Word: rhodesia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...crowded, and delegates representing most of the world's nations stood in knots on the floor as British Foreign Secretary George Brown began to address the Council. His mission was the product of failure. He had come to ask the U.N. to impose mandatory economic sanctions on Rhodesia, and in the minds of many diplomats present was the ghost of the old League of Nations -which began to fall apart 30 years ago when it proved unable to enforce economic sanctions against Mussolini...
...failure of British policy toward Rhodesia was equally apparent in London, where the House of Commons held its stormiest session since the Suez crisis of ten years ago. For the first time since Labor took control of the government two years ago, the Conservatives were in open opposition on the Rhodesia question. Wilson, charged Tory Deputy Leader Reginald Maudling, was leading Britain "into one of the greatest disasters in its history...
...document called for constitutional amendments that would give Rhodesia's overwhelming black majority an immediate minority voice in the government, yet preserve white rule for a period that Wilson estimated would last about ten years. A Royal Commission composed of Rhodesians would draft the necessary amendments, which would be submitted to "Rhodesians as a whole" for approval. In the meantime, censorship would be lifted, political prisoners freed and "normal" political activity permitted. The Rhodesian Parliament, whose hard-line white-supremacist majority might try to block the new constitution, would be dissolved and all legislative powers handed over to British...
...have any real effect, U.N. sanctions would have to include a total blockade on oil imports by Rhodesia. But such a blockade would almost inevitably lead Britain into a direct economic confrontation with South Africa, which now supplies the fuel that Rhodesia cannot readily get anywhere else. That would cut off Britain's considerable trade with South Africa, most notably including gold, which is one of the main props for the British pound. Last week sterling dropped of a cent in a wave of panic selling. Whatever happens, Wilson told Parliament, the U.N. sanctions "must not be allowed...
Indeed, in taking the Rhodesia problem to the Security Council, Britain looked suspiciously as though it was simply passing the buck. The nation that only three decades ago ruled the world's mightiest empire had given a pitiful demonstration that, as one Nigerian put it, "it is unable to spank its own child...