Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses

by Mark Curtis

  Iran is the only source of Middle Eastern oil which is not tinder the control of an Arab government, and present production could be considerably increased in an emergency. This strengthens the West's hand vis-àvis the Arab oil producing countries.18

  Noticeably absent from the government's planning record is mention of the concerns of the people of the region. Nowhere that I have seen in any of these files, covering three decades, are the interests or wishes of the inhabitants of the Middle East even considered.

  South-east Asia was also recognised as critical, mainly owing to British investments in the region, notably Malaya. The war in Malaya in the 1950s was described by the Foreign Office as 'very much in defence of [the] rubber industry'. It was fought at a time when Malaya was the largest net earner of dollars in the sterling area, due mainly to its rubber and tin exports, then partly in the hands of British companies. By 1962, British companies had invested £810 million in South-east Asia. A Foreign Office paper noted two other interests in the region – that sea and air routes from Britain to Australia and New Zealand pass through it, and that it was a 'conspicuous battlefield in the cold war'.19

  Southern Africa, and especially South Africa, has always been of primary importance to British planners as a field for commercial investment – a priority which was never seriously upset through the long decades of apartheid. A Foreign Office paper from 1964 notes that in 1961 the return on British investment in the region was £124 million, 26 per cent of the global total. A Cabinet Office study of 1959 summed up the role of Southern Africa:

  General interests of the West will be: (1) excluding Sino-Soviet infiltration and keeping local governments and populations on our side or, at least, benevolently neutral; (2) developing trade and guarding access to raw materials.20

  A 1967 Cabinet Office report referred to the international debates over the racist regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa, and stated that 'apart from this our major interests in both Middle and Southern Africa in the long run are economic and are substantial'. 'Our only political interest' in the region, it added, 'is to do what we can to create conditions . . . in which we can pursue our important economic interests to the best advantage'. This meant that 'we should positively seek to create in Middle African states an atmosphere conducive to British trade and investment and to the presence of British nationals'.

  As regards apartheid South Africa, 'we should continue to make it clear . . . that we cannot contemplate economic or political warfare with South Africa'. Rather, South Africa 'is likely to remain impregnable for a long time to come and must therefore be left to evolve in whatever way her own internal pressures dictate', while 'we are prepared to do business with South Africa and the Portuguese colonies', referring to Mozambique and Angola. The most important issue overall was to 'have regard to the protection of our investments and other economic interests'.21

  If anyone believes that the interests of mere Africans have ever had anything to do with British policy towards Africa, they should read these files.

  Seeing Africa primarily as a source of raw materials and a field for investment was a direct continuation of pre-war and immediate post-war policy. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin noted in 1948, for example, that the basic need was 'to develop the African continent and to make its resources available to all' (i.e., Britain). This echoed the view of Field Marshall Montgomery, who the previous year had noted the 'immense possibilities that exist in British Africa for development' and 'the use to which such development could be put to enable Great Britain to maintain her standard of living, and to survive'. "These lands contain everything we need', he wrote, such as minerals, food and labour. But, he said, 'there must be a grand design for African development as a whole'. Britain needed to develop the continent since the African 'is a complete savage and is quite incapable of the developing the country [sic] himself'.22

  Latin America was portrayed even more starkly as simply a source of raw materials. A 1958 Foreign Office paper stipulated two British aims:

  (1) Promotion of trade and good relations. Latin America is an important source of raw materials for the United Kingdom and in some cases might become a vital one if the delivery of supplies from other parts of the world were to be interrupted, eg, oil, tin, copper and meat; (2) The retention in the Western camp of an economically rich area which has comparatively secure communications and is at present opposed to communist penetration.23

  The importance of America and Europe

  Two fundamental pillars of British foreign policy today are the special relationship with the US and the role inside the European Union. The first has been a core feature of Whitehall's planning since the early 1940s; the second since at least the early 1960s when British planners made the decision to join the then EEC.

  In 1968 the Foreign Office wrote that:

  If we want to exercise a major influence in shaping world events and are prepared to meet the costs we need to be influential with a much larger power system than we ourselves possess. The only practical possibilities open to us are to wield influence with Western Europe or the United States or both.24

  Since Britain's imperial decline had led to diminishing ability to impose itself unilaterally around the globe, London essentially joined forces with the world's superpower to preserve British interests and Western dominance. British officials opted for a special relationship with the US during the Second World War, both to survive and as part of a vision for the post-war world. By 1945 they were talking of acting as a 'junior partner in an orbit of power predominantly under American aegis'.25 The idea of Britain and European allies acting as a 'third force' between the US and Soviet Union – which planners had dabbled with in the late 1940s – was soon rejected. The price of playing second lieutenant to Washington – which involved the US displacing Britain from parts of the globe – was one that British planners (albeit often reluctantly) agreed to pay for the benefit of maintaining a residual greatpower status and commercial interests.

