Socialist The Correspondent · The distinctions between nations, between town and country, between...

SocialistCorrespondent

What andwhere is the

working class inBritain?

PPAAGGEE 44

Issue Number 1 Winter 2007

The

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WORKFORCEEPAAGEE 6

ContentsISSUE NO. 1 Winter 2007

2 The Socialist Correspondent Winter 2007

CommentaryIn this first issue we outline The SocialistCorrespondent’s aims and what readers canexpect from the journal.

Page 3

What and where is theworking class in Britain?HELEN CHRISTOPHERInvestigates whether or not the working classin Britain is capable of becoming a revolutionary class and overthrowing capitalism.

Page 4

The state of Britain’s coalindustry and its workforceBARRY JOHNSONLooks at the decline of the coal industry inBritain and the impact this has had on theminers and their trades union organisations.

Page 6

Mandela’s continuing walk to freedomVERNE HARRISExplains the background to and the futureof the Nelson Mandela Archive.

Page 8

Breaking the silenceover the “Miami Five”GINA NICHOLSONTells the story of Cuba’s campaign to freethe “Miami Five” who were arrested by theUS Government and imprisoned on spuri-ous charges.

Page 12

INDIA: Divide and Rule Britannia

2007marks the 60th anniversary of IndianIndependence and the 150th anniversary ofthe Indian Mutiny. Both events were ofgreat significance and continue to have resonance today. We reproduce articles andwritings by Marx and leading Marxists writing at the time these events took place.

Page 14

KARL MARX:The Revolt in the Indian ArmyFrom the New York Tribune, July 15th1857.

Page 14

NEIL STEWART:Imperialism and the Indian ArmyFrom the Labour Monthly, May 1947.

Page 16

R PALME DUTT:1. End of British Rule in India2. Pakistan in CrisisBoth extracts are taken from his book - TheCrisis of Britain and the British Empire -1957.

Page 18


The

The Socialist Correspondent has theaim of exposing capitalism and pro-moting socialism. Based on Marxistprinciples, it will aim to establish adiscussion forum for those seeking tobetter understand developments in aworld run by capitalism, followingthe defeat of the Soviet Union. It willseek to assist those fighting capital-ism and imperialism and it will pro-mote the values and principles ofsocialism. The journal will be pub-lished several times per year.

MarxistPoint ofViewFuture issues willcarry a Commentaryon the political situa-tion in the worldfrom a Marxist pointof view. These Commentarieswill take as their starting point thatthe 21st century is radically differentfrom that of most of the 20th centuryin which progressive forces, led bythe Soviet Union, made considerablegains. The Socialist countries alongwith the forces of national liberationand the working people in many cap-italist countries forced concessionsfrom capitalism and imperialism.The defeat of the Soviet Union andother socialist countries has reversedthis dramatically. We now live in aworld run by capitalism. It does notmake it a more peaceful world butone that is more dangerous. Theneed to discuss and to find successfulways of fighting capitalism and itscontinuing drive to war is one of theaims of the Socialist Correspondent.

The working classin BritainThe article, "What and where is theworking class in Britain?", by HelenChristopher, introduces a discussion,of this question, to be continued insucceeding issues. Linked to this, it isintended to carry brief analyses ofdifferent industries in Britain.

The first of these is the coal miningindustry in Britain, by BarryJohnson. The defeat of the Miners’strike in 1984/85 by the ThatcherGovernment paved the way for some


twenty five years of continuous attackon the whole of the working people bysuccessive British governments.

The current extremely weak state ofthe political and industrial labourmovement in Britain is a reflection ofthis. There have been many changes tothe composition and nature of theBritish working class over the last 30years.

The discussion of the nature andstate of the working class, alongsideanalyses of industries, will seek to clar-ify and understand these changes.

International natureThe Socialist Correspondent is of theview that to understand the state andnature of British Capitalism one needsto view it in a global context.

For this reason, but also cognisant ofthe fact that British Imperialism hasnot been the dominant capitalist statefor some considerable time, the journalwill carry material of an internationalnature. After all,it is a worldstruggle againstimperialism. Avictory anywhereagainst capitalism is a victory for allworking people.

The Socialist Correpondent will seekto describe and explain events else-where in the world, normally ignoredor distorted by the capitalist media.

In this first issue there is an articleon Cuba, a country which continuesvaliantly to maintain and developsocialism in a very different, andarguably far more difficult, contextthan when the revolution occured in1959. Gina Nicholson, following arecent visit, brings to life some aspectsof what it means for the people of Cuba.

60th Anniversary ofIndian IndependenceEven when there are defeats for impe-rialism, it does not give up the fight orretire from the fray. As Lenin wrote,after a defeat, the capitalists fight ahundredfold to regain their lost posi-tion. They fight to reverse defeats in avariety of ways. One of these ways is tore-write history, and to appropriateand distort the struggles which led to

capitalism'sdefeat. Britain'sEmpire washuge, straddlingcontinents, inwhich "the sunnever set andthe blood neverdried".

India was atthe centre ofthe BritishEmpire. Thisyear is the 60thanniversary ofIndian Independence. It is also the150th aniversary of the IndianRebellion of 1857. The British impe-rialists termed it the "IndianMutiny", thus giving it a particularideological spin. Both of thesemomentous struggles/events continueto have considerable significancetoday.

Divide and RuleBritish imperialism's 'turning defeatinto victory' is exemplified by itspartition of India into India andPakistan, as a condition of independ-ence. Imperialism encourages anduses divisions among people,whether it be race, colour, religion orsomething else, to further its ownends. And, of course, it blames thepeople for their divisions, oftenexplained as merely a fact of life.

In the case of India, it fomentedthe divisions (having drawn the les-sons of theIndian"Mutiny"), andeventually, whenit was forced toconcede inde-pendence, itinstitutionalisedthe divisions bypartitioning India into two separatenation states based on religion.

This tore apart communities whichhad lived together peacefully for avery long time. India and Pakistan,divided as two separate hostile enti-ties are easier to deal with, exploitand manipulate.

This practice of 'divide and rule' isnot unique to the Indian sub-conti-nent but it can be found in theMiddle East, Asia, Africa, Irelandand elsewhere. Partition has beenone of the most effective ways ofImperialism 'turning defeat intovictory', and retaining control.

The To contact The Socialist Correspondent

email the editor:[email protected]

CUBA SI!

Winter 2007 The Socialist Correspondent 3

Commentary


What and where is the working class in Britain?

THE COMMUNIST Manifesto (1),one of Marx and Engels’ earliest works,is dense with strands of analysis whichwould be expanded on in their laterwritings.

In it they describe a world which isshrinking due to the development oftechnology; a world which is becomingmore homogenised and globalised andin which material worth and individual-ism dominate our values and con-sciousness.

The distinctions between nations,between town and country, between thesexes are all diminishing.

Human relationships; family relation-ships are "reduced … to a mere moneyrelation". (2) and the only freedom is"free trade" (3).

Nothing else is respected or valued.These trends exposed with ferociouspassion by the young Marx and Engelsare the ones which dominate our worldtoday.

Despite this amazing analysis of thedestructive power and anti-humannature of capitalism, nevertheless 160years later it is still the dominant forcein the world.

The opposing power of the socialistworld, socialist and progressive move-ments, the anti-imperialist forces andthe non-aligned movement no longerrepresents the challenge that it did inthe 70-odd years from 1917 to 1989.

The major capitalist powers havebecome thoroughly reactionary withshrinking or vanishing communist par-ties. Social democracy has virtually dis-appeared in Britain and is beingattacked and eroded elsewhere.

Liberation movements in Ireland,Palestine and South Africa find it diffi-cult to manoeuvre to maintain progresstowards their goals. Religious funda-mentalism fills the ideological vacuum

for many of the oppressed. Only in Latin America, with Cuba

still as a beacon of the possible, is theresome semblance of a movement makingprogress. Maybe with the war in Iraqand Afghanistan and Iran to worryabout, Uncle Sam has taken his eye offthe ball in its own back yard.

Yet the Communist Manifestoseemed to offer not only the analysis,but also pointed to the solution to theevils of capitalism.

Class antagonisms were at last laidbare and simplified as the world divid-ed more clearly into the capitalists own-ing and controlling the means of pro-duction and the exploited workingclass, owning only their ability to work,which by necessity they had to sell tothe capitalists.

The working class is portrayed as agrowing, impoverished mass and in

later works as one which is increasinglyintensively exploited as technologyadvances.

As Marx and Engels watched thegrowth of factories and cities inEurope, this description was very real,however, did it stay like that for long? Itcertainly hasn't in Britain.

The decline in the working class heredoes not mean that it is declining innumbers in absolute terms on a worldscale, however, it is clear that with theadvance of technology smaller numbersof workers are required to producegoods which not too long ago wouldhave required shed-loads of proletari-ans.

Of course more goods are also beingproduced. In advanced capitalist coun-tries this has manifested itself in wide-spread conspicuous and vacuous con-sumption, a phenomenon once the pre-serve of the wealthy. What evidence wehave tells us that the consumer societyis not improving the quality of people'slives.

Along side the decline in numbers ofthe working class in Britain, there hasalso been a growth in middle class andancillary strata servicing capitalism, sothat naked class divisions do not appearin the stark way set out in theCommunist Manifesto.

The decline in the number of work-ers required to produce the sameamount of goods is an absolute trend incapitalism, which is acutely realised inBritain, the United States and other oldestablished capitalist countries. Thishas been a continuing and acceleratingtrend.

What are the implications of this forthe vision of the working-class as therevolutionary class? It is seen inMarxism as the class that prefiguressocialism as it is socially organised to

What and where is theworking class in Britain?IInn tthheeiirr wwrriittiinnggss MMaarrxx aanndd EEnnggeellss ddeessccrriibbee aa ccaappiittaalliissmm wwhhiicchh iinnmmaannyy rreessppeeccttss iiss aass rreeccooggnniissaabbllee ttooddaayy aass iitt wwaass wwhheenn tthheeyy bbeeggaanntthheeiirr ccrriittiiqquuee oovveerr 116600 yyeeaarrss aaggoo..

HELEN CHRISTOPHER investigates whether or not theworking class in Britain today is capable of making arevolution and overthrowing capitalism.



produce wealth, is alienated from theproduct of its labour and lives togetherin communities.

Workers and working-class commu-nities rely on collective solidarity as anatural part of their day-to-day livesand that solidarity can be essential attimes for survival itself.

Where can we recognise this image inBritain today except in isolated pocketsor occasional instances? Even our col-lectivism is moulded and made synthet-ic by the media from "mass out-pour-ings of grief" to participation in votingpeople in or out of reality TV pro-grammes.

Individuals are increasingly blamedfor failings which are the products oftheir environments; being fat, smoking,having too big a carbon footprint etc.Self-help is extolled to change yourather than collective action to changeyour circumstances.

There are workers in Britain but canit be said that there is a working-class -"a class against capital" never mind "aclass for itself" (4)

In Britain the corruption, fragmenta-tion and disappearance of the working-class has been a complex process withmany layers to it. Some of these are:

Corruption through materialwealth, fulfilment of personal aspirationsto improve life chances through educa-tion and other forms of welfare-statism.

