LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
COLONIAL SELF-DETERMINATION SIR,--The late arrival of the Spectator in some of our colonies may deprive those most concerned of the benefits of informed debate in your columns until too long after the appearance of the articles which Svou are publishing about this subject. There is one observation, however, Which must be made. That is that the generalisations concerning colonial self-determination to which we are treated from time to time admit of exceptions. For instance, it must be stated officially whether or not we intend to grant dominion status and eventual freedom to secede from the Empire to the strategic islands and bases: the Falklands, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and Hong Kong. According to the declarations of the Atlantic Charter and of the Secretary of State for, the Colonies, we do so intend. Have we been anything but foolish in not exempting these colonies from these general statements which in their original form are misleading and lay us open to the accusation of political hypocrisy ? Someone in authority must surely have faced the possibility of the rape of the Falkland. Islands by their neighbour Argentina, the absorption of Gibraltar by Spain and of Hong Kong by Communist China." Self-determination indeed! A useless little Republic of Malta would be anybody's prey, while there can be no doubt whatever that Cyprus, having been granted self-government, would within twelve hours declare for union with Greece. Another twelve hours' honeymoon would be followed by civil war between Communists and Royalists and the final submission of the shattered island to Russia.
If we have honestly faced these possibilities, why not say so and boldly proclaim that we have no intention of jeopardising the safety of civilisation by granting to minute countries or to politically immature peoples the status of self-governing or self-determining States ? They are all far too small to stand by themselves, and although in every case we must keep to our plan of trying to foster political and cultural maturity, we must realise that there are people in this world who do not wish to learn anything because they believe that England hks nothing to teach them and who want self-government only to resign themselves into the bands of a foreign Power. This is certainly true of the so-called " Greeks " of Cyprus.
Furthermore, there is a special reason why the colonies to which I refer (with the exception of Hong Kong) should be treated by themselves. They are all inhabited exclusively by Europeans, though not by any means entirely by Anglo-Saxons. (I include the loyal Turks of Cyprus among the Europeans.) One is led to question whether the Colonial Office, with its obsession with coloured races advancing along a standardised political line of development, is the right department for dealing with European white populations. None of these places is a colony in the true sense of the word.—Yours faithfully, WitFam T. F. CASTLE.
z Stadium Street, Varosha, Famagusta, Cyprus.
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