In Rhodesia: Compromise

Fearful of black terror to the north of them and of Boer chauvinism to the south, 200,000 Britons in the Central African colonies drew closer together in self-protection. A majority of them hoped to build a strong new British dominion of Rhodesia, ruled at first by the white minority, but promising gradually to extend political rights to its 6,000,000 black dependents.

The settlers' hopes rest on Central African Federation, a plan to unite self-governing Southern Rhodesia with the adjoining British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (TIME. Feb. 9). Last week in the House of Commons, 6,000 miles away, Tory Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton put the plan to the vote. "To reject or defer it," he warned, "is to resign our responsibilities as a colonial power; to sink into inglorious inaction . . ."

Though all sides agreed that federation, in some form, is good business and wise politics. Laborites and Liberals, backed by clergymen, trade unionists and an influential segment of the British press, debated whether it was good morals. Lyttelton's plan, they said, provides too few guarantees for the voteless blacks.

Silvery-haired Jim Griffiths, the Labor government's ex-Colonial Secretary, who was the first proposer of African federation, now held back, beseeching the government "to take time, to think again, not to act now because the risks are too great." His point: the principal African chiefs oppose the scheme. "If we go on with this federation--which could be a fine thing--while this racial tension exists, we shall be building a house on a volcano," Welshman Griffiths added. A majority of M.P.s thought just the opposite. Convinced that the threat of race war makes bold planning more, not less, imperative, they voted Lyttelton's bill, 304 to 260. If approved by the House of Lords and accepted by the white settlers of Southern Rhodesia (in a referendum to be held April 9), the Central African Federation will become reality in 1953.

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