The Process of Betrayal
Here we present, in abridged form, a rather poignant chapter from Major-General Richard Hilton’s Imperial Obituary, which is arguably even relevant as concerns the British politics of today. The painting featured above is ‘The Course of Empire: Destruction’ by Thomas Cole, painted 1836, perhaps a tad dramatic, but nonetheless thematically related to the subject matter of today’s text.
The most disquieting fact of British history in recent years is the fact that the British Empire emerged from the Second World War territorially intact (with the one exception of Ireland), and with its prestige enhanced rather than diminished despite its financial straits and its early disasters. Intelligent world opinion, particularly in Europe, recognized that, if it had not been for the British in 1940 and 1941, Nazism would have conquered the world. In 1945 British prestige and influence among the nations was as high as it has ever been.
The first shattering blow was the unnecessary, or at any rate the disastrously premature, withdrawal from India under Mr. Attlee’s post-war government.1 This was quickly followed by the surrender of the Palestine mandate—again by the same Labour government.2 But, apart from these scuttles, the British Empire still remained in being when the Conservative Party commenced its thirteen years of power in 1951. During those thirteen years of government by this right-wing party, whose declared policy, till then, had always included the maintenance of the British Empire, the entire Empire was disintegrated.
It is reasonably certain that a vast majority of voters, who put the Tories into power in 1951, did so in the firm hope and belief that the dissolution of the Empire, started in India by the Socialists, would cease forthwith. Sir Winston Churchill had told Mr. Roosevelt, a few years previously, that he had not been appointed Prime Minister of Great Britain in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. It was reasonable for voters to suppose that the party which he had led shared its great leader’s sentiments, particularly when it is remembered that the Conservative Party manifesto for the 1951 election had contained no hint whatsoever of any intention of destroying the Empire.
The debacle of the thirteen years 1951-1964 constitutes an act of betrayal by the right-wing leadership of Great Britain—an act of betrayal for which the right-wing electorate as a whole must forever carry a great deal of blame.
From the left must always be expected dangerous and cranky experiments, surrenders of authority to mob rule, and a tendency to encourage, comfort, and help in every instance the enemies of Great Britain. From the right our country and the Empire ought to have been assured of a stalwart defence of all that was being undermined by cranks and enemies.
Why did they do this? It is a question that need not be asked in the case of left-wing empire-breakers. But there must have been a deep and perhaps sinister reason for Great Britain’s former pillars of the Empire to continue and even to hasten the work of disruption, commenced by the left-wing ‘little Englanders.'3 Not one of the reasons, commonly put forward by Conservative apologists, is worth a moment’s consideration. They have said that it was done in response to some compelling clamour for freedom, expressed by the subject races of the Empire. There never has been any such clamour. Even the left-wing idealists, Montague and Lord Chelmsford, knew that this was nonsense.
Our politicians must have known, unless they are imbeciles, that the ordinary masses of Asia or Africa are not interested in self-government. Montague and Chelmsford knew this about India forty years ago. British politicians of today have no excuse for imagining that popular feeling in undeveloped lands has changed in this respect.
During the the thirteen years of shame,4 when a Tory government was organizing the break-up of the Empire, official instructions were issued to district commissioners, and similar officials in charge of colonial territories, that they were to tour their districts and give instruction to the people about the independence which would shortly be given to their country. In Nigeria, when a young white administrator delivered an educational talk of this kind, in accordance with orders received, his words were heard by the simple countrymen with horror and dismay. They protested loudly that they had no wish for this promised freedom. They besought him, as representative of British rule, not to leave them. Much the same experience was encountered all over the Empire when young men in charge of districts, in accordance with orders received from an exalted source, tried to reconcile their flock to the prospect of being left without British rule.
However complacently Whitehall politicians may live in the clouds, it is incredible to think that no mention at all of the real reactions of the colonial peoples should have come to the knowledge of Whitehall. Yet they persisted in forcing severance from the British upon unwilling recipients of this boon.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in their otherwise unaccountable conduct, the Tory government of 1951-1964 must have been acting under outside pressure of some sort. This suspicion is greatly strengthened if we study the sequence of the early surrenders of British interests.
