HL Deb 13 April 1949 vol 161 cc1169-88

2.50 p.m.

VISCOUNT SWINTON rose to call attention to the policy of the Colonial Office and the administration of Colonies and Protected and Mandated Territories; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, a few weeks ago we had in this House a debate on Defence which attracted a good deal of attention, and the theme running through nearly every speech was the need for an overall plan and for action conforming to that plan. In Colonial affairs the need for an overall plan and policy is equally plain, and therefore at the outset I would enunciate the principles which I think (and I believe most members of the House will agree with me) should inspire the policy and govern the plan.

I would put five principles. The first is that we are trustees, but we are trustees for all and not for a section or a minority, and we must discharge our trust to all our beneficiaries. The second principle is that the greatest need of all the people for whom we are trustees is improved health and well-being, and the true liberty of the individual to enjoy them. Health and well-being, and indeed all social services, depend on sound economic conditions and development. My third principle is that economic and social progress depend on co-operation between the European and the native populations—what has so well been called "The harmony of the black and white keys." That, my Lords, is the law fundamental. The fourth principle is that the ultimate goal is self-government. But this evolution will not follow any sealed pattern and may be infinitely varied. My fifth and last principle is linked with the one I have just stated, and it is that the prerequisite of self-government is a capacity to govern. Security, law and order are the guarantees of freedom. A country can have so-called "independence" but its citizens may have no real freedom.

For the policy and the discharge of our trust the Secretary of State is responsible to Parliament, but we in both Houses of Parliament all share in that responsibility. It is our duty to see that the policy is wise and right, and that the trust is administered in the best interests of all the beneficiaries. Let us see how far the Government have a policy in line with those principles, and how they are carrying it out. The principle of trusteeship is nothing new. It was the practice long before the dogma was formulated in terms. It was the natural way by which our administrators on the spot did their jobs—and how fortunate we have been through the generations in the natural genius, sympathy and aptitude of those men on the spot! It was not only the men at the top, like Lord Lugard, but the district officers everywhere.

If I take Africa as an example to-day and devote most of my speech to it, it is not because it differs in essentials, and certainly not in principles, but rather because it contains the largest and most typical examples. The system of indirect rule which Lord Lugard evolved, used and developed native institutions, local traditions, local loyalties, but always so that, wisely led and guided, they would safeguard and foster the welfare of all the people. Greatly varied as are the languages, customs and characteristics of African tribes and peoples, they have two things in common. The African Colonies are predominantly agricultural, and they are all lands of millions of small farmers. Not only do these men and women form the vast majority of the people, but upon them depends the whole life of their countries. They keep themselves; they feed the towns; they produce the exports which, while raising their own standard of living, have created and to-day maintain by far the greater part of the commerce of Africa and pay for its imports. I well remember, when during the war I went out to West Africa, Lord Woolton saying to me that the one thing above all others he did not want to have to reduce was the fat ration. And he added "It depends upon what you can do in West Africa whether we can keep it or not." My Lords, it did not depend upon me; it depended upon millions of men and women in forest and bush who produced the ground-nuts, the palm oil and the palm kernels. They beat all records; they kept our fat ration going—and they, these millions of small people, are the people for whom we are trustees.

The greatest needs, as the greatest interest, of the mass of the people—whom to-day I believe we call "the common man"—are economic prosperity, health and practical education. These three go together and are interdependent. How can we discharge our trust to the common man and give him these? We can help him to produce the best types in agriculture; we can see that he gets a fair price for what he sells, and we can make him independent of the moneylender. On these depend his health and his standard of living. His interest is our interest too. Economic sufficiency and security in Europe and America depend on the development of our Colonial territories and those of other Colonial Powers. Our needs are mutual, our partnership reciprocal; and the development of that partnership calls for the encouragement of the ablest European and American brains and capital.

