The British debate about an intervention in the American Civil War is fascinating because it skewers every political theory one might be attached to. Consider, for example, that the hero of liberalism, William Gladstone, was interested in supporting the Confederacy and thought southern independence was a foregone conclusion. Charles Dickens, seeing the Lancashire Cotton Famine, was convinced that the war was primarily due to Northern protectionism, a sentiment also somewhat shared by the Economist, which argued (bizarrely, one might add) that the Union victory would continue the institution of slavery, something most British citizens opposed. Incidentally, the people who shared both kinship and class with the landed gentry of the South were the British aristocracy and Tory landowners back in England; most of them had sympathies for their cousins. Robert E. Lee was considered the last true Englishman in America.
But they were also opposed to any foreign wars and intervention. The New York Times, explaining Lord Palmerston’s neutrality, wrote, “England having no control over the domestic politics of other nations can acknowledge whatever form of Government they please to set up. To refuse to do so, would involve her in endless wars, and ruinous commercial embarrassments.” […]
Eighty years on from D-Day, our headline finding is a clear scepticism towards foreign adventures and an unambiguous focus on British national interest, a view which markedly differs from the prevailing liberal interventionism of past decades”, Freddie Sayers wrote. “This more ‘realist’ option is preferred by overwhelming majorities of Reform and Conservative voters, but is also the preference of people planning to vote Labour, at 45% to 36%. Only Liberal Democrat and Green voters tend the other way, preferring a more idealist foreign policy Läs artikel