Air Estimates, 1935.

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply. – in the House of Commons at on 25 July 1935.

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Photo of Lieut-Colonel Sir Edward Grigg Lieut-Colonel Sir Edward Grigg , Altrincham

I expected that intervention, and I am grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend for making it. I know the technical difficulties of dealing with this question, but nevertheless we have to face the fact that the King's poorest subjects, the poorest taxpayers, are paying the highest interest on public debt at the present time, and some means ought to be found for dealing with this very difficult question. I do not know whether the existing debt can be dealt with, although I think suggestions might be made for dealing with it, but in future we should issue loans at the lowest possible rate, in view of the fact that these Colonial loans, although they do not rank as trustee loans, really have that character. After what we did in the case of the Dominion of Newfoundland, everybody must know that we are not going to allow a Colony to default, and therefore these are really trustee stocks.

If they are trustee stocks, as they really are, the interest on them is very high. The value which people attach to them can be seen by the premium at which they stand at the present time. I looked at two outstanding loans this morning, and found the Kenya 6 per cent. standing at 124 and the Nigerian 5 per cent. at 117. Obviously people think they are good investments and that the security is good, and it will be an extremely unfortunate thing if we can find no way of cheapening credit to the Colonial Empire in the future, even if there is difficulty in dealing with the existing debt; but I very much hope that the right hon. Gentleman will address his mind to the problem of the existing debt, because I cannot believe that the interest and sinking fund charge which these territories are being asked to pay is justified. I know it is technically difficult, I know that the contract is there, but in a world where contracts are constantly being modified in the interests of the debtor I feel that the time has come to consider the claims which can be made by the African territories. It would bring immense relief and would enable those territories to make an expansion of services much more easily than if we raised money for them on the older terms. Indeed, I do not see why, for the future, money should not be raised for the Colonies for certain purposes on an entirely Imperial guarantee and the stock treated as trustee stock. The sum involved is not very large, considering the sums with which we deal. In these days, when we talk of loans of £250,000,000, the total Colonial debt is nothing at all, and I suggest that attention should be given to the possibility of producing some kind of guaranteed stock for the Colonial Empire as a whole, for certain purposes, which our Government and the Treasury can approve.

Another suggestion to which I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give his mind concerns the deterioration of the soil, which is going on very rapidly in Africa. When I was in Kenya some time ago I remember looking at two lots of land which, I was told, had been exactly similar land 20 years ago. Part of it belonged to the Wakamba tribe and part of it to settlers. The settlers' land, because stock had been kept on it in moderation, was still fine pasture, whereas the Wakamba land, because stock had been put on it with no consideration for the soil, had become absolutely denuded and worthless. That had happened in 15 or 20 years. It is going on in many parts of Africa. We know what happened in Basutoland, within the memory of many people. The trouble about it is that the stock which is denuding the land is not valuable stock, but consists very largely of stock propagated solely for currency purposes, marriage dowries and so on. It has no economic value. You see little cows which are no bigger than St. Bernard dogs, and miserable goats. They exist as currency and not as stock with an economic value, and yet it is these miserable animals which are destroying the soil. That problem really requires to be dealt with much more firmly. I made desperate efforts to deal with it in Kenya, but found there were great difficulties. The difficulties are twofold. In the first place there is the difficulty of getting money, which means raising capital, in order to put this land right, and, in the second place, the difficulty of getting support for the measures which are necessary in order to persuade the natives to give up uneconomic stock. It is in their tradition, they believe in this stock, and we must treat them generously and spend money for the purpose if we are to wean them gradually from this belief in stock simply as currency. I remember that a witty person in Kenya said the greatest benefit that could possibly be bestowed on the natives would be the demonitisation of the goat, and there is a great deal of truth in that observation.

