by Mark Curtis
Without access to the planning files we cannot be sure precisely why Britain stepped up pressure in spring 2000. Two factors, however, cannot be ignored: the breakdown of talks between Zimbabwe and the IMF in late 1999; and the introduction of Mugabe's 'fast track' strategy of seizing whiteowned farms in February/March 2000.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's speech to parliament on 3 May 2000 announcing the arms embargo is replete with concerns about land seizures and Zimbabwe's opposition to 'a fair programme of land reform'. Among Cook's demands was that such reform be 'based on a fair price to the farmer'; something not unreasonable, perhaps, but in the context of Zimbabwe's recent past, somewhat revealing of Whitehall's priorities.7
In November 1997 the Zimbabwean government had announced the compulsory acquisition of 1,471 farms. The 'fast track' land-seizure programme, however, has involved all manner of human-rights violations, more against poor, rural, black people than white farm owners. There is little doubt of the urgent need for radical land reform in the country. By the beginning of the 'fast track' programme, around 4,500 mainly white large-scale commercial farmers still held 28 per cent of the total land; at the same time, more than one million black families, or around 6 million people, eked out an existence in overcrowded, arid, 'communal' areas, representing around 41 per cent of the land – essentially the land allocated to Africans by the British colonial government. This situation created 'a significant land hunger in Zimbabwe', in the words of Human Rights Watch.8
In the first decade after independence in 1980, the government redistributed over 3 million hectares of land, resettling more than 50,000 families. In the second decade, however, less than one million hectares was acquired for redistribution and less than 20,000 families resettled as the pace of land reform declined. Meanwhile, population density in the 'communal' areas increased.9
Historically, Britain has gone to huge lengths to protect the property interests of white farmers in Africa. In the 'decolonisation' process in Kenya in the 1950s, for example, British plans for land reform ensured that the settlers' ownership of the best land would continue after independence. In Zimbabwe, the price of independence was also a status quo on the land. During the independence negotiations, Britain secured the agreement of Zimbabwe's resistance leaders to preserve for ten years the pattern of land ownership that benefited the white farmers. This agreement included provisions that the new government would not engage in any compulsory land acquisition and that when land was acquired the government would pay adequate and prompt compensation. It is believed that Britain promised the Zimbabweans to raise hundreds of millions of pounds for long-term land reform as part of the deal to end the war.10 In the event, Britain provided only £44 million in aid after independence for land reform, and also imposed conditions on how that money could be spent. Conservative governments under Thatcher and Major insisted on government purchases of land from willing settlers at full market prices.
When Labour came to power in 1997, the new International Development Secretary, Clare Short, told the Zimbabwean government that 'we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe'.11 After an international donors' conference on land reform in 1998, relations between the donors and the Zimbabwean government broke down and the latter accused the donors of not putting up the funds they had pledged and of protecting the interests of white agribusiness.
It is also worth considering the fear that Zimbabwe's land- seizure programme might be replicated elsewhere. In South Africa, for example, 13 per cent of the population own 80 per cent of the land. Since the African National Congress government came to power, only a tiny percentage of the land has been redistributed, but one opinion poll showed that 54 per cent of South Africans supported the land occupations in Zimbabwe. The Financial Times has referred to the 'Zimbabwe contagion', meaning the danger of the conflict in Zimbabwe spreading elsewhere and undermining the prospects for foreign investment.12
A related threat posed by the Mugabe regime is its refusal to implement the orders of the Washington-based institutions, the IMF and the World Bank. Zimbabwe's adoption of a Structural Adjustment Programme in 1991 led to rises in infla- tion and the contraction of manufacturing and employment. By 1997 Zimbabwe was in the throes of a serious economic crisis. The IMF demanded further cutbacks in government spending as well as an end to Zimbabwe's intervention in the DRC, which was costing £1 million a day. When Zimbabwe refused, the IMF cutoff aid.
The Blair government is one of the world's leading champions of global economic 'liberalisation'. Countries failing to promote the required model – of trade liberalisation and privatisation under World Bank/IMF guidance – are routinely pressurised through the denial of aid and debt relief. Zimbabwe is one such example, although not a favourable model by any means. When> Cook announced the arms embargo on Zimbabwe in May 2000, he repeated the government's position that for the Mugabe government to receive new IMF aid, 'it must meet the full conditionality of any IMF support'.13
When, in 1998, Britain withdrew its support for Indonesia after 30 years, ministers suddenly discovered a history of human-rights abuse; they even referred to the regime as a dictatorship. The real concern was that Suharto was failing to implement an IMF programme. The stance over Zimbabwe is strikingly similar, while the media has almost universally swallowed the argument that human rights are the only motive of the British government.
