What if Clement Attlee appointed Ernest Bevin to Exchequer and Hugh Dalton to Foreign Office, as ori

[raharris1973]

What if Clement Attlee appointed Ernest Bevin to Exchequer and Hugh Dalton to Foreign Office, as originally planned?

from wiki: "After the 1945 general election, Attlee had it in mind to appoint Bevin as Chancellor and Hugh Dalton as Foreign Secretary, but ultimately changed his mind and swapped them round."

What if Attlee hadn't made this swap.

Would there have been any notable differences in British Foreign Policy between 1945 and 1951, with Hugh Dalton as Foreign Secretary, on UK-US relations, UK-USSR relations, or other significant matters such as the Dunkirk Pact with France, the Brussels Pact with France and the Low Countries, policy on Indian independence and partition and disposition of princely states, Malayan counterinsurgency, and termination of the Palestine Mandate? The British atomic bomb decision? Hugh Dalton also did not survive more than about two years in OTL as Chancellor of the Exchequer - would he have survived full term as Foreign Secretary?

What difference would Bevin have made at Exchequer for domestic, financial, and budgetary policy of the Labour government?

[raharris1973]

I do not know exactly what Ernest Bevin would do at the Exchequer, but whatever course of action he chose, he would argue it with gusto, and he would come to a position of mutual professional respect with the expert professional staff, the eggheads and bean counters, at Exchequer, to whatever degree is possible within his overall Labour commitments. I say this by working off of analogy with his relations with Foreign Office staff.

As for Dalton, at the Foreign Office, he is more likely to be influenced by Attlee and pressures of the median Labour MP opinion, and pressures for consensus among of forces pressing upon him, including foreign ones, above all, his US counterparts.

As such, his positions on Palestine policy are likely to shift more pro-Zionist compared with the previous Conservative government, reflecting Labour constituencies and opinions, and against Foreign Office opinion and 'men on the spot. This will line up nicely with the ongoing Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Holocaust revelations, and avoiding frictions with the USA.

The British government would allow Jewish immigration in excess of the White Paper of 1939 limits, in effect setting them aside. Over the course of 1946, the British government would adopt basically the Jewish Agency plan for partition over Arab communal objections, with only minor, tempering pro-Arab Palestinian modifications. Here are two illustrations of the proposal: Jewish Agency Partition Plan - Map - Hebrew (1946) and Jewish Agency partition plan for Palestine proposed in 1946 Stock Photo - Alamy.
Basically, the difference of this partition from either the UN adopted partition plan of 1947 or the 1949 armistice lines is that instead of the three Arab-Palestinian chunks of the 1947 partition plan, Galilee, West Bank, Gaza and west Negev, and the difference from the left-over West Bank and Gaza Strip from the armistice, is the Jewish Agency plan left no Galilee or Gaza Strip for the Arab Palestinian side, but just a mega-West Bank, and a port outlet at Jaffa, with or without a corridor. And Jerusalem would be an international enclave.

By allowing immigration without restriction, and accepting the Jewish Agency side's partition concept, the British government essentially would be at peace with Haganah, the largest, most powerful Jewish militia, which would not need to spend energy ingeniously circumventing British immigrant interception operations. But the Revisionist Irgun and Stern Gang militias would reject the solution which fall way short of their desired borders of including the whole Palestine Mandate and Transjordan and keep up assassinations and bombings. However, their effectiveness would be kept limited in scale and sporadic through British administration and Haganah cooperation. However, Arab Palestinians would demonstrate and conduct violent attacks in protest of partition. Here, in addition to some limited # of vetted Arab Palestinian policemen the British administrators could rely on, while others quit or moonlight or get fired as security risks, the British are relying on the Emir of Transjordan and his Arab Legion to ultimately occupy and administer the allocated Arab section of Palestine.

This all increases the anger and bad press Britain gets among the Arab Palestinian press and in Arab-majority countries, and reduces the bad press and negativity Britain gets in Jewish sympathetic outlets throughout the western world in Europe and North America. The French, out of a vindictive, 'get-even' policy against the British, and still angry about getting ushered out of Syria in summer of '45, may still support, as historical, Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists, but possibly also Arab Palestinian terrorists who target the British as well.

