Out On a Limb: A Vice-Consul and Labour Officer at Fernando Poo by Christopher Hanson-Smith (Administrative Officer, Nigeria 1950-59)

 

Fernando Po from N.E.

As District officers were expected to meet - and welcome - every new challenge that confronted them, I volunteered on one particularly hot and sticky day in Sokoto to serve temporarily as Her Britannic Majesty's Vice Consul and Labour Officer stationed on the Spanish island of Fernando Poo in the notorious Bight of Benin from where "few come out but many go in". The Consul's name was Martin and he needed some leave, hence the posting.

On the strength of my sketchy Spanish, which I had learnt before and during my honeymoon in the Balearic Isles in 1955, I was duly seconded to Santa Isabel, the capital of Spanish Equatorial Guinea on Fernando Poo. The long, dusty drive from one end of Nigeria to the other with a young wife and a year old daughter was a challenge but a wonderful chance to appreciate the endless diversity of Nigeria.

The port of Calabar was steeped in the earlier history of the traders, black and white, who had bargained, lived and died during the last days of the slave trade. From Calabar a small steamer took us to Santa Isabel; I remember the Spanish captain plying me with Havana cigars and cheap brandy. We steamed into the circular harbour, formed from an extinct volcano, to be met by the Consul in his Ford Consul car, proudly flying the Union flag. After a rapid handing over Martin departed and we were left in a bare house overlooking the harbour and surrounded by tall avocado trees. It was a different world to Sokoto.

Spanish Colonial Architecture

The colony had been annexed by a Spanish expedition that sailed from Montevideo in 1778 and over the years came to include the neighbouring island of Annobon and a chunk of the African mainland called Rio Muni with Bata as its main town. From 1843 to 1854 John Beecroft had been both British Consul and Spanish Governor, a post that Richard Burton also held later for a short period; the Foreign Office wanted this troublesome genius out of the way and secretly hoped that he might never return like so many other Europeans.

My job was to look after the interests of about 20,000 Nigerians, mostly Ibos, who worked as indentured labour on the Spanish and Portuguese-owned plantations on the island and in Rio Muni. The Portuguese, who owned two smaller neighbouring islands, were also represented by a Consul. Because of the fertile volcanic soil, bananas, coffee and oil palms grow well and imported labour was crucial for the colony's economy. But the treatment of labourers was often brutal and living conditions harsh. Every weekday a long line of complainants formed outside the Consul's office; many bore scars of beatings and all had stories to tell of maltreatment by the plantation overseers. Each complaint was heard and, if it was thought genuine, a report was sent to the corpulent Spanish official responsible for an explanation and possible redress.

As there were always two versions of each complaint, one's sympathy was often with the plantation owners who were exasperated by idle workers whose one aim was to earn enough to buy a bicycle and a Singer sewing machine before returning home. The Spanish accepted that we were really playing a sort of game which, provided both sides followed the rules, allowed the plantations to be run with the minimum of fuss.

The Consul had the use of a cottage high up on the flank of the 9,000 ft peak - El Pico - below which the open pastures were grazed by bulls destined for the corridas in Spain. I was once chased by one such brute; fortunately there was a nearby fence over which I leapt to safety. Near the bare summit of El Pico the Germans had built an observation post during the last war from which they were able to monitor Allied shipping movements in the Bight. I once climbed to the summit in order to check on this story and was caught in a violent storm that caused the sudden death by pneumonia of my guide.

Spanish Stamps Showing Fernando Poo

The few beaches were of dark, volcanic sand and the shallow waters off them teemed with fish and large prawns. Shoals of barracuda coasted through the clear water but paid no attention to any human swimmer or fisherman. The forests clothing the higher slopes of the mountain were full of a special genus of duiker which was hunted by the natives - the Bubis. Compared to the arid savannahs of Nigeria this island was indeed a bit of paradise.

Santa Isabel emerged briefly on to the world stage when its airstrip was used by charity organisations, notably Caritas, as a launch pad for their support of Biafra during the civil war in Nigeria. When the colony was given up by the Spanish, it fell into the cruel hands of a local dictator whose infamy and alleged cannibalism consigned the country to a decade of terror. When he finally died the natives refused to believe the news of his death until several months had elapsed. It was only the sight of a black swimmer, nicknamed 'the Eel' from a country called 'Equatorial Guinea' at the Sydney Olympic games that again put this island back on the map - everyone asked" where on earth is this country?" They should have been told how a long succession of Spanish, Portuguese and British settlers and administrators had created in a small corner of Africa a country which is happily not now racked by the feuds and rivalries of so many of its larger neighbours.

