The Rise and Fall of the British Empire

by Lawrence, James

  Inevitably Africans fought back. Black nationalist movements had been banned and their leaders were either under arrest or in exile. The armed struggle began slowly after UDI and only began to gather momentum by 1972. The pattern of the war was familiar: raids and assassinations by guerrillas, called the ‘boys in the bush’, designed to wear down the enemy’s will. There were two main partisan armies: Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). The guerrillas knew their trade, they were armed with modern Soviet weaponry, including rockets, and were trained in extensive base camps in Zambia and, from 1975 in Mocambique.

  The anti-guerrilla war was a corrosive, inconclusive struggle which ate up Rhodesia’s manpower and treasure. By 1979, 47 per cent of Rhodesia’s revenues were consumed by the war effort, and the government was being forced to mobilise more and more black men to fill the gaps in its army. At the same time, its adversaries seemed to be getting stronger; in September 1978 the guerrillas used a Sam 7 heat-seeking missile to shoot down a Viscount airliner on an internal flight, and another was similarly destroyed in February 1979. Rhodesians began to feel that victory was beyond their grasp and voted with their feet. Between 1977 and 1980, 48,000 whites, a fifth of the European community emigrated.

  The truth was, as it had been in Kenya and the Portuguese colonies, that the settlers could not sustain their position without the military power of the mother country. Moreover, by the late-1970s the technical gap between the equipment of the Rhodesian forces and their opponents was narrowing. The destruction of the two airliners had been dramatic proof of this. A similar lesson would be learned more painfully by the Soviet Union during the early 1980s, when it embarked on an imperial war of coercion in that former graveyard of British armies, Afghanistan.

  By the beginning of 1978, Smith and the Rhodesia Front had to choose between fighting on and possibly losing a war of attrition, or a salvage operation which would involve considerable concessions to the blacks. They decided on the latter and entered into an alliance with three relatively moderate African parties, Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s United African National Council, Ndabaningi Sithole’s African National Council, and Chief Chirau’s Zimbabwe United People’s Organisation. The upshot was the ‘internal settlement’, which created a constitution that increased black representation. In April 1979, Bishop Muzorewa became prime minister of the cumbersomely-named Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. A month later, the Conservatives under Mrs Margaret Thatcher won a general election, raising hopes in Rhodesia that a settlement with Britain was imminent.

  The Rhodesian imbroglio was one of many intractable problems bequeathed Mrs Thatcher by her predecessors. She was determined to act decisively and swiftly and, at the same time, demonstrate how fumbling past governments had been. At the Lusaka Commonwealth conference in the summer she insisted that Britain alone would unravel the Rhodesian knot. The answer lay in bringing the country back under a British government, which would supervise an election in which all political parties, including those of Mugabe and Nkomo (who had boycotted the April poll) would compete. The Commonwealth ministers, who had no alternatives, acquiesced. Zimbabwe–Rhodesia, war-weary and still without the international recognition it craved, also agreed.

  Representatives of all factions, including Ian Smith (who had been allowed immunity from a prosecution for treason), assembled in London in the autumn. The Lancaster Gate conference chaired by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, finally lanced the Rhodesian ulcer. The country passed back to Britain’s jurisdiction and its new governor, Lord Soames, with a small contingent of troops and advisers, oversaw the surrender and disarming of the guerrillas and a general election. It was won by Mugabe who became prime minister in a coalition government in which his Zimbabwe African National Union shared power with Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union. Mr Smith held one of the twenty seats reserved for whites in the new Zimbabwe assembly. One of its first acts was to pull down a statue of Cecil Rhodes.

  7

  Unfinished Business

  While Zimbabweans were plucking down Rhodes from his plinth, the British were trying to forget about him and the rest of their imperial past. All that now remained of it were a few scarlet pinpricks on the globe: Gibraltar, Ascension, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha, the Falklands and their scattered, snowbound dependencies, Pitcairn Island (home to the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian brides), Hong Kong, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Montserrat. Few people knew where they were, let alone how and why they had been first obtained. They were an imperial legacy and their inhabitants’ welfare was and is Britain’s responsibility.

