The Labor government of England, coming to power in a world of naked international rivalry, has had to face the difficult and bitter problem of being at once a Socialist government and the administrator of an empire. On that government’s success in solving this apparent contradiction, depends not only the economic future of Britain herself, but also to a large extent the emergence of an integrated Western European system. In this article, George Lichtheim, who wrote “England: The Citizen on Trial” in the January COMMENTARY, analyzes British plans for the development of a “third empire” in Africa, in terms of Britain’s socialist program and the overall problems of international rivalry.
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What should be the place of the British colonial empire in a planned socialist economy? This question—how to unite two such dissonant terms as “empire” and “socialism”—has naturally intrigued British political observers and theorists. Even before the formation of the five-power nucleus in Western Europe (the Brussels Pact) it had been projected into the arena of current events by Mr. Bevin’s speech of January 22, 1948, in which, after advocating a Western European Union, he dealt in straightforward terms with the new role that was to be played by tropical Africa and Malaya.
“We turn our eyes,” said the Foreign Secretary, “to Africa, where great responsibilities are shared by us with South Africa, France, Belgium, and Portugal, and equally to all overseas territories, especially of Southeast Asia, with which the Dutch are closely concerned. The organization of Western Europe must be economically supported. That involves the closest possible cooperation with the Commonwealth and with overseas territories, not only British, but French, Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese.”
Neither the Conservatives nor the Socialist left-wing (with the inevitable exception of the fellow-travelers) found much to criticize in this suggestion, though some Conservatives disliked the idea of “planning an empire” and some Socialists were not too happy at being associated with France and Holland, currently in armed conflict with their colonial subjects. The little band of free-trade Liberals could hardly support so blatant an argument in favor of economic regionalism, but their criticism carries little weight in present-day Britain. As an attempt to educate the Labor party in its new imperial responsibilities—and to claim for it some credit for maintaining Britain’s traditional great power role—the speech was undoubtedly a success.
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The idea behind the speech is an old one, and it was not the first time that Mr. Bevin had tried to popularize it. As far back as 1930 he surprised his trade-union colleagues by making a speech (recently circulated to all members of the Foreign Office staff as a reminder of their chief’s prescience) demanding a “world federation” for the purpose of “creating an easy access to the raw materials of this planet.” On closer inspection, the “world federation” turned out to be a characteristically Bevinian rhetorical device that obscured a quite specific aim.
This was made plain when, after a brief but pregnant reference to the “imperial” possessions of America and Russia (“Empires are not limited to the British Empire”), he sketched the role that a remodeled British Empire, no longer anarchically exploited by the City of London but scien tifically planned and organized, would play within the “world federation”: “When we find that one country has oil, another nation cotton, and another nation rubber, it is not a case of armies or navies settling the business. But we shall say to the others: Here are the resources at our disposal—resources which will be open to you, there being no restriction of raw materials for your needs. But in return there must be no restriction of supplies imposed on us, so that we too may have the raw materials that we need, without the fighting and financial struggle that has gone on hitherto.”
Despite the crude language and the vagueness of thought—why precisely should barter on an inter-continental scale lead to anything but inter-continental rivalry?—this Grossraum idea was imaginative. So much so that the Conservative governments of the 1930’s would have none of it. In the economic circumstances of the period, with the balance of trade moving in Britain’s favor and the home market booming despite mass unemployment, it was more profitable to invest capital in consumer industries or in housing than to develop the backward parts of the empire. Hence the “National Government,” under Neville Chamberlain and Sir John Simon—largely composed of, or influenced by, right-wing Liberals with banking connections and a healthy distrust of “planning”—refused to look at it, though a handful of Conservatives like L. S. Amery and Lord Beaverbrook anxiously pressed for an active imperial policy. Neither were the Socialists enthusiastic about an idea which seemed to violate all their traditional libertarian notions.