Another thing I would like to suggest is that we must do more to control native production and marketing if the natives are to get full value for their produce. West Africa has been very fortunate in the past. It has had two windfall crops, cocoa and palm oil, both giving a great profit with comparatively little effort and organisation. But that time has passed. Those crops are now facing a difficult, competitive world. I think it is eight years since the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works pointed out in a report on West Africa that the palm oil industry was meeting with severe competition from organised production in the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere. This raises the whole question of controlling native ideas of how to use land and it is a difficult problem for that reason, but it has to be faced. It has to be faced in regard to cotton in Uganda, and in regard to coffee also. I believe that coffee could be developed as an economic crop, grown by natives in Kenya, but to do that we must spend money. It means spending a great deal of money. It means capital outlay and taking particular care that disease does not develop. It is a very expensive business and it has not prospered where it is done in tiny patches, as it is done by some natives at the present time.

I would like to say a word about another branch of production in East Africa—the production of the white settler. We have had the sort of talk about the white settler which always seems to come from the benches above the Gangway, but I wonder whether those who talk about settlers in those terms realise that the fact that they are there is our responsibility and not theirs, because it was the Imperial Government which put the majority of the present settlers where they are in Kenya. Those who come and go of their own will are a comparatively tiny percentage of that population. We hear a great deal in the papers of "detrimentals," of people in Kenya who have come from what the hon. Members above the Gangway like to call the "idle rich." They fill far too great a part of the picture of Kenya which is presented to the world. It may be true of 5 per cent-of them but 95 per cent. are hardworking men who have had to stick to their farms and not move from them, and are living as a matter of fact in the simplest manner in which it is possible for white families to live. Many of them through the years of depression have been living on "posho," boiled maize, the same food as the Africans have eaten for many decades, and tea.

We put these men there. The first wave of them was brought in by Sir Charles Elliot and the second wave by Sir Percy Girouard. That was a deliberate act by the Colonial Government which has the justification that there seemed to be no other way of placing the colonies upon a sound economic foundation. They justified the policy of settlement, for in 1912 the Protectorate and railway balanced their budget and the grant-in-aid was no longer required. But the War destroyed their work; 80 per cent. went on active service and their farms went back to bush. A fresh start was made after the War. What happened then? More settlers were pumped in by the Imperial Government. We brought in officers of the services and gave them land for nothing. We put them down and left them to sink or swim and they have since been through terrible vicissitudes. They have had to face the fall in prices and the change in currency which increased their overdrafts by 50 per cent. overnight, and they have had to face the difficulties of a virgin country. These men are our responsibility, and it is no use speaking with rancour about them as though you could dispose of the problem merely by speaking of them with ill will. They are part of the African problem, and you cannot dispose of it in that way. The hon. Member for Rothwell can go on making speeches in that tone for ever, but the settlers would still be there, and their problems would be more and more difficult every year.

What are we going to do about it? It is not to be faced by approaching it in that way. There are only three courses possible in regard to the problem of white settlement in Africa. In the first place, if you liked to do it, you could buy those settlers out. If you are convinced that settlement is a mistake, be wholehearted about it—buy them out. Transoprt them to other places, and give them a chance of earning their living there. That is a possible policy. I do not believe it would cost very much, because the numbers are not very great. If settlement is wrong, this House is responsible for putting it right in that way. If this House is not prepared to put it right in that way, it must be prepared to do justice to the settlers whom it leaves there. I do not believe that the policy of buying out the settlers would prove a practicable one—not on the grounds of expense, but because it would be an impossible economic proposition to take away the white settlers from Kenya and Uganda. Those territories live entirely by two things, Uganda cotton and produce of the white settlers. There is no means of changing those things in a few years and starting on a new course of development, or of bringing in a new native population. The present native population could not undertake to carry the system of transportation and government that we have set up.

What is the second course? It is a policy of drift and of putting our heads in the sand. That is what we are doing now and it is a desperately dangerous course to pursue. Let us take a lesson in this matter from the southern states of the United States of America. Some of the best British and Irish stock went to the mountains, as they were called, in the early days, many generations back, and they lived well, in the early days. Economic pressure compelled them to lower their standard of living. The land became impoverished, and no cattle could be fed upon it. They had no education, and no means of meeting competition from other producers in a difficult world, and gradually those mountaineers have become poor whites and a very grave problem, although they came from some of the best stosk that ever went from this country to the United States. Do not let us set about creating such a situation in East Africa and Kenya. We shall create it if we drift, because that result is inevitable. Populations of that kind are never stationary. They either go forward or go back, and if not reinforced they inevitably deteriorate.

