Some unexpected things emerge from reading a collection of diplomatic speeches from 1960. It seems not that much time has passed in historical terms, but imagine a representative of Ecuador trying to say now that Spain had the most humane treatment of the indigenous population of the Americas. Back then, this was said with the most cynical frankness, and it raised no problems, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
On December 14, 1960, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 1514 (XV), which approved the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This event marks its 65th anniversary. The adoption of this resolution was an important political and moral step in supporting the struggle of the peoples of developing countries against colonial rule by Western powers. This resolution retains its significance in the fight against neo-colonialism today.
The process of discussing and adopting this resolution in the UN General Assembly was long and difficult. Debates on the resolution began at the General Assembly Plenary Meeting on November 28, 1960, and lasted over two weeks. Nineteen plenary sessions of the Assembly (sessions 925-939 and 944-947) were devoted to the issue. Such a lengthy and intense debate on a single resolution is a rare and unusual example in the practice of the General Assembly. Usually, at a plenary session, everything is decided in a day or two.
First, a year earlier, in 1959, in the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly, newly independent Guinea proposed that the UN General Assembly establish a clear timeframe for granting independence to colonial and trustee countries. However, the Guinean draft resolution was not supported.
At the 1960 session, the Soviet Union submitted the initial draft declaration (document A/4502, September 23, 1960). It was drafted as a letter directly from Nikita Khrushchev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which was also far from standard practice. It was a lengthy 14-page text, composed, it must be admitted, not in the typical format of a General Assembly resolution. A standard resolution preamble typically consists of clear paragraphs such as “taking into account” such and such, “recalling” such and such, and “based on” this or that. Instead, the Soviet-proposed resolution consisted of a lengthy 13-page textual description, written more like a report, and only then did it move on to the operative part.
It stated that all colonial, trust, and non-self-governing territories must be granted full independence, and that the colonial system and colonial administration in all its forms must be completely abolished. That all strongholds of colonialism, in the form of possessions and leased areas, must be eliminated.
The governments of all countries were urged to observe strictly and steadfastly the provisions of the UN Charter and of this declaration, allowing no manifestations of colonialism or any special rights to the detriment of other states. It was also stated that the “complete and final elimination of the colonial regime must occur not some time in the distant future, but immediately and unconditionally.”
Nikita Khrushchev personally presented this draft declaration in his speech to the UN General Assembly on the same day, September 23, 1960. A certain shift in emphasis in the argumentation between the declaration’s lengthy written preamble (13 pages) and Khrushchev’s speech is interesting. While the preamble was almost entirely written in a sharply condemnatory tone toward the colonialists, the Soviet leader’s speech also stressed scientific and technological progress, emphasising the power of science and technology, which would undoubtedly lead to global social progress. Colonisation, he argued, is incompatible with this and should therefore be consigned to history. This optimism about the future in Khrushchev’s speech on September 23 is quite revealing: “It has fallen to our lot to live in the stormiest and yet the most splendid period in the history of mankind; future generations will envy us.” Interestingly, six months before the first human spaceflight, Khrushchev spoke about this quite openly: “With his brain and hands, man has created spaceships which circle the Earth. He is already able to send men far beyond the limits of our planet.”
Then, primarily under British influence, an attempt was made to remove the decolonisation issue from the General Assembly plenary agenda and transfer it to committees. The General Assembly’s General Committee (which forms the agenda proposals) supported this British position and recommended sending the issue to the First Committee.
As a result, a rather stormy General Assembly meeting was held on October 12, 1960, where the issue was discussed. Nikita Khrushchev again spoke in person at the meeting. He insisted that the declaration should be considered at the plenary session, without delegating it to committees.
Among other things, Nikita Khrushchev said: “If the UN does not adopt the proposals aimed at the elimination of the colonial system, the peoples of the colonial countries will have no option but to take up arms.”
As an example, Khrushchev recalled Russian history: “There was a similar period in Russia when the institution of serfdom was on the verge of collapse and the peasants began to rise against the hateful opposition of the serf-owning landlords; the more far-sighted among the latter then said that the serfs should be set free from above because otherwise they would achieve freedom on their own and seize it from below. This is to some extent true of the colonialist Powers today.”