Why Did a Conservative Government Signal the End of Empire in Africa? by Thomas Harbor

  As John Darwin noted, ‘before 1939 it was usual to suppose that even if the pattern of rule in the colonial world was modified, ultimate European control would continue almost indefinitely almost everywhere[1]’. In a postbellum world, Labour and Conservative politicians alike construed Empire as an evolving paradigm, not a dying one. Empire, under Michael Doyle’s extensive definition, is defined as a ‘relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social or cultural dependence[2]’.

 

In 1960, the Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan embarked on an African Grand Tour, visiting Ghana, Nigeria, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, ending his official trip in South Africa.  In 1960-61, half of African countries were already independent.  The Prime Minister’s ‘wind of change’ speech in front of the South African parliament in Cape Town almost immediately entered the discourse of decolonisation. Labelled as a ‘Black Monday’ by right-wing conservatives who formed the ‘Monday Club’, this speech for many ‘signalled a policy change in decolonisation in Africa[3]’.

 

To ascertain why a Conservative government signalled the end of Empire in Africa poses multiple issues. It stresses that a government engaged in a policy at odds with its core ideological tenets. But the crux of the argument is on how to construe the verb ‘to signal’. Does ‘signal’ mean to convey an instruction or does it just indicate that an event has occurred. This essay will discuss to what extent decolonisation was a policy-backed process by a conservative government. This essay will develop (i) decolonisation as a ‘planned obsolescence’, but also (ii) as a reactive movement with an emphasis on agency.

 

 

            Archival evidence seems to suggest everything was planned[4]. Minutes of the C.R.O meetings mention for example ‘if our decolonisation plans go well[5]’. Macmillan’s administration produced many reports, which highlights its Weberian-cum-bureaucratic view of Imperial relations. This Government-Whitehall view would therefore aim for an ‘uneventful and welcome independence’ of African territories, as Macleod put it in 1961.

 

Macmillan saw colonial affairs as part of a ‘cost-cutting exercise[6]’. To better ‘gauge whether, from the financial and economic point of view, we are likely to gain or lose by [the colonies’] departure[7]’, Lord Salisbury was asked to draw a Profit and Loss account for the Empire. The Empire contribution was under severe scrutiny due trade imbalances and currency volatility. Minutes of the Cabinet Economic Policy meetings show how the ‘precarious state[8]’ of Britain’s external finances and the Imperial issues were interwoven in interdepartmental government discussions. The Sterling area, which buttressed Empire-building, was tumbling. The full convertibility of Sterling, enforced in 1958, put a further strain on Britain’s economy. More importantly, it made the underlying rationale of an Imperial Sterling Area redundant. Keynes had noted that Britain could not financially sustain the political and military requirement of Empire without US loans. Post-Hobsonian authors, such as Paul Baran (1957), presented decolonisation as a policy geared to embrace the change in capitalists’ best interests. However, Darwin notes that ‘surprisingly little official account was taken of British commercial interests and opinions in the approach to independence[9]’.

 

Britain’s rationale for decolonisation seems find a more satisfying with international relations and high politics. The explanation here is twofold. First, Britain prioritized the strengthening of the US Special Relationship. The three Churchillian interlocking circles – the Atlantic, Empire and Europe – had changed postbellum. The ‘Future policy study, 1960-70[10]’ (1959) set out a blueprint for a realignment of Britain’s strategic interests with the US. The report took as granted that Britain’s world power was declining. The Suez debacle in 1956 constituted a severe blow in that regard. Therefore, the Atlantic alliance had to be ‘the core of our foreign policy’. The Atlantic Charter (1941) was key in preserving good relationships with the US. In December 1960, Resolutions 1514 and 1541 were adopted by the UN General Assembly. They constitute the legal underpinning of the right to self-determination in international law[11]. John Hargreaves puts forwards that Macmillan’s colonial policy was aimed at saving the US-UK special relationship, which would have been tarnished had the UK insisted on keeping its African colonies. Second, decolonisation was an anti-USSR policy. The report ‘Africa in the next ten years’ (1959) emphasized that ‘If Western governments appear to be reluctant to concede independence […] they may alienate African opinion and turn it towards the Soviet Union[12]’. The Asian example, the Soviet intervention in the Congo, and the rise of Marxist intellectuals in Africa embodied the Communist threat. In Macmillan’s own words, decolonisation and the struggle against communism were the two biggest single historical trends of the Twentieth Century. In Africa, they formed a system. Ovendale summarizes this view, stating that decolonisation was ‘partly due to international considerations, and to Cold War politics and the need to prevent Soviet penetration in Africa[13]’.

