'Short list for a long haul': Britain's role in the process of relaxing strategic export controls during 1953-1954 revisited

Board of Trade officials had contemplated a drastic de-restriction of trade with Eastern Europe as early as winter 1952. However, no initiative was undertaken until autumn 1953, by which time Dwight Eisenhower had launched a gradual review of US embargo policy. Although Winston Churchill was behind the impetus to relax strategic export controls, his government acquiesced to the Americans and agreed to a further curtailment of dual-purpose goods, which it was keen to decontrol as part of its efforts to increase trade with the Soviet bloc. A new review of documents reveals that the decision-making process in Whitehall, with its internal division between the Board of Trade and other economic departments on one side, and the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence on the other, and the interactions with the Americans were more complex and subtle than previously thought.