Decolonizing Regional Politics in Oceania: Re-examining the Historical Record

ABSTRACT

Contemporary scholarship on the decolonization of regional organizations in Oceania has emphasized the agency of Indigenous leaders and the extent to which they led the charge to both decolonize the South Pacific Commission and to set up a new regional organization, namely, the South Pacific Forum, in which political issues could freely be discussed. In doing so, there has been a tendency to treat the colonial powers as a homogeneous group all reading from the same imperial script while Pacific Island leaders are often portrayed as a largely unified ensemble of players whose own agendas naturally harmonized around the project of decolonization. In re-examining the historical record, this article highlights the diversity of approaches evinced by actors on the regional stage leading up to the formation of the South Pacific Forum in 1971, showing that there are many more nuances to the story.

Key words:

• Oceania
• regional organization
• colonialism
• decolonization
• agency
• South Pacific Forum

Oceania as a region encompasses the world’s largest geographic feature and an extraordinary variety of countries and people whose histories, along with those of many other actors, have contributed to a complex of interactions that have made the project of regionalism what it is today. The geocultural subregions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, along with Australia and New Zealand, comprise the larger region which, in standard geographic terms, is known as Oceania and whose countries constitute the core membership of the major regional organizations, namely, the Pacific Community (originally the South Pacific Commission, and of which France and the US are also members) and the Pacific Islands Forum (originally the South Pacific Forum, and whose membership consists of independent and self-governing countries).

The discussion here first outlines early developments in regionalization and then focuses on the period in which regional organization began the process of decolonizing more than half a century ago and in which Polynesian leaders in particular played a prominent role. Contemporary scholarship on this period has emphasized the agency of these leaders and the extent to which they were instrumental in both decolonizing the South Pacific Commission and setting up a new regional organization of their own, namely, the South Pacific Forum.¹ But there were other factors at work. Although the colonial powers were generally well aligned on Cold War issues, it was a different story when it came to decolonization. Each had their own, sometimes very different agendas which, in turn, produced very different approaches to both decolonization and the development of regional organization. Indigenous leaders of the time, while often portrayed as a largely unified ensemble of players whose own interests and agendas generally harmonized around the project of decolonization, also had their own interests and agendas.

The purpose of this study is to explore these nuances through a closer examination of archival and other relevant sources.² While the major events leading to reforms in regional organization are reasonably well known, these sources shed further light on the ideas and actions of the array of actors involved in the project of decolonizing regional politics from the 1960s, up to the formation of the South Pacific Forum in 1971, a period which set the stage for many of the dynamics evident in the post-independence era.

Post-War Regionalization

The immediate post-war period in which the first substantive regional organization, the South Pacific Commission (SPC), was established took place against a background of emergent global developments in Cold War geopolitics as well as moves to decolonization. However, all of the Pacific Islands and their people, with the exception of Tonga, were still firmly under colonial rule and in no position to dictate the terms of regional organization or even define ‘the region’. It was through the SPC’s founders – Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, France, and the Netherlands – that formal regional boundaries were effectively defined under the 1947 Agreement Establishing the South Pacific Commission (otherwise known as the Canberra Agreement).³ Although it clearly set up a thoroughly colonial body, the Agreement also provided for a South Pacific Conference of Island leaders. Initially, however, it was to meet only every three years. This was at least partly a strategic move to meet concerns about the spread of communist ideas via anti-colonial nationalist movements by keeping Island leaders focused on a Western-oriented regional body and form of identity that also entailed bridging an assumed cultural gap between Polynesians and Melanesians in particular.⁴

From the outset, the SPC placed much emphasis, at least formally, on the welfare of Pacific Island peoples in terms of highlighting the values of trusteeship – values that were to be formally incorporated in the UN Charter in 1945. These values also envisaged ‘progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned’.⁵ For some colonial powers, however, political development was to be delayed as long as possible. The French delegation’s opening address to the 1947 meeting emphasized the exclusion of ‘political and ideological problems’ from the SPC, foreshadowing its rigid opposition to any form of political discussion in the years to come.⁶ The US delegation was equally firm that ‘the proposed commission should not be empowered to deal with political questions or with matters of defense or security’.⁷

The Canberra Agreement entered into force in July 1948. The following year saw the secretariat relocate to Noumea from an interim base in Sydney. France had been a reluctant party to the founding of the SPC, participating mainly because it did not wish to leave the running to the Anglophone countries. But it was keen to have the secretariat located permanently in Noumea. One commentary asserted that France had joined only because staying out would have damaged its prestige and that having the headquarters in Noumea was undoubtedly due again to this factor rather than ‘any love for the new project’.⁸ French attitudes were to loom very large in the difficulties experienced in the SPC in the coming years.

The commitment to Indigenous participation saw the first South Pacific Conference held in Suva in 1950, at the time of the main SPC meeting itself, with delegates from around 15 territories in attendance. The Canberra Agreement had envisaged that delegates should be chosen ‘in such a way as to ensure the greatest possible measure of representation of the inhabitants’.⁹ But France, in contravention of the spirit of the Agreement, sent Europeans to represent Indigenous people in their territories, the only colonial power to do so.¹⁰ Among the 85 or so delegates and observers, the French representatives must have felt rather conspicuous. Despite this, the meeting was later recalled as marking ‘the birth of a Pacific identity where Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians met and agreed that their common home – indeed their common heritage – is the Pacific’.¹¹

Although decolonization was not a major issue in Oceania at this time, the development of self-governing institutions, at least within most of the individual territories controlled by the Anglophone powers, was certainly on the agenda. France, however, would not entertain discussion on the subject while the US never acknowledged that they constituted an imperial power at all.¹² In the broader international sphere, the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples reflected the fact that membership of the General Assembly had grown to include many more former colonies, mainly in Africa and Asia. This swung the ideological balance in favour of what was variously styled the Non-Aligned bloc, the Bandung group, or ‘Group of 77’ which emerged from, and saw itself as representative of, the ‘Third World’. Lacking legal force, however, the Declaration was safely brushed aside by some countries, as the continuing French colonial presence in Oceania attests.

As for Netherlands New Guinea, its fate was sealed when, in 1969, the UN legitimized the replacement of Dutch colonialism with Indonesian colonialism – a development very much in line with US Cold War strategy.¹³ Indonesia had previously hosted the famous Bandung Conference of 1955 which had loudly proclaimed a robust anti-colonial internationalism. Indonesia’s subsequent annexation of the former Dutch territory, now commonly known as West Papua, was therefore an act of gross hypocrisy, or, as Lachlan McNamee puts it, a case in which we are ‘confronted by the practice of colonialism in a state rhetorically opposed to colonialism’.¹⁴ This act also precipitated the redefinition of the region by relocating West Papua to Southeast Asia.

