“A Squalid End to Empire:
British Retreat from
by
Harold Smith
For Carol
"We are English, that is one good fact."
Oliver Cromwell to Parliament. 17 September
1656
"Sons of
George
R. Parkin: 'The
Quoted
in Jan Morris' 'The
“A Squalid End to Empire: British Retreat from
This is the story of evil committed by
kind, nice, decent British politicians. They sought to keep
To leave friends in charge of
William was our cook and our steward
in
We rarely had dinner parties in
Millions died in the great Nazi
onslaught on
Grace and William worked for us and we
trusted them and treated them as friends. We loved them. We left
In his private office in Government
House on the
I was that young officer, and I was in
deep trouble. I carefully prepared for that interview and wore a freshly
laundered linen suit and, although it was steaming hot, a white shirt fully
buttoned up, and a tie. I hoped to be told that a terrible mistake had been
made. I hope to be allowed to leave the Colonial Service and forget all about
this ghastly experience. My hopes were to be shattered. Sir James was not in a
forgiving mood. John Bongard, his private secretary, showed me into Sir James'
room.
"Mr Harold Smith is here to see
you, Sir, as you ordered, he said, and retired.
"You know why you are here,
Smith," said Sir James. "And I want you to know that all your worst
fears and suspicions are absolutely correct. All the accusations you have made
are correct. I am telling you this because I want you to know how much trouble
you are in."
It is a cliché to say that my heart
sank, but I use it deliberately because it was somewhere in my groin. I had
wanted to be proved wrong, but I was being told from the highest possible
source that my conclusions were correct.
While I was absorbing this incredible
disclosure, Sir James was pronouncing a death sentence. In his opinion I was
wilfully disobeying orders on active service. The penalty was death. If the
sentence was to be postponed, and he clearly deeply regretted that, I would now
do exactly as I was told. As I had no choice... I listened to Sir James' terms
and, when he had finished, I said nothing. I looked at the portly figure of the
most senior, the most powerful representative of the Queen in the Empire, and
very calmly, pronounced two words:-
"No, Sir!"
I had graduated from
When we arrived in
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Chapter List
The British retreated from
The vast mass of the African people
was indifferent or actually would have preferred the British to stay. But
neither was it true that the British found in
Not only is Africa denigrated by the
carefully nurtured fairy tale fashioned for the most part in
My main qualification for demolishing
the myth that the British created viable democracies out of savage tribes only
to see the ungrateful and greedy natives quickly revert to their tribalistic
ways was my personal involvement in these events. I was educated at
I have not told this story before
because I did not wish to wreck the chances of success of the new nation by
revealing the truth behind the fine but phoney ceremonial retreat. It would not
have been possible to write this book in the 1960's anyway as my health was in
ruins and my survival unlikely. By the mid-1960's too, the consequences of the
British betrayal were becoming evident and
When I suggest that the British
Government meddled with the democratic elections in
Whatever the shortcomings of British
Colonial Administration in
Much of this statement is true.
Certainly, compared with other imperialist nations, the British behaved well to
their native peoples. British historians, civil servants, academics and the
colonial administrators themselves have told the story. However, as I have
indicated, they have not always told the whole truth. The historical record
does contain some questionable events which have tended to be glossed over,
and, as always, it was the victor who wrote the history, not the subject
peoples. I was present in
There are many fine, honest Nigerians
who have served their new nation well and there is much to be proud of in
It is probably too early to make a
balanced assessment of the British occupation of
The supreme betrayal of a new
sovereign nation of which I write took place when the British retreated from
What I now reveal in the following
chapters is that the British Government interfered with the elections so as to
achieve Northern domination of
I was one of the British officers
serving on the headquarters staff in
In 1986, approaching my sixtieth year,
I decided, in compliance with the convention, to seek permission from the Prime
Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, to publish my account of those years in
The British Government's response to
my plan to write these memoirs, was totally negative. Mrs Thatcher refused to
reply to my letters. She is not often stuck for words but on this occasion she
was rendered speechless. Assuming that my letter had been suppressed by the
Foreign Office I wrote again using the good offices of the Archbishop of
Canterbury and, when that produced no response, the Prince of Wales. I must
assume after all these endeavours that Mrs Thatcher has indeed seen my letters
and has no objection to the publication of my story of how the British tricked
the Nigerian people.
The Governor General had told me that
I had a choice. I could give my word to keep my mouth shut and I would continue
to be a golden boy, a high flier, an outstanding officer with appropriate
remuneration and rewards, or I would never be employed again by anybody. I
chose the latter course. I had no choice really. Cheating a brand new nation
out of its birthright was evidently routine stuff if you were Sir James. I
could not see myself getting involved in this kind of intrigue. And of course I
thought I would somehow survive. And of course I did, even though I found
myself permanently retired at thirty-three with no salary or pension. I had
only graduated at
During a TV discussion about an MI5
case officer, Cathy Massiter, who had resigned and told all, it transpired that
MI5 had been partly privatised and was able to turn over unpleasant chores to
private detectives. One of these sleuths remarked on TV. that he had been asked
to check out on a character who had been kept out of employment for twenty-five
years. He had declined the assignment.
The Governor General simply could not
understand why I should make such a fuss about which set of Africans the
British chose to leave in charge in
One of my neighbours in
I was very impressed with my
neighbour's exploits. His main job was to check all foreign mail coming into
"I don't speak any foreign lingo,
old chap," he assured me. "That's where all my years of training come
in. I just look at the stamps. All mail from Iron Curtain and red countries I
bung into the fire there..." and he indicated a stove.
"You don't read it?" I
asked.
"Good God, no... It's obvious
they're up to no good!"
So I should worry that my mail was
opened and that I was being watched while I pottered around with my dog and cat
in my old cottage at Widbrook. If I became a real threat, who knows but one day
I might be fished out of the canal. The police would no doubt report that I had
been complaining of being persecuted and was depressed.
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I was born in Hulme,
"My Father's name is Henry, but
my Mother calls him Harry. My Mother's name is Margaret, but my Father calls
her Maggie."
That was the complete composition and
it pleased my teacher.
"Short and sweet, Harold
Smith," she commented.
By that time we had moved from the
dark tight terraces of Hulme to the heavenly winding avenues of one of
In this first literary effort at the
new and splendid elementary school built on the Barlow Hall estate I could have
added that my name was Harold, but that I was addressed as 'Our 'Arold'. The
Family secret, only revealed after years of pestering, was that my Father, the
most true blue Conservative Englishman it is possible to envisage, was of Irish
origin. And so was my Mother. Dad had once answered when I had asked him what
he was, meaning what work he did,
"I'm an Orangeman."
I told my school friends he worked in
a fruit shop. He was actually the key and quite senior employee in a large
shirt factory, 'The Cutter,' no less. It was his job to lay out the patterns of
the various bits of a shirt on to the stacks of striped flannel material so
that the stripes ran the right way and there was as little waste as possible.
He was really the boss on the production side of the factory, but it was only
when I was sent to collect his wages one Friday afternoon so my Mam could do
the weekend shopping that I found this out.
"He's the boss, Mam," I
gasped. "They call him 'Sir,' and say, 'Yes, Mr Smith' and 'No, Mr
Smith.'"
"He might be the boss there, but
he's not the boss here," responded my Mam.
He was Irish, an Orangeman, a
Protestant; his family were from
"None of your business,"
they would respond, and we believed they were concealing terrible secrets.
It was not just that they were Irish
and despised the Irish, but that Mam was a Catholic, and that was worse than
being Irish for my Dad. My Mother's sister, my Aunt Nell, rarely called to see
us. She hated my Father for being an Orangeman and despised my Mother for
giving up her Roman Catholic faith to marry my Father. To my Father and Mother
this was of the greatest possible importance. It took many years before I was
able to force Mam to reveal that her maiden name was MacGarry, a clan or tribal
name associated with the West of Ireland. I know of no famous MacGarry's but I
am pleased from time to time to find writers and film makers who are
MacGarry's. And one of the MacGarry's had enough brass to get himself a beautiful
coat of arms.
Although my Father's discharge
certificate mentions no special medals for heroic conduct, he was regarded by
his many friends as being a war hero. Perhaps this was because he was one of
the few who returned from three years of trench warfare with the Manchester
Regiment in the first Great War. He regarded himself as incredibly lucky. All
his friends had died. He had lost an eye and a leg and had a stiff left hand
due, he said, to lying on that side for months in hospital beds while his wounds
healed. He never complained, but then he did not grumble about anything. He
never actually sat still. He was always on the move. Not so much restless,
because that would suggest he was nervous, which he was not. He was perfectly
content and sure of himself. He was highly principled, a bosses' man, a
freemason, a heavy drinker, an Orangeman, a Conservative and he loved his
country without the slightest reservation.
Before the War my Father had been a
keen athlete, and his weekends were taken up by football and long distance
running. After the War, with the young men dead or busy elsewhere, he was taken
to the pubs and fêted by the older men. Later when he was established in a good
job, it was his turn to repay their generosity and every night of his life he
bought drinks for anyone and everyone. My Mother had started drinking to try to
stop him but she had rapidly become hooked and probably drank more than he did.
Eventually she died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Dad was always right and never saw two
sides to any question. He was strict, unbending, without a hint of ambiguity
and, although he inflicted much pain and suffering on his children, he was
respected and adored. The rules had to be learned and were reinforced with a
cuff on the side of the head.
"Don't answer back! Don't be
cheeky! Speak when you're spoken to! Who are you looking at? Look at me when I
speak to you!"
And general rules. "A man - a
gentleman - never strikes a woman or ever lays hands on her!" (This rule
made me an extremely reserved and inhibited teenager. Perhaps I was so popular
with the girls because I 'did not try anything on' as the saying used to be. My
best friend got an older girl pregnant when he was fifteen. I had not got to
the kissing stage at that age.) Truth telling had to be one hundred per cent
and lies brought on kicks as well as blows. I never lied to him, but sometimes
he did not believe me and I would dive under the table for protection. Only
rarely did he move the table so I was able to dodge his gammy leg which was swung
with great force. If the table was moved my mother would intervene as I
scrambled to get under the sideboard.
"I'll kill the little sod, I'll
throttle him, I'll swing for him!"
My Mam used to say, "No one will
poison you, you little bugger, you were born to swing."
Practically all the money surplus to
food and rent and coal went on alcohol. Money for clothing or anything else was
only extracted with great difficulty and after continual nagging and pleading.
From my bedroom window I could see
through the trees the ancestral home of the Barlow's. During the long months of
mysterious illness which beset me throughout childhood I peopled the Hall with
its generations of Barlow children in strange costume and saw in my imagination
its long hall hung with dark paintings of Barlow knights. My Father had no need
of the ancient equivalent of a family photograph album to know where he
belonged and who he was. He was ex-Private Harry Smith of the Manchester
Regiment, an officer of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes.
Although I adored him, our life paths
diverged from the very start. One of the Barlow's, Ambrose, was a Catholic
martyr and had been cruelly executed. Ambrose Barlow was one of my saints
before he was canonised. To follow in Jesus' footsteps and pay the ultimate
price for his faith! There was a man. I doubt my Dad knew of his existence for,
although intelligent, he had little education and I never knew him to open a
book or read anything except the Daily Mail and racing papers. When we sang my
favourite hymn, 'There is a green hill far away', in the hall during assembly
at
My Father served his king and country.
The only top person he ever criticised and that below his breath so he would
barely be heard, was General Earl Haig.
"Bloody Generals! What did they
care! It was like a bleeding butcher's shop... What did Haig care?"
Then he would swing his leg and shut
himself away in the kitchen.
"Dad's crying in the kitchen. He
was sobbing, Mam," I would say.
"Leave him be," she'd say.
"It's the war."
When very young, I would ask,
"Why are you crying, Dad?"
Once he said, "For my old
comrades I left in
And he'd slip out his glass eye and
wash it under the tap at the sink.
When my body burned with fever as if I
was on fire, I slept in his bed and would watch as he unstrapped the canvas and
leather belts which held his artificial leg in place. One of his boots was
laced permanently to his gammy leg and he would leave the leg with the boot
attached inside his trousers when he undressed. Then he would remove the
special white socks made to measure for his leg stump and rub away the pain.
Only my Mother would know when his stump was raw and sore. It was a point of
honour not to complain. It was something men did not do.
For the fevers my Father prescribed
Fennings Fever Cure, which was highly thought of because it tasted ghastly. Dad
knew about such things because he had had ambulance training and for a time had
been a stretcher bearer in
I would swim out of a delirium to find
my Dad clinging to me. Our flannel shirts would sometimes be soaking with
sweat. But sometimes I would be in one of those tranquil cool periods between
fevers when my brain, though no longer inflamed, saw everything so clearly, and
it was my Dad who was tortured in his sleep and re-enacting a battle in the
trenches. Sometimes it was impossible to make sense of the incoherent flow of
shouts and orders - perhaps that was how the real battle was. Sometimes pieces
made sense.
"Mr Edwards, Sir! Mr Jones
presents his compliments and requests you to bring up your men immediately,
Sir! We are under heavy attack! They are in the trench!"
There would be a pause, then, "Oh
God! Jesus Christ! They're all dead! Bits and pieces of bodies everywhere! Jim!
Bob! Where are you?"
Then Dad would begin to sob and I
would try to comfort him.
I was brought up to serve King and
Country and the Empire. I was a boy soldier, and as such treated like a man. A
man never ran away. He always stood his ground. A man never laid hands on a
woman. The reason as I have said for my being regarded as a 'nice boy' by girls
and their mothers when in my 'teens. Impatient girls undid their blouse buttons
and put my cold hands inside to warm. One can be too nice!
"Don't be so bloody daft,"
was my Dad's response. "We are Conservatives."
All my Dad's beliefs were like that.
Final and forever.
Although I adored my Mam and Dad, one
of my earliest recollections, following on those of being fed with pobs and
later Farley's rusks and squatting on the Daily Mail and grunting, was of total
disbelief at what I was seeing. I was propped up with cushions on a settee
watching my Mam and Dad and brothers and sisters. The furniture was cheap and
unattractive. How did I know? The conversation was in bits and pieces,
accusing, mock threatening, whining from the children. It was not elevating or
educated, but common and even vulgar. I was repelled and alienated. Why had I
come here? I was in the wrong place! Some awful mistake had been made!
I was a weakling. Something had to be
done. I had to be taught to fight and uphold the family honour.
"Up the Buffs!" was my Dad's
cry to arms.
At every opportunity I was expected to
fight. If my Mother stood at the gate she would challenge a passing Primo
Carnera or budding Tommy Farr and cry, "My lad can beat you!"
They would look at me and laugh, which
only encouraged my Mother.
"Call yourself a lad of mine and
you won't fight!" she'd say.
"But Mam, I don't want to fight!"
"Don't you want to stick up for
your Mother then? Say someone attacks your Mother? Fat lot of good you'd be.
Harry (my oldest brother) would look after his mother! See that boy coming.
He's very nasty! Go and get him!"
And so began my career as a prize fighter.
Nobody fought harder, longer or more often. I got used to pain, bruises, split
lips, black eyes, scratches, kicks. In fact I welcomed them as it made my
Mother happy. I was a real boy. I never won a fight in all those years and
never desired to. But I never ran away and would get off the floor time after
time until my assailant would explain he would lose face if he kept knocking
down someone who obviously could not fight for toffee.
"He wiped the floor with
you," said my Mother scornfully after watching a somewhat unequal contest
with a boy the size of a furniture van.
How I longed for her to rescue me and
tell me I was brave, but she never did.
"You don't want to be a bloody
clerk," said my Dad when I was eleven and took the scholarship examination,
so I ended up at Chorlton Park Elementary Boys' School or rather after two
minutes, in the playground winded and bleeding.
I was picked up, my arms were threaded
through the school railings and I was then thoroughly beaten. The gravel
embedded in my knees turned septic and when the delirium finally cleared I had
been away from school for ten weeks. I had no idea that I was dying; that the
doctors had given me up. In 1938 the wonder cure for septicaemia, Penicillin,
had not yet been discovered. It was just delirium, another fever, but it seemed
like coming back from a far country and I did not care whether or not I
arrived. On one of these occasions early on I became aware of the doctor
examining me.
"Hello," he said. "It's
the first time I've seen you conscious. I'm Doctor P. I don't know what's wrong
with you. I'm bringing a colleague to see you."
Dr P. was apologetic when the other
doctor arrived. The new doctor assured him he had done the right thing.
"Let's start again," he
suggested. "We'll examine him from top to toe."
They pulled off my shirt. When they
saw my knees they could not miss the abrasions and scabs. They parted my legs
and found a large black swelling in the groin.
"Septicaemia!" they
exclaimed.
The decline continued. There was no
cure. I would become conscious to find Dr P. bathing my body to get the
temperature down.
"We're both in trouble," he
said.
Ages later I swam out of delirium and
he said maybe I was going to make it. My temperature was falling.
"They can't take that away,"
he said.
Very gradually I recovered and Dr P.
would sit by my bedside doing his pools coupon. He would bring me piles of
expensive American comics. And then he stopped coming. My Father would not tell
me why. I felt somehow it was my fault.
"When is he coming back?" I
would plead.
My Father said he was not coming back.
He had been struck off for gambling debts. I did not believe my Father. It
could not be true. If it were true I would not have wanted to live.
In my absence from school the
preliminaries in the
"You're new, aren't you?"
"Not really," I replied.
"Listen. I can beat everyone in
the school," said
I guess he thought I looked a pale
thin weakling who had just got off his death bed.
"You can't beat me," I said.
"Are you kidding?" said
He gave me a push which would have
sent me six feet if the railing had not been three feet away.
"You can knock me down," I
said, "but I'll never admit you can beat me."
"You're crazy," said
In due course
"Why wouldn't you admit I could
beat you?" he would plead. "You were the only one in the school who
wouldn't submit."
"I can't," I said.
"It's the way I was brought up!"
Ten weeks into my new school and I had
not had a lesson or met a teacher. I was really looking forward to my first
class. Besides I had survived my first encounter with
"I have told you time and again
for months," he yelled, "never to put a plane down on its
blade."
The rest of the class gathered round
in eager anticipation. From his desk Mr Ladd extracted a long leather strap.
The ends of the strap were cut into thongs.
"Hands up, boy! One under the
other!" yelled Mr Ladd.
"The cat of nine tails,"
somebody murmured gleefully.
Mr Ladd was not angry. His face was
lit up. His eyes were gleaming. His tongue was hanging out. He skipped forward
as if going to bowl out Don Bradman. He could not have tried harder to tear the
fingers from my hand. I got six of the best. Three on each hand. As he was
preparing to take aim a quiet boy wearing spectacles tried to intercede.
"He's new, sir. It's his first
lesson."
"Shut up!" yelled Ladd.
"I've told him a dozen times."
I was not too upset by all this. I was
used to pain and the school bullies left me alone. Apparently
In 1939 war was declared and Mr Ladd,
as the dogsbody, was voted to be in charge of Air Raid Precautions. As timber
was in short supply he had a good excuse for not handing out any wood for the
boys to work with. As he had always been mean and acted as if it were his wood
he was handing out, he was very pleased to walk around wearing a tin hat and
blowing his whistle. Instead of ghastly woodwork we now got lectures, often
very imaginative, on what to do if the enemy bombed us.
During one of his talks he told us
what to do if the Hun decided to drop gas bombs on Chorlton-cum-Hardy. We would
hear gas rattles - which Mr Ladd demonstrated. Apparently as soon as Mr Ladd
learned that the Germans were going to wipe us out with gas, he would ride
around on his bicycle rotating his gas rattle. We would then all put on our gas
masks. However, this would not help if the enemy were dropping mustard gas. How
would we know if we were being bombed with mustard gas asked a brave ex-woodworker.
Mr Ladd looked at him as he had once looked at me, and I feared he was going to
demonstrate his skill with the cat of nine tails again.
"You'll know about it, you just
wait and see," he threatened.
"So what do we do if we get
covered in mustard gas, Mr Ladd, please sir?"
"A very good question," said
Mr Ladd with a snarl.
He would have smiled but there was a
war on.
"You take all your clothes off
immediately."
"In the street?" someone
exclaimed.
"Anywhere," said Mr Ladd.
"Women too?" said a brave soul.
"Women too. Everybody stark
naked."
Mr Ladd was warming to his work.
Perhaps he was thinking of riding on his bicycle giving his rattle alarm for a
practice mustard gas attack and making everybody he encountered strip stark
naked!
"What do we do then, Mr Ladd,
please sir?" asked the class.
"You run to the nearest house.
Ring the door bell. Run inside and jump in the bath."
"What if there's a lady in the
bath?" the whole class gasped.
"Tell her to move over and get in
with her," shouted Mr Ladd, full of excitement. "All naked, all in
the bath together!"
With that he ran out of the room with
his tin hat and rattle and the class broke up to run round the school, telling
everyone to pray for a mustard gas attack. The girls got quite hysterical. Next
day a deputation of anxious mothers waited on the headmaster to ask why their
daughters were expected to strip naked when Mr Ladd performed with his rattle.
Mr Ladd became extremely popular and his stories, like all good yarns, were
added to beyond all recognition.
When Mr Ladd suddenly disappeared, it
was obvious to all the boys that the headmaster, jealous of Mr Ladd's
incredible popularity, had volunteered him for something very nasty, like being
dropped behind enemy lines with his tin hat and gas rattle.
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When I was a small child I would help my older
brother Harry with his newspaper round in Northenden, an attractive
For two years I was unemployed,
although my mother sent me for a number of jobs. I pretended to be stupid so as
not to be employed as a butcher's boy. My mother was very disappointed. She
liked the idea of cheap or free meat. When I was eleven she found me a morning
newspaper round which paid three shillings and sixpence a week. Then an evening
round for another three shillings and sixpence. Mr Burgess at the farm at the
bottom of our council estate street could see I was a keen worker, so I took on
a milk round too at seven shillings a week. I started delivering milk at five
in the morning until the air raids started and I was at risk of getting in the
way of fire engines and rescue squads. After my evening paper round I turned up
at the farm to help bottle the milk for next morning. At the weekends I
collected cash from my customers on the milk round and did odd jobs on the
farm. In the holidays I cleared pigsties and weeded and picked potatoes.
My mother was not too happy when I
left school and started an engineering apprenticeship at the vast Metropolitan
Vickers factory. I only earned fourteen shillings a week at the factory. I
loathed engineering. My first department was H Machine. I arrived the morning
after it got a direct hit from a German bomb. The lathes and milling machines
were hanging from their drive belts in mid-air. I was moved to K Machine. The
lavatories at K Machine were in two facing rows and were so close that legs
stretched into the walkway between.
My father had lost his job as a shirt
cutter and had volunteered for war work. I found him dragging trucks piled high
with iron castings on K Machine. The management had not noticed he had an
artificial leg and a glass eye and he did not tell them. He was intensely
patriotic. Women had been conscripted in large numbers into the factory and
rapidly proved, after only a short training period, to be better machine
workers than the men. This caused a lot of resentment. There was a great deal
of flirtation and even the middle class ladies who were well spoken seemed to
enjoy the sexual banter and innuendo.
My job was to drag two large steel
baskets of brew tins to a lean-to boiler house at lunch time and otherwise run
errands. A surprising number of men would either try to grab my penis or stroke
my bottom. Some would try to get me to go home with them. If this was
homosexuality, there seemed to be an awful lot of working class homosexuals at
Metropolitan Vickers. The brew sheds were dangerous too. Sexual attacks
disguised as initiation ceremonies were common. I learned to run fast and cry
at night. The nightmares I had then I have had ever since. The initiation
involved masturbation by an older youth and sometimes variations like jamming a
narrow topped bottle on to a boy's penis so he could not remove it when he had
an erection. If he did not get an erection a girl would be persuaded 'for a
laugh' to expose her breasts or raise her skirt.
At fifteen I was on some errand when I
stopped to chat to another brew boy from the Research Department. I agreed to
swap secrets. They had few sexual initiations in Research. The people there
were graduates and college apprentices and scientists. A better class of
worker. So I recounted my stories of the K aisle brew sheds and he told me the
secret of the atomic bomb which they were working on in the top secret Research
Department. A little later I moved to West Works where I helped to assemble the
switch gear panels for the Victoria Falls Power Station and mobile switch gear
units for the
My national service in the RAF.
followed a predictable pattern. I tried hard not to be an electrician so I
became one. At Melksham in Wiltshire I was pushed through advanced courses in
electronics which I found totally boring. We had to be reasonably bright and
our intake included a sprinkling of grammar and public school boys and
students. When taking the end-of-course examinations I was surprised to get
high marks.
"You remember very little, so you
work out all the answers from theory and principles," I was informed.
"The others only remember what they've been told."
I was asked what rank I would like. I
settled for a pass. I was terrified I would be given stripes and recruited as
an instructor.
At Melksham I discovered the joys and
delights of
I volunteered for service in
The problem with electrics in a very
hot climate is that the insulation melts. The fire switches were held in place
by blobs of pitch which also often melted, leaving the engines awash with foam.
One
One night I was swinging my
searchlight and trying to dodge the large dung beetles which hit the lamp and
fell at my feet, when a Sten gun opened up and bullets flew around my head. The
rifle came up and I fired a magazine automatically. I was furious that the RAF.
had succeeded in training me against all my inclinations to become a rifleman.
My inhibition was not unconnected with my father's experiences in the trenches
in
"It's a bit of a let down you
being alive, Smithy," said one. "We were all saying what a smashing
bloke you were. We felt very sorry for you - you being dead. Now you've gone
and spoiled it!"
About this time I was summoned to see
my Wing Commander and was given a dressing down.
"I have here a report on your
work signed by your Flight Sergeant before he returned to the
"He didn't tell me, sir," I
said.
"All right then," he
replied. "So long as you know. Your grade is satisfactory!"
At that time the British were
withdrawing from
During that voyage back to Liverpool
in August 1948 I cleaned the latrines all the way through the
Within days it was as if I had never
been away. I would have gone insane if I had not been saved by my old mate
Frank Fairhurst, the shop steward. Frank had news of a junior engineers'
conference organised by our Society, the Amalgamated Engineering Union. I
attended that conference and was pitchforked into battles with the communists.
I was outraged to discover that they rigged elections and found that they
fought dirty. I was very quickly elected to the Trades Council, the executive
of the Fabian Society, the executive of the City Labour Party. The following
year I was a candidate for the City Council. When Frank Fairhurst stood down as
shop steward I was elected to replace him, and Frank became a foreman. The
communists now saw their chance and the District Committee refused to issue me
with credentials as a shop steward. The works director had wanted Frank to
remain shop steward. I only pretended to force him out. Frank wanted the
foreman's job. However, the works director was displeased with me and very
rapidly, to the delight of the communists, I was out of a job. The major
battles in the unions in
I found a job in an aircraft factory.
Was it true, the communists asked, that I was collecting books for a book fair
for the Labour Party League of Youth? Would I like a pile of books? How kind, I
thought. I was checking some wiring on an aircraft when a security officer
ordered me to report to the Personnel Department. Someone had been smoking or
taking a break on that aircraft.
"I wasn't smoking or taking a
break," I protested.
"You're going anyway," said
the security officer. "Have you seen your bench?"
The works of Lenin, Marx, Engels and
Stalin were stacked high on my bench. The communists howled with laughter.
"Have a good read," they
shouted.
I had been out of work a few weeks
when a printer on a newspaper asked if I would like a job. He was a keyboard
operator. The salary seemed enormous.