It was the chronic food shortage brought on by the war, and the threat of a permanent dollar famine, which converted both parties to the principle of stimulating the development of the colonies, at the expense, if need be, of the British home market. The British working-class housewife, a close judge of such matters, can see the value of the colonies if the subject is discussed in terms of more fats from ground-nuts to be grown on vast mechanized farms in East Africa. This widely publicized scheme, however, is only part of a much broader plan for providing the British Empire with a new lease on life and a new economic basis—in Africa.
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The term “third empire,” which is often employed to denote the British Empire of the post-1945 era, can have two meanings. Chronologically, the African empire is “third” in succession to the colonial empire in the New World lost in the 18th century by the Tories, and to the 19th-century Indian empire abandoned in our own day by the Labor government. But it is “third” also when considered against the background of the “Commonwealth” (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) of self-governing “Dominions” (in actual fact independent nations), and the Moslem protectorates in the Middle East which are not formally part of the British Empire at all. It is “third” in this sense because it is last in significance, and it is last because it is the poorest and least developed.
There is a vague notion current that Africa is phenomenally rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. Africa has for thousands of years suffered from the effects of soil erosion, human malnutrition, and the tse-tse fly; it has the world’s worst climate (literally) and its labor force is the least productive on the planet. Its potential riches in raw materials are considerable, but with the exception of the South African gold mines they are almost totally undeveloped. There is copper and chrome in Rhodesia, and the coal deposits in the same region are said to contain limitless quantities of coal of very high thermal power. There is also plenty of water power in East Africa which can form the base of hydroelectric developments, but almost nothing has been done to get them started. Finally, the whole area is short of labor and almost totally devoid of native technicians. Not only capital but skilled labor has to be imported from Europe—at a price. Political fragmentation, resulting from the colonial scramble of the late 19th century, completes the picture.
Still, Africa south of the Sahara is mainly British-controlled. The exceptions are the Belgian, French, and Portuguese possessions. Given some semblance of European union, the problem of political harmony should not be too formidable, though it will take time before the agents of the powers on the spot learn that their job is no longer to intrigue against each other. Africa is the obvious economic complement of Western Europe—the Germans realized this in the 1930’s and built their plans upon it—and the hinterland of any future war in which Western Europe may be involved: the French General Staff is reported to be working on the assumption that French North Africa is to be the main base of the French Army in any future conflict. Now, since European union means primarily Anglo-French union, and since Britain and France are the paramount powers in Africa, politics and economics dovetail very neatly—or would, if Britain’s economic problem were not of a rather peculiar sort. That problem can be summed up in one word: capital shortage. And capital is what Africa needs most.
The problem is not insoluble, provided Britain is temporarily relieved of the necessity of exporting almost everything not absolutely needed at home in order to pay for American imports. In other words—without Marshall Plan aid, no African development. British industry, frantically trying to re-equip itself, is starved for capital, and the job of industrializing the African continent is far beyond its resources. Private capital is more likely to flow into areas which have already been developed (there was a considerable outflow of “funk money” last year, largely to South Africa, which does not need more capital) and where returns are quick and high. But Britain needs the additional food and raw materials that Africa can undoubtedly produce, and the surplus investments that can be made in these years of crisis must be made where they do the most good. This is why government has been compelled to step in. Tropical Africa for many years cannot yield high profits, and only the taxpayer can foot the bill.
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Whether this process is described as socialism or as state capitalism is a matter of political taste. Socialists may draw comfort from the fact that in this field at any rate private enterprise has been found unequal to the task (partly because of two world wars, which have eaten into Britain’s wealth). Conservatives have already noted that in this age of super-empires, regional blocs, and economic planning, the old policy of letting the colonies pay for their industralization out of local tax resources no longer provides an answer. British colonial policy until quite recently was in fact Victorian in two ways: it assumed that it was wasteful (if not downright immoral) for the home government to advance money to the colonies; and it envisaged the latter’s eventual independence after passing through a period of uncontrolled development, financed by private investors—by no means all of them British. On all these points a complete change of view has taken place.
