Empire Into Commonwealth

LT.-COL. LEGGE: During the Crusades to the Holy Land, Richard the Lionhearted, King of England, took as his patron St. George who had been martyred by Diocletian in the persecutions of the year 303 A.D. Today is St. George's Day and it is most fitting that we should have as our guest of honour Sir Charles Arden-Clarke, a gentleman who has devoted his life to the service of England and to the people of Africa who have been helped to independence by the genius of our Commonwealth system and by the devotion of great British pro-consuls like Sir Charles.

In the year 1959 the whole continent of Africa is spotted by an epidemic of bubbling cauldrons. There is brutally terroristic warfare in Algeria and in our sister Dominion of South Africa there is the unswerving racist doctrine of Apartheid which even threatens to tear the universities asunder by separating the communities in every sphere of activity. In Egypt there is the vicious and hysterical propaganda of Arab nationalism, while in the Belgian Congo there are deadly riots reminiscent of the bloodshed and bestial acts of the Mau Mau which took place in Kenya not so long ago.

On the other hand, there are hopeful experiments taking place in the new independent African member of the Commonwealth, Ghana. Our speaker, like most great experts, loves his subject and Sir Charles' subject is Africa. He left school to join the Machine Gun Corps in the First World War and campaigned in France, Germany and Southern Russia. After the cessation of hostilities he entered the Colonial Service and spent sixteen years in Nigeria which was followed by service in Bechuanaland and Basutoland until 1946. On his next posting Sir Charles left Africa and went to Sarawak as the first Governor of the Colony after a century of rule by the white rajahs of the Brooke family. Then m 1949 he was given the vital assignment of Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Gold Coast which was in a state of irritable agitation and was suffering from a persistent rash of strikes and boycotts. Under the leadership of Dr. Nkrumhe's Convention Peoples Party immediate self-government was demanded. By 1951 Sir Charles had been able to work out a new constitution for the Gold Coast and then wisely and generously freed Dr. Nkrumhe from prison to lead the new Government. It is surely a tribute to the fairness and ability of Sir Charles that he was accepted by Dr. Nkrumhe as the first Governor General of the youngest member of the free Commonwealth.

Sir Charles Arden-Clarke is presently the Chairman of the United Nations Good Offices Committee on South-West Africa and I now have the honour to invite him to address The Empire Club of Canada on "Empire into Commonwealth".

SIR CHARLES ARDEN-CLARKE: During the past half-century the British, almost unknown to themselves, have been engaged on a great experiment, the transformation of an old-style Empire of dependent Colonies and Protectorates into a new-style Commonwealth of sovereign independent states and nations. This transformation seems to have come as a surprise to many and to be a cause of alarm and despondency to some. That India and Pakistan, with their teeming millions and ancient civilisations and culture, should achieve independence within two years of the end of World War II, after a relatively lengthy period of British rule, was generally accepted as proper and inevitable. It was the achievement of independence ten years later by the Gold Coast, now Ghana, and the Federation of Malaya, to be followed next year by Nigeria, with its 35 million people, (with other Colonies on the "independence production line") that has caused surprise and some anxiety.

There are three questions that I am often asked about this:

1) Is the grant of independence to these African Colonies a new concept of British colonial policy? 2) Is a parliamentary democratic system of government on the British model regarded as the system best suited to such politically undeveloped people?

3) Why this rush to establish these new independent states under this alien system of government before the people are ready for it?

I will try and give some of the answers to these questions. To take my first question, the answer in my view is NO. I will instance West Africa, where I spent 24 years of my service. Nearly a hundred years ago, in 1864 to be precise, a Select Committee of the House of Commons dealing with West African affairs resolved:

"The object of our policy should be to encourage in the natives the exercise of those qualities which may make it possible for us more and more to transfer to them the administration of all the governments."

That did not stop us acquiring sovereignty over further large areas and millions more natives in West Africa when, towards the end of the century, "the scramble for Africa" by the Great Powers was at its peak. We did not do this for love of sovereignty or power for its own sake, but because if we didn't, someone else would, the French, the Germans, or some other Power. The world needed and could no longer do without the products of those tropical lands, the vegetable oils, the timber, the minerals and so on; chaos prevailed out there and out of it order had to be produced. But our policy in the exercise of that sovereignty and our objective remained unchanged.

