The Anglo-Saxon Social Model

[Rattigan]

Successor States of Germany

Austria

The Habsburg monarchy was restored, once more, in December 1945 and a new constitution was instituted which severely reduced the powers of the monarchy. This, combined with the persistent success of the Social Democratic Party, has lead to it being nicknamed the 'Crowned Republic.'

Kings

1. Otto I; December 1945 -

Chancellors

1. Adolf Scharf; Social Democratic; December 1945 - April 1961
2. Franz Jonas; Social Democratic; April 1961 - April 1972
3. Edvard Kardelj; Social Democratic; April 1972 - May 1975
4. Josef Taus; Christian Democratic; May 1975 -

Baden-Wurrtemberg

Presidential republic. Ludwig Erhard was elected the first President but over the course of the 1950s he became increasingly autocratic and the elections more and more undemocratic as it became obvious that he would not be able to reverse the economic conditions imposed by the Allies. By the time he was overthrown in an Italian-backed coup in 1966, he was effectively a pro-French dictator. Erhard's replacement, the People's Congress lead by Kurt Gscheidle, instituted an autocratic regime that imprisoned its political opponents and instituted widespread land nationalisations and reforms. Gscheidle's regime was, in turn, overthrown in a French-backed coup lead by the Security Watch and armed by the SDECE.

Presidents

1. Ludwig Erhard; National Union; May 1949 - March 1966
2. Kurt Gscheidle; People's Congress; March 1966 - January 1971
3. Jurgen Brandt; Security Watch*; January 1971 -

*The Baden-Wurrtemberg police service (the equivalent of an army)


Bavaria

The constitutional monarchy was restored in November 1946, with the Anif Constitution removing most of the monarch's remaining powers and rendering him a figurehead. Instead, a Chancellor is the head of government, commanding a majority in the legislative assembly elected and run following the Westminster model.

Monarchs

1. Rupprecht; November 1946 - August 1955
2. Albrecht; August 1955 -

Chancellors

1. Wilhelm Hoegner; Social Democratic; September 1945 - December 1946
2. Josef Muller; Christian Social Union; December 1946 - December 1954
3. Wilhelm Hoegner; Social Democratic; December 1954 - October 1957
4. Fritz Schaffer; Christian Social Union; October 1957 - December 1962
5. Volkmar Gabert; Social Democratic; December 1962 - October 1969
6. Franz Josef Strauss; Christian Social Union; October 1969 -

Hanover

Constitutional monarchy on the Westminster model. Close relationship with the Commonwealth. For idiosyncratic reasons, the restored monarchs give themselves regnal names as if their overthrow by the Prussians had never happened.

Monarchs

1. Ernst August III (1887-1953); November 1946 - January 1953
2. Ernst August IV (1914-1987); January 1953 -

Chancellors

1. Kurt Schumacher; Social Democratic; May 1949 - January 1952
2. Heinrich Wilhelm Kopf; Social Democratic; January 1952 - October 1956
3. Robert Lehr; Christian National; October 1956 - October 1960
4. Willy Brandt; Social Democratic; October 1960 - July 1976
5. Hans-Dietrich Genscher; Christian National; July 1976 -

Hesse

Notionally a constitutional monarchy, in practice an autocratic regime where affairs of state are tightly controlled by a clique of powerful landowners. Political parties are banned, notionally to prevent corruption. Philipp von Hesse, a distant cousin of Grand Duke Louis V, served as Chancellor for 20 years before ascending to the Grand Dukedom. By 1976, increasing demands for political reform have been partly satisfied by the appointment of Monika zu Solms-Laubach, who has headed a philanthropic and moderately redistributive administration.

Grand Dukes

1. Louis V (1908-1968); October 1947 - May 1968
2. Phillipp (1896-1980); May 1968 -

Chancellors

1. Ludwig Bergstrasser; Social Democratic; October 1947 - March 1948
2. Philipp von Hesse; non-partisan; March 1948 - May 1968
3. Horst von Buttlar-Brandenfels; non-partisan; May 1968 - December 1972
4. Monika zu Solms-Laubach; non-partisan; December 1972 -

Rhineland

Presidential republic with the big-tent conservative Rhenish National Union dominant. Konrad Adenauer was initially installed as President but he resigned his office in 1953 in protest at the continuing economic sanctions imposed by the Allies, subsequently moving to live in Hanover. Since 1969, all parties other than the Rhenish National Union have been banned.

Presidents

1. Konrad Adenauer; Rhenish National Union; May 1949 - June 1953
2. Franz Blucher; Rhenish National Union; June 1953 - March 1959
3. Gerhard Schroder; Rhenish National Union; March 1959 - December 1963
4. Rainer Barzel; Rhenish National Union; December 1963 -

 

[Rattigan]

Central and South America

Argentina

After independence from Spain in 1816 Argentina was plunged into a prolonged civil war (1818-1861) but eventually achieved stability under a federal constitution and the presidency of Bartolome Mitre. Following Mitre's two six-year terms an unofficial policy grew up whereby presidents would only serve one term (although Julio Argentino Roca served two non-consecutive terms). Although Mitre was notionally a non-partisan figure, by the end of his tenure he was closely associated with a grouping known as the National Republican Party. After Mitre's retirement, the National Republicans dominated federal Argentinian politics, winning the next 7 presidential elections in a row (on a restricted franchise) and presiding over an enormous economic boom. However, when the Argentinian economy was disrupted by economic dislocations (mainly due to the UK partially retreating behind tariff walls with the Dominions from the 1890s), the National Republicans acceded to pressure to expand the franchise, leading to the election of Lisandro de la Torre of the Democratic Progressive Party in 1916 and the subsequent fracturing and disappearance of the National Republicans altogether. Universal suffrage was finally achieved in 1927 and a combination of this and the global economic dislocations of the 1930s lead to another reorganisation of Argentinian politics around a left-wing coalition lead by the Radical Civic Union and a right-wing one lead by the National Democratic Party. In 1952, Robustino Patros Costas of the National Democrats became the first president since Mitre to win a second consecutive term but, as yet, no other figures have followed his lead (although Arturo Frondizi also served two non-consecutive terms).

Presidents

1. Bartolome Mitre; non-partisan; October 1862 - October 1874
2. Nicolas Avellaneda; National Republican; October 1874 - October 1880
3. Julio Argentino Roca; National Republican; October 1880 - October 1886
4. Miguel Angel Juarez Celman; National Republican; October 1886 - October 1892
5. Carlos Pellegrini; National Republican; October 1892 - October 1898
6. Julio Argentino Roca; National Republican; October 1898 - October 1904
7. Manuel Quintana; National Republican; October 1904 - March 1906*
8. Jose Figueroa Alcorta; National Republican; March 1906 - October 1910
9. Roque Saenz Pena; National Republican; October 1910 - October 1916
   
10. Lisandro de la Torre; Democratic Progressive; October 1916 - October 1922
11. Carlos Ibarguren; Democratic Progressive; October 1922 - October 1928
    
12. Julio Roca; National Democratic; October 1928 - October 1934
    
13. Enrique Martinez; Radical Civic Union; October 1934 - October 1940
14. Marcelo de Alvear; Radical Civic Union; October 1940 - April 1942*
15. Eduardo Laurencena; Radical Civic Union; April 1942 - October 1946
    
16. Robustiano Patros Costas; National Democratic; October 1946 - October 1958
    
17. Arturo Frondizi; Radical Civic Union; October 1958 - October 1964
    
18. Juan Peron; National Democratic; October 1964 - October 1970
    
19. Arturo Frondizi; Radical Civic Union; October 1970 - October 1976
20. Isabella Martinez de Peron; National Democratic; October 1976 -

*Died in office

Brazil

Following the declaration of independence in September 1822, Brazil adopted its constitution in March 1824, which established the nation as a unitary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral parliamentary system. Regarded as one of the most liberal of it time, the role of the Emperor was to act as an impartial mediator between political factions and it was one that Pedro I performed impeccably until he temporarily abdicated the throne, in favour of his young son Pedro II, in order to return to Portugal to put down a reactionary rebellion against the rule of his first daughter Maria II. As Walter Bagehot commented, few nations have been as lucky as nineteenth-century Brazil in their choice of constitutional monarch: Pedro II, as a child, did not intervene in politics and when Pedro I returned to his throne in November 1834 he chose to continue to rule in the same manner until his death. Since then, Brazil has been the model of parliamentary stability, as the economy rapidly industrialised and the franchise was incrementally expanded. Slavery was eventually abolished in 1869, largely as a result of the promises of the Conservative prime minister, Evangelista de Sousa, to rural land owners of increased investment in labour and machinery.

Emperors

1. Pedro I (1798 - 1864); October 1822 - April 1831
2. Pedro II (1825 - 1891); April 1831 - November 1834
3. Pedro I (1798 - 1864); November 1834 - September 1864
4. Pedro II (1825 - 1891); May 1864 - December 1891
5. Isabel (1846 - 1921); December 1891 - November 1921
6. Pedro III (1875 - 1940); November 1921 - January 1940
7. Pedro IV (1913 - 2007); January 1940 -

Prime Ministers

1. Joaquim Gonçalves Ledo; non-partisan; March 1824 - July 1835
2. Januário da Cunha Barbosa; Liberal Party; July 1835 - April 1841
3. Viscount of Sepetiba; Courtier Party; April 1841 - July 1847
4. Viscount of Congonhas; Moderate Party; July 1847 - October 1851
5. Marcos Antônio Monteiro de Barros; Moderate Party; October 1851 - May 1852
6. Irineu Evangelista de Sousa; Courtier Party; May - September 1852
7. Count of Baependi; Liberal Party; September 1852 - January 1858
8. Irineu Evangelista de Sousa; Conservative Party; January 1958 - November 1862
9. Teófilo Ottoni; Liberal Party; November 1862 - May 1868
10. Irineu Evangelista de Sousa; Conservative Party; May 1868 - April 1871
11. Camilo Armond; Liberal Party; April 1871 - April 1876
12. Baron of Cotegipe; Conservative; April 1876 - August 1877
13. Count of Baependi; Liberal Party; August 1877 - August 1881
14. Manuel Pinto de Sousa Dantas; Radical Party; August 1881 - April 1886
15. Gaspar da Silveira Martins; Liberal Party; April 1886 - February 1894
16. Rodolfo Epifânio de Sousa Dantas; Radical Party; February 1894 - September 1901
17. Francisco Glicério; Radical Party; September 1901 - November 1906
18. Antônio da Silva Prado; Liberal Party; November 1906 - January 1911
19. Ruy Barbosa; Radical Party; January 1911 - August 1919
20. Alaor Prata; Liberal Party; August 1919 - November 1924
21. João Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque; Radical Party; November 1924 - October 1929
22. Getúlio Vargas; Social Democratic Party; October 1929 - August 1930
23. Oliveira Botelho; Radical Liberal Party; August 1930 - November 1931
24. Getúlio Vargas; Social Democratic Party; November 1931 - December 1938
25. Pedro Ludovico; Radical Liberal Party; December 1938 - December 1940
26. Benedito Valadares; Social Democratic Party; December 1940 - August 1948
27. Filinto Müller; Radical Liberal Party; August 1948 - June 1953
28. Alberto Pasqualini; Social Democratic Party; June 1953 - June 1960
29. Rui Carneiro; Social Democratic Party; June 1960 - November 1963
30. Roberto Campos; Radical Liberal Party; November 1963 - June 1968
31. Rogê Ferreira; Social Democratic Party; June 1968 -

Mexico

Political stability returned to Mexico following the historic compromise between Benito Juarez and Emperor Maximilian in July 1865, after which the Empire was governed by a reformist emperor and a series of chancellors who alternated between the centre-left and the centre-right. However, when Maximilian died in June 1907 he left no natural-born male heirs and the throne thus passed to his adopted granddaughter Maria. For a variety of reasons, a conservative faction of the military lead by General Porfirio Diaz mounted a coup in October 1907, which precipitated a civil war between royalists, republicans, revolutionaries and various regionalist forces which was eventually won by Diaz's protege General Bernardo Reyes in February 1909. Reyes then promulgated a federal constitution in 1910 with four-years terms and won the first presidential election. Reyes' Constitutionalist Party governed as an oligarchic managed democracy which oversaw vast economic expansion and the flourishing of Mexican arts and culture. The (relatively) liberal Constitutionalist President Obregon granted universal male suffrage ahead of the 1930 elections, which were won by the leftist National Revolutionary Party, bringing Lazaro Cardenas to power. A mutiny amongst the lower ranks of the army forestalled a potential military coup. in 1935, Cardenas promulgated a new constitution and instigated the so-called Nuevo Estado, a corporatist, authoritarian state modelled on the fascist dictatorships of Spain and Italy. However, under American pressure, Mexico provided aid to the Allies in the World War and Cardenas agreed to democratic elections in 1945. Nevertheless, the corporatist constitution otherwise remained in place and its strictures would radicalise conservative and reactionary elements, leading to a coup in April 1964 that overthrew the civilian government and replaced it with the military-backed National Renewal Alliance.