 

Decolonisation adopted as a policy by a Conservative government means ideological ramshackle. John Gallagher[14] puts forward the key to decolonisation is to be found in an impossible triangle between Domestic Politics, Great Power Diplomacy, and the Terms of Colonial Collaboration. This is a powerful analytical model. As diplomacy undertook a paradigmatic shift, domestic conservative politics were shaken. The triumph of social democracy, high-mass consumption, and the appearance of the Soviet threat ‘marginalized the adherents of the imperial idea[15]’. Decolonisation was led by Whitehall, not Westminster. But, following Darwin, the traditional Tory paternalism embodied by Lord Salisbury was side-lined under Macmillan’s premiership. The Bow Group – liberal-minded conservatives – outnumber the Monday Club, whose members defined decolonisation as being ‘pushed out of one country after another cheering loudly to the pulling down of the Union Jack[16]’. Macmillan’s majority could undertake the end of Empire partially thanks to the side-lining of traditional Toryism[17]. It should be noted that the Imperial discourse did remain embroidered with Imperial paternalism, signalling the reminiscence of a high-minded imperialism. The Lugardian idea of trusteeship was still very present among policy-makers, and British decolonisation prided itself that the ‘transfer of power was effected over tea in an atmosphere of sweetness and light[18]’. The impact on the ‘terms of colonial collaboration’ is crucial. To know why Conservatives undertook decolonisation has a huge bearing on how it was undertaken. The Central African Federation[19] and the ‘Federal Moment[20]’ sheds light on how decolonisation was construed. The top-down approach undertaken by ‘post-imperial federations’ shows the ‘imperialism of decolonisation[21]’. British Conservatives, including Macmillan, had in mind ‘a move towards decolonisation […] as a means of securing imperial control[22]’.  Therefore, the imperial mind-set is not only present in colonial discourse, it is a bedrock of the policy itself. There are many definitions for ‘decolonisation’. The ‘official mind[23]’ of policymakers envisioned the legal-cum-constitutional transfer of sovereignty as a pure legal formality. The key goal of decolonisation was to keep imperial influence through indirect rule, ideally through Commonwealth[24].

 

            Frantz Fanon, for whom decolonisation meant the ‘complete extrusion of all foreign influence from the new state[25]’, probably had a different definition of decolonisation that Whitehall officials. It can also be argued that Britain signalled the end of Empire because it had no other choice. This second strand of argument emphasizes on the ‘wind of change’ as a political fact to which Macmillan is reacting. We will stress Macmillan’s policy was reactive in the light of the general trend of decolonisation, the impossibility of bloodshed in Africa, on nationalism as a sweeping political force.

 

The Fifth Pan African Congress, held in Manchester in 1945, warned that the ‘future could hold bullets as well as ballots’, that ‘Africans might have to appeal to force in an effort to achieve freedom[26]’. Violence was the only possible outcome, ‘British rule in Africa could be maintained only by force and British public opinion would reject the use of force for this purpose[27]’.  The Hola incidents in Kenya, more generally the Mau Mau revolt and the 1959 events in Nyasaland were seminal in Macleod’s acceleration of decolonisation as ‘any other policy would have led to horrible bloodshed[28]’. The publication of the Devlin Report in 1959 into the Nyasaland disturbances was an electroshock as it talked about a ‘police state’. In 1959, J. Enoch Powell denounced colonial violence in the Commons: ‘We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility[29]’. Until 1959, Conservatives did not perceive a big risk of violent upsurges in Africa. The high risk of violence was the crucial stimulus according to Horowitz[30]. John Darwin stresses that Macmillan’s government accelerated decolonisation when it realised that formal empire would lead to disturbances like those in Asia at the end of WW2. Drawing from the East-Asian example, but also the Congo and Algeria, policymakers realised ‘subversive wars’ could not be won.  F. Fanon thought violence was a liberating force, a path towards state creation.

 

The upsurge of violence was underpinned by the rise of ‘national consciousness[31]’. Pan-Africanism proved too difficult to implement[32], and ‘nationalism vanquished its transnational competitors, notably imperialism and Marxism[33]’. Due to settler politics, African nationalism was more racialized than in Asia[34]. This element underlines that ‘Conservative colonial policy makers […] were aware of the change embodied in the emergence of African nationalism but tended to underestimate its intensity[35]’. This led policy-makers to bet that Africans would comply with ‘multi-racial’ partnerships, which was an ‘error of judgement’ according to Horowitz. The electoral successes of African nationalist parties such TANU in Tanganyika or KANY in Kenya took Macmillan’s government ill-prepared. In the lens of agency theory, how could once-compliant colonial subjects show their agency and politically structure it to implement decolonisation? Sartre stresses how the ‘European élite undertook to manufacture a native élite […] and branded them with the principles of western culture[36]’. Wallerstein explains this phenomenon by ‘the rise of colonial nationalism as an ideology through which an educated colonial elite progressively mobilized mass following, skilfully exploiting the racial exclusiveness of their masters […] successfully inventing imaginary nations[37]’. Another explanation of agency is given by Robinson. He sees nationalism as a symptom, not a cause, of colonial breakdown. The reliance of the colonial state upon collaborators thanks to the ‘divide and rule’ colonial governance is key. When ‘this clockwork politics no longer sufficed[38]’ rule by coercion became the only (im)possible colonial governance.