If the British government were in any way interested in promoting 'humanitarian intervention' as a strategy or doctrine, or interested in upholding human rights in anything like a serious way, then it might undertake the simplest of steps with regard to some of its key allies engaged in state terror and repression – reducing total support from London, for example. It is to this that we turn in part 3, but before doing so, let us consider what planners have been articulating in private about their actual goals.
8
FROM THE HORSE'S
MOUTH: WHITEHALL'S
REAL GOALS
Britain has a highly secretive state that withholds many government planning files even after the 30-year rule which is meant to declassify most of them. Censorship of key passages and names in the declassified documents is also routine and widespread. Yet the documents that can be viewed – from the Foreign Office, Treasury, Ministry of Defence, the Prime Minister's office and others – are available to any member of the public who chooses to visit the National Archives.
It is an indictment of British academics and, to a lesser extent, journalists, how little of this private planning is ever revealed to the public and much of what does emerge is of marginal importance, ignoring more significant issues. Most commentators choose to ignore the private record, preferring to take at their word what officials say in public. The secret files might never be able to provide the full picture of government planning, but they do provide the single most comprehensive one that is available. Indeed, a fairly clear picture emerges from these files as to what British governments really want in their foreign policy.
Whitehall's economic and political goals
A July 1970 report entitled 'Priorities in our foreign policy' states that Britain needs 'to act in support of our commercial and financial interests throughout the world':
We must contribute within our economic capability to international stability and the protection of our interests in the rest of the world from which so many of our raw materials derive . . . We shall need to pay particular attention to the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Southern Africa.1
The basic aim is to ensure that other countries establish economic climates favourable to British, and Western, companies. A Foreign Office report from 1968 recognises that the primary goal of foreign policy is to make Britain economically strong, meaning that 'we should bend our energies to help produce a world economic climate in which our external trade, our income from invisibles and our balance of payments can prosper'. The key to this is 'freer' global trade and 'increasing our efforts to
open up new markets in Europe, Latin America and the Far East'.2
Ensuring a favourable investment climate was especially important for countries where Britain had important oil interests. The Cabinet Office noted in 1958, for example, that one of Britain's aims was 'to maintain political conditions favourable to our trading requirements throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East'. An interdepartmental Whitehall group noted in 1968 the 'need in developing countries for an economic and political climate attractive to expatriate capital, and the advantages of the status quo both to security and to low prices'.3
'The broad aim', the Foreign Office noted in 1968, 'is to inhibit undue governmental interference in the international oil trade': Britain should 'oppose, or at least attempt to moderate' resolutions in the United Nations that would encourage governments to 'expropriate or acquire too direct a control over Western oil investments'.4
British planners were at pains to counter the trend towards nationalisation since 'expropriation nearly always results in a measure of loss for the UK interests involved'. This policy was promoted in the knowledge that nationalisation embodied 'the hope that a large share of the profits may be retained locally and increased funds be made available for local investment'.5 Thus British policy-makers were perfectly aware that in opposing nationalisation they were also opposing likely improvements in the welfare of the people of those countries.
This aim of ensuring favourable investment climates for big business – and countering governments who do not – has been the primary goal of numerous post-war British and US military interventions, in Iran, Kenya, Indonesia, British Guiana, Central America and elsewhere. This is also the root of Britain's global economic policy, promoted in bilateral 'aid' pro- grammes, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's 'structural adjustment' programmes and in the shaping of the rules of the World Trade Organisation. The consequences of promoting privatisation and economic liberalisation have often been devastating for hundreds of millions of people around the world. The most basic of British goals bears significant responsibility for maintaining, often deepening, global poverty.
