This well-written and modestly couched memoir will be of tremendous interest to
students of imperialism and decolonization. John Smith was accepted for the
Colonial Service in 1950 and became one of the last Cadets to enter the Northern
Nigerian Administrative Service. Twenty-three years later he was appointed as
the last Governor of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. While they were considering
candidates for this post, the ECO committee, seeking a measure of his experience,
were told that during the first Nigerian military coup in 1966 he 'personally and
unaided' kept Northern Nigeria In one piece and ran the government single-handed
for a week until he made representatives of the new regime take responsibility. In
1978 he wrote in his valedictory despatch to the Secretary of State: 'I would have
to confess that in the atolls I had met my match'. He told the Governor of Nigeria
in 1951 that he expected a career of 'a certain five years, a probable ten, a lucky
fifteen'. It turned out to be 'twenty-seven years of decolonization'. Although this
book focuses on only three small countries - present-day Solomon Islands, Tuvalu
and Kiribati (with a total population at independence of a little over 200,000) - it
holds immensely wider interest for students of Empire for six reasons.
Firstly, it tells of the motivation behind overseas service. Son of a father who
worked for Posts and Telegraphs in Nigeria and Tanganyika; exposed as a youth to
Kipling, Baden-Powell and Arthur Ransome, Smith sought for a career 'something
active, outdoors, adventurous and fulfilling'. Already the Raj was ended in India
and the policy was to 'guide colonies to responsible self-government within
the Commonwealth'. Thus Smith 'always assumed that my career would be in
decolonisation'. And anyway in Northern Nigeria he wasn't 'ruling'. He was all too
aware of the anomalies and absurdities, but necessity, of indirect rule, which he
wrote about vividly in Colonial Cadet in Nigeria (Duke UP, 1968).
Secondly, by his time in Oceania In the 1970s he was abundantly aware of
the impact of the closure of the Colonial Office and the very different priorities
in the FCO. Colonial Service officers were there to serve their colony; diplomats
were posted to foster British interests. Smith characterises the difference by
suggesting the way the respective services would react to a bad smell in the
drains. The diplomat would pen a witty despatch adorned with a classical quote on
the superiority of Roman sanitation; the colonial servant would 'roll up his sleeves
and do something about it'.
Thirdly, he emphasises that decolonization was also about self-sufficiency.
He had always assumed that colonial rule was as much about development and
improvement as law and order. As Financial Secretary in the British Solomon
Islands Protectorate from 1970 to 1973, he found a dependency 'grossly over-administered',
but with only 5.5% of government expenditure devoted to agriculture,
the basis of wealth. He also realized that the UK could have no long term economic
interest in the islands, that Asia provided the potential markets. Thus his great
success was to negotiate, alongside the first generation of Solomons' political
leaders, a joint venture agreement with Japan's largest fisheries company, for the
operation of tuna canneries in the Solomons to process fish that had never been
frozen.
Fourthly, on the vexed question of colonial boundaries, he had a major role in
one of the few pre-independence adjustments whereby the Ellice Islands were,
by agreement, able to separate from the Gilbert Islands. The mainly Polynesian
Ellice Islands Protectorate had been annexed along with the Micronesian Gilbert
Islands Protectorate in 1915 mainly to remove jurisdictional anomalies. Distance
meant there was little contact, and Japanese occupation of part of the Gilberts
during the Second World War accentuated the differences. Thus when British
rule seemed likely to end, the Ellice were adamant that they would not be ruled
by the Gilbertese. Separation for so small a place was regarded in the FCO as a
'nonsense' and Smith was enjoined to stall or delay such a move. But after careful
examination of the issues and a referendum observed by a UN Visiting Mission,
charmingly described by Smith, the independent state of Tuvalu (population 7000)
emerged In 1978.
Fifthly, Smith brings out how complex decolonization could become. The climax
of the book is his account of the background to the Independence of Kiribati. The
separation of the Ellice Islands removed but one of the complications. The thirty two
Gilbert Islands spread over two million square miles of ocean. Some of the
Line Islands and Phoenix Islands were subject to sovereignty claims by the USA.
Canton came under a fifty-year condominium agreement, but when the Governor
turned up in uniform (complete with feathered hat and sword) the commander
of the American military facility there professed ignorance of the agreement.
Above all there was the problem of Ocean Island (Banaba), a raised Island and
rich source of phosphate that had been annexed by Britain in 1900. Here was a
'colony within a colony' run by the British Phosphate Commission (jointly owned
by Australia, Britain, and New Zealand) from a head office in Melbourne. The BPC
paid royalties, which met half the Colony's revenue in lieu of any other taxes; It
operated on Melbourne time rather than Tarawa time, used Australian dollars,
and Australian school syllabuses. The Banabans, who had gradually parted with
more and more of their land in return for royalties, had all been deported by the
Japanese in 1942 and when they were eventually released their Island was so
devastated by bombing, that they were resettled on Rabi Island in Fiji in 1945, where they decided to stay in 1947. Although they had more land here and were
better off than most Pacific Islanders, the Banaban leaders constantly complained
about their lot, looked to the BPC and the British Government for compensation,
and called for the separation of Banaba from the Gilberts before independence
to become an Associated State of Fiji. With their royalty money they briefed top
lawyers to argue their case in court and the 'Justice for the Banbans' campaign
in Britain lined-up MPs and prominent activists. The Prime Minister of Fiji chipped
into the argument and the Australian and New Zealand governments also had to
be consulted.
This issue dominated Smith's term of office, but his chief concern was that
Kiribati should get a fair start at independence. Ocean Island was not detached.
Having experienced the failure of the Westminster parliamentary system in
Nigeria in the 1960s (described in Nigeria in Crisis (1971) under the pseudonym
John Oyinbo), Smith ensured that the Kiribati constitution more carefully reflected
the local culture. He circulated a list of 52 questions that need to be answered
and brought in Professor David Murray from the University of the South Pacific
(with whom he had worked in Nigeria previously) to guide the Gilbertese in their
constitution making. Kiribati became a republic with an executive president and
built in checks and balances on the government's power.
Finally, the book includes valuable illustrative material. There are forty
photographs, half in colour. They are so good that it is a pity that they do not bleed
to the edge. There are four documentary appendices that Include the 52 questions
and Smith's valedictory despatch of 1978, which was withheld from the FCO files
that were opened under the thirty-year rule in 2009.
During lonely days on tour in Northern Nigeria in the 1950s, John Smith had
looked forward to getting belated copies the The Listener so he could enjoy
reading Sir Arthur Grimble's broadcasts about life in the Gilbert Islands in the
1920s. Perhaps it was fitting that he should end his overseas service a quarter century
later helping to wind up Grimble's legacy. His account of this stewardship
makes for a great read.
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