  The possession of these outposts was largely irrelevant to a nation which entered the 1980s in search of a new, post-imperial identity. It proved hard to find. For the past fourteen years Britain has been a wavering and lukewarm European power, forever wary of its partners’ motives, and, at the same time, a zealous client of America.

  The Commonwealth remained and today has forty-nine members, representing a quarter of the world’s population. Its size is a reflection of the empire at its height and a reminder of Britain’s impact on the world. The history of North America, most of Africa, India, the Middle and Far East has been shaped by Britain and in many of these regions English is still the language of the law, commerce, government and education. And yet, inexplicably, Britain’s part in the transformation of the world is gradually being excluded from the history syllabuses of its schools. A generation will grow up whose knowledge of the empire, how it grew, and what it did for its subjects and for Britain will be drawn from fiction and films.

  As a political force in the world, the Commonwealth’s achievements have been severely limited. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s its regular heads of government meetings have been stormy with Britain’s prime ministers having to endure Pecksniffian harangues about its handling of the Rhodesian crisis, and, more recently, its alleged half-heartedness in backing economic sanctions against South Africa. Mrs Thatcher found these occasions bothersome and did not always hide her feelings. Once, during the 1985 Nassau conference, she rounded on a Ugandan delegate after he had lectured her on racial discrimination, and reminded him of his country’s shameful expulsion of its Asian population. Afro-Asian states are always touchy whenever attention is drawn to their racism. Moreover, sermons on human rights from leaders of those Commonwealth states which lock up dissidents or smother political debate sounded like humbug.

  By contrast, the Commonwealth functions more smoothly and effectively at the middle and lower levels. Exchanges of ideas and cooperation in such practical areas as education, medicine, agriculture and technology provide an invaluable bridge between its rich and poor members. The sundry good works sponsored by its agencies provide vital assistance for developing nations and, in a way, are a fulfilment of the old ideals of benevolent imperialism. One feels that Joseph Chamberlain would have warmly approved of Canadian vets working to improve Kenyan cattle stocks or young men and women from Britain teaching English in Indian schools. He, and all those of similar mind, would have enjoyed seeing African, Asian and Chinese names among the lists of graduates from British universities and those attaining British professional qualifications in law and accountancy. What Edmund Burke once called the ‘small platoons’ of individuals with common interests and working together are strong and active throughout the Commonwealth. What they are achieving explains why two former Portuguese colonies, Angola and Moçambique, have recently applied to join it.

  Royal tours of Commonwealth countries continue. These progresses generate much goodwill and provide plenty of excitement and fun for all involved, as well as occasional entertaining ruckuses over protocol. Queen Elizabeth II is known to have a strong affection for the Commonwealth and she undertakes her duties towards its members with charm and dignity. Her and her family’s peregrinations have a deeper significance: they provide a sense of historic continuity for the former subjects of the empire and th
eir descendants. They may, at times, regret their imperial past, but feel unable to turn their back on it and their former mentor. The Queen represents that shared past, and that she can return to her father’s colonies as a welcomed and fêted guest may say something about the nature of imperial rule and how it was ended.

  The Conservative governments which have ruled Britain since 1979 have not been noted for their strong sense of history. Indeed, Mrs Thatcher and those ideologically close to her have an instinctive dislike of arguments which appeal to past traditions, particularly of their own party. There is no room in the universal free market for sentimentality about days gone by, or public institutions whose survival has, in part, depended on a reverence for the ways things have always been done. Three of the latter, the Commonwealth Office, the British Council and the BBC World Service have suffered cuts in their budgets. These lacerations have been made in the name of economy and despite arguments that each of these public services has helped to win hearts, minds and friends throughout the world. Britain’s international reputation as a moral and cultural force cannot be easily measured in terms of profit and loss.

