• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4311 0

in charge of Burma affairs, had been obsessed with events surrounding the Cabinet Mission to India and its consequences. Even Cripps was focused on Wavell’s problems. Attlee, however, had carefully read the despatches and had come to the conclusion that no one was really in charge in Burma and that armed rebellion was only weeks away. Effectively he had taken over as secretary of state for Burma from the relatively inexperienced Listowel. During the actual meetings, however, Attlee just sat and listened, doodling on his notepad.53 Cripps, as was his wont, did all the talking and Listowel begged off the meetings altogether in order to attend to grander Indian affairs. On the Burmese side it was Tin Tut, naturally, who did the real negotiating. Tin Tut had known Cripps since 1941, when the latter had stayed with him in Rangoon while on his way to meet Chiang Kai Shek in Chungking.

The critical point in the negotiations, according to Kyaw Nyein, was not so much British commercial interests in Burma as the status of the hill areas. At one point Cripps glanced up at the map. He said that if you looked at the hill peoples, Burma seemed to be surrounded by a scythe.54 It was no use getting independence unless these territories and peoples were firmly welded to the new state. With these few words Cripps conceded to Buddhist Burma what three generations of British officials, commercial agents and missionaries had sought to deny it – control over the ethnic minorities. As with the Indian princes, though not the Indian Muslims, the British simply abandoned their long-term clients in the face of political reality. Ministers had already tacitly agreed that whatever clever jigsaw work might be done, nothing like a Karen state was really viable. A weak and fissiparous Burma would be dangerously exposed to Chinese incursions from the north and even to communal instability in neighbouring India. The incorporation of the hill areas and minorities would be a tricky problem, however. Both sides agreed that there should be a conference with their leaders at the hill town of Panglong once the delegation returned to Burma. The question of British participation in this remained unresolved. Aung San was deeply suspicious of the British Frontier Service officers and Tom Driberg increased his alarm by saying that even one British government representative at Panglong might encourage the more recalcitrant sawbwas or minority tribal leaders to hold out for too much.

Economic disagreements were significant, too, even though they seemed less pressing than the security issues. The AFPFL wanted a full-blown nationalization plan as any compromise on this might hand the communists a propaganda victory. The British cabinet wanted enterprises such as Burmah Oil to remain private. Apart from the question of profits, ministers noted that Burmah Oil was currently dependent on another British company, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, for marketing and distribution. The last thing anyone needed that bitter winter in a shivering and malnourished Britain and Europe was an interruption of fuel supplies.55 Nationalization was to remain a contentious issue between the British and the Burmese for several years.

The London negotiations were a last-ditch effort and their success hung by a thread. The AFPFL was raring to go over to full non-cooperation, a general strike or even civil rebellion. Aung San had set a date of 31 January for nationwide strikes if the AFPFL had not by then been accepted as a national government. The communists, for their part, would immediately try to turn a wave of strikes into a rebellion. As British ministers contemplated acquiescence in Aung San’s demands, a string of more and more alarming intelligence reports warned them of imminent trouble.56 A British military appreciation reported widespread labour unrest and the dislocation of the administration ‘affecting police and Burman elements of the services which must lead to armed conflict with which we are incapable of coping’. The Burmans were still more or less favourably disposed to the