Emperors

1. Augustin (1783 - 1824); May 1822 - March 1823
2. Maximilian (1832 - 1907); April 1864 - June 1907
3. Maria (1872 - 1949); June 1907 - February 1909

Presidents

1. Bernardo Reyes; Constitutionalist; February 1909 - February 1915 *
2. Victoriano Huerta; Constitutionalist; February 1915 - January 1917 **
3. Manuel Mondragon; Constitutionalist; January 1917 - February 1919
4. Venustiano Carranza; Constitutionalist; February 1919 - February 1923
5. Alvaro Obregon; Constitutionalist; February 1923 - February 1931
6. Lazaro Cardenas; National Revolutionary; February 1931 - February 1946***
7. Juan Andreu Almazán; National Action; February 1946 - February 1951****
   
8. Lazaro Cardenas; National Revolutionary; February 1951 - February 1956
9. Manuel Gomez Morin; National Action; February 1956 - February 1961
   
10. Carlos A. Madrazo; National Revolutionary; February 1961 - April 1964*****
    
11. Marcelino García Barragán; National Renewal Alliance; April 1964 - January 1969******
    
12. Fernando Gutierrez Barrios; National Renewal Alliance; January 1969 -

*First election held on 1 November 1910, with the inauguration on 1 February, with elections thereafter following this pattern.
** Died in office.
*** New constitution promulgated in July 1935 extending Cardenas' presidency indefinitely.
****Free elections reinstituted with a presidential term extended to five years.
*****Military coup.
******Resigned as a sop to public opinion following the Tlatelolco Massacre.

Spain (Kingdom of)

Since the Treaty of Lisbon, large numbers of dedicated royalists left Iberian Spain for Cuba, which became home to the Royal Family and the island styled itself the Kingdom of Spain. Although many influential figures were unimpressed by the royal arrival, following a brief rebellion (1871-72) the royalist Spanish government managed to co-opt local elites through the institution of an assembly which allowed them to have representation on a limited franchise, even as the role of President of the Assembly (effectively prime minister) would be held by a success of exiled Spanish generals for most of the rest of the century. Despite an expansion of the franchise, under twin pressures of a disinterested King Alfonso XIII and economic dislocation in the 1920s, the political system turned to the authoritarian regime of Gerardo Machado, which curtailed free speech, arrested dissidents and sought an alliance with the nations that would become the Axis powers. Although no formal agreement was reached, following the outbreak of the World War the Royal Navy and US Navy began to interdict suspected Axis shipping to and from Cuba, putting severe strain on the island's finances. Upon the accession of the liberal Juan I to the throne in February 1941, liberal forces conspired with the Allies to overthrow Machado in March, replacing him with a provisional government until a new constitution in 1945 restored democracy and restricted the powers of the both the monarchy and the president. Since then Cuba has been blessed with political and economic stability, as well as being an important American ally in the region.

Monarchs

1. Isabella II; September 1870 - April 1904
2. Alfonso XII; April 1904 - November 1905
3. Alfonso XIII; November 1905 - February 1941
4. Juan; February 1941 -

Presidents

1. Manuel Pavia y Lacy; Monarchist; September 1870 - November 1873
2. Juan de Zavala; Monarchist; November 1873 - June 1875
3. Blas Villate; Monarchist; June 1875 - February 1879
4. Fernando Fernandez de Cordova; Monarchist; February 1879 - August 1883
5. Antonio Ros de Olano; Monarchist; August 1883 - July 1886
6. Arsenio Martinez Campos; Monarchist; July 1886 - August 1890
7. Rodriguez Pavia y Rodriguez de Alburquerque; Monarchist; August 1890 - September 1893
8. Jose Canovas del Castillo; Monarchist; September 1893 - November 1895
9. Arsenio Martinez Campos; Monarchist; November 1895 - January 1899
10. Juan Bautista Spotorno; Monarchist; January 1899 - May 1902*
11. Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso; Liberal; May 1902 - October 1906
12. Mario Garcia Menocal; Conservative; October 1906 - January 1909
13. Jose Miguel Gomez; Liberal; January 1909 - May 1913
14. Mario Garcia Menocal; Conservative; May 1913 - August 1925
15. Gerardo Machado; Liberal; August 1925 - March 1941
16. Alberto Herrera Franchi; non-partisan military; March 1941 - April 1945
17. Andres Rivero Aguero; Authentic; April 1945 - March 1952
18. Andrés Domingo y Morales; Conservative; March 1952 - February 1956
19. Eduardo Chibas; Socialist Workers’; February 1956 - October 1961
20. Jose Miro Cardona; Conservative; October 1961 - August 1965
21. Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado; Socialist Workers’; August 1965 - October 1974
22. Huber Matos; Conservative; October 1974 -

*First Cuban-born President

 

[Rattigan]

Africa and the Middle East

Arabia (also known, but not universally recognised, as the Sharifian Caliphate)

Despite having installed him as the ruler of a vast kingdom in the Middle East, the British never fully trusted Sharif Hussein and conspired with his sons to install a quasi-parliamentary system. Under the constitution of the Kingdom of Arabia, promulgated in May 1919, the king's powers were hemmed in by a legislature composed of tribal elders and various other appointees. The King's third son, Faisal, was trusted by the British because of his wartime collaboration against the Central Powers and was thus installed consensually as the first Prime Minister. The constitution also provided for an unusual system of succession: after the death of Hussein, it was agreed that the crown would pass to each of Hussein's three sons by his first wife. In practice, this meant that Faisal, because of the longevity of his brothers and father, missed his chance to rule but nevertheless spent 17 years as Prime Minister, moulding its political culture to his liking. Following the death of Hussein's youngest son Abdullah, in 1961, a coalition of tribal elders and other parties came together to ensure that the crown passed to Abdullah's son Talal. This caused some disquiet amongst other groups and in 1968 a coup attempted to place Abdullah al-Hejaz, the son of Hussein's eldest son, on the throne. The coup failed and King Talal blamed the coup on Commonwealth interference (which remains unconfirmed), causing a cooling of relations between the two powers before relations were repaired following Talal's death in 1972. Talal's lasting legacy was the promulgation of a new constitution in January 1962, which expanded the powers of the legislature, dividing it into two chambers, one of appointed tribal elders and another of politicians elected by near-universal male suffrage. Nevertheless, the King retains significant power in his choice of ministers and over policy direction.

Kings/Caliphs

1. Hussein I (1853 - 1931); October 1916 - June 1931
2. Ali (1879 - 1935); June 1931 - February 1935
3. Abdullah I (1882 - 1961); February 1935 - July 1961
4. Talal (1909 - 1972); July 1961 - July 1972
5. Hussein II (1935 - 1999); July 1972 -

Prime Ministers

1. Faisal al-Hashemi; independent; May 1919 - August 1936
2. Nuri al-Said; independent; August 1936 - January 1938
3. Sati al-Husri; independent; January 1938 - January 1940
4. Nuri al-Said; independent; January 1940 - June 1949
5. Suleiman Nabulsi; Workers’ Party; June 1949 - February 1952
6. Zaki al-Arsuzi; Renaissance Party; February - September 1952
7. Abdullah al-Hejaz; independent; September 1952 - August 1957
8. David Ben-Gurion; Workers’ Party; August 1957 - July 1958
9. Abdullah al-Hejaz; independent; July 1958 - October 1960
10. Michel Aflaq; Renaissance Party; October 1960 - January 1964
11. Abdullah al-Hejaz; independent; January 1964 - July 1968
12. Salah al-Din al-Bitar; Renaissance Party; July 1968 -

Egypt

Following the recognition of Egypt's independence, a new constitution was hurriedly produced in September 1905, which established a limited legislature and a Prime Minister. A further, more liberal, constitution was adopted in 1923. Nevertheless, successive kings retained a close involvement in politics until the reign of Farouk, who after the 1940s preferred to live a life of idleness and stay out of politics. King Faud II succeeded to the throne at the age of 13 and so was kept out of politics at the beginning of his reign. Since coming of age he has continued to rule as a symbolic figurehead while the franchise has progressively been expanded, becoming universal in 1966.

Sultans

1. Hussein (1853 - 1917); September 1905 - October 1917
2. Kamal (1874 - 1932); October 1917 - August 1932
3. Faud I (1868 - 1936); August 1932 - April 1936
4. Farouk (1920 - 1965); April 1936 - March 1965
5. Faud II (1952 - ); March 1965 -

Prime Ministers

1. Boutros Ghali; independent; September 1905 - February 1910
2. Hussein Rushdi; independent; February 1910 - November 1919
3. Youssef Wahba; Wafd Party; November 1919 - March 1921
4. Adli Yakan; Liberal Constitutional Party; March 1921 - June 1926
5. Saad Zaghouli; Wafd Party; June 1926 - August 1927
6. Makram Ebeid; Wafd Party; August 1927 - January 1946
7. Aly Maher; Liberal Constitutional Party; January 1946 - December 1955
8. Hussein Serry; Wafd Party; December 1955 - May 1958
9. Ibrahim Abdel Hady; Liberal Constitutional Party; May 1958 - November 1963
10. Mostafa el-Nahhas; Wafd Party; November 1963 - June 1965
11. Gamal Abdel Nasser; Egyptian Socialist Union; June 1965 - July 1967
12. Taha Hussein; Wafd Party; July 1967 - October 1969
13. Ali Sabri; Egyptian Socialist Union; October 1969 - November 1972
14. Fouad Serageddin; Wafd Party; November 1972 -

Iran

Shah Reza was overthrown by the Soviets and the Commonwealth in September 1941 on account of his pro-Axis sympathies. He was replaced by his son, Mohammad Reza, and a legislature installed. Although hardly democratic, Iranian politics became more liberal over the next decade through a number of disconnected events. Key to this was the appointment of Mohammad Mosaddegh as Prime Minister in 1953. Only four months after appointing him, Mohammad Reza got cold feet and secretly asked the Commonwealth to collaborate in a coup to overthrow him, which the Commonwealth, sensing that it would be more trouble than it was worth, refused. Following this, the Shah retreated to his palaces in a sulk, accidentally creating a parliamentary government to fill the void, while Mosaddegh's government burned itself out relatively ineffectively after only a few years. By 1976, Iran has achieved universal suffrage and is a major regional power, generally friendly with the Soviets as a counterbalance to Arabia.

Shahs

1. Reza I Shah (1878 - 1944); December 1925 - September 1941
2. Mohammad Reza Shah (1919 - 1980); September 1941 -

Prime Ministers

1. Ali Mansur; New Iran Party; September 1941 - July 1946
2. Haj Ali Razmara; New Iran Party; July 1946 - April 1953
3. Mohammad Mosaddegh; National Front; April 1953 - January 1957
4. Abdol Hossein Sardari; New Iran Party; January 1957 - October 1961
5. Karim Sanjabi; New Iran Party; October 1961 - March 1966
6. Ali Shariati; Democratic Party; March 1966 - April 1976
7. Ali Amini; Democratic Party; April 1976 -

South Africa

Following the declaration of the republic in 1961, the South African government adopted a constitution denying the vote to non-white citizens and creating a unique tricameral parliament (one for whites, one for coloureds, one for indians - all blacks were disenfranchised). Although this arrangement notionally enshrined ‘power sharing’ between the races, in practice the white chamber had a power of veto over the other chambers, the sole power to initiate legislation and the power to pass legislation without the approval of the other chambers in matters of education, defence, finance, foreign policy, law and order, transport, agriculture and commerce. (As many political scientists pointed out, it wasn’t entirely clear what the other two chambers were there for in a legislative sense.) The Executive President was to be the new head of state, elected by a white suffrage, and invested with sweeping powers. Initially limited to a single 10-year term, this would be changed in 1980 to an indefinite number of 5-year terms. Over the course of the 1960s South African politics slipped even further to the right, with Boer nationalism increasingly asserting itself and Anglo whites being progressively disenfranchised.

Prime Ministers

1. Louis Botha; South African Party; May 1910 - August 1919
2. Jan Smuts; South African Party; August 1919 - June 1924
3. J.M.B. Hertzog; National Party; June 1924 - January 1940
4. Jan Smuts; United Party; January 1940 - June 1948
5. D.F. Malan; National Party; June 1948 - November 1954
6. Hans Strydom; National Party; November 1954 - August 1958
7. C.R. Swart; National Party; August 1958 - October 1961

State Presidents

1. Hans van Rensburg; National Party; October 1961 - September 1970*
2. John Vorster; National Party; September 1970 - October 1971
3. Hendrik Verwoerd; National Party; October 1971 -

*Assassinated

 

[Rattigan]

Asia

Japan

Saito Takao continued his role as Prime Minister after the end of the World War. Between 1945 and 1948, a new constitution was negotiated which overhauled the old Meji constitution. It initiated fixed term elections to be held in April every four years, banned active members of the military from serving in the Diet and banned people who weren’t members of the Diet from serving in the cabinet. While the Emperor retained the power to appoint “whoever could command a majority in the Diet” as his Prime Minister, it was now clearer that the exercise of such powers would become increasingly theoretical and subject to the decisions of elected politicians. Saito took the opportunity of the upcoming elections in April 1948, the first under the new constitution, to announce that he would retire from politics. By this time, the Social Democratic Party had become a major force. In order to stave off the threat of socialism, the two main parties of pre-War Japan - the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Constitutional Association of Political Friendship - united and collaborated on the institution of a welfare state in order to “kill socialism with kindness.”