The agenda for decolonisation was also set by other Imperial powers. The rapid decolonisations of France and Belgium accelerated the process for Britain too. Lennox-Boyd[39] noted that ‘some results of French policy are bound to have repercussions, possibly unfavourable, in British territories[40]’. The 1957 Independence of Ghana initiated a chain reaction. In 1958, De Gaulle insisted on Britain and France deciding together what path to follow[41]. The 95% of ‘No’ to a French Community in Guinea had an impact on the British Empire in 1958. In 1960, the surrender of Italian trusteeship over Somalia bolstered nationalist claims in British colonies. When Macleod put forward trying to set the pace ‘not as fast as the Congo and not as slow as Algeria[42]’, his power of ‘putting on the brake [was] very limited[43]’.

 

            To conclude, although there was a rationale for decolonisation, there was no large-scale withdrawal plan. It seems more accurate to see ‘Decolonization in East and Central Africa [as] the outcome of several different decisions made on separate occasions during the years 1960-3, and the general theme of disengagement which prevailed […] after the 1959 General Election was a consequence of a new climate of opinion rather than of a comprehensive cardinal plan[44]’. Above all, decolonisation reflected changes in the international and African situations, not a change at the Colonial Office. To that regard, the ‘wind of change’ blew, and would have blown, whatever the majority in Westminster and the policies enacted in Whitehall.

 

 

 

---

[1] DARWIN, John, ‘Decolonization and the End of Empire’, in WINKS, Robin, The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V. Historiography, 1999.

[2] DOYLE, Michael, Empires. 1st ed. 1986, p.45.

[3] OVENDALE, Ritichie, ‘Macmillan and the Wind of Change in Africa, 1957-1960’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 38, N°2, 1995, Cambridge University Press, p.455

[4] HYAM, Ronald, and LOUIS W (eds.), The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1957-1964, University of London, 2000.

[5] Colonial Relations Office, 5^th December 1961, Hyam, Ronald, and Roger Louis W (eds.), The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1957-1964, University of London, 2000, Part II, p.259

[6] OVENDALE, Ritchie, Ibid., p.459

[7] OVENDALE, Ritchie, Ibid., p.459

[8] C.E.P, 22 May 1957, in Hyam, Ronald, and Roger Louis W (eds.), The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1957-1964, University of London, 2000, Part II.

[9] DARWIN, John, Ibid., p.5

[10] HYAM, Ronald and LOUIS William, Ibid., p.36

[11] The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was passed on December, 14^th 1960. It recognized that ‘the peoples of the world ardently desire the end of colonialism in all its manifestations […] all peoples have the right to self-determination’.

[12] HYAM, Ronald and LOUIS William, Ibid, p.47

[13] OVENDALE, Ritchie, Ibid, p.457

[14] GALLAGHER, John, The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2004

[15] GALLAGHER, John, Ibid.

[16]HOROWITZ, Dan, ‘Attitudes of British Conservatives Towards Decolonisation in Africa’, Royal African Society, Vol. 69, N°274, 1970, p.22

[17] David Goldsworthy (1970) notes that before 1959, Macmillan was unable to attempt any liberal move for fear of intra-party ramble in the first General Election since the Suez debacle of 1956. 

[18] DARWIN, John, Ibid., p.11

[19] Or Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953-63)

[20] COLLINS, Michael, ‘Decolonisation and the Federal Moment’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 24:1, 2013

[21] LOUIS, W & ROBINSON, R, ‘The Imperialism of Decolonization’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1994

[22] COLLINS, Michael, Ibid., p.21

[23] ROBISON, Ronald and GALLAGHER, John, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, IB Tauris, 1961 [2015]

[24] Macmillan exposed his plan to ‘transform the ‘old empire’ into a ‘new commonwealth’ in a speech pronounced on April 2^nd 1958 at Central Hall, Westminster. In 1951, this was already on Secretary of State for the Colonies Oliver Stanley’s agenda, addressing the Commons, who declared the government ‘pledged to guide Colonial along the road to self-government within the British Commonwealth’. A few years before (1943), the same speech had exposed the same motives but referring to ‘The British Empire’ instead of ‘Commonwealth’.

[25] DARWIN, John, Ibid

[26] BRENDON, Piers, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997, 2008, p.512-3

[27] HOROWITZ, Dan, Ibid., p.10

[28] Macleod, The Spectator, 1961

[29] OVENDALE, Ritchie, p.471

[30] HOROWITZ, Dan, p.279

[31] Ronald HYAM notes that WW2 was seminal is the rise of an ‘African politcal consciousness’ and had destroyed ‘the white man’s prestige […] as an instrument of government’.

