Commonwealth Policy in a Global Context 9781487575335

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT Edited by

PAUL STREETEN Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford

and

HUGH CORBET Director, Trade Policy Research Centre, London

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

First published in 1971 by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED 67 Great Russell Street, London WCIB 3BT First published 1971 in Canada and the United States of America by UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto and Buffalo Copyright © 1971 Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Oxford, and the Trade Policy Research Centre, London. Reprinted in 2018

ISBN 0-8020-1793-2 ISBN 978-1-4875-7253-2 (paper)

Microfiche ISBN 0-8020-0110-6

Printed in the Republic of Ireland by Cahill & Co. Limited, Parkgate Printing Works, Dublin.

CONTENTS PREFACE 1 CoNTINUING CONCERN

vii WORLD

ISSUES

OF

CoMMONWEALTH

By Hugh Corbet and Paul Streeten 2

GEOGRAPHICAL PROPINQUITY VERSUS CoMMONWEALTH CoHESION

By Ali A. Mazrui

3 AUSTRALIAN POLICY IN THE INDO-PACIFIC THEATRE By J. D. B. Miller 4 BRITAIN, SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEALTH By Lionel Gelber CoMMERCIAL RELATIONS

16

32 42

CONNECTIONS

5

1

REALIGNMENTS

AND

COMMONWEALTH

60

By Hugh Corbet 6

TRADE CHALLENGES TO COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES

7

COMMERCIAL TRADE IN TEMPERATE FARM PRODUCTS

8

FREE TRADE TREATY PREDICAMENT

9

By Harry G. Johnson By David L. MacFarlane OPTION

AND

85 98

BRITAIN'S

111

By Maxwell Stamp ACCESS TO THE NEW EUROPE FOR

TRADE

THIRD WORLD 129

By Paul Streeten

10 STERLING AND INTERNATIONAL MONETARY REFORM By Geoffrey Maynard 11 CAPITAL FLOWS TO LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES By Grant L. Reuber 12 A NEW APPROACH TO DIRECT PRIVATE INVESTMENT By Paul Streeten 13 NEW POLICIES FOR COMMONWEALTH MIGRATION By Dudley Seers 14 PROSPECTS FOR COMMONWEALTH CO-OPERATION AND PLANNING

By Michael Lipton

140 158 181 190 198 221

INDEX V

List of Contributors HUGH CORBET: Director, Trade Policy Research Centre, London; formerly a specialist writer on The Times, London.

Historian and political writer, Toronto; formerly Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Canada.

LIONEL GELBER:

HARRY G. JOHNSON: Professor of Economics, London School of Economics and University of Chicago; formerly Professor of Economic Theory, University of Manchester. LIPTON: Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

MICHAEL

L. MACFARLANE: Professor of Agricultural Economics, McGill University, Montreal.

DAVID

GEOFFREY MAYNARD: ALI A. MAZRUI:

Kampala.

Professor of Economics, University of Reading.

Professor of Political Science, Makerere University,

Professor of International Relations, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.

J. D. B. MILLER:

GRANT L. REUBER: Professor of Economics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. DUDLEY SEERS: Director and Professor of Economics, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

Managing Director, Maxwell Stamp Associates, London; formerly an Executive Director, International Monetary Fund.

MAXWELL STAMP:

Warden, Queen Elizabeth House, and Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of Oxford.

PAUL STREETEN:

vi

PREFACE At the end of the 1960s there had developed in Britain and elsewhere a mood of disenchantment with the Commonwealth. This was probably instigated more bypublic opinion media than by public opinion itself. It was certainly the case that throughout the 1960s the Commonwealth was the subject in the British press of increasingly bad-tempered and ill-informed criticism which culminated in the ostentatious hostility of several newspapers at the time of the 1969 meeting in London of Commonwealth heads of government. Yet following that meeting two leading opinion polls indicated that a large majority of the British public considered that the Commonwealth ought to be strengthened. The difference between the articulate elite and what might be called Britain's "silent majority" may be a contributing factor to the malaise into which the British have succumbed as they have searched self-consciously for a role in the world that satisfies a "top dog" ego. That section of Britain's political elite which, since the transformation of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations, has been casting about for a new domain to run is the one which appears to have had the most difficulty in adjusting to the country's lesser status in power politics. A wider appreciation of the fact that satisfactory solutions to most of the world's problems in the 1970s and 1980s will have to be worked out on a global plain, rather than on regional bases, may lead to greater use being made of a Commonwealth association which is inter-regional and world-wide. In such an endeavour Britain may yet find some satisfaction in giving a lead. Since the Commonwealth is not a self-contained entity the opportunities for solutions to be launched on a Commonwealth basis are limited. Among a group of countries sharing a common British experience, while representing diverse interests, more might be achieved in clarifying fundamental issues and promoting discussion than is possible in the larger world organisations. In this collection of essays are discussed some of the issues which are of concern to Commonwealth countries. They do not represent a comprehensive survey. Some of the matters touched upon have not been taken seriously by international organisations in the past vii

and, as with the problem of trade in temperate-zone agricultural products, have now reached a crisis point. Some of the ideas contained in these pages may be taken up by governments. Others will require further study. What the authors have tried to do though is avoid stale platitudes which today do real harm rather than no good. Most of the essays in the volume are based on papers prepared for a seminar arranged in May, 1969, by Queen Elizabeth House and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of Oxford, in conjunction with the Trade Policy Research Centre, London, on the general theme of world problems facing Commonwealth countries. It was held at London's Marlborough House, where the Commonwealth Secretariat is situated, and was attended by academics from British and other Commonwealth universities, by officials from Whitehall and Commonwealth high commissions in London and by a number of businessmen and journalists. It was opened by Sir Edward (now Lord) Boyle, who was the British member of the World Bank's International Commission on Development (the Pearson Commission), while the closing address was given by V. K. Ramaswami, then Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Ministry of Finance, who died tragically five months later. Included among the essays are three which were not discussed at the Marlborough House gathering. They are the one by Mr. Lionel Gelber, the one by Professor J. D. B. Miller, based on an address to the Foreign Affairs Club in London in the autumn of 1969, and the introductory chapter which draws together the various issues raised in the book. The seminar was made possible by a number of private grants including a substantial award from the Nuffield Foundation. In the preparation of the manuscripts for publication the editors have been grateful for the assistance of Miss Diane Elson, Mrs. Muriel Payne, Mrs. Margaret Dobson and Miss Janet Strachan and they received valuable research assistance from Miss Haruko Fukuda. The authors are individually responsible for the views expressed in their various chapters. Although they have been arranged in an orderly sequence they are not meant to develop a single theme. PAUL STREETEN HUGH CORBET

London, Summer, 1970

viii

CHAPTER 1

CONTINUING WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN By Hugh Corbet and Paul Streeten

World problems facing Commonwealth countries are dictating a new approach to the Commonwealth itself, one that differs in essentials from those put forward by what might be described, in short, as the traditional idealists and the modern realists. According to the realists, the hard facts of geography, Britain's economic weakness or the hostility of newly independent Afro-Asian countries have rendered the Commonwealth "obsolete"; it is said to have become "a millstone", "an albatross" or simply "a gigantic farce" and the sooner it is wound up the better. According to the idealists, on the other hand, historical continuity along with a common language, similar institutions and shared values, a broad respect for democracy and the rule of law, as well as the fact that the association embraces rich and poor and also different races, provide the Commonwealth with a rare opportunity to foster international co-operation. The continuities of history, however, are liable to encourage illusions, as Ali Mazrui observes in the following chapter. 1 Political independence in the new Commonwealth has meant such a radical break with the past that to postulate continuity has proved both misleading and dangerous. In any case, the common language is shared only by a small elite and the Westminster parliamentary model is not appropriate, it has been found, for many of the new nations in Africa and Asia, or at least not in the current phase of their social, economic and political development. In the discussion of international relations it appears that history has been replaced by geography as regional groupings have increasingly influenced the course of world affairs. The formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 was quickly followed by the formation of the European Free Trade Association (EFI'A), the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFI'A) and smaller integration groups in Central America, Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean. In the 1960s geographical factors have played a significant part in structural changes in the world community 1

2

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

that can be expected to affect international relations well into the 1980s. Professor Mazrui discusses in Chapter 2 the dilemma in which some Commonwealth countries have been placed as regional unities have been promoted through such forums as the Organisation for African Unity and as Britain, in particular, has become more and more involved in the European movement. The various decisions taken in the United Kingdom during the 1960s that amounted to the country's political and military withdrawal into Europe made a profound impact on other Commonwealth countries. Australia has been one of the key countries where attitudes have been affected by European developments. Security and identification, viewed in the context of the great power conflicts of the world at large, have been the major factors influencing greater Australian involvement in Asian-Pacific affairs, J. D. B. Miller argues in Chapter 3. The future of Australian foreign policy in Asia, he concludes, "will not depend much on Britain, on the rest of Western Europe or on the Commonwealth of Nations, although each of these is likely to have a marginal influence : Britain, for example, in the supply of capital and immigrants; Europe in much the same way; and the Commonwealth in providing something of an intermittent back-drop to Australian relations with Malaysia and Singapore. When Australians think of Asian policy in the foreseeable future", Professor Miller adds, "they will think mainly of proximity (as represented by Indonesia especially), of Japan and also China, and of the extent to which they want to commit themselves to whatever American policy is being operated at the time." 2 Lionel Gelber discusses in Chapter 4 the development of Soviet sea-power and the implications for Commonwealth countries, especially those in the lndo-Pacific theatre. He goes on to argue the need for Britain to hold to her traditional maritime role now that the locale of the global context between the Soviet Union and Western powers has shifted to the open seas. In doing so he stresses that there must be room in British policy for both Europe and Britain's extra-European connections. The theme is taken up in Chapter 5 where it is observed that in preparing to join a discriminatory trade grouping, Britain's increasingly Eurocentric policies in the 1960s obliged Australia, Canada and New Zealand to embark on a long-term realignment of their commercial relations away from Britain and towards the Pacific community. Since Britain has substantial trading and investment interests in the Asian-Pacific region it is suggested that there has developed a strong tendency for her politico-strategic policies to be in conflict with her economic interests. It is in her world-wide interests that the

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

3

international trading system should be as non-discriminatory as possible. In this respect they attune with those of the United States. The proliferation of discriminatory trade agreements was compelling American officialdom, at the onset of the 1970s, to reconsider the continued adherence of the United States to the principle of non-discrimination in international trade, as written into the GATT's most-favoured-nation (MFN) clause. Deep concern was being expressed in Washington over the agreements which the EEC was concluding with one Mediterranean country after another. The trade impact of the agreements was not the cause of concern. They were more worrisome because of "the shambles" they were making of the MFN clause. The chief cause of concern though was the possibility that, on the basis of those Mediterranean precedents, the prospective enlargement of the EEC would be accompanied by a further proliferation of discriminatory trade agreements designed to accommodate the EFTA neutrals and the Mediterranean, African and Caribbean members of the Commonwealth, thus resulting in a polarisation of the non-Communist world economy around the two major trading entities-the United States and an enlarged EEC. 3 Serious attention in the United States was therefore given to "MFN on condition", rather than unconditional MFN, as a guideline for future policy that would ensure a greater degree of reciprocity in international trade negotiations. Even so, assuming the continuation of a liberal trading position, the United States can be expected to promote further liberalisation on as broad a basis as possible in order to prevent the division of the non-Communist world. But MFN on condition may prove in the end to be the most effective way of promoting all-embracing trade initiatives. To what extent European regionalism, which has encouraged regionalism elsewhere, will continue to determine the course of international integration remains to be seen. With the growing integration of the world economy, however, regional groupings are out of keeping with rapid developments in inter-continental transport and communications and with the opportunities for a better worldwide allocation of resources. Intense international competition, new and expanding markets, technological advances in industry and agriculture, the still greater economies of scale that are being achieved and large-scale capital flows are having profound and continuing effects on international investment, production and trade patterns. Lasting solutions of the problems associated with nontariff distortions of trade, the operations of multinational corporations and protectionist agricultural policies will require the participation of all major trading nations in the world.

4

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Trade Issues on the Agenda

In his analysis in Chapter 6, of the trade challenges to Common-

wealth countries, Harry Johnson considers it very unlikely, given the development of macro-economic management, that there will again be a collapse of world trade requiring a retreat into protectionism ameliorated by preferential trading arrangements, as happened in the 1930s. Professor Johnson argues that it should be possible to de-emphasise the protective aspects of the Commonwealth and emphasise, instead, another theme that can be discerned in the original motivation of the Commonwealth preference system, namely the desirability of freer trade within the prevailing economic and political framework of world affairs. This would involve Commonwealth countries placing their influence on the side of lowering trade barriers. It would also involve being prepared to dismantle existing protected positions within the Commonwealth system in exchange for broader trading opportunities. Professor Johnson proceeds to explore the advantages and disadvantages of three optional strategies or modes of negotiation for liberalising world trade: (1) another GAIT negotiation conducted on the basis of reciprocity and MFN treatment, after the fashion of the six previous rounds of negotiations that have been conducted since World War II; (2) a sector-by-sector approach to free or freer trade, as tentatively proposed by the GATT Secretariat after the conclusion of the Kennedy Round agreement; and (3) a free trade treaty among developed countries, which would put the emphasis on the principle of reciprocity. Broaching the issues involved from various Commonwealth standpoints, the analysis comes down on the side of the free trade treaty option, which would amount to a broad strategy requiring a commitment to (a) the across-the-board elimination of outstandring industrial tariffs according to a pre-arranged timetable, (b) rules of competition covering non-tariff distortions to trade, (c) consult and negotiate on the liberalisation of trade in agricultural products and (d) provide market access for the exports of less developed countries. The definition of some such broad strategy seems required to counter the protectionist forces which began to mobilise in North America and Western Europe shortly after the Kennedy Round ended. Moreover, it needs to be "stated in bold and ambitious terms", to use the words of Herman Meyjes, the Dutch economist, "in order to fire imagination and mobilise the political will necessary for its implementation". 4 The "more ambitious" trade initiative that President Nixon foreshadowed in his first foreign trade message to the United States Congress will need to include among the objectives the elimination by developed countries of substan-

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

5

tially all tariffs on industrial products. In order to provide as much scope as possible for agreement to be reached, the harmonisation of non-tariff measures and the liberalisation of agricultural trade should also be included among the objectives. In the context of a broad trade strategy, moreover, it should be possible to introduce a generalised scheme of tariff preference that is more liberal, and more uniform, than the arrangements which were devised in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at the turn of the decade. If the sectoral approach to trade liberalisation is preferred, Professor Johnson urges that the agricultural sector should be an early candidate. Indeed, there has emerged, particularly since the Kennedy Round, a general consensus on the need for agricultural trade to be an integral part of subsequent major trade liberalising initiatives, whatever form they take. There is a general recognition, too, that if agricultural trade is to be liberalised, it will be necessary for national farm-support policies to be placed on the tables of international diplomacy. David MacFarlane discusses in Chapter 7 the situation for world trade in temperate-zone agricultural products. Agricultural policy is more than a domestic issue; it is also an international one. This has not been universally recognised in the past. Under the multilateral negotiating procedures of the GATT, agricultural products have been placed in a special position far less amenable to bargaining than industrial products. In the liberalisation of world trade that has taken place since the late 1940s progress in the agricultural sector has therefore lagged very far behind that in the industrial sector. This disparity was increased as a result of the Kennedy Round negotiations. For what tangible results were achieved in no way matched the results on the industrial side. Indeed, as Professor Johnson baldly states, no impact has been made, either in the Kennedy Round or in previous negotiations, on the long-run upward trend in the protection accorded to temperate-zone agricultural production. Agriculture is a vital source of earnings for many developed and developing countries. These countries have recognised that in many industrialised countries the farming community poses difficult politico-social problems. Even so, they have been continually pressing, and quite understandably, for a remedy to be brought to a ,s,ituation that is both inefficient and inequitable. The situation is likely to worsen, imposing greater losses on the world economy, as new grains and new production techniques convert more developing countries into net exporters of agricultural products. Industrial countries also have an interest in finding common

6

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

solutions to the difficulties which confront them in the agricultural sector. Many of them are trying to find ways out of their present dilemma, although others, notably the United Kingdom, seem bent on raising the level of protection. At the same time, the circumstances for making progress are not entirely unfavourable. Action under the GATT has been planned in two main directions. In the short term, it is dealing with particularly urgent problems in limited sectors, such as dairy products and poultry. In the longer term, it will take up fundamental problems : support prices and policies; the establishment of appropriate conditions of access to principal markets; evaluation of the effects of export subsidies; and acceptable compromises in regard to competition. In the United States the Roth Report suggested that the Administration should "attempt to obtain acceptance of the principle that price regulation should be aimed at price stabilisation alone and that import charges, other than moderate tariffs, should be limited in their application to off-setting subsidisation and other measures that artificially interfere with world market prices". The report went on to argue that in order to negotiate changes in the domestic agricultural policies of other countries, and the trade policies related to them, the United States must be prepared to consider changes in its own policies. "If we are to reduce restrictions on our exports and gain improved access to foreign markets," the Roth Report stated, "we will have to offer improved access to our own market." 5 While governments have emphasised their national problems in international trade negotiations over agricultural products, they had not, at the start of the 1970s, demonstrated any perceptible interest in reforming their national policies. Without such an interest in taking national action to correct at least part of the international disarray, as John Coppock has remarked, the discussions under the GATT stand little chance of making significant progress. 8 What might then be jeopardised, apart from the interests of developing countries and others which enjoy a comparative advantage in agricultural production, is the further liberalisation of world trade in industrial products, especially if the United States was to make progress on the industrial side conditional upon progress on the agricultural side. As it is, trade in agricultural products is creating difficulties for the further integration of the EEC countries and, through Britain's ties with other Commonwealth countries, is complicating the enlargement of the EEC and the achievement of wider European economic integration. The losses incurred by the industrial countries through the protection they afford their domestic agricultural sectors came about

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

7

as a result of basing agricultural policies on the interests of producers rather than on the interests of consumers. In the United Kingdom an attempt has been made to satisfy to some extent both producer and consumer interests through a relatively liberal import policy combined with a range of subsidies for the home farmer. But at the time of writing the Heath Government is proposing to raise the level of protection for domestic agriculture, for the purpose of expanding home production, by introducing an EEC-type import levy system to replace many Exchequer subsidies. British agricultural policy has largely been justified in terms of its relationship to trade objectives. But little attempt has been made to elucidate and explore the implications of the various changes that might be made to the commercial policy of the United Kingdom, either (a) from the point of view of what effect such other options would have on domestic agriculture, except in connection with the possibility of Britain joining the EEC, or (b) from the point of view of how agricultural policy might be best employed as an integral part of a revised commercial policy, in spite of the Kennedy Round agreement and in spite of the discussion in recent years on the maximising of import substitution. At the beginning of the 1970s, no discussion had developed, for instance, on how imports may best be saved, if that is an objective. No work had been done on the effects on British agriculture of changes in sterling's rate of exchange, despite the evidence that could have been gathered from the devaluation of November, 1967. Nor had any analysis appeared on the implications of further trade liberalisation in related markets. Nor had anything been published, at the time of writing, on the degree of protection that is afforded by the whole structure of Exchequer subsidies for British agriculture. Any strategy which offered effective means of coming to grips with the problem of harmonising national farm-support policies would commend itself greatly to the traditional agricultural exporting countries. By providing an institutional framework, and a proper sense of commitment, for continual consultation and negotiation, the free trade treaty option might offer as effective a means as any. The possibility of making progress over the removal of restrictions on agricultural trade might be the most attractive feature of the free trade treaty option from an American standpoint, although the general benefits that continued trade liberalisation would afford the world economy, by contrast to the threat of spreading beggar-my-neighbour policies (such as the EEC's farm arrangements), might be a more fundamental consideration. In static terms, the participation of the United States in a free trade

8

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

treaty among the developed countries would probably result, so American calculations have suggested, in a small gain. 7 As for the United Kingdom, Maxwell Stamp discusses in Chapter 8 the results of a quantitative analysis, carried out prior to sterling's 1967 devaluation, which suggested that with regard to trade in manufactures alone it would be more advantageous for Britain to join a free trade association including the United States than to become a member of the EEC. What he stresses, though, is that in terms of dynamic effects, the advantages for Britain weigh more heavily on the side of an association with the United States, the latter's market being, among other things, more homogeneous than the Common Market. And when trade in agricultural products is taken into consideration, the EEC's common agricultural policy is a heavy cost to shoulder for a country which has traditionally adhered to a "cheap food" policy. 8 Comparisons of this kind need to be made in order to put the question of British membership of the EEC in perspective, at least from an economic point of view. Mr. Stamp refers to the political or emotional aspects of the Common Market question, but is dubious about the prospects for Britain of increasing her power and influence by joining the EEC, as he is about the new Europe being able to develop a role that is independent of the United States and the Soviet Union. In any event, the United States is not likely to initiate or support a multilateral free trade association which fails to take account of EEC interests, although relations between the United States and EEC might so deteriorate that the former is obliged to resort to MFN on condition and concentrate on developing trade arrangements with Asian-Pacific countries and those in the Western Hemisphere, as the EEC has been developing discriminatory trade arrangements with Mediterranean countries and those in Africa. Reference has already been made to the possibility of the nonCommunist world dividing into trading zones centred on the United States and the EEC. The introduction of a scheme of generalised tariff preferences for developing countries, as has been agreed in the OECD, is not likely to do much to improve the international trading system particularly since the scheme may be of only little value to developing countries, in view of the protectionist safeguards, escape clauses and "exceptions" (excluding import-sensitive domestic industries). Because of the difficulties of reaching agreement in the OECD on a single system of acceptable generalised tariff preferences, as well as other shortcomings, some Commonwealth countries have concluded that they would be better off under the Commonwealth

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

9

preference system than under some versions of the generalised scheme. It has proved extremely difficult to devise in isolation a general scheme, subsuming the existing EEC (Yaounde Convention) and Commonwealth systems. Thought is accordingly being given to the question of preferences for developing countries in the context of a broad trade strategy; that is, by linking preferences for developing countries to a new programme for further liberalising trade between developed countries, such as David Wall, Jean Royer and Harald Malmgren, among others, have proposed.9 Financial Problems on the Agenda Turning to financial questions, Geoffrey Maynard deals in Chapter 10 with the decline in importance of the sterling area, the economic basis of which has largely disappeared. The sterling area survives because its members dare not let it fall apart except in the context of some international or quasi-international arrangement. Professor Maynard looks into the arrangements that might be devised in the light of recent crises and developments in the international monetary system. At its formal birth in 1940, the sterling area represented a political grouping of countries with a common objective, the winning of the war, and the contributory economic aim of conserving and making the best use of foreign exchange resources for that military purpose. After the war, however, the political factors underlying the cohesion of the system became less important and strictly economic factors became predominant. Even if, in the early 1970s, the United Kingdom's fundamental economic problems were to be solved, the problem of sterling would remain : first because of the weakening economic ties between sterling area countries, leading inevitably to a diversification of reserve holdings, which in conjunction with the economic development of developing countries in the overseas sterling area, might well lead to a fall in the absolute level of sterling reserves; and secondly, because of the remaining weakness of the international monetary system. Unless Britain's balance of payments position improves considerably, and Canada and Australia maintain a strong position, the prospects for a substantial increase in official capital transfers from developed to developing Commonwealth countries will remain dim. Grant Reuber argues in Chapter 11 that in order to ensure that financial aid is used as effectively as possible, programmes will have to be formulated more precisely within a strategic framework, one designed to attain certain well-defined objectives. Aid B

10

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

policies will need to be more closely co-ordinated with other aspects of government policies. To achieve a balanced programme of development for the countries of the Third World, either individually or collectively, it is necessary to pay attention to three inter-related areas of policy. The first concerns the policies of the developing countries themselves in making the best use of their own resources and those obtained from abroad. The second concerns the opportunities of developing countries to participate in international trade and to use it as an engine of development. The third concerns financial and technical assistance to developing countries for the purpose of overcoming the difficulties that arise in the first two areas of policy. When the Third World challenge is broached in this way the role of financial and technical assistance is cast in a different light. Such aid is not rendered less significant by a more comprehensive approach. On the contrary, its significance is enhanced by emphasising the wider effectiveness that can be attained with greater selectivity in its use. What is noteworthy about the above formulation is that it puts in perspective the larger role that could be played by trade and other policies in promoting the development of Third World countries. In co-ordinating aid policies with other government policies, trade policy is especially important. But to be successful, the coordinating process in most countries will require a higher input of information, research and first class talent than has been applied in the past to the planning and administration of aid and its coordination with other policies. Although there is no substitute for financial resources, Professor Reuber writes, the door is open to Commonwealth countries to devise more rational aid policies and practices and to exert their combined influence to advance this objective outside the Commonwealth as well. Regarding the private sector, Professor Reuber notes that private enterprise imports about three-quarters of the total exports of the less developed countries; it also provides more than half of tlie foreign personnel working in the less developed countries as expatriate commercial and industrial personnel. For balance of payments reasons, and because of the growing disillusionment with the effectiveness of foreign aid programmes, as well as for other reasons, the less developed countries are meeting stiffer competition for public funds in some developed countries, especially the U.S.A. This state of affairs coincides with the greater reluctance on the part of some donor countries to maintain, let alone increase, their aid expenditures. Private direct investment is often accompanied by access to tech-

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

11

nology and technicians, to a wide range of entrepreneurial talent, management and marketing skills, technical and market information, to cheaper and more readily available credit. It is accompanied, too, by a greater capacity and willingness to bear risk. Private industry provides for the less developed countries an easier access to foreign markets, both as sources of inputs and as outlets for sales. On the other hand, there are well-known objections to private investment. The question is how important, on balance, are the disadvantages of foreign investment in developing countries: to what extent are the benefits of foreign investment offset by the costs; to what extent can the costs of foreign investment be reduced without also reducing the benefits; and to what extent can net benefits of private foreign investment be achieved by alternative methods of obtaining the capital, and the ancillary benefits, associated with private foreign investment. Professor Reuber draws on the Canadian experience to illustrate some considerations arising out of this issue. He concludes that, with sufficient incentives and guarantees, the flow of private foreign investment to the less developed countries could be increased enormously in the 1970s.