"I can't type," I said.
"You won't be allowed to. It's a
union agreement. They've got rid of a machine, but they've got to employ an
extra man."
"And what do I do all
night?" I asked.
"Nothing. You won't be allowed
to."
I declined the well paid job. I
disapproved strongly of this kind of trade unionism.
I saw an advertisement in the Guardian
for university extra mural courses at
"Why don't you go to
University?" Ralph asked one day.
"It's impossible," I
protested.
Ralph asked what I thought of one of
the visiting lecturers.
"OK," I replied. "Not
very bright."
"Right," said Ralph.
"He's got a couple of degrees and you're brighter than he is...
Remember," he continued, "knock on plenty of doors. Some doors will
be slammed in your face but eventually you'll find someone who's been waiting
for you."
This was excellent advice. In October
1950 I got on a coach to
"Ruskin won't take you without
money and the City Council won't give you a grant unless you have a place at
College," I told him. "So write to Ruskin and say you have the money
and to the Council and say you have the place."
I helped my friend write an essay for
Ruskin on the closed shop. The opening sentence of his draft commenced, 'The
non-trade unionist in the factory is a philistine within the gate who must be
eliminated...'
"We start," I suggested,
"'Some would say that the non-trade unionist...' Then we put the other
point of view and proceed that way all through the essay like two people having
an argument."
"And at the end?" my friend
asked.
"Sum it up, pros and cons, and if
you want my opinion, settle for tolerance or leave it open."
"I won't sell out," said my
friend.
"You'll enjoy
Two years later when I moved to
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
My first year at
I was met by the College Secretary,
Ferdie Smith, who said, "You'll be staying at the Rookery in
Headington," and bundled me into a taxi.
"Don't go away," I advised
the taxi driver when we arrived at what had obviously been a large country
house.
I then tried to explain my predicament
to the students I encountered. Conway Morgan came to my rescue. He was to be my
room mate and he was rolling a cigarette with one hand when we first met. He
said nothing, but pressed paper money into my sweaty palm. During this
manoeuvre he seemed to manage to keep one hand in his pocket and continue
rolling his cigarette in a Rizla paper with the other. No mean feat! He was
like that. Con was a very dark Welshman who could be eloquent but otherwise,
unless he had something important to say, preferred silence. He chose on
leaving
Some of our lectures were given in
Headington and others at
Returning from a sojourn in Shoreditch
which had been made more tolerable by that area's Shakespearean connections, I
found that an oafish oligarchy of Northern barbarians, masquerading as trade
unionists, had taken over the house committee at Headington and were being a
bore. These were not brothers but old fashioned bullies and they had drawn up
long detailed rules and regulations which licensed them to annoy and irritate
fellow students. While I was luxuriating in a hot bath one morning, one of the
comrades burst in on me to announce that this was criminal activity. The
committee had drawn up a timetable and one could only bathe by consulting this
dreary document and taking a dip at an allotted time. As the bathrooms were
mostly vacant with hot water gurgling in the pipes at all hours, this seemed
like an attempt to turn our sylvan
I found the fellow conspirator I
needed playing the piano in the common room after dinner. Robin Higgs was quite
unique at Ruskin. He was a
'No baths
today
But we are dirty!
No baths today!
What can we do?
Take a furtive dip?
And risk persecution?
Big Brother is at the keyhole
Watching you!'
That evening, returning from a rare
visit to a local pub, the staircase in the Rookery was dark. As I reached for
the banister rail, yells and the thud of falling bodies came from the top of
the staircase. I stood aside as the thugs of the oligarchy stumbled and bounced
down the stairs.
"Sorry lads," said Robin,
who was massively built. "I didn't see you crouching on the stairs in the
dark!"
Robin revealed to me over a mug of
cocoa that he had overheard the mob planning a Tyneside Friday night ritual,
namely to kick the shit out of someone. The target was my good self and the
lads had removed the light bulb and were lying in wait when Rob had
accidentally kicked them down the stairs! Not since my schooldays, when
belatedly the school champ Dawson had become my chum, had I known the joy of
having a protector. Robin's massive presence terrified the oligarchy. They
never found their rules and regulations.
"Where did you hide their ghastly
constitution, Robin," I asked one sunny day.
"The one place those ignorant
bastards would never think to look," said Robin.
"The library?"
"Naturally," said Robin.
Ruskin had been a delightful
experience. The College specialises in courses for mature students, and I found
the tutors to be very kind and generous with their time. Ruskin is in no way
inferior to the older, richer and more prestigious colleges of the University
and achieves extremely high academic standards. Ruskin is an oasis of liberal
civilised values to which students and scholars have been drawn from all over
the world. It was established by two young idealistic Americans at the end of
the nineteenth century. An act of great generosity from the
In December 1950 I attended a student
conference at Transport House. The chairman was an old friend from
"You are going to have your
photograph taken for the Daily Herald," said Peter. "Pick out a
pretty girl from the hall."
At the back of the hall was a young
lady with a golden halo. The halo was her plaited fair hair pinned up. I
pointed to her and called and she came forward. That was how I met Carol. We
had our photographs taken and the next day I apologised for being a bit slow
and asked her to marry me. There were a lot of good looking men at that
conference and I was taking no chances. We sat holding hands in the foyer of
Transport House when the porter decided to play Cupid and showed us into the
TUC. General Chamber.
"It'll be warmer up here and a
bit more private," he said.
Which goes to show one should never
underrate the TUC. The brothers mean what they say about love and fraternity.
Trade unionists are magnificent people. Sometimes a little foolish because they
are very ordinary like the rest of us, but big-hearted, very generous and very
loyal. What few Conservative politicians understand is that they are also
intensely patriotic, conservative and yet liberal minded and the salt of the
earth. Harold Macmillan understood them which is why I think he will go down in
history as a truly great Prime Minister.
I now had a problem and Billy Hughes,
the Principal of Ruskin was, quite rightly, rather cross. I had been accepted
to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Catherine's Society by the
Censor, a reverend gentleman, and I had changed my mind.
"What are you playing at,
Harold?" asked Billy Hughes. "You've done extremely well to be accepted
and now you say you won't go!"
"But I've also been accepted by
Magdalen," I said. "And Balliol are quite keen."
"Good God, Harold," said
Billy. "How many Colleges have you applied for?"
"Twelve," I said. I was
taking Ralph Ruddock's advice literally. "I didn't think any of them would
want me," I added.
I apologised to Billy Hughes, and
suggested we take it that I had gone the wrong way about applying for
admittance to a College and had been severely reprimanded. He should reply to
the Censor accordingly and smooth his feathers.
And would I go to St Catherine's?
asked Billy.
"No," I said. "He wrote
me an extremely abusive letter without giving me a chance to explain. I acted
in ignorance. That letter was meant to hurt."
The Censor of St Catherine's was not
mollified. If I would not go to his College, the doors of every other
Perhaps the President of Magdalen had
seen me out of politeness. His butler had taken my dirty raincoat and held it
at arm's length. The President's study had large faded tapestries covering the
walls.
"Hello, Mr Smith," said
Boase. "Excuse the old clothes. I'm weeding the garden."
The butler poured the tea from an
exquisite Georgian teapot and I thought, 'This is better than working in the
factory.'
"So what have you been doing with
yourself?" asked the President.
I explained about Ruskin. I had the
University Diploma in Public Administration and had been awarded a State
Scholarship in addition to my Cassel Scholarship.
"I was born into a working class
family in
"Tell me about
"I was guarding the
"What was?" asked Boase.
"To see Karnak and
He threw back his head and laughed.
"Mr Smith," he said. "All my life I've wanted to go to
Harry Weldon was extremely friendly
and we had a glass of sherry. I was beginning to drool at the thought of
Magdalen. The very atmosphere made me tingle with joy.
"I'm a socialist, but not a
communist," I told Harry Weldon. (I thought it as well to make that
clear.)
Weldon chuckled. "Surprise me,
Smith. Surprise me," he said.
After the Censor had got to work,
Weldon saw me again. "What's the old sod up to, Smithy? What have you done
to him?"
"I told him I didn't want to go
to St Catherine's..."
"Quite right too!" said
Weldon. "Who would want to go to the Cats' Home with that burke! Tell him
to piss off!"
I nearly upset my sherry glass.
"It's all right your telling him what to do, Mr Weldon," I said.
"Sitting here in Magdalen sipping your sherry. He'll have my balls!"
Harry Weldon roared with laughter and
tears ran down his face. "That's the stuff, Smithy," he said.
"Tell the old bugger to go and..."
I began to form the impression that
Weldon had no particular respect for men of the cloth. Some days later Boase
sent for me.
"I'm afraid, Smith," he
said, "you may be called on as a Magdalen man to make the supreme
sacrifice..."
It seemed that Magdalen was supporting
Balliol who needed some new laboratories on condition that Balliol helped
Magdalen put through some crafty wheeze. Unfortunately the Censor of St
Catherine's support was also needed. His friends were making noises and...
"I think I must withdraw my
application, sir," I said.
"I knew you'd understand, Mr
Smith," said Boase apologetically. "It's Balliol's labs and our
little scheme and..."
'Oh well,' I reflected, 'it was nice
being a Magdalen man while it lasted.'
Towards the end of term I was doing my
washing in the basement at Ruskin when I had an idea. I was not committed to
any College now. Balliol had probably got its laboratories. I would start
again. I wrote to the President of Magdalen, apologising for my ignorance of
the proper etiquette when last I applied. I now had no commitments and wished
to make a fresh application...
Boase replied next day. 'Dear Smith.
Glad to have you with us...'
I was a Magdalen man again.
"Good God, Smith," said
Boase. "We let you in for three years and now you want senior status and
to do the degree in two years. Did you ask Harry Weldon?"
"He said it was all right with
him if you agreed."
"And the Dean of Arts?"
"He said if you agreed..."
"Look, Smith," said Boase.
"Just because they let the Prince of Wales do it before the war doesn't
mean..."
"The way those regulations are
drafted," I said, "I'm sure they'd let me do it."
"Go on then, Smith, old
chap," said Boase. "Tell them the story. Tell them the story."
I was housed with the Rhodes scholars
in a set of rooms opposite the College. The sitting room was furnished with a
deep club-type leather suite and limed oak sideboard, table and chairs. Mr
Edwards was my scout and we became good friends.
On matriculation day the Junior Dean
of Arts at Magdalen lined the new boys up in a crocodile. We were wearing sub
fusc, that is dark suits, squares, gowns and white bow ties. The Junior Dean
was taking no chances. He placed four reliable grammar school boys at the head
of the crocodile and shoved choir and organ scholars - Dudley Moore was not
untypical- who were notoriously wayward, in the middle. I was with the oldies,
the Rhodes scholars, bringing up the rear, but the Junior Dean, suspecting we
might slip into the pubs on the High Street, shoved us in the middle of the
crocodile too.
Off we went down the High and into the
Sheldonian which always resembles a Costain building site. I was chatting to
Colin Eisler, a New Yorker, about everyday matters like the meaning of life and
how to make a good cup of tea. We were plunging down a stone corridor when a
labourer with a wheelbarrow blocked our way. We paused and then a man with a
ladder came along. We set off again, but this time Colin and I were leading the
back end of the Magdalen matriculation crocodile. We went round the building
and passed the man with the wheelbarrow again when the cry went up, "We're
lost!" and our followers deserted us and started opening every door they
came to. Colin and I ran after them and then some smart public school boy got
the scent and we burst in on the matriculation ceremony. There was one small
problem. We had come through a door behind the Vice Chancellor who was on a
raised dais. The Vice Chancellor looked startled as the Magdalen mob propelled
by those behind hustled past him. As I squeezed past I noticed he was reciting
his Latin speech from a script concealed in his mortar board.
The Junior Dean of Arts was somewhat
displeased. His Latin speech slipped out of his hat. When he got us outside he
just shook his head and groaned.
"Do you think we got
matriculated, Sean?" asked Colin.
"About that pot of tea,
Colin," I said.
An
I was invited to lunch and thoroughly
enjoyed the burnt sausages and mash. I detest rare sausages. Miss Rosemary and
I had a contest of apologies. She apologised for the burnt sausages. I
apologised for being so greedy and eating every last burnt sausage. I think I
won. Henceforth I was introduced to everyone in
"I'm told you're the politest man
in
"I like burnt sausages," I
confessed.
"Tell me," she said.
"What is the University? Is it the Colleges?"
The politest man in
"You really are deaf, Harold,"
said Miss Rosemary one Sunday afternoon."
"I really don't think so, Miss
Spooner," I responded.
"Humour me, Harold," said
Miss Spooner. "I've made an appointment for you at the Radcliffe
tomorrow."
"So you're not deaf," said
the hearing specialist.
"That's right," I said.
The specialist covered his lips with
his hand and continued talking. I tried to peer around his hand. How could I
hear if I could not see?
"Can you hear now?" he
asked, letting me see his lips.
He stuck a hearing aid in my ear and I
recoiled. The traffic noise was awful and a whole aviary of birds was singing
madly. I was being assaulted by a battery of sound. So, courtesy of Miss
Spooner, I became officially deaf and was issued with a hearing aid. When I
wore it I didn't need to turn it on as people shouted my head off. Not that I
had much time for social activity at Magdalen. There were one hundred tutorials
to attend and one hundred essays to write. We were all so busy. Friends one
wanted to know better, Alf Morris, Guy Barnet, Gerald Kaufman, Fred Jarvis, all
rushed by.
"Hi! How are you? Fine. See
you!?"
Each week at Miss Spooner's one knew
where there had been a revolution because she always had for tea the very
latest batch of refugees. One sometimes wondered where last month's refugees
had gone. Everyone was made to feel somebody special. I had my title. A shy
Dagenham shop steward, which seems improbable, blossomed after being introduced
several times as a very important trade union official. Another visiting shop
steward held the whole room transfixed with a long boring yarn but it was not
his story which was spellbinding. It was his table knife which he waved above
his head in a repeat of the speech which paralysed
"Did we take their stinking
offer?" demanded the docker.
The assembled professors and refugees
shook their heads vigorously.
"No, we didn't!" said the
docker emphatically, the knife and its cargo of jam cleaving the air.
On the last syllable the knife and jam
parted company and everyone's eyes rose to the ceiling with the raspberry jam
and then down to the fine Persian carpet where it landed.
"Oh sorry!" exclaimed the
docker and he ground the jam into the carpet pattern with his boot.
"What a thrilling story,"
said Miss Spooner faintly.
"Lovely jam this!" said the docker
reloading his knife.
If I was polite, what were the Spooner
ladies? Saints, I think.
My friend Neil Smelser compared being
a student at Magdalen to living in a monastery. Perhaps unlike Neil I found
everything about Magdalen joyful and sheer delight. Like Neil I was not
overawed either by Magdalen or by
Yet we had so little time to
appreciate the magnificence of Magdalen. Two or three years may seem time
enough but in my case a hundred tutorials and a hundred essays left too little
time for friendships and the astonishing range of social and political activity
available. How did I find time to convene the Cole Group, to give papers to the
Labour Club, to entertain ex-Ruskin people who were also reading politics to
tea each week, to walk around
Neil was a Rhodes scholar from
"Look after Helen, Sean," he
would say and he would be away.
Was Neil trusting or did he know that
Helen would pin my ears back and would still be giving men - and me as the sole
representative available - hell when he returned much later? My daughter Helen
was named for Neil's Helen and she is an active feminist too.
We wore short black gowns, but only
when we had to wear them, which was usually for lectures and formal dinner in
Hall. Neil and I had only one mortar board between us. We were really mean. At
the end of term we would assemble in the Hall for Collections which were known
to Magdalen undergraduates as 'The Inquisition.' In turn we would go up to the
high table carrying our square and the dons would make sarcastic comments on
our progress. Quite accurately after a term of Philosophy, Harry Weldon
reported I was in danger of discovering the subject any time now. On one
occasion Neil had preceded me as usual carrying our square. He was on his way
back and my name had been called when the President took him aside to
compliment him on his work.
"Your square, sir!" the head
porter yelled as I set off up the Hall minus my mortar board.
The assembled scouts grinned as I
indicated that I was carrying an invisible square under my arm. I managed to
stand alongside Neil at the high table and our square disappeared from under
Neil's left arm and reappeared under my right one! The dons must have thought
we were a stingy pair. Actually it was Neil who was the radical. He loathed
bullshit and the
Neil and Colin Smelser lived on the
top floor of a beautiful old pile called the
"What's wrong with the
drapes?" said Neil, puzzled.
Colin paraphrased Oscar Wilde's remark
about the wallpaper in his room where he lay dying, "One of us will have
to go."
Each day Colin took the offending
curtains down and whenever he returned they would be back in place.
The
Although I mixed mainly with American
and Commonwealth students at Magdalen because they were older, I had no
problems with the boys from the public schools such as Eton, Harrow or
The vandalism used to annoy me,
particularly as the damage was meticulously recorded and costed and added to
our bills. As the vandals were often rich and some of those who did not take
part were poor, this did seem inequitable. Some of the public school boys appeared
to have been starved for years. Being from the working class and a fastidious
eater, I would rarely clean my dinner plate and would be surprised when a
well-to-do ex-Etonian would offer to finish off my scraps. In conversation the
public school boys would tell stories of hunger and deprivation which made my
working class upbringing seem rich and privileged. They would also be
contemptuous of their parents and critical of the lack of love shown to them.
Too often they felt they had been packed off at an early age to get them out of
the way. And some complained that excuses were made for sending them off in
school holidays too. They would be aghast when I piled jam on my bread.
"You can't do that, Sean,"
they would protest.
When I queried why not, they would
say, "You can't. It's not allowed."
"Pretend you're working
class," I would say, "and pile it on."
Maybe they thought nanny or the school
matron was still watching them.
All in all the student body at
Magdalen was very mixed and quite cosmopolitan. No one was nasty to me, no one
patronised me. I sometimes made the point that I felt so much at home because
the
"It's you rich sods who are the
interlopers," I would claim.
Yet in my second year I became a little
weary of Magdalen. And that because I fitted in too well. I felt the balance I
had struck was threatened. I loved the deep leather chairs, good food and
amusing chatter. Perhaps I felt I was being seduced. Most of the friends I had
made in my first year were now in digs and I had chosen, as this was my final
year, to keep my rooms in College. A joke that I was 'the college communist'
stung me. At most other times I would have laughed it off by saying 'how true'
and how 'it paid so well, the floor of my rooms had been reinforced because of
the weight of the sacks of Russian gold.' Perhaps all my friends felt the same.
A realisation that the world out there would have to be faced and some
adjustment was necessary.
I decided that I had to junk all the
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
I joined another Union, the
Municipal and General Workers, and became a
My job was to move crates of butter
along a conveyor belt and bind the boxes with wire on a machine happily named,
'The Gordian.' A homosexual theatre buff with rotting feet, who shuffled around
stacking empty cartons, told me of a young bloke he had recently helped escape
from the factory on to the stage. The young bloke's name was Maurice
Micklewight, and I have often wondered if Michael Caine, when he became famous,
remembered the factory hand who took pride in helping others get on.
There was much ribald laughter and
teasing when I took my place on the conveyor belt. The girls on the butter
packing machines were not accustomed in those days to have students in their
midst. I say 'students' because, having recently seen the Doctor series of
films like 'Doctor in the House,' they decided I was a medical student. When I
protested that I was not, they said I was really a psychologist, one of those
doctors who listened to your dreams. They had seen that film too! The girls would
invite me to listen to the glorious sexy dreams they had had and ask me to say
what they all meant! The machines were very close to the conveyor belt and when
the girls created a log jam, the men had to take turns to move along the
conveyor and squeeze past the girls. We were timid and reluctant to do this,
especially as we knew from experience that the girls might force us against the
conveyor for a 'bit of fun' and all the girls would howl with laughter.
Before going to the packing machines
the solid packs of butter would be mixed with salt and water in massive churns.
The salt was kept in the cellars and because of the large number of rats down
there, some cats were kept in the cellars. The sacks of salt we brought out of
the cellar would be pungent with the stink of cat pee. The workers claimed that
this is what gave the factory butter its appeal.
The butter would pass through the
packaging machines in a variety of cheap paper or fancy silver wrappings,
heading for a cheap corner shop or a Knightsbridge store. We all knew it was
the same butter but when the men slipped some packs into their pockets they
preferred the posh wrapper, for even they felt it tasted better. My refusal to
steal the butter myself was eventually to lead to bad feeling. I was not only
superior but dangerous. I pretended to take the butter, but they were not
deceived. I might tell on them. Perhaps I was a boss's man, a spy? It was time
to move on.
When I applied for the post of Labour
Officer with the Department of Labour in
Helen was of course the most beautiful
baby ever born and Carol and I were blissfully happy. We made light of our
housing and money problems because we considered ourselves to be so privileged
and fortunate. As we could no longer live in our one-room bed-sitter in
My first impression of the Colonial
Office was that it was as quiet as an empty church, which was not inappropriate
as it was situated in Church House,
Mr Barltrop advised me that I was going
to have heavy responsibilities thrust on me in
"What do you think of the
job?" asked Barltrop.
I replied in my usual jocular fashion
that it sounded like a cross between a Boy Scout Patrol Leader and a Factories
Inspector. I immediately wished I had kept my mouth shut, but everyone smiled
and Barltrop replied that this was in fact quite an appropriate description.
The interview over, the messenger was
leading me down a corridor as I thought to the exit, when he paused and
whispered, "Mr Parry, the Deputy Labour Advisor, wishes to have a few
words, sir."
Mr Edgar Parry looked like the trade
union official he had once been. He had served very successfully as
Commissioner of Labour in
"So you've got the job, Harold.
Come and sit down. Forget everything Barltrop's told you. They know bugger all,
that lot. I'll fill you in on the real picture in
At this point I should emphasise that
although I was incredulous at what Parry was to divulge, I was to find he was
extremely well informed, accurate and truthful.
"This is the story, Harold. The
Labour Department in
(I was never to find out how Parry
managed this. It seemed not even the Governor General could post me out of
"Into this Augean stable goes
bright, ambitious George Foggon, the new Commissioner, the new broom. He's come
from the Control Commission in
"So where do I come in?" I
asked. I felt quite shaken.
"Exactly," said Parry.
"What's in it for you? There are no prospects for you in
I left the Colonial Office in a state
of shock.
M father-in-law's reaction was direct.
"Don't go. Tell them you've changed your mind. What else did he tell you
about this new broom?" he asked.
"That he was known to his friends
in
"Maybe Parry was drunk," I
suggested later to Carol.
"It can't be as bad as all
that."
"Surely Barltrop would know, and
he seemed a very decent chap, and so did the others. Perhaps Parry's just got
it in for this Foggon bloke...."
Six months later the Smith family with
all their worldly goods were on their way to
An extremely well informed American
academic, Henry L. Bretton, in his devastating critique of British rule, 'Power
and Stability in Nigeria,' published in 1962, exposes the fraud, chicanery and
skulduggery of the British colonial rulers in such fine scholarly language that
his message was easily ignored. One of his chapters is headed with the delicate
understatement which characterises his writing, 'Not as Taught at
On our voyage to
The orderly arrangements on the
mailboat gave way to chaos when we found ourselves in the custom shed at Apapa.
Several gangs of labourers in rags were competing to head carry our loads to a
Department of Labour truck. A British official of the Department introduced
himself as Bob Curry and launched into an indignant speech to the effect that
it was beneath his dignity to meet 'new boys.' He was a Senior Labour Officer
and he was only picking us up because he had been ordered to. That was probably
true, but almost everything else he told us proved to be false. According to
our informant we were going to stay in the Government Rest House in the white
enclave of Ikoyi, and would then go up-country. He also gave us advice on
recruiting servants which was disastrous and put the boot in the new Commissioner
of Labour whom he clearly did not like over much. For us, George Foggon's stock
began to rise.
The car stopped at a long series of
whitewashed single storey offices connected by covered walkways. This was the
Department of Labour, situated on the Ikoyi road leading from the many acres of
"We wouldn't have come without
her, Mr Foggon. The Colonial Office were insistent that they had your
approval."
"I didn't know," Foggon
said.
The Senior Labour Officer smirked.
"I told them the same thing. He shouldn't have brought his wife
either...."
Foggon checked him with a disapproving
look. "That doesn't matter now. They're here."
"I'll drop them at the Rest
House," volunteered the Senior Labour Officer.
"They're going to my home for a
few days," said Foggon.
"They're booked at the Rest
House....."
"Take them to my home,"
insisted Foggon icily.
Our guide was furious and grumbled all
the way into Ikoyi. The Commissioner's house was very beautiful and set in an
equally splendid garden with breathtaking displays of bougainvillaea and
frangipani.
Bob Curry introduced us to the
Commissioner's wife with the query, "Mr Foggon says these people are to
stay with you?" as if inviting Mrs Foggon to bar the door against us.
"I've heard nothing of
this," said Mrs Foggon.
At first sight she seemed an aloof and
formidable lady with a strong
"I told them they should be at
the Rest House," said the Senior Labour Officer triumphantly. "I'll
take them there if you like."
"I think it would be better if we
went to the Rest House," I suggested. "There's obviously been a
misunderstanding..."
"If George says you're to come
here," said Mrs Foggon, "you'd better come in."
We were shown into a very comfortable
sitting room but Carol, who was already very uneasy, was signalling that Helen
needed to be changed.
"Of course," said Mrs
Foggon. "Come upstairs and I'll show you the guest bedroom."
When Mrs Foggon returned she asked,
"Are you a Labour Officer, Mr Smith?"
"Yes."
"Are you the one from
"Yes."
"It's most unusual for a Labour
Officer to stay at the Commissioner's house, Mr Smith. It's not the done
thing..."
"I would be very happy to stay at
the Rest House," I assured her.
"Oh no, Mr Smith," she
insisted. "If it's what George wants..."
When Carol returned Mrs Foggon
questioned her and seemed astonished to learn that Carol could be married, have
a child and be a graduate. It is true that Carol has always looked very young
and at that time was used to being charged half fare on the buses.
Unfortunately Mrs Foggon had told me that she had learned German with George
while stationed in
"Foreign languages, Mrs
Foggon."
"And which languages?"
"French and German,"
answered Carol quietly.
I could see this conversation was
heading for disaster. I tried to change the subject, but it was too late.
"Oh well, if you have learned
German at University, people like myself will have to be very careful what we
say..." She changed the subject. "I think it's time we dressed for
dinner," she announced.
Poor Carol looked as if she thought we
should make a run for the mailboat before it turned back for
When Helen had been given a feed and
put to bed, we showered and prepared to change and go down. Carol was very
upset and sat on the bed almost in tears.
"Why have we come?" she
pleaded.
What could I say? I helped Carol
unpack her best dress and I put on my Oxford Schools dark suit. We held hands,
counted to ten and went down stairs.
Holding forth on the settee was a wiry
small man with close cropped hair and very bad teeth. He was wearing a creased
and weary-looking linen suit and tie - almost the only time I was to see him
wear a jacket. Mrs Foggon was addressing him as 'Peter' and laughing with him.
She evidently understood what he was saying but his thick Scots accent baffled
my senses. With time, and knowing the subject of conversation, I would begin to
follow his discourse a little.