I will jump 56 years from the resolution of the Select Committee and come to my own personal experience. I went to Northern Nigeria in 1920 as an Administrative

Cadet, one of a batch of ex-officers demobilized from the Army at the end of World War I; a Cadet was the lowest form of life in the Colonial Administrative Service. We were all told that our job was to teach the people to stand on their own feet and manage their own affairs. The policy of "Indirect Rule", instituted by that great administrator, the late Lord Ingard, that prevailed in Northern Nigeria, was designed to that end. Few, if any, of us ever dreamed 40, 30, or even 20 years ago before the outbreak of World War II, that we would see the translation of an African Colonial Territory into a free and independent state within our working life time. Nevertheless we all realised that that was the ultimate objective of the policy we were required to carry out. The achievement of independence by dependent territories that prove themselves to be economically viable and capable of maintaining reasonable standards of administration seems to me to be the natural and inevitable outcome of British colonial policy during the past century. All too often that policy has not been lucidly stated and the measures for its execution have not been practically planned, hence, doubtless, the question whether the policy is new. It is not. What is new and surprising is the speed with which that policy has suddenly come to fruition. I will have more to say on this point when I come to my third question.

Let me take my second question--is a parliamentary democratic system of government on the British model regarded as the system best suited to these politically undeveloped peoples? It is only about 60 years ago that the boundaries of what we now know as Ghana and Nigeria were drawn, somewhat arbitrarily, upon the map of Africa and within those boundaries was a jumble of warring tribes, speaking different languages and without any form of central government. Today the tribes of Ghana live and work in peace together, speak of themselves as Ghanians, use English as their common and official language, and claim to be one nation governed by a central parliament, elected under universal adult suffrage. 60 years is not long in which to build a nation; it has taken us British many centuries to make the United Kingdom united. It has taken us many centuries to evolve a sound system of democratic government that suits us and which we are capable of working. It certainly does not follow that our present system will necessarily suit others living in different conditions, with a different background, different traditions, and in a different stage of political development. It would not, I imagine, be beyond the ingenuity of political philosophers or the skill of experienced administrators to work out a system of government which would seem, at any rate in logic or on paper, better suited to existing African conditions. However, I know of no serious attempt having been made to do so. The African, like ourselves, is "plain human" and is not wedded to logic. Our own proven system of government is human and humane; it is the only one of which we have recent experience and it is all we have to offer with any confidence to those of our wards, who have never had any well established form of central government of their own.

I must confess that at times, when I have been bedevilled by the delays, futilities and frustrations imposed by the democratic form of government, I have been tempted to think that a form of benevolent autocracy would suit local conditions better; there was, however, always an important proviso--that I should be the benevolent autocrat. As this proviso limited, somewhat severely, the application of this bright idea, I have always had to abandon it.

There is too a psychological aspect to this question of some alternative system of government. I doubt if any would prove acceptable to the people. The people have come to regard, indeed have been taught to regard, our British form of government, our parliamentary democratic system, as the best in the world. To suggest that some alternative, and therefore inferior, system would suit them better is, in their view, an insult; it is to suggest that they are themselves inferior and incapable of working the British system. If you will forgive a very broad generalization, the average African in these emergent territories is out to prove that he and his country are just as good as any European and his country. He recognises that there is much leeway to be made up, due in his view to centuries of neglect, oppression, exploitation or other causes for which he is not responsible, but that does not make him inherently inferior to the European in character or capability. That attitude of mind affects not only constitutional questions but almost every problem, with which an administrator is faced, and cannot be disregarded. We must, of course, recognize that the virtues of parliamentary democracy as a form of government may well diminish in the eyes of political leaders and others when it is no longer a question of wresting power from alien hands but of keeping it in their own. They may begin to think, like me, that benevolent autocracy (with the same proviso) is possibly better suited to local conditions and, unlike me, they may go a step further and put that thought into action.

I have answered my first two questions by saying that independence for African colonies is no new concept of British colonial policy, in fact that it is the natural and inevitable out-come of that policy over the past century; and that it is also natural and almost inevitable that independence should be achieved under a form of parliamentary democratic government at the centre, where no well-established indigenous form of central government had existed before our advent.

That brings me to my third question, why this rush to establish these new independent states under this alien system of government before the people are ready for it or, perhaps I should say, before the people have been adequately prepared for it? The short answer is, we can't help it. But that needs some amplification and explanation. There are many factors that dictate the speed of a Colony's progress to independence and not all of them are under our control.