Consumerism and debt.Dispersal of the working-class to

live in more atomised accommodationsuch as housing schemes and newtowns.

Division of the class through thepromotion of racism, xenophobia andother forms of prejudice.

Promotion of addictions and quickfixes which undermine the health andculture of the working-class.

Development of production so thatmuch smaller numbers and concentra-tions of workers are required to pro-duce goods.

Sub-contracting and changing pat-terns of work which fracture the collec-tive nature of production.

Destruction of industry and hencethe destruction of working-class occu-pations.

Whilst some of these are arenas forstruggle others are structural changeswhich could not be resisted or werechanges that the movement fought forlike better housing and education.

Capitalism has become adept atundermining the development of theworking class as a revolutionary class,not only through its conscious andunconscious actions, but also in thenature of its own development.

In Britain it has de-mobbed itsgravediggers. If, then, as capitalismdevelops the working class at a pointbegins to become less powerful, whatdoes that say about the concept of theworking class as the revolutionary classborn within capitalism to overthrow it?

If the processes we have seen in theadvanced capitalist countries in the20th century are an inherent part ofcapitalism then the working class willinevitably be corrupted and degraded.What is to stop the working classes ofBrazil, India and China going the wayof the British working class?

The development of production anduse of new technologies and ITC will

mean that the potential to decrease theconcentration of workers and fragmentproduction will be an increasing trend.So how will we get socialism?

Perhaps it is useful at this point toreflect on the great revolutions of the20th century; the Russian, Chinese andCuban. As has been extensively com-mentated on, these all happened incountries with a weak industrial baseand relatively new and under-developedworking-classes compared to the otherclass forces around them.

They all had larger peasantries thanworking classes. Since these are the mostsuccessful examples that we have thenperhaps, with the wisdom of hindsight,we should regard them as the rule ratherthan the exception. The achievement ofsocialism appears most likely where theworking class is newer and capitalism ismore brutal in its exploitation.

In conclusion it is worth re-visitingthe conditions for achieving socialism.Historical Materialism tells us thatchange from one class system to anoth-er occurs because the existing rulingclass and sets of class relationships havebecome a break on the forces of pro-duction and the new emerging ruling-class to be is developing new forces andrelations of production.

There is strong evidence that capital-ism has not yet reached that point aswitnessed by the development ofInfomation and CommunicationsTechnology and other new technolo-gies as a productive force in the latter

half of the 20th and the start of the 21stcentury. Profit and competition areincredibly powerful motivational forces.

We also need to think about the pointof revolutionary crisis. As Lenin said:"..for a revolution to take place it is notenough for the exploited and oppressedmasses to realise the impossibility of livingin the old way, and demand changes; fora revolution to take place it is essentialthat the exploiters should not be able tolive and rule in the old way. …revolutionis impossible without a nationwide crisis(affecting both the exploited andexploiters).

“It follows that for a revolution to takeplace, it is essential, first, that a majority

of the workers or at least amajority of the class-conscious,thinking and politically activeworkers, should fully realisethat revolution is necessary,and that they should be pre-pared to die for it; second thatthe ruling classes should begoing through a governmentalcrisis, which draws even themost backwards masses intopolitics (symptomatic of any

genuine revolution is a rapid tenfold andeven hundredfold increase in the size of theworking class and oppressed masses - hith-erto apathetic - who are capable of wagingthe political struggle), weakens the govern-ment and makes it possible for the revolu-tionaries to overthrow it." (5)

This has been analysed as crises ofover-production with inter-imperialistrivalries leading to war. It may be thatfuture crises will take these forms, how-ever, other factors are emerging whichpresent inherent problems for capital-ism, which it may be unable to manage,for example national and personalindebtedness and the destruction of theenvironment that we rely on to supportour life on this planet as resources aregobbled up in the pursuit of profit.

We know that socialism can beachieved, because it has been achieved.However, to be successful revolutionar-ies we need to try to be objective aboutcapitalism’s strengths and weaknesses,the forces that we have at our disposaland how best to attack capitalism’sweak points.

“... for a REVOLUTION to take

place it is ESSENTIAL that the

EXPLOITERS should not be able to

live and RULE in the OLD WAY.”

FOOTNOTES:1.The Manifesto of the Communist Party -Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels 1848 inSelected Works, Lawrence and Wishart.19682. ibid p.383. ibid p.384. The Poverty of Philosophy. Karl MarxProgress Publishers 19755. "Left-Wing" Communism an InfantileDisorder - V I Lenin 1920 in SelectedWorks, Progress Publishers 1977

V I Lenin



THE GREAT miners' strike occurredin 1985. In the year immediately pre-ceding the denationalisation of theindustry (1992/3) 31,700 workersturned out 61.8 million tons from 17collieries.(2) (See tables opposite)

Since 1984 there has been a constantoverall decline of employment in theindustry matched by an equally con-stant increase in the rate of exploitationas measured by output per man shift(opms).

There are some indications that thisdecline might be slowing down, or evenreversing. A number of collieriesincluding Harworth (Nottinghamshire)are kept on a care and maintenanceregime while Hatfield, in SouthYorkshire has been taken out of 'careand maintenance' following an injectionof £50 million from the Russian VTBBank Europe after the Russian coalproducer Kuzbbassrazrezugal (KRU)had taken a 51% interest in Hatfield'sowner, Power Fuel. (4)

A new drift mine under developmentin the Neath Valley is now extracting'development coal' with economic pro-duction anticipated in early 2008; it isestimated that the mine will be capableof 1 million tons per year and plans areafoot to open more pits in Wales. (5)

At the end of May Alex Salmond,Scotland's First Minister, gave his back-ing to 'clean coal technology' which isbeing introduced to that country's twocoal fired power stations as well as a bidto open a new deep coal mine atCanonbie in Dumfriesshire which hasreserves of 400 million tonnes, suffi-cient to run Longannet power stationfor 80 years.

Salmond further said that clean coaltechnologies mean that '…coal, frombeing environmentally unacceptable, isbecoming environmentally attractive.What people forget is that we haveroughly 10 per cent of Europe's

reserves.' Of course Salmond's progno-sis could just be opportunism on hispart but the argument is sound. (6)

However, because coal mining is anextractive industry, all collieries eventu-ally run out of accessible coal and die.Thus Tower Colliery near Hirwaun inGlamorgan is scheduled for closurewithin the next year or so. Tower wassubject to an employees' buyout in1995.

FUTURE POSSIBILITIESA slogan from the past was, 'coal is toovaluable to burn;' that was in the daysof mainly inefficient burning. Moderntechnologies have meant that coal can

be 'cooked' rather than burned, therebyenabling greater thermal efficiency fromthe raw material while, as oil and gasprices soar, coal could again providefeedstocks for the chemical and alliedindustries. Both South Africa (30%)and China are producing diesel oil fromcoal while the process is being investi-gated in Wales.

TRADE UNIONSEngineered by elements within theThatcher government, the UDM(Union of Democratic Mineworkers)formally broke away from the NUM(National Union of Mineworkers) in1985 though the split had been appar-

The state of Britain’s coalindustry and its workforceIInn 11998833//44,, wwiitthh aa wwoorrkkffoorrccee ooff 119911,,770000,, tthhee NNaattiioonnaall CCooaallBBooaarrdd ((NNCCBB)) pprroodduucceedd 9900..11mmiilllliioonn ttoonnss ooff ddeeeepp mmiinneedd ccooaallffrroomm 117700 ccoolllliieerriieess.. ((11))

BARRY JOHNSON looks at the decline of the coal industry in Britain and the impact this has had on the miners and their trades union organisations.

The latest available deep mining figures (2006/7) show 8.2 million tons extracted by 3,600 miners working 19 collieries (3): LLooccaalliittyy NNoo ooff ccoolllliieerriieess EEmmppllooyyeeeess OOuuttppuutt ((ttoonnss))Derbyshire 1 29 735Doncaster 2 253 57,482Gloucestershire 2 5 180Kirklees 1 14 18,565N. Yorks. 1 755 1,908,031Nottinghamshire 3 1,088 2,642,313Rotherham 1 485 828,661Warwickshire 1 704 2,247,238Neath/Port Talbot 4 122 11,235Rhondda 1 304 423,122Torfan 2 11 5,362TToottaallss 1199 33118899 77,,771100,,558833

Opencast mining now produces more coal than deep mining: LLooccaalliittyy NNoo ooff ssiitteess EEmmppllooyyeeeess OOuuttppuutt ((ttoonnss))Dumfries & Galloway 1 93 232,852E. Ayshire 7 477 3,257,094Falkirk 1 22 5,183Fife 1 129 1,046,351Midlothian 1 30 246,307S. Lanarkshire 4 204 860,104W. Lothian 1 88 494,839Carmarthenshire 1 14 32,221Neath/Port Talbot 5 194 807,311Powys 1 96 412,205TToottaallss 3333 11,,880011 88,,441122,,667700



ent from mid 1984. The courts ensuredthat all the assets of theNottinghamshire Area NUM weretaken over by the scab union, andNottinghamshire has remained the con-centration point for the UDM member-ship, though it also has a grip at thecountry's largest and most productivecolliery, Daw Mill in Warwickshire.Whilst the UDM has attempted tomove into other industries it has failedto make much progress. Both organisa-tions are concentrated in the deepmines, squabbling over less than 4,000workers, while the former TGWU, nowUNITE, is the main player in open-casting.

THE NUMFrom the founding, in 1889, of theMiners' Federation of Great Britain(MFGB) the main miners' union hasretained strong elements of federalism;even now, with so few members, feder-alism still beggars the NUM with theanachronistic 'Areas' still retaining sig-nificant funds and independence.

The Derbyshire Area for example,with only one small drift mine, atEckington, within the county boundary,still has two paid agents whilst payingthe former general secretary an undis-closed consultancy retainer. The twoagents' main functions are to providesome welfare, benefit and representa-

tion services to their retired members;one agent is paid by the National Unionand the second from the accumulatedfunds of the Area.

Some years ago the former generalsecretary expressed his objective toretain sufficient funds to ensure that thelast pound be spent on the day that thelast pensioner died!

Following the great strike some otherAreas, such as Yorkshire,Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire,opted to merge into the NationalUnion. Other Areas chose the sameroute as Derbyshire by retaining theiraffiliation to the NUM whilst upholdingtheir parochial 'independence.'

The NUM General Secretary, SteveKemp, has recently announced that hewill not be seeking re-election for hispost though he is eligible so to do.

He told the NEC that for him 'to seekre-election… would entail a long periodof uncertainty for the Union that wouldgive the appearance of unseemlymanoeuvre and manipulation thatcould do nothing but harm and wouldinevitably poison relationships in thelong term making the job much moredifficult to do,' and continued, that nonational official should, ever be'…placed in this impossible positionagain.'

It appears that John Walsh, an avidright winger who, twice unsuccessfullycontested the Presidency against ArthurScargill, is co-ordinating the campaignagainst the left.