The new policy—inaugurated during the war by the Conservatives, but now carried forward with greater energy by Labor—stresses three factors: intensive capital investment at the British taxpayer’s expense, in a quantity far in excess of anything the colonies could provide; the rapid expansion of colonial food and raw materials production; and the integration of the colonies—i.e. the tropical dependencies of Britain, chiefly in Africa—into the economic system of the Empire and/or the projected European Union.
With the Conservatives, emphasis of course is on the empire, with the Socialists it is on the European Union. From the point of view of the colonies it makes no great difference. What matters is that they are not expected to evolve into independent nation states trading freely with the rest of the world: the “third empire,” like the first, has a mercantilist complexion. It is to be a “planned” (and closed) adjunct to the mother country. Indeed, non-interference on the part of the United States is an integral part of the scheme, since, given free choice, the colonies may seek access to the American capital market. The point is succinctly made in a recent Colonial Office publication:
Although the United States has not yet fully developed the technique of foreign investment which the United Kingdom has practised so successfully for so long, it is quite possible that individuals or institutions in the United States might be prepared to put up a good deal of capital for colonial development. But that capital would not be as welcome to the Colonial Empire as capital from British sources, since the return upon it would have to made in US dollars, and if the return was at all large the result might be that the colonial territories as a whole would be added to the already long list of countries which are in dollar deficit.
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On the financial side, at least, the new policy has got off to an impressive start. Under the Overseas Resources Development Bill of 1947, a Colonial Development Corporation and an Overseas Food Corporation are set up and receive the authority to raise loans aggregating 65 million pounds. (At the official rate, one pound equals approximately four dollars.) This compares favorably with the one million allotted to colonial development in 1929, when a timid start was made, or even with the annual outlay of five million for a period of ten years envisaged in 1940.
The practical results so far are less impressive: at least one enterprise—groundnut cultivation in East Africa—is badly behind schedule and promises to be a good deal more expensive than was thought. This particular scheme is under the Food Ministry, not the Colonial Office. The paternalism of the latter had hitherto cushioned the Africans against the more violent impact of the Industrial Revolution, and the natives are already giving signs of distrusting the Food Ministry’s intentions. Their suspicions have not been allayed by some candid talk from the Minister, Mr. John Strachey, the wellknown author of The Coming Struggle for Power and other Marxist best-sellers of the 1930’s. According to Mr. Strachey—no longer the rising hope of the Communist Party but a Realpolitiker of no mean standing—“our national position is too grave to warrant any indulgence in our particular opinions on the methods of overseas development. . . . By one means or another, by hook or by crook, the development of primary production of all sorts in the colonial areas and dependent parts of the Commonwealth . . . is . . . a life and death matter for the economy of this country.”
The Daily Worker (February 9, 1948) commented unfavorably on the speech: “At least that strips away the hypocritical pretence that such development is being carried out in the interests of the colonial people.” The comment is demagogic nonsense, for the colonies can only benefit from intensive capital investment, whatever the purpose behind it. But Mr. Strachey has undoubtedly handed the Communists, and the African, nationalists, a talking-point. (This writer has been present at Fabian Colonial Bureau meetings in London at which African students voiced violent indignation.)
Two aspects of the plan deserve special notice: the actual development schemes, though in part government financed, are to be undertaken by private enterprise (even the East African ground-nuts scheme has been handed over to the United Africa Company); and secondly, there are no African representatives on the boards of the two giant state-supervised corporations already mentioned. African nationalist sentiment is likely to crystallize around these aspects of the plan.
But for the moment opposition is weak. There is as yet hardly anything that could be called an African bourgeoisie. In East Africa, its place is largely taken by Indians and Syrians (another African grievance). In the West, where development is slower anyhow because of the climate, there are no white settlers on the land to exacerbate the African sense of oppression. Thus, despite a certain amount of official agitation over a supposed Communist “plot” on the Gold Coast—the recent scene of bloody riots—the political stage is still almost empty. The present unrest in West Africa stems from the return of demobilized soldiers who for the first time in their lives were given enough to eat while in the army, and are now discontented with their lot.