Prime Minister

1. Saito Takao; National Unity Coalition; July 1940 - April 1948
2. Shigeru Yoshida; Constitutional Democratic Party; April 1948 - April 1952
3. Tetsu Katayama; Social Democratic Party; April 1952 - April 1960
4. Hayato Ikeda; Constitutional Democratic Party; April 1960 - October 1960
5. Eisaku Sato; Constitutional Democratic Party; October 1960 - April 1968
6. Kozo Sasaki; Social Democratic Party; April 1968 - October 1973
7. Kenji Miyamoto; Social Democratic Party; October 1974 - August 1974
8. Kasuga Ikko; Social Democratic Party; August 1974 - April 1976
9. Takeo Fukuda; Constitutional Democratic Party; April 1976 -

China

In the Fourth Chinese Republic, power is divided between the presidency (elected every four years) and the enormous unicameral Yuan (elected every five years), of which the leader of the largest party is made Premier. The makeup of the cabinet is decided by agreement between the President and the Premier, with the way elections are staggered meaning that they are often controlled by different parties. Since the constitution, politics has been dominated by the centre-right Progress and Development Party and the centre-left Democratic Socialist Party. Progress and Development is a soft nationalist party which often proposes policies aimed at developing national industries, whereas the Democratic Socialists tend to be more internationalist and open to foreign investment (under certain guidelines, of course).

Presidents

1. Sun Li-jen; independent; March 1953 - March 1961
2. Li Zongren; Progress and Development; March 1961 - January 1969*
3. Sun Li-jen; independent; January - March 1969
4. Chen Mengjia; Democratic Socialist; March 1969 - March 1973
5. Yen Chia-kan; Progress and Development; March 1973 -

*Died in office

Premiers

1. Yu Hung-chun; Progress and Development; March 1953 - June 1960*
2. Soong Tse-ven; Progress and Development; June 1960 - March 1963
3. Zhou Enlai; Democratic Socialist; March 1963 - March 1968
4. Sun Yun-suan; Progress and Development; March 1968 - March 1973
5. Zhou Enlai; Democratic Socialist; March 1973 - January 1976*
6. Deng Xiaoping; Democratic Socialist; January 1976 -

* Died in office


India

Although Indian politics remains dominated by the INC up to this point but are coming under increasing strain from the explicitly Hindu nationalist Janata Party.

Prime Ministers

1. Jawaharlal Nehru; INC; April 1948 - May 1964*
2. V.K. Krishna Menon; INC; May 1964 - March 1972**
3. Indira Gandhi; INC; March 1972 - July 1976
4. Balasaheb Deoras; Janata Party; July 1976 -

*Died in office
**Assassinated

 

[Rattigan]

The Idea of Pakistan: The First Thirty Years

When the Dominion of India dissolved in 1951, the assumption by many in Westminster was that their closest relations would be with India rather than Pakistan or Bengal but it could not have turned out to be more wrong. Attlee appears to have been very out of touch with events in the subcontinent, urging Slim to continue to make the Dominion work even as the Simla Agreement was being negotiated and he was horrified when Nehru told him, a year later, that India would be adopting a republican constitution.

However, had Attlee sought out Slim’s views in 1951, he would have realized how wrong his initial assumptions were. While many in Britain assumed that Pakistan was an Islamic confessional state, the reality was a good deal more complicated. As a region, the Punjab had done very well during the later nineteenth century and had benefited enormously from the increased orders over the 1930s and the World War. By 1945, it was already a major manufacturing centre, outpacing (thanks to the war) the manufacturing capacity of many European countries. Furthermore, the region had already developed a disputatious and semi-democratic culture that had well-prepared it for the transition to universal suffrage. Finally, the entire area had never been as much of a hotbed of pro-independence sentiment as many other areas of the subcontinent (notably the Deccan Plain), something helped by the fact that most of the senior politicians in this new state had previously been at least qualified allies of the British, either as members of the Liberal Unionists or the League.

Nevertheless, despite these underlying advantages, in 1951 Pakistan faced numerous economic problems and was not anticipated to be a major player in the Commonwealth (beyond providing Sikhs, Punjabis and Pathans for the Commonwealth army). Even though it had won a sizeable majority in the first national general elections in 1948, the governing League had never been much of a mass movement. Jinnah had simply been uncomfortable with what he saw as demagoguery and his successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, shrewdly saw that he could not construct a governing majority (at least not a democratic one) off the back of an appeal towards Muslim confessionalism in a country whose boundaries included the entirety of the Punjab.

Liaquat thus tacked firmly to the left, governing in a manner in many ways more progressive than Labour in the United Kingdom. Critical sectors of the economy were nationalized, including the railways, coal mining, public utilities and much of heavy industry. The League also began to develop a welfare state along traditional Commonwealth lines. With the collapse of the Dominion of India in 1951, Pakistani national elections were called for the winter, with the League quietly changing its name to the Pakistani People’s League (“PPL”) and Campaigning on a platform of socially democratic civic nationalism.

In the 1951 elections, the PPL won a landslide victory. A comprehensive welfare state was created with the National Insurance Act 1952, which required people to pay a flat rate of national insurance in return for them (and their wives and dependents – Pakistani society being nothing if not patriarchal) being eligible for receive state pensions and a flat rate of sickness, disability and unemployment benefit. Various other pieces of legislation provided for child benefit and support for people with no other source of income. One of the government’s major achievements was the maintenance of near full employment. In part this was achieved through the retaining of wartime controls over the economy, notably over the allocation of materials and manpower. Unemployment did not rise above 3% and in fact labour shortages proved to be a recurrent problem, leading to an immigration advertising campaign in India and Bengal. In the estimation of most historians, this welfare programme was the most successful of Liaquat’s period in power, especially coming in a country that was, at this stage, significantly less wealthy than its Commonwealth compatriots.

By 1956, however, Pakistan’s participation in the Malayan War had caused a heavy drain on the Finance Ministry for military expenses. This caused a bitter split in the PPL, with Fatima Jinnah and Naseer Ahmad Malhi resigning from the government over proposed cuts to welfare in order to pay for military expansion. Elections later that year reduced the PPL majority to 3. Since 1951, a coalition of conservatives, businessmen and landlords had coalesced to form the Liberal Party and they made the continuing ‘austerity’ of the PPL a big issue at the 1956 election. In 1957, the Liberals went one better than the year before and defeated the PPL, forming a majority under Ayub Khan.

Under Ayub’s thirteen-year tenure as prime minister, taking in three successive general election victories in 1957, 1961 and 1965, Pakistan’s global and domestic position would be radically transformed. Although Liaquat had laid much of the groundwork in 1948-57, Ayub’s government probably more than any other deserves to be credited with making the country the major power that it is today. As we have already seen, Ayub pursued an energetic policy in the Commonwealth, expanding Pakistan’s role and levering it into a leading role in Commonwealth decision-making. However, his tenure was equally notable for the economic developments it saw, albeit ones that built upon the foundations the PPL had built.

Despite his reputation, then and now, for being a free-marketer opposed to the socialism of the PPL, Ayub’s government accepted most of the PPL welfare reforms, the major exception being the reversal of some of the PPL’s nationalisations of otherwise-profitable heavy industries. At the same time, he pursued a development policy that, even by the standards of the Commonwealth, was remarkably protectionist, including launching the second five year plan in 1958 (the first one having run from 1952 to 1956). In February 1958 the National Bank of Pakistan was nationalized and regulatory controls were extended to much of the financial system. The spearhead of Ayub’s plan were what came to be known as the ‘national champions’: diversified family firms, mostly concentrated in Sindh and the Punjab, who came to dominate the commanding heights of Pakistani private industry. Notable national champions included Sigma Motors, Muhammadi Steamships and the Saigol Group. All of these companies benefited from state incentives such as tax breaks and the provision of cheap or even free state-financing.

Under this ecumenically-promoted (it was retained when the PPL returned to power in 1970 under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) economic policy, Pakistan’s gross domestic product expanded by an average of more than 8% per year from 1951 to 1976. Per capita GDP also grew, such that by 1976 Pakistan’s standard of living approximated that of its Big Four contemporaries in the UK, Canada and Australia. The manufacturing sector grew to 30% of the economy by 1976 and the ratio of domestic savings to GNP grew from 3% to 36% over the same period. The most significant factor in this astonishing development was the adoption of a heavy industry-focused strategy in the mid-1950s. Successive Pakistani governments incentivized corporations to develop new technology and upgrade productive efficiency in order to compete in the Commonwealth markets. In addition, the government encouraged the inflow of foreign capital (particularly British SWF and Canadian finance to improve infrastructure – an echo of the Raj’s British-financed railway building programmes) in order to supplement the shortage of domestic savings.

The steel and shipbuilding sectors in particular played crucial roles in developing the Pakistani economy. By 1976, Pakistan had become the largest heavy industrial economy in the Commonwealth, as former competitors in Canada, Australia and the UK transitioned to more high tech industries or services. This, in turn, encourage immigration to Pakistan from workers in those countries, a phenomenon captured well in the CBC comedy ‘Kudha Hafiz, Pet,’ which ran from 1983-86 and dramatized the lives of six construction workers from Newcastle in the 1970s who move to Karachi in search of work.

On the domestic political front, over the course of the 1960s, Ayub’s government was periodically rocked by scandal (most notably the death in suspicious circumstances of Finance Minister Muhammad Shoaib in November 1965, just as stories were beginning to grow about his links to Soviet agents) and opposition from various youth and trades union groups. Particular targets of these attacks were Ayub’s personal corruption (no allegations of which stuck to him at the time but many did after his resignation) and growing inequality, even as the wealth of the average Pakistani had exploded.

In 1970, the PPL returned to power under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto with a majority of 17, which would expand to 51 in a snap election two years later. Although Bhutto’s government has since come to be regarded as a successful reforming government, including improvements in trades union representation and numerous social reforms, it would be dominated by the various economic crises of the Commonwealth. The PPL went down to a narrow defeat in the 1976 elections and the Liberals once more returned to government, this time under Yaqub Ali Khan.

 

[Rattigan]

When the Lights Went Out: Britain and the Commonwealth under Margaret Thatcher

The Last Lights of Empire: striking workers in Dublin during the Winter of Discontent, 1980-81 (top); Margaret Thatcher and her entourage arrive at the second emergency bailout summit, August 1977 (bottom)


With their majority of only 25 and a record of being out of government for more than thirty years, many expected Thatcher to govern in a conciliatory and consensual manner. However, such assumptions demonstrated a severe underestimation of Thatcher’s personal radicalism as well as the extent to which her belief was that the economic problems of the 1970s were not a bug but a feature of a failing system. The first hint that she would be attempting to break with the British governing tradition of the previous century was when she appointed Keith Joseph as her Chancellor, cementing the Gladstonian wing of the party’s control over the government.

Joseph’s first budgetary event came with an autumn statement in October 1976 and it was dramatic. It included large cuts to both direct and indirect taxation, introducing cash limits on public spending on certain services such as housing while also introducing large direct cuts to social services and education. Joseph also announced that the aim of the Bank of England would be shifted such that its primary aim would be the controlling of inflation. This marked a big change for two important reasons. Firstly, the previous government-provided aim of the Bank had been the maintenance of overall macroeconomic stability rather than any one indicator of financial health. Secondly, while the Bank had remained technically the UK’s central bank, since the foundation of the MPC, it had gradually assumed more and more macroeconomic responsibility for the Commonwealth as a whole. The unilateral change of its objectives was a remarkable assertion of British power at the heart of the Commonwealth and a big potential challenge to the previous way of doing things.

Fortunately for Thatcher, general elections in member states over the course of 1975/76 had left a Commonwealth political scene more propitious for her than it would have been only two or three years later. Of the other Big Four, Pierre Trudeau had managed to cling on in the 1975 Canadian election but it came at the price of the loss of his majority. However, with Malcolm Fraser and Muhammad Khan Junejo of their respective Liberal Parties in power in Pakistan and Australia, Thatcher now had a coterie of leaders around her who saw the problems of the Commonwealth in terms of pure power politics. In an interview with the ‘Financial Times’ ahead of a Prime Ministers’ conference in October 1976, Joseph rejected calls for Puerto Rico and Newfoundland to be given more time to reign in their national debts and instead called for them to agree immediate austerity programmes to, in his words, 'get their over-spent, over-taxed houses in order.'

At the conference, the cracks in Commonwealth relations began to appear, between the Big Four (with Canada a qualified but generally willing ally) all arguing that debt-afflicted countries should swallow austerity programs to get their finances in order. On the other side was the newly-elected government of Puerto Rico: following the failures of the dominant Democratic and Conservative parties, the electors had turned to the more radical New Progressive Party lead by Ruben Barrios. The first bailout package reflected this division: agreeing to a 50% write off of Puerto Rican and Newfoundland debt held by banks and a £5,000,000,000 Commonwealth bailout fund; in return, new capital requirements were introduced for Commonwealth banks and commitments extracted from Puerto Rico and Newfoundland regarding further austerity to cut their debts.

While the package agreed in October managed to satisfy the demands of the Big Four leaders at the time, it accidentally deepend the troubles facing the Commonwealth banking industry. The imposition of new capital requirements meant that every bank was forced to raise capital at the same time. With every bank trying to add to its balance sheet, it became very difficult to raise funds and so many banks began to cut down on loans and unload lagging assets as they worked to improve their capital ratios. Furthermore, the austerity policies that Puerto Rico and Newfoundland were required to take choked off demand in their countries and only caused further economic stagnation. Taken together, these two phenomena plunged the Commonwealth economy back into recession in the first two quarters of 1977.

A marathon emergency conference in August 1977 resulted in the Commonwealth agreeing the conditions for a second bailout. Once more, it was agreed that Puerto Rican and Newfoundland debt would take a further, nominal, haircut and a second bailout package, worth £14,000,000,000, was agreed. In theory this would bring Puerto Rico’s and Newfoundland’s debt down to under 100% of GDP by 1985. However, Puerto Rican demands for a more serious writing down of debt were rejected by the Big Four, mainly because they did not want to jeopardise the position of their banks, who held much of the national debt in question.

