Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945-1961 : From Colonial Development to Wind of Change

In the years after 1959 Britain's disengagement from her colonial Empire was comprehensive and rapid. A newly re-elected Conserva tive government, well aware that many special interests would suffer in the process, set out nevertheless to press the policy of decoloniza tion speedily to its end. No previous government had shown any such clear resolve. Before 1959 British ministers were still promising most colonies their independence eventually rather than soon. For some of the more difficult' territories, in particular those in Africa where different races competed for the succession to power, the very criteria of readiness for independence were still being phrased in question begging terms.

Yet the new tempo of policy set during lain Macleod's period as Colonial Secretary, 1959-61, was a natural enough response to the experiences of the preceding years. The decade and a half since the war had encompassed both the rise of articulate and aggressive colonial nationalism and a steep decline in Britain's imperial ambi tions. What Macmillan and Macleod concluded, in essence, was that the rising curve and the declining one had intersected. A point had been reached beyond which the prolongation of the old tempo and style of colonial policy would simply incur greater political, social, and economic costs than Britain could hope to meet. The alternative, to transfer power 'prematurely', seemed the only feasible course.