MIGRANTSRussian labour is being introduced atHatfield while in NottinghamshirePolish miners are working at Thoresby.In the latter case at least, this has led tothe introduction of the 'butty,' systemwhich has close similarities to that ofthe gangmasters.

One member of a team is appointedas the butty who receives the aggregat-ed wages of the whole team to divide itout as he sees fit; it is likely that he alsohas the best knowledge of English.

It is a system that operated in severalcoalfields before nationalisation and thebutties were the mainstay of GeorgeSpencer's breakaway union after the1926 lockout. Mining is still a highlydangerous occupation in which clearcommunication between miners is cru-cial but neither the state nor the ownersare prepared to fund courses in 'Englishfor Speakers of Other Languages'(ESOL), a demand made by the NUM.Daw Mill has seen two men killed inthe last year

Chronic obstructive pulmonary dis-ease is widespread amongst former

underground workers and has occupiedthe unions in compensation claimsagainst the Department of Trade andIndustry which has taken over theresponsibilities of the, now defunct,National Coal Board and its equallydefunct successor, British Coal.

Because claims have to be made fol-lowing strict legal conditions, solicitorsare essential; the National Audit Office(NAO) has recently reported almost300,000 men have been affected whohave received less in compensation thanit cost the Government to administerthe claims!

The NAO reports that the 'top ten'solicitors' firms 'have already received£636 million…' in fees. One of thesecompanies, Ventside, seems to be whol-ly owned by the UDM and received£31.6 million. The 'financial relation-ship between the UDM and solicitors'

firms handling coal health claims is amatter that is now the subject of aSerious Fraud Office investigation.' (7)

The development of clean coal tech-nology has been at the forefront of theNUM's campaigning since before the1984 strike and, together with carboncapture, is now becoming a major issuein the struggle against global warming.It is a technology that could see a revi-talisation of the British coal industryand, just possibly, of the NUM; justdon't hold your breath!

The other unions in the industry aresupervisory. NACODS (NationalAssociation of Colliery Overmen,Deputies and Shotfirers) organises firstline managers, being another federationbased on locality which, in the pastcouple of decades, has been subject tosplitting activities often encouraged bythe UDM.

Continued on page 11

Orgreave 1985


Mandela’s ContinuingWalk to Freedom

THE APPEARANCE of NelsonMandela’s withdrawal from public lifedid not last long. He quickly foundedthe Nelson Mandela Foundation(NMF), which joined the NelsonMandela Children's Fund he had estab-lished five years earlier as a charitydesigned to continue his work. (3)

Soon after his retirement, heacknowledged publicly his regret at nothaving acted sooner in relation to theHIV/AIDS pandemic ravaging thecountry - not surprisingly HIV becamea focus of his energies after 1999.This led to the NMF setting up anHIV/AIDS programme and to thelaunching of the 46664 campaign. (4)

His interests in education and youngpeople resulted in the NMF setting upan education programme, initially ded-icated to building schools with moneyraised by him but soon broadening itsfocus. In 2003 Mr Mandela foundedThe Mandela-Rhodes Foundation,built around a scholarship programmebut aiming more broadly to promoteleadership in Africa. (5)

I could go on detailing the work MrMandela has presided over since 1999,but I think I've made my point. Forhim the long walk to freedom is a con-tinuing walk. To quote the final sen-tences of his 1994 autobiography:

"I have walked that long road to free-dom. I have tried not to falter; I havemade missteps along the way. But Ihave discovered the secret that afterclimbing a great hill, one only finds thatthere are many more hills to climb.

“I have taken a moment here to rest,to steal a view of the glorious vista thatsurrounds me, to look back on the dis-tance I have come. But I can rest onlyfor a moment, for with freedom comeresponsibilities, and I dare not linger,for my long walk is not yet ended." (6)

It remains a question, of course, as towhether any walk to freedom - in prin-

ciple - can end. As we are finding inSouth Africa, freedom is not somethingone ever possesses. And the momentone stops working to nurture it and togrow it, it seems to start shrivelling. Iknow from many conversations withMr Mandela that he feels intensely boththe growing pains of our democracyand the call of justice to keep walking.

Nonetheless, for individuals, the rav-aging of time ultimately slows the walkto a shuffle. In 2004 Mr Mandelacalled a press conference andannounced that he would be "retiringfrom retirement". As he elaborated -"don't call me, I'll call you." (7) Thatmoment inaugurated a long period ofreview and reflection within the NMF,culminating in the 2006 decision by ourBoard of Trustees to recast theFoundation as a memory and dialoguenon-governmental organisation (NGO)with its core business undertaken by theNelson Mandela Centre of Memoryand Dialogue. Here I want to tell astory about this nascent Centre. It's not

the story - just a story. It's a storyabout stories and storytelling. A storyabout Mr Mandela's engagement withus and with the concept of an institu-tion convened around his stories. Andit's a story of the questions we've beenasking ourselves as we've conceptu-alised the Centre.

In truth, the questions are legion.What I want to focus on here are thequestions we regard as critical to ourinstitutional space at this particularjuncture in the process:

11.. WWhhaatt iiss ""tthhee MMaannddeellaa AArrcchhiivvee""??22.. HHooww ddoo wwee ccoonnvveennee ((oorr ccoonnssttii-

ttuuttee,, oorr ccoonnssttrruucctt)) tthhiiss aarrcchhiivvee??33.. WWhhaatt ddoo wwee ddoo wwiitthh tthhiiss aarrcchhiivvee??Now these are blunt questions, in

their bluntness begging other questions.For example - what are we doing withthis archive? What should we be doingwith it? What could we be doing withit? Moreover, within each of thesequestions dance at least two implicitquestions of power - first, to whomdoes the Mandela Archive belong?Second, who has the authority toanswer these questions?

The story I am about to tell mayseem to avoid this complexity. That isnot my intention. But in the interestsof completing the story before readersrun out of patience, I am going tofavour the shallows rather than thedepths.

THE MANDELA ARCHIVESo what is the Mandela Archive? Well,whatever it is, it is vast and shattered,and it can reach you everywhere. (8)We have begun to document the bigger,more obvious fragments, and alreadywe are understanding that, in principle,it is infinite.

Its chronology can, more or less vio-lently, be stabilised. But it remainsopen-ended, moving forward, moving

IInn 11999999 NNeellssoonn MMaannddeellaa sstteeppppeedd ddoowwnn aass SSoouutthh AAffrriiccaa''ss ffiirrsstt ddeemm-ooccrraattiiccaallllyy eelleecctteedd PPrreessiiddeenntt aafftteerr oonnee tteerrmm iinn ooffffiiccee,, aanndd mmoovveedd,,aappppaarreennttllyy,, iinnttoo aa wweellll-ddeesseerrvveedd rreettiirreemmeenntt..

VERNE HARRIS (pictured with Mandela) tells thestory of the Mandela Archive.

Mandela’s Continuing Walk to Freedom

(1)

(2)


back. How far backdo we go? How far dowe reach into the his-tories of family, clan,kingdom, nation andland? How far for-ward can we reachinto the future tellingsand re-tellings of story? How do wehold that extraordinary spacing ofarchive that is Thembuland, the placeof Nelson Mandela's birth?

The communities living there todayhave inherited many generations of sto-rytelling about Madiba - NelsonRolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela.(9)They continue to engage the land-scapes and the cultures which shapedhim. And they absorb, from "outside",the new accounts in school curriculaand from the media. An open-endedarchive.

Wherever we choose to view theMandela Archive, we find open-ended-ness. Open in time, in medium, and ingeography. Let me briefly, by way ofillustration, trace an outline of theMandela Archive in Glasgow. A super-ficial enquiry reveals the following:

Mr Mandela was awarded theFreedom of the City of Glasgow on 4August 1981.

Students at the University ofGlasgow elected Winnie MadikizelaMandela as rector while Mr Mandelawas still in prison.

The archives of GlasgowCaledonian University has a posteradvertising a rally on 9 October 1993where Mr Mandela was present toreceive the freedom of nine Britishcities including Glasgow.

On 16 June 1986 St George's Placewas renamed Nelson Mandela Place.

In 1988 the Freedom At 70Campaign kicked off in Glasgow with amarch from the city to London.

A Freedom At 70 concert was heldon Glasgow Green.

The first office of the ScottishCommittee was established at 266Clyde Street in the mid-1970s and in1976 it was formally established as theScottish Committee of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

The last meeting of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Scotland washeld on 3 December 1994 in Glasgow.Its assets were transferred to theScottish Committee of Action forSouthern Africa (ACTSA).

In 1996 Mr Mandela was awardedan Honorary Doctorate by the GlasgowCaledonian University.

Blair Douglas composed the tuneNelson Mandela's Welcome toGlasgow, which is featured on the

album "Brave Hearts: New ScotsMusic".

A portrait of Mr Mandela by AnneMacintosh hangs in the Govan MbekiBuilding at the Caledonian University.Postcards of the portrait are included ina collection of political postcards at theuniversity.

In January 2000 Hugh Henry of theScottish Parliament welcomed theestablishment of a website to recordtributes to Mr Mandela.

In 2002 Mr Mandela visitedGlasgow's Barlinnie Prison in relationto the Lockerbie bombing.

A Glasgow schoolgirl was selectedto meet Mr Mandela in London at theMake Poverty History Campaignlaunch in 2005.

The Centre for Political Songs atGlasgow Caledonian Universityincludes South African freedom songs.

Let me stop there. My superficialenquiry reveals but a few strands in arichly layered tapestry. (10) Just thinkof the records generated by each ofthese strands - documents, photo-graphs, film footage, newspaper arti-cles, diary entries …But think also of thestories generated byeach one. Storieswhich gather new lay-ers over time. Andthink also of the myr-iad memories, someof them "archived",some of them not. Some of them givenlife in sharing; some of them doomed toerasure. Think of the endless layers ofcontext we could place around eachmemory, story and record. (11)

Viewed in Glasgow, then, theMandela Archive, in principle, is infi-nite. And it is dynamic. Viewed any-where, the Mandela Archive is infiniteand dynamic. We can, and we must,bound and stabilise it through the rangeof conventional archival interventions -selecting, collecting, safekeeping, cata-loguing, restoring, digitising, and so on.

But always the archive will dancebeyond our capacity to keep it withinbounds. Even the most bounded andstabilised documentary record, forinstance Mr Mandela's official prisonrecord, is broken open by its potentialfor an infinite layering of context - notleast the continuing narratives being toldby this record's many interpreters.(12)

And how does one keep withinbounds that archive without archive -the shared memories and stories of anycollectivity? Be that collectivity inThembuland or in Glasgow. Be it largeor small. Of course, we can choose toexclude from the category "archive"


anything not recorded on the exteriorsurfaces of our choosing.

We can choose to exclude the exteri-or surface constituted by the psychicapparatuses of a collectivity. But thatwould be to ignore indigenous ways ofknowing archive in Mr Mandela's partof the world. That would be to denyorality its status and its authority asarchive. It would be to privilege thetape recorder over the ear. (13)

I know I haven't answered the ques-tion "What is the Mandela Archive?" Intruth, I don't believe there can be adefinitive answer. What is clear is thatit is vast and shattered, and it can reachyou everywhere.