The new measures had a certain effect, drawing some countries out of recession (notably the Big Four) but leaving others further myred in it (notably Puerto Rico). The most overt expression of this ‘two-track Commonwealth’ was the increasing divergence in bond yield spreads between countries. By the end of 1977, the UK had not only climbed out of recession but was estimated to have made more than £1,000,000,000 out of the crisis as investors flocked to safer British government bonds. By July 1978 Canada, Australia and the Bahamas were also benefiting from zero or even negative interest rates. On short-term bonds (i.e. those with a maturity of less than a year), Pakistan and Ceylon were also amongst the beneficiaries.

The contrast with the two crisis countries was stark. Puerto Rico was particularly badly hit, its debt crisis exacerbated by a state infrastructure (particularly as regards tax-raising) that was weak and had been left to decay by successive governments, along with a spending policy that had relied on borrowed funds to cover up for tax raising failures (in this sense Joseph's comment about the country being over-taxed was not only harsh but flatly incorrect). Barrios’ New Progressive Party had come to power on the promise not only of a fairer management of the crisis but also a radical transformation of the Puerto Rican economy. But it looked as if his government had been, in effect, screwed over by the pure power politics of the Big Four. Over 1977, Puerto Rican GDP decreased by 8%, corporate bankruptcies increased by 27%, Puerto Rican purchasing power fell by 40% and unemployment hit 8% (with youth unemployment standing at 60% in January 1978). Newfoundland suffered, if anything, worse, even as its more compliant government was regarded by the Big Four as a ‘good debtor.’ GDP contracted by 7% in 1977 and unemployment rose to 15%.

With his government increasingly convinced of the impossibility of enacting the austerity agenda imposed by the Big Four, Barrios moved his government to more radical acts. When a June 1978 conference again produced only agreement on a further bailout without a meaningful haircut, Barrios called a national referendum on its terms, with he and the majority of his party campaigning for it to be rejected. When it was put to him in an interview that this would in practice mean that Puerto Rico would have to leave the sterling zone (and, effectively, the Commonwealth too) Barrios commented that this was a risk he was prepared to take in order to save his country. The referendum returned a decisive (61-39) result in favour of rejecting the terms of the bailout. In May 1979, Barrios' government formally delivered notice to the Commonwealth Assembly that he intended for Puerto Rico to leave the organisation in three years, furthering a sense of general decay.

This move immediately plunged the Commonwealth further into crisis, with currency speculators attacking the pound and lending facilities further drying up. This spread the crisis back to the Big Four and the UK returned to recession in the final two quarters of 1978. The size of the bailouts, historically unprecedented and now looking like they had been useless, also contributed to a spike in inflation, which peaked at 22% in 1979. The stage was set for a dramatic showdown between the Big Four, on the one hand, and the Bank of England on the other. In May 1979 a secret agreement between Joseph and John Howard (the Australian finance minister) allowed Britain and Australia to unilaterally seize control of interest rates and begin an aggressive attack on inflation heedless of the consequences for unemployment. As discussed above, the unusual legal structure of the Bank of England and the consensual way in which it had been managed previously meant that it was within the power of the British government to do this but it broke an unwritten rule that had previously given the Bank responsibility in this area.

Inflation fell below 10% by the beginning of 1980 but UK unemployment rose to 9.5% over the same period, a level not seen since the 1930s. Unemployment was particularly bad in Ireland, where nearly 20% of the adult population was out of work. Over the spring and summer of 1980, a wave of rioting broke out across the island, leading to Thatcher taking the extraordinary decision to declare a state of emergency and deploy the army in an attempt to enforce order. Defence Secretary Charles Haughey was fully behind the move and threatened the TUC with an extension of the state of emergency to cover the entirety of the UK if they embarked on widespread sympathy strikes.

Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals lost the 1979 Canadian elections to the Progressive Conservatives of Flora Macdonald. With recession, rioting and governmental changes now rampant across the Commonwealth, the Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping described it as “the sick man of the Security Council” in 1980. The winter of 1980-81 was a gloomy one in the UK: dominated by industrial unrest and government failures, it soon came to be known as the ‘Winter of Discontent.’

 

[Rattigan]

A Blueprint for Survival: Environmentalism at the Heart of Government and the Death of King Coal

David Attenborough answers questions about his white paper, December 1976


Both at the time and since, Thatcher’s government has been most famous for its economic and Commonwealth policy and this did indeed take up much of its energy. But this should not obscure the way that it was also active on environmental policy. Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine and Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Russell Johnston pursued a policy of energy independence for the UK, building on the work that David Attenborough had accomplished during his eleven years in the role. In December 1976, Heseltine, Johnston and Attenborough collaborated on the production of ‘A Blueprint for Survival.’ Part white paper, part popular science, the book advocated an ambitious policy to have the UK’s energy mix entirely free of fossil fuels by 2002, something or an irony considering how the SWF would continue to be one of the world’s major fossil fuel exporters for at least another decade.

By 1976, the UK was already a world-leader in nuclear and clean energy but Heseltine decided to push that even further. Use of coal had decreased over the decades and part of Heseltine’s plan was to close the final coal pits by 1991. In 1979, the UK experienced its first day without burning coal for fuel (for several centuries, at least) and in 1981 it experienced its first ‘coal-free’ week. Heseltine’s aggression in closing the remaining mines occasioned a series of strikes in Nottinghamshire (where the remaining mines were mostly based) over the course of the winter of 1980-81, part of the wider Winter of Discontent. It was, however, unsuccessful and the remaining miners returned to work in March 1981 with the closure plans unchanged.

Part of this was down to Thatcher’s inflexible attitude towards strikers of any stripe. But, at the same time, it was also illustrative of the decline in the importance of the National Union of Mineworkers since 1945. Once the most important union in the TUC, by 1981 it was already significantly smaller than the largest union for nuclear power workers (the Power Plant Union) and IT professionals (National Union of Computers). Together with the civil service union (the Public Service Union) and the doctors and nurses union (Confederation of Health Service Employees), they formed a powerful quartet at the head of the TUC that spread across the public and private sector. Under the surface, this was an important demonstration of the changes wrought in British society over the past few decades, as well as the way that Labour had interwoven itself into almost every facet of society.

Heseltine did much to force the issue of the environment into the British, Commonwealth and even global mainstream in the late 1970s. Previously the transition away from fossil fuels (for the domestic economy at least) and conservation of natural parks (both in the UK and around the Commonwealth) had been expressed in terms of nationalist energy independence and a certain sentimental attachment to animal rights. Heseltine and Attenborough worked closely with one another, a relationship that continued with less partisan rage about it after the latter was appointed the Environment Commissioner to the Commonwealth Cabinet in 1980. They were responsible for convening the first UN conference considering global carbon emission reduction targets in 1977.

Heseltine’s environmentalist work had two main legislative results. The first was the 1979 Arusha Protocol, an international treaty designed to phase out chemicals causing the depletion of the ozone layer. The second was the Environmental Protection Act 1981, passed into law only two weeks before Parliament was dissolved. The act gave wide-ranging powers to the Environment Secretary to identify and draft regulations regarding certain emissions processes and empowered him to draft regulations to cover the disposal of waste. The Act itself thus left much to the interpretation and vigor of whoever the relevant Environment Secretary was at the time but it was still a significant step forward, creating a framework for a dramatic future regulation of the UK’s environmental impact.

Much of this was a set up for important developments down the line. With Attenborough serving as Environment Commissioner ensuring that environmental issues were never far from the top of the Commonwealth agenda, he and Jonathon Porritt, the Environment Secretary after the 1981 election, would embark on ambitious new programmes.

 

[Rattigan]

Pre-emptive apologies for the slightly dodgy infobox this time.

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A New Hope? The General Election of 1981

Thatcher delayed going to the country for as long as possible, eventually setting the election date for June 1981. By this point, the Winter of Discontent had resulted in negative growth in the first quarter of 1981 and few thought that the second quarter wouldn’t see the UK returning to recession. Few, also, thought that the election would be a positive one for the Liberals The troika at the top of the government - Thatcher, Joseph and Haughey - were divisive figures whose autocratic and confrontational style was seen to have worsened the crisis in the UK while causing chaos in the Commonwealth at the same time.

Matters were not helped when, in May 1981, Evan Durbin released a statement formally disagreeing with the policy of the Big Four as regards the Commonwealth crisis and providing the broad sketches of an alternative route. This was a gift for Labour, the biggest that they could have hoped for. Previously, the party had generally taken an oppositional attitude towards whatever the government’s economic policy had been at the time. But now they had a ready-made economic policy and Shadow Chancellor Roy Jenkins announced that Labour would adopt the Bank of England’s suggestion and urge fiscal reform on the Commonwealth to bring an end to the crisis.

When they had lost the 1976 election, many analysts expected Labour to fall into factional fighting now that the sticking plaster of power was gone. However, that did not happen. Roy Jenkins and Michael Foot stood for the leadership at the head of the right and left wings of the party but a factional fight was headed off when Bill Rodgers successfully stood as the moderate candidate and won on two ballots. Rodgers had had a reasonable cabinet career, serving as Minister for Transport (1966-69), Minister for Supply (1969-71) and Chief Whip (1971-76). He had not become identified with any of Labour’s various factions and had instead distinguished himself as a good party manager well liked by his colleagues. Labour MPs, it turned out, valued competent managerialism over factionalism, a fitting view for a party that had had so much success under leaders like Attlee, Gaitskell and Castle. Demonstrating his skills, Rodgers immediately populated his shadow cabinet with a figures from all corners of the party. Both of his leadership opponents found positions, with Jenkins as Shadow Chancellor and Foot as Shadow Defence Secretary.

By keeping his party together and focused on regaining power, Rodgers did enough. The Liberals had been trusted with power for the first time since 1945 and, in the view of the public, had failed to prove themselves worthy of that trust. In a desperate attempt to hold down their losses, Thatcher had announced in 1979 that Jenkins’ reforms to the makeup of Parliament would be implemented for the next election. She also sacked Joseph in March 1981, replacing him with the more conciliatory Douglas Hurd. Nevertheless, the night itself was a disaster for the government. Liberal support collapsed nationwide in the face of a ruthless Labour campaign highlighting the Liberal incompetence which had lead to continuing misery at home and humiliation abroad. The result was a landslide for Labour. Their total of 447 seats was larger than after the famed landslide of 1945 (albeit with a larger Parliament). On the morning after the election night, Rodgers announced that the military would withdraw from the streets of Ireland by August.

The Conservatives too managed to make great strides, scooping up 23 more seats. In Ferdinand Mount the party had found another witty and urbane leader but this time one who combined that with a coherent message and good party management. Nearly doubling their previous seat total, the Conservatives were a beneficiary both of the Liberal collapse and of the introduction of proportional seats, where they made several gains.

The changes in UK politics were dramatic and reconfigured the political response to the Commonwealth crisis. Further impetus behind the change would, however, have to come from elsewhere.

 

[Rattigan]

Heroic Failure: Puerto Rico and the Politics of Pain

Following the reversal in the British political scene in June, events in Puerto Rico in August and September 1981 proved to be a watershed in Commonwealth history. Over the past two years, Ruben Berrios’ Puerto Rican government had been negotiating terms on which the country would leave the bloc. However, these talks had been slow-moving, with Tony Crosland doing everything he could behind the scenes to prevent Puerto Rico being offered reasonable terms, all the while working to ensure the accession of Belize as a new member state. When he retired in June 1981 (Belize being inducted as a member on his final day in office) he was replaced by the former West Indian prime minister Michael Manley. Manley, a critic of many aspects of the Commonwealth (not least the distribution of seats in the Assembly), had been expected by some to be an ally of Puerto Rico in their fight for debt relief.

However, the opposite turned out to be the case. Having cut his teeth in the hard-nosed confederal politics of the West Indies in the first decade of the country’s existence, Manley had a clear view of the dangers facing small countries in the world. Consequently, he privately resolved to cut off at the knees any attempts at Puerto Rican secession, not only because he reasoned that this would be better for Puerto Rico itself but in order to discourage similar attempts by any Caribbean islands. In this he found an ally in Lord Hailsham, the new Commonwealth President and a paternalistic aristocrat of the old school. Both worked together to spike the negotiations with Puerto Rico, the beginning of what would be a fruitful working relationship despite coming from seemingly opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Frustrated by the ending of the negotiations, Berrios returned to his previous strategy of high-stakes brinkmanship. On 28 July he produced his own unilateral exit terms and announced a vote on it in the Puerto Rican parliament for the following week. Designed to appeal to the more extreme factions of his own party and scare the Commonwealth, the document would have Puerto Rico leave the Commonwealth on 31 May 1982 and (among other things) repudiate the debt it owned denominated in sterling and float its own currency, all the while continuing to receive remittances from the Asset Management Agency.

It was an incoherent document, effectively demanding that Puerto Rico retain all the benefits of remaining in the Commonwealth while also leaving it, and one which bore little resemblance to the tentative discussions that had been sketched out with Commonwealth officials. However, if the main purpose was to antagonise the Commonwealth, it certainly did that. It was immediately met with a furious response from the Commonwealth. Crosland, only two months into his retirement, denounced it as a threat to his life’s work and this was echoed in statements made by both Hailsham and Manley. When the Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev cheekily suggested that a departed Puerto Rico could find a home in the Soviet sphere of influence, the Commonwealth attitude only hardened.

Furthermore, in an effort to appease his extreme flank, Berrios’ ‘deal’ had managed to alienate moderates in his party. Smelling blood in the water, both the Conservative and Popular Democratic parties came out against the deal and aggressively whipped their MPs to vote it down. With a majority of only two in the first place, Berrios told his MPs that he would treat the vote as a matter of confidence but, with it becoming clear that, even if the deal did pass the Puerto Rican legislature, it would be a dead letter as a matter of negotiating with the Commonwealth, his hopes were doomed and his deal went down to a loss of 25-76. Berrios immediately resigned and called a snap election for 26 September.

