'Moments of tension and drama': the Rhodesian problem at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Meetings, 1964-65

Recent scholarship on Rhodesia¹

During the last few years there has been a flurry of documentaries, oral history projects, and conferences that has revealed a renewed interest in the question of Rhodesian independence and the history of southern Africa.² The recent fortieth anniversary of Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) served to emphasize that academic research in this field is particularly vibrant and the number of publications is increasing rapidly, partly as a result of the deluge of declassified British government records during the last fifteen years. These materials have provided younger scholars with opportunities for doctoral research,³ and have generated further volumes in the British Documents on the End of Empire project.⁴ Availability of sources in The National Archives of the United Kingdom and published collections of documents have provided the basis for a re-examination of British policy, especially the controversial decision to abjure the use of force to impose a political settlement in Rhodesia.⁵ Other recent studies have used British and international sources to examine some of the wider dimensions of the Rhodesian problem, such as its impact on Anglo-American relations and the significance of South African policy.⁶ The question of Rhodesian independence was of course fundamental to Commonwealth relations, but this has attracted relatively little scholarly attention.⁷ This article uses new sources from the National Archives of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to examine the Rhodesian independence issue in the context of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meetings of 1964 and 1965, which according to one contemporary commentator faced ‘the fourth “great crisis” of the Empire-Commonwealth’.⁸

The Commonwealth, British foreign policy, and the Rhodesian problem

Following South Africa’s departure from the Commonwealth in May 1961, some commentators heralded a new era in which the Commonwealth would become a prominent international actor, but ‘the Commonwealth was far from an institution of triumphant virtue.’⁹ Difficult issues still remained unresolved, including relations with the apartheid regime in South Africa and the question of Rhodesian independence. This had important implications for the future direction of British foreign policy because Conservative and Labour governments alike viewed the Commonwealth as a means by which to project British influence in the world. Arnold Smith, the first Commonwealth secretary-general, lamented the fact that the Commonwealth was often conceived not as an association of equals but as a form of British ‘kith and kin’, a ghost of empire, or a surrogate for empire.¹⁰ However, the Rhodesian problem demonstrated clearly that the Commonwealth was no supplicant to British governments of the right or the left.

Conservative faith in the Commonwealth had been eroded to some extent by issues such as the withdrawal of South Africa, the demise of parliamentary democracy in many newly- independent Commonwealth countries, the British move to join the European Economic Community (EEC), and immigration.¹¹ A well-known article written by an anonymous ‘Conservative’ in 1964 described the Commonwealth as ‘a gigantic farce.’¹² Nevertheless, Sir Alec Douglas-Home believed that although the Commonwealth was changing rapidly, and becoming more difficult as a result, it was still ‘a significant and dynamic force in world affairs’.¹³ At the 1964 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting, Douglas-Home made several proposals for economic development and technical co-operation (but this initiative went in a different direction than he anticipated). Whilst in opposition the Labour Party stressed the Commonwealth as an alternative to British membership of the EEC.¹⁴ Its 1964 election manifesto declared that a future Labour government would revitalize the Commonwealth through an exports council, long-term purchasing contracts, joint economic planning, and technical co-operation.¹⁵ Harold Wilson and the right wing of the Party also saw the Commonwealth as an essential component of Britain’s continued global role. In November 1964, in his first major foreign policy speech as prime minister, Wilson declared: ‘We are a world power, and a world influence, or we are nothing’; and the following month told the House of Commons that ‘whatever we may do in the field of cost effectiveness … we...