-continued
that Wilson was wrong to refuse devaluation and accept the eventual solutions arrived for the reasons he advanced in his speech to the assembled bankers and their wives in the Guildhall — in order to “save the pound”, in order to keep sterling “riding high”, in traditional style. This was an abdication before the essential dilemma posed in the crisis. If followed through, this reasoning will imply another Labour government that tried to be all things to all men; and hence, a government that ends as the servant of the archaic system the country is saddled with; a government that attempts to extract progress from the pockets of the workers (through incomes policy) instead of through structural reforms (of which, in Britain, the first and most necessary is the de-throning of finance-capital). Such was the Labour government’s first bout with imperialism. The sinister appearance of the result is to a certain extent mitigated by a factor already indicated: Labour’s lack of preparation for the contest. In part, what has happened arose out of ignorance and the absence of theoretical insight,, in a situation where immediate action was indispenable. The Left, in and out of the Labour Party, shares in the responsibility for this. It can now help to repair the damage. Similar mitigating circumstances cannot be found for Labour’s other principal dealings with imperialism — on the hard ground of direct confrontation, so to speak, rather than in the shadows of the international exchange system. In Malaysia, Labour has plunged over the head into a ruinous war in defence of what the Indonesian government calls (correctly) “British neo-colonialism”. In British Guiana, the Labour Colonial Secretary has completed the suppression of the leftwing People’ Progressive Party and installed the American candidate
securely in power. In South Arabia, Labour’s solution to popular revolt envisages the preservation of Aden as an “indispensable Commonwealth link”, but not the recognition of the Yemen Republic. As regards South Africa, Labour has ended the export of arms; but only after allowing the final export of sixteen Buccaneer aircraft “for financial reasons” (at the same moment as it prepares to spend far greater sums in Malaysia), and with no hint of any more positive policy of opposition to the apartheid regime. In the Congo, Labour duly participated in the shameful Belgian- American expedition with the loan of Ascension Island as a base. After all that has been said and written in recent years on colonialism and the problems of the Third World (by Labour Party spokesmen as well as by others), there can be no shadow of excuse for such actions. They represent unqualified Labour complicity in the maintenance of British neo-imperialism and western neo-imperialism more generally. This complicity has been proudly theorised by the Prime Minister, in the course of his speech on foreign affairs in the House of Commons (December 16th). “Britain,’ he pointed out, is like the USA and the USSR in having an authentic “world role... which no-one in the House or in the country would wish to give up or call in question.” Of course not. Wilson rubbed the point in, nevertheless. “We should be abdicating from what I regard as our duty to the Commonwealth and world peace, and we should be abdicating from any hope of real influence in the world, if we were to think this world role could be abandoned . . .” Such a role, he continued, “depends on our having adequate bases for peace-keeping forces as an essential link in communications further afield .. . we need most of the bases we now hold... to be accepted in those bases ... must
be one of the major priorities in- our
overseas policy.” Would Home have
said this better, or differently?
How are Labour’s attitudes to-
wards these two sides of the great
imperial inheritance related to one
another? There is a direct and obvi-
ous link, in the sense that a policy
of greater involvement in neo-
colonial adventures will aggravate
the permanent burden of military-.
political expense on the balance of
payments; and, that extent, make a
solution of the economic question
and a confrontation with the City
less likely. but beyond this, there
does not appear to be any mechanical
or necessary connection. The Guild-
hall speech did not imply the deci-
sions made in Guiana or Arabia.
Vice-versa, the government might
have taken a tougher line with the
pound at home, and still be plunged
in the snares of the traditional
“world role’ East of Suez. The
danger is, rather, that they will hang
together in the context of a general
governing inertia towards imperial-
ism. The less of a challenge Labour
makes to the City, the sterling zone,
and the other paraphernalia of finan-
cial power, the less incentive it will
have to alter its attitude on the
ground, overseas, the less point there
will be in such changes, the harder
it will be for the Left to make an
issue of them. And vice-versa.
In this way, one can see all too
clearly the general political profile in
formation: that of a subordin-
ation of Labour to _ imper-
ialism in ever respect, to its archaic
forms as well as to its new needs and
drives. Surely there were some
people “in the House” willing to see
this menace and resist it? Beyond a
doubt there are many “in the
country” who will see it, and resist
it.