Reforming Regionalism

From the mid-1960s, with Western Samoa already fully independent and other Pacific Island countries on the path to decolonization, there was a pressing need for Pacific Island leaders to not only manage their own affairs as far as technical development programmes were concerned, but also to discuss critical political issues in their own region. Fiji’s Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, a leading figure in regional politics, recalls that by this time the feeling among Indigenous delegates was that the organization was too rigid, and the attitudes of the administering powers ‘at best too paternalistic, and at worst arrogant and autocratic’.¹⁵

Matters came to a head at the 1965 SPC meeting in Lae where it had been expected that Island delegates would be able to gain more control of the works programme and that a major revision of the SPC’s guidelines would be considered.¹⁶ With respect to the works programme, delegates were presented instead with one that was largely unalterable. Technically, this was because of budget constraints. But these were due in turn to French machinations. No one metropolitan country could increase its contribution without the others increasing theirs in proportion, and if the French refused to increase theirs, no other country could either.¹⁷ This was a deliberate tactic on the part of France to forestall any effective agency being exercised by Island delegates at this time. Also, Ratu Mara had come to the meeting with proposals backed by Fiji’s governor, Sir Derek Jakeway (also Britain’s senior commissioner on the SPC), to promote a better deal for Islanders in the organization’s affairs, but was completely frustrated, remarking that the Commission was simply ‘an exclusive club’ for metropolitan governments.¹⁸

If taken at face value, Mara’s remark suggests that the metropolitan powers were all lined up on one side in opposition to the demands of Island leaders on the other. One contemporary analysis by prominent regional scholar, Greg Fry, adopts this approach, depicting the 1960s as a time of stark contestation between imperial control and self-determination – ‘a struggle between all of the colonial powers, on the one hand, and the emerging island leaders of Pacific territories undergoing political change, on the other’.¹⁹ This accords with approaches to regional politics that are framed explicitly in a mode of postcolonial analysis promoting a view of relations, both past and present, in which dynamics are restricted to a single oppositional binary as between colonizers and colonized, if not heroes and villains.²⁰ This is an easy narrative to push given prima facie power imbalances. But with respect to the decolonization of the island Pacific, and regional organizations, it does not reflect how the colonial powers actually behaved or, for that matter, how Island leaders necessarily saw events in the region. The record shows that three of the five metropolitan governments – the UK, Australia, and New Zealand – were keen to see reforms occur and were often just as frustrated with French obstructionism.²¹ Support for reforms, however, was not necessarily driven by recognition of the moral shortcomings of colonialism. The UK in particular was looking to serve its own national interests by handing over as much authority as possible to actors within the region.

New Zealand records indicate that from at least 1965, it was also actively seeking significant reforms in regional organization to give Island leaders greater control. Ahead of the Lae meeting, a New Zealand memo to Prime Minister Holyoake noted that ‘New Zealand, as you know, has for some time been concerned to give the territorial representatives a more effective voice in the work of the Commission, and particularly in the determination of its work programme’.²² Another report before the Lae meeting observed that ‘It would be better if reform came before this conference: if not it must surely come soon afterwards’.²³

Two years later, another New Zealand report noted, with strong tones of disapproval, that France remained determined to restrict the influence of Island delegates, engaging in interminable ‘nit-picking at recommendations made by the conference’, while other Commissioners ‘soon allowed themselves to be goaded … by the constant sallies of the French Senior Commissioner’.²⁴

In the meantime, the momentum building for greater Islander control had come to a head at Lae, mainly over the ban on political discussion. The more general context, as Mara recalled it, were the moves to independence, something to which he was actually opposed for his own country at the time, but which was nonetheless a topic he wanted to discuss.

In 1962 Western Samoa had become independent and Nauru was on the way. In Fiji we were trying to stem the tide of independence whipped up by agitation at the United Nations. We wanted to talk about it, to hear the views of the main countries in the South Pacific Commission. But we were not allowed. France was the most insistent on this point, probably on account of its own vulnerable position in the Pacific, because of both its overseas territories there and its nuclear-testing programme at Mururoa Atoll. … I walked out of the conference and the rest of the delegates followed.²⁵

Mara’s comments present an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, he wanted Indigenous delegates to have much more say in the Commission and accused the colonial powers of arrogance. On the other, like most other Indigenous Fijian leaders of his generation, he was strongly opposed to independence for Fiji and resented pressures at the UN pushing for rapid decolonization, and so the situation in Fiji hardly constituted a struggle between imperial control and self-determination.

The apparent contradiction between Mara’s views on colonialism within the SPC, and colonialism within Fiji, reflects a long history of close relations between the dominant chiefly groups of eastern Fiji, of which Mara was a prominent member, and the British colonial authorities. Mara had much more of a sense of partnership with the latter than of subordination. British colonial rule was nothing if not hierarchical, but it was a hierarchy that had long co-opted Indigenous elites from equally hierarchical sociopolitical backgrounds. Another factor was the presence of a large Indo-Fijian population – descendants of migrants brought in from India to provide cheap plantation labour and often portrayed as threatening Indigenous interests. Apart from accommodating the Indigenous hierarchy, the British colonial system was regarded as a protective mechanism ensuring the paramount rights of Fiji’s Indigenous people over those of other groups.

Mara clearly found interactions with other colonial powers within the Commission – France in particular – far less congenial. A Fijian participant in the SPC in this period, Jioji Kotabalavu, confirms that Fiji’s internal politics were different from the regional sphere, with Fijians very close to their British colonial administrators ‘but because regional politics involved quite different considerations, so the relationship with [other] colonial powers was different’.²⁶

The UK, however, was committed to divesting itself of burdens in a region remote from its strategic interests. In addition to a precarious financial situation at home, crises in other parts of the world had confronted the British government in the mid-1960s and, in January 1968, it decided to withdraw its forces from ‘East of Suez’ – a now paradigmatic phrase signalling a major turning point in Britain’s history as a global power.²⁷

The UK was not the only colonial power supporting moves to independence in the region. New Zealand and Australia were to become active decolonizers too, even where there was little or no pressure from the territories in question. Leaders in Niue, for example, needed persuasion – by New Zealand – that independence was a viable option given that there was a guarantee of continuing New Zealand responsibility for administrative and financial assistance as well as free access to New Zealand.²⁸ Niue subsequently became self-governing in ‘free association’ with New Zealand, an arrangement also made with Cook Islands.

All this was in complete contrast with the situation in the French territories where colonial authorities steadfastly refused to entertain independence as an option.²⁹ Such attitudes held firm across the French political spectrum, from left to right, and went hand in hand with a sense of national greatness – indeed, an obsession with ‘la grandeur Française’³⁰ – which had been inflated rather than undermined by the humiliation suffered in the world wars and which played out across the French colonial world. France was determined to pursue an independent nuclear capability to consolidate its status in the international sphere, which in turn required testing grounds in the Pacific – the Sahara Desert could no longer be used due to the war in Algeria – and French Polynesia proved the only suitable alternative. As a result, a local French Polynesian Council of Government was abolished in 1963 to prevent an autonomy movement developing, and the same treatment was meted out in New Caledonia. If it were not already the case, France was now perceived as a reactionary power in the Pacific.³¹

The UK had already become a nuclear military power, having tested its weapons in Australia in the 1950s and on Christmas Island (now part of Kiribati) until the early 1960s. It therefore had its own independent nuclear capability and was in a weak position to criticize France for attempting the same, as was the US with its own abysmal record of nuclear testing in Micronesia. Australia and New Zealand, however, were to become strong opponents of testing in the Pacific. In this they were aligned with most of their Island colleagues, although among the latter, views varied from radical opposition in the Melanesian countries, to more conservative views among Polynesians – an alignment that was to become evident in other ways as well.

In the meantime, following the altercation in Lae, a reform process was initiated and Mara was invited to submit proposals for the amendment of the constitution of the SPC, which he did in 1967.³² The reforms provided for stronger input from Indigenous delegates, but they did not involve a political agenda, including trade. This latter issue had already seen leaders from Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa taking matters into their own hands by forming a small regional body of their own – the Pacific Islands Producers’ Association (PIPA). The impetus is said to have come in 1964 when Mara, as Fiji’s chief minister, was negotiating a banana export contract with New Zealand and realized that to get a better deal it was essential for Island countries to cooperate.³³ PIPA is also seen as a prelude to more significant moves by Indigenous leaders to establish a broader body with a political agenda that went ‘beyond bananas’.³⁴ We return to this issue shortly.

