THE TABLET. November 28th, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6236

TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

Published as a Newspaper

FOUNDED IN 1840 NOVEMBER 28th, 1959

NINEPENCE

Cultural Exchange The Marxian View of Religion Uganda Today I The Old Kingdoms and the New Politicians. By Adrian Hastings A Letter from Rome I New Cardinals and Curial Changes 1he Liturgical Books : I. The Ritual. By Lancelot C. Sheppard

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

THE MONCKTON COMMISSION

irjPHE Government have opted for a large Commission to look at the Central African Federation. Such a Commission was envisaged when the Federation was set up, and it was agreed that after a number of years there should be a careful review of the way things were working out. But what was then foreseen as largely an administrative question has become highly charged with political feeling. The African opposition manifested itself from the outset, but African political consciousness has grown more rapidly than was allowed for, largely because of the successful emergence of Ghana, with the tempting hopes it holds out, and, conversely, because of the intensification of the apartheid policy in South Africa. In these circumstances, there came to be much more of a case for following the precedent of the Simon Commission of seven M.P.s (Earl Attlee was one of them) which went to India to survey the reforms thirty years ago. Its composition was an affirmation of Parliament’s final responsibility for India. It represented the parties, with a Liberal chairman, in proportionate strength ; and no one could make the kind of criticisms which Mr. Gaitskell could make on Tuesday about the choice of African representatives, speaking of their insufficient numbers and the circumstance that some of them are dependent on the Government for their livelihoods. The Central African Commission is a rather amorphous body, and Lord Monckton will need all his skill as a conciliator to avoid a number of minority reports and reservations, each of which will detract from the value of the conclusions.

The Government would still like the opposition to be represented, and preferably by Privy Councillors. But this is one of a number of questions on which the Labour Party itself has no unity of outlook. The leftwing Labour men attach great importance to remaining uncommitted to any joint activity with the Government. They do not see a great deal that is promising in domestic issues, but African issues seem to them a hopeful as well as an important field, where the real differences between the parties manifest themselves. While it might be difficult for the opposition to refuse to participate in a small Parliamentary Commission, it is easy for them to decline to join anything as large and unparliamentary as the Monckton Commission. There are two ways of keeping issues away from party politics, as our relations with the African peoples ought to be kept. One is by a bi-partisan and agreed approach, which Mr. Macmillan hoped to secure ; and this is much preferable to the other course, which is being followed, of a non-party Commission whose recommendations will then be brought into the political arena just as the report of the Devlin Commission was.

Party politics in Britain have been vigorously conducted since the war, and yet the policies pursued in Asia and Africa have up to this year shown continuity, and a broad agreement, and in West Africa the new States do not look particularly to the Opposition. Unfortunately where there are European communities there is this tendency ; though Mr. Callaghan, who speaks on Colonial matters for the Opposition front bench, has very sensibly tried to correct it. The European interest must and does look to the Conservatives, and the African National interest to the Labour Party. The future of the East African territories is then regarded in Africa as decisively affected by British General Elections. If the Labour Party is depicted in Africa as boycotting the Monckton Commission because its terms of reference are not sufficiently explicit about the separation of Nyasaland from the Rhodesias, the Commission will start its hearings under a heavy handicap. The temptation will be increased for African political leaders to refuse to recognise it as the open-minded body it is, not hand-picked to reach any predetermined conclusions. It would have been, as Mr. Macmillan pointed out, detrimental if the terms of reference had been too explicit, indicating what policy the Commission was to think about in already narrowed terms. It is their strength that they are quite free, and their presence next spring should lift the whole question on to a high plane of discussion about the long-term interests of the peoples of these territories. From this point of view it is a help that the Commission will begin its labours after the General Flection in Britain has confirmed the