in many areas , particularly in India and Burma , the basic problems to be solved before development can begin is that of land reform , involving the break-up of feudal ownership and the establishment of co-operatives . only by these means can there be any hope of getting communities on the move . we can do no better than turn back to India again to illustrate these points . it is perhaps natural that I should gather together the threads of the discussion by talking of this massive nation of over 400 million people . its size and geographical position set it at the centre of world politics . by the allegiance of its rulers to socialism it provides a test case for conservative principles . above all , it provides a perfect cross-section of all the stages of development and their accompanying problems upon which we have touched in this essay . some areas and sectors are already far advanced and are overripe for private domestic and foreign investment . other areas , mostly agricultural , remain in virtual stagnation , still awaiting the application of knowledge and resources , and the reforms and organisation which we have described . across the whole economy there is a lack of roads , drainage , education and health services , and in the towns , even of telephones . the Indian planners have been criticised for the rigidity of their plans and the emphasis which has been given to government investment in urban and already industrialised sectors . they have been blamed for neglect of the rural sector and for the resulting permanent food shortages and inflation of food prices which this imbalance between agriculture and industry creates . whatever the truth in these accusations , as conservatives we would like to see the Indian government pursue three lines of development policy with far greater vigour than at present . first , encroachment into the private sector should be replaced by withdrawal and more overt encouragement to private domestic and overseas enterprise . secondly , the application of finance and supervision to smallholders &apos; agriculture , preceded where necessary by land reforms , should be tackled with greater dynamism , and , thirdly , these two policies should be combined with greater diligence in carrying out the basic services and providing the facilities ( which will certainly require considerable government expenditure ) which we regard as being rightly within the sphere of government . that we can hope to see such policies pursued in India is doubtful . but it is possible that we can have , over a period of time , some marginal influence on the pattern of progress . to withhold aid is not the way to exert this influence . on the contrary , more aid , better administered , offers the best hope of success . aid is essentially a part of foreign policy . but it should be seen as a contracting and not a permanent element of foreign policy , for its aim should be to return predominantly to the sphere of private initiative both the processes of economic development which it is trying to assist and the processes of capital investment for which it stands as a partial substitute . this must be the general objective . to deny it makes the dispensation of all aid purposeless and wasteful . while development gathers momentum we shall have to condone a variety of deviations from the principles which we support and would see established . but if , amidst the many changes and expedients , we can both provide aid and bring to bear some influence in line with our general aim , then we stand a good chance of seeing thriving economies growing up in the underdeveloped world , based on free enterprise and a fine sense of friendship and unity with the already industrialised countries . if not , then we run the risk of divorcing the poor half of the world from the rich and of creating opportunities for all the subversion , disruption and tyranny which that state of affairs can bring . James Lemkin . commonwealth approaches . 9 . conservatism in a post-imperial age . in the second half of the twentieth century , amidst revolution and turmoil , the British commonwealth survives . its continued existence is of itself proof positive to conservatives that the institution works . but is there too much complacency about this ? is interracial partnership , which is the hub of commonwealth development , possible today ? the evidence of Africa in 1960 is that numbers matter more than the quality of things . but the needs of Africa in 1970 show that European , Asian and African must cooperate to sustain an expanding economy , based on a representative system of government . that the needs of 1970 are desirable political ends will be denied by few British politicians . the hub of the argument - and this affects the commonwealth , and not merely British Africa - is that conservative principle will result in methods being applied that would differ substantially from those of the liberals who would maximise freedom at the expense of order , and greatly from those of the labour party which would prefer rapid , perhaps revolutionary , social change to organic growth . conservatives , however , do not in their approach to the commonwealth , start with a clean plate . their record is very much of the species of the curate &apos;s egg . some economic neglect , some administrative tyranny has been shameful . but in other places , the broad progress under a conservative government has been startling , not merely to indigenous commonwealth peoples fed on the idea of tory bogeymen , but to conservatives who found a good deal of practical sense planted amongst those who have cooperated with them in Asia and Africa . conservatives today are cast in a liberalising mantle , however much some of them may wish the garment to be thrown off . in their approach to the commonwealth , conservatives bring three political principles to bear . first they see the commonwealth as a whole . this needs a good deal of tory self-reconciliation as the reciprocity of material interests of commonwealth countries declines . secondly , they accept that effective power which has passed can not be successfully recalled . this leads tories sometimes to credit non- , or not wholly , self-governing European communities with greater authority than in fact such groups have . thirdly , conservatives accept