Professor Reuber asserts that much of what can be done to improve the prospects for private foreign investment in Third World countries is in the hands of the less developed countries themselves and does not lie within the powers of developed countries. If there is the will to create a better climate for investment, the Commonwealth countries might usefully consider how far developed countries can go in covering investment risks, without bearing the costs of risks that should properly be borne by investors and without discriminating against those less developed countries which minimise the risks of foreign investment. Secondly, Commonwealth countries might come together to explore the possibilities of providing more and better information to potential investors, of overcoming inertia and arousing a greater awareness and interest in investment opportunities in less developed countries. This might be done along the lines of the Inter-American Investment Development Centre. Another possibility would be to expand and extend such agencies as the International Finance Corporation, the regional and sub-regional development banks, the Commonwealth Development Corporation and so on. These can be effective agencies for marshalling entrepreneurial talent, management, technical know-how and market skills in order to help in the domestic utilisation of resources in the developing countries. The initiatives which Professor Reuber discusses are followed in

12

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Chapter 12 by a proposal for joint ventures in less developed countries between private firms and local governments or government agencies. It is argued that if the main concern is the social and economic development of less developed countries, the contribution of private overseas investment must be assessed in the light of a variety of methods for mobilising indigenous resources, skills and know-how. The task is to explore the most effective and cheapest ways of attracting foreign resources, skills and knowledge and the best ways of combining them with local resources. This requires an examination of new institutions, arrangements and forms of contract. Even in sectors and industries where private equity is the engine of development, political considerations suggest that partnerships and joint ventures, in which local capital and know-how can participate, are often preferable to wholly or majority foreign-owned operations. It is urged that from the outset, the foreign firm should avoid putting up more than 49 per cent of the capital, but if a higher percentage is desired an arrangement should be made for an eventual transfer of part of the equity at a later stage. Raising the expectations of high level manpower in the developing countries is an aspect of the problem discussed by Dudley Seers in Chapter 13, which is concerned with the free movement of people within the Commonwealth. Such movement poses a new challenge. In 1962 Britain imposed, for the first time in her history, restrictions on Commonwealth immigration into the United Kingdom. Subsequent legislation in 1965 and 1968 implied an increasing degree of discrimination and at the close of the 1960s "repatriation" appeared on the agenda of serious discussion. The main flows of high-level manpower are now of professional people away from countries with the greatest need for highly qualified personnel towards those where such manpower is relatively plentiful. The situation is worsened by the educational pattern and facilities in the developing countries which are conducive to many professional shortages. Yet the most obvious ways of checking the migration of professional people raises major issues of human rights and involves moral issues of race and religion. The need for constructive migration policies, and corresponding policies in education and technical assistance, is plain if international friction is to be avoided. The problem of Commonwealth migration illustrates the anachronisms which exist in the commercial and investment policies of the Commonwealth. Miohael Lipton's idea in Chapter 14 for a Commonwealth indicative plan is therefore an imaginative proposal. Strong emphasis is placed on the indicative character of his

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

13

proposal which is aimed at the avoidance of wasteful location and duplication by, for instance, siting cement, steel and fertiliser plants according to rational criteria, or by diversifying agriculture in one country without undermining the earning capacity of another. An attempt could be made to identify the future growth industries and declining industries in industrial countries and to avoid protection of, and defensive investment in, decaying sectors, thus opening up trade opportunities for developing countries. If instead of supporting the cotton textile industry, the United Kingdom was able to shift capital, management and labour into engineering industries where there are shortages, the British market could be opened to more cotton textiles from Hongkong, India and Pakistan, to the benefit of all countries. Such matching of markets, based on forecasts of industrial change, contains enormous scope for mutually advantageous co-operation. In considering the prospects for Commonwealth co-operation, Mr. Lipton dwells on the multilateral aspects and on common interests which could be developed. The new Commonwealth he urges already exists to some extent in areas that are not considered newsworthy. Whether it is true or not that no news is good news, it is certainly true that good news is no news. In the professions, universities, chambers of commerce, the law, tourism, telecommunications, market development and so on there is a long record of individuals and governments in the Commonwealth co-operating constructively. Besides the Commonwealth Secretariat, founded in 1965, there is the Commonwealth Foundation, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Commonwealth Development Corporation, the Commonwealth Institute and numerous other organisations which foster co-operation quietly but effectively. The Commonwealth which appears in the London headlines, though, is one which consists of bilateral relations radiating from Britain at the centre. These bilateral relations are highlighted when a charge by the periphery is made against the centre, whether it be over Rhodesia, the Common Market or British immigration policy. As a result the whole system is damaged. More attention needs to be focused on the Commonwealth's multilateral aspects. But this cannot be left to private well-wishers. In a world where communications media are influenced daily by public relations agencies and information services, the Commonwealth Secretariat requires an information service of its own. While the multilateral Commonwealth needs to be publicised and developed, care must be taken not to push decentralisation too far. For most Commonwealth countries the United Kingdom is a clearing house and this is so, as Lionel Gelber points out, for prac-

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

tical reasons and it is also so for historic reasons. If that which brought its members together was to be removed the Commonwealth would probably fall apart. Joining a rich man's club, whether it is the European Economic Community or a multilateral free trade association of industrial countries, need not (though it may) mean abrogation of the responsibilities towards the Third World. Rules and policies can be devised which combine such joining with more, and with more effective, aid to and trade with developing countries. While Britain has a selective responsibility for accelerating the development of the poor Commonwealth countries, this should not be interpreted as an exclusive stance. Commonwealth links can be used to forge a world-wide strategy for development. Special ties, Commonwealth preferences and selective Commonwealth obligations can be used as a tactical weapon for achieving world-wide acceptance of sharing the responsibility for development and for moving towards one world.

NOTES 1. Ali Mazrui, "Geographical Propinquity versus Commonwealth Cohe-

sion", Chapter 2.

2. For a fuller discussion of Australian policy in Asia, see J. D. B. Miller, "Australia and Asia after the US Withdrawal", The Pacific Community, Tokyo, July, 1970. 3. In this connection see the testimonies before the Joint Economic Committee hearings on Washington's Capitol Hill in December, 1969, and especially those of Professor Richard N. Cooper, then a consultant to President Nixon, and Professor Francis Bator: A Foreign Economic Policy for the 1970s. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy, Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1970) Part 1, pp. 49-61 and pp. 109-14. 4. Ibid., Part 2, pp. 408-419.

5. Special Representative for Trade Negotiations, Future United States Foreign Trade Policy (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1969) pp. 36-37. 6. John 0. Coppock, Atlantic Agricultural Unity : ls it Possible? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), quoted in David L. MacFarlane, "Commercial Trade in Temperate Farm Products", Chapter 7 below, p. 99.

WORLD ISSUES OF COMMONWEALTH CONCERN

15

7. Mordechai Kreinin, Alternative Commercial Policies: Their Effect on the American Economy (Ann Arbor: Institute for International Business and Economic Development studies: Michigan State University, 1967) and Robert G. Hawkins, "The Economic Impact on the United States of a UK-Canada-US Free Trade Association", in Thomas M. Franck and Edward Weisband (eds.), A Free Trade Association (New York: New York University Press 1968). 8. See Nicholas Kaldor "EEC Farm Policy is Fundamentally Misconceived", New Statesman, London, April 3, 1970. 9. David Wall, The Third World Challenge (London: Atlantic Trade Study, Trade Policy Research Centre, 1968); Jean Royer, The

Liberalisation of International Trade during the Next Decade (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, 1969); and Harald B. Malmgren, "Trade Policy and Negotiations in the 1970s", in A Foreign Economic Policy for the 1970s, op. cit., Part 2, pp. 254-289.

CHAPTER 2

GEOGRAPHICAL PROPINQUITY VERSUS COMMONWEALTH COHESION By Ali A. Mazrui

George Bennett, the Oxford historian, used to say that the strength of independent Tanzania was the dispersal of her population. Kenya and Uganda had concentrated populations near the capital cities and had large single tribes which constituted significant proportions of the national population. But mainland Tanzania had a capital which was basically remote from the majority of the dispersed population of the country and the tribes were relatively small and far between. The tribal tensions, then, which have been known to shake Kenya and Uganda were barely possible in mainland Tanzania. The dispersal of her peoples was the basis of the country's unity. By contrast Commonwealth unity suffers from its own dispersal. As I have had occasion to argue elsewhere, the British Commonwealth is weak today partly because the British Empire was strong in its massive size. A large disparate empire was an impressive achievement while it lasted. But on attainment of independence the disparateness of the constituent parts in a sovereign partnership has not been conducive to Commonwealth cohesiveness. For the Commonwealth, by contrast to the good fortunes of Tanzania, dispersal has not been a basis for unity. This, then, is one of the major areas of conflict between the realities of geography and the ambition of Commonwealth cohesiveness. Yet in this paper we ·shall not single out aH the aspects of tension between geographical facts and Commonwealth faith, but those factors which bear on the interplay between regionalism as a loyalty to one's particular geographical region and loyalty to a partnership between those who shared an historic Britannic experience. It is this which is the great dialectic of Commonwealth history. It is a dialectic which derives part of its dynamism from race consciousness as a factor in Commonwealth relations and as a profound theme in personal and communal identification in the modern world. 16

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17

Pan-Africanism versus the Commonwealth A major rival of the Commonwealth concept has always been the lure of regional integration. It is true that theoretically the two loyalties are supposed to be quite compatible. It was indeed hoped quite early that cross-cutting affiliations between Commonwealth members and others outside the Commonwealth would help to enrich the internal cohesiveness and meaning of the Commonwealth. But this kind of reasoning was usually based on an old faith which attributed to the Commonwealth infinite flexibility. It was not always remembered that flexibility in an association reaches a stage when the last ounce of meaning in the association is squeezed out. For those who believed that the intimacy between Commonwealth countries was bound to be affected if rival relationships with outside associations became too strong, the idea of regional integration in Africa, Asia or Europe always carried the risk of looser ties between Commonwealth countries themselves. On balance it might be said that in the last few years the attractiveness of rival concepts to the Commonwealth in Africa and Asia has declined, whereas the attractiveness of a rival concept to the Colillilonwealth for Britain has increased. Ideas of regional unification in Asia and Africa have lost some of their former mystique and dynamism, whereas regional unification in Europe has assumed a compulsive fascination for the British. When Ghana gained her independence in 1957 questions began to be asked whether President Kwame Nkrumah's commitment to pan-Africanism would come into conflict with his acceptance of the Commonwealth ideal. After all, Mr. Nkrumah's brand of panAfricanism envisaged a union which would embrace former French Africa, former Belgian Africa, Arab Africa, and that part of Africa which had experienced Iberian rule. Moreover, Mr. Nkrumah's vision of an actual merger of sovereignties between these countries, and the creation of new national entities, posed ,the problem of how these entities were to be accommodated within a Commonwealth concept which had until then continued to be based on a shared Britannic experience. The issue assumed a little more immediacy when Guinea under Sekou Toure grabbed her independence from France. Guinea was cut loose without a penny from the metropolitan country and needed friends in the first glare of sovereign daylight. Nkrumah not only made a financial gift to Guinea in her moment of distress, but also extended the offer of political unification. In 1958, therefore, it did seem as if Africa was about to have the beginnings of a genuine political integration between a former British colony and

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a former French colony. The meaning of such an experiment for the Commonwealth was unclear. What was grasped was that it would pose important questions for the Commonwealth, and for the sterling area, if Ghana and Guinea merged into one state. The union did not in fact take off effectively. It was expanded later to include Mali, but the degree of fusion originally expected fell far short of accomplishment. Then in May 1963, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) came into being. Mr. Nkrumah, at the inaugural meeting of the organisation, put forward a spirited case for a continental union government. The mood, however, of the conference, which set up the OAU, was more cautious. It settled for continental collaboration on matters both functional and political, but retained the principle of sovereignty for individual African states. Yet even this concept of continental regionalism raised the issue of whether it was rivalled by other forms of association to which the African states were already affiliated. The conference in Addis Ababa itself decided that the new organisation was certainly not to have its role challenged by sub-regional organisations within Africa unless these were purely functional. And so organisations like the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa, which had its headquarters in Dar es Salaam, was liquidated as a gesture of commitment to the broader unity of the OAU. The Afro-Malagasy Union of French-speaking states was also liquidated and replaced by a more purely functional form of collaboration between those states. This, too, was in response to the OAU's commitment in favour of continental collaboration in politics and disapproval of sub-regional collaborative ventures of a political kind. The OAU, as an organisation, took no position against extraAfrican links like those which former British colonies had with other Commonwealth countries. Nevertheless, some African commentators raised the question of compatibility between these commitments. The year following the formation of the OAU dramatised the duality of affiliations. The thirteenth Commonwealth Prime ,Minister's Conference in 1964 and the second Conference of African Heads of State and Government were held one after the other. In fact, arrangements for the OAU conference in Cairo had to be synchronised with arrangements being made in London for the Commonwealth meeting so that African leaders could attend them both. Those African leaders from Commonwealth countries flew directly from London to Cairo in one big burst of diplomatic activity. In the following month, a leading African political figure, the

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19

late Tom Mboya, of Kenya, gave an important policy lecture at Makerere University College on the subject of "The Commonwealth and Pan-Africanism: are they in Conflict?" Mboya said that three developments which emerged from the recent Commonwealth conference could prove to be of critical significance. First, there was a suggestion by Ghana to set up a Commonwealth secretariat. This was bound to be the first time that the Commonwealth had adopted any permanent form of centralised machinery. Another issue which came up at the conference was a proposal to establish machinery for Commonwealth conciliation. On this Mboya asked: "Would such innovations really keep the Commonwealth together? Would they not begin to create commitments that would lead to conflict in our loyalties to pan-Africanism and the break-up of the Commonwealth itself?" Mboya also referred to the proposal for permanent multilateral trade and technical aid arrangements and institutions. On this he asked, "How far would these conflict with OAU efforts and with the bilateral arrangements entered into between African member states and other non-Commonwealth states?" Mboya also drew attention to the fact that the Commonwealth conference communique issued in 1964 "went beyond the normal expression of pious, polite words". Some controversial issues were discussed and decided upon. An attempt was even made to secure a commitment to certain ideals and standards to be applied to all member states. At the conference the African states had tried to secure agreement on issues on which they were due to report to the OAU at the Cairo conference soon following. These included questions like Rhodesia, South Africa and even Commonwealth pressure on Portugal in relation to her colonial policy. Mboya went on to ask: "Will the next conference break up on disputes as to what should go into the communique? Will the African states demand more than the Western powers in the club can agree to support and still remain loyal members of their own block? These are important points in considering this question."

Faction at the United Nations At the second meeting of the Council of Ministers of the OAU, the African members of the Commonwealth had in fact been specifically asked to raise certain issues at the Commonwealth conference and to use their influence with Britain and Rhodesia especially. Mboya made the observation: "The implication here must lead one to ask whether members of the Commonwealth will in future be able to come to the OAU to plead for a point of view of the Commonwealth on a given matter. Or will they expect to

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plead only the OAU point of view at Commonwealth conferences? It is difficult at this stage to see the way ahead."2 On balance Mboya himself was convinced that there was no immediate prospect of conflict between commitment to the OAU and loyalty to the Commonwealth. As to which one was likely to prevail, if there was such a conflict, there was a suggestion in Mboya's lecture that the pan-African bond was stronger than the Commonwealth tie. He cited the example of experience at the United Nations where pan-Africanism had apparently proved stronger already. African states had come together to form an active African group at the United Nations. But there was no Commonwealth bloc there. Even French-speaking African states, which, Mboya observed, had originally tended to vote with France, were now active members of the African group at the United Nations. President Julius Nyerere, of Tanzania, had been, a few years earlier, even more specific in regarding pan-Africanism as the primary commitment of unification for his own country. Addressing the Royal Commonwealth Society in London, Dr. Nyerere paid homage to the concept of the Commonwealth and pledged a loyalty to it which has continued ever since, in spite of moments of strained relations with Britain. Dr. Nyerere nevertheless emphasised that "African unity must have priority over all other associations ".3 Mboya mentioned this solidarity of African states on some issues at the United Nations. But even Afro-Asianism has often been a more effective basis of diplomatic collaboration at the United Nations than shared membership of the Commonwealth. On most issues which come before the United Nations-even those which are of special interest to the Commonwealth-Commonwealth members are hopelessly divided. Their distribution in different ideological camps, different regional groupings and different races, all go towards making it virtually impossible that the Commonwealth should ever speak with one voice on any major international contention at the world body. Looking at the problem, however, from the perspective of the United Nations is not enough. It may indeed be true that at the United Nations there is a serious lack of anything approaching like-mindedness among Commonwealth countries : that, as an index of the realities of Commonwealth relations, is quite reliable. It may also be true that at the United Nations on some issues there is a high degree of consensus among African countries : that, though, as an index of general African solidarity, is far less reliable. One major reason is that African issues which go to the United

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21

Nations are often those which least divide African states. There is a general reluctance to take issues like the Nigerian Civil War, or the Ethiopian-Somalia dispute, or the Malawi-Tanzanian disagreements, or the old Algerian-Moroccan border contention, to the United Nations. On the contrary, there is an ethos in inter-African relations which puts a premium on trying to solve this kind of African problem within the African continent itself. I have had occasion to call this ethos the principle of continental jurisdiction. The great issues of the African continent, insofar as they concern relations between African states, are often jealously held back from spilling beyond the continent. And African policy-makers, sometimes led by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, have often emphasised the desirability of keeping major domestic contentions between Africans away from the chambers of the world body in New York.' The tendency within the Commonwealth is quite different. The issues which go to the United Nations are often precisely those issues which deeply divide the Commonwealth internally. After Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in November, 1965, Britain did try to insulate the problem from United Nations politics. This seemed to be a hopeless ambition from the start. Britain's initial appearance of toughness against Mr. Ian Smith's regime was motivated by a desire to pre-empt the initiative and help to keep United Nations involvement in the Rhodesian crisis to a minimum. In fact, one major argument which the British Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Wilson, used at the time to make sure there was a bi-partisan approach to the Rhodesian rebellion was to warn the Conservatives in Britain that if they did not support the Government in measures of toughness against the Smith regime there was a danger of Rhodesia being invaded by "a Red army in blue berets". The allusion was, of course, to the possibility of United Nations soldiers recruited from Communist countries being dispatched to subdue the Rhodesian rebellion under the banner of the world body. Since then the Rhodesian problem has remained one of the recurrent issues in the debating chambers of the United Nations. Other major convulsive issues within the Commonwealth which found their way to the United Nations over the years have included the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, the old Anglo-Cypriot dispute and the British invasion of the West Indian Island of Anguilla in March 1969. All these have been deemed fit subjects for heated discussion at the United Nations between Commonwealth members themselves. On balance, then, politics at the United Nations provide a

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reliable reflection of Commonwealth relations, but a distorted picture of the realities of inter-African relations. The Commonwealth is on the whole as divided as its behaviour at the United Nations would indicate and Africa is much less united than its behaviour at the United Nations would suggest. Pan-African solidarity, as a rival to Commonwealth loyalties, is much less strong now than it was when Dr. Nyerere was telling the Royal Commonwealth Society in 1961 that "African unity must have priority over all other associations". And Afro-Asianism as a major factor of diplomatic ideology on the world stage has greatly declined in effectiveness since the great Bandung conference in 1955. If these loyalties towards Africa, or towards the fellowship of Afro-Asianism, have now become weak, regionalism as a whole in Asia and Africa might be deemed to have declined somewhat as a rival concept to Commonwealth amity.

Pan-Europeanism versus the Commonwealth While Afro-Asian regionalism has thus subsided, a British commitment to regionalism in relation to Europe has surfaced conspicuously within the last decade. It has been a dramatic change of direction. Leopold S. Amery had occasion to say forty years ago, in a paper addressed to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London, that: . . . greatly as I sympathise with the pan-European movement, profoundly as I feel that it is a movement true in itself and calculated to meet the difficulties of the world situation today, I would fight to the last ditch against any suggestion that Great Britain should actually proclaim itself a European and not a world power. 5

Hugh Gaitskell, as leader of the Opposition, had occasion to say, in the course of the 1962 debate on Mr. Harold MacMillan's application for Britain to enter the European Economic Community (EEC), that Britain should not too easily "turn her back on a thousand years of history". 6 The idea here was that a policy which sacrificed old imperial links in order to emphasise European ties should not be undertaken without careful thought. 7 One perspective from which to evaluate the change of direction in British policy might be to relate it to the whole notion of "first among equals" in diplomatic associations. The sovereign Commonwealth in the old days of dominions, and especially after the Statute of Westminster, had already evolved into an association wherein one member, by virtue of historical leadership, might continue to be thought of as "the first" in a relationship of sovereign equality with her other partners. When India and Pakistan became inde-

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23

pendent and Commonwealth membership became open to them, membership was again accepted on the understanding that sovereign equality would prevail between members of the Commonwealth. Indeed, insofar as the Queen ceased to be Queen of the Indian sub-continent and became the Head of the Commonwealth in a more purely symbolic and narrow sense than she had ever been before, the accession of India and Pakistan to the Commonwealth re-emphasised the principle of equality even more and reduced somewhat the notion of Britain as "the first". The reduction of the sovereignty of the British monarch was a dilution of the "firsthood" of Britain in this egalitarian partnership. Then from the late 1950s onwards Africa became increasingly significant in the sovereign part of the Commonwealth. By the mid1960s the Commonwealth had ceased to be a British Commonwealth and had in fact become an association with two centres of influence : Britain herself and the African group of states. The British Commonwealth had, in other words, become an AfroBritannic association in some respects. While the Commonwealth was realising the ideal of racial equality in the very process of becoming a multi-coloured partnership, there came a time when some of the older members of the Commonwealth began to sense a discrepancy between racial equality and substantive equality between states. Small states from Africa, the West Indies, as was as Cyprus and Malta, began to join the Commonwealth on a principle of parity of esteem. The diversification of the Commonwealth in a racial sense did indeed help to uphold the principle of racial equality. But the diversification of the Commonwealth in terms of varied sizes of states detracted from the notion of the Commonwealth as a partnership between substantive equals among states. Of course this substantive state equality had never been complete. Britain had always been far ahead of her other partners in several areas of technological development, of economic base and size of population. Disparities between the older dominions themselves-South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand-were much less accentuated than other disparities which came with the enlarged Commonwealth. India's and Pakistan's accession introduced significant disparity in population; but substantive state equality was sensed as between, say, India and Canada, or Pakistan and Australia. The smaller states, though, which were admitted into the Commonwealth in the 1960s could not always be accommodated into the idea of substantive state equality. As Britain was groping for a role in the wake of the imperial retreat, there was at first a great temptation to build on this

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leadership of a new multi-racial diplomatic unity. Instead of being ruler of an empire Britain would now become leader of a Commonwealth. The attractiveness, however, of the principle of first among equals sometimes presupposes that one is indeed dealing with equals. Man to man there is no doubt that each citizen of the Commonwealth is an equal of another. Race to race it might also be said that each such group in the Commonwealth should enjoy equal rights with another. But on state to state there is less agreement that all sovereign units should become equals. It became increasingly true that Britain was not excited by the idea of being the first among Commonwealth equals since she was no longer convinced that her partners were "equals". Tensions between racial equality and state inequalities have therefore begun to have a strain on British diplomatic calculations. The demands of racial equality imply a readiness to be attentive to claims made from outside one's racial group. This desire to demonstrate attentiveness sometimes becomes an inhibiting factor in Britain's diplomatic responses. A reluctance to differ too strongly from a policy advocated by a small African, Asian or West Indian country might be partly motivated by a desire to avoid giving racial offence. Britain's desire to prove her belief in racial equality sometimes comes into conflict with the realities of state inequalities. Britain finds herself on the defensive and a growth of disenchantment with the Commonwealth becomes more discernible in British attitudes. A glance at what is going on in Europe turns out to be the beginning of temptation. European countries between themselves are in a sense less egalitarian than Commonwealth countries are called upon to be. The EEC often behaves in full recognition of the facts that France, West Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy are the senior partners of the six members. Holland and Belgium are next in the hierarchy of operational diplomacy. Luxembourg is denied even the veto in the decision-making process. There is, therefore, in the EEC less pretence about the full sovereign equality of countries than there might be either at the United Nations or within the Commonwealth. In the controversial proposals of the new Europe which the British Government attributed to President Charles de Gaulle in February, 1969, again the idea was of a kind of inner cabinet of Europe which would treat Britain, France, West Germany and Italy as specially important in the decision-making process. This Gaullist vision of the new Europe, as claimed by the British version of the conversation between the President of France and the British Ambassador in Paris, was not inhibited by any fear of giving racial offence. In a continent which is "racially" homo-

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geneous, the disparities in state power are allowed a more candid manifestation. President de Gaulle might not always have believed in submitting to the realities of power disparities. Indeed, he sometimes sounded as if he regarded France as the full equivalent of the two super-powers. Yet even in his grand patriotism, he more often than not conceded that the real potential equal for the United States and the Soviet Union was not France on her own but Europe. The attractiveness of Europe for Britain might in part lie precisely in that old concept of "first among equals", but this time the principle is to be more compatible with the realities of power distribution.8 To be the first among real equals in international politics offers a greater vision of fulfilment for Britain than to be the first in the Commonwealth. Britain might be the equal of France, West Germany and Italy in crude evaluation and stands a good chance of emerging as the first among these equals when the realities of power foundations and influence are closely scrutinised as between the four countries. To be the first among Commonwealth equals was less exciting, now that the Commonwealth had so many unequal partners and yet was compelled to adhere to the principle of racial equality. It was certainly less exciting than it might have been in the old dominion days. Britain's desire to enter Europe is in part a nostalgic desire to return to the old Commonwealth of intimate white partners-that Commonwealth of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and white-dominated South Africa. That old comradeship cannot now be revived within the new Commonwealth without creating the impression of two classes of membership. The nearest alternative open to post-imperial Britain is a different comradeship between white powers, but less dispersed across the globe. To be the first in an egalitarian partnership which includes the French, the Germans and the Italians might be almost as good, in some senses better, than the old experience of having been the first in a partnership which included Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and white South Africans.

