HC Deb 08 November 1957 vol 577 cc569-80

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Finlay.]

4.0 p.m.

Mr. John Stonehouse (Wednesbury)

I am glad to have the opportunity of raising the question of the opportunities of African advance in Northern Rhodesia. There are many people, particularly Europeans, in Northern and Southern Rhodesia who would like the responsibilities of this House for the welfare and opportunities of Africans in Northern Rhodesia to be restricted.

A statement was recently made by Mr. John Roberts, the leader of the elected members of the Legislative Council of Northern Rhodesia, to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. He asked that the British Government should grant sole responsibility to the Northern Rhodesian Governor in essential local matters before the review of the Federal Constitution in 1960. I hope that pressure of that sort will be strongly resisted, because I do not think that Europeans in Northern Rhodesia have yet shown themselves sufficiently sincere to take on the responsibility of safeguarding the welfare and future of the 2 million Africans who live in Northern Rhodesia. There is a small minority of Europeans in that country—some 65,000—and I believe that it would be a great mistake if Her Majesty's Government were to give their responsibilities for the welfare of the African masses in Northern Rhodesia to the small white minority in that country.

I should like to refer first of all to the opportunity for Africans in paid employment in Northern Rhodesia. Of some 2 million people, 266,000 men and 6,700 women are in paid employment, but practically all of these people are unable to advance in their occupations. They are restricted to doing the humdrum, routine, arduous manual toil, while the skilled occupations which would give them a higher income are denied to them.

Let me refer, for instance, to the railways. The railways do not employ Africans in any of the skilled jobs, although just across the frontier in the Belgian Congo Africans from a similar tribal background to those in Northern Rhodesia are able to do practically all the skilled jobs on the railways like driving trains, being firemen and so on. In Northern Rhodesia, however, those jobs are denied to them and Italians are being imported to do this work because the white minority in Northern Rhodesia do not want to give the Africans an opportunity to undertake these jobs.

In the mines there is still not enough opportunity for African mineworkers to move into the skilled occupations and to earn higher incomes. But in the Belgian Congo in the copper mines the African mineworkers have for many years been employed in skilled occupations and have earned high incomes. I hope that will soon be the case in Northern Rhodesia.

I agree that a start has been made, but there is still very severe restriction of African mineworkers who are able to undertake skilled occupations. They have to join a particular trade union, and I believe that if an African mineworker has proved himself able to do a skilled job there should not be any necessity for him to leave the trade union of his choice.

How many African employees in the mines and other industries are able to earn decent incomes in Northern Rhodesia? We are often accused on this side of the House of producing incorrect figures. I have taken care today to quote figures from official sources so that there will be no misunderstanding about them. In a Budget speech in the Northern Rhodesian Council the Minister of Finance said that there are now 270 posts for African miners carrying salaries of over £520 a year. What a figure to quote—only 270 African mineworkers able to earn salaries over £10 a week.

Then he said that in Government employment there are 86 Africans on scales with a maximum of £668 per year. These official figures demonstrate that Africans still have not the opportunities that they deserve in the more skilled jobs in the mines or the higher levels of the Civil Service in Northern Rhodesia. The Under-Secretary of State knows very well that, in the Belgian Congo, there are literally thousands of Africans doing these jobs. If it can be done in the Congo, it certainly can be done in Northern Rhodesia.

I should like to quote a passage from the recent Financial Times Survey of Rhodesia which refers in one article to the position in the Copperbelt. This is an article by Mr. Jack Thomson of the Rhodesian department of the Selection Trust Limited. He says: A realistic appreciation of the position must surely convince the European on the Copperbelt that he has no fear of being swamped or ousted; it is obvious from the trends of the past few years that, for the foreseeable future, with the introduction of new methods and modern techniques, which will increase efficiency and productivity, the rationalisation of African labour must follow. This must result—and in fact has resulted—in an overall reduction of the African labour force…. He makes the point to persuade the Europeans that Africans should take on more skilled jobs in the mines. I hope that the Europeans of Northern Rhodesia, particularly the European mine workers, will pay heed to his point of view.

