Re: atlee what a c***
- From: john.jsm@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 12:31:43 -0700
On 19 Aug, 11:35, jobl...@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 19 Aug, 11:12, john....@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2283238.ece
"By the end of 1946, many troops had left and Britain's ability to
keep the peace in India was reduced: each British soldier was in
theory responsible for keeping 40,000 restive Indians under control.
As a privately educated turn-of-the-century socialist with
sentimental, doctrinaire ideas about the British working class (his
maudlin poetry has to be read to be believed), Attlee's main interest
was in building the new Jerusalem and strengthening the power of the
state in their support. India was an irritant.
Busy creating the National Health Service and the welfare state with
borrowed American money, Attlee took two months to respond to an
important letter from the viceroy. As Wavell wrote to Pethick-
Lawrence: "We are very near what will amount almost to open civil war
between the communities . . . the absence of a definite policy on the
part of His Majesty's government is a very serious matter indeed at a
critical time like this." After meeting Attlee and the cabinet, Wavell
told his private secretary that he was "really horrified by their lack
of realism and honesty".
In early 1947 the prime minister solved the problem by installing
Mountbatten as viceroy. His instructions were to get a deal and get
out. Although in old age Mountbatten liked to pretend he had been
given plenipotentiary powers, it is apparent from cabinet minutes that
the crucial decisions were all taken by Attlee. He reversed earlier
promises and blocked India's princely states from deciding their own
future; he weakened Pakistan by denying it many assets under the
partition agreement; he decreed that all British soldiers should be
withdrawn from the date of independence and could not be used to
prevent disorder. Crucially - despite requests by Wavell from 1946
onwards - he still refused to confirm the borders of the new Pakistan.
Instead, Attlee gave Cyril Radcliffe, a British barrister, six weeks
to invent a new dividing line. This uncertainty over boundaries was
the proximate cause of the mass migration and ethnic cleansing. It
meant Indian electors had no idea what they were voting for when they
chose to accept or reject partition and Pakistan. Some presumed Delhi,
given its Mughal heritage, would be in Pakistan; others thought
Lahore, with its Hindu businesses, would be in the new India.
When the border was announced two days after partition, the refugee
crisis multiplied as people fled in their millions. Muslims were burnt
out of east Punjab and west Bengal, and Hindus and Sikhs were driven
from east and west Pakistan. Villages were looted and destroyed. Women
were kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted. No preparations were
made for the vast movement of peoples. They died of thirst and disease
and babies were left by the roadside. According to independent
witnesses, about 1m people lost their lives.
On the day when Radcliffe's boundary was announced, Attlee held an
emergency cabinet meeting over a currency crisis: the meat ration was
cut, foreign holidays were banned and the convertibility of sterling
was suspended. India was the last thing on his mind.
Ultimately, it was murderous neighbours, religious gangs and criminal
militias who were responsible for the slaughter of partition. Nobody
was held to account and it was in the interests of all the politicians
to play down the scale of the bloodshed and praise their own role in
making India free. The Indian leadership, and Jawaharlal Nehru in
particular, did not want British troops to remain in a peace-keeping
role after independence.
Today the carnage is often presented as the product of atavistic
rivalries and larger historical forces, rather than the consequence of
gross political incompetence. The BBC2 epic The Day India Burned:
Partition - which was shown last Tuesday - has the best broadcast
interviews I have ever seen with survivors and perpetrators of the
1947 massacres, but ignored Attlee altogether.
I was the historical consultant on the programme and fought and lost a
battle with the producer to pin more blame on the single figure who, I
now believe, bears the greatest responsibility for the debacle.
Focusing on the photogenic Mountbatten and "the British government" is
like blaming the American regime for the invasion of Iraq without
bothering to name-check President George W Bush. "
Translates: Millions of brown people on the Indian sub-continent kill
each other: one white man is to blame.
Didn't we have some responsibility for these people? In those
circumstances the decisions of single Englishmen could have the most
immense consequences. I always used to blame Mountbatten. Atlee was
another of those Christian types, if less hypocritical than Blair,
with a supposedly altruistic philosophy. It is often such types who
have most blood on their hands.
.
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