By the end of the 1960s, the Conference had become an annual event, satisfying at least some measure of the quest for greater participation. Nonetheless, the SPC remained firmly under the control of the colonial powers, mainly because of French intransigence in the face of demands for reform. Frustration with the French, however, did not mean there were serious moves to push them out of the SPC. A 1969 New Zealand report observed that,

While we knew that Ratu Mara … would, if necessary, be prepared to see the French forced out of the Commission, there was reason to question whether his views were generally shared by the territories. … Albert Henry [of Cook Islands] certainly did not want to see the French forced out.³⁵

And while Mara envisaged turning the Conference into an annual summit, Henry was less keen on it becoming a political forum because of the potential damage to its social and economic activities, which were of major importance especially to smaller territories.³⁶ According to a New Zealand report of a meeting with Henry, he had

expressed concern that, with the accession of further independent countries to the Commission, it might become a political forum which, in his opinion, would spoil it and hinder its functioning. He said that the territories were growing up politically and needed a forum in which to mature and he felt that many might use the Conference for this as it was the only possible forum at this stage. He felt that this would divert much energy from the co-operation and aid aspects of the Commission which were its main benefit to the territories and especially to the Cook Islands which were small and isolated.³⁷

The US was also averse to political reformism. A 1968 New Zealand report had noted that the US ‘intended to discourage any relationships that might lead to independence movements or conflicting loyalties, especially in the US territories to the North’.³⁸ Another report mentions US concerns to keep the French ‘within the fold if Pacific cooperation is to be of any significance in the future’.³⁹

Regionalism, as it stood then, was still seen to be stronger with the French inside the SPC tent rather than outside it. Also, for Island leaders, the SPC remained the only organization that brought them together at this stage, providing a valuable opportunity for at least informal political discussions. So, although the SPC had never intended doing so, ‘it promoted the very conditions favouring the development of a political agenda by bringing together the leaders of the different island communities, giving them the opportunity to discuss common problems, to realize the extent of their common interests and to provide a means for the public expression of their needs and desires’.⁴⁰

The establishment of the Forum as a politically oriented body was to take some pressure off the SPC, although the latter organization continued to undergo other reforms which, by 1974, gave Island leaders much greater control within the organization. An advantage that the SPC also continued to enjoy over the Forum was its much more extensive membership, bringing together all countries of the Pacific, whatever their status. As the Pacific Community, it is still a major development organization, attracting funding from a wide range of donor organizations for its cultural, scientific, and technical programmes. Its apolitical status has also enabled it to remain aloof from episodes of political turbulence – sanctions against coup-prone Fiji since 1987 being a major case in point.⁴¹

The South Pacific Forum

Following the 1965 Lae Conference walkout, it was reported that informal talk of a ‘Regional Council’ to give Island leaders a greater say in political and economic affairs was in the air.⁴² Who was doing the ‘talking’ is not exactly clear – but it would certainly not have been France or the US. An early proponent of an entirely new regional body was the UK. The first specific mention in the archival record appears in 1967, in the papers of the Western Pacific High Commission, which speak of the possibility of forming a ‘Pacific Consultative Council’ and which the UK clearly wanted to promote.⁴³ Pacific Islands Monthly also reported the British secretary of state for the colonies as saying that ‘Britain had been doing some serious “homework” on the possibility of forming the small Pacific groups of islands into viable trading and political associations’, and he expected Australia and New Zealand to take a proactive role.⁴⁴ Australian records for that year report that Britain had given much thought to how ‘the four administering powers in the region should encourage the emergence of a grouping to replace colonial relationships’, and provided the following extract from the British papers:

The most important function of the grouping would be to provide a forum in which leaders of the territory governments can discuss regional affairs. … Membership would be a crucial question. The best course might be to leave it to a founding group (perhaps W. Samoa, Tonga and Fiji) to work out a formula. Alternatively, the group might be a specifically ‘post-colonial’ one, admission to which would constitute a ‘birth certificate’ for a territory that had shed its colonial status.⁴⁵

Another British paper, dated June 1968, indicated that, ideally, the initiative should come from the Island territories themselves and that pressure from the metropolitan powers might prove counterproductive. The paper went on to propose a robust form of regional association among the Island countries:

One possibility … is to encourage the island territories to form a central forum – some form of ‘Pacific Consultative Assembly’ … at which island leaders could discuss political and other matters of mutual interest … Such an Assembly would no doubt be composed of territory members only. … it is in the interests of both metropolitan governments and the territories that the latter should not develop into a collection of mini-states without any form of cohesion, but that, in the interests of stability in the area, they should be encouraged to work together so far as geographical difficulties permit and to regard themselves as a Pacific family. … Given the acceleration in political evolution which can be detected at any rate in Fiji and Tonga, it seems to us a matter of some urgency to attempt to reach a common view on whether any progress in the direction of increasing cohesion amongst territories in political fields is possible and if so how it might be promoted or facilitated by the metropolitan governments.⁴⁶

An initial response from New Zealand noted that British policy had ‘for some time been directed towards finding ways to reduce and finally terminate their colonial responsibilities in the area’,⁴⁷ but there appeared to be little demand from the territories themselves and that ‘it would be better to let political cooperation grow from existing associations rather than attempt to impose a new body for which there was at present no spontaneous demand’.⁴⁸ It was agreed that time be set aside at the next SPC Conference for some general debate at which the more ‘sophisticated’ territories could air their views.⁴⁹

But even by 1969, and despite dissatisfaction with aspects of SPC operations, a New Zealand report said that Pacific Island territories – other than Fiji, with some support from Nauru and Cook Islands along with a few critical comments from Western Samoa and Tonga – appeared reasonably ‘content with current arrangements’.⁵⁰ But dissatisfaction with these arrangements was to become more apparent over the next year.

New Zealand’s Norman Kirk, the Labour Party leader who was to become prime minister from 1972–4, had issued a proposal in 1968 to ‘meet many of the political deficiencies in the regional scene’, suggesting that a Pacific council of parliamentarians modelled along the lines of the Nordic Council be established. It could ‘include Australia, New Zealand, and the mini-states of the south-west Pacific which have common historical, cultural and legal traditions, and common interests’ and which could be extended at some future point to encompass neighbouring Southeast Asian and other Pacific nations. Kirk’s vision explicitly mentioned the establishment of a South Pacific ‘forum’ to address political and economic problems in the region.⁵¹

By the beginning of the 1970s, Australia had developed a position on how matters could be moved forward. One report noted disillusionment with the French in the SPC, and evinced sympathy with the British idea of a new regional body. There was also concern at prospects for Papua and New Guinea which Australia did not want to be ‘sucked into the cockpit of Asia’. A ‘real political context’ in the South Pacific would provide it with a genuine alternative.⁵² Another report noted that ‘whether Papua-New Guinea is to be considered a part of the region depends essentially on political decisions to be taken by indigenous leaders in the Territory’.⁵³

Australia’s approach to the region at this time sometimes appeared rather languid, at least at prime ministerial level. A 1969 report in Pacific Islands Monthly complained of how little interest had been shown by conservative Prime Minister Gorton.⁵⁴ Two years later, at the inaugural meeting of the Forum, all those leading delegations were heads of government, except Australia. Even when the second meeting was held in Canberra in 1972, Australia’s Prime Minister McMahon attended only at the opening ceremony after which Australia’s participation was left to the Foreign Affairs minister.⁵⁵

Even so, the record indicates that Australia, as well as New Zealand and Britain, favoured moving towards a political body and encouraged Island leaders in that direction. And if conservative Australian prime ministers of the period sometimes appeared indifferent, documents of the time show that serious attention was being paid to the region at the bureaucratic level.