The reduction of the labour force in the mines is also an important matter, because not only do we want to see improved opportunities for African skilled workers but we want also to protect the interests of the masses of African mine workers who are not in skilled occupations. If, as Mr. Thomson says, due to increased efficiency and productivity, the rationalisation of African labour will mean a reduction in the overall labour force, what are the Government in Northern Rhodesia going to do with that labour when it is no longer required in the mines? Have they proposals for developing other industries so that this manpower may be absorbed, or do they suggest that the people should go back to the land? If the latter, what measures have they in mind for grants and assistance to enable the land they occupy to be developed?

Although many are employed in the mines and in industry, most Africans in Northern Rhodesia depend on the land for their living. It is still most regrettable that inadequate provision has been made for the assistance of African farmers in Northern Rhodesia, both through the development of co-operative societies and assistance in the development of cash crops. Very little has been done to assist Africans through the granting of credits, the use of agricultural machinery, the provision of proper seed, and so forth, to develop cash crops. A great deal, however, is apparently intended to be done for the development of European settlement in Northern Rhodesia.

I ask the Under-Secretary to bear in mind that Africans in Northern Rhodesia look with very great suspicion on the present measures for increased European settlement in Northern Rhodesia when they themselves are unable to get the sort of assistance which is given, or being promised, to European settlers. He well knows that there are several thousand African farmers who will be displaced by the Kariba hydro-electric scheme and the Government have a responsibility to settle on decent land these Africans who are being displaced.

There are certain projects, I believe, on the Tonga Plateau, but that land may not be yet fully cleared of tsetse fly, and it would be in the interests of the displaced African farmers for them to get some decent land and not be put on land which will not give them an adequate crop.

I should like to refer also to the Order-in-Council which has just been brought out in Northern Rhodesia under Government Notice No. 229. I should like the Under-Secretary to give the reasons for this Order, because it does appear that some of the rights of Africans on Crown Land are being withdrawn. An African who may have lived for 10, 12 or 15 years on Crown Land may now, because of the amendment to the Order-in-Council of 1924, find that he has no rights on the land he has lived on for so long. I should like the Under-Secretary to tell us what is the reason for this Order-in-Council. Will Africans who have lived on land for a certain number of years be able to appeal against it?

I move on to educational opportunities. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), on a recent visit to Rhodesia, made certain comments about the lack of technical educational opportunities in Northern Rhodesia. He was much abused while he was in Rhodesia and one of the spokesmen for the Education Department made a statement to refute what my hon. Friend said. He, in his official statement, said that technical education, particularly in Northern Rhodesia, was quite sufficient. He gave these figures. The Hodgson Technical College in Lusaka, with 402 students, produces each year 100 graduates, if one may call them that, as bricklayers and carpenters. There are twenty-one trade schools in the country which produce twenty boys in a year as bricklayers and carpenters—a total of 420-odd from the trade schools. That leaves a total of approximately 520 boys a year leaving trade schools and the technical college with the minimum qualification as bricklayers and carpenters.

This is all that we have from official sources as to the technical opportunities in Northern Rhodesia. What a miserable figure it is—500 or 600 people a year being trained in very low grades of building and carpentry out of a total labour force approaching 250,000. This is most inadequate, and more provision must be made.

Of course, technical education depends on a wide development of primary and secondary education. We have it from Sir Gilbert Rennie that the primary and secondary education in Northern Rhodesia is most inadequate. Sir Gilbert Rennie is the High Commissioner for the Federation of Northern Rhodesia in London. He said recently that only two out of five children out of a school range of 500,000 attend school. When one looks up the last Report from Northern Rhodesia, 1956, one sees that out of 213,000 children estimated to be in the lower primary school age group, only 176,000 attend school.

In the upper primary age group, of the total of 185,000 only 33,000 are at school. Thus, although half the children start in the primary school age group, when they reach the higher grades more and more of them leave school. More must be done to provide facilities in education, primary, secondary and technical, if more Africans are to have the opportunity which they deserve.

Finally, I quote a statement by Sir Arthur Benson, Governor of Northern Rhodesia, which is a very sensible statement and which I hope reflects the Government's policy. At Lusaka on 4th October, he said …In another ten years the average African pupil will be on the same educational level as the European pupil of the same age. The fact is that you have to live cheek by jowl with them. Some people think it will be a long time before this happens, but I think it is going to happen in the next two or three years. That is a very sensible and realistic statement. I hope that Government policy towards Northern Rhodesia will live up to the implications of that statement and give the Africans the greater opportunity in employment, education and the professions which they deserve.

