Another voice

Avenge 0 Lord

Auberon Waugh

Tuesday of this week was Biafra's national day, being the eleventh anniversary of the declaration of Biafran independence on 30 May 1967. That month also, by unhappy coincidence, marked the tenth anniversary of the fall of Port Harcourt to Federal Nigerian troops in the civil war and the imposition of the siege which with British and Russian support was to last for twenty months, eventually bringing about the Biafran collapse and surrender on 12 January 1970.

The exact number of deaths in that time is known only to God. More moderate Nigerian partisans like John de St Jorre put it at 600,000, although no doubt his overseer at the Observer, Mr Colin Legum, would put it much lower than that. Lady Hunt, Nigerian wife of the British High Commissioner in Lagos throughout most of the war, seemed to be favouring the lower range in a recent letter to the Spectator defending her husband who, since his return from foreign parts, has been elected the Brain of Britain. Rather than descend to one of those unseemly arguments about exactly how many Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, one might examine the figures issued by the relief workers in the field. On 14 July 1968 the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva estimated that 3,000 people were dying daily in Biafra — nearly all children and old people, suffering from protein-starvation. On 3 August, they upped this figure to 6,000 and continued to publish estimates throughout the war which at one time reached 10,000 a day.

Now it is quite possible that the International Committee of the Red Cross got it wrong. Those dour Swiss officials might even have been influenced by a desire for cheap publicity. But at times when it is not in conflict with the desires of the British govfrnment — as, for instance, when it might have reported on the victims of the Katyn wobd massacres — the ICRC is generally thought a fairly respectable body. And however much one may doubt the ability of any foreigner to count corpses properly, the fact remains that the British government had no one in Biafra to do the job any better. So however many people actually were dying — and John de St Jorre's figure would put it at an average of only 1,000 a day over that twenty month period — the best information available to Mr Wilson's government at that time was that first 3,000 a day were dying, later 6,000 and finally 10,000. And it was on the basis of that information that his government persisted in supplying arms and support to the Nigerian war effort and using diplomatic pressure to obstruct relief to the Biafran side.

My purpose in wandering down memory lane is not to re-open old wounds or appor tion blame yet again between the Biafran and Federal sides. There seems little doubt that after the surrender the Nigerians were able to restrain their troops from gross slaughter, however oddly they behaved in other respects, and it must certainly be admitted that the Biafrans used the fear of genocide — however rational such a fear might have been in the light of previous events — to bolster their own morale, if that is the right expression. Few people, I suspect, will be celebrating the anniversary in Enugu, Nsukka, Onitsha, Umuahia, Aba, Owerri, Calabar or Port Harcourt. But I feel we should not forget it in England.

I became involved in the Nigerian civil war at a fairly late stage, in the summer of 1968, when I was sent as the Spectator's political correspondent to report on conditions inside Biafra, already reduced to an enclave of the heartland around Aba, Owerri and Umuahia. My trip was a brief one, ten days all told, just long enough to convince me that the place existed, that the Biafrans thought they were in the right and thought they had been unjustly treated by Britain, that they were determined to fight and that reports of mass starvation had not been exaggerated. Thereafter I covered the story, and watched the unfolding pageant of events, exclusively from the Westminster and Whitehall end.

It would be idle to pretend that my interest was not coloured by the things I had seen and heard in Biafra, or by my admiration for the Biafrans. One could not listen to the well-rehearsed arguments for continuing British policy in the Nigerian civil war with quite the same equanimity having once seen its results and knowing that the results were growing more severe with every week that passed. Having said that, and making every allowance for a certain failure of imagination among the British official and political classes (many of whom came from humble homes and poor educational backgrounds) whereby one or two million Africans dead might represent no more than a statistical concept, something to be played around with on a computer, a tribute, in some way, to their own responsibility and importance in the world — making every allowance, as I say, for all of that —1 can only_testify that the episode has burned itself into my memory.

It has entirely shaped my subsequent attitude to politics and politicians, journalism and journalists, the House of Commons, British democracy, the British people and its suitability to have any particular role in the world, to the Labour and Con servative parties and to a strange collection of individuals with nothing else in common but that they supported the Federal side: John Mendelson, the 'left-wing' Labour MP for Penistone who died last week; John Cordle, Tory businessman and adviser to John Poulson, who resigned his seat recently;

Frank Giles, dapper Old Wellingtonian foreign editor of the Sunday Times, who still

seems to be with us; Michael Foot, once so much admired and loved, now Lord President of the Council; Sir Alec Douglas Home, now 'Lord' Home of the Hirsel

the list could be continued for a long time. But the chief insight I gained during that unhappy period was into the mentality of

people who seek power. One was always aware of their vanity and absurdity, but this was my first glimpse of their ruthlessness, or Of the lengths to which they will go if they think they can get away with it. Harold Wilson was not a wicked or evil man, like Hitler; just an unprincipled opportunist.

Michael Stewart, his disastrous foreign secretary, was not even an unprincipled man; just an obstinate and foolish one. Yet between them they urged and assisted for twenty months a policy which involved starving to death anything up to 10,000 children and old people every day.

They, it is true, are the real villains of the story, along with Mr Donald Tebbit, of the FCO, Mr Ronald Burroughs, of MI6, and Mr Maurice Foley who briefed one of the 'impartial' observers, Major Ian Walsworth Bell, to give what assistance he could to the Nigerian forces. But what of the.whole armY of FCO information officers, junior officials, Labour party and journalistic lickspittles who supported them? What of the House of Commons, which divided three times on the issue and each time gave Mt Stewart a mandate to continue his policy?

The last time it was debated before Biafra's collapse was on 9 December 1969, when the war had already lasted two and a half years with the best available estimate of two million dead. The chamber was sparselY attended until the Division Bell rang, when 254 voters (including six Tories) appeared from nowhere to swamp the 84 Members of all parties' w ho had decided to vote against the government. The Tories had advised abstention; Labour put on a two-line Whip. It was a motion for the adjournment, with no question of confidence being imolved, no very serious embarrassment for the government if the vote had been lost. I do not think that 84 Members prepared to vote against such a policy is a very impressive figure —nor will I have any confidence in the respectability of our public affairs until the men responsible for it have been brought to justice. But above all, as I watch my fellow citizens sprawling and wallowing on Bow' nemouth beach in the undeserved sunshine of their undeserved bank holiday, I that'll( God that Britain no longer has sufficient power or importance to influence events in many other parts of the world.