By early 1970, there was still no overt movement by Island leaders to forge ahead with a new political body. Towards the end of 1970, a New Zealand report said that of the ‘many political forums that have been suggested, none seem yet to have got off the ground, perhaps because none of the prospective fathers has wished to run the risk of siring a white elephant’.⁵⁶ Following the 1970 SPC Conference, however, a substantial New Zealand report noted continuing dissatisfaction among some Pacific Island countries, and Fiji was again singled out as the country pressing hardest for self-determination inside the SPC. But, as yet, there was no mention of Mara promoting a separate body.⁵⁷ Western Samoa’s prime minister, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi IV, also ‘acted as a catalyst in an attempt to convene a meeting of Prime Ministers of the independent states for early 1971’. After observing the tenth Conference in Suva, Tamasese reportedly said that ‘he felt the organisation was so inadequate he wanted a Polynesian Prime Ministers’ meeting’.⁵⁸ The report continued:

After the October 10th Independence celebrations in Fiji, Tamasese [had been] able to talk with other political leaders from the region … possibly in Suva or Apia. … Cook Islands Premier Albert Henry, had called during his early 1970 visit to Australia for a new political body outside the SPC, so it was no surprise to hear Tamasese say Henry was keen on this new idea. Tu’ipelekae, PM of Tonga, was apparently more interested in the Tamasese idea initially than later, but his country’s refusal to join the SPC makes it likely he will remain interested in an alternative forum.⁵⁹

As for the SPC itself, the report said it remained limited by the more conservative metropolitan powers’ refusal to allow political discussions while its secretariat was ‘hemmed in by constraints that have deterred it from initiating significant programmes of co-operation’ and ‘has failed to meet the changing needs of the region’. A problem for a grouping of independent Island members at this stage, however, was that it would ‘include only five members when the region has 18 territories and states, and this may prove a weakness’. The report continued:

The initiating central body in regional co-operation in the South Pacific needs the widest membership and the greatest freedom in choosing topics for deliberation, as well as the administrative back-up services necessary to press for programme implementation. …  [But what really matters overall] is that there is a body with the political authority the SPC has been denied the right to develop. There must be an institution that gives voice and effect to the aspirations of the inhabitants of the region.⁶⁰

To summarize, it is clear that British moves to extricate itself from responsibilities in the region involved more than formal decolonization of individual countries. It also involved a major exercise in decolonizing regionalism which, given French intransigence, could only be achieved by the establishment of a new, separate organization through which Island leaders could freely discuss political and any other matters relevant to their interests. Australia and New Zealand, too, clearly supported the need to move to a separate organization but, along with the UK, recognized that Island leaders themselves needed to take matters forward. But a practical move was still to be made.

The South Pacific Forum

We have seen that Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa had already taken an important initiative in establishing PIPA in 1965. In 1968, its terms of reference were extended to encompass joint ventures as well as regional transport, fisheries, and handicrafts. By 1970 it had a constitution, an annual conference, and subsidiaries and, by 1971, an advisory committee consisting of the prime ministers of Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa, the Cook Islands premier, and the leaders of government business of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and of Niue. In practice, however, its annual meetings were usually attended only at ministry (of agriculture) level. Although there was no mention of a political role in its constitution, it did not preclude one and PIPA could have evolved to provide a political voice.⁶¹ Indeed, at its seventh session in Apia in 1972 (after the Forum had been established), it registered a strong protest against continuing French nuclear testing in the region.⁶²

PIPA membership did not include any of the metropolitan powers, prompting a suggestion that the exclusion of Australia and New Zealand ‘may have had a good deal to do with the establishment of the Forum’.⁶³ This implies that these two metropolitan countries played a central role in promoting it because they wanted, from the start, to be members themselves. But while it is obvious from the record that Australia and New Zealand actively promoted moves to create a new political body, it is less clear that they had always expected to be part of one. At least, if there was such an expectation, it is not evident in the archival records of the late 1960s. Even as late as 1970–1, there is no evidence in the records of either country being assured of a seat at the table. Their support and encouragement of initiatives to create such an organization, however, made it much more likely that they would. As it turns out, Australian and New Zealand both welcomed the opportunity to be part of a new organization and their interests have certainly been better served by being members themselves.

That issue aside, the emergence of the Forum is usually seen as an Islander initiative, or more especially an initiative of chiefly leaders in the Southwest Pacific.⁶⁴ One source says that it was within PIPA – at their sixth meeting in Tonga in April 1971 – that discussions first took place about forming a larger regional body, apparently on the prompting of Fiji’s Ratu Mara who was then tasked with taking matters forward.⁶⁵ However, a significant public statement about the possibility of a new organization had come from another Island leader earlier, in June 1970. Cook Islands Premier, Albert Henry, had declared that the South Pacific region needed a ‘mini-United Nations Organisation’ operating independently of the SPC and catering for political discussion. ‘The SPC is still a paternal body, formed by metropolitan powers and it’s still a metropolitan power showcase, despite the trend for more say for the Islanders’.⁶⁶ He added, however, that ‘soap box politics’ by Island leaders should have no place in the SPC – a different kind of organization was needed. But not all metropolitan powers should be excluded, and Henry said he had in fact approached Australia and New Zealand for support for a new regional body, without which he thought it was unlikely to succeed. These countries, he said, were in any case an integral part of the Pacific, which the US, Britain, and France were not. He said that he had not consulted the French ‘because their attitude is dogmatic’.⁶⁷

In December 1970, the New Zealand Island and Maori Affairs minister announced publicly that he would encourage ‘a political forum where island countries can meet on equal terms with Australia and New Zealand’.⁶⁸ Both Albert Henry’s statement and the New Zealand announcement took place in advance of PIPA’s April 1971 meeting, so it may be an error to credit that meeting (and Mara) with having actually initiated the move. In any event, Kotabalavu’s recollection is that New Zealand Prime Minister Holyoake was indeed asked to go ahead with convening a meeting of Island leaders in Wellington. Further, ‘having asked for such assistance, it was felt that NZ must be asked to join, and Australia too, as without them the Forum would not be viable. They were both in the region – not like ‘metropolitan’ powers – and so were regarded differently’.⁶⁹ The New Zealand prime minister then issued a formal letter of invitation to leaders of the independent and self-governing countries – Cook Islands, Fiji, Nauru, Tonga, and Western Samoa – as well as to Australia, to a meeting in Wellington in 1971. This meeting was to be the effective founding moment of the South Pacific Forum.

With respect to Australia’s and New Zealand’s inclusion, it was certainly unusual for a ‘Third World’ regional organization and has created certain anomalies.⁷⁰ A media report of the time, however, suggested that self-determination movements in the South Pacific differed from those elsewhere in wishing to maintain close colonial contacts, attributable to ‘few feelings of strong antagonism to vestiges of colonial influence’ as well as ‘the desire to use their colonial contacts for economic assistance, for diplomatic assistance, and for migration opportunities’.⁷¹ Even so, the exclusion of the US, France, and the UK signalled a shift away from direct involvement by great powers and, in the absence of France in particular, facilitated discussion of the most vexed political issues of the time – decolonization and nuclear testing.