Regionalism and Race What ought to be borne in mind is that regionalism in Commonwealth experience has often been intimately connected with race consciousness. Pan-Africanism, for example, as a major regional movement was ultimately inspired by a sense of shared racial identity, though there was also the mystique of the African continent to prevent black identity south of the Sahara from becoming too alienated from Arab Africa north of the desert. In other words, pan-African unity, as a trans-Saharan continental movement, was C

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inspired by the mystique of a shared continent. But panAfricanism, as an assertion of a united black dignity, was by definition inspired by a sense of a shared racial identity. Afro-Asianism, too, as a movement of trans-national commitment had ultimately a racial basis. In this case what was being shared was not a specific racial origin, but the negative quality of being non-white. The Bandung spirit was a protest against white arrogance and an assertion of non-white dignity. It might therefore be said that the kind of regionalism in Asia and Africa which threatened the Commonwealth as a rival was often a regionalism with racial overtones. The question which now arises is whether the new Europeanist tendencies in Britain are in turn partly racial in conception. There seems to be little doubt that the racial theme is present in Britain's new pan-Europeanism. A sense of having been rejected by the Asians and Africans, and being put in the dock for the sins of Britain's imperial history, have alienated significant elements in the British population and made them more favourably disposed, on the rebound, towards fellow Europeans. The British are beginning to feel like strangers in the big wide world and are therefore compelled to look more closely at their neighbours in a quest for familiarity. What is familiar is often comforting and capable of affording a sense of security. The neighbours across the English Channel were indeed once looked upon as total aliens. In many respects they are still so regarded. But it has hit the British people with a renewed emphasis that continental Europeans even at their most alien are perhaps less incomprehensible than, say, the Pakistanis. There seems to be little doubt that the most dramatic rise in racism within the Commonwealth in the last five years has taken place in Britain itself. :In many parts of the Commonwealth, racialism has, in fact, been on the decline within the same period. In Asia, especially, all indications seem to suggest that anti-white militancy, as such, has considerably subsided in the last decade or so, though anti-Westernism as an ideological stance might still be important. Opposition to the American omnipresence in the world, for example, might have increased in Asia. Disapproval of Britain as a collaborator in the special relationship with the United States might also have significant depth in Asia. But the old animosities agamst white people as suoh lSeem to have subsided. By contrast, anti-coloured feelings in Britain have probably attained an all time high. A substantial reason is the immigration of significant numbers of people from India, Pakistan and the West Indies coming to settle in Britain. Job competition between whites

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27

and coloured people, cultural differences in racially mixed neighbourhoods, a sense of resentment against too many newcomers from coloured lands, have all contributed their share to the rising tide of British racism. There seems to be little doubt that the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1968 was a piece of racialistic legislation. British citizens of Indo-Pakistan extraction were from then on to be given discriminatory credentials as regards entry into Britain. The world came to witness a blatant acceptance of the principle of two classes of citizenship by a British Government and a British Parliament. Even the legislation which was being put forward by the Labour Party, far from being a sign that the British Government was more racialistic than British society, was probably an effort by the British Government to contain that rising tide of popular racism which was manifesting itself in significant sections of the country's population. When it is suggested that of all Commonwealth countries it is Britain which has experienced the most dramatic increase in race prejudice, it is not meant that Britain therefore is today the most racially bigoted of all Commonwealth countries. This would be quite untrue. There are still impressive areas of tolerance in Britain, and there is a commitment to the creation of a racially integrated society in the future. In Malaysia there was in 1969 an upsurge of such intense communal animosities that many people lost their lives in the confrontation between Malays and Chinese. In Cyprus the GrecoTurkish confrontation continues in its own acute form. In East and Central African countries Indophobia is still a significant political phenomenon. What makes Britain a striking case is that, starting from a relatively low base of prejudice, racial problems have attained a level which has precipitated historic policy changes in British approaches to such problems. One index of the increase of race prejudice in Britain is legislation. There has been, one might say, legislation which has been anti-racialist as well as legislation which is basically racist. And both kinds of legislation in Britain are a measure of the changing racial situation. The anti-racist legislation in Britain concerns the measures which the Wilson GoveJ1D1Dent brought in to control incitement to racial violence and discourage discrimination in public places, employment and, to some extent, housing. For generations the British have believed that race relations could not really be made subject to legislation. And yet by the middle of the 1960s a need for some kind of control to ensure social justice for minority groups began to be sensed. And the outcome of it all is the British conversion to the theory that inter-group relations could

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indeed be subject to legislative regulation. It is to the credit of the British Government that some forms of discrimination have now been outlawed. But legislation can also be racist in intention or motivation. And the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1968 was such a piece of legislation. It sought to control the inflow of Commonwealth citizens from abroad, giving priority clearly to those who were white and introducing disguised handicaps for those who were not white. It is these considerations which make it possible for us to observe that both the racist forms of legislation in recent British experience and the anti-racist forms of legislation together constitute an important measure of the dramatic pol,iticiation of the racial issue in British society in the last few years. Increased racial feeling in Britain might therefore be said to have independent causes from increased pan-Europeanism in Britain. But the two feelings seemed to have interacted and to some extent reinforced each other. From the ranks of British Conservatives, for example, are to be found both staunch panEuropeanists and staunch supporters of British withdrawal from relations with coloured nations of the world. There are, of course, people who are sincere pan-Europeanists without being even remotely racialist. One cannot help feeling, all the same, that there is a considerable section of the British population for whom the two emotional orientations are mutually reinforcing. It was said earlier that racialism in Asia seems to have declined while racialism in Britain has increased. What of racialism in Africa? What has happened in Africa seems to be neither an increase in racial militancy nor a reduction thereof, but a change of emphasis. On balance there is less anti-British feeling in East Africa today than there was five years ago. But there might be more antiIndian feeling in East Africa today than there was five years ago. The great objection to the British, and the resultant tensions between whites and Africans, was basically derived from the colonial relationship. Once British colonial rule was withdrawn a major cause of anti-British feeling was semi-neutralised. Arrogant British settlers, or extra-assertive British district commissioners, were no longer loose on the East African countryside. On the other hand, Indian shopkeepers are still around, and they pose not only competition for African traders but also a relationship of condescension with the African customers and neighbours. The exclusiveness of the East African Indians is often exaggerated, but they are exclusive in their social relationships and not always tactful in their general attitudes. The policies of the different

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African governments to Africanise commercial activity have also heightened tension between Africans and Asians in East and Central Africa. If there is significant racialism still remaining in East Africa, it is less anti-white and more anti-brown than it might once have been. Anti-brown bonds between Africans are not as good a foundation for pan-Africanism and regionalist loyalty as anti-white feeling might once have been. Opposition to Indian shopkeepers does not arouse African race consciousness in the direction of greater regional integration. African opposition to the place of Indians in trade tends to be narrow in conception, limiting itself to demands for a greater infiltration of Africans into the commercial and exchange activities of the African economies. The old antiwhite militancy inspired a pan-regional form of African nationalism, partly as an outgrowth of anti-colonialism and partly as a way of strengthening Africa through regional integration and making her a more meaningful equal in international politics. Both anti-white and anti-brown feelings among East Africans are indeed a manifestation of some aspects of national consciousness among Africans, but it was the anti-white feeling that had a regionalist dimension. In Britain itself the racialism is both anti-brown and anti-black, depending upon whether it is the Pakistani immigrants that are under disapproval, or the West Indian immigrants, or the African states which are militantly critical of British political behaviour. It is all these factors which continue to emphasise that of all the major areas of the Commonwealth, it is in Britain and perhaps in Britain alone, that racialism has gained a dramatic ascendency. Coupled with that ascendency is the new British commitment to the narrower identity of being "European".

Conclusion There was a time, as earlier indicated, when the regionalist tendencies which threatened Commonwealth cohesion were African and to some extent Asian movements. 9 Pan-Africanism especially, with its ambition to create new territorial entities regardless of colonial backgrounds, seemed to be on its way towards posing new problems for the Commonwealth concept. Could a former French colony, when merging with a former British colony, be regarded as a meaningful partner in a basically Britannic association? Could a member from the franc zone be admitted into the sterling area without demanding significant readjustments in traditional arrangements? As suggested, these were the issues which were being raised in the late 1950s as the newly independent

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Ghana, symbolising pan-Africanism at its most ambitious, appeared committed to the idea of merging different African sovereign entities into a new pattern on the map of Commonwealth and African diplomacy. Now it is regionalist longings among the British that constitute what is perhaps the most important single threat to the continuing survival of the Commonwealth. That old dialectic between the Commonwealth concept and regionalism has reached a new level of confrontation. The "continuities of history" in Commonwealth relations and tihe "contiguities of geography" have been exerting different demands on the loyalties of the members of the Commonwealth. In Africa and Asia the pull of geographical loyalties has lost strength in the last ten years. In Britain the lure of geographical convenience is attaining new levels of efficacy. But the dialectical process is not as yet concluded. Running through it all is the tragic theme of racial consciousness within the sad music of Commonwealth history. NOTES 1. Since this lecture by Tom Mboya, who was assassinated in 1969, the Commonwealth Secretariat has been established, its doors having opened in 1965.

2. For a condensed version of Mboya's lecture, see the East African Standard, Nairobi. August 12, 1964. 3. Julius Nyerere, "For Commonwealth and/or African Unity", Commonwealth Journal, Royal Commonwealth Society, London, NovemberDecember 1961, p. 254. 4. See, for example, Uganda Argus, Kampala, January 25, 1964. 5. Leopold S. Amery, "The British Empire and the Pan-European Idea", Journal of the Institute of International Affairs (since succeeded by International Affairs), Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, January 1930, pp. 8 and 9. Also see George Bennett (ed.), The Concept of Empire: Burke to Attlee, 1774-1947 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1962), p. 403. 6. Speech to the Labour Party Conference, Brighton, October 3, 1962. See Britain and the Common Market (London: Labour Party, 1962), p. 12. 7. Related points about history and attitudes to regionalism are discussed in Ali A. Mazrui, "African Attitudes to the European Economic Community", International Affairs, January 1963.

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8. Other aspects of the European issue in Britain are discussed in the essays in this volume by Lionel Gelber, Hugh Corbet, Harry G. Johnson, Maxwell Stamp, Paul Streeten and Michael Lipton. 9. There is also, of course, a form of regionalism in the special relationship which has existed between Canada and the United States. But partly because of Britain's own special relationship with the United States, Canada's links with her continental neighbour have not appeared to put a special strain on Commonwealth cohesiveness. Also noteworthy is Canada's unwillingness to be drawn into the hemispheric regionalism of the Organisation of American States.

CHAPTER 3

AUSTRALIAN POLICY IN THE INDO-PACIFIC THEATRE By J. D. B. Miller

Several aspects of Australian policy towards Asia are plain for all to see. They stress Australia's military role in Asia. Foremost is her membership of the two security pacts. ANZUS links Australia with the United States and New Zealand and is still a flourishing affair. The South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), which dates like ANZUS from the pact-making era of the early 1950s, is in nothing like the same state of health and the United States, under President Nixon, may decide that it should be discarded. But the Australian Government has been one of SEATO's strongest supporters because it believed that SEATO kept the United States committed to an interest in Asian affairs and this, as I shall show, is still the most important aspect of Australian policy in Asia : not a policy towards Asia as such, but towards keeping the United States involved in Asia. Along with membership of the two security pacts has gone a series of Australian military interventions : first in Korea, later in the Malayan Emergency, then in Borneo against Indonesia's Confrontation of Malaysia and finally in the Vietnam War. The common thread in all these is opposition to militant Communism. Even in the case of Confrontation, where the government against which Australia was fighting was not a Communist one, it was the fact that President Sukarno was supported by the Indonesian Communist Party-and, more important, was himself supporting itthat weighed most heavily. One could include, along with these policies of membership of security pacts and participation in anti-Communist wars in the lndo-Pacific theatre, the Australian refusal to recognise the Communist government of China, and the Australian Government's clear desire for some Japanese participation in Asian defence. The obvious policies add up to a preoccupation with security, an opposition to Communism and a considerable apprehension about China. These have existed for at least twenty years. 32

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Policy Goals: Security and Identification But there are also other policies. Consider first the Australian approach to Indonesia. In spite of the fact that the Australian Government was against Indonesian possession of West Irian, and gave up its opposition only in 1962 when it was clear that no-one else was prepared to support Australia, the rest of the 1960s were a period of considerable Australian goodwill towards Indonesia. Even when Confrontation was at its height Australia retained an envoy in Djakarta. She even continued with some forms of economic aid. When President Sukarno was overthrown in 1966, Australian goodwill became perceptibly warmer, and has survived the carrying out of the "act of free choice" whereby Indonesia at last obtained formal approval of her possession of West Irian. Secondly, there have been the policies towards Cambodia, India and Pakistan, which have been uniformly friendly, whether these countries were flirting with Communist China or not. The Australian Government has not taken its anti-Communism to the point of quarrelling with those who made friends with Communist powers. And while it has adopted a highly moralistic attitude towards the recognition of China, and the Chinese seat at the United Nations, it has not hesitated to trade with China to an unprecedented extent. Moreover, in its general approach to Asians as people, it has shown very little of that racialism which once motivated the White Australia policy. The Colombo Plan, which gained some of its character from an Australian initiative in 1950, has been followed up with zest by Australia, so that there are now Australian technical assistance teams in a great many Asian countries and thousands of Asian students in Australian universities, technical colleges and other educational institutions. The White Australia policy itself has been modified in ways which would have seemed inconceivable a generation ago. It is still not possible for any coloured person at all to walk into Australia as of right, but he cannot do that into Britain, Canada or New Zealand either. The categories of those who can are being steadily extended in Australia. These less obvious policies, leaving aside those such as the wheat deals with China which are simple matters of material self-interest, indicate a considerable interest in Asia as a whole and a desire, in particular, to show the governments of the smaller Asian states that Australia is aware of their problems and wishes to help them. They are linked, of course, with the more obvious policies of security. Malaysia and Thailand, for example, are viewed both as security partners and as small states with which Australia can have a valuable relationship in technical assistance, trade and exchange

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of ideas. There is a strong desire to come closer to Asians in every respect. This is partly a recognition of Australia's past ignorance about its Asian neighbours. But it is also a genuine desire to know more and be more of a help. In short, Australian policy towards Asia has two broad faces : :Security on the one hand and identification on the other. Neither is simple and both require qualification. Security has been viewed fairly narrowly in terms of a concern about Communism in general and China in particular. Identification has not been the assertion of an identity of character-Australians are well aware of the differences between themselves and Asians in background, religion, ethnic features and standards of life-but of an identity of interests. Part of the Australian Government's argument for entering the Vietnam War, for example, was that South Vietnam was a small Asian state which had the right to call for help from like-minded states when it was being subverted or attacked from outside. Australia might one day wish to claim the same right to call for assistance.

Asia : Arena of Conflicts Security and identification, then, are the two faces to keep in mind. But they cannot be seen in isolation from the great-power conflicts of the world at large. Asia is not a world in itself: the United States and the Soviet Union have active Asian policies and China is inextricably involved in all Asian questions. On these issues Australia's position has been simple. Post-war Australian cabinets -to go no further back-have been composed of men to whom Communism was an innately expansionist and subversive force. The disintegration of international Communism in recent years, through the Sino-Soviet clash and the rise of nationalist-minded Communist governments, has not made as much impact on this state of mind as might have been expected. First Russia was regarded as the master of Asian Communist parties; then China was thought to be so. The fact that this analysis corresponded with the wishes of the Russians and the Chinese, even if it did not always correspond with the facts, made it the more plausible, since an anti-Communist government like the Australian often prefers to take Communist statements at face value rather than look behind them to the obscured reality of a particular situation. However one may view this aspect of the situation, it is the case that Australian governments' security policies in Asia have been governed by the vision of Asian Communist parties being manipulated first by Russia and then by China. Australian governments have seen the dangers in this simple

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fashion and they have seen the remedies in similar fashion. Until quite recently, there was one sovereign remedy in the military sphere : American intervention. If there has been one possibility which Australian governments have striven to prevent, it has been that of the Americans pulling up their stakes from Asia-which has been identified with South-East Asia to a great extent-and sailing off home. It is not hard to understand why this should be so. Australians have always had an uneasy feeling about Asia as a whole, arising from their own anomalous position as people of European descent anchored off the shores of Asia on a large but largely inhospitable island. The position has usually been dramatised by reference to the vastness of the Asian population and the smallness of the Australian and to the differences in their standards of life. Throughout the years when Australians thought about Asia they thought about the possibility of interference or invasion from a dominant Asian power. Once it was Japan. Now it is China. For a while Indonesia seemed to be taking the position. Because the fear of Japan proved ultimately to be correct, and because the only power which could help Australia effectively against Japan was the United States, it became an axiom of Australian thinking about foreign policy that, in order to prevent the emergence of an aggressive Asian power, the United States had to be involved continuously in Asian affairs. If Australians have a conventional wisdom in foreign policy, this is it. To Australian governments such a view is not incompatible with the independence of Asian states and does not constitute any special sort of colonialism. Australia's leaders are honestly puzzled when it is suggested to them that their attitude might involve something like an American protectorate in Asia and that this should not be tolerated. They reply that if small states wish to preserve their independence they must have the help of friendly greatpowers; otherwise they are likely to be in danger from hostile great-powers. Although Canberra's sense of Communism as an undivided whole has been severely shaken by the events of recent years, ministers and officials still feel that China is a danger; that Asian Communist parties are liable to be under Chinese control; that small Asian states which do not receive help and encouragement from major powers are likely to succumb to Chinese pressure or local subversion or both; and that, in order to have the sort of stable, quiet Asia that Australia wants, American involvement is essential. Australian governments are prepared, too, to play a part in helping Asian states, but they consider that the task cannot tie

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done by Australia alone. Even if Japan could be induced to share in it, they would argue that American interest was still essential. It is nat difficult to imagine, therefore, how disturbed ministers and officials have been by suggestions that, following the failure of American efforts in Vietnam, the United States might pull out of Asia altogether. I do not think there is any likelihood that this will happen, although there is every prospect of a change in the method and form of the American involvement. But the possibility has at least been raised and it has been extremely disturbing to many of those who have followed the conventional wisdom.

Policy Options under Discussion In the face of the uncertainty which that wisdom began encountering at the end of the 1960s, there has been much discussion of alternatives to the sort of full-throated support of an American ground presence in Asia that was so popular before Vietnam went sour. Broadly three options have been canvassed. The first, which might be called the radical one, is that which most people of the Left in Australia would espouse: it would have support in the councils of the Labour Party (though not, I think, from a majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party) and would be supported by a good many left-wing intellectuals with access to paper and ink. Under this option the idea would be to cut loose altogether from the United States, cultivate whatever Asian governments were not tied to American apron and purse strings, and follow a generally neutralist line in international affairs, with the emphasis on economic aid. Such a course presupposes scepticism about Chinese expansionism and about any likelihood that Australia might need great-power assistance. Those who pursue it are divided somewhat over the extent to which Australia should set up her own defences on a large scale: a few might go so far as Australian nuclear weapons, others would strengthen the conventional forces considerably, while still others would not worry much at all. In respect of Asia, this section of opinion has suffered some erosion in recent years with the change in regime in Indonesia and the movement of India away from nonalignment as previously understood. At the close of the decade there was no Asian regime which fully satisfied the non-Communist Australian Left-a state of affairs which strengthened its natural tendency towards isolationism. Another option can be associated with the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), which is essentially a Catholic anti-Communist party, but does not by any means include the majority of Catholics.

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DLP strength is concentrated largely in one state, Victoria, although the proportional representation system in the Senate has enabled the party's supporters to elect Senators in two others. This second view would involve much less reliance on the United States, since the United States is likely to lose interest in SouthEast Asia after its experiences in Vietnam and may retreat to its own continent or, worse still, make some kind of accommodation with the Soviet Union and/or China. In this view, Australia should not disclaim the guarantee she has from the United States under ANZUS, but should not depend on it. Instead she should build up her own forces substantially-including her own nuclear weapons-and should seek a close alliance with other anti-Communist states in Asia. Nationalist China, the Philippines, South Korea and South Vietnam are usually in the list. Sometimes Malaysia and Singapore are added. In practice, more stress is usually laid on increased armaments and foreign aid than on the likely benefits of the alliance. Japan is mentioned occasionally as part of the projected line-up. The third option, which for want of a better term shall be called the midway one, is held by various academics and officials and is the one to which :J am most drawn. It is not clear-cut and has not been put in public by any organisation. Its details vary from person to person. Broadly speaking the proposition is based on the assumption that Australia ought to preserve the American alliance because of the need for ultimate protection by some great-power of roughly like mind, especially in view of the unpleasant forms which future great-power quarrels in Asia might take. It would accept the fact that the United States is no longer likely to wage costly land wars in Asia. It would also assert that Australia was illequipped to look after the affairs of Asian states in spite of the quite remarkable technical efficiency of Australian troops in the jungles and swamps. It would remove Australian combat troops from South-East Asia, increase the number of technical assistance teams, increase the strength of Australian defences-leaving the option open for nuclear weapons, but going no further than that at present-and generally assume that the British withdrawal from Asia, coupled with the American ground withdrawal (not the same thing), meant that the period of white men's interference in the details of Asian problems was over. It would assert that most frontier and communal questions in South-East Asia were best left to the local people to deal with despite the likelihood of injustice in a good many cases. It would wish to see Australia operating the American alliance in a more sceptical and discriminating fashion than now.

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Criticism of Options There are difficulties for all three of these options. The first, the radical one, is not likely to be adopted by any Australian government. The sense of ultimate dependence on the United States is almost as strong amongst Labour politicians as amongst ministers and is certainly very strong in the population at large. It may have been slightly affected by the disappointments of Vietnam, but not enough to enable a government to cut loose from American protection. This radical view is also vulnerable in great-power terms. Although no-one can be sure that South-East Asia will fall under Chinese dominance, or be subject to Chinese pressure, no-one can be sure that it will not. The DLP view, while logical and tidy in ways that satisfy some people who would not accept the DLP's other tenets, is open to two grave criticisms : its projected alliance of anti-Communist Asian states is a paper army which would not, in practice, work together in anything that mattered; and its open espousal of nuclear weapons is likely to alienate a good many Australians who would be prepared to support greater military strength of other kinds. The midway view, which may well prevail in the long run, is at a disadvantage at the time of writing because it involves giving up the minuscule military presence which Australia has promised to keep in Malaysia and Singapore. It is an article of faith of the Australian, American, New Zealand, British, Malaysian and Singaporean governments-in public-that these few troops are needed to defy aggression and-sometimes in private-that they would prevent the Malays and Chinese in the area from fighting one another. They would not be adequate for either of these purposes, but the official lines of all the governments involved are the same, and it would be too much to expect an Australian government to get out of step so soon after the British have dropped out. It is worth noting that all three policy options have some features in common, notably the need for greater expenditure on Australian forces and Australian foreign aid; and each has something to say about Australian nuclear weapons. The government is vulnerable on all these counts. It has been niggardly with defence spending (although it has been prepared to enact conscription); its aid programme, beyond New Guinea, is insignificant in quantity though often admirable in quality; and it was unable to make up its mind until recently about the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and about whether Australia should go ahead with the foundations on which a nuclear weapons programme might be built. As put in this paper, the options, along with the criticisms to be

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made of them, all assume the continuation of present great-power rivalries. That is a fair assumption as things stand. But no-one knows how long these rivalries will last. A further deepening of the detente between the United States and the Soviet Union, and increased friendliness by both of them towards China, could lead to a situation in which Australians might not consider that the protection of the United States was so vital, even if there continued to be disturbances in South-East Asia. The great-power situation matters most in determining Australian policy in Asia even though that policy is directed specifically towards the small countries of the south-east portion and is strengthened by a keen attachment to the domino theory. For since 1949 hostility between the United States and China has been the great reality of Asian affairs. It has been accompanied by others, of course-by the Inda-Pakistani quarrel, the Sino-Soviet split, the rise of Japan to renewed economic power-but the clash between Americans and Chinese has been behind the Korean War, the Vietnam War and even, in some degree, the Indonesian Confrontation. If that clash should be lessened or stilled, Australia might not need the ultimate guarantee of American help, or might not need it so much as to make it an absolute of Australian foreign policy. In such a situation all three of the options mentioned in this paper would gain in credibility. They would not do so quickly and there would be strong opposition to any one of them being accepted in its fullest terms. Previous Australian experience has conditioned most Australians of my generation (and certainly of the generation older than mine) to regard American help as indispensable, and as requiring that Australians accede to American demands that installations such as they have made at Port Hedland in Western Australia and Pine Gap in the Northern Territory-for communication with submarines and for the control and monitoring of missiles-should be solely under American control and beyond the reach of the Australian Parliament. Some modification is occurring in this situation. But it is still symptomatic of the basic belief that the United States is needed in Australia and, if possible, in Asia. In 1969 Australian discussion was affected by the suggestion that another great-power, the Soviet Union, might become more active in Asia. Apart from the increase in Soviet naval activity in the Indian Ocean, there has been the shadowy suggestion that the Soviet might sponsor some arrangement of collective security amongst Asian states. This threw the OLP into an electioneering paroxysm after Mr. Gordon Freeth, then Australian Minister for External Affairs, had said some soothing words about the unlikelihood of any dangers arising. His Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton,

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was later constrained to make appropriately fierce statements about the undesirability of Russian interference in Asia. Undesirable or not, there is little Australia can do to stop it unless the United States decides to withstand Soviet penetration, which is most unlikely, or unless Asian states refuse to have anything to do with the Soviet suggestions, which is a little more likely. The reason for Mr. Freeth's soothing words was presumably that the Soviet move is regarded as directed against China, and this suits the Australian Government. But that government, as already emphasised, is essentially anti-Communist in its reactions and could hardly feel easy at the thought of the Soviet Union being influential in places where it believes that only the United States should exert influence. In fact Asian states are incapable, in the writer's judgment, of anything approaching collective security. All the Russian move might mean in the end is some Russian naval and perhaps missile bases to the south of China. But the Asians can be trusted to make life very difficult for resident Russians. The whole Soviet initiative may eventually come to nothing. Primacy of Great-Power Relations Returning by way of conclusion, to the process of Australia's identification with Asia, she will not become "part of Asia", as the matter is sometimes put. Nothing can make Australia's people Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist. Nothing can bring them to adopt Asian family or caste systems. Nothing can make them give up English. Nothing can make them stop eating what they eat or reading what they read. Nothing but catastrophe can prevent them having a far higher standard of living than the great majority of Asians will experience throughout the foreseeable future. Identification, as I said before, cannot be an identity of character; it can, however, approach an identity of interests in some respects. In this sense, Australia can expect to achieve greater identification with those parts of Asia that have entered the modern world and are both able and determined to stay there. This means, above all, Japan. It means Malaysia and Singapore. It will also mean, though to a lesser extent, the Philippines and Thailand. Perhaps it also means India and Pakistan. With all of these Australia can hope to enjoy better trading relations, though India is a major problem in this respect, as is the Philippines. Australia can also be expected to have more to do with them in military supply and training, in investment, in technical assistance and in migration. Essentially, it is a matter of increasing connections with those Asians who are like Europeans and North Americans, because Australians are like Europeans and North Americans.

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41

In terms of proximity the most important country to Australia is Indonesia. To a great extent the test of successful Australian policy in Asia will be whether friendly and fruitful connections can be made with this neighbour. It will require a good deal of luck. But that will be no excuse for not giving it good management as well. The problem centres on the two countries' common frontier between their colonial possessions in New Guinea. In due course, however, Australia is expected to give independence to Eastern New Guinea. The problem will then become rather more complex. There are other problems, too, which arise from Indonesia's economic difficulties and population growth, and from the presence there of active political forces which could prove hostile to Australia. Australians have not yet taken the measure of what will be involved in long-term living with Indonesia any more than the Indonesians have. Both countries have had more immediate problems and the West Irian issue has obscured others. While there is no need to be pessimistic about Australia's future with Indonesia, it will lead into policies which at present can be only dimly discerned if that. Like others mentioned, Indonesia is a modernising, Westernising country, but her rate of progress has been slow. It will be both the responsibility and the special interest of Australia to try to stimulate that rate, both through her own efforts and through encouragement to others, of whom Japan is the most obvious. The future of Australian policy in Asia will thus depend in part on great-power relations, in part on the lines which the Asian states themselves take, and in part on the policies Australia pursues in such spheres as defence, trade, economic aid and immigration. It will not depend much on Britain, on the rest of Western Europe or on the Commonwealth of Nations, although each of these is likely to have marginal influence : Britain, for example, in the supply of capital and immigrants; Europe in much the same way; the Commonwealth in providing something of an intermittent backdrop to Australian relations with Malaysia and Singapore. But when Australians think of Asian policy in the foreseeable future, they will think mainly of proximity (as represented by Indonesia especially), of Japan and also China, and of the extent to which they want to commit themselves to whatever American policy is being operated at the time. That will be quite enough.