The first incident was that of Abadan—not of course a part of the British Empire but most certainly a vital British interest created out of almost nothing by sheer British enterprise. The Abadan crisis had already commenced during Mr. Attlee’s government, but the situation was still in hand, and could have been saved, when the Tories assumed power. H.M.S. Mauritius was in the Persian Gulf, within easy reach of Abadan, and a brigade from India lay in readiness at Basra. Public opinion in Persia and Iraq fully expected firm action by the British to follow this show of force. But, at the last moment, the British climbed down in response to American pressure. The situation drifted from bad to worse until eventually, after prolonged negotiations, conducted by the Americans, an international consortium took over what had been an exclusively British enterprise, and kindly allowed the British to keep 40 per cent of what had recently been wholly theirs. Americans took another 40 per cent and acquired a controlling interest in the refineries.5
There is little doubt that the Tory politicians of 1951-64 were acting under foreign influence of a very compelling nature during their liquidation of the British Empire, and there is little doubt that this influence was American. Did this conduct of British affairs by British politicians, acting under foreign influence, constitute a betrayal of the trust imposed on them by their Sovereign and by the British electorate? History will one day judge them. Meanwhile it can scarcely be denied that it would have been considerably more honourable for the Tory leadership in 1951, assuming that they were indeed under intolerable foreign pressure, to have taken the British electorate into their confidence and told the British nation openly that we were being compelled by American pressure to liquidate the British Empire.
But the British public were never told the truth. No mention of a coming liquidation of the Empire figured in the election manifesto of the Tory Party. No hint was given that, in the next few years, under a Conservative government, our country was going to open its gates to a torrent of coloured immigration which, as any child could foretell, would inevitably change the national character of the very people who had built the Empire, thus doing their best to ensure that Great Britain could never rise again. The voters were never told that our country had its back to the wall, just as desperately as in 1940, though our enemy of 1951 still posed as a friend. Instead the electorate was lulled by the fatuous parrot-cry that our country had 'never had it so good'.
The indignation of British patriots should be reserved, not for foreign enemies of our country, who have only behaved as enemies normally do, but for British right-wing politicians, who must have seen all this going on, who for thirteen years had the power and responsibility of defending our country against such attacks, but who made no attempt to stop it, if indeed some of them did not actually aid and abet this enemy action. One more example I give.
The flooding of Great Britain with coloured immigrants started in the form of financially assisted passages for West Indians, the fares being paid by foreign money-lenders. It quickly became clear to Britons of ordinary intelligence, who had studied the results of multi-racialism in other lands, that this new development, if unchecked, would eventually destroy the whole character of the British nation. Yet leaders of the Conservative Party, far from acting against this danger while it was still easily controllable, actively encouraged the invasion and to this day persist in minimizing the danger, advocating integration, and smearing as racialists or extremists those patriots who dare to protest.
It is beside the point to mention that the other parties, being further to the left, might well have done far worse damage to our British future. It is in the nature of left-wingers to do so.
By infiltration of the Conservative Party with the defeatist ideas of the left, by invasion of the Party leadership and the Conservative Central Office by men of left-wing mentality, posing as Tories, the task of restoring Great Britain to health and vigour has been rendered immeasurably more difficult. No political party today believes in Great Britain’s destiny or cares whether she degenerates to the status of a third-class nation—not one of the three big parties. The Tories, traditional defenders of the nation and Empire, have abandoned their post. It is left to a few old-fashioned patriots, without funds, without aid from the Press or the B.B.C. (if not indeed against opposition from these agencies) to save the situation.
The Conservative leaders of 1951-1964 will have a serious charge to answer at the bar of history.
1. Clement Attlee; Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955 and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from July 1945 to October 1951
2. 15 May 1948
3. ‘Little Englanders’; a political anti-empire-building and expansion movement associated with the Liberal Party.
4. From 1951 to 1964 Great Britain was ruled by successive Conservative governments.
5. The Abadan Crisis revolved around the nationalisation of oil refineries in Iran, in this case of the oil refineries around the Iranian city of Abadan on the Persian Gulf in the border province of Khuzestan.
For further information about the oil painting, please see: https://emuseum.nyhistory.org/objects/41597/the-course-of-empire-destruction