Here is an audio excerpt of
Macmillan's speech. Scroll down for the transcript.
It follows an excerpt of the transcript of
Harold Macmillan's Wind of Change speech, delivered
before the Parliament of South Africa, Cape Town, South
Africa - February 3, 1960.
It is, as I have
said, a special privilege for me to be here in
1960 when you are celebrating what I might call
the golden wedding of the Union.
At such a time it
is natural and right that you should pause to
take stock of your position, to look back at
what you have achieved, to look forward to what
lies ahead. In the fifty years of their
nationhood the people of South Africa have built
a strong economy founded upon a healthy
agriculture and thriving and resilient
industries.
No one could fail to be impressed with the
immense material progress which has been
achieved. That all this has been accomplished in
so short a time is a striking testimony to the
skill, energy and initiative of your people. We
in Britain are proud of the contribution we have
made to this remarkable achievement. Much of it
has been financed by British capital.
As I've travelled around the Union I have found
everywhere, as I expected, a deep preoccupation
with what is happening in the rest of the
African continent. I understand and sympathize
with your interests in these events and your
anxiety about them.
Ever since the break up of the Roman empire one
of the constant facts of political life in
Europe has been the emergence of independent
nations. They have come into existence over the
centuries in different forms, different kinds of
government, but all have been inspired by a
deep, keen feeling of nationalism, which has
grown as the nations have grown.
In the twentieth century, and especially since
the end of the war, the processes which gave
birth to the nation states of Europe have been
repeated all over the world. We have seen the
awakening of national consciousness in peoples
who have for centuries lived in dependence upon
some other power. Fifteen years ago this
movement spread through Asia. Many countries
there, of different races and civilizations,
pressed their claim to an independent national
life.
Today the same thing is happening in Africa, and
the most striking of all the impressions I have
formed since I left London a month ago is of the
strength of this African national consciousness.
In different places it takes different forms,
but it is happening everywhere.
The wind of change is blowing through this
continent, and whether we like it or not, this
growth of national consciousness is a political
fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our
national policies must take account of it.
Well you understand this better than anyone, you
are sprung from Europe, the home of nationalism,
here in Africa you have yourselves created a
free nation. A new nation. Indeed in the history
of our times yours will be recorded as the first
of the African nationalists. This tide of
national consciousness which is now rising in
Africa, is a fact, for which both you and we,
and the other nations of the western world are
ultimately responsible.
For its causes are to be found in the
achievements of western civilization, in the
pushing forwards of the frontiers of knowledge,
the applying of science to the service of human
needs, in the expanding of food production, in
the speeding and multiplying of the means of
communication, and perhaps above all and more
than anything else in the spread of education.
As I have said,
the growth of national consciousness in Africa
is a political fact, and we must accept it as
such. That means, I would judge, that we've got
to come to terms with it. I sincerely believe
that if we cannot do so we may imperil the
precarious balance between the East and West on
which the peace of the world depends.
The world today is divided into three main
groups.
First there are
what we call the Western Powers. You in South
Africa and we in Britain belong to this group,
together with our friends and allies in other
parts of the Commonwealth. In the United States
of America and in Europe we call it the Free
World.
Secondly there are
the Communists Russia and her satellites in
Europe and China whose population will rise by
the end of the next ten years to the staggering
total of 800 million.
Thirdly, there are
those parts of the world whose people are at
present uncommitted either to Communism or to
our Western ideas. In this context we think
first of Asia and then of Africa.
As I see it the
great issue in this second half of the twentieth
century is whether the uncommitted peoples of
Asia and Africa will swing to the East or to the
West. Will they be drawn into the Communist
camp? Or will the great experiments in
self-government that are now being made in Asia
and Africa, especially within the Commonwealth,
prove so successful, and by their example so
compelling, that the balance will come down in
favor of freedom and order and justice?
The struggle is
joined, and it is a struggle for the minds of
men. What is now on trial is much more than our
military strength or our diplomatic and
administrative skill. It is our way of life. The
uncommitted nations want to see before they
choose.
