Page:MALAYSIA BILL RHODESIA AND NYASALAND BILL (2) (Hansard, 11 Juli 1963).djvu/17

 Conservative Party have been guilty of treachery.

The Tory Government’s actions over the years have amounted to criminal negligence, because they have given promises to tens of thousands of people who have left these shores to settle in Rhodesia, who have in fact torn up their roots here and settled in Rhodesia. They gave promises to these people that they would live in a Federation which would be virtually under white control. Nor those people see that this prospect is being removed and that they are likely within a few years, even if they live in southern Rhodesia, to have to live under a black majority, which they did not expect when they moved with their families a few years ago.

Something must be done for these people. I do not agree with the First Secretary of State that are human tragedy in all this can be confined to the Federal Civil Service. The human tragedy involves thousands or people or British stock In Southern Rhodesia who have travelled out to Rhodesia in the last 10 years assuming that the Federation was to continue. Something must be done for them because many of them are living in a condition which cannot last. Many of them are artisans who have a privileged income 10 times that their counterparts who happen to have black skins now receive. As political advances come, so these black Rhodesians will demand the same opportunities for work as their white Rhodesian counterparts, with the result that many of the Jobs—bricklayers,train drivers and so on—which so many of the white emigrants have today will no longer carry the sort of income that they now carry. Something must be done for these tens or thousands people whoo have gone out under a false prospectus. I hope that he can look during the debate at some ways of helping these people.

The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) was one or those who spoke of the great successes of federation in the last 10 years. He referred to the building or skyscrapers and hotels. The right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) spoke of Kariba. What is not generally understood is that most of these developments were sold for the benefit of white-controlled industries, white populations and white artisans or professional men. The benefits of many of these investments here only marginal to the mass or the African population.

I have been in these skyscrapers in Salisbury, as no doubt the hon Member for Harborough has, and found that the lifts are reserved for white men only I have been in the hotels. All of them but one when I was there were reserved for white men

Mr. J Hynd What a partnerhsip!

Mr Stonehouse True. there is an attempt to open the doors, but it has come far too late and hypocritically, According to line noble Lord the Member for Hartford (Lord Balnoel), two of the representatives attending the Victoria Falls Conference from Northern Rhodesia were refused admission to hotels.

I do not believe that all the window-dressing in the past ten years has in any way disguised the basic fact that the economic structure of the Federation largely benefits the white minority in the population. This fact is brought out only too clearly in the Report of the Monckton Commission, which gives chapter and verse for the division or the national income or all these territories, particularly southern Rhodesia, in the interests of the white minority.

It is no earthly use saying to the Northern Rhodesian or the Nyasaland or the Southern Rhodesian Africans, "Do not worry about political advance. Concern yourself with economic progress", when they see that without political advance they cannot demand the opportunity of participating in the economic wealth that they have created.

Mr. Bence Is my hon. Friend not aware that, while at the moment the people who may mainly benefit from this economic development are those who make up the white population, in a developing country such as this the benefits will spread to the coloureds in general as the society evolves?

Mr Stonehouse It is only a marginal improvement. The European has become progressively richer while most of the