Canberra, 3 May 1967
Secret
The Prime Minister wishes you to transmit to the White House the following personal message from him to the President. He also indicates that you should feel authorized to supplement message as necessary by giving the President or his staff access to cables which you already hold dealing with this subject. This includes the Prime Minister’s message to Mr. Wilson1 and also the record of his discussion with Sir Charles Johnston. But as to the former, he would wish you to stop short of handing over the text of his message to Mr. Wilson.
Message begins:
‘Dear Lyndon,
First I must thank you for your invitation to talk with you in Washington on June l—and my thanks, also, for your kind offer of an aircraft and accommodation for myself and party at Blair House.
I greatly look forward to our meeting, because there is much of common interest to discuss, and it will be most timely to canvass the implications of British intentions East of Suez before the talks both you and I will be having with Harold Wilson.
I gather from his messages that Paul Hasluck has kept Dean Rusk fully informed about the views I have been putting to Harold Wilson and to the Heads of Government of New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. We have greatly appreciated the robust attitude taken by Dean Rusk. I shall not go over the ground in detail now.
You will know how troubled we have been to learn of the British proposals leading to withdrawal by the mid-seventies, and how strongly I have expressed myself in relation to them. We had firm assurances individually from Wilson, Stewart, Healey and Bowden—quite apart from those in the British Defence Papers of February, 1966, and February, 1967, that, although we retained some doubts about their resolution, we were unprepared for the suddenness with which an entirely different picture was presented, and the tone of finality in its presentation by Brown in Washington and Healey in Malaysia and Singapore. I hope that George Brown has reported back the strength and identity of feeling shown by the United States, Australian, and New Zealand spokesmen in Washington.
Harold Wilson replied to my message2 giving me an assurance that no final decisions will be taken until he and I have an opportunity for full discussion when I meet him in London in June. Reading the messages which have come from various sources, I cannot close my eyes to the possibility that the British Cabinet has discussed its situation fully and is far advanced towards final decisions of a particular kind. But I nevertheless propose to trade heavily on Wilson’s assurance that there are not yet any final decisions, and that there is to be full consultation with me and consideration by their Ministers of our views before they come to decisions. Australia and New Zealand are both deeply involved in the existing Commonwealth defence arrangements which have persisted over a period of time, as indeed are the host countries of Malaysia and Singapore. I will be at pains to bring home the responsibilities of partnership and to argue, and to sustain the argument, that the partners, other than Britain, have earned the right to consultation and concerted examination with Britain on these matters. I am not thinking merely of discussing aspects of timing, troop dispositions, base facilities, and so on. What I want to do is look ahead to developing with Britain and other Commonwealth partners, concepts to ensure that the security and stability of the area are guaranteed with changing circumstances. I will certainly be seeking to exploit what receptiveness there may still be to persuasion away from the concepts and philosophy which they appear to be on the road to adopting. I have asked Wilson that whatever decisions his Government makes as to reduction of military forces East of Suez, in no circumstances should it be presented as a final withdrawal—he should both publicly and privately keep some options open.
The Governments of Singapore and Malaysia have reacted more mildly in public than their real feelings would have warranted. They have made known to us their apprehension that a more dramatic reaction would touch off a chain of unfavourable consequences for them, resulting, among other things, in loss of confidence in their future by investors, industrialists and others who could be playing a helpful part in their development, and even weakening their security. The very mildness of this public reaction makes it, of course, the more difficult for Australia and New Zealand to press their own views publicly as vigorously as we feel them.
Just as I hope to trade on the assurance of no decision as yet, so I hope that you also can and will. The course which Britain appears to have set must cause you great concern—not necessarily so much in the matter of the loss of defence potential, but in matters such as the stability and confidence of Asia, your own presence in Asia and, in fact, British/American co-operation in the wider world sphere. I would have thought that we, for our part, but also you particularly, must seek to persuade Britain back into a full role in world affairs.
There is much hard thinking to be done about the implications and the possibilities before June, and I am putting my own people to work on these as well as doing some hard thinking about them myself.
The measure of Britain’s attainment in South-East Asia has been large and significant by any standard. I value greatly their contribution to the peace and stability of the area, and I do this quite apart from considerations of our own ties of kinship which have been the source of our own history and our own response to Britain’s call in two world wars. Britain and Australia and New Zealand, but principally Britain herself, has foiled two separate attempts to introduce Communist strength, both politically and militarily, into the Malaysia region.
It is, I feel, a great disadvantage that none of the leading figures in the British Cabinet has a realistic awareness of Asia which can only be produced by personal contact with the countries and their peoples. None of them has felt, as you and I have, the stir of change there, and the interest—even the excitement—they are finding in their social, political and industrial development. It saddened me, during my own most recent tour of Cambodia, Laos, Taiwan and South Korea, to find no reference in any country to Great Britain or the part it could play. It was as though England was, in substance, turning its back on three-fifths of mankind, with its role and influence rapidly diminishing in this area of the world. If Harold Wilson succeeds in taking Great Britain into the EEC, there will be further diminution of British influence and interest in the area, and of the interest of others out here in Great Britain.
We shall all be better informed about these matters by the time we meet, and I greatly look forward to the opportunity of exchanging thoughts with you.’
1 See Document 64.
2 See Document 64.
[NAA: A1209, 1966/7335 PART 3]