WHAT IS THIS “FREE WORLD’?

RNEST BEVIN at least made no bones about his lack of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the K colonies. They must remain under British rale, he said, in order to maintain the living standards of the British workers. Now of course it can be argued to what extent British workers ARE better off as a result of Britain’s colonial empire.

Apart from anything else, the preservation and expansion of such a system has involved our people in the bloodiest wars in history and killed them in millions. _ Allowances must -be made, too, for-the advances possible for the colcnial countries if they were allowed to develop freely and contribute to an international division of labour and distribution of wealth.

Not everyone is as straightforward as Bevin. A common argument for the continued existence of imperialism is that without British or French or German domination the colonial countries would have remained in the night of barbaric backwardness and ignorance from which they were saved by the expansion of Western capitalism.

Yn fact there are hundreds of examples of exactly the opposite process. The Tasmanian aborigines were certainly culturaily backward wher discovered: now they do not exist.

In. Australia the native people were killed off like flies or deprived of their land, which for a hunting people meant social death.

The remaining aborigines, only a fraction of the 300,000 first discovered, are discriminated against in some towns, barred from others, or more or less imprisoned in mission-run work stations which make a European slum look like a palace.

Reality and the myth The gap between the reality and the official myth was well brought out by the recent Australian trip of the Queen Mother.

A specially dressed-up aboriginal woman was flown miles to be presented to her; at the same time, and in the same woman’s home area, aboriginal prisoners in the hands of the local police were chained by their ankles day and night to the outside of the jail, for lack of space inside.

Such window-dressing for distinguished visitors is of course well known to every factory worker in Britain. One factory in Sheffield even prepared a red-plush lavatory seat for the use of a royal visitor. Alas, the work was wasted, for the call was never felt. ;

Another well-known example of the benefits of: imperialism was the slave trade, which brought tens of millions of Negroes from the west coast of Africa to the New World, often crammed like sardines into the holds of ships, and suffering under the whip of devout Christian traders and masters. The struggling Negroes of the South of the USA are the descendants of these slaves.

Into all the island communities of the Indian and Pacific Oceans the Europeans carried syphilis, tuberculosis, measles, trade and the Bible.

Epidemics halved the population For some people, like the Andamanese, this often meant a death rate which at least halved the population in one or two epidemics.

The romanticized South Sea Islands suffered the same fate, and the survivors went through generations of ‘blackbirding’, forced labour at starvation wages and every form of economic and social discrimination.

The rising colonial peoples of today come from largely peasant or feudal societies.

That is to say, they had developed to the stage of individual rights in land; in some cases the old tribal organization still survived and checked the growth of great inequalities; in others, the chiefs or neighbouring feudal monarchs had established a régime of tribute and tax which resembled European -feudalism. pegs eten g Has imperialism brought social advance to these peasant and feudal societies?

Besides the oft-quoted statistics of illiteracy and disease, it can be shown that in fact the social backwardness of these countries was intensified, rather than alleviated, by imperialism. The imperialists combined with the feudal lords to defeat movements of nationalism or democracy.

Led defeat of backwardness The capitalist class of Europe led the defeat of feudal backwardness in Europe as a necessity for their own development.

They progressed to unified national States, with legal and financial security, as against the local military power of the feudal lords, which restricted the growth of trade and inTue NEWSLETTER

dustry.

The old rigid bonds of status and superiority by birth were largely shattered, so that the path was created for democratic processes and free competition. In this atmosphere the Industrial Revolution could occur.

If we look at those agricultural countries which have come . under the heel of imperialism, we find that they have not made these same progressive steps from feudalism.

Out of necessity, Western capital allied with the most reactionary classes and strengthened them.

Take any oil company in the Middle East: if it encourages democratic forces against, say, Feisal or King Saud, and these forces are successful, what will be the future of the company? There will inevitably come to power a class which wants native control of the country’s resources.

Sapport of feudal landlords For many years British imperialism rested on the support of the feudal landlords in Egypt, typical of many countries.

Already in 1881 there occurred a nationalist revolt against the Turkish Empire, but democratic Britain regarded this as a threat, not a welcome victory over the feudal régime.

British troops intervened and defeated the new national government, and all the old feudal relations and ties were confirmed. But for this intervention, Egypt might have led a successful Arab revolt throughout the Middle East.

The key to Britain’s motives is not hard to find: six years earlier, in 1875, Disraeli had bought 176,602 shares in the Suez Canal Company, the gateway to India.

In order to preserve ‘law and order’ on the banks of this golden hundred miles, progressive Britain preferred a nation weak and backward, and: pressed on from Egypt to control the head-waters of the Nile by a ruthless conquest of the Sudan.

Within a few years of British conquest Egypt had a far greater inequality of wealth and a more rigid class structure than under the Ottoman Empire.

Preying on the fellahin The small landlords and village headmen became big landowners, tax-farmers and money-lenders preying on the poverty-stricken fellahin.

These poor peasants lived in debt from birth to death, unable to escape the grip of feudal tyranny. In 1882 in Egypt, 80 per cent..of the people were illiterate; under the British in 1920 the percentage was 90.

A similar story could be told of India, China, the kingdoms of Africa. and the whole of the Middle East. In China, the rival imperialist powers sided with different warlords for their own purposes, and combined to suppress the revolt of other classes.

In the Arab Middle East the British and others divided up the area into artificial States with no regard for national interests.

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India under British rule saw the rise of a wealthy landlord class far above anything previously existing, yet Indian native industry declined, and the country was deliberately kept divided by the British. - ;

Professor—Rushbrook Williams frankly: admitted i” the ~ Evening Standard of May 28, 1930:

‘The situation of these feudatory States, checkerboarding all India as they do, are a great safeguard. It is like establishing a network of friendly fortresses in debatable territory. It would be difficult for a general rebellion. against the British to sweep India because of this network of powerful, loyal, native States.’

In every. case imperialism prevented national unity and discouraged the development of political democracy and individual rights.

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Traq was one of the Arab countries involved in the national Siruggles of the first. world war and its aftermath. In 1919 Britain took over from the Turks, and by 1932, when the Aw t country achieved nominal independence, a new powerful class of wealthy ‘sheiks’ had been built up as imperialism’s puppet and defence against democracy.

South America, Africa, the whole of the underdeveloped and dependent world, have undergone the same experience in one form or another.

Their economic and political progress has been sacrificed to the accumulation of wealth by the Western- powers, and this has demanded the retention of all the old political and social backwardness.

Vol, In this way the ‘Western democracies’ defend progress and stand for the ‘free world’ against the ‘barbarism’ of communism and the East. ~ re se