[32] For example, Ghana’s constitution (article 2) left a possibility of abandoning a national structure to integrate a Pan-African political union. The failure of Pan-Africanism is not the subject of this essay, but it can be noted that Gamal Abd-El NASSER, leader of Egypt, famously turned from a Pan-African leader to Pan-Arabism as a doctrine.

[33] COLLINS, Michael, Ibid., p.1-2

[34] It could be observed that settler politics are not very present in this essay. Although settlers had sympathies in Westminster among Conservatives, the feeling of treachery of settlers was not felt very strongly by MPs, except the right-wing Tories that had a less significant voice under Macmillan as noted before in the essay. Ronald HYAM notes that Macmillan’s premiership was characterized by the fact that White Settlers had less influence than what was commonly accepted under previous PMs, when it was believed the ‘settler threat to be as big as the communist one’. The reduced size of Settler Politics therefore reflects this diminished influence in early 1960s as compared with the 1950s.

[35] HOROWITZ, Dan, Ibid., p.11-12

[36] FANON, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961, Preface by Jean-Paul SARTRE

[37] DARWIN, John, Ibid., p.7-8

[38] DARWIN, John, Ibid., p. 8-9

[39] Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1954-1959

[40] HYAM, Ronald and LOUIS William, Ibid., p.46

[41] SHIPWAY, Martin, ‘The Wind of Change and the Tides of History: de Gaulle, Macmillan and the Beginnings of the French Decolonizing Endgame’, in BUTLER, L and STOCKWELL, S (eds.), The Wind of Change. Harold Macmillan and the British Decolonization, 2013, pp.180-194

[42] Macleod Cabinet Memorandum (January 1961), quoted in: HYAM, Ronald and LOUIS William, Ibid., p.41

[43] According to Julian Amery MP, figure of the Monday Club, appointed to the Privy Council in 1960 and son-in-law of PM Macmillan, quoted in HYAM, Ronald, Britain’s Declining Empire. The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp.241-326

[44] HOROWITZ, Dan, Ibid., p.18

Sir Andrew Cohen and the End of Empire by Tommy Gee (Administrative Officer, Uganda 1949 - 65)

 In 1985 Brian Lapping wrote End of Empire, a masterful account based on his TV series starting with India, The Jewel in the Crown, the first to be dislodged, moving through the Middle East, finally to Africa, the continent where many of OSPA's of remaining members served. That was the year I retired after spending 20 years at IDS where FCO had held a conference about what should be done with the remaining pieces of empire excluding the sensitive territories of Gibraltar and Hong Kong. Our government is still struggling with this rump which now includes several tax havens, and of course, the Falklands and Gib. The Colonial Office (CO) in its hey-day employed some 4000 staff, never mind countless overseas officers. A new large building being planned was aborted and it lingered on in rented accommodation in Church House, Westminster, and as the Empire shrank, finally finished up in a room in the Commonwealth Office, which itself was merged with the FO to become what was mischievously called by detractors, the "Common and Foreignwealth Office", but which we now all know respectfully as the FCO.

The German History Museum is currently hosting a special exhibition about its colonial past. Back in the '40s on the "Devonshire" course we probationary administrators, mostly public school and Oxbridge, learned that the UK headed up the international colonial admin league table of France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Germany, US and the empires of Rome, both ancient and modern.

How will the British colonial record be remembered?

At its peak in the 1870s the achievements of the British Empire were once encapsulated in our Imperial Institute intended as a permanent Empire museum. But after WW2 in 1958 this morphed into the Commonwealth Institute and Imperial College, and as the role of the Commonwealth declined so did that Institute, which closed down in 2002. Its unusual copper roof donated by the Northern Rhodesia Chamber of Mines always leaked, threatening the future of the building. Its contents were then transferred to the Museum of the British Empire and Commonwealth in Bristol, which itself closed in 2009, and some of the contents were then passed to the Bristol City Museum. The remaining assets were liquidated and passed to the Commonwealth Education Trust, a charity established in 2007 to advance education in the Commonwealth.

How then shall we be remembered? It will not be by this sorry institutional saga. What is needed is another Gibbon, Britain's finest ever historian, to match his History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, a monumental task. We need someone who can take better distance from Elkins' murky account of the Mau Mau rebellion, who will not confuse British politics with its administration, turning us into the whipping boys. Politicians have concealed colonial records at Kew and they have also had some destroyed, but a rich seam remains. The anticipatory Colonial Records project at Rhodes House of all places was set up 60 years ago as our exodus gathered momentum. Many of us sent our papers there to be perused by future scholars. OSPA has worked hard to place on the record and preserve a faithful account of our remarkable contribution to development and independence.