D

CHAPTER 4

BRITAIN, SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEAL TH CONNECTIONS By Lionel Gelber

It took two world wars to impress on the West that when contests of power shape and reshape world politics its own power for peace must be brought to bear unremittingly. The non-Communist world has nevertheless been slow to perceive how, as she adopts policies of detente on the European continent and may even curb the apocalyptic race in nuclear weapons on land, Russia is not only girding her loins against Communist China but might also be clearing the decks for global supremacy through the element of seapower. While that relentless Soviet bid affects the United Statesa,s leader of the West~first of all, it is not one from which her British ally can keep aloof. History may help to put this old-new challenge to the free world in perspective. The United States, after being sheltered by British naval power during her own years of growth, assumed the responsibility of leadership at a time when the dimensions of world contests have become larger than ever before. Not that these contests could ever be waged within narrow confines. When a free world order relied on Britain the scale of things was also world-wide. But in those years, with the Royal Navy and an Empire on which the sun never set as the instruments of primacy, it was only in Europe that Britain also had to have an adequate balance of power. The North Atlantic Alliance would not have been formed if an adequate balance of power in Europe and adjacent waters were still not a pre-requisite for the Western world. But the European balance is now merely a key sector in a larger global balance. One major prop of that global balance has been the naval preponderance which the West, under aegis of the United States, enjoyed. There have not only been sea lanes to police in a traditional manner. For a number of years the Western deterrent has been sea-based as well as land-based. This last fact may explain why, amid much else to which Russian energies might be harnessed, naval expansion has been put so high on the list of Soviet priorities. 42

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Although Russia is both a European and an Asian power, poor transportation and a backward economy have made it awkward for her to cope with the prospect of war on two fronts. But in the age of long-distance seaborne missiles what must also give the Kremlin pause is a Western presence on nearby encircling seas. There, more than elsewhere, it is an overriding feature of the Russian global design to deter the Western deterrent at sea as on land. A territorial imperium that is at once so ramshackle and yet so compact may no longer nurture territorial ambitions in its own vicinity. All that Russia can now desire territorially is to retain what she has. Beyond that, however, she has her own political system to impose on others or a political ascendancy to ensure. After World War II the United States pitted against the further expansion of Soviet land-power a global nuclear apparatus with oceanic ramifications. Russia may get far without neutralising these. If she neutralises them she may get still further. There are therefore two interrelated aims which impel her when she vies with the West at sea. This dual Soviet resolve could potentially become the gravest threat since Hitler to a free world order. In fact the stalemate on land may be matched by one at sea if the United States can do no more than she is doing to preserve American naval predominance. But whatever she does her British ally has a particular contribution to make in spite of severe budgetary constraints. Britain's contribution must arise from her residual propensity to concert far afield with others. It may not be innate. But if General de Gaulle had not been convinced that it was he might have let her enter the European Community. What he resented in Britain was all she still derived from those Commonwealth bonds and that Anglo-American tie which has been the legacy of her oceanic past. Many doubts about that legacy have been voiced, since World War II, in Britain herself. General de Gaulle, by his inadvertent tribute, took a more realistic view. Land-powers, looking out on a broad territorial expanse, have one kind of place in the world. The United Kingdom, as the hub of an oceanic system, has had another. Land-powers may flourish without overseas sources of strength like the Commonwealth and an Anglo-American factor to draw upon. But it is through such overseas connections, economic and political, that Britain's stature is upheld. These are incompatible, however, with membership in the Common Market because what the latter demands, if the European Community is to attain its aims, is economic and political unifica-

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tion. In a full organic union with European neighbours Britain would accordingly have to attenuate any separate overseas connections of her own. She would have external links that other federalised components share and no others. By stonewalling on Britain's entry into the European Community, and by thus allowing the British people a breathing space, President de Gaulle gave them a chance to remember how much beyond Europe their horizons might still extend. That was a positive outcome of negative fiats from the Elysee Palace in Paris. Even more positive, restoring some of the economic scope Britain once had without stultifying her politically, would be ·some looser trading arrangement in Western Europe or multilateral trade treaty. If such an arrangement could be brought about it would enable Britain to prolong those overseas connectionsCommonwealth, Anglo-American and others-with which she has been endowed. But it could not be organised on a broader basis unless the United States recognises the utility to her, from a politico-strategic as well as an economic standpoint, of such a venture and, as leader of the West, takes an appropriate initiative. 1 At all events, the enlargement of the European Community, through the entry of Britain and others, might revive the Gaullist drift towards a Third Force Europe-one that would divide the Western world at a conjuncture when its unity, with an American leader weighed down by war in Vietnam and hampered by manifold distractions at home, has seldom been so imperative. Certainly by merging her political identity with that of others in a close-knit European union, Britain would be sounding the knell of an oceanic grouping such as the Commonwealth and be doing it just when the maritime phase of the global contest between Russia and the West, accentuated by the momentous expansion of the Soviet navy, might render it more onerous to keep safe that everyday traffic between continents which much of civilised society takes for granted.

Nature of Commonwealth Here attention might be given to the nature of the Commonwealth before the effect upon it of Soviet naval advances is discussed. It is forgotten how, during the nineteenth century, the Pax Britannica made overseas democracies secure-not least the American Republic itself-as they came of age and protected overseas dependencies as they strove for independence against Britain herself. By the same token an oceanic Commonwealth could never have emerged if first Britain and then the United States had not kept the seas open for open societies. Among Afro-Asian members of the Commonwealth few live up to the heritage of law and public life that the

SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEALTH

45

Brit,ish passed on. Yet the imponderables of the Commonwealth should not be minimised. They have set the higher political standards of open societies as those towards which a number of less open ones may still aspire. As it exists, the Commonwealth is a twentieth century phenomenon that, on any comparative reassessment, should never be downgraded or dismissed cavalierly. Countries that are ill at ease within it can secede. That has happened before. But if most of its members did not wish for reasons of their own to maintain their membership the Commonwealth would not persist. Nor are great intangibles the only merit of the Commonwealth. There are important trade pacts and programmes of financial and technical assistance. It is, moreover, by importing cheap foodstuffs from Commonwealth countries that Britain obtains export advantages which, upon entry into the Common Market, she would have to abandon. Even in economic terms Britain must therefore regard the Commonwealth nexus as a boon. Tangibles might be rated highest by nations that have come to the fore through land-power. Britain, however, would never have got far in the modern era-indeed, at some junctures in two world wars she might not have survived-if her own island resources were all that she had to rely on. There may be good grounds for disenchantment with Commonwealth bonds. But it is only in the long run that imponderables tell. Furthermore, for the people of Burke and Churchill, a materialist and quasi-Marxian interpretation of history can hardly be the whole story. It is flattering, there is something to be cherished and not disparaged, when, after all that has occurred elsewhere in the twentieth century, so diverse an assortment of nations from other continents still converge on Britain. Formally or informally, explicitly or implicitly, Britain is still the centre for Commonwealth transactions. Is any such vestige of an exceptional function really out of date? Many think it is. But an argument which harks back to a vanished epoch would seem a good deal more out of date. It was Canada that, by protesting against undue centralisation in London, did most to work out equality of status as a concept through which the Commonwealth was to evolve and endure. That battle was won long ago. It is centrifugal trends which might now be pushed to excess. There is no question of principle raised when the Commonwealth turns to Britain as its clearing house. When this is done it is nothing more than a practical expedient-a by-product, in other words, of that very empiricism in politics which others have inherited from the United Kingdom and by which equality of status itself was made

46

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

possible. Members would not keep up their membership if they wanted the Commonwealth to splinter and expire. Not wishing it to do so they should welcome facilities that Britain alone can provide. The United Kingdom's function in this regard may be surveyed from yet another angle. The benefit is widespread when an entity with members so dispersed in locale, so varied in race and creed and so divergent in world views tends to perpetuate itself. But it would be hard for the Commonwealth to persevere if it dispensed with its historic focal point. Some critics may aver that one is not required; that, as a substitute for a British centre, other bilateral and multilateral contacts would suffice. Perhaps Commonwealth countries could keep in touch by such means. It is more likely though that the Commonwealth would dissolve if that which helped bring partners together were removed. While a number of Commonwealth countries have succeeded in taking British political and legal institutions as their model, it was inevitable that, upon attaining independence, a number of others should fall short. As far as members of the Commonwealth have more than regional interests to be preserved in common, the British political tradition is the main link between them. That is largely why there would be so much difficulty over perpetuating the Commonwealth if members were to lose the direct contacts with Britain to which they are accustomed; why, if all contacts are made more general, everything could become so diffuse that very little would be left. In this respect, too, it may be noticed how most of her partners insist that Britain observe a stricter code of conduct than some would observe themselves. India could do as she pleased about Goa; during the Suez expedition of 1956, on the other hand, the Commonwealth was shaken to the core. When there is a big flow of non-white immigrants from other Commonwealth countries to so crowded an island as Britain, damage may be done to her own adherence to the fundamentals of a multi-racial Commonwealth; and yet African members of the Commonwealth treat Asians from Commonwealth countries dwelling in their midst much more harshly. It is anomalies such as these, however, that furnish a clue to the nature of the Commonwealth. Whether members approve or disapprove of this or that British policy, Britain still sets the tone. Growth of Soviet Sea-power Even so, none of this will be worth much if Britain's oceanic security is undermined by Russia's maritime endeavour to outflank

SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEAL TH

47

the European sector of the global balance-if overseas partners of the Commonwealth are thus cut off from Britain and from each other. It was not only in the Western Hemisphere but in Western Europe that the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 saw the United States as still pre-eminent. Today, however, Russian sea-power encroaches on the scattered maritime defences of the West where these are most sensitive. After World War II when the American Sixth Fleet spread its protective wing over southern Europe its aircraft also had the Black Sea ports of the Soviet Union within reach. More recently it has had to reconcile itself to an offsetting Mediterranean presence by the Red Fleet from which presence Russia has reaped immense strategic profit. In the spring of 1967, after egging on her belligerent Egyptian ward, the USSR could not save Egypt from a preemptive defensive strike by Israel. But while Arab client states had been set back their Soviet patron had not lost ground. It is reported that ten thousand Soviet personnel and technicians have been sent to Egypt where the Soviet navy has also obtained facilities at Alexandria and Port Said (as well as at Latakia in Syria). The Red Fleet, moreover, possesses helicopter carriers which can be modified, but it has no attack aircraft carriers. From the Cairo West airfield it instead gets land-based air support which Russia may also try to procure elsewhere. Throughout the Mediterranean the Soviet build-up has caused apprehension. There is even disquietude about what Malta, a Commonwealth country, may do. For that island is a key to maritime communications between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Her naval facilities, a bequest from Britain, could be at Russia's disposal if the Maltese went neutralist following a change of government. Russia's orbit might eventually extend even to the Western Mediterranean. As paymaster of the Arab cause, she could attain a footing at Mers el-Kebir, the former French base in Algeria. As long as there is a European standstill between Russia and the West, the Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean does not have to match in size the Mediterranean vigil that the American Sixth Fleet, with the navies of European allies, has been mounting. What it does do more immediately is fulfil an age-old Russian dream by serving as a cover for a Soviet breakthrough from the Middle East to the Indian Ocean. Such a breakthrough contrasts sharply with trends elsewhere. In Eastern and Central Europe, Russia has been consolidating the status quo and she is also for it in East and South Asia. South Vietnam gets arms from the United States and Russia has been

48

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

supplying North Vietnam, thus detracting from any exclusive lien that China might otherwise have on Hanoi and on the whole lndoChinese region. Similarly, whenever warfare flared on Indian frontiers with China, Delhi could appeal to Moscow as well as London and Washington. And by way of a third example the Soviet Union has not encouraged Pakistan in her quest for Kashmir. In the Middle East, on the other hand, it is the status quo that the Soviet Union appears bent on subverting. In 1967, when Israel again beat Egypt, Russia indirectly gained most. The Egyptians, compelled also to retire from the Yemen, became more dependent than ever on the Soviet Union. Important, above all, will be the degree to which the Russians penetrate the Persian Gulf in the wake of any British withdrawal and the reopening of the Suez Canal. The Soviet Union may or may not plan to seize and market the oil of the region. What she might covert is the ability to deny it in a showdown to Britain, other West European countries and Japan. Already, Russia has acquired a firm grip on the Yemeni port of Hodeida, while in Somalia across the mouth of the Red Sea she is carving out an East African foothold. After Egypt evacuated troops from the Yemen and Britain had withdrawn from South Yemen, Russia could bring the naval base and airport of Aden, together with the island of Socotra, within her strategic embrace. No strategic prize as precious has fallen to her since she fixed her sway upon Eastern Europe. For now it is the Soviet Union and not some feckless Arab state or states that may police traffic through the Suez Canal (if the West collaborates in its reopening), the Gulf of Aquaba (Israel's gateway to Africa and the rest of Asia) as well as the Persian Gulf (with all its oil riches). By operating from Aden the Russians will traverse the Indian Ocean with ease. Russia may or may not have the use of naval facilities on the Indian east coast or on Indian islands in the Bay of Bengalwhence Soviet warships might command traffic passing through the Malacca Straits to and from Singapore and Malaysia to Hong Kong and Japan. By improving a road through Afghanistan, however, the Soviet Union has acquired a shore-based rampart of Russian naval power at the Pakistani seaport of Karachi. Russian submarines may collaborate, moreover, with Soviet fishing trawlers and on behalf of the latter Moscow has signed agreements with three Asian members of the Commonwealth-Ceylon and Mauritius as well as Pakistan. For thousands of years the Middle East, the cross-roads of three continents, has figured in the ambitions of empires and conquerors. It has long been patently clear that control of Egypt would give

SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEAL TH

49

Russia a stepping-stone for the pursuit in the Indo-Pacific theatre of a still wider global strategy. The Truman Doctrine was devised to curtail any downward Soviet thrust through Greece and Turkey. In 1956, however, when Sir Anthony Eden and M. Guy Mollet might have impeded the Russian leap-frog across the Mediterranean, Washington did what it could to impede them, which was a bizarre and self-defeating blow from which American policy in the Middle East has never recovered. 2 Israel, with aircraft from the United States, and yet with scant backing from other natural allies in the West, might again save herself from the perils by which she is beset. But there has also been the question as to whether an attempt will be made beyond the neighbourhood of the Suez Canal to take minor peripheral defence measures of a more localised character at the sea passages around the Cape of Good Hope and South-East Asia. In this regard, Britain has had to find the answer, pro or con, and she has had to find it in Commonwealth terms. At these two vulnerable oceanic junctions the answer cannot be the same. The political circumstances of each could scarcely differ more. In SouthEast Asia a number of other Commonwealth countries sought to persuade Britain to stay on when she tried to depart. At the Cape of Good Hope the African members of the Commonwealth demanded hands off.

Importance of Cape Route What provoked the Commonwealth crisis over the defence of the sea passage around the Cape of Good Hope was the second closure of the Suez Canal that the Six Day War between Israel and Arab states had brought about. For normal traffic of Britain and other West European countries as well as the Soviet Union the longer route was of course more costly and time-consuming. But Russia also envisaged transit through the Suez Canal as a key feature in the maritime phase of a global design. In this context politico-strategic competition with the West is not all that she must consider. Other countries have been constructing supertankers for the transportation of oil from the Persian Gulf which, because of their size, cannot pass through the Suez Canal and must accordingly go around the Cape. The Soviet Union refrains from building such monsters as they cannot navigate the straits of the Black and Baltic seas or slice through ice that, for much of the year, obstructs the Arctic passage above Norway. Then, too, when Russian supplies for North Vietnam were debarred from travel across Chinese territory, the Soviet Union had to ship them by the slower route around the Cape. It would have to do the

50

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

same if the trans-Siberian railway were exposed to bombing by a Chinese foe-unless the Suez Canal were available. Soviet control of Egypt will furnish the availability of the Suez Canal after it is unblocked and as long as there is no further local or general war. And so more than a century after the United States bought Alaska from Russia, the Russians, gathering the early fruits of an expanding sea-power, again possess an overseas dependency. It is one, furthermore, that puts under the Soviet thumb, if not actually under the Soviet emblem, the most direct means of access from the Black Sea through the Mediterranean and Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. By her presence in the Indian Ocean, however, Russia may not only protect a shorter route to East Asia. Her own Eurasian security interests fit into a larger global pattern. Russia assigns warships and submarines to the Mediterranean as a check first of all upon that sea-air branch of the Western deterrent which, with allies, the American Sixth Fleet has established. Another if much smaller branch of the Western deterrent might also do tours of the Indian Ocean and this, too, the Soviet Union, by its naval presence, may try to watch. There is no certainty that Russia will always have direct access to the Indian Ocean after the Suez Canal has been reopened. With Egypt as her subordinate, it is difficult to forecast the conditions under which a local war may be fought again on the banks of that waterway. But there are other contingencies against which the Soviet Union may be taking precautions. It may seem idle to speculate about the impact of a world war, whether it be nuclear or conventional. In the event, however, an artery such as the Suez Canal would be put out of business at once and the Soviet navy would have to use the more roundabout route to sustain its presence in the Indian Ocean. But if Russia were more solidly entrenched in the Indian Ocean beforehand she could still do her utmost to neutralise any Western presence there. And so it may also be against another closure of the Suez Canal that she is acquiring land-based facilities in the region. Assistance to the Soviet Union from within the Commonwealth has not been lacking. The Commonwealth is politically the most permissive of entities and the concessions made to Russian seapower by Commonwealth members in the Indian Ocean must puzzle beneficiaries as politically unpermissive as the masters of the Kremlin. It may be that Mauritius, for one, did not understand what she was doing; Pakistan, still aligned to the West by treaty, has not formally changed sides or even intimated that she sees

SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEALTH

51

nothing to choose between them as custodians of world order. But if she is ambivalent, so might be some African members of the Commonwealth. This is a danger, moreover, which stems from a deepening solicitude in Britain for the safety of sea traffic around South Africa. Today the Cape route has more than a fallback utility. It is the only possible path for giant tankers laden with that oil from the Persian Gulf to which, like Japan, Britain and the rest of Western Europe have geared their economies. There are nevertheless those who wonder whether fortification of the Cape route is not strategically futile. The argument is that nonSoviet traffic will be in less jeopardy at that oceanic junction than elsewhere because the Cape is so far from the North Atlantic where roving Soviet marauders would have nearby havens of their own and where, so as to contain the Soviet naval threat, the West is also better off. This might well be so-though modem techniques enable naval detachments to be self-sufficient in distant seas. But it is not only with the West that the Soviet Union competes. There is also the advent of the Communist Chinese to Tanzania and Zambia. Far beyond Sino-Soviet frontiers, Moscow combats Maoist ideology and the magic worked on non-white peoples by Chinese forward strides in war technology. Russia has yet another motive for showing the flag off the coast of East Africa. By doing so she may augment Soviet political inroads. If there are ensuing grants of naval facilities, these will enhance the Russian strategic capacity among the sea lanes of the region. South Africa, with the most convenient site for surveillance over the Cape route, has been willing to undertake that mission. It was one that Britain, by resuming the sale of naval arms to the Republic, has sought to promote. But some overseas members of the Commonwealth have not been ready to acquiesce in sales of that kind to South Africa. For a number of years Britain ensured the defence of the area through an agreement with South Africa under which British naval vessels could be berthed and fuelled at the Simonstown base or use other South African ports. The Wilson Government, however, had banned the sale of arms (though not Buccaneer jets or radar) to South Africa after the Security Council of the United Nations denounced that country in 1963 for its cruel mistreatment of blacks by whites. Since then the politico-strategic

52

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

picture has altered. All the same, the Heath Government ran into a hornet's nest when they proposed to lift the embargo. Commonwealth capitals opposed to such a proceeding contended that South Africa could employ British naval arms to reinforce the iniquities of apartheid and it is indeed true that some of these weapons might have more than one use. Nor is it inconceivable that African peoples look forward to the moment when, having progressed technologically and become proficient in the use of the latest arms, they themselves may lash out at South Africa not only on land but by sea. If this is so it is unlikely that they will tolerate British arms measures that could eventually forestall them. They may also have feared that collaboration between Britain and South Africa in the sphere of defence would be the thin edge of another wedge; it might presage South Africa's return to the full comity of the West. Threats of secession from the Commonwealth resounded in Afro-Asian quarters during the Franco-British expedition for the reoccupation of Suez in 1956 and Ottawa then urged London to think again. Over arms for South Africa there was a repeat performance. It was a Commonwealth imbroglio as tragic and as paradoxical as the distempers of the era in which the Commonwealth itself had emerged. Not even the United States, bearing the brunt against Russia elsewhere, could endorse steps contemplated by her British ally. Unrest among black Americans would be aggravated if Washington blessed anything done by Britain that, as charged, might help to tighten the screws of racial persecution on remote black kinsfolk. When it was Afro-Asian capitals from which black Americans were taking their cue the United States could only regard the British effort as counter-productive for the West as a whole. From the start the outcry against defensive arms for South Africa was a reminder of irrational new elements in world politics. If during the middle years of the twentieth century Nazi racism had prevailed there would have been no further emancipation of colonial territories. Against those who purveyed the evils of Hitlerism no major power stood longer than Britain after the eruption of war in 1939. If it was right for Britain, when Hitler tore up the NaziSoviet Pact, to combine with a ruthless Stalinist dictatorship against a common foe, it could not be wrong now for her to reinvoke that same classic expedient. Historically that would be cogent enough; but politically, in this particular setting, it was not. A working compromise between principle and necessity, as between Britain and South Africa on the above wartime analogy, could still make sense to those peoples of the Orient who forgive

SOVIET SEA-POWER AND COMMONWEALTH

53

the West its sins--even racial ones-lest worse befall. There are some, however, who do not feel it could be worse. Until the eve of World War I it was British naval supremacy which prevented Russia, so oppressive and expansive on land, from penetrating the lndo-Pacific theatre by sea. Now, when most other empires have been liquidated, the Soviet imperium-diminished territorially by World War I and territorially reaggrandised by World War IIseizes the opportunity for expansion by sea beyond its own Eurasian domains. To be sure, anti-imperialist countries like India and Pakistan have not been alarmed by such bold latter-day imperialist expansion. India has been eager to cultivate Russia as a counterpoise against China and against Pakistan over Kashmir. As she strives for the cession of Kashmir, Pakistan, in her turn, cultivates both Russia and China against India. But if Russia may capitalise on her failure to penetrate the African continent in the hey-day of Western imperialism, France has been able to capitalise on a penetration that was once among the most extensive. The autonomy of her former colonies in Africa is something Britain treats more respectfully than France, but among former sub-Saharan dependencies France has got away with a lot by doing more for them financially and administratively. Francophone Africa trades with the South African republic while, when a British government was pilloried for wanting to sell arms to South Africa again, France went on making such sales with impunity. The Organisation of African Unity, however, did elicit a promise from the French to re-examine their policy towards South Africa. That re-examination did not prescribe an entire reversal and so the supply of naval arms to South Africa from Western Europe will not ceaJSe. In addition, after Britain announced her strategic withdrawals from the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic there was a rapprochement between South Africa and the two chief powers of Latin America, Brazil and Argentina, with the goal of making the waters of the South Atlantic more secure. Brasilia and Buenos Aires, removed as they are from the traumatic atmosphere in which London is destined to deal with African problems, could be suitable intermediaries for the purchase by South Africa of naval arms abroad. If South Africa procures these through other channels the heat will be off Britain while oceanically the West will be no weaker. This is the one sort of compromise that may be feasible. There are many members of the Commonwealth whose racialist wounds are still raw. These are authentic susceptibilities of which Britain with her special place at the heart of the Commonwealth (like the United States with responsibilities as leader of the West and with

54

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

greater anxieties than Britain over racial discord at home) must take into account. London has to remind itself that African countries have no monopoly on unreason and that, among other things, statecraft is the art of putting first things first. Britain's export drive would suffer if she simultaneously invited trade reprisals within the Commonwealth from some of her own African partners. Zambia has to pay Rhodesia, despite the Rhodesian brand of white supremacy, for electricity generated by the Kariba Dam. They are not even discomfited when Communist China imports chrome ore from Rhodesia. While fellow Africans are prepared to make allowances for Zambian needs they are unpredictably selective in the allowances they make for others. Nor is this all. In the event of the Cairo-Mosco axis seeking to exclude the military aircraft of the West from the air space of the Middle East, Britain will have to maintain a more circuitous route for air communications with the Commonwealth countries of South-East Asia and the Antipodes. A modicum of goodwill among Commonwealth nations in Africa is therefore essential if Britain is to retain those air or landing rights with which British staging posts in the Indian Ocean would be the other intercontinental links. And she has, above all, a still more imminent contingency to anticipate. It would serve no strategic objective if, by selling arms to South Africa, Britain so antagonised African countries that they vengefully retaliated by offering naval facilities to the Soviet Union. The auguries were such as to suggest that Britain would do better for herself and for the West if she bowed out. It was not an issue over which the Commonwealth, with its value to the free world as a whole, could risk a deeper rift or break-up. The United States may reduce the size of her military presence in Western Europe because European signatories of the North Atlantic Alliance have borne less in the common defence than their due proportion of the load. Canada, for one, has already pared down her contribution. But affluent European countries also have a stake in the security of that South Atlantic entrance to, and exit from, the Indian Ocean. Will they admit it? Britain and the Indian Ocean Meanwhile, to the north of the Indian Ocean, pressure of a very different character has been exerted upon Britain. Commonwealth countries preoccupied with

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236

263

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276

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CHAPTER 13

NEW POLICIES FOR COMMONWEALTH MIGRATION By Dudley Seers Until the early 1960s the movement of people inside the Commonwealth was relatively unhindered, although there have always been some notable exceptions.1 The "old dominions", that is those of predominantly European settlement, had strict controls on nonwhite immigration, but there was an almost completely free movement of "British subjects" into the United Kingdom and also into the colonies (except for people considered politically dangerous). Since the late 1960s these distinctions have diminished. Whilst Australia and Canada have partially relaxed their discriminatory policies, the general tendency among Commonwealth countries has been to make entry into them more difficult. A number of newly independent countries, such as Trinidad, have introduced or tightened controls and Britain has done so as well. The major change in the United Kingdom was the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, classifying immigrants and limiting the entry of those without special qualifications, unless they have been offered employment. The numbers allowed into Britain were sharply reduced in 1965 and again in 1968 when the Act was amended "to relate the issue of vouchers more closely to Britain's economic and social needs". 2 As Ali Mazrui has observed in Chapter 2 above, the changes in British immigration controls also imply increasing racial discrimination.3 No restrictions have been put on the entry of Irish citizens even though Eire is not a member of the Commonwealth. The category of "working holiday-maker" seems to be flexibly interpreted for Australians and New Zealanders. And employment permits are fairly readily issued to citizens of European countries. On the other hand, migration from non-white members of the Commonwealth, apart from dependants, is effectively confined to a few thousand a year whose skills are in short supply in Britain. The original Commonwealth Immigration Act was strongly attacked as discriminatory by the Labour Party which was then in Opposi190