The results were both dramatic and confusing. Berrios’ New Progressive Party split, with a moderate faction led by Fernando Martin Garcia opposing the deal and in favour of a different one. (What this meant in practice, of course, was unclear.) Both the Conservatives and Popular Democrats, however, adopted an explicitly anti-exit position, arguing that Berrios’ brinkmanship had brought the island to the verge of catastrophe. In the days after the election, an effort was made to reach out to Martin’s Green Party but these proved fruitless when it became clear that they did not favour ending the exit process, merely trying to renegotiate it. Instead, the Conservatives and Popular Democrats agreed to form a grand coalition under the Conservative Carlos Romero Barcelo. In truth, the two parties had little in common and had been avowed enemies for their entire existences. Nevertheless, under the pressures of the Commonwealth crisis, they could agree that it was vital for Puerto Rico to remain in the bloc.

In this, they were helped by the other elections in the Big Four that took place over 1980-81. As we have seen, 1981 saw a change in government in the United Kingdom. In Canada, Jean-Luc Pepin’s Liberals ended Flora MacDonald’s disastrous tenure in 1981 and Gough Whitlam’s Labour and Zulfikar Bhutto’s PPL had both returned to government in 1980 promising a change of approach towards the Commonwealth debt crisis. The change of Commonwealth leadership, with Hailsham and Manley now sitting in the top jobs, also pressaged a different way of dealing with the crisis countries. All of the important players were now united in the belief that Puerto Rico should remain and that the Commonwealth should be reformed in order to put the nightmares of the previous decade behind them.

On 1 October, Barcelo formally went to London and delivered a withdrawal of Puerto Rico’s original intent to leave. A week later, Durbin gave a press conference in which he stated that he would do “whatever it takes” to ensure the continued stability of the single currency and the coherence of the Commonwealth. This calmed the financial markets and gave the governments around the Commonwealth room to breathe and develop what would eventually become a more comprehensive package of reforms.

 

[Rattigan]

Returning to a previous topic you said that in TTL , Beeching (or the ttl equivalent) called for retention of the entire rail network and wide scale electrification . Considering that, by 1981, how large would the electrified railway network be and another question (as a rail enthusiast) - Was steam traction retired by 1981 or it is still fine and well?
PS: Refering just to Britain, not the Commonwealth in general

Steam traction is still around but only on heritage lines, I'm afraid. You won't find it on the main railways anymore. The electrified network is very large and accounts for just over 50% of total passenger kilometres. The first full trunk line was opened in 1970, connecting London-Birmingham-Manchester-Glasgow-Edinburgh and was expanded to connect all the major cities in England, Wales and Scotland (as well as one linking Dublin and Belfast) over the course of the 70s to early 80s. The backbone of the rail system, however, remains commuter rails: the most popular railway is the London Orbital Railway (TTL's M25 equivalent), which was constructed between 1966 and 1976.

* * *
​

Also, I've just remembered that someone a while ago asked me how space exploration is going so here's a quick and dirty list of the major 'firsts' up to the end of 1981.

4 March 1953 - first artificial satellite - Commonwealth/Megaroc 6
3 April 1953 - first animal (a dog named 'Lucky') in orbit - Commonwealth/Megaroc 7
19 April 1956 - failure of the first Commonwealth manned mission - Commonwealth/Sol 1
7 August 1956 - first photograph of Earth from orbit - USA/Explorer 6
13 October 1956 - first impact on the moon - Soviet Union/Luna 2
19 March 1957 - first animals to return alive from orbit - Soviet Union/Luna 7
14 February 1958 - first flyby of Venus - Commonwealth/Megaroc 16
15 July 1959 - first solar probe - Soviet Union/Perun 5
14 November 1959 - first flyby of Mars - Commonwealth/Megaroc 19
12 December 1959 - first human spaceflight (Alexei Ledowsky) - Soviet Union/Vostok 1
17 January 1960 - first American in space (John L. Whitehead, Jr.) - USA/Mercury 3
26 November 1961 - first impact on the far side of the moon - USA/Ranger 4
14 October 1963 - first close-up photos of Mars - Commonwealth/Halley 3
1 March 1964 - first spacewalk (Yuri Gagarin) - Soviet Union/Voskhod 1
5 November 1964 - first unmanned orbit of the moon - Soviet Union/Luna 11
18 May 1965 - first Commonwealth citizen in space (Lee Jones) - Commonwealth/Sol 3
21 December 1965 - first piloted orbit of the moon - USA/Apollo 8
20 April 1967 - first man on the moon (Gus Grissom) - USA/Apollo 11
19 February 1971 - launch of the first space station - Commonwealth/Salute 1
2 December 1971 - first Soviet man on the moon (Gherman Titov) - Soviet Union/Zond 8
4 September 1972 - first Commonwealth man on the moon (Philip K. Chapman) - Commonwealth/Cook 6
26 September 1972 - first soft landing on Mars - USA/Voyager 8
8 June 1974 to 20 February 1975 - first manned orbit of Venus - USA/Traveler 7
16 August to 13 September 1974 - first lunar base, first plants grown on the moon, first mission to spend more than a week on the moon - Commonwealth/Cook 12
11 July 1975 - first soil samples recovered from Mars - Commonwealth/Newton 3
12 April 1979 - first use of reusable spacecraft - Commonwealth/Space Shuttle
5 November 1980 - launch of first extended orbital exploration of Mars - USA/Traveler 13
11 July 1981 - launch of the first Soviet space station - Soviet Union/World

 

[Rattigan]

Adults in the Room: The Hogg-Manley Reforms and the Rescue of the Commonwealth

The eponymous Hogg and Manley


While Rodgers busied himself with domestic reform, he largely entrusted Commonwealth reform to his foreign policy team. Roy Jenkins did not move from Shadow Chancellor to the main job (that went to Dennis Healy, who had recovered from his slip of the tongue in 1976) but instead took up the job at the Foreign Office. Rodgers appointed Peter Shore, who had finished an eight-year stint as President of the Commonwealth Council in 1980 to return as a list MP in 1981, to the position of Commonwealth Secretary. Shore had been at loggerheads with the Big Four during the course of Thatcher’s premiership and by 1981 was a strong believer in the need for Commonwealth reform. Jenkins was more ambivalent on the issue but recognised the need for change after the failures of the previous decade.

The events of October 1981, both the general election in Puerto Rico and Durbin’s announcement of a defence of the pound, had given the Commonwealth breathing room. The economy returned to growth in the next two quarters and political tensions calmed. This in turn bought time for Shore and his reformist allies to prepare a massive reform package that was unveiled at a roundtable Commonwealth conference in April 1982. The centre point of the package was a series of widened powers for the Bank of England, the most notable of which was the proposal to give it the power to issue government bonds in decimalised sterling on behalf of all of the Commonwealth member states jointly. This was a major concession by the strong economies in the Sterling Zone and was important in further calming the structural problems facing heavily indebted countries. Under the new rules, governments of member states would be able to petition the Bank of England to make an issuance of these Commonwealth bonds and remit the funds to them. The bonds were then secured against the solvency of the Commonwealth as a whole, ensuring that interest rates would remain low (at least in theory). The Bank of England would be required to make the bond issuance provided that doing so would not cause serious damage to the integrity of the Commonwealth as a whole. In practice, this allowed smaller countries to borrow money on the international markets at significantly lower rates than previously available to them.

Tied to these technical monetary policies, Hailsham and Manley worked with their allies to push through a swath of Commonwealth legislation that moved well past the precedents which had been largely kept to since the Assembly had been established in the 1950s. Both agreed with Shore and the other big Four representatives that radical actions were required to reduce the overall Commonwealth debt to a sustainable level. The figure chosen was a write-off of £1,000,000,000. This was to be financed by a one-time wealth-tax of between 15 and 30% (depending on national wealth) levied on the non-crisis countries. Crisis countries, notably Puerto Rico, were not required to pay. In addition, the Commonwealth Assembly passed a regular flat tax of 10% on private wealth.

These Hogg-Manley Reforms, as they came to be known (Hailsham’s family name of ‘Hogg’ has traditionally been used in connection with them, for unclear reasons), were remarkable: combining radicalism and redistribution with an enormous expansion of the scope of the Commonwealth. It was politically contentious too and, realistically, was only allowed to pass because of the desperation of the political leaders for a change of tack following the disastrous 1970s. Across the Commonwealth, the political results were uneven even as, economically, the bloc returned to rude health. In Rhodesia, the troubles of the 1970s had caused the fall of the decades-long premiership of Garfield Todd, replaced by, first, Abel Muzorwera’s Liberals and, then, Joshua Nkomo’s Labour. Labour’s consecutive wins in 1979 and 1983 cemented Nkomo’s domination of the political scene and the final triumph of the promise of majority rule (although Rhodesia would remain a country with notable economic and racial inequality for many years to come). In East Africa, the general Commonwealth economy gave a boost to the country’s agricultural and tourism sectors and Julius Nyere’s Socialist Party won a second term with a narrow victory in 1985.

But it was of course to Puerto Rico that everybody looked to see how things would bed in. Following the failure of his exit package, Berrios had slunk into retirement to be replaced by his former enemy Fernando Martin Garcia. Martin Garcia dropped Berrios’ commitment to leaving the Commonwealth and successfully reunited the New Porgressive and Green Parties into the Progressive Green Party. With the threat of leaving the bloc removed, the Conervative-Democratic grand coalition predictably fell out over domestic policy, with a minor dispute over the management of the national health insurance service being the final straw that provoked the Democrats to leave. Romero Barcelo lost the subsequent elections in December 1982 and Rafael Hernandex Colon became prime minister at the head of a Democratic-Progressive Green coalition. Many observers noted with surprise how little the Hogg-Manley reforms came up in the campaign.

Indeed, while there was some attempt to paint the subsequent elections in the Big Four as some kind of referendum on the Hogg-Manley Reforms, these were semi-successful at best. Of the elections that the Big Four did have in the next five years, only the Australian one in 1983 was really seen at the time as dominated by an argument over the incumbent government’s role in passing the Reforms (in this case Gough Whitlam’s Labour Party, who were successful in their re-election bid). By the time that Pakistan and Canada went to the polls in 1985 and 1986, respectively, it was in fact remarkable how little the Hogg-Manley Reforms came up. In Pakistan, Bhutto’s government was eventually brought down over it’s perceived failure to get to grips with continued trades union issues. In Canada, Jean-Luc Pepin’s Liberals managed to retain their coalition majority off the back of a campaign dominated by the question of the potential secession of the western provinces.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that the Hoog-Manley Reforms did generate a wave of critique that came to be known as Angloscepticism. However, what practical results this could achieve appeared limited, at least in the short term. Most notably, Angloscepticism initially thrived as an oppositionist platform, finding a home, where it did at all, in whichever party was out of power at the time. So, in Puerto Rico, it came to be associated with the further left reaches of the New Progressive Party. In 1987, two MPs would split off to form the Puerto Rican Independence Party (“PRIP”), which would find a certain kind of audience, if only marginal electoral success, in the following years. Similarly, in Newfoundland it was often associated with the more statist Liberal Party. But on the other hand, in other countries it became a right wing movement, associated in Pakistan with the Liberals, in Canada with Progressive Conservatives and in Australia with the Liberals. (In this context the uneven naming conventions of parties in Commonwealth member states can be extremely confusing.) As David Marquand asked, rather contemptuously, of the movement: “what goals do a Puerto Rican Marxist, a Pakistani factory owner and a Cornish smallholder truly have in common?”

What indeed?

 

[Rattigan]

The Banality of Revolution: Bill Rodgers in Power

Living on the Edge: The return of economic prosperity in the 1980s saw an explosion of new fashions and technology


Labour had returned to power in 1981 mainly on the back of popular discontent with Liberal rule but its programme for government had been vague. When he got into office, Rodgers delegated much of the responsibility for what became the Hogg-Manley Reforms to Roy Jenkins and Peter Shore while he attempted to get to grips with the domestic problems that the Thatcher government had left behind it. Despite the attention of historians being focused on her government’s handling of Commonwealth and environmental affairs, at the time the foremost legacy of Thatcher’s premiership in Britain was thought to be her and Keith Joseph’s savage cuts to the welfare state. Labour had opposed the Liberals’ cuts to social security but it was not clear, now they were in power once more, whether Labour intended to simply reverse them or do something else. In general terms, there were three main schools of thought within the party.

The first school was dominated by what was generally considered to be the left of the party (although in this context they were kind of the most conservative) but had adherents from across most of the party’s political spectrum. In general terms, these people were in favour of simply returning to the model which had obtained in the UK since 1945. In practice, this would involve simply reversing Joseph’s budgets, with a few additions or subtractions around the edges (according to the flavour of the individual MP). A prominent exponent of this tendency was Michael Foot but his appointment as Education Secretary after the 1981 election indicated that he would be less influential in Rodgers’ final economic decision-making.

The second school was much smaller, made up of a small coterie of MPs on the right wing of the party. They had mixed feelings about many of the Thatcher-era cuts, viewing the 45-76 welfare state as in need of being trimmed. In practice, many of them viewed welfare as of secondary importance to other government programmes such advancing equality of opportunity and the maintenance of markets. Roy Jenkins was associated with this grouping but was, in truth, never fully of it and its informal cabinet-level spokesman was David Owen. Owen’s appointment as Defence Secretary was, like the appointment of Foot to Education, regarded by many as a sign that his tendency was being sidelined.

