David R. Smock

Amid conservative hopes for a settlement and liberal fears of a sell-out, Harold Wilson arrived dramatically at Gibraltar at midnight on October 8, 1968, prepared to meet Ian Smith aboard HMS Fearless to discuss the three- year-old Rhodesian crisis. Thus one more move was made in the contest that has been stalemated ever since it began on November 11, 1965, when the white minority government in Rhodesia made a unilateral declaration of the territory's independence (UDI). Despite the hopes and fears surrounding the Wilson-Smith meeting, the Fearless talks left the situation virtually unchanged. What turned out to be more significant than the talks themselves were the national and international pressures which lay behind the decision of the two sides to meet.