During the discussion of this issue at the UN General Assembly on October 12, the representatives of Great Britain and New Zealand opposed bringing it up in plenary session and insisted on referring it to committees. Then a quarrel erupted, which ultimately led to Khrushchev famously banging his shoe at the UN. The representative of the Philippines, Lorenzo Sumulong, instead of talking about the decolonisation of Africa, began talking about the lack of independence of Eastern European countries. He was interrupted several times by the Romanian representative, who accused the Filipino of insulting his country. Then Khrushchev himself, in a response, called the Filipino “this toady of American imperialism.”
As for the shoe, the New York Times reported the following morning, October 13, that Khrushchev banged his shoe during the Filipino’s speech and threatened him with it. Then, later that day, according to the New York Times, Khrushchev shook his shoe a second time during a speech by US Representative Francis Wilcox. On the other hand, Andrei Gromyko, who was next to Khrushchev in the UN hall at the time, writes that Khrushchev banged his shoe during British Prime Minister Macmillan’s speech. However, Macmillan spoke at the UN not on October 12, but on September 29 (and Khrushchev had been in the United States since September 19). The New York Times, in the same article, writes that Khrushchev only shouted from his seat during Macmillan’s speech on September 29, but did not remove his shoe. Khrushchev’s shouts from his seat during Macmillan’s speech are also reflected in the transcript of the 877th plenary session of the UN General Assembly on September 29.
Perhaps Gromyko, while preparing his memoirs, might have considered it expedient that if the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers banged his shoe on the table, and this became public knowledge, it would be better to show him doing so in response to a speech by his immediate counterpart, the British Prime Minister (a fellow heavyweight), rather than to the obscure Philippine UN representative, who didn’t deserve such personal attention from the leader of the Soviet Union. But these are merely possible conjectures. We leave it to the reader to judge who was ultimately right about the shoe story – the New York Times, fresh from the October 12 meeting, or Gromyko, many years later, in his memoirs.
Khrushchev’s phrase about a “toady of American imperialism” also sparked a linguistic debate over how to correctly translate the Russian word “kholuy” (slave) into English. To some extent, it added to Khrushchev’s collection of linguistic gems. First of all, the Filipino Sumulong himself was not satisfied. The next morning, October 13, he again took to the UN General Assembly podium and, again in Khrushchev’s presence, asked himself what the word “kholuy” meant.
“The interpreters had difficulty determining what he meant: ‘toady’, ‘jerk’, ‘lackey’, or something similar. ... I even find it hard to read the spelling of the Russian word for it.” The aforementioned New York Times article states that the word “jerk” was used in the UN simultaneous translation, but a later review of Russian dictionaries revealed that the word means “a servile, fawning creature, happy in subservience”. Although the New York Times claims that the word “jerk” was used in the October 12 simultaneous translation, the later written transcript of the meeting used the word “toady”.
Khrushchev, however, was more relaxed at the October 13 meeting; he avoided another altercation with the Filipino and merely remarked: “The gentleman representing the Philippines is not, at bottom, a hopeless individual. There is a germ of sense in him which may take firm root. … We have a proverb that says ‘every vegetable has its season’. Similarly, this gentleman is obviously in the process of maturation; I think he will mature and come to understand things properly.”
Ultimately, despite this squabble, the Soviet proposal was procedurally accepted. The issue of decolonisation was submitted directly to the plenary session of the UN General Assembly.
Debate on this issue began on November 28, 1960, with the USSR representative, Valerian Zorin, presenting the Soviet draft declaration. Among other things, Zorin directly linked the process of decolonisation with the October Revolution in Russia: “Our descendants, when studying the development of human society, will have every justification for calling the middle of the 20th century, after the great October Socialist Revolution, a significant epoch of construction of a new world, a world of freedom and independence of peoples.” Zorin also linked decolonisation with the name of Lenin: “Close at hand now is the complete collapse of the whole colonial system of imperialism, foreseen by the best minds of mankind and predicted by the great Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.”
