In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Cold War convention of containment, which undergirded American involvement in Vietnam, was broadly shared, internalized, at times even fostered, by the United States European allies. This consensus broke down by the 1960s, as successive US administrations saw themselves locked ever more rigidly into Cold War logic which seemed to require going to war to preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam. By contrast, the United States transatlantic allies and partners increasingly came to question the very rationale of US intervention. By the mid-1960s there was a remarkable consensus among government officials across Western Europe on the futility of the central objective of the American intervention in Vietnam of defending and stabilizing a noncommunist (South) Vietnam. European governments refused to send troops to Vietnam. However, West European governments differed considerably in the public attitude they displayed toward US involvement in Vietnam, ranging from France’s vocal opposition to strong if not limitless public support by the British and West German governments. Across Western Europe, the Vietnam War cut deeply into West European domestic politics, aggravated political and societal tensions and diminished the righteousness of the American cause.

Drawing upon Stockton-on-Tees and Leeds West as case studies, this chapter explores the relationship between the National Government and popular Conservatism in urban, industrial, predominantly working-class constituencies. It demonstrates how Conservatives in the depressed regions, despite budgetary impediments to social reform legislation, succeeded in constructing a distinctive working-class appeal in the 1930s. They did so first by seeking to assert a reworked version of anti-socialism among working-class voters at the 1931 general election; then, in relation to relief campaigns among the unemployed, by seeking to rehabilitate a conspicuous Conservative presence in working-class communities; and ultimately, in 1935, by embracing the National Government’s cross-party example to advocate a programme of economic reconstruction that was both in keeping with reformist Conservatism and capable of retaining erstwhile Liberal and Labour voters.