The final school was arguably the smallest but may have been the most adventurous. This school saw the question of welfare reform not just as one of whether to reverse or retain the Thatcher-era cuts but as an opportunity to replace them with something else. This attracted figures from across the political spectrum, from the technocratic Tony Benn through to Shirley Williams on the left and John Smith closer to the right. In many respects they were less of a coherent wing than a kind of parliamentary think tank - with some favouring an American-style guaranteed jobs programme, others a universal basic income and others nursing even more adventurous ideas. But the force and energy of their ideas, alongside the heterodox voices advancing them inside the party, meant that they attained a level of influence outside of their mere numbers.

In this context, Rodgers’ managerial, conciliatory style proved immensely valuable not only in making sure that the parliamentary party remained united but also that the policy debates were carried out internally rather than in the pages of the press. An informal ‘welfare cabinet’ was put together to manage and coordinate welfare reforms, consisting of Rodgers himself, the Chancellor Denis Healy, Home Secretary Roy Hattersley, President of the Board of Trade Tony Benn and Welfare Minister Shirley Williams. With figures drawn from across the party’s political spectrum, it also demonstrated the government’s openness to new ideas.

Over the next five years, Rodgers’ government rolled out a series of policies that were a mixture of fudge and ambition. Most of the Thatcher-era cuts were rolled back, with between two-thirds and three-quarters being simply reinstated. (Estimates vary in this context due to the fact that certain benefits were reinstated with different methods of calculating them.) In particular, social security payments relating to disability and maternity assistance were brought back in 1981 and increased in 1983 and 1984 as the economy recovered.

In the winter of 1982/3 the government unveiled the first part of its most ambitious reform package: an unconditional income guaranteed to all families. A trial run began in the Irish province of Ulster in January 1983, with plans for a national roll-out in the 1984/85 financial year in the event of successful results there. Millions of pounds were budgeted to provide the 1,600,000 people in Ulster with a guaranteed income of £200 a month. The trial had three big questions that it needed to answer: firstly, would people work less (or at all) with a guaranteed income?; secondly, would the program be too expensive; and, finally, would it be politically feasible?

Contrary to many of the predictions of its opponents, researchers found that the reduction in working hours was small to negligible. What declines did occur were mostly attributed to people with young children. Other declines were thought to have been compensated by people performing other useful activities, such as a search for better jobs. One mother took a night course in psychology and got a job as a researcher at Queen’s University. Another took acting classes while her husband indulged his previously private passion for classical music composition. Amongst people in their teens and twenties there was an increase in part-time and further education, including re-training for new jobs. Although it still had its opponents in the cabinet (not least Healy, who was quietly reshuffled in February 1984 in favour of Smith), the government announced that the plan would be rolled out across the entire nation for the financial year 1984/85.

After 1982, the economy began to return to growth, averaging 4% per annum by the beginning of 1986. There remains a significant controversy about the reasons for this growth, with some people identifying the calming effects of the Hogg-Manley Reforms, while others give credit to the increased profits of the SWF following the successful diversifying of its portfolio and an oil-price spike in the early 1980s.

The final major development in Rodgers’ first term was one which owed little to him personally. Since its rollout over the whole of the UK government service in 1979, the internet had enjoyed great success. In March 1980 the Commonwealth bureaucracy in London was connected and in September Donald Davies produced the Internet Protocol Suite (“IPS”). A landmark work, the IPS was a set of communications protocols which provided a means by which the internet could be expanded to other countries. The Commonwealth Assembly adopted a series of regulations which provided the legal means for this to take place. Inspired by Attlee’s Atoms for Peace programme in the 1950s, the Commonwealth regulations provided for an expansion to other Commonwealth nations, not outside it.

In October 1980, the first trans-Atlantic high speed link was completed between the National Physical Laboratory outside Liverpool and McGill University in Canada. In April 1981, Peter Kirstein began writing ‘Explorer,’ the world’s first web browser, work which he completed three months later. On 1 August 1981 Explorer was rolled out across all government institutions in the Commonwealth. In October 1984, the British Library was connected to the internet and began the process of digitising its entire catalogue. In May 1985, the first private institutions, commercial deposit banks, began to be connected, followed by the CBC and other broadcast media institutions three months later. Finally, on 6 August 1986 the internet was made open to the public.

The mood of the country was buoyant once more with the successful launch of the CSA space station ‘Gaia’ in January 1986. With the Liberals mired in civil war between the ‘Thatcherites’ (or ‘neo-Gladstonians’ as they called themselves) and moderates and Labour getting credit for solid economic management, Rodgers’ dissolved Parliament and went to the country in spring 1986.

 

[Rattigan]

After Nehru: Hindu Nationalism and Politics in Post-Independence India

Clashes between Indian police and Keralan protestors, April 1984

In the history of twentieth-century nationalism, there is a distinct subgroup where religion played a central organising role from the beginning of the movement. The most obvious examples of this case are the post-colonial states of the Indian subcontinent: Pakistan, Bengal, Ceylon and India itself. As we have seen, in Pakistan and Ceylon the practical demographics worked against the perseverance of a purely confessional state and the existence of irreligious (or at least areligious) elites worked towards the establishment of what eventually became thriving, if imperfect, parliamentary democracies. In Bengal, a sadder story took place: caught between two confessional nationalisms, the country descended into polarisation and civil war, resulting in the imposition of a communist dictatorship and the further partition of the country.

India followed a different path from its compatriots. Under the towering figure of Jawaharlal Nehru, a stable parliamentary democracy took shape. The INC, and Nehru himself, dominated the Lok Sabha and attempted to distance itself from the confessional undertow of the Indian independence movement (which had been, in practice, dominated by Hindu confessionalism even as it clung to secularism in theory) without ever being able to tackle this legacy head-on. The Indian Union did not profess explicit religious allegiance but no INC leader proved able to openly combat the pietism that Gandhi had injected into the movement. After the collapse of the Dominion in 1951, Gandhi notionally retired from politics but remained informally involved until his death in 1964, saturating his periodic declarations with Hindu pathos. Until his own death that same year, Nehru’s charisma managed to mask the compromised origins of his state but afterwards matters rapidly degenerated. His successor, V.K. Krishna Menon, ruled the country for the next eight years, injecting a further irrationalist element into the political system through his repeated irredentist claims to regions of the Punjab and support for Hindu separatists in Bengal: mingling blood and faith into a potent cocktail.

When Indira Gandhi took over after Menon’s assassination in 1972, she made more of a show of her secularism but continued, in practice, to toy with confessional appeals when it was expedient. By the 1970s, Indians were now fully aware of the vast economic growth in their neighbours in Pakistan and Ceylon and were eager for the pickings of similar prosperity in their own country. In these conditions, the ground was prepared for the People's Party - who made no secret of it appeal to Hindu nationalism - to enter into its inheritance. Key to this process, too, was the marginalisation of the political left (the largest party of which was the Indian Communist Party), a structural result of the dominance of Hinduism in the national identity.

Of course, it took a series of contingent events to lead to the fall of the INC. It probably began with the manipulation and repression of Christian and Marxist insurgents in the south of the subcontinent, followed by its retribution in Menon’s assassination in 1972, with the ensuing pogrom being quietly applauded by INC figures. The corruption that had ballooned around Nehru and Menon was then generalised under Indira, crystallising the conditions for the People's Party’s victory in the 1976 election. This result was greeted with intense alarm by many of India’s intellectuals but it also illustrated how they (and the Indian state) had failed, in the post-1951 period, to separate state and religion, never mind to develop a systematic critique of Hinduism.

In the end the INC was basically outflanked by a more extreme party which had fewer inhibitions about appealing directly to the theological passions aroused by the original independence movement. The People's Party's success was due not just to the faltering of the first wave of INC office-holders but to Balasaheb Deoras’ and his colleagues’ abilities to articulate openly what had always been latent in the national movement and which the INC had neither acknowledged nor repudiated. To an extent, by the late 1970s, the Janata Party were probably closer to the original Indian independence cause (at least as it had been since the adoption of Swaraj as its rallying cry) than the INC’s quasi-socialist authoritarianism.

One region where this development was particularly alarming was Kerala, where not only was there a significant Christian minority (nearly 30% by 1980 - helped by Hindu and Muslim emmigration in recent decades) but also a noted leftist tradition. A communist government had been elected in 1957, resulting in the INC conniving at religious agitation to overthrow it. The central government contrived to have the Keralan state government overthrown no fewer than five times after that, in each case when the Communist Party won an election and subsequently took things ‘too far.’ Already chafing under this soft repression from New Delhi, the majority of Keralans were horrified when the People's Party won the 1976 election (no People's Party MPs were returned from the state) and this was only compounded when they won a majority again in 1981.

Matters came to a head in December 1983, when the Communist Party won a landslide in the Keralan state elections. As was, by this stage, almost par for the course in Indian politics, New Delhi declared President’s Rule in the state and disestablished the state government in March 1984. In response, E.K. Nayanar, the leader of the Communists, declared a general strike and urged the citizens of Kerala to resist. The first sign that this was going to be a serious step up from the previous routine of passive resistance was when the New Delhi-backed government had to wait five days to find a judge in the state willing to swear them in. On 23 March 1984, things took another step towards a deeper crisis than usual when a unit of Keralan soldiers refused orders to leave barracks and put down a demonstration in Trivandrum.

On 6 April, the Indian army began a military operation to take control of the major population centres and eliminate all political and military opposition, under the cover of suppressing anti-Hindu violence. Before the beginning of the operation, all foreign journalists were systematically hunted down and deported. As well as their military operations, the Indian army also unleashed a wave of anti-Christian and anti-Muslim pogroms that are estimated to have, over the course of nine months, killed between 100,000 and 1,000,000 people and resulted in the rape of between 60,000 and 150,000 women. On 25 April, the University of Kerala was attacked by Indian soldiers, with over 500 students, academics and staff being murdered in cold blood. The sheer violence of the Indian campaign proved to be the final straw and Nayanar proclaimed Keralan independence on the night of 26-27 April.

Keralan forces waged a mass guerilla war against the Indian military, liberating numerous towns in the first months of fighting and carrying out widespread sabotage against Indian naval ships and even successfully stealing Indian Air Force planes to carry out sorties. They received covert help from the Commonwealth, mostly from the Pakistani government and the Five Eyes Agency. By November, the Indian military had been restricted to its barracks after dark and the Keralans controlled the countryside. Amidst a general crisis, Deoras lost a vote of no confidence in his government in September and at the subsequent elections the People's Party lost its majority and a coalition of the INC and numerous small parties returned Indira Gandhi to government in November.

Despite campaigning on taking a harder line on Kerala, Indira’s government quickly changed course and sought a ceasefire. On 16 December, she ordered the remaining Indian units in Kerala to withdraw and signed a declaration recognising Keralan independence the next day. The Commonwealth immediately promoted Kerala’s application to join the UN but this would not be finally accepted until 1988, when China (an ally of India’s) agreed to withdraw its veto.

Prime Ministers of India

1. Jawaharlal Nehru; INC; April 1948 - May 1964
2. V.K. Krishna Menon; INC; May 1964 - March 1972
3. Indira Gandhi; INC; March 1972 - July 1976
4. Balasaheb Deoras; People’s Party; July 1976 - November 1984
5. Indira Gandhi; INC; November 1984 - October 1988
6. L.K. Advani; People’s Party; October 1988 -

 

[Rattigan]

Gods at War: The Expansion of the United Kingdom Sovereign Wealth Fund

The offices of the SWF at Lansdowne House, Berkeley square, London


Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, one of the consistent facts about the United Kingdom was that it was a dominant (occasionally the dominant) energy-producing nation. In the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, this had come in the form of coal. From the late nineteenth century it had come in the form of oil, first from the Empire and after that from efficient and energetic exploitation of the North Sea oil and gas fields by the SWF. SWF funds were further augmented when oil and gas fields were discovered in Canada and Australia over the course of the 1950s. These were managed by Canadian Natural Resources and Australian Worldwide Exploration, both funds established along similar lines to the SWF. Under an agreement signed in 1954, the CNR and AWE agreed to pay their funds for investment into a single fund pooled with the SWF, furthering that organisation’s already-gargantuan investment reach.

The founding of OPEC in 1955 had further empowered the Commonwealth in its control over energy markets. With a founding membership of Arabia, the Benelux, the Commonwealth, France, Kuwait, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, OPEC was designed to stand up to the United States, the Soviet Union and Iran. Especially after Portugal withdrew in favour of the newly-independent Guinea-Bissau and Angola in 1975, the Commonwealth was the de facto leader of the group and by 1970 it had become probably the most dominant influence on global oil prices, guaranteeing the supply of cheap oil that many have since regarded as being key to the economic growth of the decades after 1945.

However, by the beginning of the 1980s, the mood in Commonwealth politics had turned against fossil fuels. Since the publication of the Sawyer Report in 1972, the scientific community had increasingly cohered around the position that the use of fossil fuels was creating the greenhouse effect and accelerating manmade climate change. More shall be said on the other international consequences of these developments elsewhere but they had a big effect on the public and political view of the SWF. Rather than seeing it as an unalloyed good, many now began to see its activities as potentially harmful.

