The Atlantic Bridge
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 1954
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith Lecturer is the Chairman of Lloyds Bank, Sir Oliver Franks. He is the former Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and the former Professor of Moral Philosophy at University of Glasgow. He was the British Ambassador in Washington, DC, between 1948 and 1952, and has been described as "one of the founders of the post-war world". He delivers his Reith series entitled 'Britain and Tide of World Affairs'.
In his third lecture entitled 'The Atlantic Bridge', Sir Oliver explores the relationship between the United States of America and Britain. He discusses the frictions between the two countries and their mutual interdependence. He analyses the discomforts of the passage of power, McCarthyism, and the fear that the United States will land us in a third world war.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.7 | This lecture in the series Britain and the Tide of World Affairs, given by Oliver Franks, |
| 0:10.9 | was originally broadcast in 1954. |
| 0:14.4 | Britain and the Tide of World Affairs. |
| 0:17.9 | In the third of the 1954 series of wreath lectures, which the Right Honourable Sir Oliver Franks is giving under this title, |
| 0:24.6 | he speaks of Anglo-American relations. |
| 0:27.6 | Sir Oliver Franks. |
| 0:30.6 | Since the war, we have felt comfortable about the Commonwealth, |
| 0:35.6 | but we have felt increasingly uncomfortable |
| 0:38.9 | about our relationship with the United States. |
| 0:42.8 | In the last four years especially, |
| 0:45.6 | we have been disturbed about what the Americans were doing or might do. |
| 0:50.8 | I think I should make my own position clear at the outset. |
| 0:55.0 | I believe that in their dealings with other nations, the American people intend good and not evil, |
| 1:02.0 | and I believe they want peace, not war. |
| 1:06.0 | There are some who will think this nonsense. I am sure it is not, and my conviction is based on years of negotiation |
| 1:13.6 | and discussion with the Americans on a great variety of topics. There is no shallower |
| 1:20.6 | delusion than the idea that we could get along without the United States, or indeed, that |
| 1:26.6 | the United States could get along without us. |
| 1:30.3 | Our interdependence is a fact, and I am glad that our governments since the war have accepted |
| 1:37.3 | this fact and acted on it. For I also believe that close and effective cooperation between Britain and the United States |
| 1:47.0 | is the basic condition of an orderly world, the best chance of avoiding another world war and our hope of peace. |
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