A ‘special relationship’? Harold Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson and Anglo-American relations ‘at the summit’, 1964–68
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loginIn the years 1964–68, the Labour government of Harold Wilson coincided withthe Democratic presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. David Bruce, US Ambassadorto London 1961–69, regarded the relationship between Wilson and Johnson asan especially interesting one, because ‘seldom if ever have two heads of statebeen such long-time master politicians in the domestic sense as those two’.1Many writers have commented on the Wilson–Johnson relationship, usuallyhighlighting the undoubted strains therein. Ritchie Ovendale, for example, ar-gues that although they were ‘initially effusive in their reciprocal praise’, thetwo leaders soon ‘viewed each other with some suspicion’. The President ‘thoughtthat Wilson was too keen to cross the Atlantic to bolster his domestic position’,and believed ‘that the British Prime Minister was too clever by half’.2 BritishAmbassador to Washington in the 1980s, Robin Renwick, states that ‘no per-sonal rapport developed between Johnson and Wilson, hard as Wilson tried tocultivate the impression that there was one’.3 According to Raymond Seitz, USAmbassador to London during the 1990s, Johnson ‘could barely conceal hisdisdain for Harold Wilson. He once referred to him as “a little creep”.’ YetWilson ‘thought his friendship with Johnson was harmony itself’.4 John Dickiemaintains that ‘Even the most ardent Atlanticists were surprised at the suddencooling of the Special Relationship so soon after the end of the Kennedy–Macmillan era’. In particular, Wilson’s prime ministership ‘set the scene for adecline which continued for fifteen years until Margaret Thatcher rekindled thespecial warmth of the partnership with Ronald Reagan
