HC Deb 21 October 1952 vol 505 cc964-7

8.45 p.m.

Sir Richard Acland (Gravesend)

I shall not complain at all if the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies cannot stay to listen to me, because I have not been able to do him the courtesy of letting him know that I should be making a point on a quite different subject. I was not aware that an opportunity for raising this small point would arise, but, as it has arisen, I should like to rescue from the obscurity of a Written answer to the last Question on the Order Paper yesterday, a statement which the right hon. Gentleman was good enough to make, because it corrected a misunderstanding or a misapprehension which he created last week, on Thursday, in the course of supplementary answers which he gave.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hopkin Morris)

I would point out to the hon. Baronet that although he is perfectly in order in raising this matter, he places the Minister in a difficulty because, without the leave of the House, he has no right to speak again on this Adjournment.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Oliver Lyttelton)

Perhaps, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I might wait to ask leave of the House until I am able to ascertain whether I can make any sensible answer to the hon. Baronet, and so keep myself in reserve, if I may.

Sir R. Acland

I do not think this is a point on which I and the right hon. Gentleman are likely at this stage to find ourselves in any serious disagreement, although we may have been in very serious disagreement if we had discussed it on Thursday night, because on Thursday, when asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. T. Reid) what were the causes of the outbreak of violence in Kenya, the right hon. Gentleman said: One, which perhaps will strike hon. Members as being rather curious, is that many of the tribal dances and other means of 'letting off steam' have been suppressed by the missionaries …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th October, 1952; Vol. 505, c, 394.] This statement has obtained wide publicity in some of our British papers, and there is a reasonable likelihood that it will be copied in other papers abroad. The game of baiting the missionary is quite a popular one, although I think a rather mistaken one, because, although missionaries have no doubt made mistakes from time to time, there are no other principles except those to be found in the Sermon on the Mount with which we can cope with the problems that arise in the Colonies and many other places. That being so, I think that on the whole, we ought not to allow currency to any unjustifiable charges against missionaries.

It is not true, in any serious sense, that the tribal dances have been suppressed by the missionaries, as the statement, in answer to a supplementary question on Thursday, seems to suggest. On the contrary, if any tribal dances have been suppressed at all, they have been suppressed not by the missionaries but by the Government. Therefore, the impression given that the Government had no responsibility for this, and that the missionaries were entirely to blame, was a false one, and one which, if it had been allowed to remain uncorrected, would have done a great deal of damage in ways and places where it would have been very difficult to detect that any damage was being done, and very difficult to follow it up and correct it.

I therefore put a Question on the Order Paper on Monday last. It was put down late; I am afraid that it was one of the very last Questions, and it received no oral answer. My only purpose in speaking at this late hour is to bring this matter, as I have said, from the obscurity of a Written answer on Monday, and to put on the spoken record of the House an answer from the right hon. Gentleman which, provided that it can be as well-publicised as was his earlier statement on Thursday, would be completely satisfactory to me and to members of missionary societies who have expressed to me their real and acute distress at the misunderstanding which might have arisen from the earlier statement.

The answer, to which I should like to draw attention, is to the effect that Tribal dancing is controlled under bye-laws.… Those byelaws are, of course, the bye-laws of Government, and not the byelaws of missionaries. Missionary societies"— says the right hon. Gentleman in his answer— naturally and rightly advise their followers against taking part in certain dances held to be incompatible with the Christian faith."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th October, 1952; Vol. 505, c. 69.] Indeed, so they do, but that is far different from saying that tribal dances are suppressed by missionaries.

If a missionary makes a convert and advises him as a Christian that there are certain dances and tribal rituals in which he should not take part, it is entirely voluntary whether that Christian accepts the advice or not. He may accept it, he may reject it, but at any rate that advice can have no possible force of law upon anybody else.

If the tribal dances have been suppressed they have been suppressed by Government regulation; and if the suppression of tribal dances have contributed at all to the outbreaks of violence, which are so universally regretted at this time, then it is Government and Government authority which must bear responsibility for any mistakes that they have made in this matter, and missionaries must fairly and squarely be exonerated.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with me on that point and that his answer showed that that was so. I hope he will not at all resent what would otherwise have been a rather discourteous action on my part in raising this matter so suddenly just when a fleeting opportunity arises and without telling him that I was going to do so.

8.52 p.m.

Mr. Lyttelton

By leave, I will make a very short reply. The hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) has, I think, trespassed greatly, not on my patience, which is illimitable, but upon that of the House, in raising again a matter to which he himself confesses that he received a perfectly satisfactory answer no longer ago than yesterday. I do not know what is going to satisfy the hon. Baronet or how many times something must be said before he is inclined to believe it.

He has also made an entirely false point, that "suppressed" necessarily means "suppressed by law." Would it be very shocking if I was to say that missionary societies had suppressed polygamy? I do not think so, because polygamy is not part of the social customs which are usually blessed by the Christian faith. That is all that was meant, and since there was some misunderstanding I corrected it. I am very glad to correct it again if there is a misunderstanding, but I have in front of me what I originally said: that many of the tribal dances and other means of 'letting off steam' have been suppressed by the missionaries …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th October, 1952; Vol. 505, c. 394.] That seems to me to be a statement of fact. It is not a criticism of missionaries at all. It is the inevitable part of their teaching.

If the hon. Baronet chooses to read into the word "suppressed," "suppressed by law," then of course I was saying something which is palpably inaccurate, but I was not doing so at all. My analogy is a perfectly good one, but as the hon. Baronet and others have been particularly tender about this matter and are ready to think that anything that is said is said in criticism, I am very glad to correct it. I am merely stating a fact, and it is a fact which must be mentioned whenever we look at the underlying causes of the unrest in Kenya.

The plain fact is that the lives of many Africans have, through the impact of a much older civilisation, become in their view very drab, and they seek outlets, and not by any means always desirable outlets, for their emotions in such things as secret societies.