Abstract
Between 1960 and 1964, 17 British colonies gained independence, many of them African possessions previously deemed unready for self-government. However, while Britain had avoided the bitter colonial conflicts faced by the French in Indochina and Algeria, the process was not trouble-free. Racial tension in two states caused particular problems for the Douglas-Home government: South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Sir Alec Douglas-Home had previously played a large part in the development of Britain’s policy towards both of these territories. While at the Commonwealth Relations Office (1955–60) and the Foreign Office (1960–3), Douglas-Home had shaped policies on South Africa and Rhodesia that had pleased the right of the Conservative Party. This led to visible differences with the more progressive Iain Macleod at the Colonial Office.1 The main source of these clashes had been Africanisation, with Douglas-Home arguing that:
Anyone can give a country independence without worrying about the result but if the aim is to launch a nation … which is capable of surviving economically and will conduct its foreign relations according to the code of the good neighbour, it all becomes much more complicated. I confess I am not satisfied with the answer that freedom is everything and the rest is nothing.2
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Notes
J. Frankel, British Foreign Policy 1945–1973 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 36
D. Dutton, Douglas-Home (London: Haus, 2006), pp. 26–9.
Lord Home, The Way the Wind Blows: An Autobiography (London: Collins, 1976), p. 129.
8 December 1966, quoted in E. Windrich, Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence (London: Croom Helm, 1978), p. 11.
Quoted in K. Young, Sir Alec Douglas-Home (London: Dent, 1970), p. 116.
Speech to the General Congress of the United Party, Bloemfontein, 19 November 1963, quoted in J. Spence, ‘South Africa and the Modern World’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds), The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol. II: South Africa, 1870–1966 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 491.
R. Hyam and P. Henshaw, The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa since the Boer War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Table 1.1, p. 13.
J. W. Young, ‘The Wilson Government and the Debate Over Arms to South Africa in 1964’, Contemporary British History, 12:3 (1998), 71.
Z. Cervenka, The Organisation of African Unity and Its Charter (London: Hurst, 1968), p. 17.
J. Barber and J. Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security 1945–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 84.
Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference, 62nd Year (London: Transport House, 1963), pp. 222–4.
T. Ranger, Crisis in Southern Rhodesia (London: Fabian Society, 1960), p. 3.
I. Smith, Bitter Harvest: The Great Betrayal (London: Blake, 2001), p. 50.
R. Blake, A History of Rhodesia (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), p. 347.
M. Tamarkin, The Making of Zimbabwe: Decolonization in Regional and International Politics (London: Cass, 1990), pp. 1–2.
C. Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 75–6.
P. Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 10
Home, The Way the Wind Blows, p. 133; Macmillan diary, 28 March 1963, quoted in Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–1963 (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 327.
K. Young, Rhodesia and Independence: A Study in British Colonial Policy (London: Dent, 1969), p. 101.
Welensky to Salisbury, 12 November 1963; Salisbury to Welensky, 13 November 1963, quoted in J. R. T. Wood, The Welensky Papers: A History of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Durban: Graham, 1983), p. 1223.
P. Keatley, The Politics of Partnership (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 489.
Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler, K.G., C.H. (London: Hamilton, 1971), p. 226.
See also C. Palley, The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia 1888–1965: With Special Reference to Imperial Control (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 418–19.
J. Parker, Rhodesia: Little White Island (London: Pitman, 1972), pp. 76–7.
Quoted in D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (London: Faber, 1981), p. 58.
Douglas-Home to Smith, 4 June, 1964, quoted in D. R. Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1997), p. 351
Thorpe, Douglas-Home, p. 351; J. Todd, The Right to Say No (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972), p. 12
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© 2014 Andrew Holt
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Holt, A. (2014). Africa, Race and the Commonwealth. In: The Foreign Policy of the Douglas-Home Government. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284419_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284419_4
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