I wish I could see more evidence that the Government are putting these first things first; that they are advancing on the right lines, and have a plan in accordance with those principles. We have lately debated in this House the unhappy example of the Gold Coast immigration directive. I am not going to discuss that unhappy document to-day, beyond saying that what was so wrong in it was the apparent assumption of conflict of interest between the European and the African. The capital, experience and brains of the ablest firms are needed. And I say this without fear of contradiction—or, at any rate, informed contradiction. The best firms all want to train and to give every opportunity to the Africans. They know that that is not only the right policy, but that it is good business. I speak now from a fairly long practical experience, and all the best developments that I have seen have been on those lines.

I could give countless examples but I will just take a few almost at random. Years ago, when we had to develop diamonds in Sierra Leone (I think I have given this particular example before to the House) what did we do? We found the ablest and most experienced firm we could—Chester Beatty and his Selection Trust. We gave them a monopoly (shocking!) but on very strict terms, which were willingly conceded. The result was the fullest development, great success, model employers, ideal villages built for the Africans, and revenue to the Colony—a small Colony be it remembered—which in one year when I was back in West Africa amounted to £350,000. Take Colonial timber. When we had introduced a preference on Colonial timber—a preference which I am afraid His Majesty's Government are doing their best to abandon or, at any rate it looks, unhappily, as if they were letting it slip away—we wanted to combine the knowledge of forests which local Governments possessed with the practical experience of businesses in this country. The moment they were approached, all the great timber firms in this country agreed to take forest officers from the Colonies. They taught them the markets, and they learned from the forest officers which timber could be produced in the Colonies. The result was that, taking a typical year or two which followed, the imports into this country of Colonial timbers went up 200 to 300 per cent.

Again, in regard to this matter of timber, and much more recently, there was the case of plywood in Nigeria. How was that developed? A great firm sent out the ablest expert in Europe to make a detailed study on the spot. At great expense, a factory was established which is now producing first-rate plywood—and developing the great resources in that country—from indifferent timber which would not otherwise have been used. And the factory is giving admirable employment to the native African. Similar things have been accomplished with sisal in Kenya. Without the development of sisal, we and the Americans would have found ourselves faced with the greatest difficulty in the war. How was that development carried out? By soil research on the spot, but, above all, by the co-operation of the ropemakers in this country and the use of their resources. They put their money, their best brains and their research equipment into the business. One result was that a far greater proportion of the plant was able to be used, with great advantage to everyone concerned.

Next, take cotton in Uganda. The Empire Cotton Growing Corporation was an organisation in which from the start the textile industry of this country was deeply interested. Now take just one more example—bauxite in the Gold Coast. When that mineral was greatly needed in the war I picked out the ablest mining engineer I could find in West Africa, and he was put in charge of the whole undertaking. He not only developed it with the greatest technical engineering skill, but immediately built villages for his African workers and instituted bulk purchase. In this case it was the right sort of bulk purchase, and using that method he bought foodstuffs for his workers. I am in favour of bulk purchase of that sort, because the man in question knew what he was doing—which is more than can be said for a good many other bulk purchasers. The foodstuffs which he bought in this way were sold to the natives at cost.

I could go on for a considerable time in this strain. Any one of your Lordships who has had experience of Colonial matters in practice, and has not merely studied them in picture books, could multiply these examples. Certainly, all the West African war effort and achievement—in which I had some share—was on these lines. The good firm will always work on these lines. They have long-term investments and plans. They know that the real partnership pays. The slick, quick exploiter should be resolutely excluded. No one wants him. But, my Lords, exploitation is not the monopoly of the European—or even of the Syrian. The African himself can be the worst; no one who knows Africa will deny that. The African has a great sense of family responsibility—he is wonderful to his family—but he can be a shocking exploiter outside his family circle. Let me take an example—that of money-lending. In whose hands is that business? It is always in the hands of the Africans. Take cocoa in the Gold Coast. The Minister of State, if he has visited the Gold Coast, must know that every little cocoa farmer is burdened, ground down, by debt to an African moneylender. He does not know what he owes; principal is added to interest, or interest is added to principal, and what the farmer gets is what is left. What are the Government doing about this? It is an evil which is nearly as bad as disease—as bad as swollen shoot, shall we say? The right way to deal with this is to make money-lending on the crop illegal, and at the same time to establish a co-operative credit system which will give to the farmer the credit he needs.

