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

144

continuing by the creating of the Modern Commonwealth. Therefore, the
principle of Imperial
Preference was protected, by both the Labour and
Conservative political elite, between 1945-63. (It was
originally implemented at
the Ottawa Conference of 1932, where Britain arranged bilateral
trading
agreements with individual Empire countries, wherein reciprocal tariff preference
was given.
The aim was to boost intra-imperial trade – in food, raw materials and
manufactured goods – at the
expense of foreign competitors). In 1961, the
Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, described the political
purpose of the Modern
Commonwealth, as seen by the Conservative Party:

“In our Empire building, we came to grips at close quarters with problems
of race and colour, in
which there was the certainty of conflict unless by
some bold act the danger could be laid. The way we
chose with our eyes
open to the risks, was to bring the Asian and African colonies to
independence,
and then into the Commonwealth as equal partners The

Association is growing
and bas its imperfections, but it is possible that by
that act of faith we ensured the ultimate defeat of
Connunism.”28

In
the preceeding chapter I looked at India as a case study, since she
presented the most complicated
questions to the Labour programme of
decolonisation. The path to independence for other nations, mainly
in Asia,
between 1945-51, was not as difficult as India’s bad been.

Therefore, before moving onto defence, Kenya and Uganda will be the
subject of our case studies in
respect of decolonisation of the Empire between
1951-63. Granting independence to other areas in Africa,
or elsewhere outside
Africa during that period presented less complication to the
Conservative
Governments of 1951-55, 1955-57 and 1957-63, as the outline of Chapter
Three
indicated.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213