Africa is still a land of abysmal poverty (and soil erosion). Food production, both for its inhabitants and for export, is a prime necessity, and whoever undertakes it can count on solid local support, at any rate from moderate elements. The African laborer can only be the gainer, especially if the color bar is not made an excuse for barring him from all but the least skilled jobs. Thus the new policy must be rated “progressive.” There is nothing specifically Socialist about it, however, and it is certain that any Conservative government in Britain will continue it.
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It may be useful to cast a glance at another aspect of the new policy of concentrating all of Britain’s available resources on Africa. Ever since the end of World War II, an influential section of official opinion has argued in favor of shifting the Empire’s strategic center of gravity from the Mediterranean to the Dark Continent. Talk of a “Greater Somaliland” controlled by Britain, the tendency to block Abyssinian claims to Eritrea (British spokesmen are very vocal on the subject of Abyssinian misrule when this claim is brought up), the building up of army supply depots in Kenya, the concentration of the former Palestine garrison in Libya, and the tightening of British control over the Sudan, are all pointers in the same direction. Mr. Bevin is fond of talking about a “power line” running across the Middle East to Malaya and Australia, but in actual fact it is the north-south direction that is beginning to fascinate the military planners. In the event of war, the Mediterranean is likely to be temporarily “walled up,” as General Eisenhower recently put it; but Britain can still hold Africa, and keep the route to the Far East open by using Cape Town as the main point on the line.
By contrast, the Middle East seems both politically and militarily less safe, and in any case it is now largely an American responsibility. It is true that the British Empire, in regard to influence, is becoming coextensive with Islam; so much so that one is tempted to describe it as an Anglo-Moslem Empire, or, in Toynbeean terms, as the Islamic Society with the Union Jack superimposed upon the Koran. But territorially the “third empire” is African or it is nothing. It is only in Africa that Britain still has full control, for her Far Eastern possessions are strategically dependent on American domination of Japan and American influence in China. In the Indian Ocean area and the Middle East, Britain is a great power; in Africa south of the Sahara, she is the great power. And Africa is almost the only part of the world where Britain is still economically a dominant force.
But the African empire cannot support itself without an industrial center capable of standing on its feet in the event that Britain is cut off from her overseas possessions. That is why Southern Rhodesia is becoming so important to Britain; more important in some ways than the Union of South Africa, for the Union, with its Boer majority and its strident nationalism—much of it fascist in pattern and all of it virulently anti-British—is politically unstable and of very doubtful loyalty. Southern Rhodesia is one hundred percent British, and is even beginning to attract Britons from South Africa who are getting tired of Afrikaner domination and fearful of what may happen now that Smuts has gone. Little noticed by the world, Southern Rhodesia has doubled its European population since 1930, reaching one hundred thousand this year. It also has some two million Africans who are mostly excluded from political life, as well as from the better paid jobs. . . .
Southern Rhodesia is not under the Colonial Office, and neither is it going the way of South Africa. Its goal is Dominion status; its white ruling minority is profoundly loyal to Britain and, it may be added, a good deal more liberal in its general politics and its attitude to the color problem than the white ruling class in South Africa. Industrially, it is well on the way to becoming a major producer of some important raw materials. Together with its sister territory of Northern Rhodesia it is the sterling area’s biggest producer of such dollar-earning goods as chrome and copper, and its coal mines at Wankie are capable of turning out more than double their present output of two million tons annually. Apart from the dollar income these products give to the territory, they possess a crucial importance in the general scheme of post-war military strategy. The Empire now pivots on Africa, and Africa may soon pivot on Southern Rhodesia.
