UNSELFISH AIMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 122, 25 May 1945, Page 7

UNSELFISH AIMS

BRITAIN'S DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIES

Ah indication of what Britain is doing for her colonies was given by the High Commissioner, for the United Kingdom (Sir Harry Batterbee) in an Empire Day address in Wellington yesterday. „ „ "Much as I hate quoting figures," said Sir Harry, "let me give you a few. In 1940, when our fortunes appeared to many to be at their lowest ebb, the United Kingdom Parliament passed the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, which provided for £5,500,000 a year to be spent for 10 years on development, welfare, and research in the colonies." At the moment, he continued, a proposal was before Parliament to increase the sum provided to over £120,000,000 during the 10-year period. Each colony was drawing up a 10-year plan for development to be financed from their own resources and from the fund to be provided under the Act. Already about 50 per cent, of the money raised by taxation in the colonies, all of which was used for the benefit of the colonial peoples themselves, was spent on social services and economic development. -\ "It is sometimes alleged by those who know nothing of the .subject that colonial revenues are called upon to assist the United Kingdom exchequer," said Sir Harry. "That is, of course, quite untrue. The boot is on the other foot. When in the past colonial Governments have faced deficits they have received assistance from the United Kingdom exchequer. The financial help so given amounted in the 10 years 1930-40 to £12,000,000." To show what had been done in regard to the social and economic development of the colonies during the last few years, he said that in Malaya at the beginning of the war there was j a hospital bed for every 250 of the population, and 7.5 per cent, of Malay ■boys were receiving a proper elementary education. In northern Nigeria the number of girls attending elementary schools more than doubled in the five years 1937-41." In the colonies generally the number of Government labour advisers and inspectors increased fourfold in those years. In spite of the war, 300 laws and regulations for the improvement of labour . conditions in the colonies were passed between 1939 and 1943. It was sometimes suggested that Britain pursued a selfish commercial policy in the colonies. But in the years before the' war the colonies took from Great Britain less than 25 per cent, of their imports, and more than 75 per cent, from the rest of the* world, while of their exports only 35 per cent, went to Great Britain and 65 per cent, went to the rest of the world.