Word: macleods
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Copper-rich Northern Rhodesia supplies most of the federation's revenues. Racially, it is the pivotal state, lying between Nyasaland, which is almost all black and slated for black rule, and Southern Rhodesia, whose 215,000 white settlers intend to cling to power indefinitely. Macleod last week sprang a proposed new constitution on Northern Rhodesia's 73,000 whites and 2,280,000 blacks. As ingenious as it was complex, it was designed to give Africans an equal voice with the whites in government...
...Northern Rhodesia's black leaders want total power, and its whites are not prepared to relinquish any. As the constitutional talks in London dragged on for weeks, the white settlers boycotted them, while the black leaders attended and fumed. When Macleod finally gave both sides a look at his proposed compromise, they erupted. In Salisbury, Federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky, a strapping ex-boxer who speaks for the white settlers, stormed: "The vicious influence of African nationalism has apparently turned the bone marrow of many metropolitan countries to jelly. I intend to stem that tide...
Tory Trouble. For a time, Macleod's proposal split the Tories almost as badly as it did the Rhodesians. A group of 97 backbenchers, including not only the usual hard core of empire tub thumpers but an important moderate bloc as well, introduced a motion in Commons urging Macleod to go slow. The right wing was furious at Macleod and hinted that he might be forced to resign. Snapped Columnist Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph: "He actually seems to be enjoying the job of presiding over the dissolution of the British Empire...
...Macleod, with Macmillan's Cabinet solidly behind him, turned all of his smooth skill to winning over the dissident Tories. After a series of closed-door meetings, most of the Tory rebels were ready to let their motion...
...Macleod's dogged mind, the greater danger is not bruised white feelings but open black rebellion. Warned Kenneth Kaunda recently: continued white domination of Northern Rhodesia would bring "an explosion of a far-reaching nature" that would "by contrast make Kenya's Mau Mau seem a child's picnic...