the value of an objective law free from administrative meddling - the rule of law . now given these three working conservative approaches a keen supporter of the government may well meet himself coming the other way . he believes in the statute of Westminster as a symbol of equal power . but he also knows that racial discrimination will destroy the unity of the commonwealth . the translation of one nation abroad , as has been spoken of by Mr Iain Macleod , is meaningless unless a stand is made on racial discrimination ( in whichever direction it operates ) . the conservative speaks up for impartial law but what of Hola ? and because he starts from this standpoint few speeches made in the House of Commons during the previous secretaryship of the colonies were in fact more effective than Mr Enoch Powell on Hola to an unvigilant House of Commons at half past one in the morning . to stand for the rule of law enables the colonial regime in its closing days to help purge itself of its paternalist past . but when a newly independent regime rejects the common law and substitutes rule by executive , do some conservatives wonder whether these political principles are the playthings of academics rather than the medicine of good government ? conservatives in government are of course being carried forward by the &amp;eacute;lan of the nationalism of others and this overshadows their concern for order which at best means a balanced advance , putting emphasis on economic as well as political development . but to define balance is to defy politics . sometimes bread is more important than votes , sometimes both are necessary . in some territories votes can be given , but bread can not be provided . the conservative properly brings an undogmatic approach to these problems . in being pragmatic about his priorities he will rightly emphasise on the one hand , for example , the political advance of Somalia , while arguing on the other that a more complex set of constitutional checks and balances is required in northern Rhodesia . the jibe of Mr Mboya in attacking the Lancaster House conference that what Somalia required were settlers was double-edged . settlers might have retarded Somalia &apos;s political progress , but they would have given it a much better standard of living . no conservative in looking at the commonwealth will underestimate Britain &apos;s interests in preserving the commonwealth as an institution . to say this is not to suggest that commonwealth relations are merely an extension of foreign policy . Britain must analyse her interests hard before she can determine in what way her contribution to the commonwealth may be effective and acceptable . the commonwealth today is largely a new institution . Sharpeville , the passing of responsibility to the new coloured territories , the tremendous drive to give economic aid to under-developed countries , the willingness of Great Britain to prefer commonwealth under-developed countries to foreign under-developed countries as a priority for aid , and the need of new commonwealth countries for administrative and technical assistance - all these have shifted the balance of subjects for discussion amongst commonwealth Prime Ministers from defence of the free world and from inter-commonwealth trade - as were the principal subjects before the second world war - to this new gamut of subjects bound up as they are with a new psychological relationship between Britain and the new members of the commonwealth . now Britain &apos;s interests in the commonwealth are four-fold . first , in a world of large units , Britain is striving to maintain an existing large institution , being enlarged as each year goes by , without committing it strategically to Russia or America . Britain has a double role to play in this respect . some of the members of the commonwealth - Canada , Great Britain , Australia and New Zealand - are bound up in defence pacts with the United States , which are devised as a protection against the Sino-Soviet block . Britain nevertheless can maintain , through the commonwealth , peculiarly friendly relations with countries that would not wish to be aligned in such a struggle . Britain &apos;s second interest is to harness the power , both the political power and the administrative skill , that lies in the commonwealth to the task of healing divisions in parts of the world - first , of course , putting the house of the commonwealth in order , and secondly in assisting to maintain peace in countries adjacent to commonwealth countries . thirdly , Britain &apos;s interest , although it may in truth be said now to be a declining interest relative to Europe , is to expand the trade of the sterling commonwealth . it is a declining interest because it must be recognised that the purchasing power of the under-developed countries in the commonwealth will rise slowly compared with that of Europe . these areas , which are areas of primary producing , will not show the most dramatic changes in consumption during the next decade or so . for the dramatic expansion of its trade , Britain will do better out of trade of manufactured made-up goods with Europe and with some of the big countries of south east Asia before it will see any great improvement in its trade with the commonwealth sterling area . but Britain &apos;s last interest is to assist the countries of the commonwealth to modernise rapidly by speeding technical progress through an acceptable educational system . these are not selfish aims , although they will rebound to the benefit of the people of Britain in two ways . first , we shall have friends in the world , at a time when negotiations of international problems are resolved by larger and larger groups of nations . friends are necessary for the safe conduct of our affairs abroad . secondly , through the medium of the English language , through the influence of our teachers and administrators , Britain &apos;s word can still be of value in some parts of the world . it would be arrogant to think only of Britain &apos;s role in the commonwealth . for some time the idea of the mother country has been dwindling as the coloured races came to power in the new territories , and the idea of London as being the centre of activities has shifted from the American continent to Asia , and now , for the time being , to Africa . 