NEW POLICIES FOR COMMONWEAL TH MIGRATION

191

tion. But each of the front benches in the British Parliament now seems determined to show that it is at least as illiberal as the other; moreover, the idea of "repatriation" of Commonwealth immigrants has appeared on the agenda of serious discussion. On the face of it, the explanation for the dramatic change in British policy is that the inflow of Commonwealth immigrants in the 1950s and early 1960s exacerbated already serious economic and social problems, especially the housing shortage. And the consequent opposition within the country was stimulated by racial disturbances in the United States, which cast doubts-as interpreted by some journalists-on the feasibility of a truly multi-racial society. There were more profound reasons, however, for this volte face. In the 1950s it appeared that the old imperial system could be converted into a much looser political organisation still led by Britain. But even a Commonwealth like that has turned out to be, in various senses, too big for Britain, struggling with her own adjustment problems, to sustain a headquarters role. Not only are her markets for goods and capital far smaller than the metropolis of such a system would require. Her resources of tolerance and fair play have proved insufficient to cope with human flows on the scale which this role demanded. As a consequence virtually all of the implications of the role have been rejected, even though in part irrationally. From a strictly economic point of view there can be little doubt that the Commonwealth as a whole is being harmed by the immigration barriers that have appeared. In conventional economic theory, all countries would benefit from the free movement of labour: unemployment problems would be eased in those short of land or capital; while in the remainder, shortages of labour would be alleviated. This applies to any group of countries with different resource patterns, such as the Commonwealth, or to the whole world. Discussing uncontrolled migration among Commonwealth countries seems a pointless exercise. Apart from any reasons of racialism or nationalism, a completely free movement of people would imply a near-equalisation of the wages of unskilled labour, which would not be permitted by the trade unions of the richer member countries. In any case, there are economic objections, formally not dissimilar to the arguments against free movement of goods or capital. In the first place, unless there were a mechanism for the redistribution of income towards the poorer members of the Commonwealth inequalities would tend to become cumulative. For countries enjoying an advantage in educational and research facilities would corner the professional talent and be able to expand

192

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

these facilities at a fast pace, becoming still more attractive as centres for professional careers; indeed, on balance many countries would lose from entirely free movement. Secondly, strains on the economic structure, in countries losing people as well as in countries accepting large-scale immigration, would become catastrophic as international flows of labour accelerated-quite apart from the resultant social tensions.' Brain-Drain and Development But this does not mean that no change can or should be made in the present arrangements. After all, what exists is a makeshift system that started as a relatively liberal one, but on to which various restrictions were grafted in response to political pressures. The grafting operations were often carried out in great, indeed undue, haste and left certain groups (notably the Kenya Asians) in highly exposed positions. The results are not only inhumane. They are also inefficient. While the movement of people without university degrees has largely dried up, professional graduates are migrating away from countries in the greatest need of high-level manpower and towards those where such manpower is relatively plentiful. The most striking example is the large numbers of doctors which travel to Britain each year from India and Pakistan, even though medical services are far from adequate in South Asia, especially in rural areas. In addition, with the increasing awareness of high-level manpower as a key factor in development, the damage done by the "brain-drain" is being acknowledged. Such movements not merely check development directly in the countries providing high-level manpower, where a major obstacle is the shortage of people with professional qualifications, they also aggravate income inequalities which already appear too great for long-term development.5 It is true that there are important flows of technical assistance in the direction of countries where it is needed. But the recipients are not necessarily the same countries as those that lose such manpower and, in any case, experts working on technical assistance contracts are visitors rather than migrants. The pattern of manpower flows, taken as a whole, is counter-productive; it is marred by the main disadvantage of laissez-aller, but brings few of its benefits. The industrial countries have developed an insatiable appetite for medical personnel and for scientists, too, and certain types of engineers. This appetite is growing rapidly. On the one hand, rising incomes cause more than proportionate increases in the demand for professional services, particularly in medicine, while technical innovations in consumer (and military) goods require a growing

NEW POLICIES FOR COMMONWEALTH MIGRATION

193

quantum of expertise. On the other hand, the supply of the required types of personnel is only rising slowly, because of delays in expanding the necessary educational facilities. In addition, those entering universities have recently shown a stubborn preference for the (usually less demanding) courses on the arts side. The problem is a world problem by no means confined to the Commonwealth. Indeed, its heart lies in the United States, where it used to be aggravated by the personnel needs of the space programme. The United States attracts very large numbers of professionally qualified people from other industrial countries, notably from Britain and Canada, but also from Australia and New Zealand (apart from countries much less plentifully endowed with the higher skills). Britain's and Canada's appetite is therefore in some degree an induced appetite. Clearly there is no simple solution. Partly it is a matter of expanding certain types of education in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom so that these countries cease to be dependent on imported skills. Steps are being taken to do this in the case of doctors, but given the pace at which the demand is growing and the time required to increase the corps of any profession, the main shortages of medical personnel cannot be eased in the foreseeable future-not until the 1980s at the earliest. No end seems to be in sight though for the shortage of engineers and scientists. While such shortages constitute a world-wide challenge, the Commonwealth could make a particular contribution because of its common language, its cultural links and its experience of migration. The burden on Britain, and on the other industrial members of the Commonwealth, of helping to solve this problem need not be unbearable. Criteria for Controls? Yet the most obvious cure, checking the migration of professional people, raises a major issue of morality. Essentially it means not just stopping somebody from going to a country where he would earn more or do more satisfying work. In some cases it means preventing his escape from persecution because of his race or religion or political beliefs. These are very real human problems. So, too, are the problems of development. To restrict migration is to interfere with individual freedom. But the prevalence of disease in the rural areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the lack of knowledge about contraception is a very serious restriction on the freedom of individuals to shape their own lives. Shortages of schools, roads and all the other economic and social infrastructure which cannot be either created or maintained without professional

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

expertise are also a serious restriction. It could be argued, furthermore, that highly educated people are needed to bring about political change in their countries; and they will help to achieve this even if (perhaps especially if) they would prefer to be somewhere else. 6 It is not the principle of controlled immigration though that is being discussed. After all, there are already quotas limiting migrants; and each individual migrant is subject to administrative checks. The question is on which criteria should the controls operate and whether quotas should be set for immigrants from certain countries which are suffering from the loss of skills. Sometimes a scientist would be better able to develop his subject overseas and the consequent improvement in technique might in the end benefit his country and other poor countries as well. In any case the growing prosperity in the rich countries that benefit economically from migration helps to raise incomes everywhere. But these arguments are not very convincing when the mechanisms for spreading prosperity are evidently so feeble, and the economic inequalities in the world are so great, that technical advances in the industrial countries are irrelevant or even damaging to countries with wholly different needs and circumstances. Although put forward as " internationalist" arguments they in fact serve the national interests of countries which gain from skimming the cream off the international market in skills. It is true that an Indian doctor or scientist, say, may require types of equipment which are only available overseas. Or there may not be a suitable post for him in his own country, perhaps because the specialism concerned is too expensive. This may temporarily justify emigration. The only overall remedy to the problem is to change the education system. But such a development may actually be delayed as long as an international market exists in professional skills. It may be argued that checking the brain-drain is really a matter for the governments of countries that export skills. Most of them make some attempts to do so (by "bonding" scholars for example). If, for whatever reason, they do not do more, this is surely their business! Countries losing professional skills could certainly do much more to curb the loss. They could, for a start, make their educational syllabuses more relevant to local needs. But one must avoid being unrealistic about the politics of the situation. Policy is determined by the interaction between politicians, civil servants, professional associations and other interests. In these groups the weight of urban educated opinion is heavy. All graduates, even those in professions that are not particularly mobile, benefit directly

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or indirectly from the existence of an international market for professional skills. Making highly-paid jobs easily available to citizens of low-income countries unable to educate many professional people would seem an unreasonable interference with the political processes of those countries. This is especially the case where the development process is imperfectly understood. For one of the characteristics of an under-developed country is that its government may hardly appreciate its need for higher-level manpower. Need for Bilateral Agreements Britain, along with other industrial countries, should be ready to enter into agreements to check damaging types of migration. For instance, she might co-operate in the enforcement of "bonds" and be prepared, moreover, to bar certain types of migration. Where the latter cannot be checked, adequate compensation should be paid to the governments that lose expensively trained manpower, and "adequate" in this connection should refer to the expected total effect on national income and not just to the cost of replacing the migrant. Where politically feasible such agreements could be much more positive. They could cover the full scope of professional needs in the countries concerned, by providing for the extension of regional and national educational systems, the creation of new syllabuses, the development of appropriate research facilities and the provision of overseas training suitably adapted to meet the needs of the trainees. Because the circumstances and requirements of Commonwealth countries vary greatly the pacts would have to be bilateral. Consider medical education as an obvious example. None of the poorer Commonwealth governments can supply all their own requirements. Some need help in the establishment of training centres at home for medical orderlies in the sending of students overseas for training as doctors. Others could educate their doctors at teaching hospitals covering the needs of several countries if these were established with financial and technical aid. While the larger countries can produce doctors they would benefit from sending a number of medical graduates to the richer members of the Commonwealth for experience that involves a large training element (in, for the most part, teaching hospitals) specifically designed for their needs and limited in duration. It would be better that thi~ should happen instead of the present situation where doctors from developing countries spend indefinite periods in richer Commonwealth countries in junior hospital grades involving little deliberate training.7

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The agreements could also rule out drastic unilateral changes in national policy such as the sharp increases in 1967 in fees for overseas students in Britain and the 1968 changes in British immigrant quotas. These can be more harmful than sudden changes in textile quotas or in tariffs on farm products. It may be asked what the industrial countries of the Commonwealth, especially Britain, would gain from such agreements. In the first place, their governments are on record as wanting to help the development of poorer countries, the real test of which is in policy areas such as immigration and education (and trade) rather than financial aid. For aid often seems a conscience-salving substitute for real co-operation in solving development problems. 8 The developed countries should be prepared to draw out the implications of these commitments rather than write them off as hypocritical. After all, professional manpower is a resource with which the richer members of the Commonwealth are well endowed. In most professions there are relatively large numbers, many of whom have had experience overseas. Secondly, the British Government might look on this type of assistance as the most relevant to Britain's role in the last quarter of the century as a truly international centre, which might be a key part of her overall external policy. The same might be done, at least to some extent, by Canada and even Australia and New Zealand. Agreement over immigration and education is not only a matter for bilateral negotiation between rich and poor members of the Commonwealth. The agreement between India and Ceylon on migration could be followed by pacts between neighbouring countries elsewhere, such as in the Caribbean area. Multilateral agreements, under which Australia and New Zealand might agree, for instance, to cover certain specified needs of Malaysia and Singapore, would also be feasible. What is really needed, though, is a new and Commonwealthwide approach to the linked issues of migration and citizenship. The Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference held in January, 1969, re-affirmed previous declarations that for all Commonwealth governments it should be an objective of policy to build in each country a structure of society which offers equal opportunity and non-discrimination for all its residents irrespective of race, colour or creed. It also set up a study group to explore the implications of this objective. But this may easily remain an empty aspiration, especially if Britain joins the European Community. This initiative should therefore be followed by a Commonwealth conference on migration in order to consider the study group's report. Such a conference could provide a set of guidelines for bilateral

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agreements on the narrower question of migration of high-level manpower. First, it could draw attention to the need for statistics on this very obscure problem and indicate research priorities. Secondly, it could point towards the policies of technical assistance and educational aid which the richer members of the Commonwealth should be pursuing. And thirdly it could bring out the major shift which is needed in technical research to provide for the needs of poor countries. Much of this research could be done overseas under contract or by scientists from overseas working temporarily at centres in the industrial nations. 9 On all these issues leadership and guidance to public opinion are badly needed, but are not being provided by the governments of the richer members of the Commonwealth. NOTES l. The writer has benefited from some criticisms of an earlier draft made

by Mr. Tilak Gooneratne, when Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and by Mr. Oscar Gish.

2. Mr. Ray Gunter, as Minister for Labour in the British Government, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House of Commons, London, Vol. 759, February 26, 1968, cc. 242. 3. See Ali Mazrui, "Geographical Propinquity versus Commonwealth Cohesion", Chapter 2 above. 4. A qualification of the conventional argument is that free trade in goods, can have a comparable effect on incomes.

5. This effect has been discussed at length in a paper by the present writer for the Haile Selassie Prize Trust Conference of 1966. There are certain offsetting benefits, such as remittances by emigrants, but these do not seem significant to lessen the damage of most types of migration. 6. This is doubtless one of the reasons why Cuba permitted the departure of professionally qualified people. 7. These ideas are spelled out at length in an unpublished thesis by Oscar Gish. 8. One wonders whether Overseas Development Administration does not concentrate its attention too much on aid to the neglect of the other ways in which British policy could help, and can harm, the development of overseas countries. 9. The writer owes this point to Hans Singer. The proposed development centre in Canada could play a big part in achieving such a shift.

CHAPTER 14

PROSPECTS FOR COMMONWEALTH CO-OPERATION AND PLANNING By Michael Lipton

Countries co-operate for three main reasons. First, they may be compelled to do so in order to resist some threat or to gain some advantage from another country. Second, one or more may see an advantage from co-operation with other countries, and may convince those others that they too will benefit, though this is not true. Third, the co-operating countries may voluntarily combine to seek genuine gains for all (or for some who re-distribute part of their benefits to the rest) in the correct belief that such gains are not obtainable without co-operation. Subsidiary reasons for co-operation might be given. But the first main reason suggested here, involving outside pressure, does not apply to a body as heterogeneous as the Commonwealth. The second, the confidence trick, can produce lasting co-operation only if the countries that do not gain are governed by rulers at once secure at home and corruptible from abroad. Only the third, which produces a form of co-operation which is voluntary and in the reasonable expectation of real advantages being secured for all parties, is possible for the Commonwealth. And it can be secured. Britain's constant jeremiads are unconvincing. The British are too fat to be "on their knees" just because imports sometimes exceed exports by one or two per cent of their total product. Britain should not indefinitely allow her Commonwealth connections to be eroded because some day she might enter the European Communities (EEC) which might in any case prefer to incorporate a Britain whose Commonwealth links are in good order. Moreover, the British and their troubles are not the whole Commonwealth; Britain should not be permitted by the other members to destroy the association. What is needed, then, is mutual self-interest. It can be positive, like the expansion of trade, so that each country can specialise more fully in what it does best. Or it can be negative through, for instance, the signing of agreements to prevent the sudden seizure (or repatriation) of another country's assets. Such areas of common interest are for historical reasons very important within the 198

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Commonwealth. But they have been allowed to decline. In this paper it will be argued that they must be actively reasserted and that they cannot be replaced by sentiment, goodwill or even morality; these, however desirable, are not "economic cement", in Maxwell Stamp's phrase. A Commonwealth linked by emotion, and no more, will provide neither a serious alternative to the EEC for Britain, nor a useful dowry by Britain to the EEC. To revive the prospects for Commonwealth co-operation and planning it will be necessary, in particular, to develop a Commonwealth which is multilateral, which rests upon expanding areas of common interest and which is able, however tentatively at first, to commit its members to decisions. Such a Commonwealth, far from being a fantasy, exists to some extent in many special fields such as in the law, in university questions and in monetary affairs. But it is threatened by another Commonwealth, bloodless yet sentimental : a set of weakening bilateral relations, usually involving a withdrawing Britain and a complaining victim; declining trade and investment accompanied by protestations that these can be replaced by language, custom and general goodwill; and high-level ministerial meetings which, in place of decisions, produce non-binding resolutions. Unless the Commonwealth of Interests can be revived the Commonwealth will be destroyed by the Commonwealth of Sentimentality. "Flexibility before cohesiveness", "signed agreements do only damage", "let academics meet and exchange ideas": it is evasions such as these that are killing the Commonwealth. Decline of Trade Paul Streeten's paper (Chapter 9) convincingly refutes the argument that, because a country's trade is smaller (or slower growing) with one area than with another, the former is less promising than the latter as a candidate for trade expansion through the reciprocal removal of restrictions. He points out that the gains from trade depend on the opportunity cost to the partners of having to make the imported goods themselves; and that such gains are probably decreased in Britain's case by exchanging Morris Minors for Renault Dauphines rather than for copper and cotton textiles which she can produce herself only at high cost. This very argument, while disposing of the use of trade-share trends to "prove" fashionable statements about desirable regional trade associations,1 suggests that one should be worried if intraCommonwealth trade declines substantially relative to trade between (say) Britain and France, or India and Indonesia. Such a decline would suggest that the gains to Commonwealth members, per pound sterling of trade transacted, are also declining, for intra-

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Commonwealth trade consists, to a much greater extent than world trade, of exchanges between highly dissimilar goods. It suggests as well that the strongest bond in the Commonwealth of interests, that of mutual trading advantages, is being weakened. TABLE 1: SHARES OF TRADE Exports to Commonwealth

Imports from Commonwealth

1960

1967

1960

I 1967

World*

28·2

24·2

22·5

19·9

Commonwealth

36·9

27-4

32·6

25·2

Australia

44·0

36·3

51-4

37·1

Canada

22·3

15·1

15·2

9-6

India

45·5

31·2

31·2

19·1

Pakistan

36-4

30·2

27-4

24·1

United Kingdom

36·0

23·6

32·3

24·7

Country or Region

%

%

Source: Data to 1963 from Commonwealth Trade (London, Commonwealth Economic Committee); thereafter from Commonwealth Trade (London: Commonwealth Secretariat). *Excludes the Communist countries.

The above table, the trends in which have accelerated since 1967, does not prove that Commonwealth countries were gaining less per unit of trade in 1967 than in 1960. It might just be that trade among rich countries, and among poor countries, in similar products has fallen. But this is not so. An extreme but important case is that of British exports to India, which fell in absolute terms almost every year from 1960 to 1968 and declined from 19 per cent of Indian imports to 7 per cent over the same period.2 It is above all the trade between rich and poor countries that has declined in the 1960s. Even before 1960, Canada was less a part of the Commonwealth, as regards trade, than "World." As the table shows, the decline has affected the exports and imports of most major Commonwealth countries. 3 It appears to threaten the Commonwealth as a serious entity. It is therefore necessary to examine (a) arguments that claim the trade trends of the 1960s are special or temporary or likely to be reversed and

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(b) arguments that deny the crucial importance of trade in the Commonwealth context.' (a) Several arguments are deployed to explain away the trade trends. They reflect, it is said, the decline of Commonwealth preferences, particularly relative to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Commonwealth preference for the United Kingdom declined from 10 per cent in 1938 to 4 per cent in 1959. By the time EFTA was formed in 1959 there was not much margin left. EFTA is not competitive anyway with the great bulk of Commonwealth trade: apart from dairy products and some forestry products, the products traded are different. Secondly, the trade trends reflect, it is said, the declines (largely now concluded) of London as a commercial centre, of sterling balances built up during World War II and of Britain's colonial links. These declines, though, had virtually run their course by the beginning of the 1960s. The mass of sterling balances held by Commonwealth countries were run down in 1956-57. Indeed, the Clarke Report, on Britain's invisible earnings, shows a steadily rising trend of " City income " from overseas banking and insurance transactions. 5 Thirdly, the trade trends, it is said, are much too short-term to explain anything. But the table above merely continues a longer trend. In 1952 over 40 per cent of British exports went to other Commonwealth countries. 6 Tt is true that in an even longer perspective, from say 1913 to 1963, a few years of declining Commonwealth trade might be seen as a return to some kind of historical equilibrium.7 But the recent downward movement has been too fast, prolonged, steady and general among Commonwealth countries to be thus dismissed. Furthermore, even if the recent trends were a reversion to type, they would be particularly damaging at a time when EEC negotiations, decolonisation, Britain's long period of balance-of-payments difficulties and Rhodesia have placed immense strains on the Commonwealth association. (b) The decline in Commonwealth trade has still not been explained. But what of the arguments that it does not matter because the Commonwealth depends on subtler things than exports and imports? Sir Walter Scott, the Australian management consultant, once said, as president of the Federation of Commonwealth Chambers of Commerce, that " Commonwealth relationships ... have never basically depended on artificial distortions of trade, but on links . . . between business organisations and the mutual knowledge of each other's countries ". 8 John Pinder, of Political and Economic Planning (PEP), implicitly agrees: " The tariff preference system no longer meets the essential needs of most 0

202 COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Commonwealth countries . . . because of the decline of the real importance in trade between [them]."9 (Some might feel that the direction of causation was exactly the reverse.) Such views stem from the belief that Commonwealth cooperation rests on intangibles : a common language (as is enjoyed by North and South Vietnam), a common legal system, a common historical legacy (of exploitation, or more often and more seriously of neglect, by the United Kingdom). Much can be made of these factors. Indeed, more is made of them than most people realise. But the intangibles of the Commmonwealth are only the superstructure. The infrastructure must be the self-interest of the member countries in continuing the association. The belief that without this the superstructure can survive is dangerous sentimentality. At the second United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), held in Delhi in 1968, such sentimentality led Britain to support generalised tariff preferences for less developed countries on terms that would dismantle Commonwealth preferences while permitting Common Market preferences on exports from the EEC's associated overseas territories (mainly ex-French colonies) to continue. It has resulted also in British proposals to enter the EEC without securing any concessions for the manufactured exports of 540m Indians and 110m Pakistanis, although Britain's spokesmen have said they will fight to the last for the sugar of 787,000 Mauritians and the dairy products of 3m New Zealanders. Britain's proposed merger with the EEC raises the principal explanation for the decline during the 1960s of intra-Commonwealth trade as a share of the total trade of Commonwealth countries. It is regionalism. Ali Mazrui discusses in Chapter 2 above the new veneration for the" facts of geography ".10 New techniques for producing synthetic substitutes for jute and rubber, and innovations in industry for saving on raw materials, have certainly increased the ability of rich countries to do without trade from distant poor ones. Trade between rich and poor countries is also less dynamic because the demand for many products from poor countries, especially beverage items such as tea and coffee, grows at a much slower pace than the incomes of consumers and users in the rich countries. On the other hand the demand in poor countries for imports from rich ones has expanded hugely with the advent of development planning. !Many exports from poor countries, such as tin, copper and rubber, are not in income-inelastic demand in rich markets. Moreover, the transportation argument for concentrating trade on nearby partners has been weakened. While reliable freight-rate

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203

figures are not available, bigger and bigger ships and "container revolutions" must have kept freight costs, relative to the price of the goods traded, falling since (say) 1958. World imports, on a c.i.f. basis, grew more than ten-fold in cash terms between 1938 and 1968. Their excess over the value of exports, on a f.o.b. basis, in the same period, grew less than five-fold.11 It would thus appear that unless the distance travelled by the average traded goods fell by half in this period, which is incredible, freight and associated rates must have fallen relative to goods prices, and probably substantially. Britain looms so large in Commonwealth trade that her relatively new trading links in Western Europe, both through the EFTA and in anticipation of joining the EEC, are the major manifestation of the new regionalism. In 1959 the countries of Western Europe provided 27.5 per cent of British imports. By 1967 the figure had risen to 36.4 per cent. Meanwhile the Commonwealth's share of Britain's imports had fallen from 35.3 per cent to 24.9 per cent. 12 Why? Britain's slow growth forced her to shift marginal demand for sophisticated industrial products from home to European sources (and hence, inter alia, her growing trade deficit, although increasingly uncompetitive prices mattered more in this regard).13 But this influence on British imports cannot be the whole explanation for the huge shift in Britain's regional emphases. For the same slow growth of supply in Britain, relative to home demand, should have had the reverse effect on British exports: pulling marginal sales of sophisticated industrial products out of European and into home markets, and hence raising the non-European (including the Commonwealth) share in United Kingdom exports. Yet from 1959 to 1967 Western Europe's share of British exports rose from 28.2 per cent to 38.0 per cent, while the Commonwealth's share fell from 36.4 per cent to 24.5 per cent. Within Western Europe, again from 1959 to 1967, the EFTA share of the United Kingdom's exports rose from 11.3 per cent to 15.1 per cent, as against the EEC's slower rise from 14.9 per cent to 19.2 per cent.a In explaining regional trade shifts, prices do matter; Britain's trade with EFTA grew faster than her trade with the EEC owing largely to increasing effective preferences in the former market. But prices do not explain everything; despite Britains' rising tariff disadvantage within the EEC relative to her competitors inside the common external tariff, Britain's EEC trade greatly outpaced her Commonwealth trade. The new regionalism, then, cannot be wholly explained in terms of income and price. Income explanations would account for Britain's increased share of imports from Europe to meet the grow-

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

ing gap between home demand for and home supply of sophisticated industrial goods; but, far from explaining Britain's increasing diversion of exports from the Commonwealth, the income trends would indicate a declining share of United Kingdom exports to European markets. Price considerations would partly explain EFTA's erosion of the Commonwealth's share in British trade even though most of the commodities traded are different; but price movements would also suggest that the Commonwealth might have expected to gain British trade from the EEC. The fading of the Commonwealth in British trade would therefore appear to be, to a great extent, a matter of policy. One can, in fact, point to numerous deliberate acts of official and business policy which have had the effect of boosting Britain's European trade at the expense of her Commonwealth trade. The imposition of quotas on Commonwealth textile sales to Britain in 1959 was one such act. Britain's willingness in 1967, even before negotiations with the EEC had begun, to accept the latter's common external tariff on Commonwealth textiles was another. Yet another has been the switch from Commonwealth quotas to a tariff system that will benefit Portugal, a member of EFfA, at the expense of India which was proposed by the United Kingdom's Textile Council and in July, 1969, was accepted by the British Government. The story on textiles is typical of those that might be told on other commodity groups. As for business policy, one can only go on hunches (unless one is prepared to indulge in personal references). But in the writer's judgement there is little doubt that large exporting companies have been redeploying their best sales personnel from Commonwealth to European markets and their less able employees in the opposite direction. This process is based on a certain view about the more rapid growth potential of West European markets, as Maxwell Stamp argues in Chapter 8; but the process is the cause of the relative failure of Britain in Commonwealth markets, at least as much as its effect. As far as ancillary services to trade in Commonwealth areas are concerned, they have not been fostered by British concerns. If Tanzania is encouraged to look elsewhere for general aid, and Zambia for railroad capital, nobody can be surprised if they buy in the European or Chinese markets where they borrow their money. Trade among Commonwealth countries has therefore declined in importance for reasons to do with policy at least as much as with price or income changes. I have concentrated on the British case because as Hugh Corbet points out in Chapter 5, Britain's declining involvement has been the prime mover in the trade policies of other

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Commonwealth countries. If it is right to claim that other forms of collaboration must rest on an infrastructure of mutual selfinterest, which is mainly trade, then the first task of Commonwealth co-operation and planning must be to repair that infrastructure. Neglect of Commonwealth trade by Britain is sometimes described as "realism", but it is not "realistic" wantonly to abandon useful imports and advantages in major export markets. It can appear so only under a definition of realism that covers replacing cheap goods by dear ones, joining trade associations without securing the country's external balance and seeking to win new friends by demonstrating special zeal in abandoning old ones. Capital Movements Capital flows to developing Commonwealth countries are considered in detail by Grant Reuber in Chapter 11 above. From the viewpoint of assessing the requirements and prospects for Commonwealth co-operation and planning it is necessary to know about the size and trends in the share of capital inflows into Commonwealth countries derived from Commonwealth sources. Such data are unfortunately hard to come by and are not presented in, for example, the publications of the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 15 One must agree with Professor Reuber that as a complementary agency for capital flows the Commonwealth has too many poor people and not enough rich. The fact, however, that all the rich Commonwealth countries with the exception of Britain are net importers of long-term capital is not as important as it might seem. In forming Commonwealth bonds it is gross long-term capital flows that count. Links between Canada and India are not weakened because Canada's aid and private investment in India are more than offset, on Canada's balance of payments, by American private investment in Canada. Furthermore, in estimating the importance of the Commonwealth in aid flows it should be remembered that American and, to a lesser extent, Australian and Canadian food-aid (a) is worth less than it seems to recipients because it deters their domestic food production by cutting producer prices; 16 (b) is a much smaller burden on donors than it seems because it would greatly cut wheat prices if sold on the export market;17 and (c) is in any event not extrapolable since neither American nor Indian and Pakistani agricultural trends and policies suggest its continuation at present levels. Hence food-aid in 1967-accounting for 31 per cent of total United States aid, 30 per cent of total Australian aid and 24 per cent of total

