10 -

(INAUDIBLE)

B Well, yes, not intervention. It's a very
free enterprise economy.

A Actually it is a very .... (INAUDIBLE)

D But with some measure of dictatorship when it
comes to labour relations.

A .... the government has got more power than
most - than the rest of us.... Mr. Lee Kwan
Yew seems to have done very successfully.

B Well he has a powerful personality

JKG That's principally manifested Jack in an incomes
policy, along British - that you have now imitated
....

D I'm not sure, I think there's rather more
dictation from the centre. I think ....

AM And yet the secretary of the trades Union is also
a cabinet member in Singapore.

D That's probably the reason....

B Jack, I never knew you had aspirations in
this way. (LAUGHTER) You are insatiable.
(LAUGHTER) .... to formalise your present
position.

D But you see what do you do? You've mentioned
an incident in Britain. We are subjected in
not only undeveloped countries but developed
countries maybe outside the United States of
America to the whim and will to some extent of
multinational companies. Whilst I accept that
many multinational companies are efficient

- 10 -

11 -

that they, in dealing with labour, in that
they're not all that bad and we can negotiate
reasonable wages and working conditions. There
is just that threat that can be exercised,
and unduly exercised by multinational companies
which calls in my view for some form of
international code which all countries who
have to deal with multinational companies must
adopt because you simply cannot be at the
behest .... You can't act as countries
leaving aside the position of work people.
But as countries you can't operate in a situation
where you, you really must respond to the
behest of privately owned multinational companies.
I mean they can, not only put men and women
out of work in the factories, they can affect the
economies of countries.

AM Is it however preferable that there should be
this mechanism for aid which is divorced from
ideology?

D Oh yes, I'm in favour of that, that's what I
hoped we might be able to discuss ....

- 11 -

ENDS

THE A.E. OF UNCERTAINTY
TALE ROLL VB9
Shot 61/1

1

B: We must accept that they settle their own destiny and so on. But it is becoming a more and more difficult problem, of how you sell this to the ordinary elector, I find this in my own constituency.

C: But Ted, if I can just ask this, I mean there is a, there is a certain parallel between expenditure on defence and expenditure in this direction. In other words that there is an argument for saying that we ... that we haven't ...

B: Only if you're using it for political reasons. If you use defence to protect ourselves and our friends and you say there's a parallel. There's only a parallel if you are using aid to persuade people to support us rather than to support people opposed to us.

C: Sorry, I mean on an economic argument, not a political one and there's an economic argument, a straight Keynesian argument for having production which is directed outside your own domestic economy and we mostly do that by defence and one could do that in a much more imaginative way. By directing it to the needs of the third world and then you'd be stuck with the political problem. But I think that in some ways Mr. (I) has answered that because what he really said, and I think it's terribly significant, if you don't create a difference structurally, you will end up with in effect a collective bargaining situation which the third world will force upon the first and second worlds its own requirements, because in the end the oil lesson is going to be learnt, it seems to me much more .. (INAUDIBLE) .. by the oil producers.

E: The most powerful argument is power.

B: Yes ... just a little sceptical about this. It has happened with OPEC and of course when we produce oil we become a member of OPEC and then we shall have a very considerable influence on all these things.

(INAUDIBLE - ALL TALK AT ONCE)

B: Is this really going to happen over copper, is this really going to happen over aluminium, is it really going to happen over tin, is it really going to happen over wool?

D: It could you know.

B: It could, but is it really in fact going to happen?

A: I, I tend to agree with (B). That the discussion is really ... you're talking about things that happened in the forties and fifties and I don't think we need this sort of help from the so-called rich countries at the sacrifice of the welfare of people in the rich countries. We need ... the kind of help we need, I repeat again, is (INAUDIBLE) ... in our country (INAUDIBLE) ... I would like to (INAUDIBLE) ... the cares between Japan and

THE AGE (UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROL: B9
Shot (1 CONT.)

A: my country, we both have problems. Our problem is unemployment so our wages are rather low and their problem is high wages, cost. So they can't afford to produce the usual sort of cheap things that they used to, that they, that they produced before. They transferred the production of those things to our country where labour's cheap. We don't mind that at all because that created employment. But there is this. The profit centre of the whole venture was in Tokyo and not half way between Bangkok .. (INAUDIBLE) .. that's, ... (INAUDIBLE) ... and if that could be corrected then we're quite happy, we're quite satisfied and we will discipline our unions somehow to keep the level of wages within possible ...

D: Don't discipline them too strongly you know.

A: ... Well I ... in that case we'll ... (INAUDIBLE) ...

C: That's better, that's a much better technique.

D: Treat them as ...

