Old Colonials Fade Away

From a Honiara correspondent

It might all be over by Christ mas. This is when the axe may fall on the old colonials. The last of the “African Retreads” and the “Malawi Mafia” are sadly pre paring to pack their bags and set out on the road to retirement.

This is one of the results of a recent meeting of the Permanent and Pensionable Officers Associa tion in Honiara. No fixed date was given for the disbanding of the service, but members were in general agreement that Whitehall would be giving them the Order of the Boot some time in the next few months.

The greatest impact of such a decision would undoubtedly be felt in the Solomons, which, after Hong Kong, is the largest em ployer of old colonials in Britain’s

dwindling overseas empire.

Even in the BSIP, however, there are less than 30 P & P officers still hanging on, and fore casts of their imminent departure will surprise none of them. The writing has been on the wall for some time, and the men con cerned have already received one tax-free award of £stg 11,000, “for loss of career prospects”. It is generally expected that they will be given another lump sum with which to speed their departure, to add to their generous pensions.

For most of them this is just another episode in an all-too familiar story. Many of them have already been ‘localised’ before, some more than once, as other former colonial possessions have gained their independence and got rid of—to them—their expatriate deadwood as soon as possible.

Nevertheless, any decision to disband the service will represent the end of an era. The present sedentary survivors are lineal des cendants of those colonial officers who opened up Africa and paci fied India in the golden days of empire. Even in the Solomons they can point with pride to such illustrious predecessors as the legendary C. M. Woodford, en trusted with the task of bringing the islands under control at the turn of the century while equip ped only with a whaleboat and a handful of native policemen; W.

R. Bell, murdered on Malaita in 1927, and Martin Clemens, Dis trict Officer and Coastwatcher on Guadalcanal in 1942.

It would be safe to say that these hardy characters would have had difficulty in recognising the present crop of middle-aged and disgruntled overseas civil ser vants currently bemoaning their lot. If they are chopped, they will have a great deal to moan about.

For the past few years the P & P officers in the Solomons have been fortune’s darlings. Pro motion, salary increases and ex cellent living and working con ditions have been theirs.

The word has been out in the BSIP for some time among the men at the top that the P & P officers were to be looked after.

They were the ‘professionals’, the dedicated career men, and as such were always to be given pre ference over the usually better qualified two-year contract ex patriates, and even over the in digenous officers.

As a result, for some time the old colonials have been running the protectorate, and the result, in too many cases, has been a de cade of well-meaning amateurism.

At least one important depart ment has taken such a bashing that it will need a lot of time and labour to sort it out.

The elected members in the

Governing Council/Legislative

Assembly have been growing in creasingly restless about incom petence in senior positions, and in particular over the extreme reluctance of most of the old colonials to train local successors and thus work themselves out of a job. Members and former mem bers like Solomon Mamaloni and Peter Salaka have been particu larly bitter about the long-service expatriates who, they claim, were building a paradise for themselves in the islands.

The evident desire in London to shuck off its overseas commit ments, allied to the intense dislike of the islanders for some of the more starchy of their colonial ad ministrators, means that the pre sence of the P & P officers is an embarrassment to everyone.