minority population was granted special safe-
guards, with both Greece and Turkey promising
to respect Cypriot sovereignty. Britain secured
two sovereign bases. It was a solution imposed
from outside by the three powers, one that denied
the majority of the islanders the right of union
with Greece. Cyprus enjoyed an uneasy peace
under Makarios, interspersed with serious conflict
between the Greek and Turkish communities,
until the final breakdown, the Turkish invasion
and the effective division of the island into separ-
ate Turkish and Greek halves in 1974. The
problem remains no less insoluble today, but it
has ceased to be Britain’s responsibility, having
been handed over to the UN, like so many other
lost international causes.
In Malaya, Britain was more successful. A
determined military campaign was waged against a
communist revolt started in 1948 with the objec-
tive of seizing power from the British. There were
some 4,000 of these communist guerrillas, fight-
ing fanatically from bases deep in the jungles. But
the insurgency was defeated by 1954 and Britain
granted independence to the Federation of
Malaya three years later. Singapore was made self-
governing under the terms of this settlement, but
became completely independent two years later.
In the same year in which Malaya was granted
independence, Britain began its retreat from colo-
nial dominance in West Africa: the Gold Coast
attained independence as Ghana in 1957, Nigeria
in 1960, Sierra Leone in 1961 and Gambia in
- The Commonwealth had become multi-
racial, a force (it was hoped) for racial harmony in
the world. Britain appeared to be shedding its
responsibilities and burdens with grace and little
hardship. Macmillan, in a speech before the
United Nations, reflected the false optimism of
the time when he declared in 1960, ‘Who dares to
say that this is anything but a story of steady and
liberal progress?’ Yet the 1960s were soon to wit-
ness the breakdown of British-style parliamentary
rule in the West African states, and Nigeria was
plunged into civil war.
Britain’s withdrawal from its East and Central
African colonies proved far more difficult than
withdrawal from the West. Here, the white settlers,
who claimed the land as their own and who pos-
sessed disproportionate wealth and held dominant
power over the black majority, foresaw that major-
ity rule and independence would mean the end of
their pre-eminence. Nevertheless the Conservative
government succeeded in 1961 in reaching a satis-
factory settlement in Tanganyika, which with
Zanzibar soon after became the state of Tanzania.
In contrast, the relinquishment of control in and
the granting of independence to Uganda in 1962
started the country on a path of tribal rivalry and
bloodshed. In Kenya, the 30,000 white settlers
and Europeans wielded more influence than those
in Tanganyika, so the path to independence here
was more violent. As in Malaya, Britain faced a
major uprising in the 1950s organised by the Mau
Mau, a militant secret society comprised mainly of
Kikuyu. Britain reacted to this revolt by banning
black political activity and using military force.
Military action, as in Malaya, was successful, but,
unlike in Malaya, the black independence leaders
were not on the British side – they were all in
prison. Macmillan, proclaiming the ‘wind of
change’ in a celebrated speech in South Africa in
1960, pressed on with the decolonisation policies,
which placed Kenya under black majority rule and
gave it independence in 1963. But, from the
British point of view, the policy of ‘steady and lib-
eral progress’, pursued with a mixture of military
force, flexibility and diplomacy and intended to
transfer power gradually to black political lead-
ers, came seriously unstuck in Central Africa.
Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, which became
the independent states of Malawi and Zambia in
1964, had been federated with Southern Rhodesia.
Here a white minority of settlers held all political
power, but their demands for independence could
not be accepted in the progressive climate of the
1960s. The position had changed radically in the
half-century since the white South Africans had
obtained all political power and had been
entrusted with the future of the country. Now the
Commonwealth was multiracial, with Asian and
black member states. South Africa was forced to
leave it in 1961.
Talks intended to lead to a settlement in
Southern Rhodesia broke down in 1965 and the
white Rhodesians declared their unilateral inde-
pendence in November. The new prime minister
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