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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responsibility.”45 MacMillan asked the Governor to elaborate his reply a
bit
further. The Governor’s reply was,” I should give it [freedom] to them at once –
as
soon as possible,”46 and he developed this argument. “If the
fifteen or twenty
years were to be applied in learning the job, in increasing their experience of
local
government, or of central administration, only then I would be all for it. But this
is not
what will happen. All the most intelligent men capable of government will
be in rebellion. I will have to
put them in prison. There they will learn nothing
about administration, only about hatred and revenge.
They will not be fruitful,
but wasted years; so I say, give them independence now.”47

The
argument of the Governor, who is not paned in MacMillan’s
autobiography, in MacMillan’s words,
“seemed to me, as to him,
unanswerable,”48 According to
the Prime Minister’s own writings, “nor was this
Judgement unique. It was shared by all his most
experienced and reflective
colleagues,”49 Needless to say, such
Judgement reflected on MacMillan’s policy.
His South African speech, afterwards widely known by its
theme of the ‘Wind of
Change’, demonstrated the direction of his colonial policy. MacMillan said
in his
speech, “what the Governments and Parliaments in the United Kingdom have
done since the
war in according independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Malaya
and Ghana, and what they will do for
Nigeria and other countries nearing
independence, all this, though we take full and sole responsibility
for it, we do in
the belief that it is the only way to establish the future of the Commonwealth
and
of the Free World on sound foundations.”50 The
justification for Macmillan’s,
and, in general, the Labour and Conservative Governments’ forward
moves was
merely determined on a practical political basis, in view of the international
situation
in and after the Second World War, in particular the predicaments that
have been discussed in the course
of the book. In other words, in view of
Communist expansion and British economic crisis, the process of
decolonization
and creation of the Modern Commonwealth was the only practical course of

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