4.16 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. John Profumo)

I am obliged to the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) for giving me notice of some of the points which he has raised in his speech. If I may, in the time which remains to me, I will say something about these important matters.

I suppose the hon. Member's main point today was that of education and the opportunities for Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Perhaps we had better start by looking at this from its genesis, as I know he would like me to do. Opportunities must, in the main, stem from the ability of people to take on these various jobs, and education is, therefore, of fundamental importance.

We start by recalling that in Northern Rhodesia a little more than a generation ago there was a completely unschooled population of 2 million and that it is only since the end of the war that Northern Rhodesia, with an expansion of its copper industry, has ceased to be a very poor country. Today, about 80 per cent. of the entire child population of primary school age is receiving some sort of education.

The fall in copper prices has inevitably meant that the rate of progress will be slowed down, but the claim of African education is being given priority by the Northern Rhodesian Government even today. In other words, although this year's total revenue falls short of what might have been expected before the recession in copper prices, the Government are still giving African education first claim on their budget. The immediate impediment remains teachers rather than money.

Turning to the programme, may I say a word, first, about secondary education? Having established a broad and sound foundation of primary education the Education Department is now concentrating on the expansion of secondary education in order to increase the supply of potential teachers. At the moment there are three senior secondary schools, two for boys and one for girls, which have the school certificate course; one of these has three streams or planned courses, thus making a total of five school certificate streams altogether. Plans have been prepared to increase the number of streams to 12 by 1960.

I should point out that girls' education is markedly backward compared with boys', not so much in the total numbers enrolled as in the standards reached. The main obstacle to be overcome is public opinion, since African parents do not put so high a value on education for their daughters as they do for their sons.

The Federal Government are responsible for higher education in the form of institutions or other bodies offering courses of a university, technological or professional character. However, Africans who are unsuccessful for Federal bursaries may apply to the Northern Rhodesian Government for a small number of bursaries for further education outside Northern Rhodesia. At the moment, there are 34 Government bursary holders studying outside Northern Rhodesia and, in the past twelve years, 125 bursaries have been awarded.

As I have explained, the Government have been concentrating on establishing primary education on a broad and sound foundation, and they are only now ready to shift the emphasis to secondary education. In 1956, there were 1,424 students taking technical and trade courses, an increase of 119 over the 1955 enrolment. The Hodgson Technical College in Lusaka, to which the hon. Member referred, has 402 students studying building and engineering trades, and it produces each year about 100 people trained for posts—and these are important posts, however the hon. Member may feel like playing them down—such as foremen in industry and instructors for the Education Department and rural development schemes. A course for motor mechanics was started this year. Ultimately a course embracing some ten trades is to be reorganised on a five-year basis with inter and final examinations as the objectives for the third and fifth years.

All that shows at any rate some planning and as time goes on this will build up in a way all of us want to see. In addition, there are 21 trades schools in the provinces organised by the local education authorities and missions with an enrolment with 50 or 60 each. These provide artisan courses of two years' duration and they train particularly bricklayers and carpenters. There are some vacant places at these schools which do not as yet seem to have caught the public imagination.

At a lower level, with no educational barrier for entry, are the Rural Development Training Centres sponsored by the Commissioner for Rural Development at which Africans are instructed in simple rural trades. There are, for example, six-month courses in tailoring, carpentry, joinery and tanning. As for women, 433 women and girls were enrolled at home-craft courses in 16 school in 1956. In addition, 769 women in 1956 were in the informal group of practical courses and nearly 2,000 men and women attended academic adult education courses.

The hon. Member went on to talk about wider opportunities for Africans as skilled workers in mines and so on and he mentioned the railways. I ought to say that the railways are a Federal responsibility but by an agreement signed between the European Mineworkers' Union and the mining companies in September 1955—

Mr. Stonehouse

I admit that the railways are a Federal responsibility, but surely the fact that Africans are not allowed to take those jobs on the railways illustrates the European attitude to them in the Federation and in Rhodesia.

