Abstract
With the benefit of hindsight, a lot of scholars saw (and still see) Anglo-American relations between 1964 and 1979 in a negative light. One scholar (J.W Young, Cold War Europe 1945-1991, 1996) speaks of "the lean years of the almost forgotten friendship". Some go as far so to say this was a period in which there was no SR (for special relationship) between London and Washington, mainly because of Heath's pro-European stance (John Dickie, Special No More, 1994). What I'd like to do today is to try and cast a more favourable light on the SR and to show that the idea of an opposition between Britain's pro-American and pro-European are fundamentally warped. No structural opposition, no institutional incompatibility. More a question of perception, not to say of political passions.