The introduction was so brief as to be
non-existent and he returned to his subject. This was strange too for he
actually allowed Mrs Foggon to speak as in a normal conversation. To most
people Peter Cook would simply engage in a long monologue that was impossible
to interrupt. When he had finished he would simply turn and go. I suppose I was
surprised that he was homosexual because in my almost total ignorance of the
subject at that time, I had an idea that homosexuals were handsome or at least
attractive, and Peter Cook quite obviously had neither of these attributes. He
was quite repulsive.
Mrs Foggon had most certainly dressed
for dinner. She was wearing a long-sleeved full length black evening gown with
jewellery, and her hair was pinned up. She was a very striking woman and was
making a stab at being thoroughly poised and at ease. But her voice let her
down because her tone was affected and her accent was an uneasy blend of low
Geordie and southern acquired posh. Coming from the back streets of Hulme and
having been strained through the higher reaches of
When Foggon arrived he exploded on
seeing
"For goodness sake,
"His wife calls him Sean,"
said Mrs Foggon.
"So you're Irish?" asked
Foggon.
"Of Irish stock. My wife decided
I needed a distinctive name after my dentist gave me a lot of fillings meant
for another Smith."
Foggon turned to Peter Cook and
addressed him warmly as if he were a good friend.
"And how are you, Peter?"
Whatever Peter said was lost on me.
Then abruptly he was up and he had gone. Mrs Foggon left the room to discuss
the evening's meal with her cook, and Carol went upstairs to check on Helen.
"Have a drink Smith; relax and
take off your tie," ordered Foggon.
I sipped a sherry and loosened my tie.
Foggon appeared to be in his element. He was relaxed and happy and he was about
to make me an offer.
"You are going to find a lot in
the Department you will hate. Don't worry. I am going to change it all."
(Some years later he had changed nothing.) "Take no notice of that
pervert, Peter Cook. I'm going to get rid of him." (When Foggon left
Foggon went on to say that he had
particularly asked for an intellectual to be sent out. Someone who could handle
papers. There it was again. It was news to me that I was an intellectual. Maybe
someone had noted that I wrote poetry which I had published in student
magazines. Did writing songs for a cabaret at
"I'll draft you a Factories Act,
Mr Foggon," I said firmly. "You really will, Smith?" asked
Foggon. He was both anxious and elated.
"When do I start?" I asked.
"It will take you a day or two to
settle in. We've got to find you a house. Peter will see to that."
"Like hell he will," I
thought. I was learning fast.
I excused myself to see if Carol
needed any help. Carol was pretending all was well and was smiling wanly. I
repeated the deal Foggon had offered.
"And what did you say?"
asked Carol.
"Very little. Nobody seems to
expect me to say anything. Perhaps it's because I smile. I do want to draft a
Factories Act so I told him I'd do it."
"But nobody is to know,"
said Carol.
"That's right," I said.
"Do you trust him?" asked
Carol.
"I don't know. Probably
not," I replied. "What choice have I got?"
We stayed at the Foggons' a couple of
days and whilst appreciative of the hospitality we were being offered, made it
clear we would be happy to get started in our own place. It seemed that Peter
Cook had found us a very nice bungalow and the following morning we moved in.
The wooden bungalow had been empty for
some time as most expatriates preferred to live in the three-storey blocks of
flats which lined some of the Ikoyi roads. Rats and lizards scuttled under the
corrugated iron roof but the biggest drawback was the lack of a proper cooker.
The kitchen was very primitive and situated outside the bungalow. The stove had
to be fired with wood. How did we get wood? The wood problem would be resolved
when we got a cook. We asked for Mrs Foggon's help. But she had a lot of
problems with servants and the cook she sent us stayed two days, and was so surly
we were happy to pay an extortionate sum to get rid of him. We also needed food
and household goods.
Two Labour Officers dropped by and
made welcoming noises. I had two questions. How did I get to the office and how
did we shop? At that point the two Labour Officers withdrew their offers to
help. They were not on speaking terms. And if I was talking to one of them, the
other was going to cold shoulder me too.
I had gone in desperation to call on
one of these expatriates at his home to request assistance when, on returning,
I heard Carol let out a scream. She was sweeping the bungalow's concrete floor
and had placed Helen in her carrycot on top of a coffee table. Coming out of
the bedroom Carol saw a large snake entwined round the leg of the table ready
to strike Helen in her cot! Carol had rushed at the snake with her brush raised
and the snake swept out into the compound, as the barren garden was called. We
were having a rough few days, but in reality we were being prepared for another
proposition.
Peter Cook let us stew for a while
before revealing that perhaps he could find us a modern flat in the block where
he chose to live. He was in fact supposed to live in a rather sumptuous house,
but preferred to live in a top flat. Before the flat made an appearance - it
was in fact the flat we had been supposed to occupy - I got several hours of
Peter Cook's monologues which could be summed up as demonstrating the
desirability of doing nothing as everything was pointless. (His message of
total apathy did not apply to his hedonistic life style or the fat salary he
drew for doing very little). One did not really have conversations with Peter
Cook. I have noticed that in some marriages when one partner refuses to argue
and tries to withdraw, the other conducts both sides of the argument.
"I know what you're thinking. You
think I'm nothing but a..."
That was Peter's technique. If you
gave him a polite answer to fob him off, he simply ignored the answer and told
you what you were really thinking. This was very disconcerting as his guesses
were often correct. And if they were not it put you in the wrong. And your
protestations did no good. If Peter told you that you thought he was a useless
sod, you might find yourself lying in your teeth and telling him he was not that
at all!
After listening to himself talk for
several hours, he decided that we should be friends. We would get along fine.
All I needed to do was to do what Peter told me. At this stage no action was
indicated. He was full of goodwill. He would not only let us move into a flat,
but would deliver me to and from work in his car for a few days. He would even
tell one of the Labour Officers to take me into
So Peter Cook was a fund of goodwill,
because I was a sensible, intelligent person who realised he knew nothing about
Africa and would put himself one hundred percent into Peter's hands to be
guided along a safe and sure track where nothing nasty might happen. And who
knows, when George Foggon departed as he surely would very soon, Peter would be
in sole charge again and a bright intellectual might go far with the right kind
of help.
We moved into the flat. We even found
a cook. The cook wanted to live in the servants' quarters in the compound, but
it seemed that Peter Cook's young houseboy needed two sets of quarters, which
was probably why Peter had kept our flat empty for some time. Peter did us
another good turn and allowed us to have the quarters belonging to our flat.
Every normal arrangement became a privilege, a concession to be granted or
withheld at Peter's say so. It seemed that
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
Henry L Bretton, in the
prophetic work I have referred to earlier, distinguishes clearly between the
formal aspect of institutions in Nigeria; that is to say between how the Labour
Department was supposed to work, and the reality of what actually went on.
Unfortunately most of the early scholarly works on
As the façade of the constitutional
system crumbled in the 1960's, many scholars, with an investment of years of
study in
As predicted, Peter let it be known
that I would be posted up-country very shortly, but nothing came of it.
The working day in Government offices
in
It did seem an odd way to issue
orders. The truth was that George was really a stickler for discipline and
chains of command. The proper route for his orders to his staff was through
Peter Cook, but Peter Cook for the most part simply ignored them. George simply
did not know how to cope with this situation and was forced to try issuing
orders direct to the staff. But they in turn only acted when Peter Cook told
them to act. No one actually refused to obey orders - they just mislaid or lost
the file or lied and said they had returned it. They would call the messenger
in and shout at him. If that were not enough they would dress down the long-suffering
Chief Clerk. He of course, as did all the African staff, knew exactly what game
was being played. But it was Mr Cook they feared, not the Commissioner. Peter
Cook was in charge of the administration, which included promotions, postings,
sackings and bicycle allowances, and he could and would make an African
employee's life a misery whenever he chose.
In all Government headquarters,
whether in
Colonial administrations had been
forced with some reluctance to set up Labour Departments under pressure from
progressive Colonial Secretaries in
But most important was the
Intelligence aspect. Intelligence is the life blood of any colonial regime.
Trouble must be nipped in the bud and trouble makers controlled. The apparatus
of conciliation and even the encouragement of trade unions made sure that most
kinds of dissent or rebellion were channelled into the offices of the Labour
Department whence they were immediately notified to the Administration's
Special Branch officers. The Commissioner of Labour in each colony sat on the
main Intelligence Committee with representatives of the Police, Military and
Administration. The industrial relations section of the Labour Department in
Peter Cook's total inaction, however,
and in particular his loathing of correspondence and paper work could be
misleading. He kept a close eye on industrial disputes and could act decisively
to damp them down when he chose. The effect of his policies on the staff of the
Labour Department Headquarters was to encourage total idleness. Peter did not
tolerate laziness - he urged it on all expatriates. As he correctly pointed
out, most items of correspondence, if ignored long enough, would not require
answering. The subjects which at first appeared urgent would be seen in their
correct perspective when the page was yellowed and covered with dust in a
departmental file some weeks or months later. The letter would then be seen to
have been 'overtaken by events.' Besides, answering letters promptly only
encouraged the correspondent to write again.
A good way to deal with an oppressive
letter was to write 'BU 3 months' (bring up in three months) on the minute page
and have the file returned to the dusty racks of the filing section where there
was a good chance it would never reappear. If by chance the file did reappear,
the original letter might be buried under fresh correspondence which dealt with
a quite different subject. And anyway the chap who had signed the original 'BU'
might be safely on leave and propping up the bar in a country pub in
The employment schedule or section to
which I was assigned was very quiet because it operated on the lines laid down
by Peter Cook. It was Reg Lewis who was delegated to show me the ropes. No-one
quite knew how Reg came into the Department, but a similar mystery shrouded the
backgrounds of several Labour Officers. As some had a trade union background,
it was generally assumed that those Labour Officers, who were not ex-Army and
insisted on being called Major or Captain, were ex-Trade Union officials. One
or two had slipped in sideways from Public Works or the Railways like Peter
Cook and the ex-Army types did not have much regard for them either.
Reg went to the door and looked up the
walkways. It was quite safe. The messengers outside each office were fast
asleep. Sometimes a Labour Officer would awake from a nap himself and creep up
on his sleeping messenger and roar in his ear giving the poor man a fit.
"Wake up, you lazy bastard,"
he would shout.
Or they did in 1955. As
Reg returned to his desk where he had
insisted that I be seated. Looking around from time to time to make sure no-one
was listening, Reg gave me the key advice on how to survive at Labour
Headquarters.
"Remember," he said.
"You've got to keep your head down in this place. Know what I mean? Peter
Cook... he's a bit fly... know what I mean? It's not just that he's one of them.
Know what I mean?"
"You mean he's homosexual?"
I was prepared to defend Peter Cook's
sexual preference, though I hardly knew what homosexuality was in the innocent
1950's, as I would have defended Oscar Wilde, an ex-Magdalen man whom I
revered.
"It's the kids from the Alakoro
Labour Exchange and the juveniles from the youth office, those trying to get
Government jobs. They get sent up in two's and three's for interview by old
Cookie."
"I see," I said.
This sounded all right to me.
"It's not what you think, "
said Reg in a whisper. "He takes them home and puts it to them."
"Puts it to them?"
"You know. Come and have a bit of
fun and I'll be your friend and look after you."
"Oh Jesus."
"These kids are desperate for
jobs," said Reg. "I suppose they're used to it. Brought up in the
jungle. Come to
"And everybody knows?"
"Of course they do. Every other
day there are two or three sitting under Foggon's window in the shade waiting
for Cookie. You've got to watch your step here, Smithy. You don't have to do
anything. If you do you'll only step on someone's toes. Just take it easy. Read
the papers. Slope off for a coffee or a beer. Back for two and home for lunch
and a little death..."
The 'little death' was how it felt to
take a nap in the steamy heat of a
I felt sick with the whole situation.
What had I let myself in for? It was not that Peter Cook was a homosexual. That
need not have been anyone's concern, but his own and his friends. I was going
to be responsible for the running of the juvenile bureau and the proper and
fair handing out of jobs, and Peter Cook would be - and I was to find he was indeed
- seducing and raping the boys in my charge. Edgar Parry in
"The trick," said Reg,
"is to get rid of files. If all else fails you can lose the file or slip
it into someone else's 'In' tray when he's absent or 'Not on seat' as the
Nigerian clerks say."
To mark a file 'PA' for 'put away'
involved risk because it might disappear for too long and if found would have
your name on it. Of course one could refer files to another section.
"And if they send them to
you?" I asked.
"Ah," said Reg. "Then
you write on the file 'Noted' and send it back. Of course," he continued,
"you can refer it up, but Cookie doesn't like that. He's likely to walk
the file back and throw it on your desk. You could put up a draft reply to him
or even send a typed letter for signature. He'd probably pass it on to Foggon
then and he'd be unhappy as well. If letters have got to be written, be very
careful and sign them for the Commissioner of Labour."
"And who types the letters?"
"Send them to the Chief Clerk.
He's got two dozen typists sitting at typewriters but not a key is pressed.
They have to sleep with their eyes open. It can be done," protested Reg.
"Just takes a bit of practice. If they close their eyes the Chief Clerk
throws things at them."
"And who keeps him awake?" I
asked.
"Hatred keeps him awake. He
thinks he's intellectually superior to all us morons. He's either planning a
revolution or a book which will denounce us."
"You're kidding, Reg," I
protested.
"I swear it's the truth," he
said. "Have you met our famous author who's rolling in money? His books
are translated into ten foreign languages."
"No, where?"
"You can't miss him. He's the
messenger who's awake. You'll see him scribbling in kids' exercise books. His
name's Amos Tutuola."
"THE Amos Tutuola," I
exclaimed.
"Oh, you've heard of him?"
said Reg.
"He wrote the Palm Wine
Drinkard."
"Drunkard," said Reg.
"No, drinkard. I suppose it's
pidgin.
"It's amazing," said Reg.
"All that money and the bugger can't spell properly. On the other hand, I
can't spell either," he added. "But no one's paying me to write
books. Now you'll be in charge of the Employment Exchange," said Reg.
"But don't look too closely, know what I mean." Reg tapped the side
of his nose with a finger. "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, eh? See all, hear
all, say nowt. Keep your nose clean and don't go looking for trouble. Know what
I mean?"
I nodded in bewilderment.
"The Lagos Exchange is totally
corrupt," said Reg. "But it doesn't matter as any jobs the staff
don't give to their relatives, Cookie gives to his boy friends. Cookie's the
most feared man in the country. And he has friends in High Places. Right at the
Top. They come to his parties and his small boys dance with them.... So I'm
told," added Reg hastily. "I've never actually been invited. I'm not
you know... one of them. Now a bit of black velvet. That's different, eh?"
"Should I visit the Labour
Exchange at Alakoro?" I asked.
"Any time," said Reg.
"It's like a Turkish bazaar."
"I could 'phone the manager
first?" I suggested.
"I wouldn't do that," said
Reg. "He's very busy. Not at the Exchange. He's running a laundry in
"What else do we do?"
"Oh, yes," said Reg.
"Migrant workers. Twenty thousand Nigerians working on the plantations in
Spanish Fernando Poo. We license recruiting agents who wander round the Eastern
Region where there are lots of Igbo kids without work. The Spanish beat them
up. Tie them to trees and wallop them with wooden paddles..."
"Can't we stop it?"
"That's not our policy," said
Reg. "Cookie says they deserve all they get. Nobody made them go. So don't
do anything... it will only bring Cookie down on you. He's friendly with the
Spanish recruiting agency. It's very profitable. They send him cases of
wine."
"But that's terrible!"
"Yes, it is," said Reg.
"Tastes like bloody vinegar. We've also got workers in French territory
round where Dr. Schweitzer has his hospital. He plays his organ to them and all
that. The French don't beat them to death."
The handing over was supposed to take
some days, but after our 'showing the ropes' chat, Reg disappeared.
As Carol and I were determined to be
honest, we were very soon put to the test. Once we had a flat to turn into a
home and a cook who became our friend, interpreter, protector and guide, we
soon took delivery of a car. A driver had to be found and again we made a good
friend when we found Joel. This expense was essential until I could pass the
driving test. One of the trade testers in the Labour Department offered to
obtain a licence by telephoning his chum, who was the Chief Tester. He was
persuasive.
"Scratch my back and I'll scratch
yours," he insisted. "It's not corrupt like the bloody Nigerians.
It's just a favour. You'll probably want to do me a good turn one day."
We would not have missed Joel for
anything. All we had to do now was to do our sums but we found we needed much
more than I was earning. How did the other expatriates manage? Now we had the
car, Carol could seek a job and quickly found employment as personal secretary
to the General Manager of British Petroleum (
Almost as soon as I was ensconced
behind the employment desk, Foggon sent me a pile of dusty files relating to
the various efforts to draft a Factories Act for
What should be done was to cut up the
English Factories Acts and the Colonial Acts based on them. That was the first
decision. This was to be a scissors and paste job. Secondly, the Act had to be
driven on to the Statute Book without delay. It had to be presented in the
proper layout, beautifully typed with schedules showing the precedents for
every phrase used. Consultations would be needed with trade unions and
employers' organisations, but this could be steamrollered through so long as
Peter Cook did not get wind of it.
The earliest letter on the files had
been collecting dust for many years. It was a letter from the Colonial Office
suggesting a Factories Act was needed in
I told my messenger I needed a large
supply of foolscap lined paper, paste, pins, scissors and paper clips and duly
filled in a requisition on the stationery store. My messenger returned to say
that the store was closed, they had none of these items, they were stocktaking
anyway and Mr Cook had given orders that Mr Smith was to get nothing without Mr
Cook's approval. I got in my car and went down to the Kingsway Stores and
purchased everything I needed. On my return I went to see the Chief Clerk and
admired his neatly spaced ranks of typists who were struggling to stay awake in
a baking hot, ill-ventilated room. Could I have a typist to take on a very big
job for the Commissioner?
The Chief Clerk smiled, "My
typists are too busy, Mr Smith ..."
I returned his smile. I went back to
the Kingsway Stores and bought both typing and carbon paper.
The Factories Act was drafted in my
flat at night, typed by Carol as I was cutting, sticking and making up extra
bits, and it was finished in six weeks. A beautifully typed Bill, ready for the
lawyers, was presented to Foggon. He did not say "Thank you." To be
fair, he appeared to be stunned into silence.
The Act went immediately on to the
Nigerian Statute Book and was hailed by the leading politicians as the finest
piece of legislation ever to be placed there. The Attorney General wrote to say
that the draft had been passed without amendment and was the best presented
Bill ever to go through his chambers. Foggon had tried to interest a former
Factories Inspector in checking through my Bill. The three of us sat down and
began to turn the pages. Foggon was really happy and handled the pages of the
Bill as if it was treasure beyond reckoning. Our Factories Inspector was uneasy
and kept glancing at his watch.
After a few minutes he stood up and
said, "I must be off."
"We've only just started,"
protested Foggon.
"I can't help that,"
announced our old coaster grandly. "Some other time perhaps. I've got a
cricket committee meeting. It's very important. I mustn't be late."
The day my Factories Bill became the
Nigerian Factories Act, Foggon telephoned to say he was taking our cricketing
old coaster with him to the House of Representatives to see the Bill become
law. They would sit in the Chamber behind the Speaker's chair - a rare honour -
because the Bill was meeting with tremendous approval from all sides.
"That's very nice," I said.
Foggon paused. "Of course you
could come too if you wanted, but I expect you're very busy..."
"That's right," I assured
him. "I'm very busy. Thanks anyway."
Whilst producing what might be a
magnificent piece of health and safety legislation which could possibly help
cement the emergent Nigerian nation together and give it the trappings of a
civilised country, I was also aware that I was producing what might be merely a
piece of window dressing without real significance for Nigeria's eager
millions. I was certainly producing a stepping stone to help George Foggon
climb higher and higher up the civil service tree, but George's ambitions lost
me no sleep. I had no doubt that when he had finished with me I would be cast
aside and perhaps even destroyed.
Our small flat in
The furniture provided by the Public
Works Department was simple but adequate and the flat had wooden parquet
flooring. Mosquito nets were provided for our very large bed and Helen's cot.
The king-size bed was an excellent idea because, with the net down, it became a
secure insect-free zone and, when stocked up with books, games, toys, food and
drink, it was turned into a small, quiet, comfortable and peaceful kingdom. The
PWD. chairs were also built for king-size colonial administrators, but once the
dirty brown cushions were covered in brightly-coloured rep material, and
cheerful curtains hung at the windows, we had a home which gave us great joy
and a strong feeling of security.
Yet we were acutely aware of how
privileged we were to live so well, while the many thousands of people in
Lagos, who were paying for Ikoyi, our flat and our salaries out of their
miserable wages, were living in mud huts for the most part, without running
water and proper sanitation. When the rains came they would be flooded. In no
way would we minimise the discomfort or suffering of people living in such
difficult circumstances. Yet in spite of these privations, the people from
these shacks were all clean and neatly dressed. Their children too, were
clearly well taken care of and loved. When we think of the nauseating racism
which permeates white societies and compare it with the tolerance, kindness,
good manners and hospitality which we received without exception during our
five years in
Once we had equipped our flat with
rugs and ornaments and a small radio and record player, we began to get to know
our neighbours, particularly those with children. We also tried to invite
Nigerians to come to the flat for a cup of tea or a meal, but in 1955 this was not
as easy as at first we thought. What we had not thought through was that our
intended guests would wish to return hospitality, and if they were living in
very poor conditions, might feel embarrassed. Even the few Nigerians in
European quarters at that time were not always easy to get to know outside the
office. They might not turn up at all or be late and ill at ease. Having said
that, one would then encounter Nigerians who were much more urbane and
sophisticated than we were, who were totally at ease in any situation. The
general level of intelligence was extremely high in so many Nigerians we met
and, though often they took pains to disguise the fact, all too often one found
Nigerians in relatively humble jobs who were head and shoulders in education and
intelligence above the European masters whom they served.
Although it was obvious to me that
The Yoruba or Lagosian in a secure
senior Government position had the character and demeanour of a very wise judge
or professor. These were people of the very highest character, often self
educated to the highest possible level, yet modest and polite as it was no
doubt politic to be in the old colonial
It was fashionable for some
expatriates in those days to taunt the Nigerian elite with being too clever by
half. This was the reaction of people who knew themselves to be inferior or inadequate.
Often dogged by injustice, poverty and by lack of opportunity, considerable
numbers of Nigerians - often aided by dedicated Christian missionaries - had
gained an education and become leaders of considerable stature. And if one
thought Nigerian men were often brilliant, one only had to meet some Nigerian
women to be stunned by their high intelligence, perception and wit. It would
not surprise me if West Africans proved to be of a higher intelligence than
many people in
It became my rule to recommend almost
every Nigerian who came my way for rapid promotion. This fitted in well with
the obvious need for Nigerians to be found to fill senior posts, but again,
although this was acceptable by 1960, it was by no means tolerable to many Europeans
only five years earlier. It was suggested once in my hearing that the reason
for the drastic shortage of mosquito men in
Once the Factories Act was out of the
way I was able to survey the awful state that the
Those first few weeks in
As the weeks passed, Carol would
become listless in the evenings and homesick. Carol hated to be inactive and
was happiest during the day because she had her interesting and fulfilling job
at British Petroleum. If the truth were known, Carol would have much preferred
to do her own cooking and housework and felt restless when watching servants
look after us. We detected the same unease in other expatriate wives and
wondered that those without jobs to go to did not die of boredom.
Apart from these occasional depressions
and a few bouts of 24-hour fever which I had and which alarmed me, during those
early days we had few health problems. We took our anti-malarial drugs each day
and were so happy to be in our first real home together with Helen that even
the clouds blowing up around my work at the Labour Department did nothing to
affect our cheerful optimism.
We rarely stayed up late and made a
point of retiring earlier when Peter Cook began to call in at a late hour and
uninvited. He would be carrying a whiskey bottle and a glass and would sit by
the door under the garden window, always in the same seat. We would try to
engage him in conversation by asking him questions about
"People like you, Sean," he
would say. "Come out here, with your wishy-washy preconceptions and
liberal values. You feel sorry for the Africans. You think they're poor and
hungry. They're not poor and hungry. They're well fed and happy."
"And the infant mortality rate is
fifty percent, Peter," Carol would interject icily from the depths of a
large chair where I had assumed she had fallen asleep.
"There you go, Carol. You think
they suffer as you would suffer. They're used to it. And it keeps the
population down. It's a kind of population control or family planning."
I would signal to Carol not to get
heated as it would be pointless. Carol would be enraged and I would suggest
maybe she was tired and ought to turn in. I would stand up myself and begin to
close windows and beat out the cushions, but Peter was expert at not taking a
hint. Soon I would be sitting close to his chair while he droned on. I had to
get close to him as his voice would sink lower and become more hypnotic.
Occasionally I would snap awake from a doze and find he had gone. The sweat
stain on a chair back and the ring where his drink had stood were the only
signs that he had called.
Our afternoons and early evenings
would sometimes be enlivened by a Romeo and Juliet scene with Peter Cook's
balcony as the setting and Peter and his small boy/steward cum lover as the two
players.
"Who's making all that row in the
compound?" we would ask James, our cook.
"It's Mr Cook's boy, sir,"
he would answer with a grin. "He's sulking behind a tree. He says he
doesn't love Mr Cook any more..."
The small boy, a youth of fifteen or
so, was standing with his back to Peter Cook who was pleading for forgiveness
from his upstairs balcony.
"I won't do it again, I promise.
I'll be good. Oh, come on. You can't stand out there all night. We'll have a
treat. We'll go and see a film..."
The small boy would sooner or later
begin to turn, though determined not to give in easily, and gradually would
allow himself to be coaxed indoors. In time one would begin to accept this type
of behaviour as normal and take no notice. The heat in
I was appalled and shocked when I
visited the Lagos Employment Exchange. It was situated on the waterfront at
Alakoro near the
The compound was packed with people,
of whom only a minority appeared to be job seekers. Traders were doing brisk
business; groups of friends were deep in discussion; and the Exchange compound
was more like a market or bazaar than a Government office. People were asleep
or drunk not only in the compound. Inside the offices it was even worse. It was
impossible to distinguish between the staff and the clients because the crowds
were on both sides of the counter. Job seekers or staff were fast asleep
stretched out on the counters, behind the counters and under the counters.
Fierce haggling and bargaining were taking place and no one appeared either to
be in charge or to consider anything was at all unusual. I was angry, bemused
and amused at what I saw. I had to take another new Labour Officer to see the
chaos because I was not sure I could believe my eyes.
On my return to Central Office from
visiting the Exchange, Peter Cook sent for me. My visit had not gone unnoticed.
"So you've been to Alakoro. Enjoy
your visit?"
"I thought it was a shambles,
Peter."
"It's not that bad really. It
just appears untidy because it's relaxed and informal."
"People were asleep on top of the
counters!"
"It's very hot down there. The
staff probably overwork..."
I burst out laughing. "You're not
serious, Peter?"
"Indeed I am. And I must remind
you that you have no operational control over the Exchange. Your job is
employment policy. The Exchange comes under the Labour Officer,
"Actually, Peter, the
Commissioner asked me to visit the Exchange. He has asked me to take a personal
interest in its proper running."
Peter launched into a tirade of abuse.
I backed out of his office and returned to my papers.
After some consideration I proposed to
the Commissioner that all applicants be removed from inside the Exchange and
brought back into the Exchange by the entrances at the other side of the
building. Each entrance would deal with a different category of applicant. For
example, new applicants would be separated from those renewing their
application. Peter Cook surprised me by seeming to accept that this might be a
good idea. He suggested I take one of his chums to the Exchange to explain my
plan. We pushed our way through the crowds while I explained my scheme. The
large gates would have to be closed.