206

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Canadian aid18 should be excluded in most calculations of the current role of Commonwealth capital flows. A consideration that more clearly increases the relative value of Commonwealth aid is that its terms of repayment, and usually its tying to the purchase of the donor exports, are less onerous than is the case for almost all non-Commonwealth aid. The data are not at present available in sufficiently disaggregated form to assess in any detail the trends in intra-Commonwealth shares in capital movements. But one or two indicators can be given. About 90 per cent of the United Kingdom's bilateral aid goes to other Commonwealth countries and during the 1960s the Commonwealth share has been increasing. 19 As for British private overseas investment, the proportion going to Commonwealth countries has also been rising. Of the fifteen countries analysed in the Reddaway Report, which account for well over 85 per cent of British-owned assets abroad, the seven Commonwealth countries accounted for 52.7 per cent of net United Kingdom operating assets in manufacturing in 1957 and for 60.2 per cent in 1964.20 Moreover, the three really large Commonwealth locations of United Kingdom manufacturing assets, namely Canada (£359m in 1964), Australia (£268m), and India (£133m), all exhibited asset growth from 1955 to 1964 at a substantially faster rate than the average for the fifteen countries, which was 102.3 per cent. There are some signs in recent Board of Trade data that suggest a temporary reversal in the period 1962-66; that matter is discussed by Paul Streeten on page 181. However, the upward trend in the Commonwealth's share of British overseas assets may well have begun again with the growing severity since 1966 of Bank of England restrictions on United Kingdom capital movements outside the sterling area. These were designed to favour the less developed capital importers in particular, and it would be unfortunate if this effect were eliminated in British negotiations with the EEC. Statistics for other gross capital exporters are fragmentary, 21 but in this respect the British role in the Commonwealth is dominant. Total net official and private capital flows to less developed countries in 1967 from the United Kingdom were $875m, while from Canada they were $254m and from Australia the figure was $182m.22 Even before more detailed flow-of-funds data are supplied by the Commonwealth Secretariat, one can be sure that the story of the 1960s of Commonwealth countries redirecting trade away from their partners in the association cannot be told of private or public capital movements. Indeed, the setting up of British-owned subsidiaries in less developed Commonwealth countries was one cause, although only a minor one, of the decline in the latter's

PROSPECTS FOR COMMONWEAL TH CO-OPERATION

207

imports from the United Kingdom, while there is "virtually no trace ... of imports into the United Kingdom of manufactured goods produced by overseas subsidiaries ".23 Although trends in international capital movements have been much more favourable to Commonwealth cohesion than trends in international trade, there has been some cause to doubt whether this .more favourable environment will last long. Despite Britain's substantially improved balance of payments, her huge burden of foreign debt, together with the twin threats in 1970 of runaway wage inflation and a substantial (recession as well as deliberate) cutback in U.S. imports make severe further restrictions on capital outflow likely, in the near future. If Britain is trying hard to enter the EEC, such measures will be directed against Commonwealth investment flows. Furthermore, concerted United States action against inflation and import surpluses will also reduce the ability of Australia and Canada to afford (or, more accurately, to finance) even their present levels of capital movements to developing Commonwealth countries. Even if this is too pessimistic an account it will not be denied that Commonwealth action to secure an increase in internal capital movements is desirable. Free Trade and Bloc Trade A believer in free international trade and factor movements (especially before reading Dudley Seers in Chapter 13 above) might nevertheless deny this last statement, and also the implication of the previous section that Commonwealth action to secure faster growth in intra-Commonwealth trade is desirable. To this liberal view one must respond by putting the issue of Commonwealth co-operation in the context of the real world in which one often has to satisfy oneself with "second-best" solutions. Of that world, international trade in sugar is a microcosm. It does not consist of one market. There are instead five sub-markets. Within four of these sub-markets-the Commonwealth, the EEC and its associated overseas territories, the United States-Philippines arrangement and the Comecon-Cuba alliance-there is an implicit deal under which the richer partners (a) admit cane sugar from the poorer ones, (b) exclude cane sugar from other sub-markets and (c) protect their own high cost growers of beet sugar. The fifth sub-market is the free market, and it is the residuary legatee of the deals done in the other four sub-markets. Plainly in such a world no general arguments for "free" trade can justify a one-sided move to dismantle the mutual advantages pertaining to just one of the four tied sub-markets. Yet, at the time of writing, this in effect is what is proposed for the Commonwealth

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

market as part of the terms under which Britain is seeking membership of the EEC. The first task of Commonwealth co-operation and planning is to make some sense of these proposals. This task is eased, politically speaking, by the coincidence of Commonwealth producer interests, British consumer interests, and the ultimate producer interests of the EEC countries. The replacement in the United Kingdom market of efficiently produced butter from New Zealand by high-cost butter from Normandy, of cheap Canadian soft wheat by bogus-priced wheat from France or even southern Germany, and of low-cost cloth from India by high-cost shoddy from southern Italy are surely undesirable and unnecessary concomitants of British entry into the EEC. British consumers, Commonwealth producers and, in the long-run, the structure of European production-all would suffer in order to confirm in their misdirection the resources of the marginal, inefficient and subsidised producers of Western Europe. In Gerard Curzon's words, Britain is causing some embarrassment in Brussels by insisting on an attempt to join "the Europe of 1957", by giving up her real interests and by surrendering to French protectionism on agriculture and on textiles. 2' Britain would do better to align herself with the liberal trade forces in the EEC Commission and elsewhere in the Common Market. Similar arguments apply to the international movement of United Kingdom capital and labour which are to be deprived of distant homes and different uses in order to move freely to near home and similar uses. The statistical analysis of these possibilities, and of alternative terms for British membership of the Common Market, is a priority task for the Commonwealth Secretariat. It sometimes appears as if, rather than consider Commonwealth prospects the British negotiators are prepared to behave almost suicidally vis-a-vis the EEC; almost (to quote Mr. Harold Wilson), "to roll over on our backs like spaniels ". Britain's willingness to adopt in toto the Community's farm policy, which is her initial position, will involve a loss to the country's balance of payments of about £320m per year in order to support the least efficient farmers in Western Europe, and will involve, also, a substantial increase in British food prices over and above the cost of changing the system of agricultural protection in Britain from one of subsidy to one of tariff. 25 Here, as in the acceptance of the EEC's common external tariff on cotton textiles, serious and lasting damage will at once be done to British consumer welfare, to Commonwealth capacity utilisation and, in the end, to European productive efficiency. And the reason for all this is simply to ease the temporary political difficulties that a more rational British negotiating position might create between certain European governments and their least efficient producers.

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It is not the task of the Commonwealth Secretariat in particular, or supporters of the Commonwealth in general, either to advocate or to fight proposals for new regional trading groups. Where such a group, the EEC, is on the public agenda, however, the Secretariat could spell out the consequences for the Commonwealth, and for British and Western Europe, of negotiating on the assumption that extra-European relationships are expendable. The latent alliances between British bread buyers and Canadian wheat-growers, between British carpet-backers and Pakistani jute processors and between Britain shirt weavers and Indian spinners and weavers are long overdue for political exploitation in the interests of greater economic efficiency. The Commonwealth and Western Europe could be complementary trade groupings linked by Britain. Two obstacles stand in the way. One is a laudable adherence to free trade, which has unfortunately produced a misplaced readiness to engage in unilateral Commonwealth tariff disarmament. Ours is a world of trade blocs where the Commonwealth is a major shelter for some of the biggest and poorest countries in the world. The second obstacle is an inward-looking and unimaginative defeatism in the British political elite which is more the cause than the effect of the sudden outbreak among Britain's lumpen-proletariat of racial intolerance. Racist attitudes are common among stupid and parochial people everywhere; but decently and confidently led societies do not express them so violently as to imperil their relations with other races in other countries. Yet the lack of confidence of Britain's political leaders has pushed them into passing increasingly illiberal immigration laws, from 1962 to the promise-breaking of 1968 and the family-breaking of 1969, and encouraged the related view that Britain's best path into Europe is through the abandonment of her very considerable historical advantages in the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Secretariat cannot act as the psychologist for the "can't do" neurosis of Britain's political leadership. But it can spell out the costs of the gravest manifestation of this neurosis: the treatment of the 25 per cent of British trade and 65 per cent of British capital that is in the Commonwealth as a millstone and not as a dowry in Britain's bid to join the European Communities. The Commonwealth Secretariat could also examine alternative solutions and, in particular, "second-mostfavoured nation" treatment for Commonwealth exporters to the EEC, which would be considerably less than the ex-French colonies enjoy. No British strategy vis-a-vis Europe, and no real or imagined British "weakness", can make sense of the erosion of the Common-

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wealth. But perhaps the Commonwealth Secretariat is not the right body to prevent the Commonwealth's erosion? Superstructure of Co-operation The argument of this paper is that Commonwealth co-operation must rest on mutual advantages from trade, overseas investment and probably aid. It is, however, worth drawing attention to the many forms of Commonwealth co-operation that continue largely unpublicised. A very cursory glance through the Commonwealth press of 1968 reveals moves by Malaysia, Singapore and Ceylon towards a regional court of appeal; 26 a Commonwealth tour by an expert team from the Canadian Defence College; 27 a situation in which, "ignoring all criticisms and domestic pressures, the BBC (Director-General, Controller of Overseas Relations and the directors of Radio and Engineering) went for a fortnight to attend in New Zealand the Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference of 24 countries"; 28 and, perhaps most significantly, the fourth Commonwealth Education Conference, held in Lagos with substantial senior Ministerial and administrative representation, and the second Commonwealth Medical Conference, held in Kampala, with most delegations (including the British) led by Health Ministers. 29 The above are only a few of the successful activities in the Commonwealth superstructure. Critics of the Commonwealth, most vociferous in the British press, are often ignorant of, at best unconcerned with, functions like these. The regular meetings of finance ministers, the consultations among Commonwealth UNCTAD delegations and the prime ministers' conferences are more newsworthy; the issues, after all, are acutely controversial even if they are frequently beyond the effective power of the conferees. Like the United Nations, the Commonwealth is persistently judged by its raucous and inconclusive debates on issues beyond its true scope and not on its serious, productive and specialised work. Especially in the rich countries, the Commonwealth could do with a "pressure group" as effective as the gatherings, centred on the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London, that in the years 1957 to 1964 did much to persuade Britain's political and industrial elite of the case for entry into the Common Market. Need for Multilateralism The decline of interest in the Commonwealth, for the United Kingdom and probably for other rich member countries, has a lot to do with the pseudo-Realpolitik that sees the Commonwealth as a set of useful bilateral relationships but no more. This represents

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a serious failure to exploit the potentiality of the association. The point can be demonstrated in many fields : (1) In education, the fourth Commonwealth Education Conference stressed the value of aid from rich to poor members to finance the training of personnel in third countries.30 (2) In legal matters, the notion of an Asian Commonwealth appeal court must be set against the present London-based, and almost entirely British-staffed, system of appeal to the law Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Indeed, it is Australia's and New Zealand's objections to this arrangement, and their tendency to submit fewer and fewer cases to it, which underlie their lack of interest in the Malaysian proposal for a Commonwealth regional court. (3) In movements of skilled persons, the kind of issues earlier discussed by Professor Seers and Ali Mazrui-brain-drains plus the mis-matching of trainees from developing countries to the local attitudes and skill requirements of those countries-could be met by a Commonwealth treaty on the migration of skilled personnel designed to prevent the rich countries from at least unintentionally exploiting the poor. (4) In military assistance to the civil power, the immediate postcolonial days when British forces could be invited back, as happened in East Africa in 1964, are now probably over. But regional links, as with Malaysia's and Singapore's requests for Australian and New Zealand help to resist externally promoted insurgency, are more in order and would benefit enormously from the similarity of milHary and administrative training and practices. (5) In private overseas investment, the rich Commonwealth countries, as a group, would wish to see that their capital aid to the poor Commonwealth countries is used to produce goods to replace not their own exports but those of third countries. (6) In the settlement of international disputes, the Commonwealth could possibly do better if Britain restrained her chairman's urge, especially after Mr. Wilson's unfortunate and apparently partisan " Lahore speech " during the Indo-Pakistan hostilities of 1965. The most promising non-communist address for ameliorating the Kashmir conflict may be Ottawa. The proposal put forward

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in 1968 by Mr. Hugh Hanning, of the Royal United Service Institution in London, for a Commonwealth force to interpose itself in the Nigerian civil war, while rightly taken very seriously by the United Kingdom's Commonwealth Office, would have had a much better chance of satisfying Colonel Ojukwu and the Biafran secessionists of its impartiality if it had not involved a British contingent. If any part of the Commonwealth system is not in keeping with current needs it is its London base. Even for Britain it is far from desirable that the political and economic strains of say Indo-Pakistani, Hausa-Ibo or intra-East African relations should take the form of contradictory demands on London. The Commonwealth, with its arrangements at many levels for co-operation among complementary polities and economies, and with its unique potential for rich-poor exchanges, meets Britain's international requirements in a way that no narrowly European grouping can achieve (although the Commonwealth could well complement such a grouping). But a Commonwealth conceived of as a set of bilateral relationships centred on London is psychologically unsound. Non-British members see only British international conduct they dislike as an attack on the Commonwealth, while other members are exempt from this rebuke; thus British policy on Indian migration, but not the Kenyan policy, come under scrutiny. This antagonises many Britons and helps to debilitate the Commonwealth. Conversely for Britain, the London-centred concept of Commonwealth transforms each occasion of bilateral irritation, such as with Tanzania over pensions in 1968, is transformed into anger at "the Commonwealth ". (It might be noticed that Britain's more serious irritation over West Germany's refusal before the 1969 elections to revalue the Deutschmark was never transformed into anger at the EEC, because the latter is seen to be multilateral.) for other Commonwealth countries, especially those recently come to independence, London-centred bilateralism keeps alive memories and suspicions. The more secretariats, conferences and other decision foci are transferred from London to Ottawa and Delhi, Kampala and Karachi, the better the prospects for the Commonwealth and, indeed, this process of devolution is already well under way. More important, the analysis and projection of Commonwealth trade and aid on a multilateral basis should be embarked upon without delay, although in the field of aid it certainly should not hold up fuller "multilateralisation" within the World Bank or even the rationalisation of Britain's bilateral programmes.

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CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH ACTION Sceptics might argue that the infrastructure of co-operation, for which a number of suggestions were made in the last section, is merely a series of talking-shops and frustrated initiatives. That would be an exaggeration, but not entirely a falsehood. The last major issue settled on a Commonwealth basis was the Rann of Kutch dispute between India and Pakistan in 1965. On Rhodesia, the Commonwealth's efforts, like everyone else's, to remind Britain of her solemnly proclaimed responsibility for "guaranteed progress towards majority rule" have failed. Immigration and race policy have been so sensitive domestically, and not only in Britain, that Commonwealth action has not extended even to the customary joint committee. Three kinds of remedy exist for this situation (apart, that is, from a greater and more multilateral political concern about Commonwealth prospects as a whole). First, there should be more functional, high-level meetings on problems where there is no major and overt conflict of interest among members. Agricultural development and family planning are two such problems. Secondly, the recommendations of such meetings-and of those already taking place on health, education, telecommunications, tourism and market development-should be addressed to people with the power to implement them, either directly or through branches of the Commonwealth Secretariat that are delegated clear interpretative functions. Finally, in the area of economic policy and co-operation -the infrastructure on which the preservation of social, literary and educational ties ultimately rests-a serious attempt should be made to pull together the stated intentions of member countries into a Commonwealth indicative plan. (See pages 217-18 below). Such a plan would not be binding on members. It could perhaps arise from working out the consequences of a range of policy options and would provide a coherent blue-print for Commonwealth action. New Areas for Action A search for new areas for action should begin with the fact that the Commonwealth's special strength lies in the ability of its members to negotiate, disagree and even transfer aid not as "equals" (which is pure cant), but as countries enjoying what might be called "parity of esteem" (which is not cant but cliche, here accurate). In particular, it is the only body, certainly including UNCTAD, in which such relations exist between developed and under-developed countries. This is because, for all its exploitative

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origins, membership of the Commonwealth now depends on the mutual self-interest that exists within it, so that an attitude of de haut en bas from its richer members would be absurd. If the Commonwealth can survive the strains associated with Southern Africa and enlargement of the EEC then its cohesion, through "parity of esteem", should by 1980 be strengthened by the emergence of Malaysia, Singapore, some Caribbean nations and perhaps Ceylon and Guyana as rich non-white states. The mutual self-interest in development, binding the richer and poorer members of a trading association with relatively free internal capital movements, is self-evident and should be exploited to the full. The trouble with new areas for Commonwealth action in the field of rich-poor relations is that discussion is at once taken back to the contentious UNCT AD issues of trade and aid, which usually generate heated talk rather than enlightened action. The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement demonstrates how interests can be reconciled if discussion is concentrated on specific commodities, although in this case the protection of British beet sugar is a complicating factor. The prolonged talks on an international tea agreement may be making progress; but, if they fail, a Commonwealth agreement might be possible. The same applies to cocoa. As for aid and private investment, the common interest of all parties in a degree of certainty, together with the City of London's role as an insurance centre, suggests that Commonwealth guarantee schemes would not impede, but could indeed guide efforts to bring about a world-wide system for guaranteeing the recipient country against sudden large repatriations of capital or profit and guaranteeing the investing company against expropriation and unreasonable restrictions. But the main field for rich-poor co-operation is not in these conventional UNCTAD areas, as may be seen from the fact that the main area of Commonwealth under-development, namely India, has export-income ratios of about 5 per cent and finances less than 15 per cent of capital formation from abroad (aid plus private foreign capital, both net). In India especially, but elsewhere in the underdeveloped parts of the Commonwealth as well, it would be wrong to identify developmental problems with issues relating to trade and foreign capital, and then to proceed on this basis to delineate the scope for rich-poor co-operation. It is true that the facts and the fears of economic exploitation have prompted developing countries to seek co-operation in these fields from the industrialised world. But it is also true that conflicts of interest make progress on these questions exceptionally difficult. A more fruitful approach is suggested by the proceedings of

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the Commonwealth's health and education conferences. Moreover, such conferences need to reduce the ratio of discussion to decision In particular, the next education conference should grasp the tallest nettle in the garden of world higher education, which is the drift of skilled persons, trained at the expense of poor countries, to work in rich ones. A Commonwealth Convention on this issue is a reasonable aim and could be a useful guideline for a world agreement later on. This is still not at the very heart of the development problem. The central issues are agriculture and family planning. In agriculture, the American work done in India through the Ford and Rockefeller foundations has shown the great potential of seed improvement in a properly balanced "package" of inputs. For rice in the Philippines and for wheat in West Pakistan, where properly timed inflow and drainage of water have become almost assured, the new seeds and the "package" have transformed the agrarian scene; for these crops several years of growth in production at annual rates above 20 per cent have been experienced. But the splendid work done on improved seeds by the United States has so far only benefited the larger farmer, who can obtain credit to buy fertilisers and pesticides, and who has assured water supplies. At least 90 per cent of Indian farmers are overlooked. The experiences of Britain with agricultural extension and credit to small farms, and of Australia with techniques for working tropical lands, are plainly relevant to the needs of underdeveloped countries. A Commonwealth agricultural foundation could enable Australia and Canada to export surplus rural skills instead of surplus wheat and thus confer a long term benefit on the poor Commonwealth at a very small cost to themselves. Existing Commonwealth aid is much too little related to agriculture. 31 Successive Commonwealth medical conferences have recognised the importance of family planning. 32 Indeed, the discussion at the second of these conferences was recognised by the ministers and officials who took part, to have been the frankest to have taken place in any international forum, including the World Health Organisation. Very little has been done on this question.3.'l Yet the Commonwealth in spite of important Roman Catholic minorities (especially in Australia) is better placed to provide assistance than the United States or the EEC. In India, on the most cautious assumptions, family planning investment yields 15 times as much as the next best use of funds. 3' The shortages in India and Pakistan are two : woman doctors willing to work in villages, and paramedical personnel. Although there would be linguistic problems, the rich Commonwealth could help to alleviate these shortages.

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Moreover, a concerted attempt to reverse the medical brain-drain, as discussed in Professor Seers' paper, would be very helpful in solving the problem. Population growth is one of rthe most pervasive problems in the world. Perhaps joint Commonwealth action would seem less paternalistic to poor members if it recognised that some rich members, notably Britain and New Zealand, also have population problems. Commitments to Action The reports of Commonwealth education and health conferences read in many places like certain planning documents : "ought" and "should" appear where one would expect "the Government will ...". This is partly because funds are short; but these reports do not even commit governments for the time when funds are more readily available, no!f indeed on issues where there are no financial implications. It is a strange situation because the reports are signed inter alia by ministers who presumably respect the concept of collective cabinet responsibility. The Commonwealth does well to avoid trying to bind its members to political standpoints. That might indeed break up the association. But failure to bind members to any collective action at all could have the same effect. In a Commonwealth of independent states any proposal for federal or even confederal institutions would be out of place. But institutional arrangements of other kinds could be introduced. Perhaps the contrast between UNCTAD and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) will clarify the position. In UNCTAD the public confrontations between 86 poor counrtries and 26 rich ones are the principal centre of attraction. The UNCTAD Secretariat is so small and so underfinanced, relative to the functions it has to discharge, that it gladly hives some of them off to bodies such as the OECD, which have quite different memberships and commitments. On the other hand, GAIT confrontations are informal and on the whole private, save in the final stages of a negotiation, which are of course the culmination of months of hard paperwork both in administrations of member countries and in the GA TT Secretariat. The GA TT Secretariat is also small but adequately financed, single-minded and unhampered by an obligation to have representatives of several particular nationalities on its staff. Here the GATT Secretariat is not afraid to develop its own bargaining position and is determined to deal with member states according to their real economic interests (and to the concrete objectives of the General Agreement), rather than to engage in pious resolutions. The GAIT path and the UNCTAD

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path represent distinct alternatives for the Commonwealth Secretariat in approaching rich-poor relations among the countries it serves. Some would claim that shortage of funds has compelled the Commonwealth Secretariat to take the less effective UNCTAD course. But might cause and effect be the other way round?

Commonwealth Indicative Plan It is not difficult to list reasons why Commonwealth planning might not work. Some members, such as Canada and Australia, do not plan on an economy-wide scale. Others, such as Britain, merely publish documents. Few members would be prepared to posit their policies on the fulfilment of plans in other countries. In 1965 even a very modest British proposal to identify "matching markets " got nowhere at the Commonwealth prime ministers' meeting. Above all the Commonwealth is not supranational and has no machinery for enforcing planning decisions. These objections, however, do not relate to "indicative planning". It is possible to project the likely sectoral growth rates of various types of production and demand in the main Commonwealth countries and to estimate the consequences for the flows of goods, services, capital and labour among them and, too, between them and the rest of the world. This would be an interesting exercise, especially if carried out with a properly articulated model, on alternative assumptions about such things as exchange rates and United Kingdom tariff schedules. Such an exercise could be up-dated as new statistics became available. But this, on its own, would not be "planning". It would not even be indicative planning because it would be descriptive rather than normative. To transform such projections into an indicative plan-which has not been done for the so-called " Indicative World Plan " of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)-the planning agency (presumably within the Commonwealth Secretariat) would need some machinery for (a) discovering from member countries the respects in which the projections diverge from what they would like to see, (b) calculating the policy switches needed to improve the welfare of all parties and (c) persuading national governments to implement such switches in policy. This last might be achieved through a GATT-like process of bargaining supplemented by arrangements for direct compensatory payments. The unhappy and costly precedent of the FAO's "Indicative World Plan " is not relevant, it should be noted, to genuine indicative planning as proposed here. The above might seem hopelessly ambitious. But is it? If areas of common interest exist in the Commonwealth, will it not help p

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to bring them to the fore? Consider a small part of the exercise relevant to Professor Seers' paper, namely the projections of each Commonwealth country's supply and demand for doctors. The likely course of the medical brain-drain would be substantially revealed by the proposed exercise and Commonwealth countries could meet to devise appropriate policy adjustments. If the process of indicative planning (but not of course the overall projections) were split into sectors in this way, there is no reason why the Commonwealth Secretariat should not proceed in GATT-like fashion to tackle at least the easier issues. Sir Roy Harrod has pointed out that a Commonwealth indicative plan would not require a commitment by all member countries. It might begin with those members initially willing to take part, and could later be enlarged. With her predominant trade investment and currency interests, the United Kingdom would have to take the initiative. But will Britain exercise the necessary leadership? Or will she persist in regarding her enormous Commonwealth assets as liabilities, in spurning her overseas allies, in undermining the most promising association which now exists between rich and poor nations, and in negotiating membership of the EEC on illiberal and restrictive terms that will at best reduce the gains from world trade, and possibly parochialise it for decades to come? NOTES 1. Such "proofs" would not necessarily work in any case. It might be that relatively rapid inflation in Commonwealth countries (compared, say, to the EEC) has caused them to replace each other's goods from Western Europe so that intra-Commonwealth customs concessions would reverse the trend while intra-European ones would confirm rather than exploit it. 2. Commonwealth Trade (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1968). 3. The trend is also noticeable in Africa. P. N. C. Okigbo, Africa and the Common Market (London: Longmans, 1967). 4. In this connection attention will not be paid to arguments that Commonwealth trade should anyhow be replaced by generalised tariff preferences for developing countries or by free trade in, say, cotton textiles. These arguments are taken up below: see pp. 207-8. 5. Committee on Invisible Exports, Britain's Invisible Earnings, Clarke Report (London: British National Export Council, 1967). 6. Sir Walter Scott, "Still Vigour in the Commonwealth", The Times, London, June 18, 1968.

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7. Michael Lipton, Assessing Economic Performance (London: Staples, 1968), p. 168. 8. Scott, loc. cit.

9. John Pinder, The Commonwealth in the Evolution of the World Economic System (London: London Chamber of Commerce, 1968). 10. Also see Lipton, "Britain's Squandered Assets in the Third World", The Listener, London, March, 1969.

11. Statistical Yearbook, 1960 (New York: United Nations, 1961), pp. 386-87, and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, United Nations, New York, April, 1969, p. ix. This is in spite of the rise in freight rates following the closure of the Suez Canal in June, 1967, at the time of the Six Days War. 12. Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1968 (London: Central Statistical Office, 1969), p. 230. 13. Lipton, Assessing Economic Performance, op. cit., pp. 170-74.

