Labour Monthly

The Liberation of Burma

Blue Print for Burma (Conservative Central Office).

By Michael Carritt


Source : Labour Monthly February, 1945, p.63
Publisher : The Labour Publishing Company Ltd., London.
Transcription/HTML : Ted Crawford/D. Walters
Public Domain : Marxists Internet Archive (2010). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.


The Commons Debate on Burma (December 11) can only be regarded as highly unsatisfactory by all those who hoped that in the interests of our troops fighting in Burma and of a speedy end to the domination of Burma by the Japanese the Government would announce an unqualified policy of liberation that would win over to active co operation the Burmese national movement. Despite pressure from many Members and some sharp comment in The Times which provoked a severe rebuke from Tory spokesmen, Mr. Amery was not only content with the vaguest of promises for Burma’s post war Dominion status, but insisted upon excusing his refusal to fix any time table of liberation by the ominous statement that unforeseen events might force us to go back upon any policy now announced.

Having failed to issue a rousing call to Burmese nationalists to fight for their liberation alongside our armies, the danger now exists that the pious hopes for Burma’s “partnership” in the Empire will will be given concrete form along the lines outlined by the Committee of seven Conservatives in their Blue Print for Burma. This policy statement, sharply criticised alike by The Times and by the Burmese Refugees Association, proposes a period of six years in which Burma will be ruled by a Governor without any Burmese representative Assembly or Council. A few Burmese are to be associated with the Governor in an advisory capacity and together this outfit will eventually put a new constitution before a Constituent Assembly. But the “Dominion Status” which this Conservative Government envisages is to be qualified by a Treaty which will give special rights and privileges (including compensation for war losses) to British business interests which return to Burma.

In other words, the Conservatives, so far from making some sort of “Cripps” offer to Burma, which alone would have any chance of satisfying their intense nationalism since the Japanese occupation, are trying to hammer out some kind of constitution like the 1935 India Act. If this attempt is successful it is painfully clear that our soldiers in the Far East are going to have to pay with their blood for the determination of monopoly interests to re-establish themselves in control of Burma’s economic life.

M.C.