"OK. Shove them all out and close
the gates."
"Hold on," I said. "I
wasn't planning to do it now. We could have trouble."
"If you want them out, get them
out," said my companion.
He began to wave his arms at the crowd
and push them back towards the gates. I thought this was crazy but I had to
help him. As the crowd was pushed back into the gate entrance they began to
shout and scream and refuse to move. I tried to smile and be persuasive but a
hard knot of shouting men were holding their ground. I turned to consult my
colleague but he was nowhere to be seen. I was alone, holding back a
threatening mob who were beginning to wave their fists. I ordered a messenger
who was trying to hide behind a pillar to close the gates, leaving those who
would not move inside the compound. I helped the messenger close the gates
against the crowd who went quietly, but once the gates were closed they tried
to force them open once more.
I turned to those still in the yard
and invited them to come into the Exchange where I would see that they got
immediate attention. They began to move into the Exchange and the yard behind
me was cleared of people. Now it was over I was frightened. I turned as a
massive roar came from the crowd outside the gate. But they were not outside.
The messenger had opened the gates and a solid mob of the unemployed were
charging towards me. Things looked very bad. I could not have got into the
offices if I had tried. I stood my ground and suddenly I roared with laughter.
They had beaten me. I had been set up. My laughter changed the mob into a happy
crowd of Lagosians who had scored against the stupid British. The crowd that
hit me were not enemies but very ordinary people. Instead of being trampled
underfoot, I was lifted high and was carried that way at speed until I hit the
office wall with this crowd of joyful whooping people. I sought the hand of one
of the leaders of the crowd and held his arm aloft as a referee does for the
victor in the boxing ring.
"The winner!" I shouted to
the cheers of the crowd.
People slapped me on the back and
roared with laughter. I laughed with them. Looking up I saw my erstwhile
colleague looking down from the safety of an upstairs balcony.
"Where the hell were you?" I
demanded angrily.
"I went for a pee, old man. Had a
bit of bother, did you?"
"I could have been killed down there,"
I said angrily.
"Then don't go looking for
trouble," he snapped and turned on his heel.
I questioned the messenger as to why
he had opened the compound gates and admitted the crowd.
"The white master say, 'Open the
gates.' Please master he tellum, go open gate."
Peter Cook was highly amused. "I
hear you had a bit of bother at the Exchange, Sean. Don't say I didn't warn
you!"
The next morning I was at the Exchange
very early and personally padlocked the gates. I took over the staff as they
arrived and made temporary signs for the new entrances. I personally supervised
the new arrangements. The Exchange was orderly, business-like and looked like a
Labour Exchange. The crowd accepted the new scheme enthusiastically, and even
the staff seemed relieved. I knew I had achieved very little so far, but it was
a start.
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
The Spanish Colony of Fernando
Poo had a well documented history of cruelty to its labour force years before
Nigerians from the Eastern Region began to work there under a Treaty between
the Spanish and British Governments. The export of almost slave labour from
The Labour Department followed the
dictates of Peter Cook and the Administration nevertheless. The line from the
Foreign Office in
My first discovery was that the treaty
workers were dealt with under the Spanish Labour Code and that neither the Vice
Consul nor the Labour Department had an English translation. I decided to
arrange for a translation to be made. In many respects my investigations
revealed a deplorable situation. No one had followed up except in a most perfunctory
way the ill treatment of workers which sometimes ended in death. The Spanish
had no consideration for the lives of Africans, and the British in
Some files he upgraded to 'Secret' and
others disappeared. It was unclear whether this was because some of the files
had been routed through Peter Cook.
It was quite impossible to satisfy
both George Foggon and Peter Cook although I tried. I was always polite to
Peter and tried to humour him. Unfortunately the only things he wanted were
that I should do nothing and actually refuse to carry out George Foggon's
orders. The extent to which I tried is shown by the relationship which we
developed. We were on first name terms, something I was never allowed to be
with George. Peter continued to 'drop in' both at my office and at my home. An
observer might have thought we were friends. Yet the Labour Department and soon
wider Government circles knew that a new raw Labour Officer was standing up to
Peter Cook. Amongst the older hands this caused some amusement. They thought I
was living dangerously but admired my nerve. The up and coming Africans in the
Department had to live with Peter Cook and I understood perfectly why they kept
their distance from me. At the same time I clearly had the confidence of the
Commissioner as I was to all intents and purposes his right hand man and friend
- his only friend it was often said. So there was some covert contact and
support from these African colleagues.
The clerical staff, because they read
all the files, followed our battles with great interest. It was probably from
the Africans in the Department that I first heard mention of Francis Nwokedi.
He was regarded as the most senior Igbo in the Department and he was reputed to
have played a major role in dampening down the riots which followed a shooting
incident at Enugu Colliery some years earlier when a large number of Nigerian
miners had been killed by the police.
When Francis Nwokedi bowled into my
office one morning I was astonished. His behaviour was so unlike that of any
other African in the Department. He was not quiet, modest or retiring. He did
not keep his eyes down. On the contrary he looked you firmly in the eyes and
smiled with such warmth that your first thought was that you had made a friend
for life. Francis was good looking, seemed to be incredibly fit and strong, and
moved like an athlete. Women said he moved like a panther. He exuded
personality and charm and supreme self confidence. He simply did not belong in
the tacky old Labour Department, and with his restless energy he always seemed
to be coming or going. He bowled over men and had an even more devastating
effect on women. My wife remarked that when Francis spoke to her, she was not
only the only woman in the room (even if the room were full of women) but the
most important. He would take a woman's arm and walk with her and you would see
the effect of that magnetic personality. He was seductive with everybody and
could even charm Peter Cook.
When I first met Francis we were both
in a relatively low position in the hierarchy, though I think he had by then
joined the senior service. In a few years he would be head of the Ministry but
even in those early days he dominated the Department and often acted as if he
were already in charge. Even more remarkably everyone deferred to him, even
Cook and Foggon.
"Sean," he announced to me
after releasing my hand from a grip of steel. "You must be dying of
intellectual starvation in this hole. Why don't we drive down to
"I'll have to ask Foggon," I
protested.
"I'll see to George," said
Francis. "I'll pick you up in the morning."
And pick me up he did. I was expecting
to go in my car, but Francis arrived in the Department's new Chevrolet driven
by a chauffeur. I was greeted like an old friend and my clerks stood back
stunned as Francis whisked me away from the god-awful Labour Department as if
on a magic carpet to the architects' dream campus that was the new
Francis meant to impress. I was not
stupid and I guessed I was being given the treatment for a reason. He made it
quite clear that he was one hundred per cent behind Foggon in his efforts to
clean up the Department and I had the impression he would be obliged if I would
pass the message on. Although we spent a day together and I learned a great
deal, there was much I did not know and I suspected Francis would make sure I
never did. He appeared extremely open and disarming in revealing details of his
upbringing and education and the fact that the tribal elders had given him a
child wife when he was only a boy. In recent years he had also married, as I
was later to discover, a sophisticated, very well educated, and beautiful lady
from
I do not think I said much on that
trip to
I tried to follow up this theme but
Francis adroitly changed the subject. In truth, Francis was already in politics
and politicking was in his life's blood. The friendliness was calculated and
yet... One really hoped that Francis was a friend and that a bond had been
forged. He was my friend so far as I was concerned for the next five years
until I finally despaired of him.
As he sometimes remarked, "But
Sean, you are so incredibly young!"
I knew he meant I was innocent and
naïve. Not worldly and looking to my career and advancement. On that trip I
expressed, I suppose, with all my youthful idealism (which made him roar with
good natured laughter) my interest in
"This place, these people,
Sean!" he would explode.
After that trip I would be for ever
thinking that, although
There was always something tragic or
comic about that winding road from
As if to underline the fact that
surprise and paradox play a major role in the Nigerian scene, we stopped the
Chevrolet on a deserted piece of road and got out to stretch our legs and to
pee into the bush on the edge of the road. No sooner had we opened our fly
buttons and sent two streams of urine arching into the jungle when, as if from
nowhere, a large European-style coach appeared crowded with European nuns in
white tropical habits. The nuns stared with considerable interest at this
strange scene of the black man and the white man side by side peeing into the
bush. The coach actually seemed to slow down as it passed and I could see the
Nigerian driver grinning delightedly.
We returned to
But there was to be a twist in the
tail of our trip to
"It's OK., Mr Smith," he
said. "No trouble, no palaver, just sign it."
"What will Mr Cook say?" I
asked.
"Mr Cook is a close friend of
Zik. It's OK."
"What has Zik got to do with
this?" I demanded.
Dr Azikiwe was the leading Igbo
nationalist and Nigerian politician. He was a living legend for many millions
of Africans. The black administrator shook his head and sighed. He obviously thought
I was very backward.
"Mr Smith," he said
patiently. "Dr Zik has been abroad. Now he has returned. His loads are
here in
"OK., Mr Fuwa," I said.
"Hold it. I'm beginning to get the idea. I just thought we were moving
books for Mr Nwokedi to
"Well, that too, Mr Smith,"
said Mr Fuwa with that happy grin which so many Nigerians reserved for when
they pulled a fast one on an expatriate. "By the way, Mr Smith, did you
enjoy your day in
"Very much," I said.
"Don't forget to sign the
voucher, Mr Smith," said Mr Fuwa. "Mr Nwokedi said you would not
mind..."
I signed the voucher and stumbled back
to my desk feeling that somehow I had been taken, but I was not sure how.
It was some weeks later that Francis
flew into
"Has it occurred to you,
Sean," he asked as we sipped a cup of tea, "that only the expatriates
get any refreshments?"
Well certainly Francis got
refreshments but I skipped in my mind whether Francis saw himself as a mere
expatriate.
"Don't you think there should be
a departmental canteen for all the African staff? That filing room is far too
large. We could use half of it for a canteen. What do you say?"
"That's a good idea,
Francis," I said, but Francis was already half out of the door, leaving
his half-empty cup on my blotter.
"I'll put your proposal to
George, Sean," he said with a grin. "I'm sure he'll approve it."
Years later when I saw Sergeant Bilko
on TV. I would wonder why Francis Nwokedi kept coming into my mind.
"George wants you, Sean,"
said his English secretary. "Francis Nwokedi's busy spinning him like a
top..."
"Ah Smith," said Foggon.
"This plan of yours for a canteen..."
"What George has suggested,
Sean," said Francis, "is that we all contribute to setting up the
canteen."
Francis was standing behind Foggon and
leaning over him like a teacher with a pupil.
"I'll make the first
donation," said Foggon, "and then you can take it round the senior
staff."
I noticed that Francis had already
thoughtfully prepared a subscription list and was putting a pen in Foggon's
hand.
"Here you are, Smith," said
Foggon. George had promised to pay one pound.
"I think a fiver would be more
appropriate, George, don't you?" said Francis, and he scratched out the
pound and put in '£5' by George's signature.
Then on the second line he added '£5'
for himself. Foggon was totally nonplussed. Francis had him trussed up like a
chicken.
"Take it to your friend Peter
next door now, Sean," laughed Nwokedi as I backed out of the Commissioner's
room. "Peter will want to make a handsome contribution, I know," he
said loudly, knowing Peter Cook would hear every word through the flimsy
partition wall.
"I heard..." said Peter Cook
as I started to explain. He signed up for five pounds too.
In due course the running of the
canteen was added to my schedule of duties, but when some Nigerians would say
how good it was that I had the interests of the African civil servants at heart
and had struggled to open this magnificent welfare facility for them, I would
say, "Well, what really happened was..." and then give up. And anyway
surely no one believed that Peter Cook would have let me get away with anything
as sensible and useful as that.
The duty officer at the Secretariat
needed to contact one of the top brass. It was mid afternoon and an urgent
cable had arrived from
The Nigerian steward replied that he
could not disturb master as he was in his bedroom.
"Quite," said the duty
officer, "but he may be reading. Just peep round the door and then tell me
exactly what master is doing."
The steward returned to the telephone
and said, "Master is lying on his back on his bed. Madam is on top of him
moving up and down..."
The duty officer wondered which creek
he would be sent up.
One very hot morning at the office I
was working through stacks of files at my desk. The overhead fan was
screeching, sweat was running down my back and I was trying to stay awake, for
after several hours of reading dusty files, the urge to give way to sleep could
become irresistible. To rub one's eyes and rest them for a few moments was
dangerous because one would suddenly come to with a jolt and find one had
fallen asleep. I looked up from my files to see Peter Cook leaning over my
desk. Peter was in a genial mood for he was smiling and revealing his very bad
teeth. When Peter was happy he wore his smile all the time, not just when he
was with somebody. He would be smiling, sitting quietly at his desk or walking
down the concrete walkways to my office. He had decided to bring his smile and
whatever idea had prompted the good mood to my attention. Peter was wearing his
linen slacks, short sleeved shirt and Scottish tartan tie. It was not possible
to see his eyes because he was wearing black sun glasses.
"I've brought you something from
George," said Peter.
He was carrying a file. I tried to
read the title on the file, but Peter turned the front of the file to his
chest.
"What file is it, Peter?" I
asked.
"Never mind that, Sean,"
said Peter. "I just want you to tear it up or lose it."
"Please sit down, Peter," I
said. I had stood up when I noticed his presence.
"No, you sit down, Sean," he
ordered. "I'm all right standing. I need to exercise my legs."
I felt uncomfortable sitting back in
my chair with Peter looking down on me through his dark glasses, and that was
probably what Peter intended.
"It's just a bit of George's
rubbish, Sean," said Peter. "When is he going to learn that this is
"Peter!" I protested.
"They beat them!"
"Of course they beat them, Sean.
Naturally when you read those petitions on the files you find it upsetting, but
that's because you're new here. This is
Peter could continue in this vein for
half an hour without pausing for breath. I would make an effort to resist the
exercise in brain-washing for that is what it was. One would pray that he would
stop or go away and I could see why he so often got his way. People would agree
to his terms, anything, to get him to stop talking. Peter's ideas were inhuman,
intolerable and unforgivable. I did not want to hit him - one had to control
violence in oneself - but simply to push him out of the office like the sack of
rubbish he was. Peter Cook was bent, twisted and corrupt, and the pity I felt
for this human wreckage of what must once have been a live, joyous, human
creature was tempered by the knowledge of the vile abuses he was perpetrating
on the African people who were paying his salary.
I suddenly jumped to attention. Peter
had thrown the file on the blotter in front of me. It was the file on which I
had asked the Commissioner's approval to pay for a translation of the Spanish
Labour Code.
"In your ignorance, Sean,"
said Peter, "you asked for Foggon's approval to translate the Spanish Labour
Code. Now why do you want to interfere with the Spanish way of doing things?
They don't interfere with us, do they?"
"It happens to be our duty to
protect twenty thousand Nigerian plantation workers, Peter," I protested.
"Their safety, health and welfare..."
"And I'm telling you, Sean, to
forget it," said Peter. "That's an order. Tear up the file, burn it,
lose it, wipe your arse on it!"
I opened the file. On the minute page
was Foggon's approval of my request to obtain a translation of the Spanish Labour
Code.
"You're not giving me an order,
Peter," I said quietly.
"But that's just what I am doing,
Sean," said Peter coldly. He was no longer smiling. "Can you not hear
what I am saying? I am ordering you to lose that file!"
"You are not ordering me, Peter,"
I repeated. "With respect, you are countermanding the orders of the
Commissioner of Labour."
"Now that's where you're wrong,
Sean," said Peter. "Foggon isn't going to see the file again because
you are going to lose it!"
"No, Peter," I said.
"I'm not going to lose any files. If you want to countermand Foggon's
written orders, then you must put your instructions in writing on the
file."
Peter's face became contorted with
rage. He became flushed and he began to spit saliva with his stabbing commands.
"You will do what I tell you,
Sean, or pay the price! No one crosses me and gets away with it!" Just as
suddenly he forced a smile and tried to cajole me. "Don't you see, Sean,
I'm your friend? There you are with your lovely wife and beautiful daughter
just starting out on your career. An
"Peter," I said. "Let's
put aside the Spanish Labour Code. It could be 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' for
all I care. If Foggon orders it, I will get it. If you order it, I will get it.
But if you countermand Foggon's orders, then I want that in writing on the
file. I will do anything you ask, Peter, if it is a proper order and
legal."
There followed another hour of
bluster, threats, promises, pleading, bribes and long passages I could not
decipher and had little desire so to do. Around Peter's mouth a white deposit
began to form.
"So be a good fellow, Sean. Tear
up the file. I can make life very good for you here in
"No, Peter," I said firmly.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."
Peter stormed out of my office
shouting threats. He continued shouting as he went up the walkway, no doubt
disturbing the messengers' sleep, and perhaps stimulating another fantastic
incident in Amos Tutuola's next best seller, for as I watched Peter Cook's form
retreating to his office with his fists clenched and raised as if to strike, I
noticed Amos sitting on a soapbox and scribbling away in a school exercise
book.
Peter did not give up so easily.
Tomorrow was another day and once again the performance would be repeated on
some other file and again and again. I tried to protest to George Foggon, but
he cut me short. He did not want to know.
One day I surprised Peter. I agreed to
his demand. He was delighted. Grinning broadly he left my office, promising me
a host of good things. Would I now get paper clips? Or my typing done without a
struggle? And would Peter stop plotting against me and trying to make my life
as uncomfortable as possible? It would be a nonsense to list the petty tricks
he would play. If Cook had a hand in any kind of function my name would be
accidentally omitted. If Foggon asked him to pass on a message, I would not get
it. I hardly noticed most of this and simply got on with my work. I reached for
the file Cook had thrown on my desk and returned it to him with a request.
'Will you please confirm your verbal
instructions of today when you ordered me to ignore the orders of the
Commissioner of Labour of yesterday's date and to lose the file?'
That file disappeared and was not seen
again, but it had served its purpose and Peter's visits to my office ceased.
But the war hotted up. I gathered from various sources that for Peter Cook I
was Public Enemy Number One. If we passed, he would not return my greetings,
but just as suddenly one day his mood had changed and he reappeared to say how
silly it was that we should quarrel when all he wanted was to be friends. As a
peace offering he had brought a copy of the Department's own Labour Code in
mint condition. Copies of the Code were hard to come by and those to be had
were often unrevised or badly worn. This was a freshly printed version and
something of a rarity. I thanked Peter profusely and was delighted at his
change of heart. But I was also a realist and very wary.
Hating myself for my base suspicions,
I began to check out the gift copy against a tattered and torn copy I had in my
desk drawer. In a number of vital sections the regulations in the gift Code had
been altered. Anyone using the gift Code as a guide to the law would have
become a laughing stock. Yet here it was all in print. Only someone in the
Government printing office, taking a great deal of trouble, could have produced
this forgery, for that is what it was. And did not Peter have a close friend in
the Government printing office?
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
One day George Foggon confided
in me that reinforcements were due to join the Department. A new Labour
Officer, formerly with the British T.U.C. was to arrive.
"You'll have someone to talk
to," said George cheerfully.
He had also enlisted, with the high
rank of Assistant Commissioner, an old chum of his, a retired Ministry of
Labour official who had worked with George in the Control Commission in
Victor Beck, the ex-TUC researcher,
was a quiet, bespectacled, scholarly bachelor who had made his way from the
Dunlop Rubber Company to the London School of Economics. His colleagues at the
TUC sensed betrayal in his leaving to work for the Colonial Office, but I
assured Vic he would have many opportunities to carry out liberal progressive
measures. I hoped to enlist him in my battle to clean up the Labour Department.
Carol and I befriended Vic and placed our trust in him. As he was very cautious
and reserved, we did our best to entertain him and told him everything we had
learned of the personalities and set-up in the Labour Department. Under
pressure Vic would betray us, but that was in the future. And as the months
went by, we learned to trust hardly anybody in the Department, so Vic's
eventual betrayal caused us little surprise. Perhaps too, Vic resented or felt
the lack of the family life which was the source of our strength. And I was
continually refusing bribes and favours and promises of promotion with glee.
Perhaps this riled Vic.
Jim Gabbutt's appointment quite
rightly angered all the existing senior staff, nearly all of whom would leave
He bowled into my office one morning
with the announcement, "Here's the third musketeer! So there's just the
three of us - you, George and me against this lot, eh Sean? I can't wait to get
my hands on these black girls. What are they like? It reminds me of when I was
in
"With you playing Humphrey
Bogart?" I queried.
"No. I was the police chief who
got the girls!"
Jim was put in charge of the Western
Region of Nigeria, and I gave him what help I could. When he was in
"She does everything for me,
Carol. She's a lovely girl," said Jim.
The young lady in question quietly
produced tea and biscuits and disappeared into the rear building lot.
"She warms my bed too. I like to
have an afternoon nap." Jim turned to shout after his young housekeeper.
"Go to bed now. I'll be with you soon!" Jim laughed merrily.
"I'll bet you think I'm an old reprobate, eh? And you're right!"
On the way back from
"He's sleeping with that young
girl, Carol," I assured her.
"You must be mistaken,
Sean," said Carol. She liked Jim and would not believe that someone she
was fond of could behave like that. "Besides," said Carol, "He's
married and has grandchildren!"
To carry out the Commissioner's
orders, I had to defy Peter Cook and put up with the consequent unpleasantness.
We believed at first that Foggon would act on his promise to get rid of Cook,
but as the months passed we began to doubt Foggon's resolve. Foggon would not
stand up to Cook but expected me to do so. Foggon could even turn away Cook's
wrath by expressing surprise at what I was doing, while privately urging me on
over the telephone. I was Foggon's lieutenant. I was his hit man. I made things
happen. I got things done. And I took all the stick. As it happened I was
totally loyal to Foggon because he was my boss and because at first I believed
he was a good man who was going to new broom the Department. When it became
clear that Cook was staying, we knew that - although we would have liked to
stay in
As other Labour Officers went on leave
from
Peter Cook would still make his night
calls to our flat and taunt me with the claim that I was just a paper mill and
that all the revised codes for trade testing, employment exchanges etc., all
the reports and surveys which I churned out in ever increasing numbers, were
just window dressing designed to impress but changing nothing. At first I
refuted these charges, but as time passed I was forced to accept that Cook was
speaking the truth.
"Everything you do, Sean, is sent
straight to the Colonial Office to impress Barltrop," Cook would say.
"Foggon has no interest in
"We're all writing in sand,
Peter," I would remind him. "Something may stick."
"I told you he wouldn't get rid
of me," gloated Peter during one of his midnight calls. "I know too
many top people, Sean. They have the dirt on me and I have the dirt on
them."
He then recounted some of his archive
of blackmail material on leading figures in the administration. It was all
extremely depressing.
When I made it clear to him that I
believed in a liberal attitude to homosexuality, he exploded, "I don't
need your approval, Sean."
At times he was aggressive as if it
was his intention to convert every young male to homosexuality, at others he
seemed full of guilt and self-disgust. He wanted to die, he would say, and
seemed to be seeking forgiveness and redemption from me. He could be
sickeningly sentimental about marriage while only minutes before he would be
threatening my life. His wife had also been employed in the Department. I had
had no idea that he had been married. His wife had betrayed him. She had
African lovers. But he still loved her and forgave her. Slipping into bed after
these ghastly confessionals in the early hours I would give a resume to Carol
of what he had said.
"His poor wife," Carol would
murmur. "He'd feel much better if he had all his teeth out. Those black
teeth are probably poisoning him."
Peter Cook had warned me on several
occasions. "I'm watching your every move, Sean. One slip and I'll have
you. You had better be whiter than white and cleaner than clean."
"Well, it's good to know you'll
let me know if I stray off the straight and narrow, Peter," I would assure
him.
"Foggon won't lift a finger to
help you, Sean, if you drop in the shit. He's in love with himself. Give him a
mirror and it's the love affair of the century."
In those early months I defended
Foggon, but as time passed I began to see that Cook was speaking the truth.
Maybe I was just knocking myself out window-dressing. On one occasion Foggon's
English secretary chided me as I handed her yet another report.
"Don't you ever stop, Sean? I
have to retype everything you do and send it to
If Peter Cook was watching me in the
hope of finding dirt, he had George Foggon under a microscope.
"I'll have your Georgie Porgie by
the balls one of these days, Sean, see if I don't," he would say.
I dismissed this as the rubbish it
clearly was. So I was very surprised one evening when Peter Cook walked in with
his whiskey and glass, and triumphantly proclaimed, "I've got him! I'll be
having no more trouble with Mr George Foggon, Sean. I knew I'd just have to
wait!"
I was very depressed when I reported
this conversation to Carol.
"Did he say what George had
done?" she asked.
"He was very cagey. But he went
on to talk about Fernando Poo and how the Spanish gave Sir John MacPherson an
incredibly valuable string of diamonds - a necklace for his wife. 'But surely
he handed it into Government,' I'd protested. 'Like bloody hell he did, Sean'
Peter had replied. 'Once she'd seen that necklace, that was it. She'd probably
never had better than Woolworth's till she saw that diamond necklace! I know Sir
John kept the diamonds and he knows I know. You see, Sean, they can't touch me,
I know too much.'"
"But Sir John's retired,"
said Carol.
"He's gone to the Colonial Office
as Permanent Secretary," I replied. "And now we've got Sir James
Robertson from the
"So what's he got on
Foggon?" asked Carol. "Have the Spanish given George a diamond
necklace?"
"I honestly don't know," I
said. But he's up to something on Fernando Poo, and he's reclassified some of
my 'Secret' file papers on to his personal files so I can't see them."
After that things changed. George
Foggon seemed less happy and under a strain. Peter Cook was much more relaxed
and, perhaps at Carol's insistence, had all his teeth out and got a gleaming
set of dentures, which not only improved his appearance but also his health. He
seemed somewhat more sane and balanced, but he was also less frightened. It
seemed he had entered into an agreement with George Foggon.
I talked all this over with Victor
Beck, trying to make sense of what was going on. It was during one of these
discussions that I began to put some pieces of the jigsaw together. If Peter
Cook had let George know about the Governor General's diamond necklace, then
George had something on the number one man at the Colonial Office. We also knew
that the Foreign Office insisted on a 'be nice to Franco' policy. So it was
very likely that George would follow Peter Cook's policy on Fernando Poo and
ingratiate himself with the powers that be in
On the surface my relations with
George were as cordial as ever, though he was perhaps more elusive, but
warnings came my way. One morning I was in
"Do be very careful, Mr
Smith," said Mrs Foggon.
"She was warning you about Peter
Cook," said Carol later.
"No," I said. "It was
very strange, but from the manner in which she spoke, I think she was warning
me about her husband!"
That weekend we took a trip to
We returned to Jim's villa and were
sitting on his concrete steps talking about the latest news from the central
office of the Department when Jim said, "Sean, you do know that Foggon
owes you a lot. He thinks the sun shines out of your bottom." Carol was
about to cut in, but Jim said, "Hold on, Carol. Foggon worships Sean but
he also means to destroy him."
"But why?" protested Carol.
"Sean has given him everything. Sean even did the Factories Act in secret
and took no credit!"
"I know that," said Jim.
"But when he said he'd see you right, did he put it in writing and did you
have witnesses?"
"Of course he didn't," Carol
replied.
"hen it doesn't count with
George," said Jim gravely.
"You mean I can't trust
him?" I asked.
"I don't understand him,
Sean," said Jim. "He's got a kink. He's done this before."