LORD WINSTER

Hear, hear.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

The noble Lord, I know, inherited in Cyprus a work which I set on foot fifteen years or so ago, and I am glad that he has intervened. In Cyprus we found exactly the same thing. When I went out into that country I found that every wretched little peasant farmer was labouring under a load of debt. I said: "This is no case for lawyers' assessments; what we have to do is to make moneylending illegal." I then directed that the real debt on these farms should be ascertained, that it should be paid off over a period of twenty or thirty years, and that it should be reduced if it was more than the farmer could stand. Moneylending on crops or estates was made illegal. Next, we set the Co-operative Credit Organisation on foot and I think the noble Lord, Lord Winster, would tell your Lordships that he found it operating successfully when he became Governor of Cyprus. What are the Government doing about moneylending in the Gold Coast?

Where sound economic development has been fostered by Europeans, native agriculture, as well as employment and opportunity, have increased. Take the example of the Dutch Indies where, I suppose, there was a greater application of science to agriculture of all kinds than in any Colonial territory in the world. It was most remarkable. Those people were our most formidable competitors. Some of their production was on great estates; but a great, and probably predominant, amount was due to the production of the small man—as is the case in Africa. And the standard of native agriculture, native health and native nutrition in Java, with its vast population, was, I believe, higher relatively than in almost any Colonial territory in the world. I have spoken from my own experience, but I would cite two authorities which may perhaps appeal more to the Government. The first is Aggrey, the most practical African visionary of modern times. His watchword, as I have already mentioned in this House, emblazoned on the shield of Achimota College, which he inspired, was always "The harmony of the black and white keys."

My second authority is more recent. May I quote it? How can we develop great areas and lift the standard of life of the population except by business-like schemes which have a real commercial object? The two things go together, and we shall not accomplish one object without accomplishing the other. … It is because the scheme is a thoroughly hard-headed and not philanthropic proposition that it will bring real and permanent benefit to the African population. … I say it once again briefly. There is no real alternative at all except stagnation and ever-growing malnutrition. Your Lordships may be interested to hear that the authority I have just quoted is Mr. Strachey, the Minister of Food. That, at any rate, should carry conviction!

Incidentally, before I pass to the next feature of the trust, I must deplore the obvious lack of co-ordination between Departments. Vast sums have been spent by the Ministry of Food on railway material for ground-nuts in Tanganyika. At the same time the Colonial Office have failed to improve the permanent way in Nigeria and buy enough locomotives and rolling stock to shift the hundreds of thousands of tons of ground-nuts lying on the ground. In a good season the Emirates of Northern Nigeria produce over 300,000 tons for export. To that must be added another 30,000 to 50,000 tons that come from the French Niger Province. The crop is harvested between October and December, and the world badly needs these supplies. The year's crop is normally shifted in six months—nine months at the outside. During the war, with all its difficulties, we greatly increased production and managed on that railway to shift not only that production but some hundreds of thousands of tons of additional war traffic as well. We knew that new locomotives and wagons would be needed after the war, and the Colonial Office had those requirements in detail before the war was over. I want to know what they have done about it.

To-day, nearly four years after the war, not only is the whole of last year's crop of ground-nuts, 300,000 tons or more, stacked in dumps at the railhead at Kano but I have just read that 44,000 tons of the crop of the year before have also not been shifted. The Colonial Office said it was all right. I do not know why they have taken that view, when we are told that the world is crying out for groundnuts. But the Colonial Office said it was all right, because ground-nuts will keep. I have never believed that. Anyway, that is not a very good encouragement to small farmers in the Emirates to go on producing. The Colonial Office told us not to worry about it, because the groundnuts would keep. We know that they are wrong. Africa is a land of pests, and beetles have now attacked the nuts. The last report I read said that 17,000 tons are known to be infested. I suspect that that is a modest estimate. Now the Government are fighting a costly, and apparently losing, battle against the beetle. What planning! What co-ordination!