The Romans were ill-prepared for their sudden exodus from Empire. Likewise we have received little notice to make ready for unexpected departure - Brexit. For many, especially because of our preoccupation with WW2, our withdrawal from Empire seemed hasty and ill-prepared. Many of my colleagues were blinkered and ignored the winds of change, and spoke of the need for another 25 years as they grasped their golden handshake.

Our departure from Africa was a major, well-accomplished exercise. Early (secretive) thinking about independence took place at a Colonial Conference held in the late '30s when Indian independence was already imminent.

It is impossible to predict what would have happened had Churchill won the 1945 election, but Labour was well prepared, and Indian independence was successfully erected on the 400 year foundations of the British Raj and the ICS. This very separate and somewhat exclusive experience inevitably impacted on the colonies. Thus in Uganda we adopted both the Indian and Criminal and Codes as the basis for the codification of our legal system. District Officers were modelled on Indian Collectors. Both were concerned with tax collection.

The first formal notice of Labour's plans came in a widely promulgated 1948 despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Arthur Creech Jones, in a despatch containing policies rehearsed in Labour's Fabian Colonial Research Bureau. Rather unusually a member of that bureau also occupied the Africa desk at the Colonial Office, a high flyer and seen as the architect of African independence. At the time some of the problems seemed insurmountable. In East and Central Africa there were white settlers with similar ambitions to those in South Africa. Our man at the Africa desk, who had seen war service posted at the tender age of 32, as the Lieutenant- Governor of Malta under siege, devised a federal solution for Central Africa which failed. The transfer of power to African politicians began in Gold Coast in 1958, a model that would inspire others to follow, the process ending up finally with a formal constitutional conference at Lancaster House in London. Not all loose ends were always successfully tied up; Rhodesian land ownership for example.

Understandably the architect for the demolition of our African empire was not universally popular. Officials on the spot often said much more time was needed to prepare for independence despite the start of crash education, development, and localization programmes. The Westminster democratic constitutional model powered events with African politicians at the helm subordinating traditional authority systems.

Governor Cohen

The Africa "architect", Sir Andrew Cohen, was again translated from the Colonial Office, only this time to govern Uganda, where as a protectorate, indirect rule was firmly entrenched rather than Westminster democracy. As a result, his term of office was marred by the deportation of the Kabaka of Buganda, who had been recognized in a solemn agreement made with Queen Victoria in 1900. Indeed Churchill teased him by asking him whether he had heard of the divine right of kings, which curiously arises today over sovereignty and Brexit, with our PM now being compared to Henry VIII.

Sir Andrew Cohen (1909-1968) joined the CO in 1933 when the British Empire of tropical Africa was expected to last for ever. After a scholarship and first class honours at Trinity College Cambridge he became a home civil servant, African governor, diplomat at the UN, and finally the first Permanent Secretary of Labour's new Ministry of Overseas Development (referred to as ODM to avoid confusion with the Ministry of Defence) which became responsible for British overseas aid with a crucial part in helping establish newly independent territories. His field experience was invaluable in this. His biographer, who never finished the task, described him as "the first to foresee the coming of African independence at the end of Hitler's war, and as most urgent in laying the necessary foundations for it. ...the first proconsul for African nationality in the common interest of Britain and Africa his personality was represented by an intensely individual force of mind, a towering physical presence, and volcanic energy".

The new dynamic leaders at ODM (Andrew Cohen and Barbara Castle) became known mischievously as "the Elephant and Castle".

At Cambridge because of his towering intellect, he was recruited as an Apostle and accordingly labelled a Russian agent by the notorious Peter Wright in his sensational and inaccurate book "Spy Catcher", an absurd libel which sadly Cohen could not refute from the dead. He took no part in Jewish corporate life, finding Jewish communalism as objectionable as discriminatory Zionism. His sister, Ruth, became Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. He reminded me of my wonderful college principal, a towering Jewish intellectual who also died in his prime. By 1947 Cohen had risen to become head of the African division in the CO where he was one of the few to realise that there had to be a change from indirect rule via African chiefs to modern systems of representative government making use of educated African officials and elected leaders. The beginning was to be with changes in local government, reflected in the 1948 despatch, leading to a transformation to the nation state.

Cohen believed that after Creech Jones fell from office in 1951 he was exiled to Uganda where a Governor's boots would cool his radical heels. He was renowned for his awkward loathing of ceremony. He first came on tour to the district where I had just been made a rather young District Commissioner, and we clicked, as I was a rebel, too. We revised the old Bunyoro Agreement and signed a new one in preparation for things to come. I became a disciple to the Apostle. Later our young Native Authority Clerk who had made his way through Uganda's Byzantine constitutional changes all the way from Bunyoro in the early 50s to Parliament to become Obote's deputy PM at Independence some 20 years later, asked me to stay on as PS Education. I sat down with Jo Zake, an old friend, and now Obote's new Minister of Education, and his first words were that with the departure of so many expats we had to double the numbers in tertiary education. When I asked where would we get the teachers, he replied, "I've rung Andrew Cohen in London and he says he will arrange this". He did, and so did we.

