Real, not sham

sanctions could

bring down

Smith regime

overnight

By KONNI ZILLIACUS
(Labor Party M.P.)

he time is rapidly ap-
ei proaching, if it has not
already arrived, when the Gov-
ernment must choose between
national unity with the Tories
over Rhodesia or giving a clear
and effective lead.

The circumstances and details
of how the Tories behaved then
and now are. different, but the
basic similarity between the Tory
attitude 30 years ago and today
is quite extraordinary,

Mussolini set out to conquer

said, the existence of a Black
Government in that country was
a form of ‘‘usurpation’’ in an
Africa otherwise governed by
whites,

To Ian Smith and his merry
men it is a form of*‘usurpation’’
for the 95 percent African major-
ity in their own country to want
majority rule within the lifetime
of the 5 percent white settler
minority, at present governing
Rhodesia and determined to keep
things that way indefinitely, even
at the cost of establishing a
‘police State and ruling by brute
force, which is what they are
doing now, :

The pro-fascist Tory appeas-
ers of the ’30s could not see any
issue of principle raised by Mus-
solini’s aggression, nor anything
wrong with his regime,

They were for doing a deal
with him, partitioning Abyssinia
(this was known as a ‘‘compro-
mise’’ settlement), on the basis
of the 1906 Anglo-Franco-Italian
treaty, and an earlier agreement
in the best traditions of the 19th
century imperialism,

They ignored the existence of
the League of Nations, for which

resident Nkrumah told a
= P cheering Parliament in
“= Accra last week that Ghana
was implementing immediate
military measures to prepare
to meet the threat posed by
Rhodesian ‘‘independence,’’

ss All military leave was can-
* celled, he announced, and a
Ss voluntary militia was being
% formed. In addition, Parlia-
S$ ment would be asked to give
the Government power tocarry
= out full scale mobilization, in-

Ethiopia (Abyssinia) because, he.

Ghana molilizes

the Tories felt the same dislike
and contempt as they do today
for the United Nations,

And the obligations of the
League of Nations Covenant were

‘as much a scrap of paper to the

pro-fascist appeasers as the U.N,
Charter is to the pro-racialist
appeasers of today, who cannot
see any issue of principle raised
by Ian Smith’s white supremacy
5 percent minority rule in Rho-
desia,

They want him to get away
with it and to do a deal with
him, They deride and hate the
United Nations and sanctions.

But in 1935, Abyssinia, as a
member of the League of Na-
tions, appealed to that body
against Mussolini’s aggression.

e

The Labor and Liberal parties,
the League of Nations Union, the
Churches, trade unions andother
bodies organized a nationwide
*¢tpeace through collective securi-
ty’’ ballot, which piled up over
12 million votes and showed an
overwhelming majority for ap-

plying sanctions to stop Musso-
lini,

The Tory leaders, with an elec-
tion in the offing, put on one of
the most remarkable political
quick-change performances in
history. Overnight they became
fervid supporters of the League
of Nations and sanctions,

Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel
Hoare appeared before the As-
sembly of the League of Nations
on September 11, 1935, and made
a noble and moving speech all
about the Government’s deter-
mination to lead in ‘*steady and
selective resistance to every act
of aggression’? and for ‘‘up-
holding
entirety.”’

Stunned delegates could hardly

cluding the right to requisition
ships and planes as needed,

A war against the Smith set-
tler rebels would not be like
an ordinary war, Nkrumah
stated, because ‘‘for every
racialist in Rhodesia there
are 16 Africans, Once arms
have been put in their hands
the war is as good as over,’’

If a rising in mass by the
people could be organized, %:
this would ensure Smith’s de- 3
feat, he said, ms

Rhodesians demonstrating during one of Prime Minister
Wilson's sojourns to Salisbury to confer with the fascist '\ clique. And time is rapidly running out, says the article
lan Smith. They are still waiting for some form of decisive

believe their ears, It all seemed
too good to be true, So it was.

The day before he spoke, Sam
Hoare had informed that un-
savoury little crook, Pierre
Laval, the French Prime Minis-
ter, andall-inappeaser, and after
the war shot as a collaborator,
that the Government would not
agree to any measure which might
involve any risk of war.