I pass to the other aspect of the trust—namely, the constitutional. In the evolution towards self-government we must, equally, discharge our trust to these millions of small men. The test must always be what form of system best serves their welfare and represents their interests. In the interim development, and probably in the ultimate goal, the evolution will follow varied patterns. What suits a large and developed municipality like Accra or Lagos, would be wholly unsuited to the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, or the Eastern Province of Nigeria, or the Emirates of the North. Nor is there any real pervading sense of national unity in these territories. Anyone who has been there knows that. There is everywhere a deep sense of personal loyalty to the King, but the local loyalties are for the most part very local—to the Tribe, the Chief, or at most a local group or confederation.

If I may, I will give one more personal memory, because I think personal experience is so much more convincing than theory. Indeed, all my practical faith as a Colonial administrator I have tried to build up on practical experience, coupled with a great faith in the people for whom we are trustees. Fifteen years ago or more, when I was at the Colonial Office, we restored the Confederation of Ashanti, which had been dissipated after the defeat of King Prempeh. Ten years later, when I was in Africa as Resident Minister, I met the Asantehene. He said to me, "You will always be remembered in Ashanti. You gave us back our Federation." I said to him, "Has it made the Ashanti peoples a nation?" His answer was, "To-day almost, to-morrow quite." It had taken all that time, more than ten years, to re-establish even a local unity. The wisest administrators have always built on the best of local customs, local traditions and local loyalties. Under that wise guidance and direction, the Chiefs have retained the traditional loyalty by responsible service to their people, so that increasingly the native Administrations are the instruments of finance and government responsive to the best interests of the people.

Nor, indeed, is there any reason why these varied systems should not operate in different parts of the same Colony and combine in an effective federal organisation, such as that which the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, recently achieved in Nigeria and which began to work so well from the start. I know that there are local elements, small in number and in real influence, who agitate for a system by which they would in effect take control of the great and largely inarticulate majority. To abdicate our trust to such a minority would be the grossest breach of trust. Moreover, the first prerequisite of self-government is the capacity to govern. To-day, in a world where Communists, integrated and directed to a single purpose, seek everywhere to foment and promote suspicion and disorder, to prevent economic recovery and to undermine law and order, the capacity to govern is all-important. Without that, without effective government, there can be no freedom for the individual. All suffer, but the common man suffers most.

The examples are all around us, plain to see—the contrast between wise advance and weak and foolish scuttle. On the one hand we have Ceylon, where long tradition and experience has bred a capacity for the responsible and democratic government of a mixed community, finding an outstanding example in its wise and greatly respected Prime Minister. That is one great example of wise advance at the right time. On the other hand, Burma is a tragic example of premature abdication, leading to chaos, bloodshed and ruin. The security which depends on government is not merely a local interest. Like defence and economic security, physical security is a universal interest in what is left of a free world.

That leads me to repeat the questions which I put in the Defence debate about the Colonial defence forces, and about the West African troops in particular. These are important from two points of view—namely, the local and the general. Locally, we know from the Communist pattern and plan, and from many examples in Malaya and elsewhere, that the Communist fifth column is organised to foment and stir up trouble whenever it has an opportunity. We should surely have learnt by now that this kind of trouble must not only be suppressed promptly when it occurs but should be anticipated and prevented. Adequate police and defence forces are necessary for this. But the contribution which the Colonial troops can make to our overall plan of defence in the Commonwealth and Empire is far greater than that. The war record of the African troops, East and West, is a great and honourable record. Not only were they able to undertake the defence of all those territories (and remember that in 1942, when we did not knew which way the Vichy French territories would go, we had to keep a large Army maintained ready for action) but they played a great part in offensive campaigns, first in Abyssinia and then in Burma. Experience proved that they were able to provide not only the fighting head but also the maintenance "tail"; they proved good mechanics as well as good fighters.