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Such is the outline of the “third empire.” As a Grossraum conception it does not lack a certain grandeur even in our age of super-states. Moreover, unlike the German conception of empire, it does not violate any of the principles on which Western civilization is based. The “planned” development of Africa makes sense economically and need not devastate African society. But the economic progress of Western Europe is a prerequisite for progress in Africa. Two world wars have destroyed Europe’s capital reserves and simultaneously slowed up Africa’s development. Before Africa can be dragged out of its mire, Europe must be unified.
Ambitious plans, in short, are not lacking. The weakness—at least from the Socialist point of view—is on the political side. The color problem has not been faced; or, where it has, as in Kenya, the Labor government has jettisoned its reform program in the face of determined opposition from the European settlers who have appropriated the bulk of cultivable land in the so-called “white highlands” (from which Africans are excluded). Nor has the government been able to broaden the restrictive franchise in Southern Rhodesia, where everything tends in the direction of native segregation.
Labor, it is becoming clear, either has no distinctive colonial policy or does not care to apply it if it means trouble with the settlers. (Compare this with the outcry over Palestine, where the fellaheen have not been displaced.) Southern Rhodesia may be more liberal than South Africa—it could scarcely be less so—but in the long run it is not likely to present a very different picture. By no stretch of the political vocabulary can the African empire in its present form be made to square with Socialist views on the development of backward areas. These demand at least the abrogation of the color bar in industry and the reform of native agriculture rather than the creation of a class of European land owners farming their lands with hired African labor. On the West Coast, fortunately, no such class has come into existence; there are many British colonial administrators who would feel easier in their minds if the problem were everywhere as simple.
At bottom it is a question of training the Africans to accept modern work discipline. European settlement on the land, and exclusively European management in industry, represents one solution of the problem—the non-Socialist one. In the light of the growing importance of Africa in the British scheme of things, the creation of a new privileged order in that continent cannot fail to have repercussions at home. There are some Socialists who feel secretly relieved at the prospect of providing outdoor relief for a section of the middle class—including many representatives of the war-time fighting services—who might otherwise take to politics and “become a nuisance” at home. But this is to take the easy way out. If the Labor party wants to be taken seriously, it must put forward a distinctively Socialist conception of the Empire. None exists so far. It is only on school-book maps that the Empire appears in red.
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Perhaps the greatest weakness of the scheme is the absence of any overriding idea capable of binding together the European planners and the African masses. It is here that the “third empire” will ultimately have to face the Communist challenge. So far the British have never won over a native intelligentsia, if one excepts the doubtful case of the Caribbean. Mr. Guy Wint, in his interesting book The British in Asia, suggests that the Congress party in India turned against the British because they had nothing to offer to the Indian intelligentsia; nothing, that is to say, that seemed really worthwhile. Africa, it is true, has little ancient culture of its own to fall back upon, but its backwardness—of which the color bar is an expression—acts as a barrier to the fusion of ruling and ruled populations.
English culture is under the best conditions difficult to assimilate, and in Africa it is likely to remain the preserve of the ruling minority. A cultural cleavage along these lines—between the governors and the governed—is prophetic of ultimate disaster. The new African intelligentsia seems torn between crude individualism and equally crude dislike of Europeans. It may be an accident that nearly all the African students one meets in London are Communists or near Communists, but it is the sort of accident that sets one thinking. If there exists a formula capable of inspiring Africans with genuine loyalty for the Empire—other than the loyalty of primitive tribal chiefs for the Great White Father in London, a sentiment much beloved by British conservatives in the colonies but rapidly becoming useless as an instrument of social progress—it has not yet been discovered.
Compared with some other 20th-century creations, the “third empire” looks pretty liberal. Can the reason be that it is not really designed to meet the 20th century’s needs?
British politics still conserves a certain Victorian dignity and charm. There are “disturbances” on the Gold Coast, but no concentration camps. The rule of law is supreme (so is the influence of native lawyers). The Empire is orderly and remarkably civilized considering its poverty. The Union Jack waves over a property tightly packed with antimacassars and framed family photographs, to which Labor is about to add some quite good social security laws. The question remains whether this is a combination stout enough to cope with the malignant spirits of our epoch.
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