STATE HAS BECOME POSITIVE AGENCY FOR SOCIAL WELFARE

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 August 1946, Page 6

STATE HAS BECOME POSITIVE AGENCY FOR SOCIAL WELFARE

(Special) Palmerston N., Aug. 26. “We have seen grow up in Great Britain the transformation of the idea that the State's functions were limited to maintaining justice and equal rights,” said the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom (Sir Patrick Duff), speaking to the Rotary Club to-day. “Now, the State is a postive agency charged with the task of promoting social welfare and improving the standard of liviijg. A century ago the idea that the State should apply itself to securing for its citizens freedom from want and unemployment hardly existed: to-day it is becoming taken for granted. Is not this an advance? But there is something far more to it than that. This enlarged conception of State responsibility has. in Britain, pushed its way outward from domestic into colonial affairs. And hence there has been growing up in Britain an increasing sense of resposibility for the welfare and education of all the miscellany of human beings who dwell within the Empire. Do you know who they are? I omit the Dominions and India, but here are a few of the others: Aden, Bahamas, Barbados, Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate, Bermuda, British Guiana. British Honduras. British Solomon Islands. Ceylon, Cyprus, Gambia, Gibraltar, Gold Coast, Togoland. Jamaica, Kenya, Federated Malay States, Malta. Mauritius, Nigeria, North Borneo, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Palestine, St. Helena, Sarawak, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Straits Settlements, Swaziland. Tanganyika, Tonga, TransJordan, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Zanzibar. (I have left out quite a tew.)

“No country has ever tackled such an immense and onerous and varied job. The British Colonial Empire has a population of 63 million and is a cdllection of more than 50 dependencies scattered about the world. If one excludes the Mediterranean territories and the West Indies, where calculation is difficult, the people of European stock only amount in round figures to 73,000: the rest are coloured folk, brown, yellow, negroid, in every stage of development, living in tropical lands in a world a large part of which is completely outside the experience of the average citizen of Great Britain or of New Zealand. It is a world remote because it is utterly different and does not Impinge on our everyday life. Moreover, this sense of remoteness has, if anything, been enhanced by films and travel talks’ which portray the so-called ‘backward races' and their way of lite as curiosities. Three-quarters of this Empire only came under British rule within the past 60 years or so. The role of the British in these far-flung territories was originally that, ot policemen to protect their own early settlers against assaults by the nativeraces: and to prevent the native races being exploited by irresponsible adventurers among these settlers. Your forbears once saw the same sort of phenomena in th* country. From being policemen it came to be accepted that they were in the position of trustees. On the economic side Britain conceived herself as holding a dual mandate, to develop the resources of the dependencies for the benefit of the inhabitants and of the world at large. On the political side the inspiration was derived from the long history of self-government at home and overseas. It came to be recognised that, while taking into full account the important differences of race and tradition, growth towards self-government on the part of dependencies was a natural expectation and an inherent right. The promotion of such development is the declared aim of the British Government. They look on it as their duty to foster arid encourage political evolution, the pace of it being conditioned in each ease by the capacity of the people. The notion that a superintending State is under a moral obligation to train a dependent State in order that it may eventually be able to stand on it«f feet as regards its economic, cultural and political life is an epoch-making conception. The conception of trusteeship has advanced to the conception of partnership. It is a fundamental British belief that associations of human beings should seek—and should be helped to achieve—the highest possible degree of individual expression compatible with effective corporate action.”