LABOUR IN KENYA

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 20

LABOUR IN KENYA

SIR E. GRIGG ON LAND POLICY.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Edward Grigg (Governor of Kenya Colony) was a guest of the African Society at a dinno.' in London recently,- reports "The Times." '

Sir Edward Grigg, responding to the toast of his health, said that hia first impression of Kenya was that the prevailing controversy about labour and other questions was misleading. Much of what was said was not actually fa' se, but it was superficial. It missed' the deeper problems and confused the issues/ and that was bad, because it blinded and antagonised the racial communities which had to live together there. The real problems of the colony had_ to do with labour and land and native production, organisation, health, and education. Th:e railway was the beginning of the history of Kenya, and steady constructive work there really began 4n 1923.. The: European population had actually quadrupled, since the war, and the exports had more than trebled in four years. In regard to the labour question, they had adopted the dual policy, and he wanted to make it perfectly, clear that in that policy there was no comv 'sion on the African to work for the European unless he wished to do so. His choice was absolutely free to work in the native reservations or outside, and there, was no indirect compulsion by taxation. There could be no progress for the African; however, unless! he contracted, habits of industry, and if he was to preserve'Ms land he must be trained-to develop "it. , The deepest question of all was that 01 the land, and ever since the war a steady and continuous effort had been made to get that question settled on a basis fair to-.every one concerned. He had found that the "natives remained in the enjoyment of "rich and adeqnate territory which was capable of great development. The final problem was that of security of tenure and the best solution; which .was now goiig'to 'beput into force, was to vest the native reservations, in bodies of independent trustees. They had-to arrange for the establishment of a population, of small native proprietors within the reservations; that was one of the problems which called urgently for adequate scientific research into" native welfare and he appealed most strongly jtor that on organised and centralised lines.