WINSTON CHURCHILL AND CHINESE INDENTURED LABOUR IN NAURU AND SAMOA

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 303, 20 December 1922, Page 8

WINSTON CHURCHILL AND CHINESE INDENTURED LABOUR IN NAURU AND SAMOA

Reviving an Evil Past

By JOHN HARRIS, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society,

v To this article, which appears in Hhsi "November number of "Foreign 1 -JUfcairs," the editor, Mr. E. D. Morel, I£JE\» writes the following fore-note: — £ JMfc. Harris's remarkable exposure of another side of the Nauru scandal — the financial side of it has been exposed in our columns by Mr. lx S-. JWbolf —will l>e read with disgust anit indignation by every decent-minded British citizen. For the system which Mr. 'Harris denounces • the British Office is primarily responsible, and the Secretary of State for the Jbolonies is the very Mr. Winston . Churchill Mho denounced the same ..system with such vigour in 1905-6, \vlien it was introduced into the „ Transvaal "by the Unionist Government after the South African War. He then described it as a "sordid experiment," tending "to degrade .the status of laboiir all over the world," and calculated "t© strike a deadly blow at the under-pillars of European civilisation." When he used those expressions ho was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; to-day he is Colonial Secretary—-that is to say, personally responsible. ■■*#.*# , The three mandatory subjects which excited- most controversy at 1 Geneva this year, and which bid fair to abEord a large part of the attention of "the Assembly for the nextj two. or three years, are Nauru, Chinese. Indentured Labour,, and the Hottentot scandal. The question of Nauru is serious from several points of vievi'. The Mandate for Nauru is the most curious of any yet granted,! for its administration is a complex in- j jstttution under Great Britain, Kew IJeialand, and Australia, a kind of •.Stye-year "'General Post" in adminis-i trative responsibility! The adminis--tsation is so'far from a "sacred trust"! tliat it appears to be in the form j ■* isirich Lord Cromer. always regarded) " as the most pernicious of all forms of! government, namely, an ad-j < mixture, of "Government and Com- j Nauru itself is a tiny island,; visible on any ordinary map—j the Isle of Man is about twenty-five! times as large as Nauru. The native] 4 population of the island is only 1084. But Nauru is rich in phosphates, and : produces to-day about 200,000 tons out the total world supply of 7,000,000 /tons of phosphates. The history of the •pfodsphatc- of Panapa, Christmas, and Kauru islands might well be the sub-I *3fe£t of a thorough investigation, par-! tieularly in the direction of ascertaining what relationship the original purchase ".pj-ice of the concession bears t/O the- £8,500,000 paid by the New J&ealand-British-Australian Governments in order to buy out the concessionaires. It is very doubtful whether tteis monopoly is within the letter (it certainly is not within the spirit) of the" covenant. It is true that other nations may purchase the phosphates AT REASONABLE PRICES, BUT NOT UNTIL THE BRITISH-NEW! ZEALAND-At T STRALJAN DEMANDS HAVE BEEN SATISFIED! ; . CHINESE INDENTURED LABOUR. :•>,. / "i The members of the Assembly clearly do not like this monopoly by the ■ British Empire of the raw material of a "sacred trust" area, but to the everlasting honour of the League, on this question the members exhibited far more concern about the condition of .Ihe natives and the question of Chin€&€s indentured labour than they did i 'about the material interests and the clear menace to their own economic Interests in a sphere consecrated by

Covenant to "equal opportunities." But another mandated area was linked, with. Nauru in this respect, namely, Samoa, where Chinese indentured labuor is also being used for the production of copra (dried coeoanut) plantations. The members of the Assembly, like other reasonable persons, have no objection to the employment of Chinese subject to conditions, but Governments must realise that a day has now arrived when certain things cannot be tolerated. The Marquis Theoroli, the chairman of the Permanent Mandates Commission, in drawing the attention'of the Assembly to this question, emphasised the fact that these Chinese coolies are brought "thousands of miles from their kith and kin/ , and are bound under "contract for three years," and that "the presence of this exclusively male labour in the midst of a native population is bound to involve a certain element of danger to the social life of the .latter." These Chinese coolies, who are under a three-year indenture, are brought thousands of miles away from their homes, and kept in com-, pounds in Nauru under a system of labour very closely akin to slavery; it is not clear whether they are as strictly confined in Samoa as in Nauru, but Sir James Allen, speaking in the As- ; sembly in defence of the system on ■ .September 20, said: ''The Chinese are kept by themselves as far as is possible to do so-, and they are at the end of three years . . . they find it difficult in three years to learn enough of the Samoan language "and Samoan customs to be associated in any close relationship, at any rate with the Samoan women." A HORRIBLE. CONDITION. These, then, are in brief the conditions of Chinese coolie labour in these mandated areas. It will be noted that In certain respects the conditions are worse than those of the South African experiment so forcibly denounced in 1905-6 by Mr. Winston Churchill. Imagination must be brought to bear on the secrets of those compounds on the phosphate and copra islands, where there are from .1100 to 3000 Chinese indentured male coolies, and where in one place, there are about 500 men and only two women! This commercial system is operating without the healthy checks o£ a. disinterested Administration. To extent is the Colonial Secretary of Great Britain responsible? In the first place, the British Government holds legally the Mandate of Nauru, and is an interested party in the exploitation of the phosphates: and in the second place, the fact that the British Colonial Secretary is responsible for the Cozivention for the supply of Chinese coolies is placed beyond dispute by the following extracts from the Report of the Permanent Mandates Commission to the Council of the League: — The Commission notes that the Government of New Zealand has, intermediary-of the British authorities at Hongkong, entered into a Convention . . . regarding the importation and conditions of work of Chinese indentured labour in Western Samoa. This is bad enough, but the most disquieting feature in connection with this question is that none of the authorities concerned suggest that this labour is other than permanent. Is Great Britain, then, bound to' this system until the phosphates have been worked out in 2322? On the evidence it would seem so!