The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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and
E.D. Morel’s influence, who represented the liberal or radical tradition, made
itself felt. They were
more interested in the actual situation in the colonies than
in a theory of imperialism. They demanded
more active reforms, to improve the
lot of the native population, instead of the withdrawal of the
colonial power.
“Hobson provided the Labour party with a ‘doctrine’, since he interpreted
colonial
imperialism in economic terms; however, Hobson was not a socialist nor even a
Marxist, but
a radical reformer who anticipated the concept of trusteeship in his
demand for an ‘enlightened’
colonial policy.”24 During the First World War the
Labour party
had already adopted the mandate principle of the future League of
Nations and also made international
control a focal point of its colonial
programme. In this there were two aims: “to prevent a new
rivalry for colonial
acquisitions among the world powers, and to replace capitalist exploitation by
a
policy of reform which would ‘develop’ backward ‘people’ and prepare them for
self
government.”25

In
addition to the two above-mentioned goals, not only did the Labour party
want “a detailed
formulation of the mandate principle and a well-defined system
of international control; it was even more
concerned with subordinating all the
colonies to the League of Nations.”26 In the following years the Labour party
demanded to extend the mandate
principle to all European colonies. However,
the SPIO (French Socialist party), unlike the British Labour
party, was interested
in assimilation and not self-government, which was the object of the
mandate
policy, and thus showed no interest in the British Labour Party’s initiatives.

Labour’s support for trusteeship and later the policy of ‘gradual grant
of
self-government’ helped to establish a certain basis of trust between the mother
country and
the nationalist leaders. Such an attitude did, to some degree,
contribute towards creating the Modern
Commonwealth – a Multiracial
Institution.

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