In March 1975 Harold Wilson's incoming government considered a
proposal from officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that a
conscious policy be adopted of accelerated decolonisation wherever
practicable including in remaining dependencies in the Pacific. There
was no Parliamentary statement and no white paper, but there was a
despatch to Governors and Ambassadors. Professor McIntyre argues
that this was the key policy decision that lay behind the winding up of the
empire in the Pacific. In doing so he contradicts previous accounts that
linked the end of empire to the British withdrawal from east of Suez. By
1975 Tonga and Fiji had gained independence under the prior policy of
not holding back constitutional advance and independence but being
guided by the wishes of the people and the needs of the territory. Under
the policy adopted in 1975 first Solomon Islands, then Tuvalu, Gilbert
Islands and, finally, New Hebrides were decolonised.
The central question addressed in this impressive study is why the
British Government changed its mind about giving independence to
Pacific dependencies after steadily maintaining that they were among
territories too small, remote and poor to be independent. In pursuit of
answers McIntyre has mined official archival sources in Britain and
records of New Zealand and the United Nations. Prior to setting out his
answers, McIntyre outlines the context in masterly overviews first of the
emergence of empire in the Pacific and its reestablishment after the
Second World War and, second, of the background set for the Pacific
dependencies both by decolonisation elsewhere and by the Colonial
Office's longstanding search for a future in the international order for
small dependencies. He then explores the main drivers explaining the
emergence of a policy of accelerated decolonisation, using the three
categories deployed by Professor Roger Louis in his analysis of decolonisation and the end of empire: metropolitan infirmity, nationalist
insurgency and international interference or, put more broadly, British
domestic, colony centred, or international causes.
With reference to colony centred nationalist insurgency, McIntyre refers
to colonial service veterans transferred from Africa to the Pacific
expressing amazement at the apparent lack of political clamour in the
Pacific. He suggests that the perceived contrast partly reflected different
cultures; there were instances of political rebelliousness, notably in
Solomon Islands and New Hebrides, but these episodes did not prompt
changes to British policy. He concludes that domestic nationalism in the
Pacific colonies played little part in driving the development of broad
policy.
One significant influence on policy resulted from a British domestic
development. An organizational change was critical. McIntyre argues
that the main domestic impulse for the change of policy came in the late
1960s from the abolition of the Colonial Office and the assumption of
responsibility for dependent territories by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office [FCO]. The Colonial Office, to the end, upheld a
moral responsibility for preparing indigenous populations to make their
own decisions, but to the FCO the Pacific dependencies were a legacy of
the past, originally acquired for reasons that were no longer valid. A
programme analysis and review assessment in the early 1970s
concluded that it was in Britain's interest to be relieved of direct
responsibility for these remaining dependencies. The FCO's assumption
of responsibility for the Pacific dependent territories brought with it the
application of FCO's ordering of priorities.
In the category of international interference McIntyre follows two main
themes. The first was the growing impact of the United Nations. From
the beginning the UN Trusteeship Council had influence in trust
territories, but the effect of the UN became more focused from 1960
when the UN General Assembly approved the Declaration on
Colonialism setting out principles for the grant of independence to
colonial countries and peoples. This was followed in 1962 by the
establishment of the Special Committee on Colonialism. By the late
1960s and early 1970s much FCO effort was going into trying to find
ways to "get the Committee off its back". Britain was in the dock
because of its remaining dependent territories and divesting it of colonial
responsibilities was the "mainspring" of the FCO's eagerness to
accelerate decolonisation.
McIntyre's second theme under international interference was the
changing part played by the Commonwealth. He traces British
aspirations for the Commonwealth which included opening up a future for
smaller dependencies in the Pacific and, in a Commonwealth framework,
Britain sought to coordinate policies with Australia and New Zealand,
both of which had their own dependencies, and also to involve Australia
and New Zealand more directly in the future of British dependencies. In
practice the direction of development involved both a curtailing of options
for Britain's dependencies and reinforcement of UN pressures on Britain
to decolonise. Here New Zealand played a part: it discounted novel
solutions for dependencies within the Commonwealth and instead
worked cooperatively with the United Nations to decolonise its
dependencies of Western Samoa, the Cook Islands and Niue. In so
doing New Zealand provided - as McIntyre expresses it - a lead to
Britain on how to acquire good standing with the Trusteeship Council and
Committee on Colonialism and 'pioneer' different ways out of the islands
that satisfied the UN bodies.
The primary impact of Australia came through its position in the trust
territory of Nauru where it was the administering authority and joint
trustee along with Britain and New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand
were also the principal beneficiaries of the phosphate mined on the
island. In the context of winding up the empire, Nauru's importance for
Britain was that in December 1966, with only 2,734 indigenous Nauruans
resident on the island, the United Nations General Assembly passed a
resolution that Nauru be granted sovereign independence and set 31
January 1968 as the target date. Australia and Britain voted against the
resolution. New Zealand abstained. The year 1966 marked the closure
of the Colonial Office. To the end it had been trying to fashion a place in
the international order for those dependencies it judged to be incapable
of independence. McIntyre quotes a memorandum of the following year
from the successor Commonwealth Relations Office to the Foreign Office
making the point that if Nauru became independent it would be
impossible to withhold independence from any other Pacific island.
When in 1968 the FCO assumed responsibility for the Pacific dependent
territories, Nauru's trust status had been terminated and, as planned, it
had already become an independent sovereign state.
As a comment in parenthesis on McIntyre's treatment of Nauru, previous
publications suggest the part played by Hammer de Roburt, the leading
Nauruan, may here be understated, de Roburt was an effective nationalist leader - however small his nation - who exploited the
opportunity to use the UN Trusteeship Council and Committee on
Colonialism to achieve independence for Nauru - and a better return
from Nauruan phosphate - in the face of a reluctant administering
authority. As McIntyre rightly notes elsewhere, President de Roburt's
influence extended to the Gilbert Islands and Tuvalu and, indeed, more
widely in the Pacific.
Into his narrative account built around British policy-making McIntyre
skillfully weaves the story of Britain's withdrawal in turn from six Pacific
dependencies. Each was different. From Tonga, a protected state,
Britain had the simplest of exits; this was far from true of the others. By
the time the FCO took over, Fiji was in sight of independence after a
difficult transition. It was to the remaining four - Solomon Islands,
Tuvalu, Gilbert Islands, New Hebrides - that the policy of accelerated
decolonisation applied. If, as Trevor Clark reported of the FCO
perspective, "Britain can't be bothered with these potty little places any
more" the FCO had nevertheless to engage with the particularities of
each in turn and to face the fact they they all presented complexities out
of all proportion to their populations. A longer book would have been
needed to trace through all the details. McIntyre is necessarily selective
but he nevertheless provides a well-judged and interesting account of the
way in each dependency Britain met its aim of accelerated
decolonisation, leaving only Pitcairn with its 83 inhabitants.
Alongside the account of Britain's exit, McIntyre gives briefer accounts of
the parallel decolonising of their dependencies by New Zealand and
Australia, recognising this to be an integral part of winding up the empire
in the Pacific.
This book is a fine work of scholarship. It fills a gap in the history of how
the British empire was wound up in the Pacific outposts. It appears to
have been written with two audiences especially in mind: those whose
interest is primarily in British imperial and colonial history and those for
whom Pacific affairs is their focus. For both this is a clear, interesting and
authoritative study but, from whatever starting point the reader is coming,
they will find the book a pleasure to read.
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