Laval promptly passed this on
to Mussolini, who thereupon be-
came the invisible president of
the Sanctions Committee,

On that committee Hoare in-
structed his delegate, Anthony
Eden, not to take the lead and
not to agree to any measure in-
volving any risk of war,

This excluded an oil embargo,
with which President Roosevelt
was anxious to co-operate, and
which Mussolini afterwards ad-
mitted would have forced him to
get out of Abyssinia in a week,
The sanctions actually applied
were half-hearted half-mea-
sures,

A Queen—but an exception

Behind the scenes theattempts ~

to do a dirty deal went on and
culminated in the Hoare-Laval
offer of more of Abyssinia to
Mussolini,

Pro-fascist appeasers did not
want Mussolini defeated for they
feared a revolution in Italy more
than they did the consequences
of the victory of fascist aggres-
sion and the destruction of the
League of Nations,

The ultimate result of this
policy was the Second World
-War, which could have been head-

‘ed off again and again if Britain

had acted against the fascist
aggressors and treaty-breaking
re-armers in accordance with
her obligations in the Covenant,

: @
_Today the Tory Party has had
for shame’s sake, and out of

fear of public opinion, to be
nominajly in favour of sanctions,

But Mr. Heath has made it
clear that he wants only pin-
pricking and half-measures, He
opposes any effective sanctions
above all an oil embargo, which
would be fatal to Ian Smith and

Last week, all of Belgium was in mourning for the Dowager Queen
Elizabeth, grandmother of King Baudouin, who died of a heart attack on

November 23, at the age of 89.

action by Britain’ 's Labor government against the Smith

below by Labor MP Konni Zilliacus.

- bargo, to squash Smith’s

the Government in its ,

During the First World War, while Queen of the Belgians, she became
a Red Cross nurse and worked in military hospitals that she helped to
found. She played an active part in the Resistance Movement while bel-
gium was occupied by the Nazis during World War II.

Last week, the British Daily Worker carried this fine tribute to an ex-
ceptionally progressive monarch, written by Andrew Rothstein, chairman
of the Marx Memorial Library of Britain.

ne evening in November jn _ occupied Belgium, Queen

1937 during an interna-~ Elizabeth studied Russian and
tional conference in Brussels, took a passionate interest in the
V.P. Potemkin, leader of the battles of the Red Army. She
Soviet delegation, was invited read the clandestine journal of
to dine at the Royal Palace with the ‘Friends of the Soviet Union’’
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen and Drapeau Rouge, and more than
Mother, once passed on substantial con-

tributions in cash,
She asked him if he could ex-

him:
a Queen ,.. but believe me I
would regard it as the greatest
happiness to see these wonder-
ful things,’’

plain the success of Soviet young

musicians—David Oistrakh and
Emil Gilels among them—in the

face of world competition at the

musical contests which she had

founded,

At the end of more than two

hours conversation about the

Soviet Union, Elizabeth said to
‘*Monsieur, I am of course

During the Second World War,

At the end of the war, in 1945,
when the Belgian-Soviet Friend-
ship Society, of which she was
a patron, held a gala concert to
raise funds, Queen Elizabeth ap-
peared, to take her seat amid
tremendous applause,

In 1951, Queen Elizabeth sign-
ed the Stockholm Peace Peti-
tion: in 1955 she sent greetings
to the World Peace Assembly in
Helsinki, and in 1956 she pub-
licly supported the Belgian Peace
Committee’s national conference,

In 1955 she was guest of

December 3, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pag?

Co, He would regard the defeat |
of the Rhodesian rebels, 35 ? |
*teradual slide into chaos ip
Rhodesia.”?

It would mean the emergen®
of “a form of society which ®
abhorrent,’’ (majority rule?).
him this is a greater evil
Ian Smith’s success in this T@
bellion for white supremacy.

That is why the moment ®
rapidly approaching when
Government must choose petwee?
two policies,

One is the present one of try
ing to maintain ‘national unity, | —
i.e. pursuing a coalition polit! Zs
with the Tories, at the cost /
not getting tough enough W!
sanctions, including an oil em)
ebel-
lion, This would lead to b¥eakiné

up the Commonwealth anda rac id
war in Africa,

Or it ‘could give a determine!
lead in the United Nations for
effective sanctions—and for kee?”
ing them up till Smith goes do™

sain

contest in Warsaw and in 199
and 1962 at the internatio?® |
Chaikovsky competition in Mo™ |
cow. :

honor at the international Chop!” ;

Speaking in Russian on Mo*
cow TV in 1958, after the tov’
of the Soviet Union, which she
had dreamed of 20 years befor
she said that what she had seal
‘¢surpassed all my expectation

. Queen Elizabeth was, of cours” |
an exception among monarcl |
But what an exception!

|

QUEEN ELIZABETH