The first to speak in response was the representative of Great Britain, David Ormsby-Gore, who spoke sharply against the Soviet project. At the same time, he said that Great Britain was pursuing a policy of caring for its colonies, gradually preparing them for independence. Ormsby-Gore even said: “It (colonialism) is dying in the sense that the Phoenix died, dying at the moment of its greatest glory, when it gives birth to new nations.”
In addition, David Ormsby-Gore quite directly raised the issue that independence is not necessary for small countries: “The people of these small territories have to think carefully about their future. There are many factors, different in each case, which may cause their people to hesitate about separate independence. They may be isolated geographically, with an economy barely sufficient to meet the expanding need of their people. These people may have no wish to sacrifice the economic and social progress to which they are entitled in order to assume responsibility for maintaining the expensive apparatus of a modern independent state.”
He then went on to provide specific examples: “It would surely be a betrayal of the whole spirit of Chapter XI of the (UN) Charter for us to say that the people of, for example, the Seychelles Islands or the Gilbert Islands, should decide immediately what form they wish their ultimate independence to take, or, to take other examples, the people of Basutoland or Hong Kong.”
The Soviet representative took the floor again and emphasised that “The UK representative should have nothing to say about the ‘beneficent’ effect the UK is having on the colonial territories. There is, of course, nothing favourable that he can say in that connection.”
Portugal’s Garin went on to say: “We take pride in the unceasing toil and work that for nearly five centuries of common history we have achieved overseas. … The progress and development we have brought and are still bringing into our Overseas Provinces was not and is not done by methods repugnant to the conscience of mankind nor by violations of human rights.” And there was plenty of this kind of direct apology for colonialism in the speeches of Western representatives. In 1960, many of them still felt no need to be embarrassed about anything.
Thus, the representative of New Zealand, Shanahan, said quite clearly: “My delegation does not equate those evils (evils of racial discrimination and all forms of domination and oppression) with the term ‘colonialism’. … When the existence of colonialism is openly recognised, as merely a passing phase in the development of a particular territory, it should not be used as a term of disparagement. … The States which have borne the heaviest responsibilities for the administration of Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories, were among the founding Members of this Organisation. … Their record of performance is symbolised by the presence among us of the representatives of many new States, which have been brought to independence by the UK, France and other countries. … The immediate grant of self-government or independence would in most cases have been detrimental to the real interests of the territory concerned.”
This speech by the New Zealand delegate revealingly combined two elements: a moral justification of colonialism and gratitude to Great Britain for finally (entirely on its own and of its own free will) granting independence to its colonies after “the heaviest burden.” This refrain of “Thank you, Great Britain” was heard in a number of other similar speeches.
The refrain that “colonialism wasn’t all bad” also persisted. Thus, the Australian representative, Plimsoll, said: “Colonialism is, like all institutions, a human institution. It varies in different parts of the world; it varies with human beings; it can be bad; it may sometimes be bad. But, at its best, I submit, it has been and is continuing to be a necessary transitional phase. … We have heard in this debate fanciful phrases about the lash of the overseer, about the crimes of the colonialists, … but they are certainly not true of any territory that has been administered by Australia.” In relation to the Australian Aborigines, the last phrase is especially revealing.
Japan’s representative Miyazaki also expressed concern about the unpreparedness of the small island territories of the Pacific Ocean for independence: “The Pacific islands may be too small as a unit of an independent State. … Chaos and void, through which anything might creep in, should never be allowed in that part of the world which has, so far, been spared from turmoil and remains true to its name.”
Note that this was said in 1960. Only 15 years had passed since the end of World War II and the dissolution of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But the Japanese delegate claims that there was no previous disorder in the Pacific islands. Wasn’t Japan responsible for this before 1945?