You are driven, therefore, to a third alternative. Whatever the hon. Member for Rothwell may feel about it, we have to realise that we are committed on this issue, and that we have our own people fixed in Africa. Children are growing up in the schools. There are a thousand children in the schools at Kenya who were born in the colony and have no possibility of leaving it. They have to make their future there. Their parents cannot afford to send them anywhere else. What are you going to do? You cannot ignore that problem. Having got a colony of that kind, you have to reinforce it. The first thing to be done is unquestionably to look into the question of the mortgages and debts which they are carrying at the present time. The Government gave the settlers land at very cheap prices. I agree that the rents they pay are very small, and their transport system is, on the whole, conducted very well, but the Government never gave them what has enabled settlers in practically every other part of the Empire to suceed—oredit, of any kind whatever. The result is that the development in Kenya has been carried out through the banks. Practically the whole thing has been carried out on overdrafts from the banks by settlers who had nothing but their land. They are carrying very high rates of interest. The average overdraft in Kenya carries from 7 to 8 per cent. That is a burden which agriculture cannot carry in any part of the world, and which a new settlement in any other part of the world has never been asked to carry. I am glad that the land bank has been set up, and that some steps have been taken to deal with that problem. I should be very glad if the right hon. Gentleman would give me information as to agricultural mortgages in Kenya at present, and whether funds are available in the land bank to put that situation right. That is by far the gravest part of the problem in Kenya at the present time.

You must try to keep your settlers alive and carry on where they already exist. It is immensely to their credit that something like 70 per cent. of the soldier settlers who were put down in Kenya have carried on, although they have no capital. It shows how utterly untrue is the picture which is usually presented of them in this House. It is not only by helping them directly that you can support their cause. I believe that you should at once go in for some measure of fresh settlement in Kenya. By that I do not mean settlement for the purpose of growing agricultural produce. I do not think that the markets of the world admit of that at the present time. Kenya presents, however, exceptional opportunities for the settlement, on small plots, of men like retired officers from different public Services and the fighting Services, who are leaving India at the present time in great numbers. If the Government will show those people that they are wanted in Kenya, and will make it easy for them to go there, and, in particular, if they will find some slight measure of financial support for that kind of settlement, I believe you will get in Kenya the kind of population which will be absolutely invaluable. It will be disinterested, it will have had experience in the public Service in other parts of the Empire and it will be the highest type that you can get for a settlement of that kind. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give some attention to that possibility.

I apologise for keeping the House so long, but this question of white settlement has to be faced in a different temper than that in which this House has approached it in recent years. The problem cannot be wished away, or hoped or abused away. It is there, and you have to deal with it. Whatever speeches the hon. Member for Rothwell makes now, when he crosses the Floor and sits on the Government Benches he may have to deal with that problem, and it is just as well that he should try to think it out as a reality with which some day he may have to deal. This white settlement is not a disagreeable necessity imposed upon us by our past, and which we have to tolerate; it is a real root for our civilisation in Africa if we get the right type of settlers to go there.

What is our problem in India at the present time? We know that we are necessary to peace and good government in India. Between the religious communities, between the Indian States and the Provinces under administration, we have always insisted, and shall always insist, upon justice. We are the third element, harmonising, conciliating and keeping that great federation together. While we have this great task to discharge, which nobody else can discharge, in India, and which is necessary to peace and welfare in India, we are, nevertheless, all the time regarded as aliens, and are suffering because we are known to be aliens coming into the country. In Africa you can dispose of that weakness altogether. You can sow there not only your ideas and ideals, but you can sow men and women who represent your ideas and ideals. Your problem of government for the future will be made much easier to solve, if you build up there an indigenous white community.