When I returned home in 1965, Cohen summoned me to the ODM and said he had a job for me at IDS. There must be many others whose lives were influenced by this remarkable man with a prophetic vision of Africa's future architecture.

Postscript

Although our Empire has ended, curiously its 1917 Order of Chivalry still lingers on and, strangely, with awards mostly to athletes and actors.

Mutiny by the Tanganyika Army by K.H. Khan Lodhi (Tanganyika Police, 1950-70)

 

John Okello

On 12 January 1964 there was a Revolution in the newly independent state of Zanzibar, ruled by the Sultan. The British High Commission managed to save the Sultan and his family in the ship owned by the Sultan, and they sailed safely to Dar es Salaam on 15 January. This coup had full support of Sheikh Abeid A Karume - a political head from Zanzibar and Pemba. The Tanganyika President, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, was the head of the President's Office and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Tanganyika. He knew that there were elements within the indigenous population who wanted to kill or harm the Sultan. However he instructed his government that no harm be done to the Sultan nor to his companions. I was instructed to see to his safety in Oyster Bay where a house was provided. I arranged a police barrier and armed police personnel to guard the Sultan. Later at 2am I was informed by Special Branch that I could go, leaving my policemen surrounding the Residence. Pre-dawn the Sultan and his party were taken to the airport and flown out of the country. Later we got information that the Sultan had safely landed in London.

Just four days later an attempted coup took place in the Tanganyikan armed forces in Dar es Salaam centered largely around pay and conditions. The British Brigadier immediately planned a counterattack and slowly things returned to normal. There had been some police personnel who also participate but these were soon arrested. 94 were arrested in the first operation and the rest were picked up later with not a single bullet fired. About three days later I was called by my Regional Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner Kiletta, to see him on the Floor. He said, "Khan Lodhi - get ready. We are going to arrest Army personnel who are in their office near the railway station. Make sure you post policemen at all foreign embassies, banks, waterworks, electricity. Now go and arrange it. Then we shall go to arrest the Army officers". Accordingly, within 30 minutes the posting was done. The Commander asked me on the telephone if the work had been done. I replied, "Yes, Sir". He said, "Wait, I will call you back". He rang me again and said, "Get ready, I will call you". I said, "Yes, Sir". After five minutes he called me, "Have you gone". I said, "No, Sir, I am waiting for you". Again he rang, "Are you still there? Come up". He said, "Why have you not gone?" I said, "You said to wait, and I was waiting". He said, "You are a most stubborn police officer - I have other work to do. Go and arrest them, they are all wild, and armed". Before leaving the room he asked me how many men I had left to go along. I said, "Two - a police driver and the second, a police detective". He said, "Go". I was very much disappointed. I came down and informed my Chief Inspector, Mr Mandal.

Tanganyika Police

I instructed the police driver to follow me in a large van. I took my car and the detective sat with me in the front seat. We drove to the Army office. I saw the Army officer, distressed and camouflaged, walking up and down with a rifle. He knew me by name. "Bwana Khan, we need your help". I said, "I have been sent to help you, and that is the reason I came with our big van". The officer said, "Shall we get our vehicles?" I said, "Look up. There is a plane. They can shoot you all including me. And in your vehicles it could be dangerous. You and I will both die". So all the soldiers started to get into the police van with their guns. I said, "You should have no guns. You could be easy prey". I got their guns stacked in the office and told them my driver would look after their guns. In the meantime I sat in the driver's seat of the vehicle. Two officers holding the rank of Lieutenant and Second Lieutenant sat with us in the front, leaving my car locked there. When we arrived at the police station I ordered drinks for them from a shop and told them that it was our police station. No-one would come to any harm there.

Then I went to see my Regional Commander, telling him that I had with me two officers and forty other ranks. I asked if I could bring them to see him. He said, "No. I don't want to see them. Better take them to Police Headquarters". When they were all refreshed, I drove the van to Headquarters, parked the vehicle and went upstairs to see the Inspector- General of Police. At the door I found a policeman was sitting there. I said, "Please tell the IGP that I'm here, and have to talk to him urgently". He said, "I cannot go in - there is a meeting". I raised my voice so that all could hear. The Commissioner of Police, Mr Hamza Aziz, came out and I told him about the Army men. He got the gist of the matter and I was allowed to enter. I saw a number of senior policemen, the Junior Minister of Home Affairs and the Permanent Secretary of Home Affairs. They asked me how many men I had. I said, "Me, a police driver and a detective police constable. They asked me about casualties. I said, "None". Any violence? I said, "None". They asked me how the Army had accepted my talk. I said, "Do you want to see them?" They said, "No". After some discussion I was told to take them back to the Central Police Station and await further instruction. I went down to the van and drove to Central Police Station. I told my Commander that I had been instructed to wait for IGP's instructions. Then I arranged another van with comfortable seats which could be locked outside. I also arranged cold drinks for the Army officers. I kept talking with them to make them feel that there was nothing wrong. I arranged Mobile police vans, one in front and another one at the back, as I had received instructions that the lot would be taken to Ukonga Prison.

