Peanut Politics

Hungry British Nation Learns Something of Socialism

PACIFIC Islanders may have heard something of the British Govern ment’s grandiloquent schemes for producing enormous quantities of ground nuts (peanuts) in Africa. The groundnuts, of course, are planned as a means of in creasing Britain’s basic foodstuffs— groundnut oil makes first-class margarine.

Fundamentally, a good plan—if not im plemented by bureaucrats.

Islanders have shown merely a general interest. Actually, the Pacific Islands should be sharply interested, because groundnut oil, as a foodstuff, is an im portant and growing rival of coconut oil.

If the markets were flooded with ground nuts, the value of copra surely would fall.

At the moment, there is nothing to worry about. The Socialists have made such a muddle of their groundnut scheme that, although there are now enormous quantities in Africa, the nuts are not reaching the British market in the way that had been contemplated.

The British bureaucrats decided to pro duce groundnuts in quantity in both West and East. The West African plan made quicker progress than the East African enterprise which, though bigger and financed on a really dizzy scale, has been more or less bogged down for months in red tape. Nigeria certainly produced the nuts; but the Socialists, in characteristic fashion, failed to make proper provision for their transport.

At the end of March, according to Lon don newspapers, there were no less than 340,000 tons at Kano, in Nigeria, awaiting shipment. 50,000 tons were 1947 and 275,000 tons were 1948 crop. There were another 15,000 tons out on the plantations.

A beetle has got into the stored nuts; and, at the end* of March, despite frantic at tempts at deinfestation, no less than 18,000 tons were useless. Kano has been described as “not even a port yet.”

The bureaucrats are hoping to get the nuts away to hungry Britain at the rate of 25,000 to 30,000 tons per month. This would leave some 165,000 tons of the pre sent accumulation still in Kano in Novem ber-enough to give every person in Britain one additional ounce of margarine each week for one year.

Critics have been pointing out that if the Bloomsbury planners who run the British Government had only used, for transportation equipment for West Africa, one quarter of the huge funds they have dissipated in East Africa, this muddle might have been avoided.

Hungry people soon recognise the fal lacies of Socialistic planning. So poor Britain’s hunger yet may serve a good purpose. The sooner the British Socialist Government is got rid of. the better for the whole of the Western world.