Twenty Pounds An Egg
All the lessons of the Gambia poultry scheme are elementary lessons. It is elementary economics that there are no automatic benefits and plenty of obvious dangers in large-scale State under- takings. It is elementary history that European adventurers —for example Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Mussolini—bar burned their fingers in the attempt to snatch quick gains in Africa. It is common knowledge that, even in the tried and tested conditions of this country, poultry farming is a risky business. It is possible that the Government may argue that all the criticism of the scheme comes after the event, and that nobody warned them in advance of these things After the display put up by Ministers in Tuesday's debate any defence, however feeble, seems likely to be preferred to a frank admis- sion of error. But such shifts cannot conceal a failure of
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common sense. Success for the Gambia poultry scheme would have been a miracle, yet the mere sound of the possible prize —twenty million eggs and one million pounds of dressed poultry a year—seems to have been as irresistible to the Government as the sound of the possible prize for a big win in the football pools. So they plunged, with a stake, of £825,000, and won 38,000 eggs at twenty pounds each. A public punch-drunk with statistics of Government expenditure—the groundnuts scheme lost forty times more money—might find it just possible -to forgive this wicked waste if there were any sign of repentance in Government circles. But Mr. Griffiths, the Secretary of State for the Colonkes, began his speech in the Commons on Tuesday with the accusation that the Opposition were using the occasion for partisan ends, and the Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, Mr. Dugdale, said the debate was directed against Lord Tref- game, the former chairman of the Colonial Development Cor- poration. There can be no compromise with this wearisome nonsense. The interest in the responsible conduct of colonial development is not partisan but national.
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