Africans, too, served as artificers and groundsmen in the Royal Air Force, and there were thousands—I think tens of thousands—in Pioneer units on different fronts. These formations were built on the old East and West African Regiments, with their proud traditions. Tens of thousands of these men have returned to their homes and been demobilised. They can be a great source of strength. I am sure many of them would be keen to serve again, and other new recruits would be ready to follow their example. And let it be remembered that these men were all volunteers. Of the 200,000 men recruited in West Africa, every one was a volunteer. I asked in the Defence debate what was being done to recruit these men in active formations and in reserves. I did not then receive an answer, but I was promised that I would have one later. I ask for that answer to-day.

I want to add a brief word about Malaya. In doing so I would wish to pay a sincere tribute to the troops and police in the arduous campaign which they are undertaking; and not only to them but to the planters and their families for the fortitude with which they are carrying on in a situation which we can barely imagine, of danger from day to day and night to night. I believe that slow but steady progress is being made in the suppression of the Communist insurgents. All the Malays and most of the Chinese want this. But active co-operation, particularly among the Chinese, is deterred by fear of the future. They have seen the spread of Communism in China, and they have seen the chaos in Burma. I am sure the Government have no intention of repeating the Burma fiasco in Malaya; but I feel sure that the position would be helped, and confidence and co - operation strengthened, by a firm authoritative declaration by the Government that Great Britain will not only restore order in Malaya but will maintain law and order and liberty in that country once order has been restored. That is one certainty which I feel would help.

The other certainty which is required is finance. The people of Malaya are entitled to fair treatment in compensation for war damage, and in the cost of the campaign which is now being waged. Whatever their intentions, the Government statements have been, to say the least of it, equivocal. I am afraid that such action as they have taken has been niggardly. The Minister of State suggested some months ago that a sub- stantial contribution would be forthcoming from Japanese reparations. I am very sceptical about reparations, both in time and amount; and Malaya is entitled to certainty. Months ago, I proposed that if the Government believed in these reparations they should underwrite them and make a grant to the people of Malaya, recouping themselves when the reparations materialised. It was three or four months ago that I made that proposal, and the Minister of State was good enough to say that it would be carefully considered by the appropriate Departments. I hope that that period of consideration is now at an end, and that the noble Earl will give me an answer to-day.

In conclusion, I would emphasise once again the need for a sound policy, and for plans based on that policy and the principles which should inspire and govern it. I have tested by those principles action—or inaction—in Colonial administration over a wide field, economic, social, constitutional and defence. I hope and believe that the Government accept those principles. From what I have heard in many debates in this House, I do not believe that the noble Viscount the Leader of the House would dissent from any of them. But in Colonial affairs, as in defence, while the Government accept the principles and the need for an overall plan which conforms, they give the impression, here and in the Colonial Empire, that they do not know where they are going; that events are their masters, and not they the masters of events. That is not just my impression. I do not know whether your Lordships have read some intensely interesting articles on Africa which have been appearing in the Manchester Guardian. I do not remember reading anywhere more penetrating articles. The editor and author would add to our debt if those articles could be republished in pamphlet form. Certainly the Manchester Guardian is not an unfriendly critic. I hope that I too have not been unfair; and I think I have been completely factual. In those articles the writer says this: One brings away an uneasy feeling that events are not so much moving, as slipping and slithering. Slipping and slithering is no way to discharge our great Imperial trust. I beg to move for Papers.

3.30 p.m.