New Zealand’s self-image at the time was that it was ‘reasonably well regarded’ among Island leaders, especially given that they had chosen to come to Wellington for their inaugural meeting,⁷² although other options may have been in short supply. Suva may have been a suitable venue, but Mara was no doubt sensitive to the fact that his prominence in regional affairs could provoke resentment. A venue in Wellington rather than Suva provided a more neutral location, at least for Island participants. This is supported by correspondence from Wellington, dated May 1971, which quotes a letter from Mara describing Wellington as more ‘neutral soil’. The New Zealand commentary on the matter added that ‘despite assertions to the contrary it is obvious that old jealousies and rivalries are still close to the surface’.⁷³ The newly independent Islands countries were also going to expect more of New Zealand by way of advice and assistance ‘and, so long as it is not too obvious, leadership’.⁷⁴ The New Zealand brief also mentioned that Ratu Mara was not altogether happy about the Australian presence in Wellington. But it also emphasized that ‘dislike of Australia was a luxury none of us can afford’, and that instead of taking the negative line that Australia simply does not ‘understand the Pacific and was only interested in its commercial exploitation, it would be much more productive … to take the opportunity provided by the forum to influence Australian thinking in more positive directions’. Elsewhere it was reported that: ‘The island states are a trifle nervous of Australia’,⁷⁵ but it was also observed that ‘Western Samoa would welcome a greater Australian presence’.⁷⁶ More generally, New Zealand records state that it was a good time to start building a ‘new style of regional solidarity’, while also noting that the SPC must still be supported ‘and so far as possible brought up to date to deal with the new situation’.⁷⁷

Senior Australian officials were at least aware of some negative attitudes towards Australia. A candid assessment of their role in the region was presented in a substantial policy paper produced soon after the Forum’s first meeting. On the question of Australia’s reputation, it said that:

Unfortunately, one cannot escape the conclusion, despite past official optimism on this score, that the islanders tend not to like what they see. Despite the widespread notion in Australia that there is a basic fund of goodwill towards Australia in the islands, Australia has a poor image which arises directly from a combination of persistent factors: Australia’s restrictive immigration policy in the face of islander over-population and limited employment opportunities, especially for educated islanders … Australia’s heavily, and in most cases increasingly, favourable balance of trade … the widespread view which some islanders have come close to expressing officially, that Australia has in the region an economic asset for which it neither feels nor exercises any real responsibility beyond its own benefit; the association of Australians with racially discriminatory practices in the islands themselves; in all, a feeling that Australia is concerned only for its own interests in the region, principally commercial profit, and too indifferent to the welfare of the islands to assume the responsible leadership for which it is naturally fitted by its geographic and economic position, and which, it is becoming increasingly clear, island leaders wish it to assume.⁷⁸

The report further observed that Australia’s standing in the region could be improved if they were seen to cooperate politically with Islanders ‘on a basis of equality’.⁷⁹

But if Australia’s attitude was problematic, it was not the only one. The New Zealand briefing papers produced ahead of the first Forum meeting mentioned the attitudes of Polynesian leaders towards Melanesians. ‘One tendency which should if possible be checked is the apparent preference of the Polynesians to ignore or exclude the Melanesians from their counsels’. ⁸⁰ The Australian High Commissioner in Suva also reported on a meeting with Mara, noting that with respect to the forthcoming inaugural Forum meeting, ‘he is implacable in his antagonism to any form of participation by PNG’. Some of Mara’s comments are quoted verbatim: ‘Why is Australia always pushing PNG’; ‘Why equate independent countries with PNG’; ‘If there is participation in any form by PNG the Forum will not be held’.⁸¹

It was not only within the Forum that Mara attempted to exclude PNG influence. The correspondence also noted Mara’s ‘emotional and illogical’ reaction to the candidature of a Papua/New Guinean,⁸² Oala Oala-Rarua, for the position of SPC secretary-general which Australia was sponsoring. Mara reportedly stated that ‘if Oala is elected it will be the end of the Commission’ and ‘Who has ever heard of Oala?’⁸³ Given that Oala-Rarua had been a Papua/New Guinea delegate to the 1970 SPC Conference in Suva, and that he had spoken out strongly against the prohibition of political discussions as well as nuclear testing, Mara’s latter remarks here are disingenuous. Mara knew perfectly well who he was, and his comment can only be interpreted as suggesting he was a person of no importance, at least as compared with the famously egotistical Mara himself. A comment in another report of a meeting with a Nauruan senior commissioner said that Nauru had supported the appointment of Oala-Rarua and ‘spoke with distaste’ of the ‘Fijian pressures’ exercised in the matter.⁸⁴

The Australian report also noted that, although generally more supportive than Mara, negative attitudes were sometimes evident from Western Samoa and Tonga. The report continued:

Ratu Mara is conscious of his aristocratic Polynesian ancestry. He is a blood relation to the Prime Minister of Western Samoa and Tonga. I believe that he sees PNG in the image of a primitive upstart nation and by virtue of its numbers likely to take leadership in the Pacific from the more sophisticated Polynesians.⁸⁵

With independence on the horizon, however, both Australia and New Zealand were concerned to keep Papua New Guinea oriented to the Pacific Islands region rather than see it turn towards Southeast Asia.⁸⁶ That particular consideration may also have figured in informal conversations with Mara and other Polynesian leaders who would have to eventually face up to the full inclusion of Melanesian countries as they moved to independence. But Papua New Guinea, as it was to become, appeared to provoke particular concern among at least some Island leaders – notably Fiji and Tonga with support from Western Samoa – in the lead-up to the Wellington conference, evincing a ‘hard line resistance’ to any representation of PNG, even to the point of suggesting that ‘PNG is not in the South Pacific in the way they are’.⁸⁷

Mara’s attitude appeared to modify over time. Kotobalavu recalls that, as the Melanesian countries approached independent status, Mara developed close personal relations with leaders such as Somare of Papua New Guinea and Father Leymang and George Sokomanu of Vanuatu. Leaders from Solomon Islands and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands also had ties to Fiji and to Ratu Mara due to their participation in the Western Pacific High Commission, and many had been educated in Fiji.⁸⁸ In addition, as a principal author of the famed ‘Pacific Way’, first introduced in his speech to the United Nations in 1970 and subsequently promoted around the region as an overarching, unifying identity for all Pacific Islanders, Mara had necessarily to modify his position vis-à-vis his Melanesian colleagues.

Despite this apparent rapprochement, a subregional Polynesia/Melanesia political divide was to play into various aspects of regional politics over the years illustrated, among other things, by the emergence of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in the early 1980s – at least partly prompted by the dominance of Polynesians in regional affairs at the time as well as the fact that the latter were far more conservative on a range of issues, including decolonization.⁸⁹ This illustrates the more general point that Island leaders then, as now, cannot be treated as a single, undifferentiated entity.

Returning briefly to Australian perspectives on the moves to create a political forum, these were summarized in March 1971 by Foreign Affairs Minister Leslie Bury. Referring to a detailed cabinet submission, he stated that this document,

[A]rgues a case for Australia and New Zealand participation in consultative arrangements that we believe the independent countries of the Pacific … wish to establish to avoid the restrictive and inhibitory framework of the South Pacific Commission and Conference, where deference has now to be paid to French and, to a lesser extent, American, objections to wide-ranging discussions.