The files indicate that strategies to address Third World poverty are to be opposed except where they enhance British business interests. The Foreign Office noted in 1968, for example, that:
We should for the time being adopt a 'heads down' attitude in regard to proposals which, however, desir- able in themselves, would throw a significantiy greater strain upon our balance of payments, eg commodity schemes directed primarily to raise prices rather than at stability of markets.6
Another report from the same year, 1968, noted that Britain should assist economic development in the poorest countries 'especially those which are or can be expected to become important sources of raw materials or important markets for British goods and services'.7
Britain's 'aid' programme was thus seen as 'a weapon in the armoury of foreign policy', in the words of the Foreign Office in 1958. Ten years later, it similarly stated that:
We must ensure that our aid programme supports not only the developmental needs of recipient countries but also our own commercial and foreign policies . . . Wherever possible we should try to shape our aid programme to fit more appropriately the pattern of our trade and investment interests in different countries.8
This role for 'aid' has been long understood by planners: the forerunner of the modern aid programme was the Colonial Development Corporation, which was established after the Second World War 'to promote and undertake the expansion of the supplies for colonial foodstuffs, raw materials and other commodities', a 1947 Cabinet memorandum reads.9
Critical to achieving these basic economic goals is Britain's political power – or 'prestige' or 'status' as it is variously referred to in the planning files. Promoting British prestige is often seen as an end in itself; indeed British planners have traditionally been obsessed with their standing in the world, and this factor has often been more important than economic goals in deciding policy.
The Foreign Office commented in 1958, for example, that 'there is no alternative to remaining a Power with interests in many parts of the world' for two reasons. The first is that 'the UK is not self-sufficient' and 'must maintain and expand our level of trade or lose our standard of life'. The second is that 'our prosperity is closely linked to the maintenance of the sterling area [the large part of the world where the pound was then the dominant currency] and to the status of the pound'. Both of these depended on 'our ability to preserve our influence in the world'.10
As the Foreign Office observed in 1968:
For the foreseeable future our direct economic worldwide interests will require us to do what we can to maintain and increase our existing influence outside Europe. Indeed, in terms of stark economic interest, we cannot afford to lose such influence.1'
In 1950, at a time when Britain was increasingly being forced to 'decolonise', the Foreign Office had warned:
If the United Kingdom were voluntarily to abandon her position or political influence in selected areas, she would probably find herself not only without economic access to those areas but unable, through loss of prestige, to prevent a further involuntary decline in her influence elsewhere and consequently a general decline in the strength of the Western powers.12
Eight years later, in 1958, the Foreign Office similarly warned of the dangers of decolonisation occurring too quickly:
Our remaining colonial territories are likely to be in many, if not most years, net contributors to our gold and dollar reserves. Premature withdrawal would lead to collapse of markets and sources of supply for the United Kingdom.
However, 'timely grants of independence would not endanger economic links with the United Kingdom' which were seen as 'sacrifices to maximise long term investment in colonies'.13
Maintaining such 'great power' status will only come at a price. The Cabinet Office noted in i960, for example, that:
There are many desirable ways of using our resources at home, especially the improvement of our standard of living through better social services and the increasing of our wealth through productive investment. But we cannot exert influence in the world unless we devote resources sufficient to underwrite our external responsibilities.14
Therefore, the price for the British elite to maintain its global prestige will be paid by the general public.
Possessing nuclear weapons is another way Britain maintain their status in the world. The Cabinet Office in 1960, for example, noted that in the 1950s 'our influence throughout the world was enhanced' by 'being a nuclear power with a significant potential both in weapons and delivery systems'. It noted that 'unilateral nuclear disarmament is, of course, within our power' but this would threaten Britain's security and 'would undermine our standing in the Atlantic Alliance and in the world as a whole'.15 It was largely to uphold the British position with the US that Attlee's Labour government acquired nuclear weapons after the war.
The twin goals of ensuring favourable investment climates and maintaining 'great power' status have been especially important in three regions – the Middle East, South-east Asia and Southern Africa.
In the Middle East, oil has of course been of paramount importance; the Foreign Office had described the region's oil in 1947 as 'a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination'. Prime Minister Harold Wilson's private secretary, Oliver Wright, wrote in 1964 that:
We have really only two interests in the Middle East. The first is access on reasonable terms to Middle East oil. The second is overflying rights across the Middle East barrier so that we may get to the other parts of the world where our presence is necessary.16
In the Middle East as elsewhere the British strategy under 'decolonisation' was to ensure that power passed to local clients. In this way, control over oil could be maintained. The Cabinet Office observed in 1958, for example, that in the Middle East many countries have
evolved to a point which makes it impossible to subject them to furt
her tutelage . . . The basic task which confronts the United Kingdom in the Middle East is thus to pass smoothly from the previous patron-client relationship, suitable to our former strategic needs, to a new and more equally balanced commercial relationship which will preserve for as long as possible the continued supply of oil as a mutually advantageous basis of trade.17
Not only Arab countries but also Iran were important for oil. Indeed, Iran had a particular importance, as the Joint Intelligence Committee noted in 1961: