My Eye and Betty Martin

Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley reached out a cautious leg in the House of Commons last week to foot a ball President Roosevelt had booted his way nine months before. Britain, he said, had decided to convert her colonial empire into a cooperative empire--but it will be an empire still. Oliver Stanley's words were a quieter echo of Churchill's growl last Armistice Day: "I did not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Changes in the Empire, it was clear, would have to be gradual.

Proposal. President Roosevelt had casually mentioned at a press conference last October his belief that the time had come to weld the islands of the Caribbean into an economic team. He added quickly that sovereignty would remain unchanged, suggested instead an international trusteeship for which the new Anglo-American Caribbean Commission might serve as a model, implied that if the experiment was a success the pattern might replace the battered mandate system throughout the colonial world. He spoke of studies going on to extend the franchise, overhaul the social and educational system, lift the economic level, encourage self-sufficiency.

Disposal. There were signs during the following months that the signal had been heard, but not until last week did H.M.'s Secretary for Colonies signal his readiness to play. Stanley announced that international commissions, on the model of the Caribbean Commission, would be established, comprising states with major strategic or economic interests in the region, "to provide effective and permanent machinery for consultation and collaboration [and] to promote the well-being of the colonial territories . . . though each state would remain responsible for the administration of its own territory."

The twin pillars of a sound colonial policy, Colonel Stanley observed weightily, are "educational advance and economic development." To strengthen the first pillar, he proposed to set up 30 annual two-year scholarships for promising colonials. To stiffen the second, he recommended fostering "secondary industries [for] processing native products [and] simple manufacturing, not requiring the import of large quantities of raw materials ... to make the colonies self-supporting." However, Britain would still draw semi-finished goods from the colonies for her specialized industries.

If the new policy had little to do with colonial freedom, it at least kicked the ball toward a limited form of native self-sufficiency in place of time-honored absentee exploitation. How soon the ball might stop rolling was reflected in the criticism of Sir Richard Acland, leader of the Common Wealth Party. Said he: "Until we end [the hold of vested interests in the colonies] it is all my eye and Betty Martin to talk about developments in the interest of the colonial natives."

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