VIEWS OF THE WEEK
Rhodesia: the Consensus Cracks
rrHERE iS more to a bipartisan policy than I having the Opposition stand idly by while the Government improvises from day to day. There has to be a policy, plain for all to see and endorse (however painful the inner qualms which some may feel in doing so). The current ominous cracking of the bipartisan approach to Rhodesia has been caused more, by the. Govern- ment's contradictions and changes of direction than by any other factor. When no one can be certain what the Rhodesia policy is supposed to be, the Opposition, for the most part far from eager to cut loose altogether on Rhodesia, are pushed into an increasingly difficult situation.
The extraordinary conflict between Mr. Bottomley and Lord Gardiner on Tuesday re- duced a confused state of affairs to a chaotic one. While the Commonwealth Secretary was abusing Mr. Ian Smith as a liar and telling the Commons that 'we Cannot deal with Smith in any way,' the Lord Chancellor was assuring the Lords that 'it is open to Mr. Smith now to put forward any Proposals that he cared to make, and they will be carefully considered by the Government.' This surpassed even the virtuoso display of politician's 'flexibility' which Mr. Wilson has been executing, from his two voices on the United Nations to his change of direction on Rhodesians' pensions and his bewildering statements on the Kariba dam.
That the ,Prime Minister urgently desires to avoid a head-on party confrontation over Rho- desia is natural enough. He has shown himself on occasion to be most accommodating in order to prevent it. His severity with his left wing over the oil tanker affair this week is a case in point. It may be thought that, if Mr. Wilson were Leader of the Opposition, he would have made a brilliant speech on this question—but from the opposite point of view. One can imagine him raking the unlucky tanker British Security fore and aft with his powerful sarcasm and scorn, sinking her with- out trace. That he declined to do so, and in fact almost wished her company a pleasant voyage with their cargo of oil for Rhodesia, is a sign of the restraints of office and of his anxiety to keep political controversy down. He firmly rejected the 'moral gesture' for which his left wing (and the Liberals) were yearning in favour of a realistic appraisal of the situation—a far more prosaic thing.
But while Mr. Wilson was displaying realism his colleague Mr. Bottomley was blowing his top. The word 'never,' as a former Tory Minister found to his cost over Cyprus, is a dangerous one to use in this sort of context. Mr. Bottomley's outright dismissal of any possibility of dealing with Mr. Smith again, ever, was particularly un- fortunate for the Government at this moment, as it happened; because it followed a careful cam- paign to evoke the prospect of some sort of negotiation, and peaceful settlement.
Mr. Wilson cannot be too hard on the unfor- tunate Mr. Bottomley, however, because he had just climbed out of the same kind of pitfall him- self. His words in the House of Commons about a 'limited operation' to protect Kariba power supplies provoked such consternation that he had to back-pedal urgently. The loudest voice ex- pressing consternation was that of the Daily Mirror, perhaps Mr. Wilson's most faithful sup- porter in the press. Mr. Wilson was so dismayed by this reaction from his own side (and the Daily Mirror is proud of its sensitivity to its readers' opinions) that he provided the newspaper with a lengthy 'clarification' of his views. In this he was seen in a different light ; Q.—So those people who deduced from your House of Commons statement that you were visualising an attack in which British troops would battle with Rhodesian troops for the possession of the power station were wholly ,mistaken?
A.—Yes. They were quite wrong, as they will realise if they will study what 1 really said.
This reassurance looks strange if one takes Mr. Wilson at his word and goes' back to Hansard. The whole exchange in question turned on the possible uses of British forces based in Zambia, and in answer to Sir. Alec Douglas-Home Mr. Wilson said, in part:
We have to envisage a situation in which Mr. Smith—or perhaps it would not be Mr. Smith, for 1 have always taken the view that he is nothing like as bad as some of the people around him—or someone might go mad in Rhodesia and be tempted to cut off the electric power . . . In those circinstanees, if we had forces there it would be the height of folly to say that in no circumstances should we be prepared to make our deterrent effective. This is a deterrent. 1 hope in heaven's name, as 1 am &ire does the House, that it need be no more than a deterrent . . . But it is no good talking about a deterrent unless you arc prepared to make, it ,elfectiv,,.
It is not surprising that people read into Mr. Wilson's words about `not standing idly by' if the Smith r4gime interfered with Kariba a •tricanin'g, which he later disowned.
The really regrettable result of this urge to self-contradiction is that it is obscuring an important development in, the Government's attitude towards the problem of Rhodesia. Lord Gardiner's remarks on Tuesday were in the long run far more significant than Mr. Bottomley's outburst. They expressed the view, which has been repeatedly argued in the Spectator, that in the end the future of Rhodesia could only be settled round a table. They even seemed to be positively inviting' an approach from Mr. Smith.
That such an attitude may well involve un- palatable things is evident. The Smith regime, is getting worse, not better ; the new restrictions on Rhodesians' freedom to listen to broadcasts from other countries, for example, are a curious blend of the foolishly petty and the downright tyranni- cal. But it is still true that words, not violence, offer the best hope of bringing about a settlement.,
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