14. Annual Abstract of Statistics, op. cit., p. 231. 15. Development Assistance: 1968 Review (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1968) and Flow of Inter-Commonwealth Aid, 1967 (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1968). 16. J. S. Mann, "The Impact of Public Law 480 Imports on Prices and Domestic Supply of Cereals in India", Journal of Farm Economics, American Agricultural Economics Association (New York: Cornell University, February, 1967), p. 144, suggests that the ultimate effect of an extra ton of free food aid is to cut Indian food production by about 32 per cent as growers react to lower prices. Some, but not all, of the land will of course be reallocated to non-foodgrain crops. 17. T. W. Schultz has estimated that American wheat aid, if offered on the world market, would have reduced prices so much as to cancel all the gain to the United States; that is, that the burden of food-aid on the United States is nil. 18. Development Assistance: 1968 Review, op. cit., pp. 268-69. 19. Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1968, op. cit., p. 256. Unpublished work by J. B. Wilmshurst of Britain's Overseas Development Administration suggests that a large part of the international variance, among recipients, of British aid per head is due to Commonwealth membership or its absence. 20. W. B. Reddaway et al., Effects of UK Direct Investment Overseas: Final Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 358. These seven countries got 67.1 per cent of United Kingdom overseas manufacturing investment in all fifteen countries in the period 1955 to 1963. Presumably the restrictions on private overseas investment since 1964, which have favoured the sterling area some-

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what and the underdeveloped sterling area much, mean that in 1970 around 65 per cent of United Kingdom overseas assets in manufacturing are in Commonwealth countries. 21. The first effort at an international flow-of-funds table for private over· seas investment (covering 1965) appears in Problems of Measuring Private Capital Flows to Less Developed Countries, mimeographed (Paris: OECD, 1968), but the degrees of aggregation and the large flow "unallocated" (just over half for the United Kingdom) mean that this table is not very useful for the present purpose. 22. Development Assistance: 1968 Review, op. cit., pp. 260-61. 23. Reddaway et al, op. cit., p. 345. 24. The observation was made by Professor Curzon during the course of his comments at the conference at Marlborough House, London, at which this paper, along with the others in this volume, was presented. 25. See John Cherrington, The Financial Times, London, May 15, 1969. The latter is an internal transfer and not a cost. 26. The Straits Times, Singapore, August 13, 1968. 27. The Hindu, Madras, January 6, 1968. 28. The Daily Telegraph, London, January 9, 1968. 29. Report of the Fourth Commonwealth Education Conference (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1968) and Report of the Second Commonwealth Medical Conference, Vols. I, II and III (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1968). 30. Fourth Commonwealth Education Conference, op. cit., p. 39, para. 29, p. 43, para 50; and p. 49, para. 76. 31. Grants and loans specific to "agriculture, forestry and fisheries" made up 15.6 per cent in 1967 of British aid in the pipeline for specific projects which was allocable by sector. But this was only £64.9m or about a third of the total aid budget. Certainly the proportion of the total aid budget going to support agricultural investment is unlikely to have been even 15 per cent. British Aid Statistics (London: Ministry of Overseas Development, 1968), p. 14. 32. Second Commonwealth Medical Conference, op. cit., vol. I, p. 97. 33. Total United Kingdom aid for family planning for 1969-70, the highest ever scheduled according to the estimates of the Ministry of Overseas Development, is £177,300. This is well below 0.1 per cent of British aid. 34. R. Cassen, "Population Policy", in Paul Streeten and Lipton (eds.), The Crisis of Indian Planning (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).

INDEX Aden, 48 Adler, R. M., 180n Africa, 3, 8, 68, 80, 146, 193; Arab (former), 17, 25; Central, 18, 27, 28; Commonwealth, 162, 163T; East, 27, 48, 56, 182, 211; Francophone (ex-French), 17, 20, 53, 138, 162, 163T, 202; racialism in, 26, 28-9; regionalism in, 17-21, 25-6; southern, 18; UK and, 23, 131, 186T; West, 182; see also South Africa Afro-Asianism, 20, 22, 26 Afro-Malagasy Union, 18 Agricultural Adjustment Act (USA), 103 Agricultural Guarantee and Guidance Fund (EEC), 102, 109n agriculture, 4, 13, 14n, 92; co-operatives, 99; costs and prices in, 99, 103, 105, 107, 109, 125; domestic policies for, 5, 6, 7, 107; foreign aid and, 99, 106, 205-6, 215, 220n; free-trade treaty and, 120, 121; import levies and, 102, 125; IGA and, 104--5; international policy on, 5-7, 94; Kennedy Round negotiations and, 103; labour in, 103; protection of, 3, 6, 7, 76, 91, 92, 96, 98, 102, 109n, 121; subsidies for, 7, 99, 121, 208; surpluses in, 99, 101, 102-3; technological advances in, 3, 101; temperate-zone, 5, 76, 92, 98-110, 118, 120, 127; trade restrictions on, 98-9; tropical, 105-6; see also Commonwealth, EEC and individual countries aid (foreign), 68, 94, 196; agricultural, 99, 106, 215, 220n; Australian, 33, 37, 38, 40, 41; benefit-cost estimates for, 164; bilateral, 161, 162; Canadian, 162-5, 205-6; Commonwealth and, 9-10, 159-65, 178n, 179n, 205-6, 214; development, 106, 146; educational, 195, 196, 197; food-, 105, 106, 205-6, 219n; intergovernmental machinery of, 170; joint ventures and, 184; military, 47-8, 211; multilateral, 162; planning of, 178 ; tariff preferences and, 136; technical, 10, 11, 19, 33, 37, 40, 45, 106, 166, 184, 192, 197; tied, 162; trade and, 10, 160--2, 214; UK, 87, 146; US, 87, 106, 205-6; aircraft, 122; military, 54, 55, 56 air transport (jet), 113

221

Alaska, 50 Algeria, 21, 77 Allen, G. C., 124, 128n American First Fleet, 57; Second, 57; Sixth, 47, 50; Seventh, 56, 57 Amery, Leopold, 22, 30n Anguilla (W. Indies), 21 anti-dumping codes, 63 Antipodes, 54 ANZUS pact, 32, 37, 56 Argentina, 53, 108 Asia, 17, 26, 28, 68, 69, 80; Australian policy in, 32--41; East, 47, 50, 65-71, 73; South, 47, 65, 94, 163T, 192; see also SE Asia, Indo-Pacific theatre Asian Development Bank, 72 Asian-Pacific collaboration, 71-6 Atlantic Trade Study Programme, 128n Australia, agriculture (and products), 92, 98, 100, 104, 105, 118, 215; anticommunism in, 32, 34--5, 40; Asian policy of, 2, 14n, 32--41, 72, 73--4; balance of payments of, 9, 159; brain drain from, 193; capital flows from, 159, 206, 207; China (Communist) and, 2, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41; Colombo Plan of, 33; Commonwealth appeal system and, 211 ; foreign aid from, 162, 178n, 205-6; Indonesia and, 2, 33, 35, 41, 68; investment flow of, 188T; Japan and, 2, 32, 35, 36, 37, 40,41,65, 72, 73-4, 75-6,86; Malaysia and, 2, 33, 37, 38, 40, 41, 74,211; migration and, 190, 193, 196; military role of, 2, 32, 33-6, 55; Pacific free trade area and, 94, 123, 124; planning by, 217; racial attitudes in, 33, 190; Singapore and, 2, 74, 211; trade of, 2, 40, 41, 63, 64--5, 66, 724, 75, 77, 86, 94, 112, 114, 133, 137, 200T; UK and, 2, 37, 41, 59n, 65, 68, 74, 75, 94, 100, 112, 114, 124, 190, 206; USA and, 32, 35-7, 38, 39, 56, 73--4, 80, 86, 94, 124; Western Europe and, 2, 135 Australian National University, 124 Austria, 153n Baguley, R. W., 180n balance of payments, 10, 87, 89, 108; Australian, 9,159; Canadian, 9, 159; Commonwealth, 159, 166; deficits, 147, 153n; international reserves and, 148; private foreign investment

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COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

and, 168, 172, 183, 184; reserve currency countries and, 147; SD Rs and, 147-8; sterling area, 141, 142-4, 154--7T; tariff preferences and, 136, 137; UK, 9, 104, 111, 125, 127, 142, 143, 144, 147, 151, 152n, 159, 201, 207, 208; US, 79, 108, 149-50, 207 Balassa, Bela, 122, 128n Ball, George, 80 Bandung Conference (Afro-Asian), (1955), 22 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 150, 153n Bank of England, 206 banks, banking, 180n; central, 149· development, 11, 134, 170, 175; overseas, 201 Basie facility, 149-52, 153n Bator, Francis, 14n Bay of Bengal, 48 Beaton, Leonard, 60, 82n Belgium, 17, 24, 138, 153n, 162 Bennett, George, 16, 30n Berlin crisis (1961), 47 Bernstein, Edward, 153n Bhagwati, Jagdish, 180n Biafra secessionists, 212 BIS see Bank for International Settlements Board of Trade (UK), 66, 70, 113-14, 180n, 206 Borneo, 32 Boyle, Sir Edward (now Lord), viii brain-drain, 192-5, 215, 218 Brandt, Willy, 78, 84n Brash, Donald, 179n Brazil, 53, 106 British Broadcasting Corporation, 210 British Empire, vii, 16, 42, 63, 116 Bundy, MacGeorge, 69, 82n Burma, 111 Burundi, 182 butter, 98, 100, 102, 109n, 208 Cambodia, 33 Cameroon, 182 Canada, ll,23,25,45,52,54,56, 153n, 167, 193, 217; agriculture and, 92, 98, 100, 104, 105, 108, 109n, 208, 215; balance of payments of, 9,159; capital flows and, 159, 164, 167, 206, 207; EEC and, 135, 139; foreign aid from, 160, 161, 162-5, 178n, 179n, 205-o; foreign investment in, 170-2, 177, 181; free-trade treaty option and, 94, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 137; Japan and, 65, 72, 75-6, 86; migration and, 33, 196; overseas ve; ,nents from, 11, 160, 205; trade of, 2, 63, 64--5, 72, 74--6, 94, 100, 108, 114, 133, 137, 200T; UK

and, 63, 64--5, 75, 100, 108, 114, 121, 122, 181, 206; USA and, 75, 78, 80, 86, 94, 108, 121, 126, 171, 205 Canadian-American Committee, 75, 97n Canadian Defence College, 210 Cape of Good Hope, sea passage around, 48, 49-54 capital, 72, 94, 164, 167, 191, 205,208; bond, 185; joint ventures and, 183, 184; local, 12, 185; private foreign, 11, 165-6, 183, 184, 185, 186; repatriation of, 168, 183, 184, 185; sterling area and, 141, 142, 154--7T; see also investment capital flow, 3; to developing Commonwealth countries, 158-80, 205; intra-Commonwealth, 205-7, 214, 217; sterling area, 142-3, 144, 151, 153n capital formation, 214 capital gains, 185 capital resources, 158 Caribbean area, 1, 3, 75, 182, 186T, 196, 214; Commonwealth countries of, 3, 162, 163T; see also West Indies car industry, 122, 126 Cassen, R., 220n cattle, 98, 103 Caves, Richard, 180n cement industry, 13 cereals, 91, 104 Ceylon, 66, 135, 163T, 164, 196, 210, 214 cheese (cheddar), 98, 100, 104; see also dairy products chemical products, 90 Cherrington, John, 118, 127n China, Communist, 2, 48, 53, 54, 70, 105; Asian role of, 34, 38; Australia's attitude to, 32, 33, 34, 35, 41; Soviet Union and, 34, 39, 40, 42, 49-50, 69-70; USA and, 37, 39, 69-70, 80 China, Nationalist, 37 chrome ore, 54 Churchill, Winston, 45, 56 City of London, commercial centre of, 149, 201, 214 Clarke Report (Britain's Invisible Earnings), 201, 218n Cleveland, Harold van B., 84n clothing and footwear, 122 coal production, 131 cocoa, 214 coffee, 202 Colombo Plan, 33 Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), 106, 207 Commission on Internation Trade and Investment Policy (USA), 79

INDEX

Committee on Invisible Exports (British National Export Council), 218n Common Market see European Economic Community Commonwealth, access to W. European market of, 129-39, 209, 218n; agriculture and, 5-7, 92, 98-109, 215; Asian-Pacific collaboration and, 71-6; Australian Asian policy and, 2, 32-41; capital flow in, 15880, 205-7, 214, 217; co-operation and planning in, 12-13, 198-218; developed v. developing countries within, 134, 137, 158-66; education in, 211, 215; EEC and, 87-8, 102, 117-19, 129-39 passim, 207-10, 214; family planning and health in, 213, 215-16, 218; foreign aid and, 9-10, 159-65, 178n, 179n; GAIT and, 88-95, 119-27; indicative plan for, 213, 217-18; international disputes in, 211-12; joint ventures in, 183-6; legal system of, 210, 211; migration, 12, 26--8, 190-7, 211, 212; multilateral role of, 13-14, 199, 210-12, 213; mutual interests within, 85-7, 134, 213-8; nature of, 44-6; PanAfricanism and, 17-21; PanEuropeanism and, 22-5; private foreign investment in, 10-12; 159, 165-78, 211; public foreign investment in, 160-5; regionalism and, 2-3, 16--30, 182; Soviet sea power and, 2, 46--59; sterling problem and, 140-7, 150-2; Strasbourg Plan and, 133-5; superstructure of co-operation and, 210; trade challenges to, 4-5, 87-95; trade decline of, 199205, 218n; UNCTAD and, 95-6; UK and, 6, 8, 13-14, 22-4, 25, 43-6, 53-4, 56, 60-5, 75-6, 76--81, 85, 878, 104, 129-39 passim, 198-209; UK bilateral approach to, 210, 212; UK trade options and, 111-27; United Nations and, 19-22; see also individual member countries Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference, 210 Commonwealth Development Corporation, 11, 13, 175 Commonwealth Education Conference (4th), Lagos, 210, 211 Commonwealth Foundation, 13 Commonwealth Immigration Acts (1962; 1965; 1968), 27, 28, 190 Commonwealth Institute, 13 Commonwealth Medical Conference (2nd), Kampala, 210 Commonwealth Office (UK), 212 Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, 13

223

Commonwealth Preference system, 4, 14, 63, 75, 85, 87, 88, 101, 113-14, 117-18, 122, 132, 133, 134, 135-7, 143, 201-2; see also tariff preferences Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conferences, 210; 1964: 18, 19-20; 1969: vii, 60, 61, 81n, 196, 217 Commonwealth regional court of appeal, 210, 211 Commonwealth Secretariat, viii, 13, 19, 30n, 205, 206, 208, 209-10, 213, 217, 218 Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, 214 communications, 13, 113 Conservative Government (UK), 52, 55, 65, 71,114 Conservative Party (Canada), 74 Conservative Party (UK), 21, 28, 634, 66, 82n consumer(s), agriculture and, 99, 104; demand, 182; goods, 192; subsidies, 104 continental jurisdiction, principle of, 21 co-operatives, farmer-owned, 99 copper, 199, 202 Coppock,JohnO.,6, 14n,99, 109n co-production agreement (CPA), 175, 176T Cooper, Richard N., 14n Corbet, Hugh, 1-15, 60-84, 86, 96n, 107, 110n, 127n, 204 Council of Europe, 134 Cowie, Harry, 128n, 139n Cuba, 197n, 207; missile cns1s in (1962), 47 currency (ies), breakdown in system of, 112; devaluation of, 108; exchange rate of, 150; Fund Units and, 148; instability of, 108; liabilities, 147; see also dollar; gold; reserve currencies and sterling Curtis, J. M., 180n Curzon, Gerard and Victoria, 96n, 97n, 127n, 128n, 208, 220n customs union, 117; European, 62, 64 Cyprus, 21, 23, 27 Czechoslovakia, 69 Dahomey, 182 dairy products, 6, 98, 99, 100, 101T, 102, 104, 109n, 118, 201, 202 Day, A. C. L., 153n Debre, Michel, 78, 84n Declaration of Atlantic Interdependence (1962), 69, 80, 81 defence, defence policy, Australian, 32, 36, 37, 38, 41, 56, 74; British, 54-5, 153n; Commonwealth, 55, 66; NATO, 54; of Cape sea-route, 4954; US Arctic, 108

224

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Democratic Labour Party (Australia), 36--7, 38, 39 Denmark, 132, 153n Depression see Great Depression Deutsclunark, revaluation of, 152, 153n devaluation, 173, 174; of sterling, 145; 1949: 144; 1967:7, 8,121,143,144; us, 150 Development Assistance Committee (DAC), of OECD, 158-9, 161, 165, 166, 173, 205 dollar, 79, 80, 147; Basie facility and, 152; conversion into gold of, 147; exchange rate of, 149-50; shortage of, 114, 131, 132, 141; short-term liabilities of, 149; sterling area reserves and, 146, 150; trading role of, 149; 2-tier gold market and, 153n; see also currency; reserve currency Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, 82n Drysdale, Peter, 124, 128n Dulles, John Foster, 69 'dumb-bell concept' see Grand Design Dunning, John H., 180n earnings, overseas, 187T, 189T; UK invisible, 65-6, 201, 218n East Europe, 47, 48, 100 Economic Council (Canada), 74 Economic Planning Agency (Japan), 72-3 economies of scale, 3, 117, 123, 125 Eden, Sir Anthony, 49 education, 12, 160, 211; Commonwealth conference on, 213, 215, 216; migration and, 191-7 passim eggs and poultry, 6, 102, 104 Egypt, 47, 48, 50 Eire (Republic of Ireland), 111, 132, 190 Eisenhower, President Dwight, 69 Eisenhower Administration, 78 engineering industry, 13, 122 English, Edward, 97n, 128n entrepreneurial skills, entrepreneurship, 11, 166, 170, 184, 185 Ethiopia, 21, 182 European Coal and Steel Community, 131 European Economic Community (EEC: Common Market), 14, 24, 80, 207; agriculture and, 6, 7, 88, 98, 99, 100, 102-4, 105, 106, 109n, 118, 120, 125, 139, 208; associated overseas territories of, 62, 202, 207; Commission, 102, 103, 208; Commonwealth and, 87-8, 117-19, 12939 passim, 207-10, 214; exports from, 67; GATT and, 117; invest-

ment flow of, 188T; trade, 77, 78, 90, 113, 120, 122-7; UK and, 7, 8, 13, 22, 43-4, 45, 55, 60--1, 62, 63-4, 65, 75, 79, 81, 85, 87-8, 94, 95, 104, 109, 113,114-16,117-19,120,121,123,124 -6, 129-39 passim, 152, 196, 198-209 passim, 212; USA and, 3, 8, 69, 78, 79, 80--1, 115, 123; see also Western Europe European Free Trade Association (EFTA), 66, 106; EEC and, 67, 78; foreign investments by, 171, 188T; free-trade treaty option and, 92, 93, 95, 97n, 117, 120, 121, 136, 137; trade, 100, 201, 203, 204, UK and, 125, 201; USA and, 177 export credit, 165T, 174; markets, 116--17, 168, 170; sales, 76; subsidies, 6, 99, 108; surplus, 111 exports, 67, 73, 76, 160, 167; agricultural, 98, 99, 100, IOI, 107, 108; Commonwealth, 111, 113, 117-18, 136; from developing countries, 10, 107, 135, 166; freight rates and, 2023; manufactured, 123, 135, 141; sterling area, 154-7T; UK, 63, 65, 67, 113, 114, 121-2, 141 expropriation (of foreign investments), 173, 174, 180n, 183, 184, 186, 214 family planning, 193, 213, 215, 220n famine grants (USA), 106 FAO see Food and Agriculture Organisation farming, farm products see agriculture farm-support policies, 5, 7, 92, 107 Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), 24, 25, 67, 78, 116; Basie facility and, 153n; national income of, 73; revaluation of mark by, 152, 153n, 212; wheat exports from, 208; see also Germany Federation of Commonwealth Chambers of Commerce, 201 FEOGA (Fonds European d'Orientation et de Garantie Agricole), 118see Agricultural Guarantee and Guidance Fund (EEC) fertilisers and pesticides, 13, 215 fibre and products, 138 Fischer, Lewis A., 106, 109n, 110n Fisher, John Arbuthnot, Lord, 57 food, foodstuffs, 88, 102, 104, 141; see also aid Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 217 Ford Foundation, 215 Foreign Affairs Club (London), viii foreign exchange, 101, 116, 132, 141, 144, 148-9, 152n foreign exchange rate, 7, 121, 145, 147, 148-9, 172, 173, 174, 217

INDEX

foreign exchange reserves, 142, 146, 147-8 foreign ownership and control (of industry), 168, 169, 170, 171, 172 forestry products, 201 France, 67, 78, 159; agricultural trade of, 105, 208; arms sales to South Africa by, 53; EEC and, 24, 134; former African colonies of, 17, 20, 53; de Gaulle and, 24--5; national income of, 73; UK and, 57, 116 Franck, Thomas M., 15n Francophone Africa see Africa free trade, 65, 76, 131, 197n, 209, 218n; bloc trade and, 207-10; Canadian-American bilateral, 75; diversion benefits from 122-3, 125, 126; global, 89, 94, 96n, 97n, 126; MFN approach to, 4, 89-90; multilateral, 78, 81, 89, 93, 94, 97n, 122, 124, 126; Pacific, 72, 75, 83n, 94, 123; sector-by-sector (industry-byindustry) approach to, 4, 77, 78, 90-2, 119; Tasman (limited), 77; treaty option, 4, 7, 8, 78-9, 92-5, 97n, 111-26, 137; West European, 1, 66, 67, 77, 78, 124--6, 135; see also EFTA;LAFTA;NAFTA;PAFTA Freet, Gordon, 39, 40 freight rates, 182, 202-3, 219n fruit and vegetables, 98, 100, 101T, 102, 104 Fuji Bank (Japan). 72 Fund Units.. 148, 149 Gaitskell, Hugh, 22 Gallup Poll organisation, 81n, 82n GATT see General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gaulle, President Charles de, 24--5, 43-4, 79, 81, 87-8, 114 Geiger, Theodore, 84n Gelber, Lionel, viii, 2, 13, 42-59, 81n General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 3, 4, 5, 6, 75, 76, 86, 88, 96n, 101, 218; agricultural trade and, 106, 107, 121; Article 24 of, 117, 119; Commonwealth and, 1034, 134; free-trade treaty under, 92-5, 107, 119, 137; most-favoured-nation (MFN) approach under, 3, 4, 8, 77, 78, 89-90, 107, 117, 119; Secretariat, 216; sector-by-sector approach under, 90-2, 107, 119, 137; Strasbourg Plan and, 134; UNCTAD and, 216--17; UK and, 62, 114; tariff reductions under, let, 136; Yaounde Convention and, 77 Germany, 58; see also Federal Republic of Germany Ghana, 17-18, 19, 30, 135, 163, 188T

225

Gish, Oscar, 197n Goa, 46 gold, 142; Basie facility and, 152; conversion of dollar and sterling into, 147; Fund Units and, 148; 2-Tier market for, 153n; UK reserves of, 141, 145; see also currency, reserve currency Gooneratne, Tilak, 197n Gorshkov, Admiral Sergei, 57-8 Gorton, John, 39-40, 74 government agencies, 12, 183-4 grain, 88, 100, 101T, 102; bread-, 99; food-, 102, 105, 106; see also wheat Grand Design (Declaration of Atlantic Interdependence), 69, 80, 81 Great Depression (1930s), 85, 87, 112, 131, 132, 141 Grecbko, Andrei, 57 Greco-Turkish confrontation (over Cyprus), 27 Greece, 49, 77, 108 Green, R. W., 127n Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 160 Gross National Product (GNP), 126, 159, 163, 164, 171, 179n Guinea, 17-18 Gunter, Ray, 197n Guyana, 214 Haile Selassie, Emperor (of Ethopia), 21 Haile Selassie Prize Trust Conference (1966), 197n Harrod, Sir Roy, 218 Hawaii, 72, 94 Hawkins, Robert G., 15n, 128n health (and medical) services, 160, 218; Commonwealth conferences on, 213, 215, 216 Heath, Edward, 7, 64 Heath Government see Conservative government hides and skins, 101T, 138 Hirsch, F., 152n Hitler, Adolf, 43, 52 Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, 72, 94 Holland see Netherlands Holmes, John, 80 Hong Kong, 48, 63, 66 horticultural crops, 104 housing, 184, 191 Hufbauer, G. C., 180n Hull, Cordell, 88 Hutt, Rosemary, 127n IBRD see International Bank for for Reconstruction and Development IGA see International Grains Arrangement

226

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

immigration see migration import licensing, 63, 131 import substitution, 7, 169 imports, 6, 170; agricultural, 45, 98, 99, 100, 101-2, 103, 107; Commonwealth, 63, 113; controls on, 107, 108; freight rates and, 202-3; levies on, 7, 102, 103, 104; manufactured, 93, 111; primary, 111, 141; -quota programmes for, 99; sterling area, 142, 143, 154--7T; UK, 65, 111, 112, 121, 133, 141 income, European regionalism and, 203--4; of farmers, 99; inequalities, 192; investment-, 142; national, 73, 164; -support, 109n, 160 India, agriculture in, 106, 205, 215; aid to, 163T, 164, 205, 215, 219n; Australia and, 33, 40; brain-drain from, 192, 194; Canada and, 163T, 164, 205; Ceylon and, 196; China (Communist) and, 48, 53; Commonwealth trade of, 200T; emigration to UK from, 26, 212; EEC and, 135; family planning in, 215; Goa and, 46; independence of, 22-3; investment flow in, 188T; Kashmir dispute and, 21, 53; manufactured exports of, 202; Pakistan and, 39, 53, 212, 213; Rann of Kutch dispute and, 213; rich-poor co-operation and, 214; Soviet Union and, 48, 50, 53; sterling reserves of, 146; UK and, 26, 48, 66, 200, 206, 212 Indian Ocean, Soviet Union and, 39, 47, 48, 50, 51, 70; UK and, 53, 54--7 Indicative World Plan (of FAO), 217 Indonesia, 2, 32, 33, 35, 39, 41, 68 Indonesian Confrontation, 32, 39, 68 Indo-Pacific theatre, 2, 71; Australian policy in, 32--41; hostilities in (1965), 211 ; security of, 79; social and political problems of, 67-71; Soviet strategy in, 49; UK and, 56, 63, 65, 66; see also Asia; South-East Asia industrialisation, 73, 85, 133, 136 industrial products, 5, 6, 90, 93, 119, 203,204 industry, capital- and labour-intensive, 122; in developing countries, 67, 134; export-oriented, 169; foreign ownership and control of, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 177, 183; importsubstituting, 169; infant, 63. 134; joint ventures in, 12, 175, 183-6; manufacturing, 177; private, 10-11; technology in, 3, 91, 125; trade liberalisation and, 6, 66, 77-9. 90-2, 119, 120 inflation, 133; Commonwealth, 218n; UK, 207; US, 149, 207

infrastructure, in developing countries, 67, 169-70; shortage of, 193--4 insurance, UK, 65, 71, 180n, 201 Inter-American Investment Development Center (USA), 11, 175 interest rates, on foreign exchange assets, 145; on international deposits, 149; in sterling area, 151, 153n International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), 162 International Chamber of Commerce, Istanbul Congress of (1969), 78 international deposits circulations, 148, 149 International Finance Corporation (IFC), 11, 170, 175 International Grains Arrangement (IGA), 104--5; food-aid convention of, 105, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 147, 152, 153n international monetary system, 9, 79, 146; reform of, 140, 147-52, 153n international reserve agency, 148, 149 investment, 3, 40, 142, 152n, 20T; costbenefit estimate of, 164, 168-9; in developing countries, 137, 159; direct equity, 185; fixed interest, 185; guarantees, 184; incentives for, 173, 175, 177, 180n; information to encourage, 174--5; in infrastructure, 169-70; joint ventures and, 12, 175, 183-6; portfolio, 152n, 165T; private foreign, 10-12, 159, 165-78, 181-9, 211, 214, 219-20n; public foreign, 160-5; rate of return on, 173, 174; risks involved in, 173, 174, 180n, 183; Strasbourg plan proposals for, 134; UK overseas, 65-6, 67, 70, 111, 127, 146, 171, 181, 186T, 219-20n; US (in Canada), 108, 170-2, 205 irrigation, 215 isolationism, 60, 64, 80 Israel, 47, 48, 49 Italy, 24, 25, 116, 153n, 208 Ivory Coast, 182 Iwasa, Yoshizane, 72 Jackson Report, 178 Japan, 39, 51, 57, 65, 124, 136, 153n; Australia and, 2, 32, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 65, 72, 73--4, 75-6, 86; Canada and, 65, 72, 75-6, 86; free-trade treaty option and, 120, 123--4, 138; New Zealand and, 72, 75-6, 86; Pacific free-trade conference in, 72, 94, 123; South-East Asia and, 71-3, 74; Soviet Union and, 48; UK and, 74, 76, 123--4, 132; USA and, 72, 78, 80, 124