  US post-war planning envisaged nothing short of control of the entire non- Soviet world, and especially the global economy, well documented by several US analysts. In 1949 the Foreign Office noted the 'importance of our maintaining control of the periphery [around the Soviet Union] which runs round from Oslo to Tokyo'. 'This policy', it noted, 'should be concerted with the United States'.26 These British planners, rooted in imperial ideology, cannot be accused of under-ambition: the whole planet is an object to be controlled; they are restricted only by the means available and the extent of opposition.

  'Our partnership with the United States is an existing source of world power . . . and our status in the world will largely depend on their readiness to treat us as their closest ally', the Cabinet Office wrote in 1960. 'From our point of view the alliance with the United States is the most important single factor in our foreign policy', the Foreign Office wrote four years later. It added that 'the possibility of a hostile United States reaction is as considerable a deterrent to our adopting a given policy as the certainty of United States support is an encouragement'. The special relationship goes so deep that 'even the exasperation we occasionally feel for each other's habits and views is a family affair'.27

  The essential component of the special relationship, as I have argued in Web of Deceit and elsewhere, is British support for US aggression (and vice versa, especially in the earlier post-war period). Another feature of the special relationship is a de facto division of the world into US and British zones of influence.

  British planners analysed the various regions of the world according to the extent of British interests, in a major 1958 report. They concluded that to achieve British and Western aims, 'in some parts the main burden must fall upon the United States', but in others Britain had to act itself to promote its aims. There were three key areas of the world: Europe and the Middle East; South-east Asia and Africa; and the Far East and Latin America. The latter was a US preserve and 'we can therefore afford to leave them to the US, whose resources are gr
eat enough to manage them'. At the other end of the scale came Europe and the Middle East, where Britain had major specific interests. And 'in between' were South-east Asia and Africa, which Britain 'cannot afford to abandon or transfer to another power'.28

  Britain thus needed to preserve some unilateral means of intervention in the first two areas, for which the US usually provided strong support (US opposition to the British invasion of Egypt in 1956 being a notable exception). In 1947, Foreign Secretary Bevin proposed to the US a review of the situation in the Middle East 'for the purpose of arriving at a gentleman's understanding in regard to a common policy and joint responsibility throughout the area'.29 Although in some cases – for example, Iran – the US sought to replace Britain's primary external role with its own, in many others it was happy to leave the controlling role to Britain. The Gulf states, for example, remained a British preserve with Britain continuing to have important unilateral interests in Iraq and Jordan.

  In the earlier post-war period, the US also looked to Britain to continue its colonial role in Africa and South-east Asia, generally approving of British (and other European) 'development' plans and the reassertion of European political control. The idea of the US as an opponent of post-war European colonialism is simply false. A 1957 National Security Council report on Africa, for example, declared that the US wanted sub-Saharan Africa to develop 'in an orderly manner' towards independence 'in cooperation with the European powers now in control of large areas of the continent'.30

  The US has always seen its junior partner as a collaborator in global intervention. Secretary of State Dean Rusk once told Harold Wilson that 'the US did not want to be the only country ready to intervene in any trouble spot in the world. We hoped the British would continue to uphold their world-wide responsibilities'. 'The US attaches the greatest importance to Britain's retaining a world power role', Rusk told Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart in Anglo-American talks in January 1966. He added that 'the British world role has, in a sense, a multiplier effect because of its influence on other nations'. The 'maintenance of British commitments around the world' was 'an essential element in the total Anglo-American relationship', Undersecretary of State George Ball told Wilson in September 1965. These discussions were taking place while the British were considering withdrawing from military bases 'East of Suez', against which the US was strongly lobbying London.31

  The dangers of Britain acting as a US stooge – a not irrelevant issue in current circumstances – receive some recognition in the files. A Foreign Office paper from 1958 notes that 'the United Kingdom is already greatly dependent upon United States support' but 'we must never allow this to develop to the point where we seem to be little more than an instrument of United States policy'.32 Some things, apparently, do change with time.

