Britain's Non-Role East of Suez
By J. ENOCH POWELL, MP The great 'East of Suez' controversy, if not quite attaining the grade of a non-event, has turned out to be remarkably narrow.
When Britain has quitted Southern Arabia next year, there will be nothing physically left on the ground East of Suez except small forces in the Persian Gulf, a few islands in the Indian Ocean—which nobody seriously thinks could ever be more than staging-posts for aircraft— and a force of (presently) about 30,000 men located in Malaysia and Singapore.
The official view, stated in the Government's White Paper of a year ago and reaffirmed since, is that the function of the small forces in the Persian Gulf is `to ensure the continued stability of the Gulf until countries in the area are capable of maintaining stability on their own.' How this is to be done by a power which will have evacuated Aden under pressure and was unable to control Mossadek's antics fifteen years ago, remains unexplained. The Government knows, and everybody knows that it knows, that in the Gulf, too, we are 'phasing out.'
There remains, then, in practice, only our presence as guests in Malaysia and Singapore, where, in the official phraseology, we 'retain facilities as long as they remain willing for us to do so.' How long that precarious—in the correct use of the word—tenure will continue, nobody knows and everybody is at liberty to guess. When it ends, the 'facilities' might be found in Australia instead; but for this Aus- tralia shows no enthusiasm.
And that, in physical terms, is all. Not much, one would have thought, to have a great debate about.
Even in terms of expenditure, the greater part of the budget for these remaining forces will be the cost of keeping up the forces themselves, and would be incurred anyhow unless we reduced the total size of the services by that number.
According to Mayhew, it was all about some- thing called a 'world role East of Suez in the 1970s.' The meaning attached to this inherently meaningless phrase can only be deduced from the course of the Government's internal debate, as Mayhew relates it. It meant, one discerns, the ability to intervene in force. But this in turn was an insufficient definition. The questions had to be asked and answered: 'In what force, and where?' Not until those questions had been answered, would the argument touch down on terra firma.
`If,' said Mayhew to his colleagues, 'you in- tend to operate outside the cover of shore-based aircraft, you will need a force of aircraft carriers.' But,' replied the opponents, 'we cannot afford a carrier force within our predetermined budget of £2,000 million (1964 prices) in I969-70."Very well, then,' said Mayhew, 'you must announce that you will not have a "world pile East of Suez" in the 1970s."Not at all,' rejoined the Cabinet, 'that would upset the Americans, who are lending us money and feel their own position in Vietnam acutely. More- over, it will be represented as ratting on our commitments. So we shall announce that we intend to operate within the effective range of • BRITAIN'S ROLE Tomonnow. (Hutchinson, 30s.) shore-based aircraft or by invitation of the local inhabitants or in a joint campaign with allies (i.e., the Americans). That will enable us to say we have a "world role" and we shall be able to cock a snook at those horrid Tories.' `Then you are all hypocrites, the lot of you,' said Mayhew; and he went out, slamming the door behind him.
He was right there, of course, though he ought not to have been so surprised. The 'world role East of Suez' was a piece of humbug; the reality had resolved itself into the ability to operate either as an American satellite or on a scale so limited that it could not in the worst case demand more than a very small exertion of force. Equally a sham was the vaunt of the Minister of Defence that 'we intend to remain, -and we shall remain, fully capable of carrying out all the commitments we have at the present time.' Commitments—certainly the commitments, for the most part highly imprecise and even implicit, which Britain has East of Suez—mean what you take them to mean, ranging from nothing to everything. For Britain 'the course of human affairs,' combined with the Government's decisions, had decided that the meaning would be near to the nothing end of the spectrum.
What irked Christopher Mayhew beyond en- durance, and it is to his personal credit that it did, was his colleagues' lack of candour in pre- tending otherwise. His reaction would probably have been more violent still if he had been able to foresee the extraordinary white-man's- burden rodomontade which the Prime Minister was shortly afterwards, in June 1966, to serve up to a private meeting of the Labour party and publish verbatim in the newspapers.
But there is more at stake than the insincerity of an administration or a junior minister's self- immolating zeal for candour. The will to main- tain a pretence and a pose can betray a nation into inverting its genuine defence priorities and neglecting those preparations and branches of the art of war on which its future independence and existence may depend. It would, for in- stance, be perfectly possible to prejudice the defence of Western Europe in the ostensible interest of 'peace-keeping East of Suez' without contributing one jot to the peace and stability of the Orient. It would be perfectly possible to neglect the maritime defence of the United Kingdom without in return gaining a day's pur- chase of the base at Singapore. These are the sort of crazy bad bargains which governments and nations are capable of making when they get around to pretending. Pretence is nearly always a cause, as well as a result, of weakness.
As I said to the Conservative conference in October 1966: This country, unique in its position, in its resources and in its institutions, can never be negligible anywhere if she will provide herself with those forces which befit a nation essen- tially maritime, and at the same time essentially a part of Europe.
The question, Is Britain's role tomorrow a world role or not?' is at bottom a silly question, like most questions which demand the answer 'Yes' or `No' to a vague or ambiguous proposition. Let Britain tomorrow, as in the past, be capable of 'saving herself by her exertions and Europe by her example,' and no one will question whether she has a role, and a great one, in the world.
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