The Brown Brother Complex
pp. 7-8 · Read in the full issue
In World Affairs
THE development of a native policy, based on administrative super sensitiveness in relation to native welfare—to the exclusion of other and more urgent considerations—is not peculiar to the Australian Gov ernment in New Guinea. It is, in fact, a characteristic of Socialist planning in most European countries.
It has been especially noticeable in Whitehall; and there are some who see in it there the first steps in the disintegration of the British Empire.
There can be nothing wrong in placing the welfare of natives high among our obligations in colonial administration. But there is a right and a wrong time for the intro duction of new policies. And, em phatically, the extremely critical period following World War II was— and is—the wrong time in which to devote thought, time, energy and money to native welfare, when the call was upon all the Western nations to devote all their resources to the rehabilitation of their own people, and the solution of their politico economic problems.
SO far as Papua and New Guinea are concerned, there was little, if any thing wrong with the condition of the natives, up to the time of the Jap
invasion. All persons without bias, and with a real and practical know ledge of the Territories, will agree that the howling of Mr. Eddie Ward and his Planners about “native slavery and exploitation” in New Guinea was merely calculated and cunning political propaganda, de signed for the purposes of the Can berra Socialists. There was a call for prompt and positive action, and for the spending of large sums of money; but the call was on behalf of white settlers and European interests, and for the encouragement of their pioneering spirit and personal initia tive. Apart from some relief measures made necessary by the Jap occupation and the military operations, there was no urgent need to engage hun dreds of white officials and millions of money in the introduction of health, education and technical training activities for Stone Age natives, who were not at all dis satisfied with their lot.
To show the lack of logic and the cock-eyed thinking in Mr. Ward’s New Guinea policy, we need go no further than the events reported elsewhere in this issue. The white officials of the Territories, having tried everything else, have been
threatening to go on strike because their salaries are far too small to per mit them to live under the very high prices caused in the Territories by Mr. Ward’s carefully-designed econo mic system. And, while they have been deprived reasonable emolu ments for a year—Canberra began to fob them off, with sweet promises, in March, 1947—Mr. Ward has been spending enormous sums in the Ter ritories on native welfare.
According to recent official figures, Mr. Ward, in 1946-48, has spent, on wholly unnecessary war damage com pensation for natives, enough to give every man, woman and boy in the Papua-New Guinea public service an other £5OO per annum. No wonder the public servants, watching that orgy of useless expenditure, lost their patience and seriously considered a strike! With what tenderness the New Guinea public servants, feeling their shrunken purses, must regard the Brown Brother complex of Mr.
Ward!
BUT Papua-New Guinea must not imagine that this dislocation of a delicately - balanced post - war economy for the sake of Brown Brother is a fashion which belongs only to Australia. It is something that has run, like a vicious epidemic, all over the colonial Empire of the Socialist-controlled European nations; and its results have been disturbing and disastrous. Line up these events and consider them:—
• With a precipitancy that was akin to mania, Britain abandoned practically all her controls in the Middle East—Egypt, Palestine, Iraq— with the result that she has lost command over her priceless Suez Canal route to the East—otherwise called “the Life-line of Empire.” • With equally indecent haste, the British Socialist Government aban doned its controls in India, Burma and Ceylon, and thereby abandoned also—just when they were wanted most—vast fields of trade in which Britain’s sorely-pressed merchants and manufacturers had held certain advantages. @ Because British prestige has fallen so disastrously throughout Asia, there is growing tendency to revolt in countries still held by Britain—in Malaya, for example, where serious riots are reported, as this is written. • Because they were deserted by their Western allies, and not allowed to follow their own policy of quick decision, backed by a strong arm, the Dutch in Indonesia have been com pelled for two wasted years to engage in endless argument with so-called “Republicans”—wriggling and utterly untrustworthy little men, the pro ducts of a combination of ill-digested Westernism, Jap Chauvinism and Russian Communism. • Minor events in China, in Indo china, in Africa, in the Pacific, show the same amazing haste on the part of the Socialists (temporarily in charge of European countries) to dis sipate those countries’ colonial pos sessions by giving to the native inhabitants concessions and a degree of political freedom for which they were not ready and had never been prepared. • Finally, see what has happened in South Africa. That has been called an anti-British development.
It is—but not in the anti-Empire sense that is meant. It is most de finitely anti-British because, of the 10,000,000 people in the Union of South Africa, nearly 8,000,000 are coloured—some million being Bantu negroes, and 250,000 Indians.
The majority of the two million Europeans in South Africa voted anti-British to the extent that they do not approve of the British Socialist Government’s tenderness towards Brown Brother, and its eagerness to toss political freedom to coloured races who are not yet fit to exercise that privilege in a world where nations now are packed closely together. • And, last of all, gaze upon the “Australian Goodwill Mission,” sent by the ineffable Dr. Evatt to South east Asia, to distribute a few thou sand tons of food, and invite a handful of Asiatic students to accept scholarships at Australian institutions —all at the expense of the over taxed Australian citizens. Witness the naive astonishment of Evatt and Company when the Mission was greeted in Malaya with jeers which clearly meant: “Go back home—and take your White Australia policy with you!”
IT is only a phase. The Western world will recover from its mania for distributing political freedom among unready coloured races, just as Canberra in time will get over its Brown Brother complex. Not much harm will have been done in New Guinea, except that the development of European interests has been re tarded for some years; but there may be a sadly different story in relation to the British Empire.
This phase, however, despite its disturbing appearance, may have real value. It may serve to prove that political freedom, European model, cannot be handed out ad lib to Brown Brother, without disastrous conse quences to the rest of the world. That is something that must be done very gently and gradually, after a period of careful planning and preparation.
And it certainly should not be attempted in this critical period, when the world is trying so desper ately to recover from the unpre cedented destruction of its greatest war.