Orders of the Day — MALAWI REPUBLIC BILL [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 25 July 1966.

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Photo of Mr Andrew Faulds Mr Andrew Faulds , Smethwick 12:00, 25 July 1966

I should like to intrude on the time of the House for a few moments because I think I must be one of the few Members of the House who have actually spent some years living in Malawi, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the great company of saints, if I may say so, of the Scots missionary community in what was still Nyasaland. My father and mother spent a great part of their lives devoting their energies and interests to the intellectual and spiritual improvement of the people of Malawi, and provided a benefit from which those people are still reaping a great deal. It is not an accident, I think, that the Africans of Malawi speak better English—as we Scots speak better English than the English do—than the Africans of Rhodesia and the Africans of Zambia.

I was also fortunate enough, by one of those strange historical accidents which happen, to have known Dr. Banda as a student in Edinburgh. He was then, if I may say so, and the House may read what it likes into it, a somewhat different man from the one we met when we returned to Malawi recently. [An HON. MEMBER: "We all change.") We all change as the years pass, some for the worse—