CONVENING THE MANDELA ARCHIVEHow do we convene (or constitute, orconstruct) such an archive? To bemore specific, how does the NelsonMandela Centre of Memory andDialogue propose to convene it? Howdo we do the impossible? Whose sto-ries do we tell? Whose stories do wenot tell? Which stories are we listeningfor? What audiences do we privilege?How do we resist the pull of everyarchive to authorise and to sanitise andto inflate? Readers will appreciate thatMr Mandela's international icon statusmakes that pull extraordinary in thecase of the Mandela Archive. Howdoes the Centre resist the temptation tohagiography?

At this point I wish to move morefirmly into the realm of narrative, or,more precisely, anecdote. For threeyears now we have been conceptualis-ing and negotiating the Centre ofMemory and Dialogue. This hasspanned a range of formal studies anda continuing more or less formal con-sultation with stakeholders.

But our primary adviser has been MrMandela himself. We have consultedhim all along the way, more informallythan formally, and have listened care-fully to his directions. What hasemerged is what I regard as a set offounding values for our endeavour, andfor any other memory initiative in thename of Nelson Mandela. There aresix of them, and I propose simply nam-ing them, and then sharing a story toillustrate the construc-tion of each.

1) The NelsonMandela Centre ofMemory and Dialogueshould not be allabout NelsonMandela. He wasalways part of a col-



lective leadership.Many individualsaround him madeimportant contribu-tions. (In August2005 Mac Maharaj,Tim Couzens and Iinterviewed MrMandela. At one point Mac askedhim to explain his journey to embracingequal rights for women. Mr Mandela'sanswer was in two movements - firstly,he and his comrades' readings during theprison years; and secondly, his reflectionson leadership roles assumed by hisfemale forebears. Both movements fore-grounded others.) (14)

2) We don't have to protect MrMandela by sanitising his history. (Inearly 2006 our exhibitions team wasconceptualising the exhibition "Madiba:Public and Private", and we realisedthat the significant number of intimateimages of Winnie might provoke sensi-tivities unreasonably. I discussed theexhibition concept with Mr Mandelaand showed him the images we pro-posed using. He smiled and said:"That's fine. It's history.")

3) Work with; don't competewith other institutions. (On 21September 2004 Mr Mandela said thefollowing of what was then the Centreof Memory Project: "We want it to bepart of what we have called the process-es of restoration and reconciliation …We want it to work closely with themany other institutions which make upthe South African archival system. (15)Five months later, at a ceremony inMthatha, Mr Mandela donated hispresidential gifts and awards to theSouth African state. The Deed ofDonation specified the Nelson MandelaMuseum in Mthatha as the institution-al custodian.)

4) The Centre should invite con-testation, ie. not simply represent anorthodoxy. (After a memorial functionfor the late Anthony Sampson atMandela House in 2005, Mr Mandelasaid to James Sanders and JohnMatshikiza: "Yes, you young people,you must keep troubling us." (16)And it is no accident that the forewordto arguably the most controversial bookto be published in South Africa in thelast decade - the Mac Maharaj/PadraigO'Malley (auto)biography Shades ofDifference - was written by MrMandela.)

5) Memory is not an end initself. It must not be allowed to lieinert. It is a resource for action, andshould provoke action. (In 2005 I wasshowing Mr Mandela and a visitingdignitary around an exhibition at

Mandela House. We were discussingSouth African music, and the name ofGibson Kente came up. Kente wasdesperately ill with full-blown AIDS.Mr Mandela told his personal assistantto cancel his remaining appointmentsfor the day, and a short time later hewas visiting Kente in Soweto. Justweeks later Kente was dead.)

6) The Centre must have placefor mischief and humour. (MrMandela is renowned for his sense ofhumour. According to him, this issomething he has cultivated as a meansof helping people to feel at ease. In hiswords: "We have a sense of humourbecause we feel it is our duty." (17)But, in my view, there is a mischiefwhich rises from wells deeper thanduty. I remember well a function atMandela House attended by the world'smedia where Mr Mandela entered theauditorium and immediately spotted hisold friend Mac Maharaj sitting in thefront row. At the time Mac was in thethroes of giving up smoking cigarettes.Mr Mandela asked him if he was stillnot smoking, and Mac replied affirma-tively. "Ah, but I knowyou," Mr Mandelaresponded, "nowyou're smokingdagga.")

For us at the Centrethese founding values,these foundinginjunctions, are bestexpressed in the concept of "memoryfor justice".

Listen to Mr Mandela speakingabout the Centre on 21 September2004: "Most importantly, we want theCentre to dedicate itself to the recoveryof memories and stories suppressed bypower. That is the call of justice. Thecall which must be the project's mostimportant shaping influence." (18)

WHAT DO WE DO WITH THEMANDELA ARCHIVE?

The call of justice to memory - mem-ory for justice. This concept suggeststhe beginning of an answer to the ques-tion "what do we do with this archive?"Whatever else we do with it, whateverelse we do, our memory resources mustbe a resource in the making of a justsociety.

But what might this mean for anorganisation like the Nelson MandelaFoundation? What might it mean,practically? Well, at one level it is easyto catalogue implications:

It means institutionalising the corevalues given us by Mr Mandela.

It means understanding the power

we wield as authorised Mandela story-tellers.

It means privileging the weak andthe poor.

And I could go on cataloguing. Butat a higher level of analysis, we haveanswered the question "what do we dowith this archive?" with a single word -"dialogue". We have identified "dia-logue" as the means for making memo-ry work in society. And we came todialogue from at least three vantagepoints:

Conceptually. We would argue thatmemory is dialogue. In our indigenoustraditions in South Africa, memory isnot something that the individual pos-sesses, or owns. And even an individ-ual sitting in a garden on her ownremembering her childhood is enteringinto a dialogue with herself.

In terms of legacy. Mr Mandela'slife has been about finding solutions tointractable social problems throughprocesses of dialogue.

The needs of our country. Robustanalysis of South Africa reveals theextent to which we are still speakingpast each other. It is only now becom-ing apparent the extent to which oursocial fabric was torn during theapartheid era and continued to beripped through the transition period.

The challenge posed by social cohe-sion is immense. In the words ofauthor Mmatshilo Motsei: "Havingreturned from political exile, the nationis faced with an act of inner exilereferred to by Wole Soyinka as 'internalseverance'. Society's moral fibre is inshreds …" (19)

Clearly, the concept "dialogue", andthe word "dialogue", need to be openedto deconstruction. This article is notthe place for such an exercise, so let mesimply mark a space before moving toa conclusion.

At the Foundation we are in the mid-dle of an extensive study designed toanswer the question "What, precisely,has the life and work of NelsonMandela taught us about dialogue?"(20)

As you can see, we do not have morethan preliminary answers to questions.And we question whether final answersare ever possible.

What do we propose to do with theMandela Archive? Insummary, we proposeto:

Dialogue with thisarchive;

Interrogate thisarchive;

Open ourselves tointerrogation by it;



two novels, both of which were short-listedfor South Africa's M-Net Book Prize.(3) See www.nelsonmandela.org andwww.nelsonmandelachildrensfund.com. (4) See www.46664.com. (5) See www.mandelarhodes.org. (6) Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom(Macdonald Purnell, London, 1994), p.617.(7) Mandela House, Johannesburg, June2004.(8) With acknowledgement to LeonardCohen, for an echoing of lines in his song"Heart With No Companion", VariousPositions (Columbia, 1984).(9) "Madiba" is Nelson Mandela's clanname. "Rolihlahla" was the name givenhim at birth; "Nelson" the name given himon his first day at school; and "Dalibhunga"his circumcision name.(10) Two members of the audienceapproached me after I had delivered thelecture on which this article is based. Onehad performed on the "Brave Hearts"album mentioned above, and shared amusician's stories with me. The otherinformed me that the Chief Executive of theNelson Mandela Foundation, AchmatDangor, had married his wife Audrey in aceremony at the University of Glasgow.

(11) And, as Jacques Derrida has argued,"the finiteness of a context is neversecured or simple, there is an indefiniteopening of every context, an essential non-totalization." Limited Inc. (NorthwesternUniversity Press, Evanston, 1988), p.137.(12) See Nelson Mandela Foundation, APrisoner in the Garden: Opening NelsonMandela's Prison Archive (Penguin,Johannesburg, 2005).(13) For a more fulsome account of thearchival status of "the oral", see JacquesDerrida, "Archive Fever in South Africa", inCarolyn Hamilton et al (eds), Refiguring theArchive (David Philip, Cape Town, 2002).(14) See Nelson Mandela: The AuthorisedPortrait (Wild Dog Press, Johannesburg,2006), pp.338-343.(15) A Prisoner in the Garden, p.98.(16) Authorised Portrait, p.340.(17) Authorised Portrait, p.337.(18) A Prisoner in the Garden, p.98.(19) Mail and Guardian, 3-9 August 2007.(20) The Foundation is working with anexternal consultant to interrogate this ques-tion through the primary means of inter-views and focus groups. Results are antici-pated by the end of 2007.(21) Long Walk, p.617.

FOOTNOTES:(1) This article is based on a public lecturepresented under the same title at theUniversity of Glasgow on 24 July 2007. Itwas the keynote address for theUniversity's conference "The Cultural Valueof Oral History".(2) Verne Harris is a programme managerfor the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memoryand Dialogue at the Nelson MandelaFoundation and an honorary research asso-ciate at the University of the Witwatersrand.He participated in a range of structureswhich transformed South Africa's apartheidpublic records system - amongst others,the African National Congress's ArchivesCommittee, the Arts and Culture TaskGroup, the Consultative Forum which draft-ed the National Archives of South AfricaAct, the Truth and ReconciliationCommission, and the South African HistoryArchive. Widely published, he is bestknown for the books Exploring Archives: AnIntroduction to Archival Ideas and Practicein South Africa (1997, 2000 and 2004),Refiguring the Archive (2002), A Prisoner inthe Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela'sPrison Archive (2005), and Archives andJustice (2007). He is also the author of

Intervene on critical social issueswith it; and,

Create space for dialogue with it.Finally, we understand that the lega-

cy of Nelson Mandela is not somethingto be preserved. To be kept. Likeevery great legacy, it has life only as itis made and re-made.

In theNelsonMandelaCentre ofMemoryandDialoguewe do not

aspire to be custodians of legacy.Keepers. We aspire rather to be mak-ers of a living legacy. And our aspira-tion is inspired by Mr Mandela himself:""BBuutt II ccaann rreesstt oonnllyy ffoorr aa mmoommeenntt,, ffoorrwwiitthh ffrreeeeddoomm ccoommee rreessppoonnssiibbiilliittiieess,, aannddII ddaarree nnoott lliinnggeerr,, ffoorr mmyy lloonngg wwaallkk iissnnoott yyeett eennddeedd.."" ((2211))

Continued from page 7 What and where is the working class in Britain?

