No independence before majority rule (NIBMAR) was a policy adopted by the United Kingdom requiring the implementation of majority rule in a colony, rather than rule by the white colonial minority, before the empire granted its colony independence.
In particular, this position was advocated with respect to the future status of Rhodesia as a sovereign nation. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was pressured into adopting the approach during a conference in London. Wilson was not initially inclined to do so, fearing it would slow down the rate at which Rhodesia could be granted independence, but Lester Pearson, the Prime Minister of Canada, formulated a draft resolution committing Wilson to NIBMAR. Wilson defended the policy when it was attacked as disastrous by opposition Conservatives. The accomplishment was short-lived, however, as Wilson continued to extend offers to Ian Smith which Smith ultimately rejected.
Famous quotes containing the words independence, majority and/or rule:
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)