Although it is true that the Labour government under Clement Attlee that came to power following WWII began the lengthy process of decolonization, it is difficult to make the case that it was not violent or that the government was entirely willing to give up all of its colonies. Thousands of people died in the rioting and violence that marked the Indian independence process, much of which was related to the eventual split between India and Pakistan. Letters and reports of British officials in India from this period are marked by an increasing sense of desperation and panic that they are on the verge of losing control of the country entirely. Political parties stockpiled weapons and formed militias for the protection of their community. Less than two months after the British left India, the First Kashmir War broke out between India and Pakistan, a conflict which has never been truly resolved and has subsequently claimed thousands of lives. This war was a direct result of the India/Pakistan split and how the British handled the process of independence.

Many other parts of the empire also saw intense amounts of violence. British forces in the Palestine Mandate were unable to stop the violence between Jewish/Israeli settlers and the Arab population. The British response to the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya was characterized by horrific levels of violence. After eight years of combat operations and brutal treatment of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans in concentration camps, the British finally accepted African majority rule by 1960. Independence for Kenya followed in 1963. Likewise, the Malayan Emergency involved tens of thousands of troops over the course of twelve years in an intensive counter-insurgency campaign against Communist guerrillas. Independence for the Federation of Malaya was granted in 1957, which subsequently became Malaysia in 1963. Malaysia immediately faced low-intensity conflict with Indonesia. While these conflicts were perhaps not on the same scale as the French wars in Algeria or Vietnam, neither were they in any way representative of a generally peaceful decolonization process.

If memory serves, it was believed by some that France NEEDED their colonies in order to rebuild economically after the war. After WWII, British/American foreign policy held that Western Europe had to rebound quickly if it was going to hold off the advance of the Soviet Union. England, even with the hammering it had taken in the war, had not suffered occupation, or the battles that France did. Plus, the English were still mildly confident in their island location. France, on the other hand, was on continental Europe and was devastated at the end of hostilities. If France were to lose their colonial revenue, it would be yet another blow to their economy, one that the West did not think it could afford to take.

I know little about Madagascar and Algeria, but have looked a bit at Southeast Asia. Ho Chi Minh was actually pro-west originally, because he thought his country's greatest hope for peace lay in the democratic nations that would clearly support him (England and the U.S.) only after he got completely shut down and ignored did he turn closer to China and Russia and begin insurgency in earnest.

Not just the French - I believe the Belgian (Congo), Portuguese (Angola/Mozambique) and Dutch (Indonesia) decolonizations were a bit ... fraught as well.

So was Britain an anomaly?