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For five solemn days the chiefs listened to official promises of increased pay, paid tribute to their importance, cursed Rhodesia's suppressed black nationalist parties as "wild dogs and hyenas," and occasionally inquired why the Queen hadn't come down from London. At the end of it all they learned that they had just voted 622 to 0 "to cut the strings that tie us to Britain." No Tea Party. That was enough for Harold Wilson. In a final ultimatum to Smith that was also released to the press to make sure that Rhodesians got the message, he warned: "The decision to grant independence rests entirely with the British government and Parliament and they have a solemn duty to be satisfied that before granting independence, it would be acceptable to the people of the country as a whole." If Rhodesia proclaimed independence, Wilson pointed out, it would be excluded from the Commonwealth, and its people would be stripped of British citizenship.
Apart from the "disastrous" economic effects, he concluded, Rhodesia would be left "isolated and virtually friendless in a largely hostile continent." It was, noted British papers, the sternest message of its kind since the Boston Tea Party, and for the time being at least, it was certainly more effective. Amid a flurry of warnings from politicians and business leaders, Smith backed down. He promised the Parliament in Salisbury that he would not declare sudden independence, and personally sponsored a motion declaring this week's referendum would be purely academic. "The British government's moves have upset everything," he said plaintively on TV. Well, not quite everything. The white man is still master of Rhodesia.