LORD RENNELL

My Lords, I intend to follow the example of the noble Viscount who has just sat down and confine my remarks, in the main, to Africa and entirely to what is, I hope, some contribution to an analysis of Colonial policy as I see it. I confine my remarks to Africa, not only because it is the territory with which I am familiar, but because I believe that in Africa can be found sufficient examples of what is happening in other parts of the Colonial Empire, notably in the Far East. In the course of the last two months, two debates on the Gold Coast have been held in your Lordships' House. I do not wish to raise that subject again, except to say that the second of those two debates—the noble Earl who, I understand, is to reply to-day was away at the time—sought to show precisely what the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, said in the concluding remarks of his speech: that the Government appeared to be slipping; that events were taking charge, and that the Government were following events instead of leading.

If your Lordships consider our Colonial policy in Africa as a whole, I think you cannot fail to be struck by the extraordinary antitheses there, which make one wonder whether there is a plan or a policy behind the whole. Let me take one or two examples. It has been the avowed policy, not only of His Majesty's present Government but of all Governments in the past, so to administer all the Colonies as to have firmly in mind the principle of trusteeship which Lord Swinton rightly said was invented and thought out by us and our administrators long before it became an accepted international doctrine. A particular aspect was to try and encourage development of Africa by Africans, rather than to follow the line of what in other countries is called the development of "Colonies d'exploitation." In other words, we moved away from the Nineteenth Century conception of what might be called the plantation system of development of Colonies, towards a system of development which we see at its best, and have for years seen at its best, in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, where the intense and improving native agricultural production is directed by our advisers and stimulated by modern scientific discovery contributed by our people.

While this policy is being pursued, another policy is being followed to the exaggerated extent (the Gold Coast Immigration Ordinance is an example) of apparently now trying to stop or limit to the maximum degree the use of white and foreign advisers. Yet at the same time the opposite course is being followed in East Africa, where white settlement is being encouraged. We see in East Africa, in the Overseas Food Corporation, an attempt to develop Africa entirely on the Nineteenth Century plantation model with, I suggest, hitherto very indifferent results. That provides a startling contrast, not only with what is being done but with what is being said and advocated in West Africa.

Take, as a second example, the particular products of Eastern Africa. We are trying—again without any visible success at present—to grow ground-nuts. The success is so small that the number of tons of ground-nuts really bear no relation—certainly up to date; they may do hereafter—to the money being spent and the effort being made. We find in East Africa a tremendous effort and expenditure to produce ground-nuts, which have not been produced, and little or no effort of the same sort to produce more ground-nuts in West: Africa where they have been grown, where we know they can be grown and where they are lying at railheads—as the noble Viscount has said, and as all your Lordships know—rotting and deteriorating. That seems to me scarcely consistent. Again, in the East African field the Government have advocated and produced a scheme—preliminary, I hope—for closer union or closer administrative contact between the territories of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. I hope it is embryonic, and only a first step to a closer and more satisfactory development than has hitherto been possible.

On the other hand, in what is called Central Africa, (which is really South-Eastern Africa) considerable efforts are being devoted by the members of His Majesty's Government to prevent a similar closer union. Proposals have been made and have found no sympathetic response. Indeed, there has been a certain amount of hostility in what I believe to be official quarters. I am referring, of course, to the proposed closer union between Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. We understand that the Secretary of State is at the present moment in those parts, and we hope that this journey will be more fruitful than some of his incursions into that problem have been in the last two years. But there are the antitheses in what is being done in North-East Africa and in what is being done in South-East Africa.

Take another example. The Immigration Ordinance of the Gold Coast, and other Ordinances already in force in Nigeria and other West African Colonies, are trying to restrict the inflow of all European professional, clerical and managerial classes, for fear they should become settlers. I think that matter was fully ventilated during the debate on the Gold Coast. I think it is a great misconception to treat as settlers people who go out on contract to work there for five, ten, fifteen or twenty years. They are really an entirely different category of person. But there is the Immigration Ordinance, and by its wording it seeks to restrict the entry of these people into the country. In Kenya, a scheme, sponsored by the Government, in my opinion rightly and no doubt with the full support of the Secretary of State, is promoting the immigration of white settlers and farmers into the country. It seems to me very inconsistent with what is happening on the West Coast.

