The cost of saving Mr Wilson's face

RHODESIA JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE

During one of his recent television appearances the Prime Minister, I recollect, expressed the hope that some of his critics overseas would

`show some of theft- teeth in the Rhodesian affair. So I am happy to be able to assure him that in a sense —though not perhaps precisely the sense he had in mind —they are indeed show- ing their teeth: they are continuing to get them very successfully into what was once a valuable British export market.

According to the latest official figures pub- lished by the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development our trading part- ners in western Europe, North America, and Japan notched up a handsome 27 per cent in- crease in their sales to Rhodesia during the first five months of this year. Of course, some countries have done a good deal better than the average: the Japanese, for instance, were able proudly to claim that their exports to this 'out- law' territory had more than doubled in the first seven months of the year (the individual national figures are more up to date than those for the OECD as a whole).

Others had more modest achievements to their credit: German exports were claimed to be up by a fifth, those of France by 18 per cent. Nor was all the progress on the export side:.

the Swiss government reported a worthwhile 47 per cent increase in imports—which are, of course, theoretically much more strictly con-

trolled by the UN embargo than are sales to

Rhodesia. The United States has not done quite so well: still, American importers declared a worthwhile $4.7 million of purchases from Salisbury. (All these figures relate to the first seven months of this year.)

It is also interesting to note that OECD mem- ber countries' exports to South Africa rose by

almost one third between the first five months of 1966 and the same period of this year. I can't help wondering whether this was wholly attributable to the liberalisation of South African trade. But it is a relief to see that, as Lord Walston assured us before Mr Wilson de- cided that his talents could be better employed elsewhere, this country has participated fully in this advance, whatever the ultimate destina- tion of the goods may have been.

Another striking phenomenon revealed by the OECD trade statistics is the dramatic rise in OECD sales to Angola—up 30 per cent in the first five months of the year, and showing signs of rising still more sharply. A remarkable tribute to the prosperity of this territory under Portuguese rule. Or maybe not.

All right, I can hear the sanctions experts reply. We know sanctions are not working as they should: there are too many shady traders

around, prepared to stoop to any tricks to turn a dishonest penny (if, of course, they were trad-

ing with Havana or Hanoi, these same people would hail them as 'merchant adventurers': but that's another matter). But the significance of the OECD statistics is that these are the figures

that member governments choose to report. I have no doubt that they wildly underestimate

the extent to which sanctions are being eroded and evaded. But they are a signal demonstra- tion of the contempt with which most of our trading partners now view the whole operation. To be fair, the gallant Luxemburgers still toe the line: if enterprising businessmen from Luxembourg are cashing in on the market which we have nobly surrendered, their government at least wishes to know nothing about it.

However, the sanctioneers are never lacking in inventiveness. If straightforward trade em- bargoes are not working out as intended, they have more ingenious devices up their sleeves. They plan to halt the presentation of Pinky and Perky on Rhodesian television screens. How our television networks have been allowed to export such a flagrant piece of racialist pro- paganda (Pinky, indeed!) all this time defies understanding. But somehow I find it a little hard to imagine Mr Smith and his colleagues collapsing before a furious onrush of six-year- olds. denied their favourite viewing. Perhaps I'm wrong.

But the latest theory seems to be that even if sanctions have failed and are never going to succeed, we—and presumably we alone, for nobody else is much interested—must sternly practise self-denial, not in order to achieve any- thing positive, but simply to strike a noble posture. Now a fine, if empty, moral gesture is a luxury in which a rich and prosperous nation is entitled to indulge itself, and I suppose it is arguable that even when a coun- try is agonisingly balanced between slump and insolvency it might still feel able to accept an additional short-term economic burden in the certainty of achieving an immediate political objective. What I find totally unacceptable is that in our desperate economic predicament we should sacrifice a valuable export market to no conceivable purpose (meaning a purpose which could conceivably be fulfilled).

I am not suggesting that the recovery of our £35 million export market in Rhodesia would enable us, in Harold Wilson's words, to 'pay our way' (and in any case much of this market is now probably lost for good). I accept that something more fundamental than the additional tens of millions of dollars which we shall soon be spending on American tobacco, and the tens of millions of pounds we are currently spending on propping up the economy of Zambia, is going to be needed to recover the 'fundamental equilibrium' which the Common Market Commission reckons we have lost. But I find it totally unacceptable that the level of unemployment should be even marginally raised, or the level of manufacturing investment even marginally further restricted, in order to enable us to continue to pursue a policy which cannot achieve anything more worth while than a temporary postponement of the final admission that Rhodesia must be added to the lengthening list of this government's glorious failures.

I hope that George Thomson's mission to Salisbury, if it comes off, will lead to a settle- ment. But it will not unless the British govern- ment recognises—and gets its party to recog- nise—that the best it can now hope for from Mr Smith and his colleagues is an assurance that the African population in Rhodesia will be allowed to enjoy unimpeded progress to full political equality at some unspecified date in the future: an assurance which will have to be accepted in good faith. The desire for inter- national recognition and pressure from South Africa should persuade the Rhodesian Front to concede this much. To hope for more would be crying for the moon.

Unfortunately, I cannot see Harold Wilson daring to present a settlement on these lines to his party. This is not because of his repeated assurances about not going back on his pledges: it would be almost unseemly for Mr Wilson to honour a pledge. It is because most of the Labour party still beat their breasts and cry 'Nibmar' at the least provocation, like punters urging on a horse which was scratched before the race began. But if he cannot get such a settlement then we can only hope that At Wrathall's recent sums of British exports to Rhodesia are correct. And if the Government will quietly allow the trade figures we send to OECD to show a strong upward trend in both directions I promise I will never refer to them in public again.