Irishman From Tanganyika To Teach N.Z. Lawyers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30413, 11 April 1964, Page 17

Irishman From Tanganyika To Teach N.Z. Lawyers

An Irishman who was called to the English bar, practised as a lawyer in Uganda, and then became a Crown counsel of the Colonial Service in Tanganyika (where duties included prosecutions for witchcraft and drafting constitutional law for the newly-independent nation) has come to NewZealand to teach criminal and family law. Mr R. A. Caldwell, a new lecturer at the University of Canterbury, has not found changes insuperable because, he says: “All have Common Law in common.” Mr Caldwell said yesterday that his varied career bred, even in a lawyer, a much deeper respect for law and its meaning for the individual. Many of the great traditions of free men were founded on Common Law. Born and educated in Dublin, Mr Caldwell took a bachelor of arts degree with honours in legal science at Trinity College there. He was called to the English bar in the Middle Temple and then spent seven years in private practice in Kampala, Eastern Uganda. In 1959 he joined the British Colonial Service as a Crown counsel in Tanganyika, working chiefly in the northern province of Arusha. East Africa “I suppose my heart is really still in East Africa,” Mr Caldwell said. “It is a fascinating country in itself and subject to all the changes which are sweeping the whole continent. Independence brought both problems and great achievements.”

A Crown counsel’s life was varied in the extreme. A great

deal of advice was given to all Government departments, legislation was drafted, and serious cases were prosecuted. Practically all this work concerned native persons, Mr Caldwell said. There were fun and frustrations in applying law based chiefly on English Common Law like New Zealand’s and a criminal code very like New Zealand’s Crime’s Act. The “witchcraft ordinance” posed peculiar problems. Very great discretion and understanding was required in handling cases banning customs which had been inbred in superstitious persons for centuries. “A local community often found it very hard to understand that a death they attributed to witchcraft was in fact murder,” said Mr Caldwell.

As independence approached, Crown counsel throughout Tanganyika undertook (often in their spare time) the big task of training Africans to be magistrates, district commissioners, and senior police officers. Mr Caldwell returned to the United Kingdom in 1962 to serve in the Home Legal Service. But after the wide spaces of East Africa he found life in London “tough.” Everything he had heard about New Zealand appealed, so he and his English wife chose to live in Christchurch. A keen sportsman, Mr Caldwell intends to resume squash, golf and sailing, but not just yet. “I’ve got to learn a lot of law,” he said. On his desk was a pile of New Zealand statutes and law reports.