Foreign Policy I: Britain, the Commonwealth and the European Union

Abstract

At Westminster Abbey, in May 1994, following the elections of the previous April which had resulted in Nelson Mandela becoming the first black president of his country, a grand service was held to commemorate the return of South Africa to the Commonwealth. The occasion, attended by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was a classic example of British establishment hypocrisy: South Africa was welcomed back as though it had been the prodigal son while Britain, by implication, had done nothing of which to be ashamed. In fact, the opposite was the case. When in 1910, still in her imperial heyday, Britain gave the new Union of South Africa self-government on a par with that already enjoyed by her other Dominions – Australia, Canada and New Zealand – she carefully obfuscated the question of political rights for the black majority in the full knowledge that the white minority had no intention whatsoever of sharing power. In the decades that followed and through the long years of apartheid, Britain, almost always, came down on the side of the white racist minority, helping to safeguard it from growing world anger after 1948 as apartheid was applied to every aspect of South African life.