Why Thatcher backs
South Africa AS WE went to press last month Commonwealth leaders were confidently predicted press-ganging Thatcher sanctions - or forging ahead regardless.
The result of course was very different: far from being dragged along by the team of horses, Thatcher dug in her heels and pulled them back in her direction - exploiting the fact that without British support any package of Commonwealth sanctions against South Africa would be an obvious farce.
A swaggering Thatcher boasted that "They've Joined me now, "and that she had moved "Just a tiny tiny bit. "The tions" decided upon were Irrelevant and insignificant: and she went further, announcing that whatever happens over the next six months before the policy ls reviewed, she will still oppose any sanctions then.
Why has she taken such a tenacious stand in opposition to economic sanctions? The answer is not complicated — £5,000,000. That is the size of British capitalism's annual trade surplus with South Africa. at a time when British economy is in a major delicit on non-oll trade.
On top of this British capitalism last year sold "invisible" financial sevices to South Africa totalling billion,
And of course there is the direct British investment, amounting to 40% of the E12 billion total of foreign Investments in South Africa, plus another 16 billion of indirect Investments (coins and shareholdings).
It is this big money — producing higher rates of return than comparable investment in Britain which has shaped the foreign policy of the Thatcher government on South Africa, and would play a big role
Exports
France 6.4° Germany USA 9.7% 22.6° Britain 14% Japan Italy 1814.4 apartheid to be
- into deciding in government if it came to the crunch.
apartheid is to blame for the violent strug
"sancgles in phasise the nit-picking "reforms" carried out by the Botha regime!
Small
Howe have laken up the demand that while
Botha guns down defenceless children.
students and workers wielding whips, batons and teargas, the liberation movement and the ANC in pargovernment ticular should "renounce violence".
from Nassau is quite long — several simply the reiterate existing poicies.
South Africa - but of course most loans and Insurance are private bank loans anyway, in which
£1.3
British banks will remain central.
stop the import of Krugerrands.
sions to South Africa - while the missions will go ahead (including one from Leeds).
ment sultable for military or police use in
South Africa — yet much of this has alrady been supplied by British firms.
and technology.
South African trade
(Trade with industrial (OECD)
\ Italy countries 1983)
France 4.7
Britain
16.8%
Japan
173
Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 pll the attitude of a Kinnock
Small wonder Thatcher now denies that
South Africa and seeks to emwonder she and Sir Geoffrey on the streets.
The list of meaningless commitments
UN embargoes and
• A ban on new government loans to
• Take "what action may be possible" to
• No government funding tor trade mis-
• A ban on the sale of computer equip-
• A ban on the export of nuclear goods
Thatcher's
Imports nose to
USA emergency
21.3black struggles.
Germany
19.4
The
• A ban on the sale and export of oil.
• An embargo on imports of arms and military equipment from South Africa.
• An embargo on all miltary cooperation with South Africa.
"tiny, tiny" concessions on sanctions were welcomed by Neil Kinnock but condemned as Inadequate by the Liberals and by the SDP
Within days of the announcements, the South African regime had thumbed its
Commonwealth leaders and signalled its appreciation of Thatcher's stand by extending the dictatorial state of restrictions to cover one thind of South Africa's population, and impos ing rigid press censorship on reportage of
To Imagine that Thatcher's unyielding stance in defence of the profits of British bankers and multinationals will be altered by petitions, protests and pressure politics would clearly be naive in the extreme. As a consciously imperialist government the Tories are delending their system in the old fashioned way.
British workers' movement. however, has the power and the possibility to take action that could cut the flow of trade and lend direct solidarity to the struggles of their black brothers and sisters in South Africa.