IkeLibrary's video: Christopher McNulty 2023 WWII Emerging Scholars Symposium

Christopher McNulty “A Special Compliment to our Allies from the United States of America: the Visiting Forces Act and Anglo-American relations, 1942" In Westminster in August 1942, the House of Commons debated the “Visiting Forces (United States) bill.” The bill provided for visiting American military authorities to assume exclusive criminal jurisdiction over American troops in Britain, and passed quickly into law. Parliamentarians voted to acquiesce to the American request to deal with any criminality on the part of GIs in Britain, but they also voted for an unprecedented measure that undermined the British constitution. The bill’s speedy passage speaks to the urgency of the moment, but it also obscures the high stakes that were at play as Members of Parliament debated the serious legal, practical and sentimental implications of eroding the British constitution in order to pay, in the words of one MP, a “special compliment” to their American allies. The Parliamentary debates, brief though they were, showed that MPs well understood these implications, but made the difficult decision in the shadow of the war.