A: To explain the points to them so that they could make it, make it possible I, I really do agree with (B). And I think the idea that, you know, help from rich countries to poor countries were all wrong, out of date, was, the truth was discovered by President Idi Amin who one day declared England, Britain as a poor country.

C: Yes, we're getting ...

(INAUDIBLE)

L: That leads up to my question. I think I just had a ticket for lunch, but I didn't include making speeches, but Ken, I would like to know why we segregate ourselves as, as a people, as a preferred people. How do you explain the difficulties in, in we have all through our country where we have un-, undemocratic procedure. Appalachia for instance. How do you explain Appalachia. Are we a preferred nation? How in the hell do we presume to tell other nations to run themselves when we've made a rather sorry promotion of our own, haven't we. Why don't you go out in the badlands of North Dakota and see what we've done to the Indians.

JKG: Well I don't want you giving ammunition to (I) here. Ah, that's because he's more than competent to, to make this case without your help Zee.

L: Yes but ... (INAUDIBLE) ... I'd like to help.

JKG: ... No but don't address this question to me. I think the question was really meant for (H).

H: I'll be happy to answer it. We have to have the bad habits... all to pertain to all powers. The thinking that as one of the perquisites of power is knowing better than other countries do, the people of other countries do, how they run their countries, I don't think it's a peculiar consequence of the depravity of Americans.

THE AGE UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL VB9
Shot 61/1 CONT.

L: Don't you get a little bit fed up with the smug attitude to
we're God's chosen people?

H: Yes, but I, well my point was that this isn't a peculiarly,
uniquely American attitude. It's an attitude which the British
were accused of having in their day, the French and the Spanish
before them, an attitude which you'll find in the Soviet Union
today. Just ask people in Eastern Europe about that. I, they're
... we have a practice of national masochism by which we think
the sins of great power are exclusively our own but I think this
is a consequence of super powership. Not something which is
... derivation from some peculiar depravity in the American culture.

JKG: When I expressed fear ... of, that you were giving support to (I), I thought as a former banker you were supporting, you were attacking capitalism. That was, I apologise.

I: ... But I would say that in an American it is a specially pro-
nounced quality (INAUDIBLE) ... beginning with your Calvinist
past, and it was very understandable in the past and the Pilgrims
have come here. They had to have an idea which would put them
through all the difficulties in the new continent, that they were
chosen people, and they built a new paradise.

J: May I come in. I doubt whether the American impact on non-
Americans ... infallibility, is any. I doubt very much whether
the impact of the United States on lesser breeds in terms of
suggesting their infallibility is any less in that, in this regard
than that of the Soviet Union. And I would say that the one ...
great difference between these two, any, all large countries had
to see themselves as chosen people, but I think that the
corrective, in the American tradition is a considerable freedom,
to condemn the conception of America as a chosen nation and to
condemn the notion of the infallibility of, of the American
government and I, I would feel much better about the Soviet Union
had, were there equal freedom of that sort. For eq..., the
freedom of self-condemnation.

I: Well yes, freedom is of course always the last argument in this
sort of discussion ... (INTERRUPTIONS) ... but I would say, no,
I would say that in general I think it was a correct point and
you know from my point of view it is a very happy development and
last years that the Americans have become more aware that they
have their own problems. And they, ... (INTERRUPTIONS) ...
don't have the .. (INAUDIBLE) .. We know for, we know very good
that we don't have all answers to all questions. But I think it
was very well pronounced .. (INAUDIBLE) .. years of manifest
destiny and to all of this, this was for a long time a part of
American nationalists.

J: You think that Marxism, that Soviet Marxism has no concept of
manifest destiny?

I: Well it is different, it is not national. It is a belief that the
other peoples will come to these ideas themselves and, and here it
is an idea to carry on this eternal truth if it is needed by

THE AG OF UNCERTAINTY
TAPE ROLL VB9
Shot 61/1 CONT.

4.

I: force of (INAUDIBLE) .. other countries. So I see a definite
distinction here.

L: I wonder if I could paraphrase a rather well known phrase, of
whom the gods make mad ... (INAUDIBLE)

C: The gods destroyed the first made man ..

L: ... say whom the gods destroyed (INAUDIBLE) .. make smug. And
I think by God that is just exactly where we are and you're a
close second.

I: Well I think your example helped us a little bit to avoid this
destiny.

AM: I wonder if we could get back to, away from ideological
argument and back to ... (INAUDIBLE)

J: You want to go onto the next topics. We've already been on this
for over an hour. We, you want to break up what time. You've
two more topics this afternoon.

AM: Well I think this one is still to be explored.

END TAPE ROLL VB9