INDEX

John F. Kennedy Institute, 153n Johnson, Harry G., 4--5, 76, 79, 85-97, 107, 110n, 111, 118, 121, 127n, 129, 139n Johnson, Lyndon, 56, 77, 78 Johnson Administration, 78 joint ventures, 12, 175, 176T, 183-6 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (London), 211 jute fabrics, 138; synthetic substitutes for, 202 Kaldor, Nicholas, 15n Kariba Dam, 54 Kashmir conflict, 21, 48, 53, 211 Kennedy, John F., 69, 78 Kennedy Round of negotiations (under GATT), 4, 5, 7, 76, 77, 88, 89-90, 103--4, 105, 107, 114, 119, 125, 135; see also GATT Kenya, 16, 19, 163, 192, 212 Kindleberger, Charles P., 179n Knapp, John, 63, 82n, 139n Kojima, Kiyoshi, 72, 83n, 94, 97n, 123, 128n Korea, 32 Korean War, 39, 142 Kreinin, Mordechai, 15n, 128n labour, 116, 217; agricultural, 103; costs, 132, 177; international movement of, 208; migration and, 191-2; union difficulties, 173 Labour Government (UK), 51, 55, 64--5, 66, 67, 70, 114 labour-intensive industries, products, 90, 119, 122, 177 Labour Party (Australia), 36 Labour Party (UK), 27, 63--4, 190-1; 1962 conference of, 30n Lary, Hal, 138, 139n Latin America, 193; aid to, 68, 94, 163T; South Africa and, 53; UK investment in, 186T; USA and, 78, 80 Latin America Free Trade Association (LAFTA), 1, 106 Lea, Sperry, 84n leather and products, 138 Lipton, Michael, 12-13, 198-220 Lubitz, P., 180n Lundgren, Nils, 84n Luxembourg, 24 MacDougall, Sir Donald, 127n MacFarlane, David L., 5, 14n, 91, 98110, 120, 121, 133 Machlup, Fritz, 153n Macmillan, Harold, 22 McQuade, Lawrence, C., 78

227

Mahan, Captain Alfred Thayer, 57 Maisels, Alfred, 160, 179n Makerere University, Uganda, 19 Malacca Straits, passage of shipping through, 48, 71 Malawi, 21 Malayan Emergency, 32 Malaysia, 2, 214; Australia and, 33, 37, 38, 40, 41, 74,211; Canadian aid to, 163T; Commonwealth security and, 55; EEC and, 135; investment flow in, 188T; Malay-Chinese confrontation within, 27; migration and, 196; New Zealand and, 211; regional court of appeal and, 210; Soviet Union and, 48; UK and, 65, 66; Indonesian Confrontation (in Borneo), 32, 39, 68 Mali, 18 Malmgren, Harald, 9, 15n Malta, 23, 47 management, 11 ; in developing countries, 135, 136, 168; in joint ventures, 183--4, 185; macro-economic, 4, 87; modern techniques in, 113; skills, 166, 170, 175; in SE Asia, 72 Mann, J. S., 219n Mansholt, Sico, 102, 103 manufactures, manufacturing, 8, 88, 102, 120, 134, 202; Canadian, 122, 171, 177; European trade in, 123, 130, 138, 139; multilateral free trade and, 93; preference schemes for, 135, 138; UK trade in, 112, 113, 121-2, 124,125,133,141, 186T,206, 207, 219-20n market(s), 116, 120, 125, 126, 204; -capitalisation, 66; development of, 13, 213; -disruption clauses, 135, 136, 137; free access to, 120; home v. export, 116-17; -information, 166; Japanese, 124, 132; UK, 122, 131, 191 marketing, 11; boards, 99; skills, 135, 166, 169, 175 Mason, Roy, 70 Matthews, Roy, 83n, 180n Maudling, Reginald, 64, 82n, 153n Mauritius, 48, 50, 202 Maynard, Geoffrey, 9, 140-57 Mazrui, Ali, l, 2, 14n, 16-31, 96n, 190, 197n, 202 Mboya, Tom, 19-20, 30n meat, 98, 101T; beef, 108, lamb and mutton, 100; pork, 102 medical conferences, 215; education, 195; personnel, migration of, 192, 193, 194, 197, 211, 215, 218 Mediterranean Sea, Soviet presence in, 47, 49, 50, 57 Menzies, Sir Robert, 83n Meyjes, Herman. 4

228

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Middle East, 47, 48-9, 54, 65, 66, 69, 70, 146, 186T migration (immigration), 213; Australia and, 40, 41; bilateral agreements for, 195-7; Commonwealth, 190-7, 213; Kenya and, 212; of professional classes, 193-5; of skilled personnel, 211 ; unilateral policy changes, in 196; UK and, 12, 13, 26--8,46, 190-1, 209,212,213 Miki, Takeo, 72 military aid see aid Millar, T. B., 71, 83n Miller, J. D. B., viii, 2, 14n, 32-41, 73, 83n mineral products, 90 mining and smelting, 171, 186T Ministry of Overseas Development (UK), 197n, 220n missiles, missile bases, Cuban crisis over, 47; seaborne, 43; Soviet, 40; US, 39, 56 Mollet, Guy, 49 Morocco, 21, 77 most-favoured-nation clause (MFN) see GATT Murobose, Fumiro, 73, 83n NAFTA see North Atlantic free-trade association National Advisory Commission on Food and Fiber (USA), 110n nationalisation, 183 nationalism, 29, 70, 191 national opinion polls (in UK) , 60-1, 81-2n National Planning Association (USA), 75, 97n navies, naval forces, British, 42-4, 46, 51, 53, 55, 56--7, 58, 115; German, 58; South African, 51-2; Soviet expansion of, 2, 39, 40, 42-4, 46--51, 56, 57-8, 70; us, 39, 42, 43, 47, 56--7, 58; Western, 42, 50 Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939), 52, 58 Netherlands, 24, 138, 153n New Frontiersmen (Kennedy Administration), 78 New Guinea, 38, 41; see also West Irian New Zealand, 2, 23, 25, 38, 137, 211; agricultural products and, 92, 98, 100, 104, 118, 202, 208; Asian security and, 32, 55, 211; brain drain from, 193; EEC and, 135; Indonesian Confrontation and, 68; Japan and, 65, 72, 75-6, 86; migration and, 33, 190, 196; PAFTA and, 123, 124, 194; population problem of, 216; sterling and, 146, 151 ; trade, 2, 75-6, 77, 86, 94, 112, 114, 120, 124;

UK and, 64-5, 66, 75, 100, 112, 114, 151; USA and, 86 Nigeria, 135, 163, 188T Nigerian Civil War, 21, 212 Nixon, Richard, 4, 14n, 32, 77, 79, 80, 81,84n,97n Nixon Administration, 78, 79, 81 Nkrumah, Kwame, 17, 18 non-sterling area (NSA), 142, 143, 154T, 155T, 156T, 157T, 181, 187T, 188T; see also sterling area non-tariff barriers, 4, 5, 88, 91, 93, 97n, 107, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124 North America, 4, 60, 68, 72, 113, 123; UK and, 65, 95, 112, 123T, 124, 135; see also USA, Canada North Atlantic free-trade association (NAFTA), 78, 120, 123, 124, 125-6 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 42, 54, 67, 69, 80, 94 Norway, 49, 132, 153n nuclear weapons, 37, 38, 42, 43, 69 Nyerere, Julius, 20, 22, 30n oil, Middle East, 48, 49, 51; British investments in, 66, 181; see also petrloeum oil, animal and vegetable (and fats), 101T, 102, 106 oilseeds (oilnuts and kernels), 98, 100, 101T, 102, 104 Ojukwu, Col, 212 Okigbo, P. N. C., 218n Okita, Saburo, 73, 83n Opinion Research Centre (UK), 82n Organisation for African Unity (OAU), 2, 18, 53; 1964 Cairo conference of, 18, 19-20 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 5, 8, 126, 135-7, 165, 180n, 205, 216; see also Development Assistance Committee Ottawa Agreements (1932) on Dominion trade Overseas Sterling Area (OSA), 141-6, 151, 155T, 181, 187T, 188T; see also sterling area Pacific Economic Corporation Committee (1968), 72 Pacific free-trade area (PAFTA), 1968 Toyko Conference of, 72, 94, 123, 124; 1969 Honolulu Conference of, 72, 94 Pakistan, agriculture in, 106, 205; aid to, 163T, 164, 215; Australia and, 33, 40; brain-drain from, 192; China and, 53; emigration to UK from, 26; Green Revolution in, 38; independence of, 22-3; India and, 39 53;

INDEX

Kashmir dispute and, 21, 48, 53; medical personnel in, 215; national income of, 164; Rann of Kutch dispute and, 213; Soviet Union and, 48, 53; sterling and, 144, 146; UK and, 66 Pan-African Freedom Movement, 18 Pan-Africanism, 17-22, 25-6, 29-30 Pan-Europeanism, 22-5, 28 Pearson Commission (World Bank), viii, 178 Penner, Rudolph G., 180 Persian Gulf, 48, 49, 51, 56 petroleum, 171, 180n 186T; see also oil Philippines, 37, 40, 207 Pinder, John, 201-2, 219n Polaris submarines (UK), 56 Political and Economic Planning (PEP), 201 population(s), 12, 16, 23, 106, 216 Portugal, 19, 162, 204 Poseidon submarines (USA), 56 primary products, 92, 134, 141, 142 private enterprise, 10--12, 166 Private Investment Corporation for Asia, 72 Private Planning Association (Canada), 75, 97n production, 3; European, 208; farm, 102; food-grain, 106; foreign investment and, 186, 170; industrial, 102, 169; low- and high-cost, 131; UK scale of, 117 production-control programmes, 99 protection, 76, 85, 87, 89, 119, 131, 141; agricultural, 3, 6, 7, 76, 88, 91, 92, 96, 98, 102, 109n, 121, 208; French, 208; European, 4--5, 138; industrial, 91, 120; of infant industries, 63,134; Japanese, 124; UK, 6, 112, 208; US, 4, 5, 79; see also tariffs Rabaeus, Bengt, 97n race, racialism, 16, 53, 213; African, 26, 28-9; Asian, 26, 28; Australian, 33, 190; Canadian, 190; Commonwealth, 23-4, 190--1, 196; regionalism and, 25-9; UK, 26-8, 29, 190--1, 209 Ramaswami, K., viii Rann of Kutch dispute (1965), 213 rate of return, after-tax, 173, 174, 180n, 183 raw materials, 121, 133, 134, 169, 202 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, 78 Reddaway, W. B., 180n, 219n Reddaway Report, 206 regionalism, regional associations, 1-2, 30n, 77,106,117,160,182,199,209; European, 3, 17, 202, 203-4; Com-

229

monwealth, 16, 17-19, 29; race and, 25-9 remittances, 183, 185, 197n repatriation of capital, 168, 183, 184, 198, 214; of immigrants, 12, 191 Republic of Ireland see Eire research and development, 117, 160, 168, 191; technical, 197 reserve currency system, 140, 147-8; Basie facility for, 149-52; international pooling of, 148-9 Reserve Settlement Account (IMF), proposal for, 153n resource allocation, 124, 186 returns to scale, 132 Reuber, Grant, 9-10, 158-80, 181, 205 Rhodesia, 13, 19, 20, 21, 54, 181, 201, 213, 214 rice, 109n, 215 Richter, J. A., 109n Robertson, David, 97n Rockefeller Foundation, 215 Roseman, Frank, 180n Roth, William, 77-8, 83n Roth Report, 6, 77-8, 92, 110n Royal Commonwealth Society (London), 20, 22, 30n Royal Institute of International Affairs, 22, 30n, 210 Royal Navy (British), 42, 115 Royal United Services Institution (London), 212 Royer, Jean, 9, 15n, 84n rubber, 106, 202; synthetic substitute for, 202 Russia, Tsarist, 57; see also Soviet Union Rwanda, 182 Safarian, A. E., 179n, 180n savings, domestic, 160, 168 Schaetzel, Robert, 77, 83n Schlesinger, Arthur, 80, 84n Schultz, T. W., 219n Scott, Sir Robert, 69, 82n Scott, Sir Walter, 201, 218n, 219 SDRs see special drawing rights SEATO see South-East Asia Treaty Organisation Seers, Dudley, 12, 190--7, 207, 216, 218 shipping, 49, 65, 71,182,203; see also navies Simonstown agreement (S. Africa), 51 Singapore, 2, 37, 38, 40, 41, 48, 55, 65, 66, 74, 188T, 196, 210, 211, 214 Singer, Hans, 197n Sino-Soviet clash, 34, 39, 69 Six-Day War (Arab-Israeli war), 49, 219n Smith, Ian, 21

230

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

Societe Universitaire Europeenne de Recherches Financieres, 153n Socotra, 48 soil bank programme (US), 108 Somali Republic, 21, 48, 182 South Africa, 19, 23, 25,181; apartheid in, 85; arms sales to, 51-4; Commonwealth preferences and, 111; investment flow and, 188T; sterling reserves of, 146; UK exports to, 63, 112, 113 South-East Asia, Canada and, 162, 163T; Communist China and, 38, 39, 70; Japan and, 71-3; natural resources of, 68, 71; as neutral zone, 69; Soviet Union and, 49, 70; UK military and economic role in, 49, 54--5, 64--71; USA and, 35-6, 37, 39, 72, 73-4; W. Europe and, 67; see also Asia; Indo-Pacific theatre South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), 32, 73, 83n Soviet Pacific Fleet, 57 Soviet Red Army, 58 Soviet Red Fleet, 47, 58 Soviet Union, 100; Africa and, 48, 54; Asian policy of, 34, 39-40, 70; Communist China and, 34, 40, 42, 49-50, 69-70; Egypt and, 47, 48, 50; expansion of sea-power by, 2, 39, 42-4, 46-54, 56, 57-9, 70; India and, 48, 53; Middle East and, 47, 48-9, 54, 70; Pakistan and, 53; UK and, 47, 48, 52, 53, 56, 115; USA and, 37 39, 42-4, 47-9, 50, 52, 56, 57-8, 59n, 68-70; Vietnam and, 47-8, 49; West Europe and, 8, 69, 80-1, 115 soya beans, 106 Spain, 108 special drawing rights (SDRs), 147-8, 149, 151-2, 153n stabilisation policies, 171-2 Stamp, Maxwell, 8, 95, 111-28, 129, 139n, 199, 204 Stanfield, Robert, 74 Stans, Maurice, 79 Statute of Westminster, 22 steel industry, 13, 131 sterling, 111 ; balances, 145-7, 150, 152, 201; Basie facility and, 150-2, 153n; conversion into gold of, 147; devaluation of, 7, 8, 121, 143-4, 145; dollar and, 150; exchange rate of, 7; liabilities, 141, 144, 145, 146; SDR scheme and, 151-2; trading role of, 140, 149 sterling area, 18, 112, 131, 147, 206; balance of payments of, 141, 142-4, 154--7T; BIS stand-by credit to, 150; decline in economic basis of, 9, 140-7; import licensing in, 63, 131; invisible account deterioration

142-5; short-term liabilities of 149; trade complementarity within, 1412, 152n; UK guarantee to, 150-1, 153n; UK investments in, 181, 219-20n; see also Commonwealth: non-sterling area; overseas sterling area Stewart, Michael, 61-2 Stikker, Dirk U., 179n Strange, Susan, 152n Strasbourg Plan (Council of Europe: 1952), 133-5 Strauss, Franz Josef, 84n Streeten, Paul, 1-15, 8, 12, 31, 129-39, 181-9, 199, 206, 220 subsidiaries (foreign), 177, 186, 206-7; see also wholly-owned subsidiary subsidies, 184; agricultural, 7, 99, 208; consumer, 104; export, 6, 99, 108; for foreign investment, 175, 177, 180n Sudan, 182 Suez Canal, 48, 49, 50, 51, 219n Suez crisis (1956), 46, 52 sugar, 100, 102, 109n; Commonwealth agreement on, 214; exports, 202; international markets for, 207; surplus, 102 Sukarno, Achmed, 32, 33 surplus-disposal (of food), 99 Sweden, 153n Switzerland, 153n Syria, 47 take-overs, 171 Tanzania, 16, 20, 21, 163, 204, 212 tariffs, agricultural trade and, 99, 102, 103, 208; barriers, 112, 114, 123; EEC common external, 117, 126, 208; fixed, 102; free-trade treaty and, 120-2, 123; harmonisation of, 77, 78; industrial, 4--5, 78, 119; money costs and, 132; multilateral system of, 75, 114; nominal and effective, 136, 138; reduction in, 8895, 107, 130, 135, 136, 137; Strasbourg Plan and, 134; UK, 111, 112, 122, 217; see also GATT tariff preferences, 117, 131, 132, 204; for developing countries, 8-9, 64, 97n, 134; EEC, 8-9, 67, 74, 77, 202; generalised, 93, 135-9, 202, 218n; imperial, 111, 112, 132, 141; UNCTAD, 95, 96, 135, 137; unilateral, 120; UK, 107, 111 ; see also Commonwealth Preferences taxation, 102, 132, 158, 160, 167, 170, 175 tea, 202, 214 technical aid see aid technical assistance agreement, 176T

INDEX

technology, 10--11, 23, 101, 106, 113, 166, 168, 169, 170, 176 telecommunications, 13, 113,213 temperate-zone farm products see agriculture Textile Council (UK), 204 textiles, 122, 136, 204; cotton, 13, 199, 208, 218n Thailand, 33, 40 Third Force (in Europe), concept of, 44, 55 Third World, 10, 11, 14, 76, 80, 160, 166, 170, 173, 174, 182, 183 tin, 202 Tinbergen Report, 178 Tirpitz, Admiral von, 57 tobacco, 100, 101T, 108 Toure, Sekou, 17 tourism, 13, 213 trade, aid and, 10, 160--2, 214; agricultural, 5---6, 7, 8, 76, 92, 98-110, 120, 121, 124; ancillary services to, 204; Asian-Pacific collaboration in, 71-6, 86, 124; balance of, 111, 118, 121-2, 123, 124, 125, 142, 160; barriers, 112, 118; creation of, 123T, 125, 131-3; deficits, Ill, 142, 203; diversion, 123T; expansion of, 11213, 198; free v. bloc, 207-10; international system of, 7~81; liberalisation of, 4--5, 6, 7-8, 9, 75, 76, 77, 78-9, 87, 88-95, 103, 10~7, 112, 117,118,126,132, 133; manufacturing, 8, 118, 122, 124, 130, 135; measuring the importance of, 12931; multilateral, 19, 7~7, 78, 107, 117,212; non-tariff barriers on, 4, 5, 76, 88, 91, 93, 97n, 107, 119: policy objectives of, 11~17; regional associations in, 77, 117, 199, 209; restrictions, 98, 99, 103, 134; role of dollar and sterling in, 140, 149; sterling area, 140--7, 152n, 154--7T; Strasbourg Plan for, 133-5; surpluses in, 111, 130, 142; Third World, 129-39; transportation and, 202-3; see also free trade: Commonwealth; EEC; and individual countries Trade Expansion Act (1962), 77, 7980, 90, 94, 95 trade unions, 191 transport, 116, 122, 142, 182, 185, 202-3 Treaty of Rome see European Economic Community Triffin, Robert, 153n Trinidad, 190 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot, 74--5 Truman Doctrine, 49 Tunisia, 77 Turkey, 49, 77, 163T

231

"twin-pillar theory" (US), 80 Uganda, 16, 163 United Kingdom, agriculture and, 6, 7, 8, 98-109, 118, 133, 186T, 208, 215; arms sales to S. Africa by, 51--4; Australia and, 2, 37, 41, 59n, 65, 68, 74, 75, 94, 100, 112, 114, 124, 151, 190, 206; balance of payments of, 9, 104,111,125,127,142,151, 154--7T; bilateral relations with Commonwealth of, 13, 195, 196, 199, 210, 212; brain drain from, 193; Canada and, 63, 64--5, 75, 94, 100, 114, 121, 122, 171, 181, 206; Cape sea-route and, 49, 51; capital, capital flows and, 2, 141,159,206,209; Commonwealth co-operation and planning and, 198-220; Commonwealth indicative Plan and, 217-18; Commonwealth trade challenges and, 85-96; defeatism of political elite in, 209; economic interests East of Suez of, 65-71; education in, 193; European regionalism and, 3, 17, 202, 203--4; European v. Commonwealth trade with, 129-39; exports from, 63, 65, 67, 113, 121-2, 123T, 125, 141, 200, 201, 203; food prices in, 208; foreign aid by, 178n, 206, 219n, 220n; foreign debt of, 149, 207; foreign subsidiaries and, 206; free-trade treaty and, 111-27, 137, 209; Great Depression and, 85, 112; gold and dollar reserves of, 141, 145; immigration to, 12, 13, 2~7, 28, 33, 46, 190--1, 196, 212; imports to, 7, 65, 121-2, 123T, 125, 133, 141, 143, 203, 207; India and, 26, 48, 66, 200, 206, 212; Indian Ocean and, 54--7; inflation in, 207; invisible earnings of, 65-6, 201; international trade system and, 76; Japan and, 74, 76, 123--4, 132; manufactures, 113, 141, 186T, 206, 219-20n; Middle East and, 48, 54, 65, 66, 186T; military role in Asia of, 6371 ; national income of, 73; New Zealand and, 64--5, 66, 75, 100, 151; opinion polls in, vii, 60--1, 81-2n; overseas investments of, 65-6, 67, 111,127,146,171, 180n, 181, 186T, 206; Pan-Europeanism of, 2, 17, 22, 24--5, 26, 29, 30, 55, 56, 114--16; racialism in, 2~8, 29, 190--1; Rhodesia and, 13, 21,201,213; seapower and, 42--4, 46, 51, 53, 55, 5~7, 58; Soviet Union and, 47, 48, 52, 53, 56, 115; sterling area and, 9, 140--7, 150--2, 154--7T; Strasbourg Plan and, 134--5; Suez crisis and, 48, 52; tariffs, 111, 112, 136, 217; trade

232

COMMONWEALTH POLICY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

policy contradictions of, 60--5; trade preferences and, 75, 85, 87, 111, 112, 113-14, 201, 202; USA and, 26, 42, 43, 44, 53, 55-6, 60--1, 62, 63, 65, 111, 114, 121-2, 207; Western Europe and, 62, 64, 67, 76, 111-12, 113, 114-16, 117-19, 129-39 passim, 143, 152n, 202, 203-4; see also Commonwealth; EEC United Nations, 19, 20--2 24 33 51 56, 178, 210 ' ' ' ' United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 86, 93, 95-6, 210, 213, 214· aid to developing countries and, 1'59, 179n; GAIT and, 216--17; generalised preference scheme proposed by, 95, 96; 1st (Geneva) conference of (1964), 95, 97n, 135; 2nd (Delhi) conference of (1968) 96 97n 135 137 202 ' ' ' ' United States of America, 26, 48-9, 136, 138, 167, 191, 193; agriculture and, 6, 100, 101, 103-4 105 107-8 109n, 215; aid from,' 10,' 105-6'. 205---6, 215, 219n; Australia and 32 35-7, 38, 39, 56, 73-4, 80, 86,' 94: 124; balance of payments of, 79, 108, 149-50; Basie facility and 14950, 152, 153n; Canada and 75 78 80, 86, 94, 108, 121, 126, 171, '205; Commonwealth preferences and 88; foreign investments by 171' 188T, 205; free-world security and' 67, 80; inflation in, 149, 207· mili~ tary expenditure of, 79; sea~power an~, 42-4, 47, 56-7, 58; Soviet Umon and, 37, 39, 40 42-4 47-9 50,. 52, 56, 57-8, 59n, '68-70; trad~ pohcy of, 3, 4-6, 7-8, 62-3, 72, 75, 94, 119-27 passim, 137; UK and, 26, 42, 43, 44, 53, 55-6, 60, 62, 63, 65, 111, 114, 121-2, 207; Vietnam and, 36, 37, 39? 44, 47, 74, 80, 149; West Europe (mcluding EEC) and 3, 8, 15, 54, 69, 78, 79, 80--1 115' 123 ' ' United States-Canadian automotive agreement, 114 United St~tes Congress, 4, 77, 80, 81, 97n; Jomt Economic Committee of 14n, 77 ' United States Department of Agriculture, 108 US Public Law 480, 105, 106, 219n Upper Volta, 182 Usher, Dan, 179n, 180n

Vietnam War, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 74, 80, 149

variable levy system, 102, 103 V~mon, Raymond, 175-6, 179n, 180n Vietnam, North, 48, 49, 202· South 34, 37, 47, 202 ' '

Yaounde Convention (EEC), 9, 77 Yemen, 48

wages (in underdeveloped countries) 132, 136 ' Wall, David, 9, 15n, 97n, 139n Watkinson, Viscount 82n Weisband, Edward, i5n Western deterrent, 42, 50, 53, 56 Western E:urope, 2, 49, 67, 72; agriculture m, 88, 109, 208; Australia and, 2, 135; free-trade treaty option and, 111-19 passim isolationism in 60, 64; naval arms to S. Afri~ from, 53; protectionism in 4 88 138; regionalism in, 3, 17, 22-5'. 202, 203, ~04-5; _s~curity of, 79; sovereign mequahties in 24-5 · Soviet Union and 8 69 80--1 115: Third World trade ~~ss to' 129__'. 39, 209; unification of, 80--1'; UK and, 54, 55, 62, 64, 67, 74, 76, 95, 111-12, 113, 114-16, 117-19 12939 passim, 143, 152, 201, 202, 203, 204; USA and, 47, 54, 80--1 · see also EEC; EFTA ' West Germany see Federal Republic of Germany West Indies, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29; see also Caribbean area West. Irian, 33, 41; see also New Gumea wheat, 33, 98, 100, 101, 105, 205 208 215, 219n ' ' Wh\te Au_stralia policy, 33 White, Srr Eric Wyndham 90 96n 119 ' ' ' Wholly-owned subsidiary (WOS), 175, 176T; see also subsidiaries Wilhelm II, Kaiser 57 Wilmshurst, J. B. 219n Wilson, Harold,' 21, 208; "Lahore speech" of, 211 Wilson government see Labour government Wonnacott, Paul and Ronald J., 128n wood and products, 138, 201 wool, 98, 100, 101T World Bank, International Commission on Development (Pearson Commission), viii, 178, 212 World Health Organisation (WHO) 215 ' World War I, 53, 57, 58 World War II, 4, 43, 47, 53 58 63 114, 132, 141, 167, 169, 201' ' '

Zambia, 54, 204