Banda, Kenneth Kaunda and the rest, will be great enough men not to allow their natural feeling of hostility or animosity towards Southern Rhodesia to destroy the possibility of keeping in being many establishments, institutions and projects which can be maintained only on a federal basis and which would take a very long time to rebuild if they were now allowed to be destroyed.
- 7.1 p.m.
'Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans) The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) expressed the hope that those on this side of the House who supported Sir Roy Welensky would not be silenced by Lord Poole into abstaining from speaking in the debate. I assure him that I shall not be silenced by Lord Poole, on this subject or on any other, for that matter, if I feel that I have something to say. The right hon. Gentleman also said that there was no cause for jubilation today. When he said it, I could not help feeling that, with certain honourable exceptions, a good deal has been done to damage the cause of the Federation by the party opposite.
Like others, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State on having achieved what has so far been achieved at the Victoria Falls Conference. However, I feel that we should recognise fully and state here and now that a great deal has been achieved in the Federation. I am disappointed that many of those who have spoken in the debate have tended to brush this aside and speak only of the disadvantages and failures, without giving a really fair picture of what has been taking place. My noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) might well have given people the impression that Southern Rhodesia was a State in which all the people were badly oppressed. Anyone who goes out there knows perfectly well that this is not so. All over the country, the people are living a very happy and free life, and much advantage has accrued to them throughout the time during which they have been governed by Europeans in that territory.
It should be realised that the Federation has not died a natural death. It may have suffered from slowness in the way it set about achieving the objects put before it. It is easy now, jobbing backwards, to criticise those who might have gone faster. It is easier still to do this speaking here 6,000 miles away from the fears which people in countries of this kind have when they see chaos in other African countries which become independent. But great strides have been made. The Africans, who are still, as we are told, the vast majority and whose interests should be our main concern, are in danger of suffering if a proper handing-over does not take place.
I said that the Federation had not died a natural death. It has been brutally bludgeoned to death. There have been various strange allies in the murder. First, there are the extreme nationalists, the racialists, whose one object in Africa is to see black domination. There is then the Afro-Asian bloc in the United Nations and, indeed, in the British Commonwealth which seems determined to destroy any vestige of British influence in these territories. They are aided by other States which, for reasons of their own, want to see chaos in Africa and Britain's influence removed. Also, there are allies of this country who have anti-colonial prejudices and who speak with great ignorance of affairs in Africa but who yet aid and abet this brutal murder. Finally, as I said earlier, there are hon. Members opposite who have certainly not helped by their exaggerations about conditions in the territories.
Most of the time, I fear, it has appeared that the British Government have been standing by without the courage to intervene and try to help. There have even been moments when one felt that they were putting a toe out to trip up the victim in the path of the assailant with his raised weapon. I cannot understand how we in this Parliament could have accepted a situation in which the United Nations sends over a committee to discuss the affairs of Southern Rhodesia, a committee with representatives from countries such as Mali which has about 5 per cent. primary education compared with 95 per cent. in Southern Rhodesia, or Ethiopia where slavery still takes place. We allow these people to probe the affairs of Southern Rhodesia and, in so doing, all we seem to do is to say,"This is not really our responsibility. We cannot do anything about it. Southern Rhodesia has been independent since 1923. Therefore, by all means come and talk about it, but we cannot do anything".