  By the 1960s at least, Whitehall planners tended to view membership of the European Community as enhancing rather than undermining the special relationship with the US. As the Foreign Office observed in 1968, 'if we fail to become part of a more united Europe', Britain's links with the US 'will not be enough to prevent us becoming increasingly peripheral to US concerns'. It was believed that 'we can regain sufficient influence in world affairs to protect our interests overseas and those of other Western European countries' by joining the EEC. The Foreign Office Planning Staff stated in 1968 that 'it is the hope of bringing our economic influence to bear more effectively in the political field that constitutes the principal motive of our application to join the EEC'.33

  The aim of British planners has always been to ensure that a cohesive Atlantic Alliance operates under US hegemony – a role which planners and the media currently refer to as a 'bridge' between the US and EU. The Foreign Office wrote in 1972 that

  The UK will, in its own interests, take on at times the role of a Trojan Horse . . . [in the EEC] . . . but its effectiveness in this role will depend on . . . not appearing to act as a US stooge.34

  The US appears to have understood the British role in the same way. Undersecretary of State George Ball told President Johnson in 1966 that Britain should be 'applying her talents and resources to the leadership of Western Europe' and that the US should be encouraging British membership of the EEC. Crucially, this British role would 'provide the balance' in >Europe that 'might tend to check the dangerous tendencies which French nationalism is already producing'.35

  Today, the danger to British and US interests is less nationalism in the EU than federalism, and especially federalism that challenges US hegemony in the Atlantic Alliance; it is this that the British Trojan Horse continues to fend off, partly on behalf of its US ally, notably in debates about an EU military capability.

  One question often asked today is why don't British planners throw in their lot with the EU entirely and, some would also argue, attempt to make the EU a counter-balance to the US. The question is naive (under current political structures): it ignores the fact that Whitehall has traditionally regarded the special relationship with the US as its single greatest source of power. And it also forgets the fact that the British role in the EU is precisely to play a supportive role to the US.

  The files contain a further reason why Britain rejected the idea of a 'third force Europe' as it was called in a long report by the Foreign Secretary in 1968: that if a "Third Force Europe really succeeded there would be a considerable risk that Germany would be the dominant power in it'.36

  Principal threats

  The major threat to British foreign policy – aside from the public at home and the UN – has been independent nationalist forces. These movements have challenged Western control over their resources and the basic British economic goals outlined above. Many nationalist forces in the past were relatively benign, and Britain's opposition to them shows how London has traditionally set itself against groups and governments wanting to address the poverty endemic in many countries of the world.

  In 1958 the Cabinet Office noted 'the emergence of fervid nationalism as a driving force in the Middle East and Asia' and lamented that it was leading to:

  attacks on our colonial, strategic and commercial interests which we have been unable to resist by force, partly because of trends in home and world opinion, and partly by the prohibitive cost of conquering and occupying territory.37

  The 'principal current problem' was understood in a US intelligence report as confrontation 'between Arab nationalism and Western strategic and commercial interests'. Such Arab nationalism 'threatened the ability of the Western powers to control developments', the US State Department later commented, in an analysis that seems relevant to Iraq today. This threat was compounded by the then leader of Third World nationalism, Egyptian President Nasser, who was understood by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee to have 'secured widespread popular . . . support in the Middle East and has a certain popularity in parts of Africa'.38

  Policy was thus to counter such forces, often under the public pretext of countering the Soviet Union. By 1958 – a tumultuous year for Britain and the US in the Middle East, when the pro-British Iraqi regime was overthrown by a nationalist government that joined with Syria and Egypt in countering Anglo-American hegemony over the region – British files refer to 'an unwritten commitment to the United States to join with them in . . . stopping Soviet and "neutralist" influence spreading'.'9 The latter half of the 1950s was a high point in covert planning to undermine and oust heretic governments, perhaps comparable to the present period where widespread regime change is also on the agenda.

  A particular threat was posed by the Cuban revolution of 1959, which overthrew the Batista dictatorship and brought Fidel Castro to power. British officials were terrified that the revolution would spread:

  A new explosive form of radical nationalism has appeared in Cuba which may well influence policies of other governments and possibly cause further revolutions . . . There is a danger that Cuba's neutralist anti-American example may be followed by some other Latin American states.40

  A year later the Cuban threat had gro
wn. The Joint Intelligence Committee wrote that:

  Castroism still retains much of its popular appeal. If, in the longer term, the Cuban revolution succeeds in achieving a stable regime which appears to meet the aspirations of the depressed classes, there will be a serious risk that it will inspire similar revolutions elsewhere in Latin America.41

  Britain set itself against the Cuban revolution knowing that it offered much to the people of Latin America. Rather than Castroism, Britain preferred the 'orderly and stable develop- ment of Latin America' which was important to Britain not only 'as a member of the Western Alliance but also from the point of view of the protection of the extensive British national interests in the area'.42