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PAGE 8
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, OCTOBER 25, 1985
list of "severe economic measures".
Mrs. Thatcher pointedly told
reporters that "I'm not one of the some." Nevertheless, the mood in
the Bahamas revealed that Britain is being isolated in the house of her
own creation.
The Commonwealth is now overwhelmingly gentile in mem
bership, adding new meaning to Deuteronomy 28: 43--·The alien who is
among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come
down lower and lower" (RAV) •
.
It is probably only because the other
Commonwealth nations realize the grouping makes no sense without Brit
ain that they felt they couldn't pressure the Thatcher government any
further. Better a sense of fragile unity than total disruption, with
Britain forced to take leave.
Unanimity on South Africa probably
awaits a Labour government in London in the future.
At home, too, "the alien" is bedeviling Britain. Around Feast-time,
rampagI"ng vTolence erupted in the several racially mixed inner-city
areas, notably the Peckham, Brixton and Tottenham areas of greater
London CBrixton was the scene of the grim 1981 violence>, as well as
parts of Birmingham and Liverpool. In the Tottenham outbreak, rioters
used firearms for the first time.
Liberals, of course, blame the
turmoil on unemployment and police and government "insensitivity."
Thatcher government spokesmen attributed it to "plain, unadulterated
law lessness and eriminality."
In some of the earlier rioting, the
targets of rampaging black youths were Asian merchants--bringing the
phenomenon of black-brown violence, common in Africa (recently in the
Durban area) to Britain's home soil.
Australia's Peril Another slice of modern Ephraim, Australia, faces an
uncertain future too.
The racial makeup of Australian society is
changing rapidly:
long gone are the days of a European-only
immigration policy.
And as the nation's defense planners chart the
future, the one neighbor that troubles them the most is Indonesia, a
nation that has expanded steadily in its own region and whose rapidly
growing population is of growing concern in Canberra.
Here are key
excerpts of a report by Seymour Topping of THE NEW YORK TIMES News
Service, reprinted in the October 9 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:
In the three weeks I took to make a 7, 400-mile circuit of
Australia•••1 sensed � faltering of national confidence.
According to one economist, living standards have declined
over the last century from first rank in the world to 16th.
'!be leisure-loving Australians still enjoy a very comfortable
life but their leaders question whether such style can endure
unless the nation becomes more competitive in the scramble
for world markets.
While they concede the urgency of
expanding trade with Asia, most Australians still suffer from
g,,n overweening fear--described by some high government
officials as paranoia--of being swamped .QY the brown and
yellow peoples to the north.
In the remote, .vast continent, the 15 million Australians are
assuming a new identity: Asian immigration is transforming a
white Australia into a multiracial society and, as the
Commonwealth ties to Britain wither, there is a growing
affinity with the United States.
A unique society of the
Pacific basin is emerging••••