Groundnuts Again
By SIR WILLIAM GAVIN• THE GROUNDNUT AFFAIR is the title of Mr. Alan Wood's eagerly-awaited book (John Lane, 12s. 6d.), and it is a sadly appropriate one. What must be a long-term colonial development project has become " an affair," a cause célebre, a music-hall joke. Even the publication of this book became, thanks to Mr. Strachey's intervention, "an affair '' in the
House of Commons and the Press. " The book that caused the uproar " ; say the publishers on the jacket. " Its suppression would have been a grave injustice to the general public for whom it was written." I agree with them. Indeed surprisingly enough it is an
understatement. Not only does Mr. Wood's book give the public for the first time a full picture of the mistakes and disasters—
both preventable and unpreventable—that have accompanied this investment of their money ; it tells them also of the agricultural mechanical and social hazards of pioneer development in Africa, which it is only right they should know before passing judgement. More important, its publication is a real contribution to the future success of the scheme, because its disclosures will, I believe, lead to reconsideration of the fundamentals of organisation and control and to the abandonment of short-term expedients.
Finally it will help to lift the project above personal and political controversy. The worst has been made public and there is nothing more to fear. Now is the opportunity for a new Minister of Food and a new chairman of the Overseas Food Corporation to insist on this full reconsideration, and thus enlist the underlying goodwill and support for a sound scheme of land development which has always existed among all political parties both inside and outside the House. It is the more regrettable, therefore,- that Mr. Wood has been unable to free himself from his own politics. He makes little excursions now and then into the realms of doctrinaire Socialism, to make it clear that, although criticising a Labour Government's enterprise, he remains himself a good party member. This is not only irrelevant, but contrary to what I am sure he desires —an objective approach to the scheme as such.
After the fuss over publication I had expected to read the carping criticisms of a disgruntled employee, or bitter personalities and attacks. Nothing of the kind. I find instead a statesmanlike approach to the problems involved, an anxiety to give credit where credit is due, and in most cases a fair and human attitude in appor- tioning blame, though the writer, I think, makes insufficient allowance for the appalling difficulties at the top inherent in the organisation. Criticism there is in abundance, but if directed against individuals Mr. Wood hastens to qualify it with such extenuating circumstances as occur to him. Moreover, he emphasises through- out how easy it is to plan in retrospect, to be wise after the event. What he has to tell is aptly set forth in his short preface: "This in large measure is a story of failure, frustration, heartbreak, bad luck and bad blunders. It tells of a tragedy, with many of the elements of a tragi-comedy. But the story starts as one of the most inspiring ventures since the Second World War: and it may yet prove to be one of the most worth-while experiments now being under- taken in a mad world already talking of more wars to come."
Mr. Wood writes well and with a light touch ; he is clearly inspired by his theme, never labours his case and deals thoroughly with every aspect of the vast undertaking. His emphasis, of course, is on the " failures, frustrations and heartbreaks " but, to his credit, he is not dismayed by them. He quotes, for example, Mr. Curtin. Prime Minister of Australia: "In this country the first generation break their backs: the second break their hearts. The third enter into the promised land " ; and Andrew Carnegie on Amer;ca: " Pioneer- ing does not pay." To these words he adds his own : " But the pioneering must go on for all that ; and let us give the pioneers our respect. When all the criticism is over and done with, every man who has played any part in the ground-nut scheme, high or low, success or failure, can feel prouder at attempting a worth-while task than if he had left the job untackled."
• Chief Agricultural Adviser, Ministry of Agriculture, 1939-1947. If you read this book you will catch something of this pioneering spirit—that made 100,000 men apply for employment in Darkest Africa, that upheld David Martin (to whom I am glad he pays r well-deserved tribute), unshakably calm and cheerful in that first crucial year of mounting calamities that kept Bunting toiling courageously both in the dust of the plain with his experiments and in the dust of controversy with higher authorities, that sent Phillips from a secure Professor's chair to wrestle with the task of getting the scheme down to agricultural realities, that has kept Unit Managers and many, many others heroically at their job in the midst of the Bush so aptly described by one visitor as miles and miles of damn-all.
The reader may also catch, however, rather more impressions of gloom and folly than are justified. Not that I dispute Mr. Wood's facts ; such of them as I can check from my own knowledge are accurate. But he has set himself to discuss all the things that have gone wrong, and there are so many of them that the reader may well be left gasping at the ineptitude that permitted them to arise, forgetting that Mr. Wood himself frequently points out that only in retrospect did many of these mistakes become apparent.
Let us say at once that to those with any inside knowledge there is nothing new in Mr. Wood's disclosures. He has brought into the open all the questions that every returning visitor from Kongwa during the last two years has asked, though this does not mean we have been able to give the answers. Certainly the Board of the Overseas Food Corporation could well retort to Mr. Wood's tale of woe (in common jargon), " You're telling me." Whether their full knowledge went to Mr. Strachey only Sir Leslie Plummer can say. His loyalty on the one hand to the scheme and the public and on the other the desire to help an old friend through an awkward debate by making the best of things cannot fail to have been an embarrassment to him.
How is it, then, that the Board, fully informed and consisting of able men with wide and varied experience, allowed so many things to go wrong, and what were the essential mistakes ? The mistakes were fundamentally two. In 1947 the world fat situation seemed to demand additional and immediate production. A programme was therefore agreed which today seems fantastic, and off went the starting-gun with no adequate preparations. The calamities that followed are well known. Result—less than 8,000 acres planted instead of 150,000, and some 20 millions spent. By the middle of 1948 the gamble on quick results had failed and failed disastrously. Then came the greater blunder. There was some justification for the trial-and-error system, but none for ignoring the errors when disclosed, as in effect happened. Difficulties were discounted instead of recognised, and the scheme went on with the lessons of 1948 unlearnt, with new targets still in the clouds, optimistic statements, bush-clearing hounded forward by the need for cash crops (for money was running out). Political and personal prestige became involved.
I believe that the O.F.C. Board, in their peculiar political position, could hardly avoid getting involved in this turmoil of desperation. " Vision faded and narrowed: all that was beyond the need of the moment became indistinct "—the need for more cash crops, the need for a promising programme, for not letting the Corporation or Mr. Strachey or the Government down, the difficulty of stemming or diverting the momentum of a vast undertaking, the difficulty of any real reform without new finance or Parliamentary action The Board were, of course, quite powerless to prevent some of the disasters discussed by Mr. Wood, as he freely admits ; and in regard to others they have, I think, a good reply, which, however, I hope they will not make. What matters now is the future, not the past.
If there is now complete frankness, a determination to allow no false optimism, no palliation of mistakes, no yielding to expediency, no seeking of party advantage on either side and a willingness to reconsider the whole project de novo in all its many aspects, then I believe the new Minister of Food will be surprised at the widespread support he will get, even perhaps from the Treasury. Most of those who know Africa would agree that the one thing England cannot afford is failure in what will one day represent but a beginning of Central African development.
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