FOOTNOTES(1) 'Production and manpower returns for12 months period April 2006-March 2007,'27 April 2007 http://www.coal.gov.uk.(2) Collieries employing less than 30 wereexcluded.(3) 'Production and manpower returns…April 2006 - March 2007.'(4) Independent, 13 Aug, 2007.(5) Robin Turner, Western Mail, [15] Aug2007(6) http://scotsman.com, 29 May 2007(7) Times, 18 July 2007.(8) www.bacmteam.org.uk/home.(9) Certification Office for Trade Unions andEmployers' Associations, form AR21Annual Return for Union of DemocraticMiners (National); Certification Office…(Nottingham Section).(10) Certification Office… National Union ofMineworkers.

The state of Britain’s coal industry and its workforcewithout voting rights, to retired mem-bers.

With new technologies of extractionand a rising demand for clean coal thefuture for miners could be promisingbut while ever the UDM exists there islittle possibility the two organisationscould work together while working con-ditions will continue to deteriorate.

As with the Spencer Union betweenthe two world wars the UDM will con-tinue to be manipulated by the employ-ers and the unholy alliance between theUDM and the coalowners is the majorbarrier to any improvement in theworking conditions of British miners.

There is nothing wrong with themembership of the UDM; their inter-ests are the same as those of NUMmembers and, from time to time, thiscommon interest flares up into com-mon action.

The danger is that another shoddycompromise such as that of 1937,

Senior managers are organised intoBACM -TEAM (British Association ofColliery Managers - Technical, Energy,Administrative staff and Managementmembers (TEAM).

It is an overtly class collaborationistbody as expressed in the opening para-graph of its website: "The Association isan independent trade union that has nopolitical affiliations. Its purpose is toimprove the interests of members bybringing a constructive approach to theemployment relationship, which recog-nises that both sides of industry mustwork together to strengthen corporateenterprises and individual wealth"! (8)

Nationally the UDM is recorded ashaving 1,293 members at the end of2005 of whom 836 are in theNottingham section. (9) The returnsof the NUM show a membership of6,154 (10) - higher than the number ofminers in the country. This is becausethe union offers 'half membership,'

which placed Spencer and his croniesinto influential sinecures, is unlikely tocreate the unity that the near futuredemands.


Breaking the silence ove the “Miami Five”

Breaking the silenceover the “Miami Five”IInn JJuullyy 22000077 GGiinnaa NNiicchhoollssoonn ppaaiidd aa vviissiitt ttoo CCuubbaa ffoorr hheerrddaauugghhtteerr RRaacchheell’’ss wweeddddiinngg aanndd iinn tthhee pprroocceessss lleeaarrnneedd ooff yyeettaannootthheerr UUSS vviioollaattiioonn aaggaaiinnsstt ssoocciiaalliisstt CCuubbaa..

Gina tells the story of her visit and of Cuba’s fightto free the “Miami Five” imprisoned by the USgovernment on spurious charges.www.freethefive.org WE WERE sailing round the Cubancoast off Havana. With the wind in myhair and the sun at my back, I askedSesun, "What are those black flags,there?"

I had seen them before from the win-dow of my hotel room. The HotelNacional is a national monument. It hasa 1930s charm combined with a veryCuban, socialist warmth.

High on one of its walls is a hugeposter: "Viva La Patria!" Near the hotel,right on the coast, is the AmericanEmbassy.

Sesun was the boat's entertainer. Shewas teaching my granddaughter todance in the Cuban manner. "Use yourshoulders!" A cross hung round herneck and I guessed she was not awholehearted supporter of Fidel's gov-ernment. But she knew all about theblack flags.

"They are for the five heroes. You donot know about our five heroes?" Shewas talking about the Miami Five,arrested by the US government nineyears ago and imprisoned on spuriouscharges and after a flawed trial.

"And their children have not seentheir fathers for nine years. And whatthey are accused of - that is not true. Sowe built the black flags in front of theAmerican Embassy and we have wentthere - gone there - and made a specta-cle, you know, a show - "

"A demonstration?""Si, a demonstration, many, many of

us, to say we support our heroes andwe do not agree with the Americans."

The next day I went to photographthe black flags. A Cuban soldier guard-ed the American Embassy and someboys jostled along the pavement, laugh-ing and joking.

The soldier reprimanded them for

impolite behaviour in front of a tourist.In the hotel is a large poster headed

"FREE THE FIVE" and below the pic-tures of their families and the short text

is the slogan: "ROMPIENDO ELSILENCIO - BREAKING THESILENCE".

We were in Cuba for six days to cel-

CUBA SI!

A poster dedicated to the FIVE HEROES inside the foyer of theHotel Nacional in Havana.


Breaking the silence ove the “Miami Five”

ebrate my daughter Rachel Young'swedding to Gareth Chick. Her father,Mike, had worked in a scientific capac-ity for ICIDCA, the Cuban Institute forInvestigations into Sugar Derivatives,which had been set up by Che Guevarain May 1963.

Mike had gone to Cuba in the midsixties and stayed there till his death in1979. Rachel had visited him duringmost of that time and through a largepart of her growing up she developedan attachment to Cuba and its way oflife. She had witnessed how her fatherand his colleagues worked very hard indifficult circumstances, selflessly, tosupport socialism.

She contacted ICIDCA and a coupleof her father's colleagues came to thewedding, and invited us to the Institute.

The day we visitedthe Institute was veryhot. They sent a carfor us, gave us a won-derful lunch providedby the Institute's can-teen, and Amaury (DrAmaury Alvarez, sub-director in charge ofinvestigations) talked alittle about his dead

colleague whom he remembered withgreat affection, and a lot about the workthey had done and were still doing.

He told us there was a policy not touse sugar itself for anything but food."Feeding the people is the priority," heexplained. Thus, Cuban rum is made,not from sugar but from molasses. AndCuba now makes plastic from bagasse,the fibrous material left after the sugarhas been extracted from sugar cane.

Amaury talked about the connectionsthe Institute has with many LatinAmerican and South American coun-tries, and I remembered how theCubans had sent their young soldiers tofight and die alongside the Angolans, inthe days before the defeat of apartheidin South Africa.

Now they give their discoveries, sci-entific and particularly medical, to thewhole world, but they are a tiny coun-try and the United States looms menac-ingly on their doorstep. One can't help

but be afraid for them.It was a strange and unforgettable

visit, part family reunion and part for-mal international contact. They gavemy daughter and her husband a bottleof their best, unimaginably preciousrum, and told her how they remem-bered her as a child.

Another day, on our way to theHabana Libre Hotel to buy souvenirs,we were accosted by purposeful womenin uniforms, handing out leaflets. Thewomen were obviously in possession ofthe high moral ground. Their leafletswere addressed to drivers: "Respect thetraffic lights. Respect the rights ofpedestrians. Remember the speed limits. . ."

They have a way to go, as Cubans'natural tendency is to drive like mani-acs. That tendency is somewhat ham-pered by the ageing car population -Ladas represent almost one third of thecars on the road by my count, most ofthem lovingly cared for and painted inbright jewel-like colours - and by thestrict enforcement of the traffic laws.

The same day, returning from theHabana Libre with our Cuban cigarsand Che Guevara t-shirts and salsaCDs, we walked right into a streetparty. There were clowns and dancing,and policemen on motor bikes who per-formed manoeuvres, like a fly-past onwheels.

On our very last day one of our partywas mugged. The hotel staff wereshocked and apologetic, one almost intears. "For this to happen - and youwere so happy...." We were still happy.

A mugging can happen anywhere,and our unfortunate was expertly caredfor, his broken collar bone strapped upand his arm in a sling. He declined tostay an extra day to help catch the thief.

Of course, with the increase intourism, which Cuba badly needs, therehas been an increase in crime. Even so,it is better to be in the world than shutaway from it, and Cuba's example, itspeople's warmth and dedication, mustcount for something against the starkabomination of US imperialism that isGuantanamo Bay.

Rachel Young and Gareth Chick

THE CUBAN Five - GerardoHernández, Ramón Labañino,Antonio Guerrero, FernandoGonzález and René González - areserving four life sentences and 75 yearscollectively after being wrongly con-victed in a US federal court in Miami.

The Five were falsely accused bythe US government of committingespionage conspiracy against the US,and other related charges.

In fact, they were involved in mon-itoring Miami-based terrorist groupsto prevent terrorist attacks on Cuba.

The Five’s actions were neverdirected at the US government. Theynever harmed anyone nor ever pos-sessed nor used any weapons while inthe United States. Their mission wasto stop terrorism

For more than 40 years, anti-Cubaterrorist organizations based in Miamihave engaged in countless terroristactivities against Cuba. More than3,000 Cubans have died as a result ofthese terrorists’ attacks. Terroristgroups operate with complete impuni-ty from within the US with the knowl-edge and support of the FBI and CIA.

Cuba made the careful and neces-sary decision to send the Five toMiami to monitor the terrorists.Instead of arresting the terrorists, theFBI arrested the Cuban Five. In ablow to justice they were convicted in

a witchhunt atmosphere in Miami onJune 8, 2001.

On 9 August 2005 after seven yearsof imprisonment, the Five won anunprecedented victory on appeal. Athree-judge panel of the 11th CircuitCourt of Appeals overturned theirconvictions and ordered a new trialoutside of Miami. However, in anunexpected reversal, the 11th CircuitCourt overturned the three-judge’sruling and granted a hearing before12 judges who voted 10 to 2 to denythe Five a new trial. This case is apolitical case and the Cuban Five arepolitical prisoners.

Their freedom will depend on thearduous work of their defence teamand just as importantly on public sup-port. Over 250 ‘Free The Five’ com-mittees have been established in theUS and around the world and supporthas come from hundreds of parlia-mentarians in Britain, Italy, and theEuropean and Latin AmericanParliaments.

The UN Working Group onArbitrary Detentions ruled there wereirregularities in the Five’s trial andarrest, denying them a fair trial andcalls on the US to remedy this injus-tice. In the US, the NationalCommittee to Free the Cuban Five isworking hard to build broad supportfor these anti-terrorist heroes.

Dr AmaurayAlvarez

Miami Five: US political prisoners

www.freethef ive.org


India: Divide and Rule Britannia

INDIA: Divide and Rule Britannia

22000077 iiss tthhee 6600tthh aannnniivveerrssaarryy ooff IInnddiiaann IInnddeeppeennddeennccee aanndd tthhee 115500tthhaannnniivveerrssaarryy ooff tthhee IInnddiiaann MMuuttiinnyy.. BBootthh ooff tthheessee eevveennttss wweerree ooffggrreeaatt ssiiggnniiffiiccaannccee aanndd ccoonnttiinnuuee ttoo hhaavvee rreessoonnaannccee ttooddaayy..

We mark both of these historic events by reproducing articles and writings by Marx and leading Marxists at the time they took place.

THE INDIAN Mutiny was one of themost significant rebellions againstBritish Imperial rule. Its significance isindicated by the fact that twoCommissions, more than twenty yearsapart, reviewed the causes of themutiny and the lessons to be learned inorder to retain British control of India.