The Departments of Trade and Immigration accept and endorse the argument that although closer association with island governments exposes to criticism our trade imbalance and restrictive immigration policy, that is something that would occur in any case, and is most effectively dealt with against a background of political co-operation and consultation. … 

The Department of External Territories accepts the assessment of the inadequacies of the South Pacific Commission to meet new political needs and the desirability of taking these up in a more limited Commonwealth grouping. They believe Papua and New Guinea should be associated from the outset with the new proposal.

The Government of New Zealand has already endorsed the concept and appears to have been fairly active in canvassing island opinions in the Polynesian Territories. … 

Having established a common position with New Zealand, we should inform the British, the Americans and the French of our intentions, and proceed with approaches to the Islanders.⁹⁰

The full submission also stressed that if ‘Island interest and support is to be maintained, the initiative for the creation of a separate political forum must come from the Islanders themselves’. And on the broader view of regionalism, it was considered important for everyone’s interests, including those of the territories,

that the latter should not develop into a collection of mini-states without any form of cohesion. On the contrary, they should be encouraged to develop a regional consciousness and to work together so far as geography permits. The greater the cohesion of the region the better it will be able to deal with external forces, and where necessary to resist external penetration without the need for assistance.⁹¹

I believe we should go beyond mere encouragement, and … should do what we can to influence Island thinking towards the inclusion of ourselves and New Zealand in a forum. … Our participation at an early stage would be preferable to delaying, and perhaps risking the development of arrangements from which we were excluded.⁹²

Immediate consultations with New Zealand were recommended ‘with a view to agreement in principle on the desirability of encouraging the Islanders to take the initiative in setting up a new political forum separate from the South Pacific Commission and Conference’.⁹³ Note that this report was dated the month before the April 1971 PIPA meeting.

In organizing the first meeting in Wellington, invitations were sent out by Prime Minister Holyoake in July 1971 to the heads of government of Fiji, Tonga, Western Samoa, Cook Islands, and Nauru. The invitation to Ratu Mara, more or less identical to the others, set out what had obviously been discussed informally in the period immediately preceding.

On behalf of the Government of New Zealand I should like to invite you to join with the Prime Ministers of Western Samoa and Tonga, the President of Nauru, the Premier of the Cook Islands, and representatives of the Australian Government, to discuss, privately and informally, a wide range of issues of concern to the South Pacific as a whole. I believe that you and your colleagues would be glad to have an opportunity to have talks in such a forum, at a time when more and more Pacific nations are assuming full responsibility for the running of modern administrations and economies. The New Zealand Government is firmly of the view that the future well-being of the people of the South Pacific can be assured only by the close cooperation of all, and is glad to host a meeting which will serve to strengthen the ties between us.⁹⁴

The first meeting of what would officially be called the South Pacific Forum was held in Wellington from 5–7 August 1971 with the heads of government of Fiji, Tonga, Western Samoa, Cook Islands, and Nauru in attendance along with the New Zealand prime minister and the Australian minister for external territories. An Australian policy paper produced shortly afterwards described the event as ‘an encouraging start’.

The proceedings were businesslike, cordial, devoid of controversy, and covered many subjects of common concern to the islands: Communications, trade, investment, tourism, law of the sea, oceanic resources, development, French nuclear tests, education and others. There was no aid-begging. The island leaders … valued the participation of Australia and New Zealand, and looked to them for practical help and guidance. They used the meeting to start to co-ordinate, at the highest level, the activities in which their countries engage together, and to engage the attention and help of Australia and New Zealand. It was clear that all present saw the value of such consultation, and that they wished it to be continuing and regular.⁹⁵

The formal communiqué from the 1971 Wellington meeting celebrated the event as having ‘significantly advanced the spirit of regional cooperation and mutual confidence’.⁹⁶ Some agenda items overlapped with matters already dealt with at the SPC, a problem that would lead to debates sometime later about merging the two organizations. But with a venue for political discussions at last available, at least some of the frustrations of the past could be left behind.

Conclusion

The emergence of the South Pacific Forum was clearly a major turning point in the decolonization of regional politics and in which both Pacific Island leaders and the metropolitan powers all played significant roles. Among the latter, very different agendas were being pursued. Britain was determined to withdraw, as far as possible, from its responsibilities in the region while France was equally determined to cling on to imperial control of its territories. The strategic interests of the US in Micronesia saw its approach align more closely with that of the French, but its behaviour in the SPC appears not to have provoked the same negative responses. It was probably content to let the French do the running on blocking political reform, which it could safely do without attracting too much opprobrium. Ironically, if we were to credit any particular country with inspiring the moves to decolonizing regionalism by creating the Forum, it would have to be France.

For Britain, it seemed fairly clear by 1965 that reform of the SPC to provide not only greater control by Islanders over its programmes but also a venue for political discussions – both crucial for the process of decolonization – was not a viable option. Britain was therefore an early proponent of a completely separate organization, and encouraged Australia and New Zealand to support moves by Island leaders in that direction. Among the latter, it seemed that reform of the SPC to allow for a political venue might still be possible, especially if the French were to leave. But, apart from Ratu Mara, it is evident that despite all the problems presented by the French presence in the SPC, none, either among the metropolitan powers or among the other Island leaders, wanted the French territories excluded.

At another level, although the establishment of the South Pacific Forum may be seen as a challenge to the SPC, it is probably more accurate to see it as having saved the SPC from rupture. Ratu Mara had been a prominent figure in the tensions although other Island leaders had also played a role, if not quite so publicly. In the event, with politics shifted to an alternative venue, further reforms could be undertaken within the SPC, making it somewhat less colonial in character by giving Island participants a major role while retaining membership of all the metropolitan powers. As we have seen, the Pacific Community remains a functional regional organization in the present period with a distinctly apolitical profile that allows its programmes to operate without undue disruption in times of political turmoil.

Looking at the period from 1965–70, it is also evident that Australia and New Zealand had been equally frustrated with the lack of a venue for political discussion at a time when a number of former territories had already become independent or self-governing, and with the prospect of Melanesian territories joining them in the near future. The record also shows that Australia and New Zealand played a key role in promoting the new organization, although they were concerned not to be seen as imposing their ideas. Both had an abiding interest in the development of regionalism in the emergent post-colonial period, borne out of long associations with the various countries and a concern to preserve those ties while ensuring political stability in their proximate strategic region. Indeed, political stability and strategic security were in the interests of all participants and the move to establish the Forum appears to have been a cooperative venture among all those involved.

In addition to highlighting the fact that the metropolitan powers scarcely operated as a single bloc, and that there was a very marked difference in outlook and policy between those resisting political developments and those encouraging it, the discussion has also shown that differences existed between Island leaders as well. Apart from the dominance of Fiji under Mara’s leadership sometimes aggravating other Island leaders, there was also a clear tendency among some Polynesian leaders to look down on their Melanesian counterparts. These differences were to have implications for the ‘Pacific Way’ and identity politics more generally in regional affairs in the years to come, although that is part of another, longer story.⁹⁷

In summary, although Indigenous agency in regional politics may have emerged together with a sense of collective identity vis-à-vis the colonial powers, it was never just a case of unified resistance to the impositions of an equally unified set of metropolitan powers. Framing the agency of Indigenous leaders purely in terms of resistance let alone a ‘struggle’ vis-à-vis Western colonial powers as a whole simply does not accord with the historical record.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council: [Grant Number DP140101227].

Notes

1 See, in particular, Greg Fry, Framing the Islands: Power and Diplomatic Agency in Pacific Regionalism (Canberra: ANU Press, 2019).

