what I said to them. I think, first of all—and I do not think that the First Secretary ought to delay too long in saying this, too—that we ought to say to them that there is no chance of their attaining their independence on the basis of their present constitution. In fairness to them this should be said.
They, of course, can say that this is a matter for them to decide, but I believe that they still want to stay inside the Commonwealth. All I would say is that it is unlikely that this Government, and certainly not its successor which will be in office very shortly, would agree to independence on the basis of their present constitution, because it would mean that other countries in the Commonwealth, including countries from Africa, would leave it. When the choice had to be made between South Africa and the rest of the African countries in the Commonwealth, it was the other countries which we chose and not South Africa; and it is the others which we should choose and not Southern Rhodesia.
But they want to stay inside the Commonwealth. I will not throw out suggestions about what the constitution ought to be. I will make only two or three very simple suggestions. First, I should like to see the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia emulate the example of their fellows in East Africa. Who would have thought ten years ago that independence would have come there in the manner in which we have seen it come? I pay my warmest tribute to the 1467 Europeans in Kenya who made it possible. I ask the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia to look at their example.
Secondly, I ask them to get round a table with the leaders of the African parties and not to be put off by the fact that there is trouble about the leadership. Every party has that. If I may say so without offence, hon. Members opposite have their share of this trouble.
Mr. John Hynd (Sheffield, Attercliffe) They have a Broederband as well.
Mr. Griffiths I speak for myself and not from the Opposition Dispatch Box when I suggest that they should make a joint declaration that their intention is to work for full democratic independence within the Commonwealth. I suggest that they should sit down and agree a target date by which that should be achieved, and that in the meantime they should be building towards it. I make that suggestion and I leave it there—with the one further thought that, speaking from the Box, I made a similar suggestion in a debate which we had in the House on Cyprus. I said to the then Colonial Secretary and others,"Why not say to Cyprus that in four years' time you shall have what you want. In the meantime let us get together and work it out". I said that if we could reach agreement on that, the transitional period could be peaceful and to the advantage of all. My suggestion was not considered. Cyprus got what it wanted in less than my five years—but at what a price!
I put it now to our friends in Southern Rhodesia,"Recognise all this. Recognise the inevitable, even if you do not like it. If you want to stay in the Commonwealth, we want you to stay in it, too. But if you want to stay in the Commonwealth you can do so only on terms which the Commonwealth can accept. You know what they are. I hope that you will not wait for the inevitable. I hope that you yourselves will take the initiative now".
- 5.48 p.m.
Mr. John Farr (Harborough) I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State on the expert way in which he handled the Central Africa Conference. It was a magnificent display of expertise on his part even to have got the members of the four Governments around the same table in the shadow of Dr. Livingstone's statue at Victoria Falls and to have held peaceful and constructive discussions with them.
Having dutifully tendered my congratulations to my right hon. Friend, I must confess that my congratulations are tempered with a feeling of sorrow that this great experiment in racial partnership, which was launched some ten years ago, a fine imaginative project, is being brought to an end if we give the Bill a Second Reading today. It nearly succeeded in its ten years. Indeed, there was every economic, geographic and natural reason why it should and could succeed, and in my view it failed simply because of man's inability to live at peace with his neighbour if his skin is a
