TV REVIEW ENDLESS IMPERIAL DREAMS

entitled with unique aptness "The Gift of Endless Dreams', contrived to plumb even more profound depths of nonsensical, anecdotal, impressionistic reaction.

In dealing with an immense and vital subject - British colonialism in China and Malaysia, the rise of Japanese nationalism and the onslaught of the Pacific War-BBC producer Tom Haydon somehow managed to concentrate his attention almost entirely on the not only biased, but also exceedingly banal and boring opinions of a small group of upper-middle-class English gentlemen and their ladies.

Were he merely presenting an account of the exaggerated pretensions and inflated egos of a particular former ruling clique, a clique sheltering behind the defence mechanism of nationalistic nostalgia, then the programme. might have passed muster: but given a vast historical panorama with which to deal. it seems possible that Tom Haydon scratched his head and came up with a few 'angles'.

Haydon's mind was obviously burning with a sole question: By what magic did a small group of white rulers direct thousands of square miles of territory and millions of people in relative calm, without massive revolt? The answer is not magical at all, residing as it does in the lag in consciousness of exploited peoples under certain' historical circumstances.

Tom Haydon's programme, however, painted a different Dicture-that of the justice and benevolence of British colonialism.

Not that Haydon questioned Mao Tse-tung's evaluation of the western colonial powers as having arrived in China 'with the Bible in one hand and opium in the other'. The facts now corroborate this view so clearly that it is accepted by even the most reactionary of historians.

But in the case of Malaya and Singapore, the intention has alwavs been to uphold the notion of happy native peoples govwhites, until gracious. dastardly erned by capable Japanese came along and smashed the idyllic harmony. Haydon did little to dispel this view. To paraphrase Mao's dictum, Tom Haydon arrived in Singapore with a BBC Producers' Handbook in one hand and his liberal illusions in the other.

The truth is very différent. In dealing with the Malaya campaign and the fall of Singapore, the programme did not attempt any objective analysis whatsoever. Nothing was mentioned of the world depression which had led to the rise of Japanese nationalism, militarism and the drive for expansion. England had for long dominated the East for profit, now Japan sought to corner those resources under the blanket of a Greater Asia CoProsperity Sphere.

Japan, armed with the more openly violent militarism of Nippon nationalism, rapidly gained the ascendent, since the ruling class England, and Winston Churchill in particular, preferred to disguise their intent behind open-door policies and co-existence, as long as it was someone else's door and another country's existence.

What resulted from this grossly hypocritical posture was that thousands of British working men and women were sent into a suicidal holocaust, together with thousands of colonial peoples, in one of the biggest military blunders of all time-the Malaya campaign.

In the spate of post-mortems which have been conducted on the great failure by a galaxy of colonels and brigadiers, the one blaming the others, only points of military detail have been argued, not the political implications. Part 11 of the British Empire series carried on that tradition.

Optimism was on "sure I am' reassurances of Winston Churchill, who was only sure of anything from a position of almost total ignorance, cloaked in chauvinistic phraseology. Although the Japanese threat had not appeared overnight, but had been maturing for over a decade, Churchill could still say when war broke out: 'I confess that in my mind the whole Japanese menace lay in a sinister twilight...If, on the other hand, Japanese aggression drew America, I would be content to have it.' The point is that the western powers had watched over the agony of the Chinese people as Japan proceeded from July 1937, to carry out a full-scale invasion of that country. The same western powers watched, without intervention and with no great sympathy; watched in the hope that Chinese resources and markets would satisfy Japanese appetites.

They then exploded with self-righteous indignation, caught unawares as Japan overran French Indo-China, proceeded on to the great rubber and tin arsenal which was Malaya and from there to the oil-rich Dutch East Indies.

This was beyond the bounds of fair play. Undemocratic behaviour. Unfortunately, however, it was also the logic of the capitalist system which is profoundly anti-internationalist and based on fierce competitiveness.