Representatives of pro-Western regimes in other countries echoed their sentiments. For example, Colombian representative Alvarez Restrepo stated: “Not every aspect of colonialism is as pernicious and harmful as some representatives here try to make it appear. In the gradual formation of new nationalities one of the valuable cultural contributions to their future life is that which has been transmitted during the years of domination by the governing country.” Guatemalan representative Herrarte said directly, “Thank you Spain”: “Now over a hundred years have elapsed since we became independent of the mother country, we have come to understand that not everything was bad in the colony; that we did receive inestimable spiritual benefits from Spain which give us strength to face the vicissitudes of life.”
The same was stated by the representative of Ecuador, Benites Vinueza: “I have hesitated to refer to the three-century domination of Spain in America, and thus also in my own country, as colonialism. ... It (Spain) sought the souls of the indigenous inhabitants as the supreme object of its colonising tasks in order to save them and, according to its Christian conception, to incorporate them into the Kingdom of God. It was a feeling of tenderness towards this newly-discovered human being, whom through a naïve mistake was called the Indian. … It was this urge that led Spain’s jurists to establish the most humane code of laws that any colonising people has ever formulated – the ‘Leyes de Indias’. Spain raised no barriers between races, but joined with them, creating our mixed society. … If there was harsh domination, it was the fault of irresponsible people and occurred against the will of the mother country … Colonialism as we see it in the modern world is based on principles contrary to those adopted by Spain.”
You must admit, dear reader, that unexpected things emerge from reading a collection of diplomatic speeches from 1960. It seems not that much time has passed in historical terms, but imagine a representative of Ecuador trying to say now that Spain had the most humane treatment of the indigenous population of the Americas. Back then, this was said with the most cynical frankness, and it raised no problems.
The debate continued in this vein for two weeks.
The attitude of the countries of Asia and Africa was quite revealingly expressed in the speech of the Saudi representative Shukairy: “The fact is frequently referred to, with pride, that certain States have a high standard of living while others have a low one. For instance, the UK, France, and Belgium are shown to have a high standard of living, while countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America are shown to have a low standard of living. This is no credit to the rich, and no shame to the poor. It is not any particular genius that made the Western countries richer; neither is it because of a natural disability that the other countries are poorer. Colonialism is the explanation of the whole phenomenon of disparity. The peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, because of ages of colonialism, have been robbed of their gold, their diamonds, their cotton, their silk, their ivory, their spices, their drugs, their rubber, their oil, their animal wealth, and many times even robbed of their fabulous museums, including the dead kings and queens.”
Shukeiri also mentions the fact that as a tragicomic farce, the aforementioned British representative Orsby-Gore theatrically knelt before the delegations of Ghana and Nigeria, not to apologise for colonialism, but to ask them to withdraw their harsh amendments on the Congo issue, then being discussed at the UN General Assembly.
Amid these discussions about the “phoenix of colonialism dying at the moment of its greatest glory” and the overt desire of Western countries to block the Soviet draft declaration, a number of African and Asian countries decided to put forward their own draft declaration. Its initial draft was put forward by Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Cambodia, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Ceylon, and Sudan. Then, gradually, over the course of the days of debate, they were joined by Cyprus, Mali, the United Arab Republic, Laos, Senegal, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Leopoldville), Dahomey, Ivory Coast, Niger, Upper Volta , Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Federation of Malaya, the Malagasy Republic, Gabon, the Philippines and Somalia. Thus, the overwhelming majority of countries from these two continents co-sponsored this resolution.
The Cambodian delegate, Nong Kimny, who presented this draft, explicitly stated that they had tried to find language that would be acceptable to the majority of UN members in order to ultimately achieve the resolution’s adoption. Therefore, this draft declaration was more moderate than the original Soviet one (and with a preamble more standard for the UN). It is also important to emphasise that in his speech, the Cambodian representative made a direct reference to the 1955 Bandung Conference of Asian and African States as a key starting point in developing the principles of decolonisation.