In early 1982, the government made amendments to the SWF’s charter, giving it permission to diversify its income-generating investments. In particular, it was now allowed to make purchases of non-Commonwealth assets, something which had previously not been allowed, with partial and (very) limited exceptions. Effectively, this transformed the SWF at a stroke into the world’s largest and most powerful private equity fund. Although it was not actually the first such investment, the most notable of these early investments was the purchase of the American baseball team the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1982 off-season. Flush with this investment of cash, the Dodgers would go on to finally become the dominant team they had so-regularly promised to be, winning World Series titles in 1984, 1985 and 1989.

The most dramatic exhibition of the SWF’s new directive, not to mention its reach, would come in December 1984 with the signing of the Sino-Commonwealth Joint Declaration. A bilateral treaty signed between China and the Commonwealth (the first time the Commonwealth had signed such an agreement on its own behalf), the Joint Declaration was the culmination of a long-term process of modernisation and reform in China led by the Democratic Socialist Party since it had recovered power under Zhou Enlai in 1973. Rejecting the nationalist approach which had obtained under the Progress and Development Party, the Democratic Socialists, now dominated by the triumvirate of President Zhao Ziyang, Premier Hu Yaobang and Finance Minister Deng Xiaoping, sought to bring in foreign direct investment but under close supervision.

The headline agreement of the Joint Declaration was that it ended the slowly-simmering question about the sovereignty of the New Territories of Hong Kong when the lease expired on them on 1 July 1997. The Chinese government agreed to end its claim to the sovereignty of Hong Kong (added to their constitution in a fit of nationalist pique in 1958 but never seriously acted on) and in turn the Commonwealth agreed to transition to an independent Hong Kong that would come into existence on 1 July 1997. Significantly, the Chinese government agreed to sell the New Territories to the Commonwealth (who would then transfer them to the Hong Kong colony and the subsequent city-state) for £40,000,000,000 in Commonwealth investments in the Chinese economy, primarily in railways, roads and airport infrastructure over the next twelve years. This was to be followed by a further £40,000,000,000 in cash in July 1997.

While the cash payment would be made out of the treasury funds of the Commonwealth member states, the initial investments would be made by the SWF. It was a dramatic flexing of the SWF’s investment muscles and a clear message to the rest of the world.

 

[Rattigan]

Quick little infobox on everybody's favourite humble finance minister...

 

[Rattigan]

Everything We Want: Bill Rodgers at his Zenith

1986 continued the British tradition of alternating between dramatic and boring elections. Labour defended its economic record and the Liberals and the Conservatives remorselessly attacked them. In many ways it seemed to be going back to the 1950s and ‘60s. What was remarkable, to many analysts, was the way that the question of Commonwealth relations barely came up as an issue. In the end, Labour lost 16 of its most vulnerable seats but retained a comfortable majority of 56. The insouciance, some would say arrogance, of the Labour top table was illustrated by the revelation, after polling day, that Roy Jenkins had spent a fortnight during the campaign on holiday in Tuscany.

The Liberals had gone into the campaign under Cyril Smith, who had won the leadership owing to his position as being the closest the party had to a consensual figure (at the time of course - the subsequent revelations about his private abuses notwithstanding). However, this proved to be too much for the most hardcore neo-Gladstonians in the party and, in March 1983, a group of MPs (dubbed the ‘Gang of Four’) issued the Leeds Declaration. Made up of Keith Joseph, Nigel Lawson, Norman Tebbit and Michael Dobbs, the Liberal Democrat Party, as they called themselves, offered something distinctive to the British public: minimal state, low taxation and a foreign policy of isolationism. However, while it was popular amongst right wing intellectuals, it failed to gain wider interest amongst Liberal MPs (none followed the Gang of Four out of the party, with Thatcher herself being a notable non-defector) or the public, with all four losing their seats at the general election (all to Liberal candidates) and the Liberal Democrats disappeared from view as quickly as they had arrived. The Liberal gain of 21 (including the Gang of Four’s seats) was encouraging in that it did not consign the party to oblivion but little more than that.

The Conservative campaign was mildly disappointing, with a reduction in their vote leading to them losing 2 proportional seats and a constituency one. Mount himself, despite receiving praise for his handling of the party, faced a scare in his constituency seat of Wokingham. In a connected development, at the next election he announced that he would stand as a party list MP, notionally so that he could more adequately represent Conservatives from across the nation. This would inaugurate an interesting and developing tradition in British politics whereby party leaders increasingly came to stand on the party list rather than in constituencies.

The first piece of domestic reform that Rodgers’ second ministry undertook was the Health and Social Care Act 1987, which shifted a lot of the funding for the NHS off the government’s books through a series of mutualisations. This effectively turned GP’s offices, commissioning services and old age care into a series of cooperatives with state funding and a very general state supervision. A&E and acute patient care remained under more direct government control. Although these reforms required a large amount of upfront cost over the first year, it proved popular with the profession and, over the course of the next few fiscal rounds, the government was revealed to have saved billions of pounds. Elsewhere, in 1988 the government reformed public transport, abolishing ticket fees on rail and bus services. Bus services were mostly in private hands and so the profits these companies made were, in the future, to be agreed according to contracts negotiated between the companies, relevant trades unions and civil servants.

The other major domestic reform of Rodgers’ second term was focused on the structure of financial markets. After a slump in financial activity from the 1930s up to the late 1940s, the City of London had rebounded to the point that it had re-asserted its role as the world’s premier financial and business centre by the mid-1960s. As proven by the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the UK - through the Commonwealth and the SWF - could be counted on as a major creditor nation. However, with the Hogg-Manley Reforms, it gradually became clear that many of the, frankly, protectionist City regulations may be becoming illegal. One side-regulation in Hogg-Manley was equal recognition of services in member states, which raised issues around City regulations on stock jobbers, who in 1986 were still required to hold British passports. A case was brought against the City of London Corporation by the Office of Fair Trading in 1988 on precisely these grounds but the government stepped in and agreed to work with the Corporation and the independent regulators to bring in a new set of legal regulations in return for the OFT dropping their investigation.

John Smith was moved to the Treasury in a minor reshuffle in 1988 and he proved key to the drafting of a set of agreements that were finalised as the Financial Services Act 1989. The Act opened up the City to an extent, abolishing the previous regime of minimum commissions and allowing citizens from other Commonwealth countries to become members of the London Stock Exchange. In addition, the rules surrounding stock jobbers were tightened up, designed to ensure that they actually did their job of providing liquidity (by holding lines of stocks and shares on their books) both in theory and in practice. It also set a strict limit on debt and equity sizes for merchant banks, effectively preventing the wide-scale mergers seen in countries such as the French Union and separating merchant and retail banking.

With this coherent international reach, the UK finance industry furthered and finalised its evolution into a Commonwealth finance industry, with a central node operating out of the City and smaller junior outposts in Toronto, Chamberlain, San Juan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Although international trade continued to be denominated in bancors, sterling came to be seen as an increasingly safe harbour and used as a reserve by many countries who lacked sufficient amounts of gold. By the year 2000, sterling had conclusively come through the disasters of the 1970s and proved the doubters wrong.

 

[Rattigan]

A Green and Pleasant Land: Bill Rodgers, Robert Kennedy and the Forging of Global Climate Policy

Vice President Martin Luther King Jr. addresses crowds protesting the Big Five's oil embargo, August 1985


Aside from its legacy of substantial domestic and Commonwealth reform, Rodgers’ ministries were also significant in pursuing global action on climate change. In this, the British government found a very welcoming international environment. Key to this was the figure of the American scientist Gordon J.F. MacDonald, who had served in various capacities in the American academic-government nexus since the 1950s and was, since 1965, a member of the President's Science Advisory Board. His authorship of the 1979 MacDonald Report and testimony before Congress the following year (in both cases reflecting a general consensus on the issue in the scientific community that had obtained for a number of years) catapulted the debate to the forefront of the public consciousness. During the presidential campaign of 1980 and following his inauguration in January 1981, President Robert F. Kennedy took up the cause himself.

With the Commonwealth as a whole generally committed to environmentalism (which is not to say that every member state was individually), this was a cause of a notable rapprochement between the two powers, after two decades of coolness. With Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan having been elected to the position of General Secretary of the UN in February 1981, there was also a friendly voice in that organisation. Working together, the Commonwealth, the United States and the United Nations were able to build a consensus on climate change and the need to take action.

The first breakthrough came at the first UN Conference on Development and the Environment, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1982. This resulted in the Framework Convention on Climate Change and was followed up by another conference in Munich in 1985, which sought to outline specific targets. At the same time, the United States was going through a dramatic energy showdown that fundamentally changed the political calculus for the Kennedy Administration.

For eleven months from March 1985, the cartel of ‘Big Five’ oil producers in America instituted an embargo on oil for the domestic American market. Angry at the Kennedy Administration’s plan to introduce carbon taxes, the cartel of oil barons hoped to bring the American economy to its knees in a demonstration of its power and reach. However, following the threat of such a boycott made in 1982, the EPA, chaired by Ed Muskie, had stockpiled significant oil and coal reserves and agreed secret deals with foreign countries (particularly the Commonwealth) to provide emergency supplies, if needed. While there was significant disruption, the US economy thus managed to ride out the crisis. In February 1986, a federal anti-trust case found the cartel’s actions to be illegal price manipulation and, under the threat of prison for the big CEOs, oil production had resumed in full within a month. The boycott was a defining moment in American corporate relations, with the Big Five’s defeat significantly weakening the power of corporate America. It was also a major victory for Kennedy and the Progressives. Kennedy had skilfully managed to keep most of the trades unions - including those in the fossil fuel industries - on-side for the duration of the crisis and was thus able to consolidate his environmentalist programme.

In a significant victory for David Attenborough, continuing his work as the Commonwealth Commissioner for the Environment, the vast majority of UN member countries joined together to agree the Shanghai Protocol in 1987. This set dramatic targets to cut fossil fuel emissions in developed countries and set non-binding targets for developing ones. In July 1987, the UK Environment Minister James Goldsmith announced a plan to phase out all petrol and diesel vehicles in the UK by 2010. Goldsmith also announced the end of fossil fuel production for domestic use by 2000 (although he was notably more circumspect about the future of the SWF) and plans to transition the UK rail network entirely to wind and solar energy over the same period.

 

[Rattigan]

The Oranje Nation: South Africa after Independence

The "Prince's Flag" from the Dutch Revolt of the 16th Century, resurrected as the flag of the South African Republic in 1961


In the years since it had been expelled from the Commonwealth, South Africa had rapidly attained the status of a pariah state. The Commonwealth wanted nothing to do with its former member, the United States had too vocal and influential an African-American minority and the Soviet Union was run according to an ideology that was, at least notionally, liberationary. Shorn of superpower support, the South African government then turned to the next best thing: China and France. Both nations were a good deal more cynical about their choice of allies. With support from the French government, the South African government is believed to have built up a substantial stockpile of chemical weapons over the course of the 1960s. Meanwhile, Chinese military advisors were deployed to aid the pacification of Swaziland, Basutoland and South West Africa. Both countries successfully blocked any moves by the UN Security Council to further sanction South Africa.

When South Africa was expelled from the Commonwealth in May 1961, the ruling National Party hurriedly organised a referendum three weeks later on whether to adopt a republican constitution. The referendum was won 67-33 by the pro-republican side, after a campaign marked by violence and repression not only of the few black and coloured voters who had not been purged from the electoral roll but also of Anglo settlers. Although the tricameral parliament (one for whites, one for coloureds, one for indians - all blacks were disenfranchised) notionally enshrined ‘power sharing’ between the races, in practice the white chamber had a power of veto over the other chambers, the sole power to initiate legislation and the power to pass legislation without the approval of the other chambers in matters of education, defence, finance, foreign policy, law and order, transport and commerce. (As many political scientists pointed out, it wasn’t entirely clear what the other two chambers were there for in a legislative sense.) The State President was to be the new head of state, elected by a white suffrage, and invested with sweeping powers.

The election for the State Presidency and the new parliament took place a day later and was marred by the same voter suppression seen in the referendum. The end result marked a major shift to the right for South Africa, even in a country which had previously been imposing a policy of apartheid. On the back of extremist pro-Afrikaans voters, the former Axis-sympathiser Hans van Rensburg won the office at the head of the ‘purist’ faction of apartheid. Van Rensburg favoured as much separation of the races as possible and immediately set out clearing cities and the countryside of non-white populations to out of the way settlements designated their ‘homelands.’ Only given passports to leave these homelands for work purposes, this process was completed by around 1967. During the course of these deportations, an estimated 19,000 people are believed to have died and there were notable clashes between South African police and soldiers and resistors in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Over the course of the deportations, the Anglo minority was a consistent, if qualified, opponent of both the deportations and the National Party more generally, something which, in turn, meant that they incurred ever-increasing hostility from van Rensburg. In 1964, English was removed as an official language in the country and the use of it in schools was banned in 1965. The strict laws that governed eligibility to vote for the white chamber were tightened even further, dramatically cutting down the number of Anglos eligible to vote.

In 1966 the National Party and certain leaders of the Anglophone community brokered an agreement. This agreement would open up the areas of Natal province not already set aside for ethnic Zulu settlement for Anglo use. English would remain one of the official languages of the province alongside Afrikaans. However, no actual land would be set aside for the supposed influx of Anglo settlers (Afrikaaner settlers would not be required to give up their often-vast estates), ethnic Anglos would continue to have their civil rights removed across the country’s other provinces and Natal itself would continue to be governed by an Afrikaaner minority. With few Anglos taking up the offer to move to their new ‘homeland,’ in about 1968 the South African police and army began to round them up and force them to move. The most notable example was what was known as the ‘Great Trek’ in 1969; the forced march of approximately 250,000 settlers across the country from Cape Town to Natal.