  The prevailing philosophy among Mrs Thatcher’s and John Major’s supporters has been that the empire, the Commonwealth and all that went with them in the way of obligations belong to the past. And yet unlooked for events in the Falkland Islands in 1982 and the approaching termination of the ninety-nine-year lease of Hong Kong have made it impossible for either prime minister to escape from history. The Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands on 1–2 April 1982 was a bolt from the blue. Critics of the war which followed have claimed that the withdrawal of a British warship from the South Atlantic encouraged the Argentinian junta, and that intelligence assessments of its intentions were hopelessly mistaken. Be that as it may, there is also evidence to suggest that the clique of senior officers who ran the Argentine acted precipitately, and that the assault on the islands was mounted at less than twenty-four hours’ notice.

  Britain reacted with a mixture of astonishment and fury. For Mrs Thatcher the issue was stark and one of principle:

  The Falkland Islands and their dependencies must remain British territory. No aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is the Government’s objective to see that the Islands are freed from occupation and returned to British administration at the earliest moment … The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom are an island race … they are few in number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. This way of life is British: their allegiance is to the crown.

  The Falklands, although a colony, were an extension of Britain. Michael Foot, the Labour leader, reminded the Commons that the Argentinian junta was a collection of military thugs whose hands were stained with the blood of their countrymen. The Falkland Islanders should be delivered from their tyranny for they had a right to live in association with Britain and ‘we have a moral duty, and a political duty, and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained.’ The mood of the Commons was angry and in favour of war; Julian Amery spoke for many on both sides when he referred to ‘a stain on Britain’s honour’.

  So Britain embarked on its last imperial war to redeem its honour and recapture what had always been seen as one of the least of its colonies. It was ironic that many of the warships which steamed to the South Atlantic had been earmarked for the scrapyard by defence cuts proposed the year before by the Defence Secretary, John Nott. Alternately petulant and lugubrious, Nott appeared regularly on television with one of his civil servants, chosen it seemed for his funereal voice, to explain the daily course of the war. At the same time, a squad of military experts offered their interpretations of war as well as unsolicited advice. These armchair strategists were a substitute for first-hand footage of the fighting, which could not be transmitted directly.

  The outcome of the war depended upon the cooperation of the United States which was confronted with a war between a major and a minor Cold War ally. President Reagan plumped for Britain, despite pleas that such a choice would jeopardise relations with other South American states. During the campaign, United States weaponry and intelligence was placed at Britain’s disposal.

  Once it was underway, American newscasters called the war ‘the Empire strikes back’. Inside Britain, there was a strong, and at times unpleasantly strident feeling that a country that had for so long patiently endured knocks throughout the world was at last hitting back. A spirit of jingoism of Boer War vintage pervaded the popular press and reached its highest peak with the Sun headline ‘Gotcha’, which appeared over a photograph of the waterlogged Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano. The sinking of this formidable warship was one of the most controversial episodes in the war. Orders to intercept and destroy it had been given after signals intelligence revealed that it was about to engage the British task force.

  Those who were, in principle, opposed to the war claimed that the torpedoes which holed the Belgrano ended all chances of a negotiated peace, although there was very little evidence to suggest that the Argentinian junta was on the verge of a volte face. What upset the left more than the fate of the Belgrano was the way in which the war revealed the depth and intensity of residual, aggressive John-Bullish patriotism. It seemed strongest among sections of the working class; a few days after the invasion of the Falkland Islands, a body of skinheads gathered outside a recruiting office in the Midlands, demanded rifles, and were angry when told that they would need to be trained. Old, belligerent, imperial emotions had not been dispelled by the disappearance of empire, and they surfaced again during the 1991 war against Iraq. It might also be said that they are frequently heard, seen and felt whenever English soccer teams play abroad. A sizeable body of young working-class men now regard an away match in Europe as a chance to create mayhem, and they seem unstoppable. There is much official hand-wringing, in which Dr Johnson’s observation about what is called insolence in the masses in time of peace being called courage in time of war, is conveniently forgotten. Whatever else it may have done to the national character, the loss of empire and world power has not made the British less aggressive.

