The Empire Builders
Britons who are prepared, to spend their lives in the hot and thankless task of helping underdeveloped countries are still needed and are hard to come by. They are needed not only in British colonies, but in all those parts of the world (far more of them than the. Bevanites, or even the Foreign Office, will admit) where British advice is still valued. In Iraq, for instance, where Lord Salter has just gone, by invitation, on an advisory mission. Yet the British Government, which finds it difficult enough to nourish its diminishing influence abroad, seems to regard these people as dispensable eccentrics. It suits it very well if British administrators and technicians are prepared to accept financially and physically precarious posts in distant places. But it will not even wave a flag to encourage them to do so. The most flagrant example of this sort of Imperial je m'en foutisme is the case of the Sudan Service. Since the beginning of the year, the 1,500 British officials have become the employees of the newly elected Government of the Sudan. Their compensation on retirement is, according to Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, a matter for the Sudanese. The Sudanese have under- taken to pay compensation, but if, and only if, the British leave when the Sudan Government chooses to discharge them. In the meantime, there they stay, getting no younger, subject to extraordinary indignities, while the whole administrative machine grinds to a halt under Mr. Azhari's anti-British Ministers. Not only has the British Government failed to secure their financial position but it is not, apparently, making any attempt to guarantee them alternative employment. In Egypt and in India, under similar circumstances, compensation was available at once, and to everybody. Empires, are admit- tedly, falling down; but this is not a particularly good reason for (in this case) the Foreign Office to condemn Empire builders to the dole.
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