"He's used Sean, and now he's
going to throw him aside," protested Carol.
"I honestly don't know,
Carol," said Jim. "I just wanted to warn you. He's got this enormous
envy of Sean and his work. George is a strange character."
"Fancy you not knowing that
George is revising the Anglo-Spanish Treaty, Sean," said Peter Cook happily.
"He's been doing it in secret behind your back. He's planning to send even
more workers to Fernando Poo, and all without your knowing! George will do
anything to ingratiate himself with those bastards in
Festus Samuel Okotie Eboh, a one-time
shoe salesman, became the Minister of Labour and later Minister of Finance, and
was to play a crucial role in the later very tragic history of
The British authorities played a
decisive part in the selection of politicians for ministerial posts. Once the
politician became a Minister he was made, and he became a much more powerful
politician. The essence of colonial rule is that politics is banned for the
people of the country while the colonial regime engages in full time politics.
The notion that colonial administration functions without politics would be
laughable to those administrators or political officers engaged in the trade.
The politics of the colonial regime
are employed in the selection, destruction and manipulation of the leaders of
the native people. Although the idea of indirect rule has become closely
identified with
A major proportion of the politicians who
made
Awolowo in the West was not sound
because he was extremely intelligent, wrote first class books, and taunted the
British for their stupidity. At the same time he betrayed a love of democracy
and touching faith in British fair play that was to lead to his downfall. And
yet his integrity, which led to his being jailed in 1962, also saved his life
when the first coup took place in 1966.
The mercurial leader of the East, Dr
Azikiwe, was an enigma. A charismatic and the first Nigerian nationalist leader
of note. He was seen as an egotistical, temperamental and flawed character by
his political enemies, but revered by his Igbo followers. Zik was not feared by
the British. His often unpredictable behaviour in the 1950's may have been more
in response to pressure from without than his own faults of temperament. If a
nationalist politician had skeletons in his personal or political cupboard the
British knew about them. At the same time the preponderance of Igbo members of
the lower and middle ranks of the civil service meant that, apart from the
highest levels, an Igbo politician who did not know most Government secrets
simply was not listening.
The interlocking blackmail that Peter
Cook exemplified in the civil service was paralleled in the control of
politicians by the colonial regime. One of my expatriate neighbours was a Post
Office engineer who specialised in tapping Nigerian politicians' telephone
lines. Surveillance of politicians by other Nigerians employed in special
branch was also routine, as was interception of the mails to prevent subversive
literature coming into
If the International Trade Union
Organisations were angered at the tardiness of their Nigerian supporters in
answering correspondence, their disgust was misplaced because quite often their
letters must have ended up in the Post Office stove in Lagos, international
postal conventions notwithstanding.
A more personal example of
interlocking blackmail occurred when I was approached by one of the Labour
Department's senior trade testers. We chatted about routine matters before he
got to the point.
He said, "You're a decent sort,
Smithy, but me and the lads really think you've got things all wrong..."
"How's that?" I asked.
"Well, you're having no fun at
all. You can't stop these people taking money. If you make a fuss, which you
do, they just keep your share! You can have as many black girls as you want.
Peter Cook will fix you up with boys if you fancy some black bum. But you won't
because you're afraid you'll get caught and that's where you've got it all
wrong. If the blokes are a bit stand-offish it's because you won't join in. See
what I mean? They're scared of you because you don't join in. Mr Clean is very
dangerous. If you join in we know you won't be blowing the whistle on us. Get
it?"
I assured him that I did get it, but I
had so little spare time. He seemed disappointed with my answer.
Perhaps the trade testers had taken
pity on me because they thought I had helped them. Peter Cook normally arranged
to post trade testers to centres around the country. While he was on leave,
George Foggon had fulfilled this duty. But the trade testers were up in arms
and sent one of their men to make representations to me. I pointed out that I
was not doing the posting but I would advise Foggon. What was the problem? The
trade tester said that postings should be by seniority. Some centres generated
far more dash (bribes) than others. The senior man expected to be posted to the
centre that was most lucrative. I explained this to George Foggon who clearly
had not known of this arrangement. Peter Cook had not mentioned it in his
handing over notes.
"Well, of course," said
George deliberately. "You were quite right to bring this to my notice. And
I want to tell you this. It's just as well I have no formal knowledge of this
dreadful behaviour as I would have to take the strongest possible action
against those concerned..." George paused and looked me straight in the
eye. "Do you follow what I am saying to you?"
"Let sleeping dogs lie?"
"Exactly."
It seemed the new broom had lost all
its bristles before it started sweeping. When next I met a trade tester I made
a jocular reference to this matter and he immediately corrected me.
"We're not corrupt at all,
Smithy. It would be corrupt if we took money off a few to let them pass. None
of us would do that. It would be dishonest. We take a dash off everyone who
takes the test. That's not corruption. It's just gratitude."
I was clearly not playing the game. I
was letting the side down. Ronald Wraith, in a fascinating study of corruption
in
I suppose the most corrupt act of all
is colonialism itself. What could be more corrupt than to steal someone else's
country? However by 1955 the problem was how to hand the country back to the
Nigerians. A coalition of politicians from the major tribes in each Region
filled the ministerial posts. At this juncture there was no Prime Minister and
the Governor General presided. Large ministerial palaces were provided for each
Minister and Mercedes Benz limousines became normal transport for top
politicians. Standards of luxury were dictated by the British colonial regime
far in excess of the living standards of most British politicians, let alone
Nigerian ones, most of whom had risen from the most humble backgrounds.
The rumours which circulated about
Festus Okotie Eboh were well founded as those in contact with him knew. The
Nigerian public wanted to know why he was allowed to get away with it. Why had
the Governor General chosen such corrupt politicians? Why did the civil
servants not refuse to co-operate with corrupt Ministers? It was evident that
the Ministers could not carry out these corrupt deeds without co-operation from
the civil service. At this time it must be remembered that the colonial regime
still had overall power and was fully informed as to what was going on. It was
clearly official policy to let the Ministers be corrupt. In the Department of
Labour George Foggon saw it as his job to carry out the Minister's orders,
whatever his personal qualms.
Not only did the Ministers betray
ignorance of the proper role of Ministers in a parliamentary democracy, but the
top civil servants seemed to be ignorant too. In the Ministry (formerly
Department) of Labour Okotie Eboh acted as if he could do what he liked unless
he was stopped. Given top civil servants who lacked training in constitutional
and parliamentary practice and substituted a simplistic notion that they merely
had to carry out a Minister's orders, the scene was set for corruption and
larceny on a grand scale.
Although I was supposed to be in
charge of trade testing matters, it was kept from me that Okotie Eboh had sold
the trade testing headquarters in
One morning I was standing outside the
Minister's room, talking to his English secretary, Katharine Polkinghorne.
"The Minister's out," said
Kathy. "He's gone to see the Governor General. He's on the carpet. I've
told him he'll get caught one day with all the crooked deals he gets up
to."
At that point the Minister came in.
Festus Samuel Okotie Eboh was a fat, jovial character of much the same build
and disposition as the seventeen stone Governor General, Sir James Robertson.
The Minister had until recently been Mr Sam Edah, but had changed his name to
that of a family who were powerful in his constituency. Those who disliked the
Minister referred to him as 'Festering Sam.' The Minister was wearing native
dress and a straw hat.
"Miss Polkinghorne, do you know
what the Governor General said to me? He said, 'Sam, you old rascal, I know
every trick you've been up to. You've got to be more circumspect.' What does
'circumspect' mean, Miss Polkinghorne?"
"You should be asking Mr Smith,
Minister. He's the clever one," said Kathy. I began a long involved
explanation. "What he means, Minister, is 'Don't get caught!'" said
Kathy. "That's what being 'circumspect' means."
"I love that Governor General,
Miss Polkinghorne," said the Minister.
"He won't love you if you get
found out with all those naughty things you do, Minister," warned Kathy,
as the Minister went into his room, chuckling happily.
Presumably the Governor General had
political reasons for not throwing the rule book at Okotie Eboh. When the
Governor General wanted to get rid of Adelabu, an extraordinary politician who,
had he lived, might have been
Okotie Eboh was into interlocking
blackmail too. The trade testers were corrupt and were hardly in a position to
protest when their office was sold over their heads. George Foggon's
justification for putting through the deal was that he was obeying orders,
although he knew he was doing wrong. But the Minister knew George tolerated the
corrupt trade testers. George was on thin ice too. Peter Cook could not protest
even if he had wanted to. The Minister knew the Department and the follies and
weaknesses of its officials intimately. If its top officials could get up to
tricks, so could he.
"George is getting in deep,"
said Peter Cook. "It looks as if you're on your own, Sean!"
I felt that way too.
One late Sunday afternoon the compound
was quiet save for a few children playing around the palms and frangipani. A
party was going on, but not noisily, in Peter Cook's flat. Like most of the
flat dwellers we had just climbed out from under our mosquito nets to shower
and change for the evening and dinner. At that point one of my neighbours
called in a very agitated state. His small daughter had gone up the servants'
stairs to Mr Cook's flat and had gone through his kitchen. She had run down to
tell her father what she had seen.
"Men not wearing clothes were
dancing in a circle; they were all stuck together..."
"Can't you do something, Mr
Smith?" my neighbour pleaded.
"It's worse than you know,"
I told him.
The question might be asked, 'Was the
Labour Department typical?' Some have suggested that because the Labour
Department produced three Nigerian Permanent Secretaries, it was a rather good
Department. With obvious exceptions I do not see that the fault lay in the
staff, but in management and leadership. With proper direction and training
there was excellent potential in both expatriate and Nigerian staff. They were
pensionable staff who were trying to do a good job in very difficult
circumstances, and they were certainly not to blame for the scandals at the top
in the Department. And what was the role of Government House and the Colonial
Office in all this? It was no secret that the Labour Department was a shambles.
Before George Foggon went on leave he
called me into his office. He whispered so that Peter Cook would not hear him.
He spoke in a very roundabout way at great length. What he meant to say was
that he was afraid that Peter Cook would drop him in the shit in his absence.
He was counting on me to hold the fort. I was to do everything by the book and
if in doubt consult the Chief Secretary's Office.
The three Regions of Nigeria already
had a measure of independence and were in effect federal states. The 1956
elections would be the final regional elections before
In Foggon's absence, Francis Nwokedi
was running the Labour Department with Peter Cook. I was a mere Labour Officer
who had been charged by the Commissioner in his absence to 'keep an eye on
things.' At this juncture the order arrived which was to change my life. It had
come through the chain of command apparently from the Governor General himself.
It was addressed to me personally. Perhaps my work had come to the Governor
General's attention? I was much too modest to make that assumption. The order
directed me to arrange for all Nigerian staff of the Department and all
departmental vehicles to proceed to the Minister's constituency for the
duration of the election campaign to work under the Minister's orders and to
get his candidate elected. This was a covert operation and a cover story was
needed. I was to devise a survey of migrant labour covering the Minister's
constituency.
My reply was brief. 'No,' I wrote on
the minute sheet. 'This would be a criminal act.'
I was immediately ordered to leave the
head office of the Department and take over the
While still awaiting Foggon's return
from leave, I was approached by Vic Beck again. Apparently, when I had refused
to get involved in the covert election plan, the orders had passed to Major
Charles Bunker, a Senior Labour Officer. It was unclear whether he had carried
them out. But he had also been ordered to pressurise British and foreign firms
to make donations to the NCNC's election funds. Threats of official harassment
by the Labour Department's Inspectors were to be made against firms who refused
to pay up. In addition fleets of cars were to be obtained either free or at
greatly reduced prices, and free or cheap petrol to run them. Vic Beck and
Charles Bunker came to see me to discuss what could be done.
"You're not going to carry out
these orders, Charles, surely?" I asked.
"It's too late, Sean,"
replied Charles. "I've done it."
Charles was very distressed. Both he
and Beck appreciated the seriousness of the situation. The British Government
was taking credit for its liberal policies in moving towards
The actual orders which were clearly a
criminal breach of Nigeria's own electoral laws, as well as being a gross
betrayal of trust by the British who were supposed to embody the notion of even
handedness, fair play and honesty, had come through Francis Nwokedi, the acting
head of the Labour Department, and Peter Cook, the Deputy Commissioner, both
close friends of Dr Azikiwe. And Okotie Eboh, the Minister of Labour, was Dr
Azikiwe's Party Treasurer.
The British loved the largely
illiterate and backward North and had arranged for fifty percent of the votes
to be controlled by the Northern party, the NPC, which was largely a creation
of the British and hardly a normal political party in the accepted sense. It
was funded by the British controlled Native Authorities and was quite simply a
tool of the British administration. Because of this,
British policy was to encourage tribal
rule in the East and West by discouraging the creation of new states which
would have broken up these two power groups. Of particular importance was the
need for the NPC. in the North to go unchallenged. And it was made quite clear
to the leaders in the South that the British would not tolerate more than token
electioneering against the British-favoured NPC in the North. There may well
have been tacit agreements between the British and the leaders of the West and
East. There was certainly anger from the British when the Action Group in the
West was seen to be planning a major election campaign in the North.
What was obvious from the orders
coming out of Government House in 1956 was that Zik was working with the
British and the NPC in the North against the Action Group in the West. The
Northerners disliked all the Southerners, East or West, as being too clever by
half, a view shared by the British administration. In many respects in the
North it was difficult to detect where the British administration ended and
Northern rule began. The sickening sycophancy of the Northern leaders towards
the British and the equally nauseating and patronising contempt (disguised as
admiration) displayed by the British to Northern leaders, horrified educated
Nigerians. But Southern politicians were needed to work with the North so as to
ensure total domination by the North.
Festus Okotie Eboh was the ideal
candidate to become the linchpin of this pact between the North and Zik's NCNC
which ruled in the East. Okotie Eboh was from the Mid West, so was not too
close to the Igbos in the East, although he was Party Treasurer of the Eastern
Party. Although from the Mid-West, he was not a Yoruba but an Itsikeri, so he
could be relied on to be hostile to the Yoruba-dominated Action Group in the
West. As Party Treasurer, he held a powerful position so long as he could raise
funds for the NCNC But the NCNC was bankrupt. To strengthen Okotie Eboh's
position, it was essential that he should be able to raise funds. We have seen
how the British set about helping their stooge to do this.
Okotie Eboh had to sell a policy of
collaboration with the North to the NCNC and to Dr Azikiwe in particular. The
Minister of Labour was a cynical party hack intent on becoming rich very
quickly. Already in the late 1950's he was a byword for corruption. Okotie Eboh
was not a nationalist and in no sense an idealist. He was a large, fat,
cheerful crook and he was much loved by George Foggon and the Governor General,
perhaps because he conformed to a stereotype which confirmed their low opinion
of Africans in general.
A warning shot had been fired by the
Governor General over Dr Azikiwe's bows in 1956 with an investigation of his
African Continental Bank. Very serious malpractice was revealed as also was the
fact that Zik's business affairs were in a mess, and he was practically
bankrupt. There was no question of Zik financing his party's election campaign.
The charges were allowed to lie on the table, and although Zik could very
easily have been dismissed from public office, as Adelabu was in very similar
circumstances, no action was taken by the British which would perhaps have put
Dr Azikiwe behind bars, a fate he had always shown considerable ingenuity in
avoiding, unlike other nationalist leaders.
The Bank enquiry not only served as a
warning to Zik, it made it impossible for the Eastern Regional Government,
which was under the spotlight, to divert funds to finance its party, the NCNC.
That the North and the West used public funds to finance their parties was no
secret to anybody in the British administration. The result of all this was to
make Okotie Eboh a key figure and, after Zik, the most powerful leader in the
NCNC. It also meant that Okotie Eboh was able to influence both NCNC and Zik's
policies away from confrontation with the British and the Northerners and in
favour of collaboration and a cynical display of horse dealing which would make
the 1959 Federal election a mockery, because the outcome - Northern domination
of Nigeria after Independence - was assured before a single vote was cast in
that election.
The group of Ministers which gathered
round Okotie Eboh was known as the 'Ikoyi clique' because they lived in the
largely European suburb of Ikoyi. A close ally of Okotie Eboh was T.O.S. Benson,
the Minister of Information. His offices were next to the Labour Department on
the
By this time, as my duties covered
such a wide range of departmental activities, I had been moved into the largest
office in the Department. This was necessary because I had acquired a number of
assistants, clerks and a typist. Labour Officers passing through
The British were busy rigging
At home, our cook William was saving
up to buy a wife from his own village back in the East. He told Carol, who was
not too flattered, that he wanted a wife like madam, nice and plump. In truth
Carol was quite slender, but when eventually William got a wife we saw what he
meant. The girls in William's home area were valued by weight, and it was not
unknown for girls to be caged and gorged with food so that they would fetch a
large bride price. Although William was paid above the going rate, as were all
our servants, he was so desperate to find a wife that he requested leave when
he only had a down payment on a bride. We ran William down to the market where
he would get a space on a mammy wagon, one of the produce and passenger trucks
which hurtled along
William found a girl, but was very
downcast when he returned, because the girl's father would not release her for
one down payment. I saw a group of servants in the compound throwing themselves
around in fits of laughter. The laughter of Nigerians is a wonderful thing to
see and I was determined not to be left out. I asked Joel, my driver, to find
out what was so funny. When he came back he could barely stand for laughing.
"It's William's long journey to
find a wife, master..." and Joel collapsed on the floor.
"Joel please..." I insisted.
"They say, master," said
Joel, "it was a pity her father wouldn't let him bring back the bit he had
paid for!"
And Joel collapsed on the floor again.
We helped William so he was able to
return quickly to complete the purchase of his wife. We also insisted, and
William was forever full of gratitude, on collecting the newly wedded couple
when they arrived in
"It's all right, madam,"
William assured Carol. "In our new home with master and madam and lots of
good food, she will soon be plump like madam."
All this made me feel like landed
gentry or even a Southern plantation owner, but that was how it was in Ikoyi in
the mid-1950's.
I was almost sorry when I eventually
had time to pass my driving test because it meant parting with Joel our driver
whom we liked enormously. He did have an occasional weakness for the palm wine
which on occasion forced me to plunge into the
Each day Joel would switch off his grin
and be very sad. He would then beseech us to buy him a peaked cap. It was very
important that he have a cap. It gave him status. All chauffeurs had a cap.
Eventually we succumbed and our servants and everybody else's cheered when they
saw Joel's cap. It was an important victory. Joel showed it off and made sure
everybody noticed it! Then after a few days he was sad again.
"Master. If only I had a khaki
jacket!"
We could not stand the pressure. In no
time Joel was kitted out in full khaki uniform and could have passed for an
officer in the Nigerian Army.
Joel would ask us to correct his
English and would rehearse a word or phrase until he had got it fixed in his
memory. Joel was staying at his brother's house in
"No, Joel," I corrected him.
"You are staying with your sister-in-law."
"No, master," he said.
"I am sleeping with her."
"Yes, Joel," I said.
"Sleeping in the same house. If you say 'I am sleeping with some one' it
means like man and wife."
"Oh, I don't touch her,"
said Joel. "But I sleep with her in the same bed. My brother is
away."
"Doesn't he mind?" I asked.
"Isn't it a bit risky?"
"Of course not, master,"
said Joel. "My brother has taken precautions."
"Precautions, Joel?"
"Yes. When he go he put juju on
back of door. When he come home he will ask juju if I have touched his wife. If
juju say 'yes' he will kill me."
"I do hope the juju doesn't fall
off the door and give him the wrong message, Joel," I said.
"I'm going to have a word with
that juju, master, myself or maybe you're going to have to find a new
driver."
With that Joel threw himself around in
a fit of laughter and the car shot off the road and sent a crowd of Lagosians
jumping for their lives.
On another occasion I discussed juju
with Joel and he said it was a pity African juju was so weak unlike British
juju. I was very intrigued by this.
"We don't have juju, Joel,"
I insisted.
"Oh, master," said Joel,
rolling his eyes up to heaven as if seeking forgiveness for this idiot white
man. "Master," said Joel, "white men have juju that gets them
pretty girls when they want, get drunk when they want, radio, car, anything
they want."
"I don't follow you, Joel,"
I said.
"White man's juju is money,
master. It is the most powerful juju in the world," said Joel. He was
deadly serious for once.
We were concerned about finding a job
for Joel when I passed my driving test, but were surprised to find Peter Cook
had offered him a job as a driver for the Department. I knew he had taken a
liking to Joel and Joel was smart enough always to salute Peter and greet him.
I thanked Peter for offering Joel the job.
"I didn't do it for you,
Sean," said Peter grimly. "I happen to like the man."
"So I won't have to go back to
that heavenly job with the Lagos Bus Company," said Joel. "Oh, those
lovely ladies, master."
I was all ears of course.
"This lovely lady is the first on
the bus, so I don't give her ticket. When we go back to garage she say, 'OK,
big boy, come,' and she takes me back to her room and loves me till I can't
stand up. Next day it's the same. Every day it's the same. 'OK., big boy,
come!' On Friday I go collect my pay and the clerk gives her my packet. She
gives me a few shillings and keeps the rest! 'See you next week, big boy,' she
says!"
A new District Officer was fed up with
reading his Dickens' collected works during his long evenings in the bush. He
would hear his servants jabbering away in the kitchen and longed to know what
they were talking about. Who knows, he thought, what exciting and even erotic
tales he would hear. It would give him something to write about in his letters
home. They might even make a book. 'Tales from up the Creeks,' that sort of
thing. He borrowed a dictionary of the local language from a missionary and
after a few months' study, helped along by lessons from the missionary, he
became proficient. After dinner he would now station himself by the kitchen
door and eavesdrop on his servants' chatter.
"Master he like chop,"
(dinner) said the cook.
"Oh yes, master like chop,"
said the steward.
"Master like chop plenty
hot," said the cook.
"Oh yes, master like chop plenty
hot," said the steward.
"Master like grapefruit before
his chop," said the cook.
"Oh yes," said the steward.
Night after night the conversation
went on for hours in this totally boring fashion. At last the District Officer
could take no more.
He burst into the kitchen and shouted,
"Talk about something interesting for God's sake! I didn't learn the
sodding language to hear you talk about chop night after night after
night!"
Shortly afterwards, he was posted a
hundred miles up country where the local people spoke a different language.
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
It was as well we had some
distractions from my troubles in the Labour Department. When talking things
over with Bunker and Beck I recalled Foggon's advice to seek guidance from the
Secretariat if necessary. This was sensible advice in most situations. The real
power house in colonial government was the Chief Secretary, and it was
perfectly proper and sensible for anyone in the administration to seek help
from the Chief Secretary and his staff. As Beck and Bunker had raised Bunker's
orders with me, and Bunker was the most senior in rank, I thought at the time I
was the junior partner in this enterprise. Victor Beck suggested we approach
one of his contacts in the security section at the Secretariat, and this we did
and had a cordial discussion.
The roar of anger from Government
House at our audacity in questioning His Excellency's orders at least made it
quite clear that the orders were official and not some freakish forgery. At
this Beck and Bunker put their heads together and decided to pin the blame on
Smith. He had persuaded them into this foolish action against their will. After
all Bunker had carried out his orders! And Beck made it quite clear he would be
perfectly happy to do anything he was told. To make sure he really was pliable,
Beck was posted to the North where he happily applied himself to hush-hush
political duties.
I had no fear of facing Foggon alone
when he returned from leave. I expected nothing, so I was not surprised at his
anger.
"You disobeyed the direct orders
of the Governor General," he yelled. "Are you mad?"
"I'm not fixing elections for
anybody," I replied.
"Who are you? Don Quixote?"
yelled Foggon. "Nobody could touch you. You were in the clear. You were
just obeying orders!"
"That defence was not accepted at
"They were wrong," screamed
Foggon, white with anger. "None of them were guilty at
There was nothing more to be said. A
man who could defend the perpetrators of
I had volunteered in the past to help
in elections in
I was annoyed at this, given the fact
that I was doing several Labour Officers' work at the time, often returned to
the office after hours to try and catch up, and often worked through the
evenings. However, I hoped that this would be my chance to bring this whole
business into the open. Phil Haywood, who was later to become Permanent
Secretary at the Ministry of Education, was a good friend.
"Tell them, Sean, that you have
been proud to have been a member of the Colonial Service..."
"Really, Phil," I protested.
"Tell them the story, Sean,"
ordered Phil. "Say you regret if in any way you have let down the high
traditions of the Service..."
"Peter Cook, Phil!" I
exploded.
"Say you are retiring at the end
of this tour..."
"Well, that bit's true..."
"They'll know you're telling them
to piss off but they'll think you're a clever bugger and let it drop."
Phil was quite correct. Foggon was
furious.
"I have a letter here from Sir
Ralph Grey I've been ordered to show to you. I've also been told to shake hands
and ask you to forget the whole business."
Foggon presented me with a limp hand
and the most unwilling handshake possible.
The letter said, 'Mr Smith has been of
some service to the State...' The rest of it told Foggon politely to drop dead.
Our world was in a state of chaos. The
seventeen stone Governor General of the most populous British colony in Africa,
in his white uniform and plumed hat, while posing as a liberal to visiting
VIP's, was secretly rigging elections and destroying the very foundations of
democracy in the new state which outwardly would be the fifth largest democracy
in the world. Sir James Robertson, not content with that, was urging his newly
elected Ministers to loot and pillage the State and make Nigeria's first great
nationalist political party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons
(NCNC) almost totally dependent for funds on levies and bribes from British and
other multinational firms which already had a powerful grip on Nigeria's
economy.
Even the mild and gentle Northerner,
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, favoured by the British and chosen to be the first
Federal Prime Minister, was moved in 1958 in an interview with the
distinguished children's doctor and writer, Robert Collis, to complain with
some bitterness of the British commercial interests that held Nigeria in
thrall. This is quoted on page 159 of Dr Collis's book, 'A Doctor's
Despite George Foggon's attempt to
have me kicked out of the Colonial Service on a trumped up charge, which the
Chief Secretary, Sir Ralph Grey, had scornfully rejected, I continued to work
flat out on my several combined schedules of work to the last day of my
two-year tour in Lagos.
Outside the office, Carol and I took
Voltaire's advice of what to do when the world is upside down; we cultivated
our garden and our friends. We usually made our garden from scratch from a
patch of weedy sand, but in the
If George could think of any extra
chores to pile on towards the end of this very long and arduous tour, he heaped
them on unmercifully. It was evident to some that he was either hoping I would
crack up or refuse to carry them out, thus giving him another opportunity to
mount an attack. It was of no consequence that other Europeans sat playing with
paper clips all day or reading magazines. When George heard that there had been
no audit on the Lagos Sub-Treasury for several years because expatriates had
simply refused to get involved in a duty for which they might be held
personally responsible for millions of pounds, he promptly volunteered my name
to conduct the audit.
Armed with a posse of assistants,
clerks, a policeman, accounting machines and written orders to suspend all work
until the audit was complete, I marched into the Treasury and we processed
masses of bills, vouchers, chits, books and petty cash and came out with a
statement that not a single penny of the millions of pounds passing through the
Treasury had been purloined or gone astray. Frankly, I did not believe a word
of it and neither did anybody else. It was reported to me by sources close to
him (there were no real secrets in the Labour Department) that George had been
quite disappointed that I had given the Treasury a clean bill of health and had
not been sucked into a quagmire of corruption and trouble. He was even more depressed
when he had to hand on to me a congratulatory letter from on high, thanking me
for carrying out this awful task expeditiously and efficiently.
