Colonial Prospect
PROJECTING THE COLONIES
By EDWARD HODGKIN
KITH a very few exceptions the colonies are tropical
or sub-tropical." This is one of the earliest snippets of information gleaned by a visitor to the Colonial Exhibition in Oxford Street, part of London's " Colonial Month," which has been organised by the Centra; Office of Information and which, after a formal opening by the King on Tuesday, is now open free to the enquiring public. The temperature of the room in which the visitor reads this notice is roughly sub-tropical ; the entrance hall itself, which is a dim-lit and cleverly constructed representation of " The Jungle," is warmed by blasts of hot air to a convincing equivalent of Lagos on an August afternoon, but there is a temperate zone in the basement which is equipped with electric fans. The object of the exhibition being to interest the average man in the Colonial Empire, there is a good deal to be said for using the shock tactic of making him even hotter than he was when, in the course of a walk down Oxford Street, he decided to turn aside to see what was going on in this dark entrance where admission was invitingly free. Shock tactics, it has long been clear, are the only ones which will bring the Colonial Empire the attention it deserves. A riot, a war, a disaster, and the Gold Coast or Malaya or Palestine finds its way temporarily into the headlines. But even when this happens the picture of events which gains currency is probably very far removed from reality.
Can an exhibition of this nature do much to overcome the dogged reluctance of Englishmen to pay attention to the dependent territories for which, ultimately, they are responsible ? There is no doubt that in some ways it can do a lot. As an animated geography lesson it is admirable. Lights flicker on and off in wall-maps showing where all the colonies are ; life-size models show what the people look like and what they wear ; a magnifying glass introduces you to the tsetse fly and the anopheles mosquito, and all the time the sound- tracks of miniature films fill the air with facts about health in Africa or irrigation in Cyprus. It is not as good as Wembley was in 1924, but within the limits of its size and scope it makes the acquisition of knowledge as painless as the acquisition of wealth.
But of course it does not begin to tell the whole story. This would be no fair criticism of the exhibition if it was not that in one or two places it passes. over points of history and economics with generalisations which are definitely misleading. The section called "How the British Came," for example, compresses history into the following nutshell: "Merchants, adventurers, explorers and missionaries first made contact with the lands forming the colonies. Later the British Government reluctantly accepted responsibility for administering these scattered territories." This is followed by equally potted accounts of the achievements of Raleigh, Mungo Park, Cook, Speke, Livingstone and Raffles. Nothing is said about the slave trade except that it was abolished, or about the " Blackbirders." The problems of self-government are dismissed in a few charts and a quotation by the Secretary of State, and the colour problem (including the problem of Indian immigrants in the Far East) is not mentioned at all. In fact there is nothing in this exhibition to explain to the uninformed public why there has been rioting in the Gold Coast or why there is a war in Malaya.
It is quite true that these are not the sort of questions which lend themselves to analysis by the visual methods which an exhibition has to employ. The change which is taking place in the mind of— for example—an African is not something which can be stuck by a pin to a wall and labelled, though it is something which a good documentary film can help to explain. But if we hope that the British public will learn to take a more intelligent interest in thd colonies, then we have got to teach them that Cyprus produces "Enosis " as well as olive oil and that in West Africa resettlement causes the administration as many headaches as swollen-shoot.
There is some reason to suppose that information on these subjects would reach an audience which is already partially attuned to listen. In the past ten years more Englishmen have visited the colonies than at any other period of history ; in fact it is probably true that the total number of visitors in this decade was greater than the total for the preceding century. The majority of men who served in the forces (and a good minority of the women too) spent part of their war or post-war service in some territory which came under the Colonial Office for its civilian administration: Singapore, Malaya, Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Palestine, West and East Africa. For these men and women the word "colony " has a particular connotation, even if it is only the inside of Sarafand camp or the sight of Freetown quay from the deck of a troopship. They are likely also to combine a fairly wide ignorance of the economy of the colonies they visited with a dogmatic opinion about their inhabitants ; to the effect that " the African" is a good soldier and " the Malay " a bad servant—or the other way round. Their economic ignorance can be corrected by exhibitions ; opinions, which are more important, and which are often based on some pleasant or unpleasant experience in a locally-owned cafe or (best introduction to colonial life) work with a colonial regiment, are much holder to modify.
In this connection much more could and should be done by way of social contacts between the people of Britain and visiting guests from the colonies. As the King said in his speech at the formal inauguration of " Colonial Month " on Tuesday : " We in the United Kingdom regard it as a high privilege to welcome men and women from the colonies who come here for study, business or recreation.' They are our fellow-citizens, and we want them to feel at home hero and to profit by their stay among us." The organisations and individuals providing such hospitality fully deserved the tribute which he paid them, but they are too few.
It may be that there is no point in telling people about the colonies. A well-informed public is a nice idea, but we have not got it and we are not likely to get it. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot persuade people that more pay does not automatically mean greater wealth, then the Secretary of State for the Colonies is not going to have much success in teaching them that copper comes from Rhodesia and cloves from Zanzibar. Does it really matter if they think that copper comes from Zanzibar and cloves from Rhodesia ? Of course it doesn't. On the other hand, if, for example, the general opinion gained ground that the population of Tanganyika existed only for the purpose of cultivating groundnuts, and that groundnuts grew only for the purpose of being turned into margarine, the consequences would be serious, both for this country and for Tanganyika. The exhibition does help to put this much-publicised scheme in its proper proportions by summarising its objectives in an order which will probably surprise most of those who read them: " The groundnuts scheme will : Clear hundreds of thousands of tsetse-infested scrubland ; Employ many thousands of Africans in good conditions ; Introduce scientific methods of cultivation ; Bring revenue to East Africa ; Make a valuable contribution to world supplies of edible oil." By the side of this text is a wall-display in which a few peanuts branch out into twenty-odd derivatives, among which margarine shares a place with such little suspected commodities as cork-substitute, plastics and dynamite.
The real reason for trying to arouse interest in the colonies is the simple one that they are the responsibility of the electorate. It is by no means impossible that the handling of colonial affairs may in a few years' time become a major issue at an election. Money—the electors' money—is being pumped into the colonies through the Colonial Development Fund and the Overseas Food Corporation, and sooner or later a return will be looked for. Whether this is expected to take the form simply of another few ounces of fat in the weekly ration, or whether the conception emerges of some form of durable political partnership in which the colonial peoples join those of the Dominions in an extended Commonwealth framework, depends ultimately on whether the public knows enough and cares enough to make its opinion felt.
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