488. Message From Prime Minister Wilson to President Johnson1
CAP 65642. I am now back in London after a week in Rhodesia and shall be making a statement in Parliament this afternoon. I have asked our Ambassador to let you have the full text of the statement which sets out pretty fully the position we have now reached.
It was an exhausting and in many ways a depressing week, depressing because so many people have their minds in blinkers and they are wrapped up in cocoons of self-delusion which it is terribly difficult to penetrate. To be in Salisbury was to have the sensation of being present at the fifth act of a Greek tragedy. I tried every method to persuade the African Nationalists both to work together and to work the existing constitution: but to no effect. Moderate European opinion, represented by business and finance, is paralyzed by a sense of helplessness before impending doom and, what is worse, subject to the personal intimidation which saps their will. Smith has quite a nice little police state in embryo there. The government have control of television and radio, although the press is still free. Most of Smith’s cabinet are impervious to argument and divided only on whether they should commit suicide now or later.
One thing is certain and that is if I had not offered on Thursday, October 21 to go to Rhodesia, U.D.I. would have been with us on Friday, October 22. But I fear that the most I may have achieved is the respite of a little more time before Smith and his cabinet go over the brink. But time is the most precious commodity of all in this problem.
[Page 834]My chief purpose was therefore not to negotiate, although I had many hours of tough discussions with Smith and his colleagues, but to see whether, as a last hope, there was any chance of changing the political climate and finding some last minute formula which would give Smith pause and give the moderates of all races something to support. Hence my talks with every conceivable representative body to whom I gave the carrot and stick treatment: I had to get home to them both the tragic consequences of U.D.I. and the fact that no one was faced with a simple choice of U.D.I. or majority rule tomorrow. There were many alternatives. Hence the proposal for a royal commission, which gives them a way out if they have the will to take it.
Quite frankly, there are so many Gadarene minds in Rhodesia, and that goes for most of Smith’s cabinet, if not totally for Smith himself, that I doubt whether good sense has much chance of prevailing. So while I am hoping for the best it is only sensible to prepare for the worst. The worst may come quite quickly but we are quite ready for it.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, United Kingdom, Memos and Miscellaneous, Vol. VII. Secret.↩