Overall however, in this ATL, the British in the late 40s are facing a far less formidable security challenge in Palestine, suffer fewer losses and humiliations [they don't get the King David Hotel or Acre Prison blown up], and exit their forces with greater smoothness from the mandate by agreements with Israel and Jordan, without deferring the whole Palestinian question to the UN for ultimate advice or solution.

The lack of 'seams' in the British withdrawal, means Britain hands all border posts of the Mandate with Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria to Israeli forces in an organized manner, deterring the former three countries from mounting an invasion. And silent truce (at least silent on the Jordanian side), prevents the outbreak of fighting between the Arab Legion and Israeli/Haganah patrolled Arab/Jewish zonal boundary.

A consequences of this is that Israel and Jordan both declare independence as members of the Commonwealth of Nations, and their independences are not accompanied by forced displacements, except for the Jewish evacuation of some settlement blocs. Jerusalem remains international with a British garrison

[raharris1973]

The British and Jewish Agency and Haganah would probably time the end of the British Mandate and independence of Israel for whatever point in the late 1940s, possibly 1949, whenever the Jewish percentage of population of the planned Jewish zone/Israeli state just tops a majority of 50.5%. Immigration can be faster in these years, without it being illegal, and Britain can hold on to the Mandate for months longer with its tenure being more peaceful and less costly.

The Israelis would shape their constitution to allow a lot of untrammeled power to a bare majority government, and the Jewish majority would likely keep increasing post-independence because of continued migration, especially from east-central Europe. Post-independence in particular this would likely be augmented by a major stream of migration of Jewry from Arab majority and Muslim majority countries as a result of voluntary moves, anti-Jewish pogroms, some agent provocateur activities, and bribes paid to allow migration even if it is against local law, as local populations are angry about the foundation of Israel without the consent of the multi-generational majority population, even without it being accompanied by war, mass refugee movements, or expulsions. Israeli/Zionist authorities would love to see non-Jewish populations in the new Israel just decide to move over to the Arab state, now the united state of Jordan, on both sides of the river, but cannot risk being seen to force it, without cover of war. What they can do is preempt all public lands for preferred, pro-Jewish community, uses, construct the constitution and political system in ways favorable to the Jewish bare majority, encourage Jewish immigration and basically reduce the areas where Arab Muslims and Christians can affordably live through a process like 'gentrification', zoning, and cost-inflation. as the economy grows and Palestinian Arab incomes do not keep up. Any armed rebellions that emerge at scale can be used to justify local military rule and disenfranchisement of particular communities (not objectively speaking, but to the Israeli leaders and Jewish Israeli public and international supporters the community relies on).

Turning the page to other matters, I am not sure Hugh Dalton does anything differently with the independence process for the Indian sub-continent at all. I have no reason to suspect so.

I do not know if Dalton would influence the Attlee government to take any softer, less pro-monarchist line in Greece, or if any adjustments an Attlee government with him heading the Foreign Office could do to mitigate the outbreak, intensification, and cost of the Greek Civil War. Even if Greece unravels the same, maybe less money on Palestine counterinsurgency means money to lead on Greece for a few months longer before having to go a -begging to the Americans to take over.

I suspect Attlee-Dalton will be as firm against Soviet pressures as Attlee-Bevin was. Dalton would probably bring forth no arguments against a British atomic bomb, though he may not be as emphatic a champ as Bevin was with his, "we need one of these now, and with the Union Jack on it!" comment.

Dalton would probably support all the West European Union, Marshall Plan, and NATO concepts. Likewise, assuming he survives this long in office, I don't suppose the pragmatic British decision to recognize the PRC when it won the Chinese Civil War was a Bevin-unique decision, and Dalton would have agreed with Attlee/urged Attlee to do the same thing.

I think a common stand with the Americans on German occupation and industrial revival issues is as likely as in OTL.