Aw, a representative of Mali, noted that the adoption of the resolution should put an end to attempts to justify colonialism, “Not every aspect of colonialism is as pernicious and harmful as some representatives here try to make it appear. In the gradual formation of new nationalities one of the valuable cultural contributions to their future life is that which has been transmitted during the years of domination by the governing country. Certain ill-intentioned hypocrites would like to make us sorry for it by reiterating – without conviction, I must say, – that colonialism has not had an entirely bad effect on the peoples under its domination, since there were schools and hospitals built, roads laid out, etc. … Let the representatives of colonialist countries not appear here as wolves in sheep’s clothing, protesting their innocence of all the sins of which they are accused and trying to divert our just complains to the shifting sands of the cold war. Let them not tell us that by shooting peaceful and defensive crowds they are contributing to their well-being, that by torturing patriots they are educating the people, or that by compelling women, children and old men to do forced labour they are raising the level of living. Let those who are trying to save their conscience and concealing their crimes not tell us: ‘Before we came to those territories, there was nothing there!’”
During the debate, attempts were made to block this new Afro-Asian draft resolution. Here, Western countries, deftly acting indirectly, instead channelled pro-Western regimes in other regions of the world. In particular, Honduran representative Milla Bermúdez, after lambasting the Soviet Union, also criticised the Afro-Asian draft, claiming it was also disruptive to peace. Honduras ultimately introduced a third draft resolution, which merely proposed the creation of a commission to calmly examine the matter. To which the Honduran received a direct response from Guinean representative Ismael Toure: “The draft resolution submitted by Honduras provides no valid answer to the fundamental question of the immediate liberation of the colonial peoples.”
As a result, the UN General Assembly adopted the Afro-Asian countries’ draft. Of the 99 UN members at the time, 89 voted in favour, and 9 abstained (Australia, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, France, Portugal, Spain, the Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Dahomey did not vote (although it later announced its accession). No one voted against the resolution.
The draft Soviet resolution was rejected. Moreover, the vote took place in sections. The operative part of the Soviet draft (three points at the end of the text) was rejected by 35 votes to 32, with 30 abstentions. The following countries voted in favour of the operative part of the Soviet resolution: Morocco, Nepal, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Togo, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, United Arab Republic, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Byelorussian SSR, Ceylon, Chad, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, and Mali.
Voted against: Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, Panama, Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China (i.e. Taiwan), Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, France, Greece, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg.
Abstaining: Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Senegal, Somalia, Tunisia, Upper Volta, Venezuela, Austria, Bolivia, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Leopoldville), Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, the Federation of Malaya, Finland, Gabon, Guatemala, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Laos and the Malagasy Republic. Dahomey and the Union of South Africa did not vote.
This balance of power is quite interesting in the context of actual support for the Soviet Union in 1960.
The preamble to the Soviet declaration, voted on separately (that same massive 13-page text, not drawn up according to UN format), was rejected by 43 votes to 25, with 29 abstentions.
An amendment introduced by the USSR to the text of the Afro-Asian draft resolution, which called for all colonial countries to be granted independence in 1961, was also rejected (47 votes to 29, with 22 abstentions). Another Soviet amendment to the Afro-Asian draft resolution, which provided for a discussion of the resolution’s implementation at the UN General Assembly session the following year, although it received a majority (41 votes to 35, with 22 abstentions), was not adopted, as procedural rules required a two-thirds majority.
On the other hand, the Honduras draft resolution was withdrawn from the vote altogether. Guatemala’s amendment to the Afro-Asian resolution on the restoration of the territorial integrity of former colonies (implicitly referring to Guatemala’s claims to what was then British Honduras, now Belize) was also withdrawn from the vote.
What’s crucial is that even back then, in 1960, representatives of African countries sensed the danger of neo-colonialism. The aforementioned delegate from Guinea, Ismael Touré, stated directly: “The problem of independence, while still the most urgent, is already giving way to another and much more difficult problem: that of the struggle against neo-colonialism. … The danger of controlled independence is already a reality.” This explains not only the historical but also the political significance of the 1960 Declaration for the peoples of the Global South today. Sixty-five years have passed since its adoption, but the struggle against neo-colonialism is far from over.
I repeat once again how unexpected the cynical frankness of colonialism’s apologists’ texts from 1960 seem today. This is precisely what accounts for the abundance of lengthy quotations in this text. Until you see it with your own eyes, you won’t even believe that such a thing is possible.