2 Another study of this period – Stuart Doran, Australia and the Origins of the Pacific Islands Forum (Canberra: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2004) – uses similar sources from the Australian National Archives, and there are some overlaps with the current study, but the analysis here has a different focus and also uses material from Archives New Zealand in Wellington and the Western Pacific High Commission in Auckland. It must also be noted that much of the material reflecting the perspectives of Indigenous leaders of the time is also contained in these sources, and is therefore reported second hand as well as through the lens of Australian and New Zealand officials. Having said that, there is no reason to assume that the Indigenous leaders of the period are made to speak in ways that do not accord with the positions and outlooks, noting that the reports were confidential at the time, intended to convey such perspectives as clearly as possible for the purposes of policy making, and not designed to communicate messages to a wider political audience, which are more often tinged with a political slant in the manner of what we now call ‘spin’. In addition, the public utterances of these actors, including media reports, interviews, and memoirs, align more or less with what is reported in the archival sources.

3 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ‘Historical Documents’, 551, ‘Agreement Establishing the South Pacific Commission’, Canberra, 6 Feb. 1947, https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/historical-documents/Pages/volume-12/551-agreement-establishing-the-south-pacific-commission (accessed 19 Mar. 2024).

4 Greg Fry, ‘The South Pacific “Experiment”: Reflections on the Origins of Regional Identity’, Journal of Pacific History (hereinafter JPH) 32, no. 2 (1997): 184, 199; see also Epeli Hau‘ofa, ‘The Ocean in Us’, in We Are the Ocean (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 46. The latter work attributes the SPC’s founding exclusively to the concerns of colonial powers to pre-empt the rise of independence movements, but this is a difficult position to maintain given a host of other factors. It also seems to fly in the face of the claim, made on the next two pages (47–8) of Hau‘ofa’s essay, that political independence – with the exception of Vanuatu and Western Samoa – ‘was largely imposed on us’. For a detailed account of the range of factors, interests, and positions surrounding the founding of the SPC, see Stephanie Lawson, Regional Politics in Oceania: From Colonialism and Cold War to the Pacific Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2024), esp. ch. 4.

5 United Nations, Charter of the United Nations: Chapter XII: International Trustee System, Article 76 (1945).

6 Pierre Auge, ‘Opening Address to Plenary Session by the Leader of the French Delegation, M. Pierre Auge’, in South Seas Commission Conference, Select Conference Papers (Canberra: Government Printer, 1947), 2.

7 Robert L. Butler, ‘Address by the Honourable Robert L. Butler, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States’, South Seas Commission Conference, Select Conference Papers (Canberra: 1947), 1.

8 Sydney Morning Herald, ‘How the Nations View Their Role in the South Pacific’, 12 May 1950, 2.

9 Australia, ‘Agreement’, 2.

10 Fry, ‘South Pacific “Experiment”’, 186.

11 South Pacific Commission, Secretary-General, ‘General Review by the Secretary-General on the Work Programme and Budget and on the South Pacific Commission’s Achievements and Prospects’, Annex III of Report of the Seventeenth South Pacific Conference, Pago Pago, American Samoa, 24–30 Sept. 1977, 44.

12 William Fisher and Stewart Firth, Decolonising American Micronesia, Working Paper 2020/4 (Canberra: Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University, 2020), 3.

13 For a detailed account, see John Saltford, The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of West Papua, 1962–1969: The Anatomy of Betrayal (London: Routledge, 2003).

14 Lachlan McNamee, Settling for Less; Why States Colonize and Why They Stop (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 23.

15 Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, The Pacific Way: A Memoir (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 170.

16 Stuart Inder, ‘New Member and a New Direction for SPC’, Pacific Islands Monthly 35, no. 11 (1964): 11.

17 See Ibid.

18 Quoted in Robert Langdon, ‘South Seas Regional Council May Grow Out of Lae Talks’, Pacific Islands Monthly 36, no. 8 (1965): 23–4.

19 Fry, Framing the Islands, 102, emphasis added.

20 For a critique of this style of analysis, see Stephanie Lawson, Postcolonialism, Neo-Colonialism and the ‘Pacific Way’: A Critique of (Un)critical Approaches, Discussion Paper 2010/4 (Canberra: State Society and Governance in Melanesia, ANU, 2010).

21 The archival record referred to here consists mainly of confidential reports produced by the Australian and New Zealand governments and which have, as far as can be ascertained, not been consulted in previous studies.

22 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, 32/1/3 Letter to Prime Minister from Secretary of External Affairs, 12 June 1965, Archives New Zealand (hereinafter ArchNZ), IT1W 2439 114 Record no. 92/1/13, Part no. 1, ‘South Pacific Commission – Conferences’ [09/1962–11/1965].

23 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, From Wellington to Apia, 1 Oct. 1965, ArchNZ, IT1W 2439 114 Record no. 92/1/13, Part no. 1, ‘South Pacific Commission – Conferences’ [09/1962–11/1965].

24 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, Wellington, to Prime Minister, 27 Feb. 1968, ArchNZ, ABHS W4628 6958, Box 29, Part 10, ‘Political Affairs – Regional Arrangements – South Pacific Commission, 1966–1969’.

25 Mara, Pacific Way, 170, emphasis added.

26 Jioji Kotabalavu, former Secretary for Foreign Affairs for Fiji, later CEO of Prime Minister’s Office in Fiji under the Qarase government; former CEO of SOPAC (SPC’s Geoscience Division), personal interview, Suva, 13 Sept. 2014.

27 See Gill Bennett, Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 95.

28 Radio New Zealand, transcript of interview with Mitiaiagimene Young Vivian, former SPC Secretary-General and former Premier of Niue, recorded 1995 (online).

29 Tony Smith, ‘A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, no. 1 (1978): 72, 84.

30 Ian Taylor, The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Continuum, 2010), 52.

31 Paul de Dekker, ‘Decolonisation Processes in the South Pacific Islands: A Comparative Analysis Between Metropolitan Powers’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 26, no. 355 (1996): 358.

32 Mara, Pacific Way, 170–1.

33 Sione Kite, ‘The Microstates of the South Pacific: An Examination and Analysis of their Membership in the Commonwealth as Compared with the Importance of their Membership in Regional and International Organisations’ (MA thesis, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1974), 22; Sandra Tarte, ‘Regionalism and Globalism in the South Pacific’, Development and Change 20, no. 2 (1989): 183; see also Mara, Pacific Way, 168.

34 Kotabalavu, interview, 2014.

35 To New Zealand High Commission, Canberra, from Secretary External Affairs, Wellington, 14 July 1969, ‘Quadripartite Consultations on the South Pacific’, attachment ‘Notes of a Meeting with Sir Gawain Bell on Monday 9 June’, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

36 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, ‘South Pacific Regionalism’, paper prepared by C. Craw, 15 June 1970, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

37 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, Record of Conversation with Mr Albert Henry, Premier of the Cook Islands, and Mr S. Sadaraka, Secretary of Premier’s Department of Cook Islands [with NZ officials led by Mr Booker], 23 Apr. 1970 (313/5/1), ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

38 From New Zealand High Commission, Canberra, to Secretary External Affairs, Wellington, 3 Sept. 1968, ‘Quadripartite Consultations on the Pacific: US views of British Proposals for Regional Cooperation’, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

39 From New Zealand Embassy, Washington, to Secretary, External Affairs, Wellington, 11 Dec. 1969, ‘Quadripartite Consultations on South Pacific: Review of South Pacific Commission’, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

40 T. R. Smith, Third Secretary-General of the SPC, quoted in SPC, Meeting House of the Pacific: The Story of the SPC 1947–2007 (Noumea: SPC, 2007), 82.