Sometimes George's zeal for piling it
on became downright absurd. He telephoned one morning to tell me that a British
lady in the Public Works Department was offended by having to liaise with a
Nigerian in the Labour Department when dealing with housing for expatriate
officers. Henceforth she would deal with me. And indeed the lady did deal with
me, but our conversations were fruitless for - miracle worker that I sometimes
was - I had no authority or way of taking these matters away from the Deputy
Commissioner, Peter Cook, who had overall authority in this area. Presumably
George was trying to provoke me into a rebellion. If so, I declined the
temptation and tried to carry out instructions which originated in the most
bizarre flights of fancy.
On our way to the nursery to buy
plants and cuttings for our garden, we would stand at the roadside and, while
trying to cross the road and dodge the cars driven by Europeans at speed,
observe African families carrying small wooden boxes to the graveyard. It would
have heartened us had we known that Dr Robert Collis was newly arrived in
William stopped apologising and,
explaining that other masters did not care, he would wake us up with,
"Another lady for
Despite my efforts to keep the Labour
Department afloat on rafts of paperwork, news of George Foggon's unpopularity
was spreading out from the Department. The Chief Clerk's years of presiding
over stacks of dusty files and ranks of sleepy typists were drawing to a close.
He had restrained his anger at the total incompetence of many of his white
superiors for many years, but towards the end his face showed the deep
unhappiness he felt at the humiliations he had suffered as an educated person
in an inferior position. On his final day with the Department, as tables laden
with refreshments were set out on the grass patch in front of the offices for
his retirement party, my clerks were huddled together whispering and I tried to
find out what was going on.
"It doesn't involve you,
sir," advised my assistant. "Just a little surprise the Chief Clerk
is planning."
The little surprise the Chief Clerk
had in store for the Commissioner had been brewing for many years.
"You will be expecting me on this
long awaited day," said the Chief Clerk, "to regale you with
platitudes expressing my gratitude for having been able to work with such a
splendid body of officials serving Her Britannic Majesty here in
I have condensed just the start of his
speech using simple words. The Chief Clerk, like a number of educated
Nigerians, had an extensive vocabulary and never used a short word if a longer
one were available. The Nigerian staff gurgled with glee and sent out ripples
of laughter at some of his carefully rehearsed barbs. But when he at last sat
down looking happier than I had ever seen him, it was as if an invisible
message had been passed around the expatriates. The Chief Clerk had behaved
outrageously, but his speech had never happened because it should not have
happened and it would be ignored.
Someone rose and thanked the Chief
Clerk for his kind words about the very fine officers he had served and he was
presented with his leaving gift. After a perfunctory shaking of hands, the
expatriates roared away in their cars, leaving the African staff to
congratulate the Chief Clerk for his courage and audacity for telling the
British to pack up and go home. It was indeed a memorable day!
This cannonade was accompanied some
time later by a full page article attacking George Foggon for his transparent lack
of interest in
I continued in these last few months
of my first tour to encourage some idealism in Francis Nwokedi, but Francis was
only really interested in his career and keeping in with the British regime. He
had been offered the post of Nigerianisation Officer and was depressed lest he
make the wrong move and lose his chance to be the head of the Department, soon
to be the Ministry, of Labour. I assured Francis, which was obvious, that he
was highly regarded by the British and would probably be the most senior
Nigerian civil servant at
My involvement with Peter Cook had
declined as he realised that he was safe with George Foggon, and that my days
were numbered. I would still meet tearful youths blazing with anger fleeing
from his flat, and would sometimes run them back into town. It seemed to have
become one of my roles in life to act as an unofficial taxi service to anyone
who needed a lift. Peter could not resist making life difficult for me even to
the end. It was up to him to arrange passages on the mailboat back to
A
"I don't play any games," he
replied truthfully. Then seeing the look of horror on the faces of the panel
members, he added, "I was very busy on my course..."
"Ah, quite," said the
Chairman. "But what games would you have played if you had played
games?"
"Cricket, rugger, sculls, tennis,
boxing," said the
"Splendid, just the man we
want," said the Chairman with enthusiasm. "We want a sporting man for
this job, not some wishy washy intellectual!"
We boarded the small cargo boat at
Apapa with considerable relief. Standing at the rail we watched as our car, a
grey Ford Consul, was slung off the dockside and on to the deck where it was
lashed down alongside massive trunks of exotic Nigerian trees. We were very
fond of the Consul because its presence had transformed our lives in
Only when our banana boat had cast off
and was in the lagoon and passing Government House on the
Two years was much too long a time to
spend in
Both of us had the pale, washed out
faces of people who had worked in
Perhaps the people we revered most
were the missionaries. They were often sorely tried. Much of what was good in
We were puzzled by the British
administrators. It must be emphasised that in condemning the low quality and
describing the sheer ghastliness of some who haunted the departmental warrens
of
No one with any knowledge of the
reality of the lives lived by the British administrators would subscribe to any
sweeping criticism of their character or work. They were honourable men who
worked hard for very low pay, often in very unhealthy conditions. I never heard
of a corrupt District Officer or Resident, and they usually retired on
miserable pensions, as poor as when they first started out.
That they were often called on to do a
Lord Nelson and turn a blind eye to injustice and corruption was, however, very
evident. Some refused and left the service. Others managed, like Sir James
Robertson, to exude liberal attitudes and a genial good nature whilst
perpetrating criminal acts. As always the hoary old
Writing in 1987, thirty years after
the events I describe, on a modern computer with a word processor facility, I
am reminded of Sir James Robertson's two faces each time I press the ALT key on
the machine in front of me. The modern computer has more functions than keys on
its keyboard. By pressing ALT a totally different set of functions is revealed
when the keys are pressed. Similarly, in talking to certain British
administrators, they would be patently honest, straightforward and
incorruptible. But if one prefaced one's remarks, after a pregnant silence,
with 'Of course, if national security is involved...' or 'If it's hush-hush
political work...' the ALT key was pressed and the honest administrator might,
now his ALT key had been pressed, admit to the most hair-raising illegal
activities on behalf of his masters. Clearly some thoroughly enjoyed these
clandestine, covert operations; others abhorred them and in extreme cases
protested.
For the protesters the punishment
stations existed. In
This was once graphically described to
me as the first pressure on the rifle trigger. If no protests were received, it
was safe to squeeze the trigger and to fire the offender knowing he had no
friends in high places to defend him. He 'got the bullet' straight between the
eyes. If he made trouble back in England he could always be terrorised with a
dodgy reference which would keep him very busy trying to find employment, and
if he did find work, a cosy telephone call from the Colonial Office might
encourage an irresponsible employer to put him on the street again.
I was free of all such fears however.
My 'Certificate of Service', the only reference allowed to be issued, was
safely in my wallet. I had made sure it was in my possession before leaving the
Department. The reference was perfectly satisfactory and I had no cause for
complaint. We settled down to enjoy life on our banana boat.
The number of passengers on a cargo
boat was limited to twelve. Beyond that figure a doctor had to be carried. The
nine other passengers included an official from the North and his wife. This
lady had to address the other passengers once to explain why they would not be
speaking to us again. She made it clear that they were the VIP couple aboard
for they had distant connections with a titled nobody and would be dining with
the Captain (the poor Captain) and so would be keeping their distance from the
rest of us.
On this kind of voyage it is
absolutely essential to take several volumes of Somerset Maugham, for his books
provide the perfect setting, background and atmosphere for social life in a
small saloon on a banana boat trailing the coast of West Africa from whence so
many slavers had carried cargoes of human misery to the
An elderly lady, who had been visiting
her son-in-law up country in
"I didn't catch your name,
Mr...?" she challenged, forcing him to put down his who dunnit.
"Urquhart, madam," said the
poor Scot in a rich brogue.
"Well, Mr Yewcart" said his
persecutor.
"Urquhart, madam," protested
her victim.
"I can hear perfectly well, Mr
Yewcart," Mrs Sheridan insisted.
The tease lasted all the way to
The wind-up gramophone in the saloon
played a collection of worn, scratchy, old 78 records. The only Nigerian
amongst the passengers was a boy of sixteen, the son of a dentist being sent to
school in
"Surely you could do something,
Mr Smith," the wife complained.
"Why me?" I asked Carol.
"It's because you look
responsible," said Carol.
The truth was only revealed on the day
we left the ship at
"Why me?" I complained.
"He's nothing to do with me."
"But you're his guardian, Mr
Smith," exclaimed the ship's officer. "His father had to produce a
certificate that someone on board would be responsible for his son and your
signature was on the certificate. Didn't you know, sir?"
A small postscript, a little practical
joke to remind us of
I had gone to
While we had been away in
If I took the job I was being offered
which was extremely well paid, I would in effect be working for the US State
Department, but technically I was still in the pay of the British Government
for a further six months. On reflection, perhaps I should have ignored the
point. At the time, however, before I made up my mind, there seemed no reason
not to telephone the Personnel Department at the Colonial Office to seek
advice. I was a personnel specialist myself, and this seemed the obvious thing
to do. The personnel officer was aghast that I was seeking work at all. I was
to return to
"But why?" pleaded this
senior civil servant.
I should explain that the staff of the
Colonial Office belonged to the home civil service; it was rare for them to
have served abroad. I tried in a few sentences to give this personnel man an
idea of what was happening in
So I returned to my questions. Was it
all right to take up other employment? Was my six months' leave pay a gratuity?
Was it all right to work for the US State Department at second hand so to
speak? Two other considerations were in my mind. Was the proposed employment
strictly above board politically, or was it some kind of semi-intelligence, CIA
operation? And was it somehow connected with the aftermath of
"But the Labour Advisor, Mr
Barltrop, speaks so highly of you, Mr Smith. He would be bitterly disappointed
if he knew you were not going to stay with us. You have a tremendous future in
the Service."
He asked if I would speak to Barltrop
and reluctantly I agreed.
Barltrop was extremely warm and
generous with his compliments.
"As soon as you arrived in
I apologised for having to disappoint
him. Barltrop was shaken.
"How could you possibly wish to
work for a foreign power?" he asked.
Barltrop made the Americans sound like
the enemy. Was this a reaction to
I chose my words carefully.
"Mr Barltrop, the Labour
Department was and still is a shambles. It is also corrupt. The Colonial
Government is busy rigging the so-called democratic elections to decide who is
going to take over at
There was total silence at the other
end.
"I find it unbelievable, Mr
Smith," said Barltrop as if in a state of shock. "It can't be!"
"I'm sorry, Mr Barltrop," I
said. "I'm speaking the truth. Why don't you ask Mr Parry? He seems to be
very well informed."
"Mr Smith," said Barltrop,
"I want to make some enquiries and I want to see you. Promise you'll come
to see me before you take up another post."
"I'll think about it, Mr
Barltrop," I said and put the telephone down.
Sadly I turned down the State
Department job. I also declined an offer to work for the TUC. It seemed I could
pick and choose from many offers. There was an interesting job going at Esso as
Personnel Officer. It was a well paid job and I liked the people who
interviewed me. The job was mine if I wanted it. As a personnel man interviews
were relatively easy because I was meeting other personnel people. Les
Thornton, one of the senior Personnel Managers at the Fawley Refinery was down
to earth and frank. There had been three hundred applications and it had been a
problem to sort out a short list.
"You were obviously the best
man," said Les. "You've got no competition, Sean."
Les went on to extol the delights of
living around the
Carol was beginning to get over
My initial task at Esso was to go
through an induction course for all new employees. I had been particularly
attracted to Esso by its democratic attitudes to its work force. All staff used
the same lavatories and the single canteen as the shop floor workers. In fact
this was not without problems for I soon found I was being buttonholed as a
useful contact in Personnel. A friendly chat might end up with a request for a
helping hand on a pay query. Whilst paying lip service to the idea of Esso's
democratic approach, most of the personnel people retreated to a pub for lunch
which was invariably a pie and a pint.
It was at this point, whilst making
many new friends and delighting in the possibilities and challenges of my new
job, that I guessed Les Thornton had a problem which concerned me and forced
him to come clean.
"Sean," he said. "You
came to us with the highest recommendation and we still think you are the right
man for us. But..."
Esso had received a secret letter from
I exploded with rage.
"Race!" I exclaimed.
"An Irish name I chose after a visit to a dentist and I have all the
faults of the Irish whatever they are! They aren't allowed to publish adverse
reports like this. There's an established procedure with appeals to a Public
Service Commission."
"Somebody is trying to destroy
you," said Les. "I've told you too much already, Sean. Esso will not
want to upset
"Like hell I'll hide away,"
I said, and went off to telephone Barltrop at the Colonial Office.
Mr Barltrop was dead. He had had a
heart attack. Had I caused this by forcing him to lift the lid on the
atrocities in
Les confirmed what I already knew.
Foggon's first act in
"It's the worst reference I ever
saw," said Les Thornton. "The bastard wants you dead. You must have a
lot on him."
"Yes," I said. "Even
his English secretary had it out with him. She told him he'd got one real
friend in the Department and his name was Sean Smith..."
"Is he insane?" asked Les.
"I don't know. Maybe he's got a
medical problem. Strange things happen to people in
"Life could be difficult for you
here, Sean," said Les. "And maybe even for me."
"That's why I'm resigning,
Les," I told him. "I'm not going to embarrass you or Esso."
The following week I started
delivering the post in Lymington. Esso executives were astonished to see their
new Personnel Officer delivering their pools coupons.
Foggon cowered when I entered his
small room at the Colonial Office. He was pale and frightened. I looked at the
small window. It was too small to throw him out. I thought of chucking a chair
out. I felt the need to shatter the calm of the cathedral-like quiet of the Colonial
Office.
"You didn't tell them about
me?" he implored. "About
"Why did you do it?" I
demanded.
He looked at his blotter.
"Look," he said, springing up. "This is what they gave me when I
left
"Christ!" I thought.
How pathetic. He had pressurised the
Chief Clerk to take a collection. Men with a life time of service in
"They want you to go back to
I turned and left. He was not worth
another thought. He was quite worthless.
The personnel people at the Colonial
Office were incredulous. How could Foggon do what was clearly a breach of all
the rules!
"Ask him," I told them.
"I've lost my job. I've had to let my house. I've sold my car. I've had my
cat and my dog put down. My wife is expecting a baby. I'm broke..."
"It's incredible," they
said. "We're checking out things in
And later:..
"What you said is true. It's
incredible, unbelievable. We could put you on the next plane back to
"Very well," I replied.
"But I don't want to talk about him. Even thinking about him makes me
sick."
Nwokedi wrote to say he would like me
to return to
And so we returned to
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
Philip Haywood met the plane at
Francis had plans for me, but it
seemed I was not to be allowed to see any files. No schedules for me, only
special assignments. A Dock Labour Scheme for
"Ask Peter to arrange Rest House
accommodation, book you on the ferry across the
I smiled and agreed, but next morning
at 3 a.m. I was on the road out of
When I had staggered into the Rest
House at
"
"How many days?" they asked.
"This morning," I replied.
There was a stunned silence.
The morning I arrived back in
"We had better plan this journey
of yours to
"I've been, Peter", I
replied.
"The Governor General thought
you'd finished and now you're back. What the hell happened?"
The speaker was the new head of
establishments in the new Ministry of the Interior. He wanted to hear my story.
I told him about Okotie Eboh and his depredations.
"He's now Minister of
Finance."
"I hear he told the Governor
General he hadn't finished spending the Labour Department!"
"Be very careful," I was
warned.
Okotie Eboh's name had become
synonymous with corruption in
"You'll know Okotie Eboh then,
Carol - Festering Sam. I've been moving his money through
This was two years before
Some histories and other academic
works on
The authors, being British, show how
Nor is this public relations job
confined to some historians. As an administrator, I drafted and edited many
reports which gave a rosy picture of the Labour Department and its work. My aim
was to present my Department as efficient and hardworking in an effort to
encourage it to be like that, and anyway I would not have been allowed to write
the depressing 'truth', emphasising all the faults and negative aspects.
Henry Bretton, an American scholar,
realised all this in 1962 when he wrote that most articles and books on
If the 'official' story, history or
report is not the whole truth, how can one find out what really happened? For
the officials who know the secrets risk their jobs, promotion and pension
rights if they reveal those dark secrets. Where law breaking is concerned it is
my personal belief that the civil servant's true loyalty must be to the
electorate and not to criminals who happen to be civil servants or politicians.
In the
The official story, that the British
handed sovereign power in
The Regions already had considerable
powers of self-government and became independent in 1957. British influence and
power continued unchecked in the most vital areas of Government after October
1960, and to some extent, so successful have British policy and the
machinations of British Governments been, even to the present day. A secret
defence pact, which
When the British invaded the Moslem
North and realised that a stable if feudal and authoritarian system of
government was already in place, they decided to rule through the Emirs. This
system of indirect government which has probably always been the stock-in-trade
of conquering powers, became almost a religion or a fetish and attempts were
also made to apply it in
Sir Alan Burns, an acting Governor of
Nigeria and historian, asked after
Dr. Robert Collis was also in
The chief recruiting officer at the
Colonial Office, Ralph Furse, wrote in 1962, 'To rule, you must also know when
to shut one eye. The British have been rather good at this... we are sometimes
surprised and a little pained, that the immense benefits we have conferred on
the so-called backward races, have not been received with more whole-hearted
enthusiasm.'
In 1947 Sir Hugh Foot found that there
was not a single University in
The colonial service was another
fiction as it did not really exist. A small staff at the Colonial Office merely
recruited staff for each colony, which itself paid the salaries of its
administrators. Most of the recruits went to Africa and most of these to
The British in the North despised the
educated Igbo and Yoruba from the South, but nevertheless they had to employ
them as clerks, storekeepers and railwaymen in the North as there were no
educated Northerners. They were seen as troublemakers like the missionaries:
the sort of people who see injustice everywhere and protest to the newspapers.
Not that the British in the North took any chances, for only one
Government-controlled newspaper was allowed there. Permission to publish
newspapers was often sought by Southerners and as often refused. Henry Bretton
remarked that, although on paper, basic human rights were guaranteed in the
North, the Northern regime was still feudal, and the civil rights provisions
were so thoroughly circumscribed and hedged round as to permit almost any
practice, including slavery.
The Northerners never really wanted
the British to leave. They feared the Southerners more than the British. The
British and the Northern elite worked so closely together that differences of
policy could hardly exist. The British claimed that the Northerners had
demanded and must have fifty percent of all the seats in a Federal legislature.
Was it really the Emirs who thought this up or did the British put them up to
it? The British agreed anyway. The only thing lacking in this feudal
authoritarian state was a mouthpiece, a political party which could represent
the North and a political party, the Northern Peoples' Congress (NPC) was
invented. It has been remarked that the NPC had few of the attributes of a
political party. Its members, officials, MPs and funds came from the Native
Authorities which were controlled by the Emirs.
Whoever controlled the NPC controlled
the North and the whole of
Sir Hugh Foot, like other British
administrators in the North, adored Northern people and, like some of his
colleagues, the people he spoke so highly of were not the common people, the
poor illiterate millions, but the Emirs. Thus, 'Polo is the national game of
the North where the people are natural horsemen. The Emir of Katsina was the
best polo player in
One can see the appeal of all this to
one type of British administrator. It seemed to many in the South that the
British had constructed in the North a magnificent game reserve, except that
the game were the Northern peasants. The Emirs were the gamekeepers. Sir Hugh
found the Obas, the Chiefs of the Yoruba, very different and most difficult to
understand. 'The Northerners have the predominant characteristics of Moslem
dignity, courtesy and courage. The Igbos in the East are quick to learn,
volatile, uninhibited, gay.'
The Yoruba on the other hand had a
barbaric custom, personal dignity and political finesse. Maybe it was the
barbaric custom that got up the British nose. The traditional way of getting
rid of an unpopular Oba was to present him with a parrot's egg. He was then
expected to commit suicide. Presumably the Yoruba did not waste parrots' eggs
on the British because they knew they would not take the hint. But the British
were not treated as gods by the Yoruba. In my experience the Yoruba regarded
themselves as superior to the British and one only had to read a book written
by Awolowo, the Western leader, to know why. The Yoruba were often highly
intelligent and they taunted the British with sending inferior people to
British settlement and ownership of
land in
Awolowo had made a tactical error and
a powerful enemy for himself. Sir John left
Sir Hugh Foot spoke with some
experience of Yoruba chiefs. He was himself given the bird by the Alafin of
Oyo. The bird was a live turkey presented as a gift and Sir Hugh, wearing his
cocked hat and white suit, was expected to make a speech with the turkey under
his arm. 'The turkey obviously thought the proceedings odd. As I spoke he turned
his head to look me in the eye. His gaze was embarrassingly close and I thought
as I continued my formal speech - and feared for my white uniform - that I
could see in the turkey's eye a look of contempt. I also thought as I turned
from the turkey to the Alafin that I caught, through the string of beads, a
wink of delight at my predicament.'
The Yoruba were extremely conservative
and drawn towards the law and business. They modelled the Action Group on the
Conservative Party as the latter's machine was considered the most efficient.
It may seem odd that the Yoruba were not chosen by the British to rule
alongside the favoured Northerners in the Independence Government which the
British were busy planning in 1956 long before the actual
Political leaders who would not be
controlled through blackmail were regarded as a menace by the British. In the
Awolowo was very displeased when
In sacking Adelabu the Governor
General performed the neat trick of putting both the Action Group leaders and
Dr Azikiwe in his debt and got rid of a likely troublemaker who might have
upset the British applecart. Adelabu had accomplished the impossible task of
turning the Western Region capital,
The British plan was to have each
major tribal party secure in its own Region. It has been suggested that the
British did some deals and had an unwritten understanding that fighting
elections outside one's own Region was to be no more than a token affair.
Although the NCNC had once won the Western Region, perhaps because at that time
the NCNC was better organised than the Action Group, and Dr Azikiwe was
perceived as a truly nationalist leader and not merely a leader of the Igbo
tribe, in general the East was the monopoly of the NCNC and the West was the
monopoly of the Action Group. What the British did not want was the intervention
of the West and East in the heartlands of the North. If the peasants were to
turn against the Emirs the very basis of British policy would be undermined.
The NCNC tried to get round this
embargo by running in tandem with the small Northern group called the Northern
Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) which it financed. Retaliation was swift.
Armed thugs physically attacked NEPU candidates and they were hounded and
harassed by police and government officials. It was said by visiting Europeans
that the British tried to control these attacks and things would have been
worse without the British presence. Others might ask why the British allowed
these terrible abuses at all. And did the British only intervene when observers
were seen to be present?
The British administrators always, of
course, acted in accordance with the traditions of an English gentleman. An
official enquiry into the recruitment system in 1929 had endorsed this view,
which had been put forward by the Duke of
What was not enquired into was what
exactly these traditions were. And which English gentlemen were to be emulated,
as they were quite a mixed bunch. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century
bribery and corruption were rife in British politics. The gentlemen who sat as
judges sent trade unionists to exile in
Ralph Furse, who personally recruited
many colonial administrators, proudly claimed that '...the name of the British
Colonial Service will be remembered with honour for a thousand years.' It is
perhaps unfortunate that Adolf Hitler made a similar claim for his Third Reich.
Yet it is undoubtedly true that in
An American, Robert F. Heussler, who
studied British administrators in the North, commented that '... following the
time honoured principles of indirect rule... colonial regimes exercised as
little government as possible.' This was another reason for the British to be
unhappy with the Western Region leaders. As soon as they got power, instead of
leaving their considerable financial reserves made from cocoa in
In the East, Dr Azikiwe had built up a
political machine, the NCNC, which could genuinely claim to be nationalistic
and not tribal. It was, however, seen by its enemies as representing Igbo
aspirations and being under the control of the Igbo leaders. Like most
newcomers to
"When there's trouble,"
Peter Cook assured me, "Zik will be out of the country. Nobody will be
able to pin anything on him."
I saw nothing sinister in this.
Perhaps I became disenchanted with Zik when I learned he was a good friend of
Peter Cook's. It appeared that Zik had been a boxer and shared Peter Cook's
love of sport to the extent of having his own stadium in
If I was disappointed to find that
Peter Cook was not displaced as Deputy Commissioner when Francis Nwokedi took
over the Department of Labour, I was shattered to learn that, after his
retirement in 1960, Peter Cook would be returning, at Zik's instigation he
claimed, to manage the new Federal Sports Stadium.
In his long political career Zik
accomplished a great deal, and perhaps his critics expected too much of him.
There was a vacancy for a saintly, self-sacrificing, adroit, highly
intelligent, revolutionary, statesmanlike, nationalist leader. The hopes and
dreams of many that Zik would fill this role were dimmed when they saw Zik, the
President of Nigeria, going about in the uniform of the Commander-in-Chief of
the Nigerian Army. As Peter Cook predicted, when the military coup took place
in 1966 Zik was having medical treatment in London, and the failure of the coup
leaders to assassinate corrupt Igbo politicians made many Nigerians, and
particularly Northerners, question the motives and sincerity of those behind
the coup. Zik's change of sides, when it became evident the Igbos were losing
the civil war, finally destroyed his image as the nationalist saviour. For many
Nigerians, Awolowo was accepted by default as the only candidate for the vacant
post of a great Nigerian political leader.
John Gunther noted that Zik believed
vehemently in a unitary
Zik has been blamed for wrecking a
potentially powerful political grouping, the Nigerian Youth Movement. By 1957
Zik was in deep trouble when the Foster-Sutton Commission of that year found
him guilty of conduct unbecoming of the Premier of a Region. But the Governor
General made no move to oust him, as he had previously ousted Adelabu. Perhaps
the British saw Zik as a broken reed, who was bankrupt in more ways than one. Seeing
their opportunity, thirty-one influential NCNC leaders demanded Zik's
resignation in 1958, but Zik outmanoeuvred them and had them all thrown out of
his party.
The full story of Zik's political
career has yet to be written. There are many dark areas such as whether Zik had
a role in the
Major Nzeogwu, one of the leaders of
the first military coup, complained that Zik was a rogue, but fortunately for
Zik the six majors did not feel too strongly about him for otherwise he might
have been one of the victims of the coup. Paradoxically, had he been
assassinated, many Igbo lives would have been saved, for the charge that the
coup was an Igbo plot, which led to so much bloodshed, would not then have been
sustained.
One of the English girl secretaries
had a headache at the office. On the way home she remarked, "I hate the
Africans."
"I thought you got on so well
with your cook," I said.
"Oh, he's all right. He's
smashing really. I bought him a watch for his birthday."
"And the chap you work
with?"
"He's great fun. We have a lot of
laughs."
"And your boss?"
"The man with the golden tool!
Women queue up to see him. All nationalities! Those eyes! Talk about 'come to
bed' eyes!"
"You get on so well with them. I
know they really like you," I said.
"Do you think so?" she asked
looking surprised. "I wish they'd say so!"
"Of course some people don't like
them," I said.
"Oh, I don't know," she said
with a smile. "They can be very sweet." After a pause she asked,
"Do you think they have big ones... you know?"
"I've heard it said. Maybe some
have small ones too!"
"I bet they're animals in bed.
You probably think I'm dreadful. I just wonder. Just once, to see what it's
like."
"It's difficult to get to know
them socially in
"Never mind," she said as
she got out of the car. "I'll probably never know."
Instead of spinning out the devising
of a Port Labour Registration Scheme for
Although disappointed that Nwokedi had
no plans to displace Peter Cook, I foolishly continued my efforts to instil
some idealism into Francis.