Now, how are all these curious antitheses to be explained? For they go further than that. We see on the one hand how, in our response to the invitation of our American friends in connection with the so-called Marshall Aid Plan, we have undertaken to develop the Colonial territories of Africa as a direct contribution to the rehabilitation of Europe. The French have done likewise. We must do so. We in Europe cannot be self-supporting in many materials without continuing development of that sort. At the same time, obstacles are being put in the way in West Africa, such as the preventing of persons from going there and carrying out precisely the sort of developments that we are pledged to carry out. I do not wish to quote particular cases, but I have examples of firms who have asked for permission to introduce personnel into the West Africa Colonies, which permission has been refused. If the noble Earl would like to have particulars of those cases, I should be glad to supply them.

We are also pledged in the Atlantic Pact, morally if not specifically, to place all our resources at the disposal of our friends in that Pact for the defence of the West against aggression. An essential and intrinsic part of that defence must be not only Africa and African resources, but African man-power, and the African military man-power to which the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, has so rightly referred. How can that be done when at the same time certain elements in West Africa are being deliberately encouraged to feel that within a few years they will have such a form of local or absolute self-government as will make our intervention both unnecessary and undesirable and make it impossible for us to rely upon the military resources which they have placed at our disposal in the past, and which we need to-day for the purposes of carrying out our own obligations under the Atlantic Pact? How can we follow a policy which is designed to give people such absolute independence of the Commonwealth of which we are members as will enable them to contract out of the military obligations that we have assumed, while at the same time we assume obligations for the implementation of which we rely upon their support? I merely quote these matters as examples; they could be repeated ad nauseam.

I must turn to what seems almost an empiric attitude on Colonial administration, which does a thing in a Colony irrespective of the conditions obtaining in that Colony. Your Lordships have debated, and have frequently referred to, the Constitutions of certain Colonial territories; and the Government have—and in my view rightly—taken credit where they have directly contributed to the liberalisation of those Constitutions. I have no word to say against that and I know it has the full support of every noble Lord on these Benches. In 1946, the Gold Coast Constitution was amended to provide for an unofficial majority. In 1947, the new Nigerian Constitution was made, and made workable by the efforts of our noble friend—who unfortunately is absent to-day—Lord Milverton. The previous Gold Coast Constitution had lasted for twenty years before it was amended in 1946. When that modification was intro- duced. the Government rightly said that they had done this proprio motu, and not as a result of any agitation or pressure put either on local authorities or on the Government in this country. That was absolutely correct in fact and correct in policy.

Now, I admit that times move more quickly, and most of us would probably have felt that a Constitution introduced in 1946 could not possibly have been expected to last for another twenty years. The time scale has been telescoped in the last decade, so that what was a twenty-years' span to the last generation is equivalent to perhaps a five-or ten-years' span to-day. But I do not see what can be the justification in 1948 for beginning again a revision of the Gold Coast Constitution—a Constitution introduced only so recently as two years ago and then very substantially liberalised——unless that justification, as it lies in the mind of the Government, is agitation and rebellion—because that is what the Accra riots were. If that were the justification, it is not one which your Lordships will easily condone. But that is not a solitary example. The Nigerian Constitution introduced as lately as 1947 is now apparently also to be the subject of revision, for in a statement which appeared on April 6, it was announced that the Government of Nigeria had approved the recommendation of the Select Committee of the Nigerian Legislative Council to review the present Constitution; that their recommendation had been unanimously accepted by the Legislative Council, and that steps are being taken, in accordance with the procedure of the Select Committee, to start the review of the Constitution.

