RITAIN is sliding into an all-out war with Indonesia. For socialists, this
is a crucial challenge: upon our ability to impose peace on the Labour
Government may depend not only British Labour’s own future, but, perhaps,
world peace itself.
There is throughout England a great reluctance to spend the word
‘imperialist’ as good descriptive coin. Those who use it tend to simper self-
consciously, to giggle, or to sneer apologetically. This touchiness, indicative
as it is of a bruised conscience, cannot in any way prevent the peoples of
the third world from seeing things for what they are. Rightly, they charac-
terise Malaysia as an imperialist creation, concerned with the financial and
strategic security of British capital alone. They also see the present tension,
all of which was ‘made in England’, and which is the successful result of a
succession of frenzied export drives, as a simple result of imperialist provo-
cation. Our Government’s reluctance to abandon imperialist priorities is
something about which all too many socialists have been soft. The facts
are now presenting their reckoning: and in it all the potential gains of
Labour rule at home are in the gravest possible danger of dissolving in the
insistent pressure of these alien commitments.
Labour’s complicity in the creation of the present conflict dates back
to at least 1961. In August of that year, Mr. John Strachey came home from
a lecture tour in Singapore, where he had been lecturing on his book “The
End of Empire’. He wrote an article in the New Statesman, under the title
‘Why Singapore Matters’. It was most revealing. In it he presented two
simple alternatives: either a federation of Malaya, Singapore and the Borneo
territories would create “a viable, and for that matter, economically strong,
non-Communist, independent state in South-East Asia” . or red ruin
Chinese dominance. “For the British Authorities,” said Strachey, “a stark
alternative looms up: unless this wide federation... can be realised, Britain
may well be faced with the necessity of either reverting to direct colonial
rule or of evacuating the Singapore base.” The snag, of course, could even
then be clearly seen: the Borneo territories were unready for the marriage.
“But can their unreadiness be allowed to obstruct the only way in which,
as it seems, a viable non-Communist state can come into being as a suc-
cessor to the British Empire in South-East Asia?” Of course not! For the
author of “The End of Empire’ this was inconceivable. And so today his
shade looks down on the Borneo jungles, as the implications of his peace-
keeping policies are spelt out in bullets and mortars.
Mr. Strachey was trapped in the narrow, nationalist horizons which
toppled the Labour Government in 1951, as it tailed along in the cold war
to the inconceivable slaughter of Korea, and financial crisis at home. Mr.
Wilson, however, came to power with the word ‘disengagement’ on his lips,
and with a record of having opposed the effects of the cold war debacle of
1951. Is he too, having triumphed, to submit to the logic of his petty-minded
fore-runners? British Labour must answer no. Here is a time and place for
disengagement. Every socialist must speak and agitate against war with
Indonesia. There must be every ounce of democratic pressure from the
unions, the constituencies, and all the organisations of Labour, to ensure
that the sick, paralysing history of the fifties does no repeat itself.
List of Sponsors Frank Allaun, M.P. Perry Anderson Chris Arthur Julian Atkinson Michael Barratt Brown Norman Buchan, M:P. Neil Carmichael, M.P. Raymond Challinor Henry Collins John Daniels Richard Fletcher Ray Gosling Trevor Griffiths Eric Heffer, M.P. Ellis Hillman, L.C.C., G.L.C. Ralph Miliband Stan Mills Jim Mortimer Tom Nairn Dick Nettleton Stan Newens, M.P. John Rex Ernie Roberts Alan Rooney David Steele Stephen Swingler, M.P. E. P. Thompson Tony Topham Raymond Williams Bert Wynn Konni Zilliacus, M.P.
INTERNATIONAL SOCTALIST JOURNAL Year 1 - Number 5-6 Lelio Basso The Workingmen’s International Association Tony Topham The implication of “package deals” in British collective bargaining Lorenzo Torres : The political situation in Spain Stephen Rousseas The economic condition of the negro in the United States Marcel Deneckere How can the left come to power in Belgium? Price 4/6 per issue—{1 for 6 issues 19 Greenfield St., Dunkirk, Nottm.
Jan. 20, 1965 — THE WEEK