One evening we had Francis and his
wife Betty to dinner and I was carrying on as usual, with Francis roaring his
head off when Betty commented,
"I totally agree with you, Sean,
but Francis is a very hard nut to crack! I know, I've tried often enough!"
While still working on my Port Labour
Scheme, I was surprised to be visited by a very large lady who, in
"I'm a plain clothes
detective," she said.
I was quite surprised. It seemed that
the dock workers had plans to throw the Port Manager into the lagoon. I found
it impossible to take this seriously. Particularly as there was no special
reason why they should. The dock workers were not employed by the Port Manager.
Their employer used ruthless tactics to maintain discipline, including a squad
of very heavy, menacing thugs who were easily picked out because they wore
English-style trilby hats. When trying to interview dock workers, I had found
them very reluctant to talk, which surprised me until I realised that the thugs
were watching from a distance. The dock worker I was talking to slipped away
into a crowd of his companions and was soon indistinguishable because they were
all wearing the same uniform of khaki boiler suits with short sleeves and legs.
The Special Branch lady was irritated
that I did not take her allegations very seriously. I asked her to let me know
if she received any more information.
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, I'd just like to be there if
they do throw him in," I said.
She was not amused.
That weekend the whole family went for
a picnic on the
I rushed to the policeman on guard at
Government House to ask him to report the body. This was difficult as the
policeman spoke very little English. I ran back to the car to quieten the
girls. They did not know why we had abandoned the picnic. As the police arrived
and I prepared to drive away, a coach stopped by my car. This was like a
repetition of the incident on the Lagos/Ibadan road when a coachful of nuns
passed by while Nwokedi and I were peeing into the bush. Only this time it was
dozens of Salvation Army ladies who were pouring off the bus and heading for
the water's edge. I rushed out and tried to send them away, but the more
insistent I was, the more they crowded round.
"Please go away," I
implored.
"We don't have to," snapped
one of the lady officers.
Then she let out a shriek and
collapsed. She had seen the body. Then there was a lot of crying and noise. I
gave up and took Carol and the girls home.
"What is it, Daddy?" asked
Helen, trying to comfort me.
My eyes were full of tears.
"Just this bloody country, Helen!
Just this bloody country!"
If our Dock Labour Scheme was of any
benefit to Nigerian workers, the credit must go to Francis Nwokedi whose idea
it was. Francis made it possible. He also deserves credit for his next brain
wave, which was to be the National Provident Fund for all
If the Victoria Beach was getting more
crowded with African families, we knew who was responsible. In our first tour
Victoria Beach was only used by expatriate families. The Syrian and Lebanese
communities would lean against their cars along a deserted piece of the beach
road. This place on the road was known as the
It was Carol's idea to get Comfort a
bathing costume. We had tried to get Comfort to paddle in the water but she had
refused. I think she felt it was not allowed.
"We're going to get you a
costume, Comfort," announced Carol. "You're a member of the family.
If you don't go in the water, we won't go in the water."
Comfort looked stunned.
"Will you take Comfort to
Kingsway and buy her a costume, Sean?" said Carol the following day.
The Nigerian shopgirls were amazed
when I asked to be shown the swimming costumes and then told Comfort to choose
one. Comfort was terrified but I reassured her. She selected an emerald green
costume with some white edging at the top. When Carol returned from the office,
she asked Comfort to put on her costume and wear her white coat on top. We set
off for the beach with the girls very excited. When the moment came on the
beach, Comfort was tense. Very slowly she removed her coat. Her costume fitted
her well and she looked really beautiful. We gasped with pleasure and ran
screaming down the beach and into the water. Comfort was so happy.
Over the next few weeks we noticed
other Nigerian girls in costumes going into the water. Then as if by magic, one
weekend the beach was crowded with African families and the road to the beach
would be crowded with Nigerians walking there. It was wonderful. Europeans
began to complain and head for beaches only accessible by boat. Half the
housing in
The semi-educated Nigerian working as
a house servant would probably know very little about
Working at my desk I would dread the
approach of Nigerian clerks wanting to have a chat. Invariably they were
seeking advice and, after paying me compliments on my wisdom and learning,
would put to me some fine point of English grammar. I was most often much more
ignorant about split infinitives and participles ending sentences than they were.
If I professed total ignorance they would think I was teasing them or being
modest. I was not; I was simply telling the truth. I tried to dodge by telling
them that English was a living not a static language, that its forms and
vocabulary were always evolving. If a new phrase or word was useful and used,
it was in. It might not stay in long or it might soon become a permanent
fixture. My clerks were not interested in this at all. They sought the correct
usage, the right pronunciation. Having said that, it was interesting to see the
clerks themselves, for all the purity of their English, coining new words and
meanings.
"Did you train here?" I
might ask.
"No, I came by bus," the
clerk would reply.
"Is Mr Jones on seat?" I
would ask, using an expression common in
"No, he has deparked," would
come the response.
"Don't you mean Mr Jones has
departed?"
"No, sir, his car has gone, he
has deparked."
One day, returning home from Alakoro,
a boy of about twelve came from an alley at speed and hit the side of my car.
He was unconscious and bleeding. I scooped him up, placed him on the back seat
and rushed him to hospital. As I returned to the scene of the accident with a
policeman the crowd seemed very menacing and I was reluctant to get out of the
car.
"When they see master, they don't
make plenty trouble," the policeman assured me.
I was not at all sure, but he was
right. The crowd was suddenly silent.
"It's the blood, sir," said
the policeman. "I tell them you take the boy to hospital. When they see
the blood, they believe me."
It was only then that I noticed that
my shirt and trousers were covered in the boy's blood.
The boy made a quick recovery and I
tried to visit him.
"Better not," said my
clerks. "We will look after him and take him food."
"Please take fruit for me,"
I requested.
"What sort of fruit?" asked
my clerks.
They seemed puzzled. I explained that
in
"Grapes!" gasped my clerks.
"How many?"
"A big bunch," I explained.
"How many in a bunch?" they
asked.
"We don't count them," I
said.
"Four grapes?" they asked.
"Good God, no," I exclaimed.
"Dozens of them!"
My clerks fell about laughing and it
was then I realised that they thought I meant grapefruit. I was the stupid one,
of course. They did not know what grapes were as they were not commonly seen in
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
I was driving down to the port
at Apapa one morning when I passed a Nigerian struggling along the dusty road
in the awful heat. I stopped to give him a lift.
As he approached the car his face lit
up and he exclaimed, "Michael! How good to see you!" He had obviously
mistaken me for somebody else. "No," he said. "You're not
Michael, you're the other one who looks like him. You were at
"Yes, but..."
"Then you knew my wife..."
When he mentioned her name, I did
remember her. Not only that, but I recollected reading that her husband had
murdered her a very few years before. And surely I had seen her at a college
dance with an African companion. I became aware that he was continuing to
speak.
"I killed her, you know. They put
me in Broadmoor. They've just let me out. It wasn't my fault..."
Three weeks later Carol and I were at
a dinner party given by the new Director General of the Nigerian Broadcasting
Service, Richmond Postgate. I opened the door to a late arrival. The man who
entered bore a very close resemblance to myself.
"You must be Michael," I
exclaimed. "I met a friend of yours a couple of weeks ago who murdered a
friend of mine. He's in
Michael Crowder was to become a good
friend. He was the new editor of '
One evening, walking around Richmond
Postgate's compound,
"I have forebodings, Sean, of the
most awful and bloody cataclysm in
I have never forgotten
Awolowo in the West had taunted the
British by claiming that his Government had accomplished more in the space of
two or three years for his people than the British had since they arrived in
"It is a very interesting
fact," Philip remarked once over tea. "No matter how bad the
Departments are in
Philip named his contacts in each
Department to make his point. It was true what he was saying. However, not
every person he named managed to become Permanent Secretary of his Ministry as
Philip did. Philip might have added that those whom he named as being dedicated
and hard working, usually had the advantage that Philip also had, of an
intelligent and enlightened wife. Philip and Vera had two daughters as we had,
and I am absolutely convinced that having a supportive family enabled us to
contribute much more to the enormous needs of
The doctors we met socially and
through our official duties also made us aware of how fortunate we were to be
happily married, for syphilis and other venereal diseases brought into the
country by the seamen visiting Lagos and other Nigerian ports meant that the
customers of the Lagos brothels were satisfying their sexual appetites at
considerable risk, not only to their health, but to that of their wives and
children too.
The Second World War had brought many
British and American servicemen to
When returning our nanny Comfort to
her village if she had been baby-sitting and it was dark, we would drive from
Ikoyi, the European suburb, and the car lights would pick out what appeared to
be illuminated brassieres moving at the side of the road.
"Fornicators!" Comfort would
squeal in an outraged tone.
The girls wearing these fluorescent
bras were prostitutes waiting for clients from the white suburb. It really did
seem that the bras were dancing without any form of human support.
Nigerian couples amongst our friends
dealt with this matter in a very practical and matter of fact way.
"We don't want our men to catch
syphilis by going with these girls, so when we are having babies or are out of
town, we arrange for a sister or a friend to sleep with our husbands."
When Carol preceded me home and I was
alone in
I stammered that I really had no
intention....
"You men are so weak," she
continued. "I had better come and have sex with you."
"But your husband..." I
protested.
"I wouldn't deceive him,
Sean," she laughed. "We don't play your English games! Of course, he
would be agreeable. He is your friend as I am!"
I thanked her for her kindness, and
reflected how much more honest and sensible the Nigerians were. With my English
reserve, I could not have handled that situation, but I agreed very much with
her attitude. When I mentioned this story approvingly some men were not very
keen.
"No, thank you," said one.
"You should see my wife's sisters and friends!"
A marriage without children to most
Nigerians was unthinkable. It would be no marriage at all. And it appeared not
uncommon among the Nigerians we knew in
Those of us stationed in
But almost without exception after a
day or two of official visits, the VIP would say, "I've been thinking. It
really has been absolutely fascinating seeing the way sewage is collected... I
was just wondering if it might not be possible to see some social life. What do
people do here at night?"
What they were after were girls.
'Local colour' was a guarded expression for what they wanted. There apparently
exists in the culture and dreams and imagination of the Western male this
enormous urge to experience sex with some dusky beauty. It is assumed, quite
incorrectly, that the native girls are promiscuous, immoral or nymphomaniacs,
but this is of course total fantasy. Certainly in
The second part of the fantasy for the
Western male is that the dusky maiden cannot wait to have sex with the white man.
That was pure fantasy too in our experience. Perhaps because Nigerian men are
extremely good looking, healthy and otherwise attractive. That left the
prostitutes.
If one escorted, and perhaps
discreetly left, one's visiting VIP's in a dance hall collecting local colour,
could one warn him that he might well take syphilis back home to
Sex without love or even affection,
perhaps satisfies rape fantasies or is perhaps a commentary on the
unsatisfactory sex lives of those who seek it. When powerful white men exercise
their sex drives with powerless black women and men or children, perhaps we are
close to the motivations of domination, colonialism or imperialism. At least
white women are free from this kind of foolishness. And I was certainly not the
only European male to exercise restraint, and treat the Nigerian people with
proper respect. Nigerians are extraordinarily interesting and nice people,
blessed with so much cheerfulness and laughter, that to see them as sex objects
and not as human beings is simply an outrageous perversion or obscenity.
The stewards at the Lagos Rest House
also provided prostitutes and one Resident bounced a lady on the bed springs
for an hour, to the annoyance of his neighbour. The thin walls of the chalet
accommodation seemed to amplify these goings on.
Eventually the voice of a Nigerian
girl was heard to complain, "Please, master, fornicate me now. I got go
cook my husband's chop!"
The Minister of Labour, Okotie Eboh,
was like a child presented with the keys of a sweet shop. He exercised no
restraint and in the Ministry did anything he wished and was never stopped. As
he had timid officials who believed in obeying orders, it was little wonder
that he was noted for his geniality. He quickly acquainted himself with every
secret and racket in the Department of Labour and, being a born practitioner of
interlocking blackmail, known to the British as 'Scratch my back and I'll
scratch yours,' rapidly acquired the reputation of being the most corrupt
Nigerian politician. The competition was quite strong for the title and
although there were other strong candidates perhaps the others did not have
such complaisant and co-operative officials to put the deals through.
As VIP's in
"Oh, not Festering Sam
again!"
They would with reluctance take him
into
"Sean, this is the finest piece
of work you have done in
"How about the Nigerian Factories
Act?" I queried.
I was not sure even Francis knew I had
been responsible for that one too. At least Francis had the grace to thank me
for my work in setting up the National Provident Fund. And then he dumped me
back at Alakoro as Labour Officer in charge of the capital. The previous
holders of that post were not distinguished for their dynamism. It took me
several months before I found out why my telephone never rang. It seemed that
the operator had instructions to tell callers I was not on seat.
"What happened to the other
operator?" I asked my assistant.
"The new woman is a niece of the
Minister," he replied.
I wondered why he had not told me that
before.
Rather than die of boredom I took
every opportunity to inspect establishments in
"Tell me what you want and I will
give it you, Mr Smith," she said, forgetting her earlier insistence that
she only spoke French.
I repeated that I wanted her husband's
workers to be paid but she brushed this aside. I kept moving up the settee on
which we sat. There were no other chairs in the room. In the corner was a
screen and I was sure her husband was in hiding behind it, waiting to leap out
and accuse me of molesting his wife. I decided to stand by the door.
"Don't you like me?" she
said.
"I want you to
co-operate..." I began.
At that she brightened.
"That's what I want," she
said and her negligee slipped.
I made a speedy exit. After further
attempts over several days, I finally cornered her elusive husband.
"What do you want, Mr
Smith?" he pleaded. "I have offered you money, crates of whiskey,
girls, boys. You are the only British officer like this. I know many British
Government people..."
He named some.
"I want you to pay arrears of
wages to your staff," I insisted.
"Are you mad?" he shouted.
"Why should you care whether I pay the lazy bastards!"
"It's the law," I said
firmly.
"You're crazy!" he shouted.
"Nobody obeys any laws in
"But not to your employees!"
"What do you want, Mr Smith? My
wife?"
"I don't want your wife."
"What's wrong with my wife?"
he asked, looking hurt.
"Your wife is very nice..."
"You'd like her?"
"No. Nothing personal. I don't
want her, that's all."
"OK," he said finally.
"You want my daughters. You can have my daughters."
I gave up and wrote to the Attorney
General asking permission to start a prosecution. The Attorney General replied
that as the employer had not paid wages, the workers were not employed. One
began to understand why the law was not obeyed in
To keep boredom at bay we continued
our inspections of
"Put her down as a
chambermaid," I suggested.
One day at the office I heard my
assistants having a heated discussion in the adjoining office. They were
debating whether English law or the English language had contributed most to
"Nobody obeys the laws, Mr Smith.
We know that."
"It's the spirit of the
law," I pleaded, not altogether convincingly. "It's the idea of the
law, of proper conduct..." Somewhat desperately I concluded, "It may
take time for the law to bite, but one day..."
To my surprise, my assistants became
deadly serious. They were not having a school debate now.
"Our inspections are a farce, Mr
Smith!"
I began to waffle. God, even I was
beginning to evade the truth!
"Maybe our calls do some
good," I pleaded without conviction.
"But only the small fry,"
said one of my assistants. "We don't do the Ikoyi Club or the Island
Club!"
I was stunned. The Club! I had not
even thought of the Club as a catering establishment. As the Ikoyi Club
exercised a colour bar, apart from a few nominal black VIP'S, the Nigerian top
people had opened the Island Club which copied the Ikoyi Club and was for the
well-to-do black as the Ikoyi Club was for the well-to-do white.
"You want us to do the Club and
the Island Club!" I demanded.
There was silence. There was a lot of
tension and unhappiness in the air.
"I know they're covered by our
regulations," I said lamely.
"It's all right," said my
assistants quickly.
"No, you're right," I said.
We were just pretending. Chasing the small fish.
"It's all right, Mr
Smith..."
"No, it isn't," I said.
"Maybe one day a year we could make the laws work in
"Inspect the Ikoyi Club, the
Island Club?" my assistants gasped.
Their eyes were on stalks. They were
on the defensive and frightened now.
"It's our job, isn't it?" I
demanded.
"Mr Smith, you would get into
plenty trouble!"
"I'm already in plenty of
trouble," I said. "I'm going to have one day of law compliance. No
one is above the law. Tomorrow I inspect the Ikoyi and Island Clubs."
"We'll do it, Mr Smith,"
they said.
Suddenly we all laughed. We felt ten
feet tall. We were exhilarated.
"What do we wear?" they
asked.
"Shirt sleeves down. Long
trousers and ties," I insisted.
Next day we assembled in my room. My
two assistants were tense and quiet.
"You don't have to come," I
said.
"We're coming," they
replied.
The Ikoyi Club was deserted at 10.30
in the morning but for a few stewards in uniform and scarlet cummerbunds. They
looked astounded when they saw my two Nigerian assistants.
"I want to see the
Secretary," I announced.
A dapper European appeared and
glowered when he saw my African staff.
"What's all this?" he
demanded.
I held out my official Identity Card.
"My name is Harold Smith. I am a Labour Officer and I am carrying out an
inspection of these premises under the provisions of the Labour Code and
Catering Establishments Regulations.
"Get out!" he shouted. He
was pink with rage. "How dare you bring those people in here!"
"May I introduce my Labour Inspectors?"
I insisted. "We will require your wages books. I am empowered to see
them."
"The Governor General will hear
of this," the Club Secretary threatened. "I'm going to 'phone the
Commissioner of Labour!"
"By all means," I said.
The Secretary raged over the telephone
to Mr Cook. It seemed Mr Cook could not help him.
"Before I get the wages books,
may I ask whether you are a member of the Club?" he enquired.
"Certainly not," I replied.
"The books please..."
At the Island Club the black Secretary
was even more enraged, but otherwise we had a carbon copy of the performance at
the Ikoyi Club. The Secretary was also hostile to having two black Labour
Inspectors on his premises. Perhaps if they had been white that would have been
all right. Peter Cook was telephoned again.
That is all that happened the time we
brought the law to
The Association of Senior Civil
Servants were known as the Bolshies. Its Secretary was horrified when I told
him how I had come to return to
"They can't do that," he
gasped. "It's just not possible."
"They did it," I insisted.
"We'll take it up," he said.
"So what happened?" I asked
some weeks later.
"It was incredible. We saw the
Governor General. We told him your story and do you know what he said?"
"No."
"'How would you boys like to go
to
"So what did you say?" I
asked.
"We jumped at it. We go to
"And my case?"
"I don't think we're going to be
able to help you... How about that! A free trip to
The Public Service Commission
Secretary was stunned.
"They can't do that!" he
said.
"They did it."
"We must do something! God, it
must have been terrible. Having to lose your dog, and your cat!"
Listen," said the PSC Secretary
over the telephone. "I protested to the Governor General. They've posted
me up shit creek!"
"How would you like to join the
Nigerian Army?" asked the Senior Assistant Secretary. "It's a
sinecure! Someone up there loves you. The Chairman of the War Pensions Board is
going on leave. The job's yours."
"What's the catch?"
"No catch! You get his pay and
yours. Just turn up on Friday, sign a few vouchers and take the money... You
can have army rank. Be a colonel if you like."
"I'd rather use my own
rank," I suggested.
"Why not? What was your
rank?"
"The same as Lawrence of
Arabia's."
"Colonel? That's OK."
"No. Aircraftman First Class. He
was in the RAF too!"
"So you said 'no'," said
Carol in a resigned tone. "We could have used the money."
"So they make me an army
officer," I said. "One day it turns out I've signed some vouchers and
someone has made off with a pile of money. I get cashiered. Maybe I get jailed.
Maybe they let me off if I promise to be a good boy and keep my mouth
shut..."
"You're right," said Carol.
The Social Welfare Department looked
after juveniles in trouble and
"Is that Governor General fucking
mad?" asked the Nigerian social worker.
She was normally a very restrained and
dignified lady.
"If that Cook so much as touches
my kids, I'll cut his balls off," she said.
I knew how she felt.
"We've got to have a revolution,"
she said.
"Marx?" I queried.
"Rubbish," she replied.
"The women's revolution!"
"The Amazons?" I queried.
"If men are going to go on making
such a mess, we'll have to take over..."
"Could I help?"
"You'd only get in the way, Mr
Smith."
Strange as it may seem, Peter Cook and
his Government-approved ring of homosexual rapists were quite distinct and
disapproved of by those responsible and liberal homosexuals who followed normal
and quiet careers in commerce and teaching and other professions. To them his
activities were a public disgrace which brought all homosexuals into disrepute
and created an atmosphere of intolerance which would lead to persecution and
prosecution.
If this had not been true it would not
have been possible for Carol and me to have a good family friendship with men
and women who happened to have a homosexual interest. To us, as to most
liberal, educated people, it was of no possible concern to us what our friends'
sexual interests happened to be. One chooses friends because they are honest,
fair-minded, tolerant and responsible.
Francis Nwokedi certainly knew that
our family circle of friends included a homosexual of considerable talent,
because he seemed puzzled. Perhaps understandably he could not make the
distinction, one I got tired of making, between being a homosexual and abusing
one's position to pressurise young people into giving sexual favours. I had
made it quite clear to Peter Cook, and he certainly understood, that I had no
interest in his private life. I was, however, extremely concerned that he
should exploit youths who were seeking employment. I would have found his
behaviour equally obnoxious if it had been carried out with young girls as the
victims.
I was already aware that the Governor
General was taking a personal interest in my activities and my endeavour to
prevent a repetition of the events following my last attempt to leave the
Colonial Service. At the same time I knew a great deal about the election fraud
which the British Government was perpetrating. I had kept my friend at
Philip was an excellent raconteur and
retailer of funny stories about
Margery Perham was a close friend of
the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, and of many other prominent
personalities at the Colonial Office. It is not improbable, given also that I
was always candid and completely open to friends and colleagues about the
difficulties I was in, that Sir James Robertson knew my every move. And of
course, as Government routinely censored mail, tapped telephones and employed
informers, it would have been surprising had they not known every detail of my
life.
Even so, I was shocked when one of our
family friends told us of a conversation he had had with the Governor General
while having a private lunch at Government House.
"Your friend Smith is dabbling in
politics, and needs to be warned," said Sir James to my thoroughly alarmed
friend.
Sir James knew of his friendship with
Sean Smith? He must have wondered why he had been invited to have lunch at
Government House. A distinction enjoyed by few.
Our friend might have replied that I
was usually much too busy to have time for politics, and was in trouble because
I had resisted being embroiled in politics by Sir James himself.
"Just let him know," said
Sir James.
He was not just letting me know, of
course; he was embroiling a close family friend, who was not in the slightest
degree involved in my conflict with Sir James. As it happened my friend was an
Our friend was frightened. He was a
homosexual and homosexuality was something one could go to prison for in the
1950's. He was being threatened and used to put pressure on me. Given Sir
James's tolerance, if not active approval of Peter Cook's activities - he would
have had only to pick up a telephone to have had Cook despatched on the first
plane out of
What followed next was even more
intolerable. A police officer called on our friend at home and openly accused
him of being a homosexual. He did not demand anything from my friend, he just
wanted him to know that the Government knew about his private life. My friend
telephoned me and I gave him such reassurance as I could, knowing full well
that Government House was listening to my every word. I knew from my conversations
with colleagues in other branches of Government, who shared my incredulity at
the British Government's behaviour, that Sir James was not only frightened I
would go public on the election rigging, but perhaps also expose his tolerance
of Peter Cook's extra-mural activities. The Governor General had appeared to be
very interested in this matter. He would not have taken personal charge in this
affair otherwise.
I was not particularly happy with
Francis Nwokedi. I knew he was reporting on me to Government House and would do
whatever the Governor General ordered him to do. Francis had complained to me
about demands made on him by MI5 who saw reds behind every palm tree. At the
same time he did not see himself as a British stooge and was deeply offended when
he attended an ILO conference in
I was then invited to Government House
myself. It was only a garden party but it was not one for the lower ranks. Most
Heads of Department were there, but there were few Africans. It was either a
sick joke or another warning for me. The reception was to honour the Minister
of Finance, Chief Okotie Eboh. The Governor General knew that Okotie Eboh was a
crook, and I knew that he knew. Had he not warned him to be more circumspect!
The Governor General also knew that Okotie Eboh's name was a byword for
corruption. His notoriety was a talking point in
It was also true that Okotie Eboh knew
I was the expatriate officer who wanted his criminal behaviour stopped. And it
seemed that quite a few departmental top brass at that reception knew that I
was the Governor General's bête noire. As I passed through the gates of
Government House on to the lawn, there was a hush and I turned round thinking
the onlookers were staring and then turning their backs on someone behind me,
but I was alone. It was me they were turning away from. People I knew were
scuttling away, as well they might, for watching us from a raised dais were
Okotie Eboh and Sir James Robertson. Government top brass were peeling away on
either side as I walked slowly across the lawn.
Here was my friend, who had been
warned by Sir James. I greeted him and strode towards him.
"Keep away," he yelled.
"Sir James will see us!" and he ran away.
As if sensing that I was being
ostracised, which I most evidently was, the Postgates came forward and
ostentatiously took me by the arm and, under Sir James's steely gaze,
introduced me to some of their friends. At this point the Governor General
called for attention.
"I have the honour today,"
he announced, "to present a medal to the Minister of Finance, my good
friend, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh.."
"Festering Sam!" I heard an
onlooker murmur.
"...for his honesty and
integrity..."
Even the VIP's were stunned. There was
a silence and then, as the Governor General's aide began to clap his hands, a
most unwilling and perfunctory clapping of hands followed. This was too much
even for the thick-skinned British administrators.
'The bastard!' was a common expletive.
Presumably they meant Okotie Eboh.
'Insane! Nauseating! Disgusting!'
These were the whispered reactions as Sir James pinned a medal on Okotie Eboh's
voluminous robe.
My thoughts were of the young English
girl who had been one of the staff accompanying Okotie Eboh on one of his
missions abroad. On some pretext he had called to see her late at night and had
tried to rape her. The Governor General must have known of this young woman's
distress.
I thought of all the honest, decent,
young Nigerian people who were struggling out of poverty and, with the help of
the missionary schools and dedicated church people, trying to create a new
society, a new nation. They deserved better than this.
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
One of our delights, returning
from the
There were many decent British people
too. As we liked to stay at home with our daughters of an evening, we preferred
to see our friends for tea rather than organise dinner parties. And as we were
not drinkers, cocktail parties did not appeal either. We found a perfect
compromise. After the morning service we would greet friends outside the
Our young American friends whom we had
met wandering the back streets of
"Do you remember that young
American...?"
Peter Marris, who had come to
What with friends at Oxford like Neil
Smelser and Andy Hacker shortly to be professors, and Bola Onitiri who had
lodged with Carol's mother soon to be professor at Ibadan, and Michael Crowder
and Robin Horton - both more Nigerian than any Nigerian - it seemed nearly all
our friends would soon be university dons.
Michael Crowder was busy writing his
very popular history, 'The Story of Nigeria.' I hoped one day Michael would
tell the true story of the events leading up to Independence, although I
appreciated that he wanted to continue to live and work in Nigeria. Michael was
to write many more scholarly works before eventually being deported.