Karl Marx as a correspondent for theNew York Tribune wrote an article, TheIndian Revolt, published in 1857, in theyear of the Mutiny (defined as ‘Mutiny’by the British Imperialists: seeCommentary, page 3). We are re-print-ing this article as it is still apposite today.Marx began the article, "The RomanDivide et empera was the great rule bywhich Great Britain, for about one hun-dred and fifty years, continued to retainthe tenure of her Indian empire.…"

Marx’s article captures beautifully hisinsight into the politics and practices ofImperialism and shows the continuingrelevance of the writings of Marx.

The lessons of the Indian Mutiny

were well drawn and applied militarilyand politically by British Imperialismand not just in India. These lessons arespelled out in the article, "Imperialismand the Indian Army", by Neil Stewartpublished by The Labour Monthly inMay 1947. The mass of evidence takenby the Commissions "showed how theMutiny had been made easy by the factthat caste and religious differences inthe old Bengal Army had beensmoothed away".

British military leader after Britishmilitary leader explicitly underlined theneed to "divide and rule" in order tokeep the Indian army "safe". It alsoshows the attraction to BritishImperialism of the use of communal-ism, which led to the deaths of some500,000 people and the displacementof tens of millions with the Partition ofIndia at the time of independence.

The extracts from "End of BritishRule in India" are taken from R PalmeDutt's, Crisis of Britain and the British

Empire and give a brief, but compre-hensive insight into the struggle forIndian independence; and the problemscreated by Partition.

The piece, Pakistan in Crisis,explains much of the present situationin Pakistan, which to this day continuesto be manipulated and, to suffer, underAmerican domination.

The Labour Monthly extracts and RPalme Dutt's writing, are all from some50 years ago. We believe that readers,who have not come across The LabourMonthly will learn from the insightscontained in these articles, which arestill pertinent today. Those who know ofThe Labour Monthly will know thequality of that journal and we are cer-tain they will appreciate our re-print-ing them at this time. These readers willalso be encouraged to learn that TheLabour Monthly is one of the inspira-tions of The Socialist Correspondent.Karl Marx and his work is anotherinspiration for this journal.

KARL MARX: The Revolt in the Indian ArmyNew York Tribune - July 15, 1857THE ROMAN Divideet impera was the greatrule by which GreatBritain, for about onehundred and fiftyyears, contrived toretain the tenure of herIndian empire.

The antagonism of the various races,tribes, castes, creeds and sovereignties,the aggregate of which forms the geo-graphical unity of what is called India,continued to be the vital principle ofBritish supremacy. In later times, how-

ever, the conditions of that supremacyhave undergone a change. With theconquest of Scinde and the Punjaub,the Anglo-Indian empire had not onlyreached its natural limits, but it hadtrampled out the last vestiges of inde-pendent Indian States.

All warlike native tribes were sub-dued, all serious internal conflicts wereat an end, and the late incorporation ofOude proved satisfactorily that theremnants of the so-called independentIndian principalities exist on sufferanceonly. Hence a great change in the

position of the East Indian Company.It no longer attacked one part of Indiaby the help of another part, but founditself placed at the head, and the wholeof India at its feet. No longer conquer-ing, it had become the conqueror.

The armies at its disposition nolonger had to extend its dominion, butonly to maintain it. From soldiers theywere converted into policemen;200,000,000 natives being curbed by anative army of 200,000 men, officeredby Englishmen, and that native army, inits turn, being kept in check by an



English army numbering 40,000 only. On first view, it is evident that the

allegiance of the Indian people rests onthe fidelity of the native army, in creat-ing which the British rule simultaneous-ly organised the first general centre ofresistance which the Indian people wasever possessed of. How far that nativearmy may be relied upon is clearlyshown by its recent mutinies, breakingout as soon as the war with Persia hadalmost denuded the Presidency ofBengal of its European soldiers.

Before this there had been mutiniesin the Indian army, but the presentrevolt is distinguished by characteristicand fatal features. It is the first timethat sepoy regiments have murderedtheir European officers; thatMusssulmans and Hindoos, renouncingtheir mutual antipathies, havecombined against their com-mon masters; that "distur-bances beginning with theHindoos, have actually endedin placing on the throne ofDelhi a MohammedanEmperor;" that the mutinyhas not been confined to afew localities; and lastly, thatthe revolt in the Anglo-Indianarmy has coincided with ageneral disaffection exhibitedagainst English supremacy onthe part of the great Asiaticnations, the revolt of theBengal army being, beyonddoubt intimately connectedwith the Persian and Chinesewars.

The alleged cause of the dissatisfac-tion which began to spread fourmonths ago in the Bengal army was theapprehension on the part of the nativeslest the Government should interferewith their religion. The serving out ofcartridges, the paper of which was saidto have been created with the fat of bul-locks and pigs, and the compulsory bit-ing of which was, therefore, consideredby the natives as an infringement oftheir religious prescriptions, gave thesignal for local disturbances.

On the 22nd of January an incendi-ary fire broke out in cantonments ashort distance from Calcutta.

On the 25th of February the 19thnative regiment mutinied atBerhampore the men objecting to thecartridges served out to them. On the31st of March that regiment, stationedat Barrackpore, allowed one of its mento advance with a loaded musket uponthe parade-ground in front of the line,and, after having called his comrades tomutiny, he was permitted to attack andwound the Adjutant and Sergeant-

Major of his regiment. During the hand-to-hand conflict,

that ensued, hundreds of sepoys lookedpassively on, while others participatedin the struggle, and attacked the officerswith the butt end of their muskets.Subsequently that regiment was alsodisbanded.

The month of April was signalised byincendiary fires in several cantonmentsof the Bengal army at Allahabad, Agra,Umballah, by a mutiny of the 3d regi-ment of light cavalry at Meerut, and bysimilar appearances of disaffection inthe Madras and Bombay armies.

At the beginning of May an emeutewas preparing at Lucknow, the capitalof Oude, which was, however, prevent-ed by the promptitude of Sir HLawrence. On the 9th May the muti-

neers of the 3rd light cavalry of Meerutwere marched off to jail, to undergo thevarious terms of imprisonment towhich they were sentenced.

On the evening of the following daythe troopers of the 3d cavalry, togetherwith the two native regiments, the 11thand 20th, assembled upon the parade-ground, killed the officers endeavouringto pacify them, set fire to the canton-ments, and slew all the Englishmen theywere able to lay hands on.

Although the British part of thebrigade mustered a regiment ofinfantry, another of cavalry, and anoverwhelming force of horse and footartillery, they were not able to moveuntil nightfall. Having inflicted but lit-tle harm on the mutineers, they allowedthem to betake themselves to the openfield and to throw themselves intoDelhi, some forty miles distant fromMeerut.

There they were joined by the nativegarrison, consisting of the 38th, 54thand 74th regiments of infantry, and acompany of native artillery.

The British officers were attacked, allEnglishmen within reach of the rebelswere murdered, and the heir of the lateMogul of Delhi proclaimed King ofIndia.

Of the troops sent to the rescue ofMeerut, where order had been re-estab-lished, six companies of native sapersand miners, who arrived on the 15th ofMay, murdered their commanding offi-cer, Major Fraser, and made at once forthe open country, pursued by troops ofhorse artillery and several of the 6thdragoon guards. Fifty or sixty of themutineers were shot, but the rest con-trived to escape to Delhi.

At Ferozepore, in the Punjaub, the57th and 45th native infantry regimentsmutinied, but were put down by force.Private letters from Lahore state the

whole of the native troops tobe in an undisguised state ofmutiny. On the 19th of May,unsuccessful efforts were madeby the sepoys stationed atCalcutta to get possession ofFort St. William. Three regi-ments arrived from Bushire atBombay were at once dis-patched to Calcutta.

In reviewing these events,one is startled by the conductof the British commander atMeerut his late appearance onthe field of battle being stillless incomprehensible than theweak manner in which he pur-sued the mutineers.

As Delhi is situated on theright and Meerut on the left

bank of the Jumna - the two banksbeing joined at Delhi by one bridgeonly - nothing could have been easierthan to cut off the retreat of thefugitives.

Meanwhile, martial law has been pro-claimed in all the disaffected districts;forces, consisting of natives mainly, areconcentrating against Delhi from thenorth, the east and the south; theneighbouring princes are said to havepronounced for the English; lettershave been sent to Ceylon to stop LordElgin and General Ashburnham'sforces, on their way to China; andfinally, 14,000 British troops were to bedispatched from England to India inabout a fortnight.

Whatever obstacles the climate ofIndia at the present season, and thetotal want of means of transportation,may oppose to the movement of theBritish forces, the rebels at Delhi arevery likely to succumb without any pro-longed resistance. Yet even then, it isonly the prologue of a most terribletragedy that will have to be enacted.



EUROPEAN DOMINATION overIndia has been in the past maintainedmore by the use of Indian troops thanBritish.

In the wars of conquest of the 18thcentury, the frontier wars against theSikhs and the Afghans, in the Mutiny,in the conquest of Burma and in theinnumerable little struggles in and nearIndia, it has been the Indian Army,rather than the European troops of theHonourable Company, or theRegiments of the Line, which has beenthe predominating factor.

This was frankly expressed by SirJohn Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, in1832: "Our Eastern Empire has beenacquired, and must be maintained, bythe sword. It has no foundation, andis not capable of having any, that candivest it of that character; and if thelocal army of India, but above all thenative branch, is not preservedin a condition which, while itmaintains its efficiency, pre-serves its attachment, no com-mercial fiscal or judicial sys-tems we may improve or intro-duce, can be of permanentbenefit". (Quoted in the EdenReport, 1884).

The task of the military andcivil leader, therefore, was tomaintain the loyalty of thearmy. The Mutiny was a ter-rible lesson; it was taken toheart and minutely analysed bythe Peel Commission of 1859,and twenty years later by the EdenCommission.

The mass of evidence taken by thesecommissions showed how the Mutinyhad been made easy by the fact thatcaste and religious differences in the oldBengal Army had been smoothed away.

A pro-British Moslem commentatoron the Mutiny recorded as follows whathad taken place: "Government certainlydid put the two antagonistic races in thesame regiments, but consistent inter-course had done its work, and the tworaces in regiments had become one.

“It is but natural and to be expectedthat a feeling of fellowship and brother-hood must spring up between men of aregiment, constantly brought togetheras they are.

“They consider themselves as onebody, and thus it was that the differ-ences which exist between Hindus andMohammedans had, in these regiments,

NEIL STEWART: Imperialism and the Indian ArmyThe Labour Monthly - May 1947

been almost entirely smoothed away."If a portion of a regiment engaged in

anything, all the rest joined. If separateregimens of Hindus and separate regi-ments of Mohammedans had beenraised, this feeling of brotherhoodwould not have arisen." (The Causes ofthe Indian Revolts". Sir Syed AhmedKhan. Calcutta, 1873).