41 Cameron Diver, Deputy Director-General, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, personal interview, SPC Headquarters, Noumea, 11 Oct. 2016.

42 Langdon, ‘South Seas Regional Council’, 21.

43 Western Pacific High Commission, ‘Administration – General: Four Power Talks on South Pacific’, 1967, pp. 100–103, Special Collections, University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services, CF345/6/Y.

44 Pacific Islands Monthly, ‘Britain Seeks New Ways of Running its Island Realm’, 38, no. 3 (1967): 9–10.

45 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Political and Social Research Section, ‘Notes on the Origin of the South Pacific Forum’, 29 June 1973, p. 2, National Archives of Australia (hereinafter NAA), File 277/1/1.

46 United Kingdom, Pacific Consultations Canberra, ‘Future Relationships Within the Area’, June 1968, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

47 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, Wellington to NZHC Canberra, 10 July 68, ‘Four-Power Consultations’, Arch NZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

48 From New Zealand High Commission, Canberra, to Secretary External Affairs, Wellington, 19 July 1968, ‘Quadripartite Consultations on the South Pacific’, Arch NZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

49 Ibid.

50 To New Zealand High Commission, Canberra, from Secretary External Affairs, Wellington, 8 May 1969, ‘Quadripartite Consultations on the South Pacific Commission: Proposal for Review Committee’, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

51 Norman Kirk, ‘South Pacific Council Proposals’ Socialist International Information’, 17 Aug. 1968, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

52 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, From K. Desmond to Rowen Osborn, High Commission, Suva, Sept. 1971, NAA, A1838, 280/18 Part 1.

53 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Canberra, Policy Planning Paper, ‘Australian Policy in the South Pacific’, LP.4/71 Rev.1, 5 Oct. 1971, 4, NAA, A1838, 280/18 Part 1, 16.

54 R.W. Robson, ‘Australia’s Role in the South Pacific’, Pacific Islands Monthly 40, no. 2 (1969): 31.

55 Kite, Microstates, 25.

56 From Secretary of Foreign Affairs to Ambassador, NZ Embassy Washington, 9 Dec. 1970, ArchNZ, PM 304/4/1.

57 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, Asia-Pacific Research Unit, Foreign Report: South Pacific Regional Cooperation: Trends, vol. 1, no. 6, filed by Anthony Haas, Suva, 19 Nov. 1970, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4188, Record no. 301/4/1, Part no. 5.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid. (emphasis added).

61 M. Margaret Ball, ‘Regionalism and the Pacific Commonwealth’, Pacific Affairs 46, no. 2 (1973): 241.

62 Kite, Microstates of the South Pacific, 24.

63 Ball, ‘Regionalism’, 243.

64 Kotabalavu, interview, 2014.

65 Kite, Microstates, 24.

66 Pacific Islands Monthly, ‘Albert Henry Wants a New South Pacific Forum’, 41, no. 6 (1970): 26.

67 Ibid.

68 Quoted in Ball, ‘Regionalism’, 243.

69 Kotabalavu, interview, 2014.

70 Peter Brown, Australian Influence in the South Pacific (Canberra: Australian Defence College, 2012); see also Richard Herr, ‘The Frontiers of Pacific Island Regionalism: Charting the Boundaries of Identity’, Asia-Pacific World 4, no. 1 (2013): 51; Sandra Tarte, ‘Fiji’s Role in the South Pacific Forum, 1971–1984’ (BA Hons thesis, University of Melbourne, 1985), 9.

71 Anthony Haas, ‘Self-Rule in the South Pacific’, Observer Foreign News Service no. 27789, 1 June 1970.

72 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, ‘Confidential: South Pacific Forum, Wellington: 5–7 August 1971, Brief for New Zealand Delegation’, ArchNZ, ref: ICW2266 2, Record no. 327. Note that according to Australian officials, New Zealand evidently had some sensitivities about Australian involvement, being somewhat ‘jealous to maintain what they regard as ascendancy in this sphere’. See Doran, Australia and the Origins, 6.

73 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, ‘Confidential, New Zealand Eyes Only’, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Wellington, 4 May 1971, ‘Pacific Islands: General – South Pacific Leaders Meeting: Political Forums etc. 1971’, ArchNZ, ref: ABHS W4637 6978, Box 7, Part no. 1.

74 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, ‘Confidential: South Pacific Forum’.

75 Ibid.

76 New Zealand High Commission, Suva, outward telegram, ‘Confidential, South Pacific Forum’, 30 July 1971, ArchNZ, ref: ABHS W5399 6942, Box 158, Record no. API 301/1/2.

77 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, ‘Confidential: South Pacific Forum’.

78 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, ‘Australian Policy in the South Pacific’, 29.

79 Ibid.

80 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, ‘Confidential: South Pacific Forum’.

81 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Inward Cablegram, from Australian High Commission, Suva, to Foreign Minister, Canberra, re: ‘Pacific Forum Wellington Meeting’, 4 July 1971, NAA, A1838, 280/18, Part 1, ‘South Pacific Commission (SPC) – Fijian Policy’.

82 Papua and New Guinea were still two separate territories at that stage.

83 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Inward Cablegram, from Australian High Commission, Suva, to Foreign Minister, Canberra.

84 Australia, Office of Australian Representative, Nauru Island, to Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs, 17 Dec. 1971, NAA, 223/3/1 no. 442, p. 2.

85 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Inward Cablegram, from Australian High Commission, Suva, to Foreign Minister, Canberra.

86 For more detail surrounding Australia’s concerns to involve Papua/New Guinea in regional affairs, and initial resistance by the core Island leaders involved in establishing the Forum, see Dornan, Australia and the Origins, 13, 17.

87 Quoted in Doran, Australia and the Origins, 13. The record Doran cites indicates that a somewhat ‘softer attitude’ was adopted by Cook Islands and that Nauru was ‘favourably disposed to both PNG and Australia’.

88 Kotobalavu, interview, 2014.

89 For more detailed analyses, see Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, ‘Re-Presenting Melanesia: Ignoble Savages and Melanesian Alter-Natives’, Contemporary Pacific 27, no. 1 (2015): 110–46; Stephanie Lawson, ‘“Melanesia”: The History and Politics of an Idea’, JPH 48, no. 1 (2013): 1–22.

90 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, Minister for Foreign Affairs (Leslie Bury), ‘Political Consultation – The South Pacific’, Canberra, Mar. 1971, NAA, A1838, 280/18. The full submission is enclosed with these papers.

91 Ibid., 10 (emphasis added). The ‘external forces’ are not specified but given the Cold War geopolitical context of the period it must be assumed that communist influences emanating from the USSR were a concern. China did not figure in terms of strategic security at this time.

92 Ibid., 11–12.

93 Ibid., 20.

94 New Zealand, Department of External Affairs, High Commission, Fiji, ‘Formal Letter of Invitation from the PM to Ratu Mara’, 6 July 1971, ArchNZ, ABHS W4627 950, Box 4191, Part no. 1, ‘Pacific Islands: Political Affairs – South Pacific Forum: Delegations [06/71–06/75], 1971–1975’.

95 Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs, ‘Australian Policy in the South Pacific’, 29–30.

96 South Pacific Forum, Communiqué, Wellington, 5–7 Aug. 1971.

97 These issues and many others are analysed in much more detail in Lawson, Regional Politics in Oceania.