Mr. Profumo

I said that I could not answer for the Federation. The hon. Member must refer to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. That matter is outside my province, although I do not wholly share the hon. Member's views as I want to show by what I am about to say. If that did illustrate the point of view of the administration there, what has been taking place in the mining industry would have been less likely to take place.

I was about to say that there has been an arrangement which will have a duration of three years for 24 categories of jobs to be handed over to African employment for the first time. Europeans have been doing these jobs, but, together with certain intermediate and advanced posts created by the miming companies, about 1,000 new places thereby became available for African advancement. There is a problem here largely because of resistance from the African Mineworkers' Union to members taking monthly-paid jobs and thus falling outside the orbit of the Union, and also because of the lack of Africans with suitable qualifications. That is being remedied by the companies providing courses for the Africans and their wives as raw recruits and later there may be other jobs under the African advancement programme.

When the hon. Member was talking about agriculture and similar matters, he mentioned Notice No. 229 and asked me the reason for it. The Northern Rhodesian Order-in-Council of 1924 provides that a native cannot be removed from any land assigned to him for occupation except by an order of the Governor. The 1957 Order-in-Council confines that prohibition to cases where land has been assigned to natives for occupation under Native Customary Law. The Order deals with a problem about which my right hon. Friend informed Parliament on 28th May, in answer to a Question put by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson).

The old provisions, which were designed to protect Africans, had in fact been working to their disadvantage in urban areas: Africans were prevented from obtaining leases of Crown lands in African housing areas and African townships, because had leases been issued with covenants in them the Governor under the Order-in-Council would have had to make an inquiry in each case before the land could be recovered or foreclosure could take place.

This considerable administrative disadvantage made it not worth while to issue any title to Africans and the Africans were able to hold plots only in African townships and municipal township areas on annual tenancies with one month's notice and at peppercorn rentals. By releasing Africans outside the agricultural areas from this impediment the new Order-in-Council facilitates a more permanent form of tenure for Africans, under which they will be able to build substantial houses with confidence and borrow from building societies, and thus encour- ages the emergence of a property-owning class for Africans, which is what the hon. Member is aiming at. So far as I know, there has been no African criticism of the new Order-in-Council.

When the hon. Member began his speech, he referred to Mr. Roberts and made rather a point about the numbers of Europeans living in Northern Rhodesia as against the number of black people, and that prompts me to say that I welcome the hon. Member's constructive criticism—which he has made in these matters since he came into the House—but I think that we must try to get a balanced outlook in this matter.

My right hon. Friend and I are always interested to hear points of view, and we listen most carefully to what hon. Members opposite say. But in these debates we want to try to get away from any partisan view which is held in this House either on behalf of the coloureds or of the whites. I am sure that it is only by realising that there is a genuine problem and by seeing that the words we use in this House are not misconstrued in some of these territories—making some people think that some hon. Members are on the side of the coloureds and others are on the side of the whites—that we shall get concerted action.

When we talk about the work of the Government of Northern Rhodesia and enlarging the scope and opportunities for Africans in so many fields, we must remember that that Government consists of a coalition under the Governor, with officials and elected members, and members specially appointed to represent African interests. My right hon. Friend would wish me to express on his behalf the great confidence which he feels in the work of the elected members and his appreciation of their untiring efforts to give the best service to Africans as well as to all other members of the community.

If I finish on that note, I think that the hon. Member will realise why I do so. I will study with the greatest interest the other points which he raised, which I have not been able to deal with in detail. I am very grateful to him for the constructive way in which he has approached the matter, but we have to remember that these problems of greater advancement for Africans stem in the first place from the ability to train them up to the standards which will allow them to take over those technical jobs and jobs of higher status which, as the hon. Member recognises, carry higher pay.

These problems stem from the education policy of the Government of Northern Rhodesia, or any other territory which we may discuss from time to time, but this is not something which can be put right at once. All we can do is to see, as the Governments of these territories are doing, that an objective view is taken of the problem. They must first have a broadly based system of education, with primary education and so on, building up to a pinnacle, and thereafter technical education, so that they can speedily take on jobs which the Government are doing their best to provide for the African people.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway (Eton and Slough)

In the half minute that is left to me, I would like to say that I am a little surprised that the Minister—

The Question having been proposed at Four o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Four o'clock.