There were many who saw thatBritish rule depended upon maintainingthe existing divisions amongst theIndians. One of the most brilliant andable British soldiers in India, GeneralSir Charles Napier, wrote only a fewyears before the Mutiny: "The momentthese brave and able natives learn howto combine they will rush on us simul-taneously and the game will be up".("Life of General Sir Charles Napier."W.N. Bruce. London 1885).

The opinions of a number of person-

alities famous in British-Indian historywere offered to the Peel Commissionwith a view to demonstrating that com-munal divisions were the basis ofBritish safety in India.

Lord Elphinstone, Governor ofBombay, wrote in a Minute (14th May1859) presented to the Commission:"But suppose that whole native troopsto be formed into one grand army, thecomponent parts of each regimentbeing as heterogeneous as possible, andsuppose some cause of discontent toarise which affects all castes alike, thedanger would undoubtedly be fargreater than that which overtook us lastyear. I have along ago considered thissubject, and I am convinced that theexact converse of this policy of assimi-lation is our only safe military policy inIndia. 'Divide et impera' was the oldRoman motto and it should be ours."

With a near simile Lord Elphinstone

compared the policy of ruling Indiawith the watertight compartments of aboat: "The safety of the great ironsteamers which are adding so much toour military power and which are prob-ably destined to add still more to ourcommercial superiority, is greatlyincreased by building them in compart-ments. I would insure the safety of ourIndian Empire by constituting ournative army on the same principle; forthis purpose I would avail myself ofthose divisions of race and languagewhich we find ready to hand."

The military leaders were in completeaccord with this point of view. Amemorandum by an old Sepoy officer,Major-General Sir H. T. Tucker, alsoenvisaged the encouragement of casteand religious differences as the mosthopeful solution: "The strong necessitywhich exists for so dividing and sepa-

rating into distinct bodies the 'dif-ferent nationalities and castes,' therulers in our Eastern Dominionsmay deem it safe to entertain inour armies, so as to render themas little dangerous as possible tothe state…. "The introduction ofother elements would be advisable… anything, in short, to divideand so neutralise the strength ofthe 'castes and nationalities' whichcompose our armies in the East."

A Minute by the Chief of Staffin India, Sir W., R. Mansfieldadvocated not merely communaldivision, but communal antago-

nism as the main contribution to bettercontrol:

"I am strongly of the opinion thatMussalmans should not be in the samecompany or troop with Hindoos orSikhs, and that the two latter should notbe mingled together. I would maintaineven in the same regiment all differ-ences of faith with the greatest care.There might be rivalry or even hatredbetween two companies or troops.

"The discipline of a native regiment,instead of being impaired would gainby it, as regards the greater question ofthe obedience of the whole to the com-manding officer. The motto of theregimental commander in chief must befor the future 'Divide et impera'."

"Divide and rule" was the policyfreely and openly accepted by the lead-ing military and civil personalities inIndia.

The Earl of Ellenborough, Governor



General of India for 1841 to 1844, alsoadvocated this policy in a Minute to thePeel Commission: "The fewer elementsof combination there are in the nativearmy the better; and therefore themore nationalities and castes and reli-gions, the more secure we shall be."

The evidence before the PeelCommission echoed the report of thePunjab Committee of 1858, which wascomposed by three men famous in thehistory of British India, Sir JohnLawrence, Sir Neville Chamberlain andSir Herbert Edwardes. It said: "As wecannot do without a large native armyin India, our main object is to makethat army safe; and next to the grandcounterpoise of a sufficient Europeanforce comes the counterpoise ofNatives against Natives.

"It is found that different races mixedtogether do not long preserve their dis-tinctiveness; their corners and anglesand feelings and prejudices get rubbedoff, until at last they assimilate and theobject of their association to a consider-able extent is lost.

"To preserve the distinctivenesswhich is so valuable and which, while itlasts, makes the Muhammedan of onecountry despise, fear or dislike theMuhammedan of another, corps shouldin future be provincial, and adhere tothe geographical limits within whichdifferences and rivalries are stronglymarked.

"By the system thus indicated twogreat evils are avoided; firstly thatcommunity of feeling throughout thenative army, and that mischievouspolitical activity and intrigue whichresults from association with otherraces and travel in Indian provinces."

A more clear and frank case for theencouragement of communal strifecould hardly be made out.

The result of the Peel Commissionwas that the balance between Indianand British troops, and between thevarious races in India, was in futurecarefully kept. There were 60,000British to 140,000 Indian troops. Allscientific arms and personnel of arse-nals and depots were British.

A number of Gurkhas were recruitedwhose antagonism towards the Indianswas known. Brigades were formed withtwo British, one Indian and one Gurkhabattalion, thus ensuring that the num-ber of fighting troops (including theartillery, the predominant arm of the19th century battlefield) were British orGurkha.

The recruiting of Gurkhas had beenadvocated before the Mutiny byGeneral Sir Charles Napier, whenCommander-in-Chief. He wrote: "The

Gurkha will be faithful, and for low paywe can enlist a large body of troopswhom our best officers consider equalin courage to European troops. Evenas a matter of economy this will begood; but the great advantage of enlist-ing these hill-men will be that with30,000 or 40,000 Gurkhas added to the30,000 Europeans, the possession ofIndia will not 'depend on opinion,' buton an army able with ease to overthrowany combination among Hindoos orMohammedians or both." ("Life ofGeneral Sir Charles Napier." W. N.Bruce. London, 1885).

The next examination of IndianArmy organisation was by the EdenCommittee, which met in 1879, andwhose report was published in 1884.It approved the continuance of thecaste and religious divisions of the

Army: "Our desire is to maintain thegreat national divisions of the army….The armies of India should be dividedinto four complete and distinct bodies,to be called army corps, so distributedthat they shall be deprived, as far aspossible, of community of national sen-timent and interests, and so organised,recruited and constituted as to act intime of excitement and disturbance aschecks each upon the other." (p.30).

This policy had already been borneout by the Mutiny, when the armies ofthe Bombay and Madras Presidencies,helped by the irregulars from thePunjab, which had all previously keptseparate from each other, foughtagainst the mutineers.

The Commission came to the con-clusion that in the Bengal Army thepolicy of "divide and rule" was notbeing correctly put into practice: "Atthe present time the Sikh and thePoorbia, the Mussalman from thePunjab and of Oudh, serve side by sidein all parts of the vast and ill-definedtract called by the Bengal Presidency…

"The natural consequences are that thedistinctive characteristics of the soldiers,both in creed and nationality, tend toamalgamate, and thus a common feelingis formulated which might dangerouslyunite them to a common end" (p.32).

The advice of the Commission wasto divide the Bengal Army into twohalves, each separate and distinct, so asto prevent any possible recurrence ofthe Mutiny: "In working out the dealsof the propose division of the army, ourmain object has been to define the ter-ritorial formation of the Army of Indiawith due regard to the great principle of'divide et impera.'" (p.33).

The Moslems had been consideredthe most savagely anti-British elementin the Mutiny, while the Hindus wereconsidered the least seditious.Therefore, while there were a few all-Hindu units, there were no all-Moslemunits, and the majority of infantry bat-talions and cavalry regiments weremade up of the different religions.

An infantry battalion might have onePunjabi Moslem, one Sikh and twoHindu companies. The Hindus wouldusually be of different castes or races,such as Jats, Dogras, Brahmins,Kumaons or Rajputs. A Number ofPathans and other Moslems from theNorth West Frontier Province and theTribal Areas were also recruited as anoffset to the Moslems from the Punjab.

The Indian Army, though extremelyefficient as a fighting force, if not in itshigher administration, was a body ofseparate little communities, each havinglittle contact with the other, and thewhole welded together by British offi-cers.

Urdu was the common language inwhich orders were given. As Urdu, orsome similar language, is spoken by themajority of Indians, the language prob-lem did not present any difficulty.

The organisation of the Indian Armyupon communal lines was not just aphase of 19th century politics. It wascarried on up to the present day, exceptwhen emergency or necessity enforceda change. It is noticeable that wherecaste or religious barriers are not recog-nised, as in the Royal Indian Navy, thesituation that led to the Indian Mutinyarose once more and Moslem andHindu united.

Communal distinction in the army is,in fact, a reflection of the consistentpolicy which has been applied to thewhole of India and which has success-fully held it under European rule forclose on two hundred years.

The encouragement of communaldistinction in the army has beenparalleled by the encouragement ofcommunal distinction among civilians;this is "the great system of 'divide etimpera'" whose result has been thepresent political deadlock and theterrible massacres of Bengal, Bihar andthe Punjab.



R PALME DUTT: End of British Rule in IndiaThe Crisis of Britain and the British Empire - 1957

IN 1947 British colonial rule in Indiaended, and British armed forces werewithdrawn. Governmental responsibil-ity was transferred to the leadership ofthe National Congress in India and ofthe Moslem League in the newly-creat-ed State of Pakistan.

This transference is commonly pre-sented in British official and semi-offi-cial expression, including in Labourimperialist propaganda, as a voluntaryand magnanimous "gift" of independ-ence to India.

The generations of struggle of theIndian people for national independ-ence, during which heavy repressionwas exercised against the nationalmovement (including the imprisonmentof 60,000 Indian patriots by the secondLabour Government) are lightly passedover and ignored in order to concen-trate attention on the final outcome ofthe national struggle.

The historical conditions of thetransfer, however, do not bear out thispicture.

A fuller examination of the evidencewould abundantly show that the retreatof imperialism in India, Pakistan,Ceylon and Burma was not so "volun-tary" as is sometimes suggested.

In the view of competent and well-informed British observers on the sub-ject, the political measures adopted inthis region were compelled by thedepth of the crisis and the popularupsurge following the war reaching tothe armed forces, and were regarded asthe only means to avert or postpone arevolution: "India in the opinion ofmany was on the verge of a revolutionbefore the British Cabinet Missionarrived. The Cabinet Mission has atleast postponed if not eliminated thedanger." (P.J. Griffiths, leader of theEuropean Group in the Indian CentralLegislative Assembly, speech to theEast India Association in London, June24, 1946.)

In his Mission with Mountbatten(1951) Alan Campbell-Johnson repro-duces the verdict of Lord Ismay, whowas Mountbatten's Chief of Staff inIndia, when he sought to justify the set-tlement against critics: "India in March,1947, was a ship on fire in mid-oceanwith ammunition in the hold. By thenit was a question of putting out the firebefore it reached the ammunition.There was, in fact, no option before us

but to do what we did."Even the then Editor of the Daily

Mail admitted that if the Governmenthad wanted to stay in India "it wouldhave needed an occupation force of500,000 men" - and no such force wasavailable or could have been madeavailable in view of Britain's other mili-tary commitments.

Similarly, in the case of Burma, TheTimes Rangoon correspondencerecorded on March 28, 1947: "Themood of the British officials I havetalked to is one of resignation. Theyhave been unanimous in declaring thatBritish policy in Burma has been theonly one that our resources permit, andthat the Anglo-Burmese Agreement wasthe only alternative to a widespreadrebellion with which we could not havecoped."

