Freedom and Opposition

By HENRY FAIRLIE

IT is not often that an important speech is 1 made at the Mansion House in reply to a Lord Mayor's address of welcome. But the speech made last Friday by U Thant, the acting Secretary-General of the United Nations, de- serves far closer attention than it has received. His argument, addressed explicitly to Britain, was that we should not expect the new countries of

Asia and Africa to adopt a representative system of government:

Our traditional belief in the universal ap- plicability of representative government is likely to be put to severe strain for some time to come. It is a mistake to assume that the politi- cal institutions and forms of democracy in most of the newly independent countries will be of the same type as those prevailing in Britain, or that there will necessarily be two main parties competing against each other for the votes of the people.

The notion that democracy requires the existence of an organised opposition to the government of the day is not valid. Democracy requires only freedom for opposition, not neces- sarily its organised existence.

This is, of course, a familiar argument. But one cannot ignore the source from which it comes. Although he has not yet succeeded Dag Hammarskjiild, U Thant has shown that he is perfectly capable of filling his place. He speaks already with considerable authority, and his words can be taken to be sound United Nations doctrine: the doctrine of the Secretariat.

Their implication is obvious. While the new countries of Asia and Africa may consider them- selves free to criticise the internal political arrangements of the older countries of the West, they are to be counted as immune from such criticism themselves, since it is irrelevant. This is only a sophisticated statement of the kind of double standards which have increasingly be- devilled the United Nations over the past years.

There is more than one paradox in U Thant's argument. He in fact undermines the main ar- gument which liberals in the West have used for granting independence to colonial peoples.

It used to be conservatives, in resisting the grant- ing of independence, who argued that these peoples were not yet capable of representative government, the liberals who claimed they were.

The Guardian, rediscovering some of its old- fashioned liberalism, showed itself sensitive to this point when it commented on U Thant's `Sometimes 1 think the Laird is too partisan in his interest in foreign affairs. .

speech. It quoted a paragraph from the auto- biography of Chief Awolowo, the leader of the Opposition in Nigeria: The proponents of this theory hold the view that it is inappropriate and hardly fair to expect a newly emergent African nation to practise democracy as it is known in the countries of Western Europe and the United States. . . . Our British friends overdo the story when they try to make it appear that the height which they have now reached and keep to can only be effectively scaled by their fellow English-speak- ing peoples.

But, in the end, the Guardian reverses Chief Awolowo's argument and returns to the new

liberalism: 'The danger for Europeans in accept- ing U Thant's argument is that systems diverg- ing from Westminster may be looked upon as inferior rather than different.'

If we do not think that systems which deny an opposition the right to organise are inferior — whether in Spain, East Germany or Ghana— the whole of political argument seems rather rointless. The argument need not be pressed to the point of withdrawing recognition from such systems, or imposing sanctions against them; tut it is important that .it should be maintained with a little urgency and conviction on our side. We are in danger of growing careless of the casualties of dictatorial, restrictive or closed systems of government. Chief Awolowo has been banished to a remote island, without a telephone. Two men who held key positions in the Ghana 1 rades Union Congress decide not to return to their country, after visiting Moscow, and or- ganise their opposition from London.

These are only the most recent of scores— indeed, hundreds—of similar happenings. They underline the weakness of the argument used by U Thant: the deceptive argument that civil freedom (the right to oppose) can be maintained without the right to organise opposition. There has never been any proof that this is true, and it is on this that the case for Western forms of democracy rests. We cannot excuse ourselves from the duty to state that case.

The great Dutch historian, Pieter Geyl, has answered this heresy, in his discussion of Quitters views of Napoleon's code civil:

This civil freedom itself, so cunningly used as a pretext for the destruction of political life, was but a fragile possession in the absence of

political guarantees. . Indeed, men were content with civil rights and material acquisi- tions. But what blindness: and to what disasters, degeneracy, moral and spiritual death. did it lead I

Napoleon . Nkrumah: the enemy (in terms

of ideas) is the same. It is the illusion that there can be any guarantee of freedom without a

representative system which not only tolerates, but even encourages, the existence of an or- ganised opposition.

As I say, to state our case is not necessarily an argument for withdrawing our recognition from such systems, or interfering in their inter-

nal policies, or refusing them aid. We should exercise the patience towards them for which U Thant :asked, and we should give them such

economic aid as we can afford, without political

!rings. All this is agreed. But we cannot allow the case for the Western conception of freedom to go unstated in one part of the world, lest if eventually goes by default in another. We can- rot allow the Afro-Asian assertions of moral superiority to pass in the United Nations with- out continually restating our belief that our con- ception of freedom is superior, and eventually attainable by all nations, and probably attain-

able by more nations than is at present allowed.

If we do not reiterate this conviction, then the inevitable will happen: as U Thant's speech shows, the other point of view becomes the pre- vailing orthodoxy. Once the acting Secretary- General of the United Nations asserts that 'the notion that democracy requires the existence of an organised opposition . . is not valid,' we should begin to inquire where it will all stop.