Again there, within two years of a Constitution having been introduced, steps are being taken to modify it; and, so far as I know, in Nigeria without at any rate any agitation or trouble parallel to what happened in the Gold Coast. If that action again is taken by the Government proprio motu, it can be susceptible of only two explanations: the first is that the Government desire to forestall or anticipate trouble by a revision of the Constitution; and the second that the Constitution which was introduced in 1947 was found to be so faulty as to require revision. The latter explanation is not one that your Lordships will care to consider. The former seems to be the more likely of the two. Thus we find no continuity, no set purpose, and even when a change is made it is upset within a short space of time by a new "good idea."

All this leads me to wonder what really is the policy of the Government, since the more I examine the details of what they are doing, the mole apprehensive I become. In the case of the Gold Coast Immigration Ordinance we had good cause to complain of the implication that Europeans are on the whole undesirable in the Gold Coast, have to be restricted and to have their movements governed; that they are unwelcome guests, and guests who ought to be asked to leave as soon as possible. I know I shall be accused by the noble Earl of exaggerating on that point; but I should like to draw the attention of your Lordships to one small piece of evidence which makes me wonder whether I am in fact exaggerating. May I read two paragraphs from the speech made by the Finance Member for Nigeria, on March 12, when he was introducing the Budget for that country? He spoke about the use of foreign capital in developing the country, and said something which I will read to your Lordships: In some other countries requiring development, external capital is translated into domestic capital by the immigration of settlers, but it is the Government's policy here, and rightly so, that settlement of foreigners and strangers should be precluded. So, if we want external capital, as we do, let us encourage it as far as possible and not attempt to impose conditions which will tend to drive it away to other parts of Africa. I do not know of one country"— this is a slightly disingenuous statement— which in normal times has imposed a restrictive capital policy and yet attracted external capital. That is only too true. He goes on to make a statement which I hope will not be supported by the noble Earl when he comes to reply. He says: I am hoping that the Colonial Development Corporation recently established in Nigeria will do much in the years ahead to develop this country. The Corporation has very substantial capital behind it. It certainly has; it has the best part of His Majesty's Treasury behind it. He goes on to say: It"— that is the Corporation— would come within the category of foreign companies, but it is sponsored by the British Government and its declared policy is to operate for the benefit of the peoples of the Colonial Empire. I ask the question directly: Is it, or is it not, the intention of His Majesty's Government that we British people of this country are to be considered as foreigners in our African Crown Colonies? If we are not, that statement must be disavowed immediately. If we are, we are entering upon an entirely new phase of Colonial development which requires a statement of policy from His Majesty's Government at the earliest possible moment.

We can do either one of two things. We can have the Colonial policy to which so many of our ablest and best administrators and thinkers, black, white and brown, have devoted their lives—that is, the development of these countries in a joint partnership of all concerned. I claim that we have the right to be considered a partner. We have devoted our lives, our treasure, our brains and the best years and the best generations of many families to that purpose. We went to what was formerly a Continent not inhabited by European races, and our people have now been there for two, three and sometimes more generations. By their work, by their devotion and by their efforts, they have earned the right to be treated as partners, as we have always considered that they were and as I claim most of the population of Africa also consider them. That is the line that we have hitherto followed, and that is the line that we, on this side of the House at any rate, would like to see continued, because we believe it to be both right and practicable and in the best interests of Africa.

There is an alternative. That alternative is to pursue an empirical policy which goes from incident to incident, changes its mind, adopts one policy in one place and one in another in order to seek, or purporting to seek, the best method of getting out as quickly as possible, while in the meantime our people out there are treated as foreigners in a foreign land. I conclude by saying that in my view, which is, I think, shared by a great many of your Lordships, the time has come for a reconsideration of what our policy in the Colonies should be. It may be that people in this country will find that the second of those two alterna- tives, which appears to be pursued by the Government at the present time, is right. What we are entitled to have is an expression of the views of His Majesty's Government as to what their Colonial policy is and to what it is directed. It will then be for Parliament and the people of this country to decide whether or not they agree with that policy and with the Government.