{Boycotts}[6th May 1970]

[Redbook1:146-150][19700506:1750]{Boycotts}[6th May 1970]

Wednesday 6th May 1970   5.50pm

            A trend which worries me appears in the way political pressure groups are trying to pressurise non-political or unaligned or neutral groups not to communicate with other groups of whose politics the pressure groups do not approve.  Hence: the Indian government recommends that the Indian Olympics committee boycott the Commonwealth Games in order to force the MCC to cancel their invitation to the apartheid-based South African team to come to Britain.  There is something doubly sinister about this: firstly, as I said above, that a politically unaligned group should be pressured to break off relations with its colleagues, and secondly, that a further complication should be added by the fact that the Commonwealth Games organisation, the group that is being directly pressurised by the Indian Government (and others), has no connection (as far as I know) with the MCC, the group that the pressurisers hope to influence -- other than the fact that both are in the same country. 

The implication must be that either (a) the MCC should be unselfish to the Commonwealth Games and cancel the tour -- which, given the MCC’s beliefs, is asking too much – or (b) the [UK] Government should respond (to pressure) and ban the South Africans’ tour -- which under the circumstances would be equally sinister because we are not, for example, at war with South Africa, nor have we declared that we do not recognise it or its people.  It would, in a word, be undemocratic not so much in the act itself, which would be no more undemocratic than many similar government actions, but in its motives and its implications for democracy and our own freedom.

            Let us bring this down to individual terms -- although I must stress that this is only to make the situation clearer, and to warn of possible developments, not to imply [sic] against the ethics of the present situation.  In the simple case, perhaps, A likes B and B likes C but A hates C, therefore A tells B to stop knowing C or A will stop knowing B.  What B does depends on his own character and his own assessment of the situation. 

However, politics is not based on friendship nor on individual welfare -- though perhaps it should be.  The situation would be better described in the following way: W deals [with] X who has fairly close personal connections with Y who deals with Z; W dislikes Z.  W therefore threatens to break off his dealings and/or friendship with X unless Y breaks off his dealings and/or friendship with Z.  He hopes that (a) X will be persuaded to urge his friend Y to do so and (b) Y will feel morally bound to help his friend X by doing so – that Y will feel the burden is on him.  In fact, of course, if Y is wise or has a mixture of ruthlessness, foresight and strong principles, he will realise that the true burden is on W, who has set the conditions of this game and who therefore bears responsibility for it.  Although X should not be harmed unfairly in this way it is not up to Y to help him by giving in, because that would harm Z through no fault of his own -- and the responsibility for that would be largely Y’s.

            Of course you cannot compare political tactics directly with the tactics of personal relationships, but equally, of course, politics is based on masses of individuals, and also on solitary individuals.  So let W be the Indian Government, let X be the Commonwealth Games organisation, let Y be the MCC, and let Z be the South African team and parallels become clearer.  But perhaps the most difficult factor for X and Y is not so much what will happen to X if Y stands firm, it is what the effect on all X’s contacts will be.  That is one of the reasons why direct comparisons are dangerous.

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