My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyThe third phase, suggested to me long ago by my observation of tendencies inPittsburgh, lies in general much further ahead; the development of almost fullyautomatic machinery in which relatively few highly skilled men work machines, oreven supervise them. At that point the triumph of advanced labour will return, and theworld will be presented with a quite exceptional problem if in the interval millions ofAfricans have been drawn from the soil to the factories and are eventually thrown intounemployment because their exploitation is no longer profitable. All looking too farahead, all too fantastic, will come the usual reply; and again I answer that we havesuffered enough from not looking far enough ahead, and that worse is to come.Africa and South AfricaMy approach to the African question is from an economic and social and not from aracial standpoint. Racialism has really nothing whatever to do with this matter. I havealways stood against the exploitation of the old colonialism, the placing of one peopleon top of another on grounds of alleged superiority or inferiority, which is the onlyrational definition of racialism and which I reject.The present nonsense of what is called racialism has nothing to do with the seriousAfrican problems, which are economic and social. If in the same economiccommunity you mix people of completely different stages of development, you geteconomic exploitation disastrous alike to the advanced and the backward, and a gravesocial problem with bitter resentments. I may possibly claim foresight for havingdevised a policy to meet these difficulties in 1948 when they were not so clearlyapparent. It was called the Mosley-Pirow proposals, because my collaborator wasgenerous enough to give it this name, although he had far more knowledge of thesubject and did most of the work. Oswald Pirow was at that time a distinguishedmember of the South African Bar; he had previously been Minister of Defence in1939 and had occupied several posts in the South African Government, but resignedat the outbreak of war for the natural reason that he was of German origin. He had abrilliant intellect and firm character; his premature death was a loss to his country andto European thought.These proposals in broad principle divided the whole of Africa between white andblack governments. What has since occurred in a welter of confusion, bloodshed,chaos and atrocity, was suggested in a clear, calm, ordered plan. Black government inthis policy received roughly two-thirds of Africa south of the Sahara, and the rest wasto be held clearly and firmly by white governments where substantial and deeplyrooted European populations existed. Rhodesia was naturally included in thedefinition of territory under white government, and the danger of a clash with Britishpeople would have been eliminated by a comprehensive plan which gave a fair deal toall. The basis of this policy was that Africa is an empty continent with a population oftwenty to the square mile as compared with two hundred in Europe—and we shouldtherefore legislate for the future rather than the status quo which could not endure.If the claim of Europeans to any part of Africa be disputed, we should inform thosewhose passions blind them to history that Europeans arrived in Southern Africa threecenturies ago in 1652, long before the present black tribes drove down from the northto encounter the whites six hundred miles north of Cape Town at the decisive battle ofthe Great Fish River in 1770. The only original inhabitants of Southern Africa werethe Hottentots or Bushmen, who were scrupulously preserved and looked after in405 of 424