A Stormy Petrel Of The Colonial Service

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30396, 21 March 1964, Page 4

A Stormy Petrel Of The Colonial Service

Verandah. By Jones PopeHennessy. Allen and Unwin. 304 pp. and Index.

The author is at pains to point out that this is not so much a biography of his grandfather as a commentary on the British colonial system, and the government of Crown Colonies in Victorian times. Mr Pope Hennessy approaches his task in a wholly objective spirit, exhibiting neither pride nor shame in his mercurial forbear. John Hennessy (Pope and the hyphen were subsequently added) was born in Cork in 1834 of penurious middle-class parents. The family, pious Catholics, consisting of five sons and three daughters, were “brought up in the love of God, and in hatred of the English soldiers and administrators of the “Famine Queen” The fact that the future colonial governor was to serve both his Maker and his sovereign is one of those examples of dichotomy not unknown in the Irish character. Ambitious from his early youth young Hennessy, after half-heartedly studying both Medicine and the Law —the latter profession in London—began to exploit an undeniable charm when he decided in 1859 to stand for Parliament as an “Irish National Conservative” for King’s County, and romped home at the head of the poll. During a six-year career in the House of Commons he made some powerful friends including Disraeli and decided to canvass them for a colonial governorship. To his great disappointment the best they could offer him was the small unhealthy and politically insignificent island of Labuan off the coast of North West Borneo. Governor Hennessy for the next 22 years (1867-1889) was to leave in his meteoric wake the wreckage Of British colonial concepts of their proper place in the scheme of Imperial power, and some severe headaches in the Colonial Office in London. But to his credit it must be said that statues were erected in his honour both in Sierra Leone and Mauritius for his championship of the coloured underdog. Riots and general lawlessness among the natives of his various administrations were a by-product of his policy, and it may well be asked why he was not called home in disgrace. Indeed it can best be explained by the twin factors of his personal charm which enabled him to keep the friendship of influential men and the extraordinary paucity of suitable candidates for the onerous and rather thankless task of governing Crown Colonies in the outposts of an almost embarrassingly large Empire. It was in Mauritius, the last and happiest of his appointments that he nearly met his Waterloo. Catholic, and still predominantly French, he compared the island to his homeland, and being an ardent Home Ruler for Ireland he deliberately instigated a “Mauritius for the Mauritians” movement, and, while being the representative of the English Queen, he extravagantly condemned English rule in the colony. He appointed Mauritians to high places, and welcomed all those with his reforming zeal into his official circle. This was too much for his British subordinates who resigned one after another, and urgent representatives to London from the disaffected British settlers resulted in a commission of inquiry being brought in to sort out a very serious situation, as a result of which the Government was suspended from Office.

Called home to England he managed to talk himself out of this embarrassing indictment, and returned in triumph to complete his term as governor. But the nervous dyspepsia created in the Colonial Office by “the stormy petrel of the Colonial Service” could only be assuaged by his final recall, and in 1889 he returned home for good, to die a year or two later of tropical anaemia at the early age of 57. This is an acutely-observed study of British colonial government in Victorian times, with its strange admixture of commercial interest combined with conscientious effort to improve the conditions of the governed.