Charlie Whitham – författare

Promoted as a means for rectifying the problems of a region in extreme need, the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission (AACC) only exposed and exacerbated the underlying antagonisms between Britain and the United States over the economic and political structure of the post-war world. This study places the AACC, formed in 1942, within the context of the Anglo-American wartime special relationship, and examines the political, economic, and security motives at the heart of this unique and little-known collaboration. It exposes the determination of the United States to use exigencies of war to impose its post-war plans upon Britain, and the tenacity of the British to defend even the smallest and least regarded of its possessions regardless of local and international opposition.The AACC was a battleground of conflicting British and American visions of a new West Indies, and it would thus serve as a rehearsal for key debates that would emerge at the end of the war. For the United States, the AACC was a vehicle for promoting America's broad postwar ambitions in the West Indies; for Britain, it was simply part of the price that had to be paid for American assistance in the war effort. Debates within the AACC over the future of West Indian sugar, the regulation of tariffs and trade, constitutional reform and the expansion of civil aviation mirrored wider British and American differences.

During the Second World War several independent business organizations in the US devoted considerable energy to formulating and advocating social and economic policy options for the US government for implementation after the war. This 'planning community' of far-sighted businessmen joined with academics and government officials in a nationwide endeavor to ensure that the colossal levels of productivity achieved by the US during wartime continued into the peace. At its core this effort was part of a wider struggle between liberals, moderates and conservatives over determining the economic and social responsibilities of government in the new post-war order. In this book, Charlie Whitham draws on an abundance of unpublished primary material from private and public archives that includes the minutes, memoranda, policy statements and research studies of the major post-war business planning organisations on a wide range of topics including monetary policy, demobilization, labor policy, international trade and foreign affairs. This is the untold story of how the post-war business planners – of all hues – helped shape the ‘moderate’ consensus which prevailed after 1945 over a permanent but limited government responsibility for fiscal, welfare and labor affairs, advanced American interests overseas and established.

During the Second World War several independent business organizations in the US devoted considerable energy to formulating and advocating social and economic policy options for the US government for implementation after the war. This 'planning community' of far-sighted businessmen joined with academics and government officials in a nationwide endeavor to ensure that the colossal levels of productivity achieved by the US during wartime continued into the peace. At its core this effort was part of a wider struggle between liberals, moderates and conservatives over determining the economic and social responsibilities of government in the new post-war order. In this book, Charlie Whitham draws on an abundance of unpublished primary material from private and public archives that includes the minutes, memoranda, policy statements and research studies of the major post-war business planning organisations on a wide range of topics including monetary policy, demobilization, labor policy, international trade and foreign affairs. This is the untold story of how the post-war business planners – of all hues – helped shape the ‘moderate’ consensus which prevailed after 1945 over a permanent but limited government responsibility for fiscal, welfare and labor affairs, advanced American interests overseas and established.

World War II presented a unique opportunity for American business to improve its reputation after years of censure for inflicting the Great Depression upon the nation. No employers’ organization worked harder or devoted greater resources to reviving business prestige during the war than the National Association of Manufacturers, which spent millions of dollars on promoting the indispensability of private enterprise to the successful mobilization of the American economy in an uncompromising multi-media campaign which spanned the factory floor to the movie theatre. Now, using unpublished primary sources, the full extent of the NAM’s wartime mission to raise the stature of American business in the post-war era is revealed. During the war the NAM erected a vast structure of research on an unprecedented scale numbering more than one hundred persons dedicated to planning the best solutions for restoring American ‘free enterprise’ capitalism after the war in a direct challenge tothe ‘liberal’ prescriptions of the reigning administration. These studies were painstakingly assembled and widely distributed and served as a complimentary arm to the better-known pro-business propaganda message of the organization. What emerges is a unique and telling glimpse into the minds of the corporate class of wartime America that reveals the determination of a major employers’ organization to exploit the exceptional circumstances of total war to influence both the power-brokers in Washington who wrote economic policy and the American public as a whole to embrace a post-war future ruled by private enterprise capitalism.