Prisons Tanganyika Badge

When I had the instructions I drove this new van to Ukonga Prison without locking the van cage. Reaching the Prison I got the prison door opened. I informed the Prison Officer that I had Army men with me. He asked me if I had any documents like arrest warrants. I said, "No". I asked him to accept them as this was confirmed by the Ministry. The officer again said, "Have you any papers? I said, "No. You could treat me as a warrant for their detention". Then the gate was opened and all were handed over to the prison. Then the Army officers started shouting at me. "You're a cunning policeman. You promised us safety. One day after our release you will see what will happen to your wife and children. We are not going to be here for life. We will come out". I said, "Sirs, this is the best place for your safety. These prison officers will only confine you and look after your needs". After that, I left them.

Later on the senior Army officer, wearing Brigadier badges, entered my office. He said, "I understand you have my men with you. Why are they here?" I told the Regional Police Commander that the Commander of the Army wanted to see him. He said, "Give me a little time and I will tell you to bring him upstairs". In the meantime the officer was served coffee in my office. He was very much upset. He wanted to see his men. My Commander rang and asked me to bring him upstairs. I took him up to where there were five Police officers. On entering the room he was furious. The Commander and his men took his revolver and said, "Khan Lodhi... you can go".

Even though the coup was more or less over, Army men were still on the top of the building with weapons. Most of them were arrested by me without the use of guns. During the whole operation I did not use guns. Their guns were taken into custody and the men handed over to Ukonga Prison.

After that. Army officers from up-country were called by their head office and I was told to meet them and then take them to the prison with one 999 car in front and another at the rear, with no warrant.

In Our Defence: Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service by John H. Smith, CBE (Administrative Officer, Nigeria 1951-70)

 

University College, Ibadan

Recent articles in the Overseas Pensioner have challenged anti-colonial comments particularly by the BBC and The Times. Colonial memoirs usually face up to the criticisms levelled against us and Harry Mitchell's Confessions of a Briefless Barrister has a whole chapter devoted to the defence of Britain's imperial record. He criticises Tim Butcher, more for Blood River about the Congo than for Chasing the Devil, his account of Sierra Leone, where Mitchell began his career. Mitchell's concern is that Butcher blames colonialism for the mess he found in the Congo some fifty years later and effectively quotes a Malaysian UN officer who argued that Malaysia had done extremely well since independence despite colonial rule. Neither Butcher nor the Malaysian accepted that British rule and preparation for independence was any better than Belgium's. Another target is the BBC's comment in a documentary about Livingstone suggesting that his exploration encouraged the "Scramble for Africa", thereby creating exploitation 'every bit as shameful as the slave trade'. Mitchell's efforts to engage the BBC in constructive discussion failed, an experience shared by OSPA.

Chinua Achebe

We learn about a less expected defender in Professor Gilbey's Chinua Achebe on the Positive Legacy of Colonialism, in African Affairs, October 2016. Gilbey points out that Achebe, although a key figure in the rise and persistence of anti-colonial ideology in Africa, made a clear statement in his final work There was a Country about the positive legacies of colonialism and was never the simple anti-colonial figure most assumed, welcoming in particular the educational opportunities he enjoyed. Achebe, as a young man, seemed to those of us who knew him to be a model of the development and modernisation that we hoped latter-day colonialism would bring. After an English style secondary education, Achebe was an early graduate of Ibadan, Nigeria's first university, carefully nurtured by the University of London. Soon writing well-constructed novels in beautiful English, he became one of the most popular novelists of the second half of the Twentieth Century worldwide. He was certainly a nationalist, particularly irritated by Joyce Gary's African novels, writing about his country with exceptional observation and understanding, the impact upon it of colonialism - Things Fall Apart - and the impact upon its peoples of participation in the modern world - No Longer at Ease and Man of the People. He was also an Igbo, the Nigerian people whose culture and demographic pressures perhaps best prepared them to exploit the challenges and opportunities colonialism offered. Things certainly didn't fall apart in the Northern Emirates where Indirect rule ossified tradition and kept western education at bay.

Gilbey demonstrates how Achebe's popularity, turning him into something of a literary industry, resulted in admirers blaming every fault and flaw on colonialism despite Achebe acknowledging local faults and failures. Achebe was essentially a fair minded critic of colonialism of which he could never approve but in which he could see some advantages, just as, although an Igbo and loyal to Biafra during the civil war, he remained more a Nigerian than a Biafran.