Sir Stafford Cripps, in theParliamentary debate on March 5,1947, stated on behalf of the BritishGovernment in justification of thepolicy pursued: "What, then, were thealternatives which faced us? Thesealternatives were fundamentally two,though both, of course, might be sub-ject to minor variations. First, wecould attempt to strengthen Britishcontrol in India on the basis of anexpanded personnel in the Secretary ofState's service and a considerable rein-forcement of British troops, both ofwhich would have been required, sothat we should be in a position to main-tain for as long as might be necessaryour administrative responsibility while

awaiting an agreement amongst theIndian communities.

“Such a policy would entail a definitedecision that we should remain in Indiafor at least fifteen to twenty years,because for any substantially shorterperiod we should not be able to reor-ganise the Services on a stable andsound basis.

"… The second alternative was wecould accept the fact that the first alter-native was not possible… One thingthat was, I think, quite obviouslyimpossible was to decide to continueour responsibility indefinitely and,indeed, against our wishes - into a peri-od when we had not the power to carryit out."

Thus of the "fundamentally two alter-natives" envisaged by the Government,(1) to maintain British direct power inIndia by "a considerable reinforcementof troops" or (2) to make the politicaltransfer on the lines of the 1947 settle-ment, the first was judged by theGovernment to be "impossible…we hadnot the power to carry it out." Thesimple reader might be excused forconcluding that the "two alternatives"were only one. Behind all the compli-cated parliamentary phraseology thesupposed "two alternatives" boil downinto one - in other words, there was nochoice.

In the same way the ManchesterGuardian commented in an editorial onOctober 11, 1947: "Public opinion haspreened itself on British virtue in with-drawing voluntarily from India: butposterity may dwell rather on the hustlewith which the withdrawal was carriedout… It may be hard to disentanglewhether the British action was based onhigh principle or on a less gloriousdesire to retreat to shelter before thestorm broke."

The political settlement of 1947 wasthus no magnanimous voluntary gift offreedom by imperialism, but a retreatextorted and dictated by conditions ofcrisis which had outstripped the powerof the rulers to control it by superiorforce, and which rendered it impossiblefor the ruling power to continue tomaintain its rule in the old fashion.

This retreat, however, was accompa-nied by considerable political manoeu-vring to salvage the maximum extentpossible of imperialist interests in Indiaand Southern Asia in the new conditions.



The settlement of 1947, negotiatedby Lord Mountbatten with the leader-ship of the National Congress and theMoslem League, followed by the corre-sponding settlements in Ceylon andBurma, bore a two-sided character.

On the one hand it expressed theretreat of Britain from endeavouring tocontinue the old colonial rule. On theother hand it represented a compromisebetween imperialism and the dominantupper-class leadership of the nationalmovement and landlord and bigcapitalist interests in India, against themenace of a victorious popular revolu-tion, such as would have swept aside,not only the basis of imperialism, butalso the old feudal and monopolistinterests that had been associated withimperialism.

Just as the naval revolt at the begin-ning of 1946, which had revealed thecollapse of the foundations of Britishrule in India and led to the decision todespatch the Cripps Mission,announced the day after the outbreakof the naval revolt, had been equallyopposed by the imperialist rulers andby the leadership of the NationalCongress and the Moslem League, sothe Mountbatten Settlement represent-ed also a certain compromise allianceagainst the mass movement.

Part of the price of this compromisewas the partition of India into the twostates of India and Pakistan, withextremely artificial frontiers of demar-cation, leading to mass shifts of popu-lation, bloodshed, communal slaughter,and wholesale flight of refugees.

Just as the retreat from Ireland in

1921, after all attempts to crush thenational revolt had failed, was accom-panied by partition, whose conse-quences still bedevil the relations of thetwo parts of Ireland and hamper pro-gressive Irish development, so theretreat from India in 1947 was accom-panied by partition. The resulting ten-sion and issues of conflict between thetwo states weakened both, and facilitat-ed subsequent imperialist attempts atintervention.

The British rulers, with their longexperience of political manoeuvre,undoubtedly hoped through theMountbatten Settlement to draw thenew governments in India, Pakistan,Ceylon and Burma into close associa-tion in practice with imperialism,despite the change in political sover-eignty, and to carry forward a new typeof political and military partnershipwhich would continue to protect essen-tial imperialist interests, and whichwould be counterpart of the alreadyclose association of the biggest monop-oly interests in three countries withmonopoly interests in Britain.

In the initial phases the continuingeconomic, trading, political and militaryties with Britain were still very close.India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burmacontinued to be a very profitable baseof exploitation by British capital.Strategic control, dispositions andtraining continued to be very closelyintegrated with the British militaryauthorities.

Even in the case of Burma, whoseindependence outside the Empire wasproclaimed by the Treaty of 1947, sim-

ilar close links were maintained in prac-tice.

The Treaty of 1947 between Britainand Burma, which established the newstate and was ratified by the BritishParliament in December, 1947, saddledthe new state with a crushing debt bur-den equivalent to £120 million, pro-tected the rights of the British monop-olies domination Burmese economy,and provided for a British MilitaryMission to Burma with British trainingand equipment for a Burmese Army,and British strategic rights to useBurmese ports and airfields as imperialbasis.

Not without reason the Labour MP,Woodrow Wyatt, could claim in thisspeech in the House of Commons onNovember 5, 1947: "Although theTreaty takes Burma out of theCommonwealth, in fact it leaves herpractically in the Commonwealth. Itleaves her so closely allied with theCommonwealth that it is true to saythat we are in a very special relationshipwith Burma, one that we are not in withany other foreign Power.

“The agreement to accept militarymissions only from this country and notfrom any other country than this virtu-ally does imply a military alliance.

So, also do the provisions that pro-vide that Burma will afford all facilitiesnecessary in Burma for the Britishwhenever we wish to bring help to anypart of the British Commonwealth.The solidarity of the DefenceAgreement … has ensured that there is,in fact, no gap whatever inCommonwealth Defence…"

R PALME DUTT: Pakistan in CrisisThe Crisis of Britain and the British Empire - 1957THE COURSE of events in Pakistanshowed a marked diversion from theexperience of India during the initialyears of sharpening new alignmentsand deepening crisis after the settle-ment of 1947.

In India the more advanced develop-ment had made possible a relativelystronger basis for the new government.In Pakistan, with its relatively morebackward economical development anddominant role of a handful of powerfulfeudal families, reaction and repressionwere extreme from the outset.

The divisions between West Pakistan,with a population of 33 millions, or aminority of the population of Pakistan,but the seat of the main ruling forces,and East Pakistan, with a population of

42 millions or 57 per cent , of the total,was further accentuated by the divi-sions within West Pakistan between theruling elements in the Punjab and inother provinces.

The Moslem League had no suchdeep roots in the masses of the peopleas the Congress in India. The regimebore from the outset a deeply corrupt

character, with palace intrigues on topand sudden coups replacing the morestable political advancement in India.

The explosive character of the situa-tion was already shown by the largescale "conspiracy" trial launched in1951, against leading left-wing repre-sentatives and military personalities,and ending, after a prolonged secrettrial in heavy sentences.

The Communist Party was banned.In April 1953, the Premier

Nazimuddin was dismissed by theGovernor-General GhulamMohammed, and replaced by the thenambassador in Washington,Mohammed Ali. This coup had norelation to any electoral or parliamen-tary verdict.



It marked the replacement of theprevious dominant British influence byAmerican domination in Pakistan.Lavish grants and loans followed fromthe United States Government toPakistan, and the new Governmentproceded to negotiate a military pactwith the United States, by which theUnited States would supply arms andmilitary instructors and assist Pakistanin the development of military air bases.

Premier Nehru issued a very sharpwarning in January 1954, on the signif-icance of such a United States-PakistanMilitary Pact. It would mean, he said,that "freedom recedes in Asia and thecurrents of history are reversed …Pakistan becomes potentially a wararea, and progressively her policies arecontrolled by others." The truth of thiswarning was rapidly demonstrated inthe events of the following months.

In March 1954, a general election onthe basis of universal suffrage was heldin East Pakistan - the first election sincethe formation of Pakistan. The MoslemLeague was routed, obtaining onlyeight of the 309 seats.

Victory went to the United Front, acoalition of democratic parties whichwon 97 per cent of the votes on thebasis of a progressive democratic pro-gramme. On May 19 the UnitedStates-Pakistan Military Pact was final-ly signed. Within less than a fortnightof its signature, on May 30, the UnitedFront ministry in East Pakistan was dis-missed by the Governor-General, par-liamentary rule suspended, andGovernor's rule or dictatorship estab-lished, with General Mirza in control.

Wholesale arrests followed of all demo-cratic leaders.

By October 1954, the crisis extendedto the whole of Pakistan. TheGovernor-General proclaimed a Stateof Emergency and suspended theConstituent Assembly. WhileMohammed Ali remained the titularPrime Minister, effective dictatorshipwas vested in the hands of GeneralMirza as Minister of the Interior (laterGovernor-General).

It is worthy of note that these succes-sive arbitrary anti-democratic coups bythe Governor-General, GhulamMohammed, an old Indian CivilService official, were openly based onSection 92a of the 1935 Government ofIndia Act, the Act passed by theBaldwin Conservative Government fora subject India, and proclaimed to bestill valid in Pakistan seven years afterthe supposed establishment of "free-dom" in 1947.

General Mirza made no concealmentof his hostility to democracy. Pakistan,he declared, was "not yet ripe for theprocesses of democracy" and needed tobe "run in the British way." "To anEnglishman… The Times reported onDecember 2, 1954, "it is extremely likethe administration of one of the biggercolonies."

The Turkey-Pakistan Pact signed inApril, 1954, drew Pakistan closely intothe chain of United States militaryalliance in the Middle East, while theadhesion of Pakistan to the South-eastAsia Pact later in the year alignedPakistan with the chain of United Statesmilitary allies in Eastern Asia.

The linking with the series of imperi-alist-inspired military pacts in theMiddle East was further carried forwardby adhesion to the Baghdad Pact ofBritain, Iraq, Turkey and Iran in 1955.

These measures of subjection ofPakistan to the economic and politicaldomination and military plans ofWestern, and especially Americanimperialism, by no means correspond-ed to the national feeling of thePakistan people. "It is generallyagreed," reported The Times corre-spondent from Dacca on December 6,1954, "that if fresh elections are heldthe United Front party would win asecond sweeping victory."

In the autumn of 1955, the pressureof popular dissatisfaction led to furtherpolitical changes, with the establish-ment of a new Coalition Governmentbased on the Moslem League and asection of the former United Front, therelease of a number of political prison-ers, and preparations for new elections.

The stormy events and successivesharp changes in Pakistan during theseyears have demonstrated the instabilityof the regime. While the rulers ofPakistan during this period turned thecountry into a satellite of the UnitedStates, there can be no doubt that thecrisis will further develop.

Whatever the ordeals and strugglesthrough which they will have to pass,there can be no doubt that the peopleof Pakistan, no less than the people ofIndia, will find their way forward to aprogressive future along the path ofliberation in common with the othernations of Asia.


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