Addressing the Labour conference, I said that the future was inevitably one of change, but that the changes should not be an excuse for Britain to slough off the responsibilities she had inherited with the empire. If they were abandoned, the consequences could be disastrous, threatening small countries like Singapore. Our closest link with an industrial power was with Britain. If we lost that link, we would suffer a severe setback. I added simply but sincerely that Britain and the empire constituted the world that I had known all my life, a world in which the British were central to our
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