  The reconquest of the Falklands at the end of May was a triumph for the stamina and courage of Britain’s fighting men, and a tribute to the resolution of Mrs Thatcher. It also gave a fresh lustre to national pride which had become tarnished after years of retreat from empire, economic debility and internal industrial strife. Overnight, Britain had been transformed from a passive nation, an international has-been to which things happened, into a power to be reckoned with. What was, in effect, Britain’s last imperial war, fought in unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances, reversed a string of humiliations going back to Suez. It also enhanced the reputation of Mrs Thatcher, now the ‘Iron Lady’, and helped her win a second term of office in 1983.

  Disengagement from Hong Kong has occasioned no flag-waving. Most of the mainland colony had been leased from China in 1898 and Hong Kong island had been acquired as a result of the 1839–42 Opium War. The colony’s existence since 1949 has depended on the tolerance of the People’s Republic of China which, as heir-general of the Manchus, acquired the right to reoccupy what its predecessor had granted away. For these reasons, successive British governments had not treated Hong Kong like other parts of the empire and its people were not prepared for self-government in the 1950s and 1960s. The official line with the Hong Kong Chinese was Louis Phillippe’s dictum ‘enrichissez-vous’, and the colony prospered, becoming, by the 1980s, one of the leading commercial and banking centres of the Far East. As the rest of China began to share in the Pacific boom and, tentatively, to embrace capitalism, it appeared that when the time came for it to resume control over Hong Kong, it would treat it gently as a valuable asset.

  This may have been wishful thinking, designed to assuage the fears of the people of Hong Kong and make the task of the British government easier. From 1984 onwards it had
been willing to allow limited representative government in Hong Kong, and had pledged that democratic institutions would survive the transfer of power. The terms of this had been agreed by 1989, but the mass shootings of pro-democracy dissidents in Tiananmen Square, Peking were a brutal reminder that China was an authoritarian state. The British government faced a quandary: on one hand it knew that China possessed a force majeure which it could not match, and, on the other, it was under pressure from Hong Kong to speed up the process of democratisation. But to follow this course would provoke China and so the future of Hong Kong became a struggle between expediency and principle.

  The new governor, a former Conservative minister, Chris Patten, appointed in 1992, adopted a traditional paternalist line, insisting that, ‘Our responsibilities to Hong Kong’s citizens come first.’ He pressed ahead with the introduction of reforms for elections in 1994 in the teeth of opposition from China, which, in December 1993, withdrew from discussions of the issue. The solution is presently far from clear, nor can it be certain that China’s ageing ruling élite will be in place for much longer.

  The issue of Hong Kong’s future is about more than the last act of imperial disengagement. Governor Patten and his supporters have put forward classic imperial arguments involving a duty towards Britain’s subjects. Their adversaries claim that such moral responsibilities are a luxury which modern Britain cannot afford. Career diplomats, who have spent their lives dealing with China, believe that muted sycophancy is the best approach to Peking, which, if offended, might harm British trade or worse.

  In the past fourteen years, variations on the view that commercial considerations are always paramount have carried great weight within Thatcherite circles in the Conservative party. While making much of herself as a global champion of democracy, Mrs Thatcher has not shrunk from currying favour with autocrats, most notably King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the sheiks of the Persian Gulf, all of whom are customers for British-made weaponry. What might be called the policy of guns before principles led her government to grovel to the Saudis in 1982 after they made a fuss about a television film, Death of a Princess. By contrast, Mrs Thatcher dealt sharply with a loyal ally, the gallant and humane King Hussain of Jordan, when he chose to tread cautiously after his powerful neighbour, Iraq, invaded Kuwait in 1990. The moral imperative which lay behind the Falklands War did not extend into other areas of foreign policy.