Suffer little children
AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS
CRO BRIEFING TO ALL DEPTS. SUBJECT: `BIAFRA'-CONCLUDED
Through no fault whatsoever of any member of this office, and I do assure you of my abso- lute faith in the honesty, decency and moral integrity of every one of you, certain events referred to in my memorandum of 17 May appear regrettably to have 'leaked' into the popular press. To those of you who for this reason or that did not have time to cast an eye over the paper in question, I should perhaps explain that it concerned the heroic police action at present being carried out in the Federation of Nigeria by General Gowon, an old Sandhurst man and a keen Methodist. It has, as I explained, been our policy over the last year to 'play down' the inevitable distaste- ful unpleasantnesses which must perforce arise in any rough game of this nature, and in this the various communications media have been, until very recently, more than helpful.
It has also been our policy, in the light of the very considerable British assets and interests in Nigeria, to supply General Gowon with such arms and ammunition as seem necessary to him in stamping out the revolting ragamuffins of the Eastern Region, the so-called Ibos, and in re- establishing a peaceful and unified Nigeria in which commerce and in particular European investments may most conveniently flourish. As I also had cause to mention in my previous précis, General Gowon's reduction of the so- called Ibos to such non-existence as is com- patible with their diplomatic status has run into hysterical resistance. Now, to cap it all, the vul- gar searchlight of publicity has been turned on the whole messy business by shrewd sentimen- talists, and we have had to undergo the humili- ating ordeal of having our activities examined and haggled over by a pack of rowdy laymen who in the past have more sensibly confined themselves to 'rubber-stamping' our decisions and presenting them to a grateful public as the will of the people. I refer, of course, to the House of Commons.
Few experiences could be more infuriating, time-wasting and irrelevant for such a body of dedicated experts as ourselves. Nevertheless, as the old Ukrainian proverb has it, the bark of a toothless watchdog is sweet in the ears of the thief: far from rousing the conscience of the nation to a state of misplaced and unjustified alarm, the Commons debate on Nigeria would appear to have lulled that never over-sensitive organ to a state of even deeper and more self- satisfied slumber. The sentimentalists thundered and roared, drawing their tasteless parallels be- tween the plight of the miserable Ibos and that of our Israelite friends under the Third Reich, various fine-sounding platitudes were uttered by bishops and other squeamish liberals, the Foreign Secretary, the small, stooped gentleman with grey hair whose name momentarily escapes me, stumbled his pitiable way through the state- ment I personally had written out for him in block capitals, and with the sigh of a conscience unburdened the nation very wisely dismissed the whole unpleasant matter from its mind.
I was particularly gratified to observe the way
in which the press and television rallied round to accept aid delivered, at the insistence of of the little Foreign Secretary, his duty in Nigeria done, celebrating a mammoth diplo- matic victory in achieving the release from cap- tivity in Yugoslavia of a student driver after a motoring offence, did much to blot unpleasant memories from the mind and to elevate our rather pathetic little cipher of a spokesman to almost heroic stature. Even Mr David Steel, a regular thorn in our flesh in the past, permitted his column in the Guardian on the morning following the debate to be entitled 'The Lessons of Nigeria,' thus unwittingly lending an aura of complacent nostalgia to what is, in all con- science, an intensely forgettable incident. Mean- while, I am delighted to be able to report, we were able to continue our work unhampered: our supply of arms to General Gowon faltered not for an instant, the 'flushing out' and `mop- ping up' continued unabated, and every report we received from our excellent High Commis- sioner on the Federal side, Sir David Hunt—we have in all cases made a point of disregarding the grotesquely distorted information reaching us from 'Biafra'—suggested that the final solu- tion was within our grasp.
Luck, I must confess, has been very much on our side: the Federal blockade, enforced Witl:t British help and advice, combined with the for- tuitous overcrowding of the self-styled Ibos in the small area still unliberated by Federal troops, has resulted in their mass starvation; and we can, together with General Gowon, look forward confidently to the death of over a mil- lion of these creatures without a single British bullet being discharged. There was, it is true, a danger at one point of the operation being thwarted by the intervention of the International Red Cross, but thanks to the 'Ibo' reluctance to accept aid delivered, at the insistence of Lagos, through what the rebels term 'enemy' territory, and the mercifully cringing attitude of the Red Cross to established authority, I think there is little fear of this extermination by the 'natural' method being held up.
There are, as I am sure you are all too well aware, still a few ends to be tied up. It is to this purpose that we have dispatched the amiable Lord Shepherd, the bald gentleman some of you may have observed in a jovial mood at our Christmas Party last year, to 'intercede' on behalf of the Prime Minister with General Gowon. A somewhat dim person, he has wisely avoided confusing his mind by visiting 'Biafra' itself, has been ideally suited to seeing the Federal point of view, and to enveloping the ultimate success of the Commonwealth War Mission in clouds of bungling goodwill and talk of peace. It may be argued that a premature peace will prejudice the outcome of any 'final solution': I think you will agree, however, as Christian gentlemen, that a few wretched half- starved and diseased survivors left alive after the eleven-month 'open season' we have been able to arrange is small enough price to pay for the political and diplomatic prestige accruing both to ourselves and to Harold the Peacemaker in the event of a ceasefire. Finally, I know you will not take it amiss if I make a frank appeal to your better natures. The summer holidays are coming, and I have been asked to say that if any of you who feel able to spare even a week, and who have any experience at all of driving a bulldozer and burying infant corpses, could give your names to the Chaplain, c/o the Com- monwealth Relations Office Sports and Social Club, it would be much appreciated.
F. C. Wigginsbaw-Beamish, PDQMG.
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