One of the most important factors to my mind is this. We govern our Colonies and Protectorates, not by force but with the consent or at least the acquiescence of the bulk of the population. Once the people, under the stimulus of their political leaders, refuse to acquiesce any longer in alien domination and claim their independence, the governing power can do one of two things; it can stay and govern against the will of the people and that means using force, and usually a lot of force involving a lot of bloodshed, or it can transfer power to the people in such manner and at such pace as the circumstances may require.

The pace varies enormously. In those territories where political dominance is exercised by a small minority of one race, better educated and with a higher standard of living, resident among a large majority of another race with little or no education and a low standard of living, the problem is complex and progress towards independence is likely to be difficult and the pace slower. When you have a reasonably homogeneous, indigenous population, as in West Africa, where the few thousand non-Africans living there are practically all temporary sojourners who return to their own homelands when their period of work there is over, the problem is comparatively simple, or at least less complex and the pace is likely to be faster.

When I was in Ghana I was asked one day by my Ministers, who had been discussing the question at some length among themselves, what form a suitable memorial to independence should take. I suggested twin columns, crowned by outsize effigies of a mosquito and tsetse-fly; it was those two insects that had prevented alien settlement, saved the country from the racial problems that were bedevilling so many other parts of the Continent, and so let them get their independence first. My suggestion was rejected.

Obviously the governing power, before abdicating its responsibilities in any territory, must satisfy itself that the country is economically viable and capable of paying its own way without outside assistance and that the government to which it hands over power is acceptable to the majority of the people and is capable of keeping the peace within its borders and maintaining a reasonable standard of administration. If these criteria are fulfilled, and they are fairly straightforward and not too difficult to assess in a country with a homogenous population, then it is indeed dangerous to attempt to resist a popularly supported demand for national independence. Freedom is a fundamental ideal of human nature and has a potent and universal appeal. It is this freedom from alien domination that gives every nationalist movement its strength. I saw something of its strength and the potency of its appeal during my eight years in Ghana.

The road to independence is like driving along a deeply corrugated road and we were all in the same car. As all know, who have driven their cars along such roads, which are common in Africa, there is only one safe pace and that is dictated by the weight and power of the car and the depth of the corrugations. If one goes too fast, one bounces into the ditch; too slow and the car shakes itself to pieces. We had to find the right pace for the Gold Coast car. Some thought that 60 miles an hour or more was the right pace, and others would have preferred to travel at 20 miles an hour. In the event we compromised at about 40. The car stayed on the road and arrived intact at its journey's end, independence. The "Now, now, now" of the C.P.P. lasted some seven years before self-government, and independence, was achieved, and achieved with friendship and goodwill on both sides. I do not know whether it would have been possible to slow things down and still retain that goodwill; and if that goodwill had been lost, it is doubtful whether Ghana would still be a member of the Commonwealth.

It is important that these newly emergent independent countries should remain as members of the Commonwealth. For the Commonwealth is playing and must continue to play a vital role in world affairs and the preservation of peace, and its growth and influence must be fostered. Recently I have had an opportunity of watching the United Nations Organisation at work and not long ago I spent a couple of weeks in New York attending sessions of its Fourth Committee. (I was there in my capacity of United Kingdom representatives on, and Chairman of, the United Nations Good Offices Committee on South West Africa.) I don't propose to air my views here on the United Nations Organisation, even if they are worth airing after such a brief experience. U.N.O. is there and we have got to have it. All I want to say now is that my brief personal contact with the United Nations has convinced me more than ever of the tremendous value, not merely to Great Britain, but to the whole world, and to be the cause of world peace, of our Commonwealth; of the way it works and attempts to put into practice the ideals that inspire it and hold it together.

The Commonwealth has been described in various ways, as a family, as a club, as a brotherhood based on common ideals of freedom, justice, the rule of law and democratic government. This is how the Head of the Commonwealth, Her Majesty the Queen, described it in one of her Christmas broadcasts:

"The Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the empires of the past. It is an entirely new concept--built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace" and Her Majesty went on to dedicate herself anew to "that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races".

It is indeed this conception of equal partnership, based on friendship and actuated by mutual tolerance and goodwill, that differentiates the Commonwealth from the United Nations Organisation and gives the Commonwealth its vital part in world affairs. It is these ideals, these qualities that must be fostered, of transforming our old style conduct of this experiment, on which we are embarked, of transforming our old style Empire into an "equal partnership of nations and races", our new style Commonwealth.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Lt.-Col. Montague, Past President of the Club.