Matters in Natal swiftly reached boiling point as, contrary to the hopes of many Afrikaaners, the Anglos and the Zulus were not played off against one another and instead made common cause. Over the 1970s, Natal became increasingly polarised between the Anglo-Zulu majority and the Afrkaaner minority. From an Afrikaaner perspective, the Anglos and Zulus were inherently disloyal and determined to force the Afrkaaners into majority rule. This threat was seen as justifying the continuation of Afrkaaner governance of the territory. In practice, this resulted in preferential treatment for ethnic Afrikaaners for housing, employment and other fields in a region that was supposed to be an Anglo homeland.

In 1970, van Rensburg was assassinated by a disgruntled Anglo farmer. He was replaced on an interim basis by B.J. Vorster before H.F. Verwoerd won the subsequent 1971 election. Although many outside observers confidently predicted that Verwoerd would be a (relative) moderate, he was nothing if not an old-fashioned Afrikaaner nationalist and soon proved that he had no intention of making substantive changes to van Rensburg’s policies. In 1972, black and Anglo activists concluded the Declaration of Faith, a statement of core principles regarding the desirability of a multi-racial, peaceful South Africa. Beginning that year, radicals in the black and Anglo camps commenced a campaign of violence but one which lacked popular support amongst the majority of those communities and was called off in 1978.

In August 1979, the Anglo populations of Durban and Pietermaritzburg began peaceful protests, leading to the deployment of the South African army. However, the failure of the army to enter Anglo areas angered hardline Afrikaaner opinion and loyalist riots broke out on the evening of 9 September, leading to a pogrom through Anglo areas that destroyed thousands of pounds worth of property but thankfully left nobody dead. Over the next three years, South African soldiers were increasingly deployed to the two cities and expanded their operations to include much of the urban and rural areas of Natal and Zululand. Between 1980 and 1982, political violence increased dramatically. It peaked in 1982 with over 500 people, over two-thirds of them civilians, dying, including a dramatic event on 30 January in which the South African army opened fire on an unarmed protest, killing 82.

Amidst the continued unrest, and with the local Afrikaaners seemingly incapable of controlling events, Pretoria took matters into its own hands in 1983, abolishing all separate government across Zululand and Natal and subjecting the provinces to military rule. Under the military command of Magnus Malan, greater oppression forced black and Anglo elites to take ever more extreme action. The Anglo-Zulu Liberation Union (“AZLU”) was formed in 1983 and began a bombing campaign against Afrikaaner offices and military barracks. When this had no obvious effect, moderates on the Anglo and Zulu side were forced to take matters further. In August 1986, a coalition of Anglo and Zulu community leaders, led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Helen Zuzman met in Durban’s City Hall to sign the Zulu-Natal Declaration of Faith, effectively declaring their secession from South Africa. The meeting was broken up violently by South African troops but the story got out and the stage was set for a greater international showdown for South Africa.

State Presidents of the South African Republic

1. Hans van Rensburg; National Party; October 1961 - September 1970*
2. John Vorster; National Party; September 1970 - October 1971
3. Hendrik Verwoerd; National Party; October 1971 -

*Assassinated

 

[Rattigan]

The Empire Strikes Back: The Third Anglo-Boer War

HMS Columbia during the bombardment of the Port of Durban

HMS Invincible and her strike group shortly before the Battle of Salisbury Island


The repression in Zulu-Natal and the subsequent declaration of independence caused, as would be expected, a major international incident. For the Commonwealth, the Americans and the Soviets, the event was an excuse to cement their opposition to the apartheid regime, putting down or supporting numerous resolutions to that effect at the UN. Brazil and Japan, whose relations with South Africa had always been somewhat ambivalent, now began to consistently support these resolutions. China, reading the room, distanced itself from its African ally and began to consistently abstain from. By the end of 1986, France was the only permanent member who could be relied upon to provide their veto when needed. Following the failure of yet another resolution condemning the occupation and calling for UN-mediated peacekeeping in the region, the Commonwealth unilaterally recognised Zulu-Natal’s independence in November 1986 and immediately began semi-covert plans for military action. The United States also extended diplomatic recognition in December (although, as with the Commonwealth, it wasn’t clear what the practical effect of this was - it wasn’t as if they could open embassies) but the Kennedy Administration, generally skeptical of military action, did not join the Commonwealth in their war planning.

It has since been suggested that the protracted nature of the Commonwealth’s military preparations was part of an attempt to scare the South African government into withdrawing from the region. More likely, however, it was to give time to try and gain other allies to the cause, efforts which proved to be ultimately fruitless. Even African states who may have been sympathetic (Katanga, Ethiopia and Botswana were often mentioned as potential allies) seem to have been put off by the professed might of the South African war machine. On this occasion, it became clear, the Commonwealth would be taking its stand alone. Land forces built up along the Rhodesia-South African border and a Royal Naval taskforce of 127 ships was assembled and set sail from Aden on 17 January 1987. On 14 February, planes of the Fleet Air Arm commenced bombing raids on South African military installations on the coast. In response, the South African Air Force commenced bombing runs on the Commonwealth ships and the South African Navy put to sea from their base in Cape Town.

On 15 March, the old cruiser HMS Tiger (which was due to be scrapped in 1986 anyway until the Zulu-Natal crisis changed minds) was struck by a South African submarine and sunk with the loss of over 300 crewmen. The loss of the ship, the first Royal Naval vessel lost in action since 1945, hardened Commonwealth resolve and instilled arguably too great a sense of confidence in the South Africans. For the next week, South African ships attempted to enforce a notional exclusion zone around the Zulu-Natal coast but their ship numbers were simply not sufficient (their navy at the time consisted of 5 submarines, 3 frigates, 3 corvettes and 6 strike craft) to deter the Royal Navy’s expeditionary force, which at this time was based around four aircraft carrier strike groups and assorted other craft. On 23 March, a disastrous engagement with HMS Invincible and her support craft just off Salisbury Island resulted in the sinking of a South African submarine, corvette and frigate, as well as serious damage being inflicted on two strike craft who had engaged late in the battle. (The sinking of the submarine, the SAS Emily Hobhouse, with all hands later became a matter of controversy, with many skeptical of the sincerity of Commonwealth efforts to help survivors in what people suspected was revenge for the sinking of the Tiger.) Following this reverse, the remainder of the South African fleet withdrew to port, where they were bottled up by HMS Illustrious and her strike group, taking no further part in the fighting.

The sea campaign came to an end conclusively with the surrender of the Port of Durban to Commonwealth forces on 27 March. The following day, planes from HMS Illustrious bombed the Cape Town naval installation, sinking three strike craft and a corvette. At the same time, mechanised Commonwealth forces in Rhodesia commenced a land and air invasion, cutting through the Transvaal and towards Zulu-Natal. Over the next 10 days, Commonwealth forces converged on Zulu-Natal in a pincer movement, one advancing from their beachheads on the coast, the other marching south over land. Following the Battle of Nkandla - a particularly vicious engagement in which Maori units cleared a South African trenchline with bayonets, killing 457 for the loss of 44 of their own men - South African units began to surrender en masse, causing serious logistical problems for the Commonwealth. (Legend has it that video tapes of Maori soldiers sharpening their bayonets were dropped behind South African lines in order to encourage surrender.)

A ceasefire was agreed between the South Africans and the Commonwealth on 8 April, under which South Africa would withdraw what was left of its forces from Zulu-Natal, de facto recognising its independence. Its hand was also forced by uprisings of the non-Afrikaaner population which had sprung up across the rest of South Africa. The rebellions were encouraged by a radio station called the ‘Voice of Free Africa,’ which claimed that the rebellion was well-supported and that the rebels would soon be liberated from apartheid. The connection between this radio station and the Five Eyes Agency has since become a matter of controversy, with rumours, considering what came later, of a cover up.

Within the first two weeks, many of South Africa’s towns and cities fell to rebel forces. Participants of the uprising were a diverse mix of affiliations, including military mutineers, oppressed black farmers and workers and far-left groups. All hoped that the violence would receive international support and precipitate a coup d’etat in Pretoria. However, following initial victories, the revolution was held back from final success by its internal divisions as well as a lack of the anticipated Commonwealth support. Verwoerd was quietly moved aside in favour of hardliners led by Andries Treurnicht and the National Party retained control over Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg, as well as the upper echelons of the army. The South African army - apparently more comfortable against badly-armed rebels than advanced mechanised soldiers - conducted a brutal crackdown, killing approximately 180,000 people and displacing nearly 2,000,000 more.

There was some criticism, then and since, of the Commonwealth, as they chose to allow the apartheid regime to remain in power rather than attempt to push on and occupy the entire country. In his memoirs, published in 1994, Rodgers argued that such a course of action would have fractured Commonwealth unity (and the general international support for the Commonwealth against apartheid) and have lead to many unnecessary political and human costs. Political papers from across the Commonwealth, published in 2016-17 under the 30-year rule, revealed the difference of opinion both within and between the governments of the member states.

On 22 April 1987, South Africa accepted the independence of its former province and Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Helen Zuzman were declared the interim President and Vice President, respectively, of the United Republic of Zulu-Natal ahead of elections to be held in three months’ time. Five days later, on 27 April, the bulk of Commonwealth troops began to withdraw from the region, leaving a few troops and ships to ensure that South Africa kept their promise.

 

[Rattigan]

The Last Man in Europe: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Final Chance for Soviet Reform

Gorbachev's official portrait as Senior Adviser to the Government of the Commonwealth of Independent States


In February 1984, Yuri Andropov died in Petrograd, ending a 15-month tenure as Soviet Premier. His replacement was Eduard Shevardnadze, who, with the support of the Party Chairman Nikolai Ryzhkov (who assumed this role in July 1985, having previously been Minister for Finance since September 1979) sought to embark on a process of domestic and imperial reform in the Soviet Union. To this end, they appointed Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of Senior Adviser to the Government of the Commonwealth of Independent States (effectively its governor) in 1985, a position he would hold until 1989.

During his time in the CIS, Gorbachev became known as the ‘European Adviser’ for his repeated attempts to pass legislation to improve the lots of the European citizens. This aroused a certain degree of praise but also considerable controversy. The most notable example would be the legal reforms introduced in 1988. Commonly known by the name, ‘Perestroika,’ that Gorbachev game them, the reforms were designed to introduce transparency into the CIS legal system, granting the native Europeans more legal rights. In particular, they would have increased the potential for Europeans to become judges (previously the higher ranks of the judiciary were reserved for Soviet officials) and even allow European judges to handle criminal cases involving Soviet citizens charged with a crime in the CIS.

The proposed reforms immediately created a storm of controversy, led by Soviet factory and industry owners in the CIS. In reference to the rapes of Soviet women during the Bucharest Mutiny of 1968-69, it was alleged that Soviet women and girls would have to face humiliation should they be forced to appear before European judges in the case of rape. The Soviet press in the CIS (which was free to criticise the actual Soviet governors of the CIS, even if they weren’t allowed to criticise either their basis for being there or the government of the USSR) spread rumours about European judges abusing their powers to enslave Soviet women, which raised considerable opposition in the Soviet Union itself. Gennady Yanayev, the head of the Soviet trades union organisation, made his opposition to the reforms clear. They eventually came into force in May 1989 but with a number of notable changes, including allowing Soviets to demand a Soviet, rather than a European, judge.

Following the fallout of the Perestroika reforms, Gorbachev was recalled to Petrograd in July 1989, where he was made Governor of Murmansk and his career dwindled into bureaucratic obscurity. Yanayev became his replacement and put a halt to most of his predecessor’s proposals. The one exception was a series of reforms to tenancy arrangements which were passed in 1990, mostly in response to a series of strikes and protests in western Poland in 1973-76. Gorbachev had initiated a review of tenancy law and, when the report was published, Yenayev accepted the recommendations mostly in full.

Although in legislative terms probably a failure, Gorbachev’s tenure in the CIS was revealling for the way it showed the limits of the governing system the Soviets had imposed on the region. The power of the system was too entrenched amongst the Soviet elite in the country (as well as their European Uncle Tom allies) and Soviet rule, it was now clear, could not be reformed away, at least in the short term. This was an important victory for the conservative faction of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union itself known as the ‘die-hards.’

Following Ryzhkov’s re-appointment as Chairman at the Party Congress of July 1990, surviving an attempt to depose him, the die-hards turned their attention to extra-party means. Using their supporters in the higher ranks of the army, the die-hards conducted a coup in August 1991 that ousted Ryzhkov, Shevardnadze and Abalkin (the Finance Minister), installing Vladimir Kryuchkov as Premier and Yanayev as Chairman. Following the coup, widespread protests began in Petrograd. Led by students and young people, the protestors called for greater political accountability, freedom of the press and democracy. At the height of the protests, about 1,000,000 people had assembled in Saint Isaac’s Square.

As the protests developed, the authorities were initially hesitant in responding, concerned about upsetting their relatively-tenuous control over the Communist Party. By September, however, Yanayev and the other senior leaders of the Community Party resolved to use force. Declaring martial law on 27 September, the full force of the Red Army was unleashed on the protestors. Over the next seven months of violent repression, thousands of people were murdered and incarcerated. Exact figures are ultimately unknown: official Soviet estimates put the figure at around 150; unofficial estimates compiled by the British embassy in Petrograd put the death toll for the whole of the 1991-92 repression at around 150,000 dead and a further 35,000 arrested. Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk - both politicians associated with the reformist wing of the Communist Party - were arrested on, at best, dubious charges, and sent to prison camps in Siberia. Gorbachev disappeared from his Murmansk flat and it would be three years before the Soviet authorities admitted he was dead.