Australian High Commission, London, 20 September 1965
Secret
I must tell you of a very frank conversation I had today with Denis Healey, the Minister for Defence. It was at Stoke Lodge, after a luncheon I gave for Allen Fairhall and his wife.
We were discussing South East Asia, with particular reference to Malaysia and Indonesia. Healey said he had not seen the paper around which the Quadripartite Talks revolved but he knew something of it. He said that he himself was pessimistic about the future of Malaysia as such; he did not hold out great hope for Sarawak and Sabah remaining indefinitely in the Federation; and as for Singapore, whilst he felt that Lee might succeed in winning the 1968 elections he did not imagine he would be able to win again in 1971. He said that he knew Lee very well, and had very close contacts with him. Therefore, the British must contemplate the situation that in the early 1970s they might suddenly be faced with the loss of the Singapore base. They were determined that they were not going to be put into the position of suddenly being ejected, and therefore they had to consider plans for disengaging in that area should circumstances force them to do so.
In a polite way, he was rather critical of your own attitude towards the Indonesian problem. He thought that Australia would have to face up to escalation of the pressures against Soekarno in the very near future, or else try to find some means of coming to an accommodation with him. I resisted these criticisms of your attitude, and I pointed out that it would be catastrophic if at this stage Soekarno had any inkling that the British were thinking of trying to come to terms with him and making even tentative plans for a withdrawal from that theatre. Healey readily agreed with this, but said that this did not absolve us from thinking the problem through, and what the ultimate end of confrontation would be.
He was also politely critical of our not having supported Britain sufficiently in their previous policy towards Indonesia. This again I disagreed with, reminding him that his predecessors gave very little support to the Dutch in their efforts to retain this part ofNew Guinea. I reminded him of what we had been doing for some time in Malaysia, and also of our recent contributions toward the struggle in Vietnam. I said to him that presumably he and his colleagues were pleased by the despatch of Australian troops, and subsequently reinforcements, in support of the Americans in Vietnam; and to this he unequivocally assented. However, he said that last year when the Government proposed sterner measures against Soekarno we rather dragged our feet. Personally, Healey added, he believed at this stage in a stronger line in an attempt to bring confrontation to an end. Within the next week or so he was going to propose to Cabinet some escalation—he kept on using this phrase—in methods. He hoped that if the Cabinet endorsed his views Australian support would be forthcoming.
It is quite clear that Healey is not thinking of an immediate reorientation of British policy, although I was rather alarmed to find him using the phrase ‘if we decide to abandon our East of Suez policy’ but he kept on reiterating that the choice was between escalation in pressures on Soekarno or finding some other means of bringing confrontation to an end. On my part, I expressed grave concern as to tactics, pointing out that by even giving the appearance of acceding to Soekarno’s demands then the results for us, and also for British prestige, in that area could be grave indeed. I think he agreed with this, but he is seized with the idea of British impermanence in Singapore, and naturally, fearing that the blow may fall in a few years time, wishes from England’s point of view to be able to retreat without indignity.
He told me that he felt that we and the Americans were doing Britain a great disservice by virtually compelling her to remain in that region unless we were prepared to find a means of bringing confrontation fairly speedily to an end. ‘What do you think the answer to confrontation is’ he kept on asking. He does not believe that Soekarno is likely to die or be displaced soon, nor does he feel that there is necessarily likely to be any change in policy by whoever might succeed Soekarno. Healey added that the only effective people in Asia we were able to deal with seemed to be dictators.
I don’t want to give you a wrong impression of Healey’s demeanour. It was a friendly conversation, but it was the first time I have heard a British Minister being critical, to me, of our policy or of your own personal attitude. He seemed to imply that you yourself were adamant and rigid, and I think he somewhat resented the message you sent to Harold Wilson about the Quadripartite Paper. 1 But he admitted, in passing, that there was not a united view in Cabinet on these problems.
1 See Document 34.
[NAA: A1838, TS691/1 PART 4]