The various constitutional conferences
in London which led up to Independence were not as significant as they
appeared, because as I have already outlined, the elections were rigged and the
coalitions formed even before the 1959 Federal election results were known. One
Igbo academic supporter of Zik, Kalu Ezera, in a distinguished and scholarly
work, 'Constitutional Developments in
The hotels in
Any reader who is nauseated by this
account should direct his anger at
The flight of the British from Africa,
signalled by Mr Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech, was based on a realistic
conclusion that the days of British rule were numbered, but did the withdrawal
need to be so precipitate? Neither of the great fears which motivated Harold
Macmillan were borne out. The new
There is a record of Okotie Eboh on
the way back from a Constitutional Conference peddling the Colonial Office line
to his colleagues in the NCNC. Not all the party leaders were aware, as were
Zik and Okotie Eboh, of the fact that British firms were financing the NCNC and
that the British Government was actively participating in election rigging and
chicanery to ensure that the North with the assistance of the NCNC ruled
Okotie Eboh's ever growing wealth
allowed him to play an independent role in politics, even defying his own party
when necessary. He financed the NCNC and was probably more powerful than Zik.
When criticised in the House of Representatives in 1960 for his dubious
property deals, like selling the Department of Labour's trade testing headquarters,
a deal put through by British civil servants, he threatened to expose similar
deals in the Western Region. Okotie Eboh and some of his colleagues were more
at home with the British-backed NPC Northern leaders than they were with the
Igbo leaders of the NCNC. It has been suggested that, as an Itsikeri, Okotie
Eboh could not plunder the Eastern Region, so had to be given licence to
pillage the Federal Government. A licence from Sir James Robertson he exploited
to the full. To put such a crook in charge of the Ministry of Finance was so
unprincipled as to be beyond belief. It convinced me that on a personal level
Sir John MacPherson, the Head of the Colonial Office and former Governor
General, and Sir James Robertson, the Governor General, thought little of the
Nigerian people and cared nothing for democratic values.
The draft minutes of an ad hoc
committee meeting of NCNC ministers on board mv Apapa on 22 July 1957 are
revealing. Zik was present, as was Okotie Eboh. Both knew of the British
machinations. They now persuaded their colleagues. 'Experience has shown,' read
the account, 'that in a country of our own level of political and economic
evolution, open and emotional animosity towards expatriates is not only a most
expensive luxury but a great tactical error. Agreed that a policy of evident
fraternisation should now be pursued - with the national leader (Zik) giving
the lead. We should not only be friendly but should appear to be so. This
policy is to be applied officially and unofficially.' Sensible as this policy
might have been, it was hardly the fire eating talk which they were feeding to
their supporters back home, when they were posing as courageous nationalists,
throwing off the British yoke.
Zik, had, of course, been expelling
radicals from his party over many years. His remarkable inability to be at ease
with men of superior or even equal intelligence has been put down to his
temperament or some flaw in his character. His betrayal of the Biafran cause
when they began to lose was the final act in a long line of similar
inexplicable changes of course. The ghost in the works was of course the
British colonial regime and the control they exercised through their superb, if
totally unscrupulous intelligence network. The British held cards they never
even played; the threat to play them was sufficient. And neither were
individual Nigerians pure and virginal; they not only reported on each other
but, after the supposed
Anthony Enaharo, one of the Action
Group leaders to be persecuted and jailed while Zik was posturing as Governor
General and President of Nigeria, has stated that after the 1959 elections the
Action Group offered to join the NCNC in forming a coalition Government in
which Zik should be Prime Minister. The offer was rejected. 'Within the NCNC
there were powerful forces ...which opposed such an agreement' for reasons
which have never been fully disclosed.'
I can now say what those reasons were.
The NCNC had done a deal with the British to support those backward and
reactionary Northerners on whom various NCNC leaders had poured such ridicule
in the past. Zik would have to be satisfied with the empty post of Governor
General, then President, but was apparently persuaded that this was really the
Number One job. He would even be Commander-in-Chief and could wear the uniform
of a Field Marshal. If Zik thought he was to be the real head of the Nigerian
military forces he was to be soon disabused.
But why take the shadow or pretence of
power when he was being offered the prime ministership? The truth was that Zik
could not deliver his party to such an agreement. Okotie Eboh held the trump
cards. Zik and his great party were bankrupt and dependent on those great
British commercial interests he had attacked with such eloquence for so many
years to keep his party in existence. Okotie Eboh was the paymaster and on the
mv Apapa Zik was dancing to Okotie Eboh's and the British Government's tune.
Zik the progressive nationalist, Zik,
the great socialist and leader of his people to freedom, was a spent force, a
burnt out case. In this topsy turvy world of secret intelligence reports, MI5,
pimps, prostitutes, rape and murder presided over by the Colonial Office and
Harold Macmillan, it was not surprising that the Nigerian political leader of
great personal integrity and honesty - Awolowo - who based his party machine on
the Conservative Party and was a devout Christian and believer in British fair
play, would soon after Independence find himself not in the President's or
Prime Minister's office but rotting in a small prison cell.
It might be asked by what right a
supposedly civilised nation like
The new constitution for an
independent
It might be asked why Zik appeared to
collaborate in the machinations of the British. In 1959 his party, the NCNC,
and its ally, the NEPU, had won more popular votes than any other party, though
this was not reflected in the number of seats won. This in spite of the efforts
of the Northerners and the British administration to crush opposition. The
Hausa were marched through the polling booths by the Emir's men in the North.
The percentage voting figures would have been remarkable in a Western
democracy. In
The funding of the political parties
was the key not only to Nigerian elections but also to their results. The
British knew where every penny came from. If the British chose not to
investigate claims that the West were diverting six million pounds of official
funds from the Marketing Boards into the Action Group treasury, it was because
the NPC in the North was obviously also being financed by the Native
Treasuries. In the East the Foster-Sutton Tribunal into Zik's African
Continental Bank (ACB) found that it was insolvent. The principal use made of
the public deposits in the ACB was to finance Zik's various business ventures.
In 1955 the Eastern Region Finance Corporation invested large sums in the ACB,
money which had come from the Eastern Region Marketing Board. In turn Zik
financed his party, the NCNC. In 1955 the ACB and Zik's businesses were
virtually bankrupt. In 1959 the Development Board took over the ACB.
In 1956 we have seen how the British
Government opened a conduit which saved the NCNC from bankruptcy, but also
placed the NCNC in the hands of British commercial interests, who would later
expect their pound of flesh. The aim of the British Government was to force the
NCNC to co-operate in letting the North rule
The extent of British philanthropy, or
extortion, is revealed in the following figures. 'Between January 1957 and July
1960, that is in the period which included the Federal Election of 1959, the
NCNC had spent approximately £1,200,000. In the same period its income from all
sources had not exceeded £500,000.' Some £700,000 was not accounted for at all,
even if the rest of the accounts were in order. The position of the party would
have been worse had it not been able to draw on the credit of official
quasi-Government backed agencies such as the Eastern Region Development Board.
Much more than the £700,000 probably passed through Okotie Eboh's sticky
fingers. A great deal certainly ended up via the City of
Ministers' wives who were not in
possession of an official marriage certificate, but had large sums of hot money
deposited by their husbands in their names in bank accounts, now found it easy
to get their 'husbands' to walk up the aisle.
Peter Cook, my boss in the Labour
Department, knew all about the hot money. It was his business to know. It was
because he knew so much that he could afford to live so dangerously. Not that
he was a happy man. Strangely, because he hated, feared and despised me, I
became his confessor. He was sick with guilt, he wanted to die, he wanted to
become a Roman Catholic - the RC hierarchy in
Francis Nwokedi was Permanent
Secretary of the Ministry of Labour and as
"The job's yours, Sean,"
said Francis. "You can name your own salary."
"No thank you, Francis," I
said. "I'm going back to the
I was not going home with 'lumpers' or
a gratuity or a pension. I felt dirty, tainted, unclean. So why had I turned
down a job I would have loved? The National Provident Fund would have been, in
a phrase later to be made famous by Mrs Thatcher, safe in my hands.
Perhaps it was the qualification
Francis had added, "Of course, Sean, you would need help on staffing. I
would look after that for you."
I loved Francis too in my way, but we
had come to a parting of the ways.
The Governor General, His Excellency
Sir James Robertson, the representative of the Queen of
My boss at the Labour Department,
Peter Cook, had drawn up a timetable and arranged for the head driver and the
Department's Chevrolet station wagon to collect and deposit me at Government
House with fifteen minutes to spare. Punctuality was Peter's only conspicuous
virtue and it was nice to see it demonstrated on such an important occasion.
Peter had started his working life as a railwayman before getting into
industrial relations. Maybe he thought I would ignore the Governor General's
command and forget to turn up at the Governor General's seat of power,
Government House, which was set on the
As the Chevrolet approached the
racecourse the head driver pulled over on to the grass verge and informed me
that we were three minutes ahead of Peter Cook's schedule. A few yards away on
the racecourse a gang of convicts were chopping the grass with machetes. The
warder was wearing a crisp khaki uniform and swinging a wooden staff. The
warder's favourite trusty was keeping time by striking an iron bar with a metal
rod. The warder was bored; the trusty was watching the gang strike the grass to
his rhythm. None of the convicts looked up at the parked blue and white
Chevrolet and the white man in a light linen suit. Maybe the convicts did not
dare. Perhaps they were hoping one day to get the job of hitting the iron bar.
"These people go to jail for
years for stealing pennies, Mr Smith. The Minister of Labour, Okotie Eboh,
steals many thousands, and the Governor General gives him a medal for his
honesty."
"I was there," I said.
"It was a reception for VIP's. Not the sort of do a lowly Labour Officer
gets invited to usually. I think the Governor General was trying to tell me
something."
"The African staff have been
watching you for five years, Mr Smith. We know what you have tried to do. We
understand... we are grateful."
I thanked him for his kindness. For
five years I had greeted him and for five years he had ignored me and turned
his eyes away. I was trouble and he needed to keep his job.
We watched the convicts slash the
grass. It was still cool if you were wearing a light linen suit and sitting in
a Chevrolet with the windows down. It would soon get very hot and there was a
lot of grass on the racecourse. As the convicts slowly moved around the track
the grass would be growing fast behind them.
"The Governor General thinks you
are plenty trouble, Mr Smith ..." The head driver paused and grinned.
"What nobody knows is which trouble he is carpeting you for. You make
trouble about the workers the Spanish kill in Fernando Poo. You know too much
about Okotie Eboh and his crooked deals. You know about Mr Cook and his boy
friends..."
"No, it's not that. Not Mr Cook.
The Governor General's secretary has insisted that we do not discuss unsavoury
matters. I think he means Mr Cook, but I can't be sure."
"I would just love to be in there
listening, Mr Smith. The Governor General - no disrespect, sir - he doesn't see
just anybody."
His Excellency was indeed next to God
in
And it was this problem of democracy
that was bringing Sir James, the Queen's representative, the man entrusted with
the glorious and awesome responsibility of planting democracy in Africa's
largest state, to see the Labour Officer for
One of us was carrying the flag for
the great principle of British democracy developed over the centuries together
with our parliamentary system and the concepts of fair play and the rule of
law, and it was not Sir James. Sir James Robertson in my view had
gerrymandered, cheated, perverted and, by his machinations, perpetrated one of
the most ghastly acts of infamy in British colonial history.
The head driver turned away from
watching the convicts. The zing of the metal rod was hypnotic. He started the
car and pulled on to the road.
"We mustn't keep His Excellency
waiting, Mr Smith," he said.
He was not smiling now.
Despite his weight of seventeen stones
and being sixty years of age, Sir James Robertson, KCMG, the Governor General
of
Sir James had all the cards. He was
the Governor General and he had a whole hierarchy of staff who could have sat
on a rebellious Labour Officer. But he had asked to see me and he had embargoed
any discussion of Peter Cook, the homosexual rapist. It did cross my mind to
wonder why.
As soon as Sir James spoke, he made a
tactical error. Perhaps because I appeared to be so thin and weak he decided to
bully me. Sir Hugh Foot had said of his old friend Sir James, that by the
warmth and sympathy and joviality of his personality he had taken all
When Carol heard this she laughed and
said, "Sean used to hang around the magazine counter in Kingsway Stores to
see who bought the other copy!"
Although I had made this wisecrack, I
had actually long given up judging character by a person's politics, let alone
his reading habits. I am sure I reminded Michael that Sir James knew how to
impress him; he was not a fool. Sir James was a Balliol man and
"You may be under a
misapprehension, Smith," said Sir James forcefully. "I want you to
know that I personally gave the orders regarding the elections to which you
objected. They were necessary."
"But illegal, sir," I
riposted.
I was told I was impertinent. The
overseas Civil Service was like the Army. If you disobeyed orders the highest penalty
could be demanded. This was simply not true. The Public Service Commission had
been designed to protect civil servants from political pressure. As if sensing
how spurious this was, Sir James tried a different tack.
"Look here, Smith," he
pleaded. "Be reasonable. Your work has been brilliant and outstanding. If
you will keep your mouth shut I can promise rapid promotion and a most
distinguished career elsewhere in Government service overseas." (I was not
to be allowed to work in the
At that moment I almost agreed with
him. I suddenly realised that he was just as much a part of this squalid mess
as Bunker or Beck or I had been. Then he rounded on me furiously with threats.
"You will never work in the
I said, "It was very kind of you
to see me, sir. My position is unchanged. I cannot carry out unlawful
orders." As I said, "Good-bye, sir," he turned away.
He was very angry. Oddly enough I felt
sorry for him.
It was reported to me from a high
level that African Ministers saw me as a threat. My life was in danger. I
should get away from
I boarded the plane for
My companion was the senior Resident
in the Western Region and only a step or two junior to the Governor General. It
seemed he was the former pupil my tutor Harry Weldon at Magdalen had spoken to
me about when I had mentioned that I was going out to
"I've heard of you, Smithy,"
my companion said. "You're the chap who keeps churning out papers from the
Labour Department. I've heard about your Factories Act and the Provident Fund
Scheme. Why don't you come and work for me as my PA? We'd get on fine
together."
"That would be great," I
replied. "But I have problems; there was a lot of corruption in the Labour
Department."
"I've got the same problems. I've
got a safe in my room full of incriminating documents..."
I changed the subject to give me a
chance to think. I did not want to get him into trouble with Sir James
Robertson. I asked why he was going to
"I'm pissing blood, old
man," he replied. "How are you?"
I told him I had lost five stone in
weight over the past year. I was down to seven stones and my clothes hung on
me. I knew my gut was a mess and everything tasted metallic. It would have been
too melodramatic to confide in him my fear that I was being poisoned.
"I can't work for you," I
said quickly. "I'm in trouble with the Governor General."
"Jesus!" said my companion,
and we did not speak again.
I felt very sad. I liked him a lot. We
had much in common and it was a remarkable coincidence that two Magdalen men,
separated by many years, should both have gone to
When the plane arrived in
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
Carol had found us a small
terraced house in North London and when we had unpacked our loads from
One day while I was painting doors,
the telephone rang. Francis Nwokedi was in
I made a full statement to Justice,
the British branch of the International Council of Jurists. I was cross
examined by Sir John Foster, QC, who pronounced himself satisfied that I was
speaking the truth. A good friend put me on to a relative who was a prominent
City solicitor. I was not hopeful of taking legal action against the Crown. For
one thing I had no money and I was unemployed. While in
"Get a good lawyer," was his
advice.
My good lawyer said I had an excellent
case but we would need a first class QC and we simply could not afford one. We
were broke. There was another alternative. Only the previous evening the lawyer
had sat down to dinner with Julian Amery, the MP and son-in-law of the Prime
Minister. Amery was also Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Colonial
Office. My lawyer got in touch with Julian Amery who could not understand what
was supposed to be going on in his Department.
"The Colonial Office have told
Amery you must be mad," said my lawyer. "They say you never worked
for Government in
I informed my lawyer that at that very
time the Governor General was frantically sending me offers through Miss Perham
at
Now the Colonial Office changed its
story. Of course I had worked for them. Unfortunately all my papers had been
destroyed in a fire. Of course this was a lie. The weeks passed, and I was
about to contact Julian Amery again when I heard he had been moved from the
Colonial Office. He had been promoted to Secretary of State for Air by his
father-in-law. I felt that particular channel was now closed.
I contacted the Labour MP for
The CIA people in
Big Bill Donovan, the CIA godfather,
had recently died. One of my friends in
"Not very long in
I had a contact with the High
Commissioner for
My new problem was my health which was
continuing to deteriorate. The doctors were unhelpful but, instead of saying
that they did not know what was wrong and referring me to the Hospital for
Tropical Diseases where sprue might have been instantly recognised, they said
nothing was wrong and therefore there was no point in getting more skilled
advice. Over the years I was to meet other ex-colonials from
For a few weeks, I held down a job at
the Holloway Employment Exchange as a counter clerk. The Queen and the Duke of
Edinburgh were due to make an official visit as the exchange service was
approaching its 50th anniversary. All the staff were to be presented to the
Queen in order of length of service, except me. I was the new boy so would be
working on the counter. One of the managers' wives stood in for the Queen at a
rehearsal and everything went well. On the day, everyone was in line including
wives who wore hats and gloves. The Queen dutifully started shaking hands with
the most senior staff but the Duke got bored and spying me on the counter
bowled over.
"You seem to be the only one
doing any work," he said cheerfully.
While the staff glowered, the
journalists and photographers took photographs and film of the new boy with the
Duke. A West Indian pushed forward with a long poem he had written in honour of
the Queen. He started to read.
"God
bless our Queen
And Empress of Light.
To us, her subjects
She gives great delight."
"Recite a few more stanzas,"
ordered the Times man who was dressed in an undertaker's suit.
"Are you a foreigner?" the
black man asked.
"Kind of, he's from 'The
Times'," said the Mirror man. "Read him a few more lines."
As the Times man put together his
fountain pen, the West Indian poet pressed on.
"Very nice," said the Duke
and turning muttered, "What a load of bollocks," but I probably
misheard.
I had no resistance to infection and a
cold turned to influenza and worse. I felt as if I was dying. One doctor gave
me tranquillisers, another gave me pep-up pills I was up and down like a yo-yo.
Then suddenly I was floating on the ceiling and out of the house. The light was
magnificent. I had gone down a long dark tunnel. As I soared into the heavens,
I saw the world of continents and oceans far below. Loved ones who had died
were waiting to greet me and the joy was incredible. All the knowledge of the
universe was now mine as if contained in one heavenly library. The depression
and unhappiness which I had buried and refused to allow to surface were wiped
away I was pure, clean, reborn. Except that I wanted to stay up there. But it
was not to be. I was told I had to return. There was work for me to do.
I returned and saw my body sprawled on
the bed as if in agony with my face contorted. It was awful and then I was
inside my body and I was alive again. Recovery was slow, but I knew I had to
stop fighting. My African struggle was over. If I wanted to survive I had to
accept a low key life. I now had no fear of death and somehow I had trust that
I would be protected.
Carol had begun to teach and I stayed
at home. We let rooms to pregnant teenagers and helping others in trouble
brought us joy and happiness. Our own problems shrank to insignificance.
On 1 October 1960 Africa's largest
and, after
When Harold Macmillan visited
"With a lot of help from your
friends," would have been an appropriate retort.
The British High Commissioner in
The Deputy High Commissioner was
another strong link in the chain. Sir David Hunt had been in charge of the
African desk in
At the
The political future of
A defence agreement had been arranged
before
Lord Head, the British High
Commissioner, had of course been a Conservative politician. He had also been a
professional soldier, then Secretary of State for War and Minister of Defence.
Sir David Hunt in his account of this affair states that it was the Nigerians
who wanted the defence pact because they feared an attack by Dr Nkrumah of
It will be recalled that the trail of
powder which led to the keg which was to blow
Macmillan's integrity was also
questioned regarding the forced repatriation of Cossacks to the
Harold Macmillan, in rushing
To some extent of course
However, other elites could have been
drawn on in
From my experience with Okotie Eboh it
seemed that the British Government wanted to hand over power to a corrupt group
of politicians. Perhaps corruption was seen as the speedy way to create a
conservative middle class which would be sound, stable, and most important
anti-Communist. If this is the case the dotty capitalists' ideologues and the
communist theoreticians come together, for it is the Marxist theory too that a
corrupt middle class is needed before a proletarian revolution can take place.
I once met a corrupt communist businessman, who defended his dishonesty by
claiming he was undermining
Our small house was soon bursting with
pregnant teenagers. I would remind the social work agencies that it was a man
who was at home looking after these girls, but the social workers assured me
that their girls were quite safe with me. Of course we would not have missed
the experience of knowing and helping all those young girls and their babies.
Even if we were crowded, the exhortation to take just one more teenager might
be resisted over the telephone, but who could turn away a pregnant girl on the
doorstep with a battered suitcase? It crossed my mind to call our home 'The
Jampot' because all our girls were in a jam. My position was not too good
either. Even if I could have got a job, my health was appalling. I had not got
the energy to go to work. It was an achievement often to get through the day
and survive.
Our girls were not immoral or anything
unusual. They were just pregnant. The pregnancy might have been inconvenient
but in the early l960s that was most often the rule. Smarter girls might have
used contraceptives or arranged abortions. Perhaps some of our girls had tried
both, but it seemed some had very odd ideas about contraception and we heard
very weird ideas on abortion. Some of our girls seemed to think that because
they had their eyes shut, IT could not be happening to them. Of course IT was
happening and as a consequence they became our guests.
The only thing to be said about the
half hearted attempts at abortion we heard and laughed about, for some were
incredibly funny, was that they all failed. One girl had wrestled with a
massive block of carbolic soap in the bath and decided after much struggling
that she was anatomically small. She had, fortunately for her and her baby,
misheard the instructions.
It may seem strange that our house was
full of laughter; maybe it was because the girls were safe that there was a
great sense of relief. Strangely with but one exception, all our young ladies
(a couple of whom were only fourteen) produced healthy girl babies.
I did not worry too much about my
status. I was delighted to be at home with my two young daughters. I was close
to them as they grew up. That was a joy I would not have missed for anything. I
was not self-conscious about turning up at the school gates with all the mums.
Was I staying at home because I was unemployable or too ill or to look after my
daughters or to look after our pregnant girls? Friends found it awkward. I was
introduced for the last time as a Poet. It seemed I had to have a title.
Everybody, particularly men, have to be something. That is how men judge you.
If unemployed or chronically ill, you are nothing to most men except perhaps as
an object of pity which is the last thing you need. My advice to anyone in this
fix is to be a Writer, or a Researcher, or a Student or a Social Worker.
Anything in fact. Not only do other people feel better, but they might offer
you jobs. Few people without jobs or an occupation can get jobs. Also you feel
better. Become a Social Worker, not just a helper with meals on wheels. Working
at home gives you status, and to your surprise you may find men envying you for
having escaped the rat race. As a Student you do not feel ill at ease in the
libraries, they belong to you. Sign up for a course if you do not feel
legitimate enough. Give yourself status!
As for being poor, I have always found
that people do not really believe it. They tend to think if you can afford not
to work - they do not see you when you are ill - you are probably quite well
off. Leisure, even if it is compulsory, can be enjoyed if you have the right
frame of mind and work at being cheerful and confident. It is by no means easy,
and there can be awful depression, but it need not all be awful gloom,
especially if you have the godsend of a loving spouse.
It is ironic that having gone to
It seems I was reduced to the African
level for Dr Robert Collis in his excellent book, 'A Doctor's Nigeria' makes
the point that the reason Africans appeared lazy and sleepy to some Europeans
was that the majority of them were only partially healthy, being continually
assaulted by non-lethal attacks of fever and harbouring numerous parasites
which infect the bowel and share with their hosts an inadequate diet.
Similarly, most of the children who
died so tragically young in
By 1971 when I was in a critical state
following coronary episodes, I was also covered with weeping blisters.
Fortunately for me, Dr Lionel Fry at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington made the
breakthrough discovery which confirmed that this skin condition was a
complication of coeliac sprue. I had survived long enough to benefit from a
major advance in medical science. Up to that time dermatitis herpetiformis had
been treated with dapsone which also suppresses lesions in leprosy. In
centuries past the two conditions had been confused. It was as well the gluten
free diet had been discovered for I could not tolerate dapsone or other sulpha
drugs. They left me a burnt out case - a term applied to lepers following
dapsone treatment.
A wasting gut was the main feature of
coeliac sprue and dermatitis herpetiformis which was to some extent restored by
a gluten free diet. However, I was to find that large doses of the B vitamins
as in brewers' yeast were also essential. Later, as I experimented on myself, I
was to find I could clear a number of other heart, bone and muscle problems
with particular vitamins and minerals. The parallel with those suffering
children in
When I returned to
"Mr Burgess will be delighted to
know you are here," said Mrs Burgess. "But he is nearly blind."
What sadness and relief I felt! I went
up close and Mr Burgess greeted me warmly. We reminisced about delivering milk
in wartime in the early hours with air raids taking place and shrapnel falling
around us. I explained that I had gone to Africa after leaving
"We have such good news,
Harold," said Mrs Burgess. "The Chapel has been supporting a missionary
in
I looked at the shining face of Mrs
Burgess and wanted to weep. I had tried to help that missionary too and those
workers. I felt I had completed a mission and fulfilled a promise too.
Recently I returned to Barlow Hall
Farm. The buildings have been razed to the ground and huge gravel pits have
been dug out of the fields. Even the cobbles of the farmyard have been taken
away. It was not all loss however. A lido and small country park have been
established and where only a few of us had enjoyed the secret places of the
farm and countryside, thousands are now able to walk and sail. It is
nevertheless a very traumatic experience to return to one's boyhood haunts,
particularly when they have changed so dramatically.
I went to
"I'm still in
Philip mentioned that he had told my
story to Margery Perham, the colonial expert at Nuffield.
"She was stunned," said
Philip.
Her friend, the Governor General would
be in
When I next heard from Philip, Miss
Perham was talking realpolitik. Was I prepared to do a deal? If I was, there
were golden opportunities on offer, if I would keep my mouth shut.
Philip Williams was a friend of
Anthony Crosland and knew the Labour leaders, Hugh Dalton and Hugh Gaitskell,
but never offered to take my story to them. Maybe he had and they did not want
to know. Some Labour people thought all white colonials bad and all Africans
good. And most of them knew little of African history and geography.
Conservatives seemed to be better informed and to take a moral stance. The
criterion used by the upwardly mobile careerists was simply how they would have
exploited the situation for personal gain.
Perhaps Philip was disappointed that I
would not join the Gaitskell camp. I would defend Nye Bevan and Harold Wilson
from the charge of being irresponsible left-wingers. 'Nye Bevan gave us the
health service,' I would argue, 'and
To mollify Philip I would say,
"My brain's with you, Philip, but my heart's with Bevan."
Perhaps it truly was instinct. Bevan
and Wilson were the kind of Methodist Chapel people I admired. Hugh Gaitskell
was like a
Margery Perham was quite a powerful
figure at
There was nothing obviously wrong with
those election studies. They were conscientiously carried out and provided much
useful information. The lone researchers had an awe-inspiring task and a much
larger team was really needed. The researchers were honest and thorough and
went on to academic posts in
No study was carried out of the
Northern Region elections of November 1956. No reason was given but it was
noted that 'this leaves an important gap in our picture of Nigerian politics at
a critical stage of its development.'
The North had plenty to hide. The
harassment of opposition candidates was disgraceful. No confidence could be
placed in the count at such elections when this kind of conduct was tolerated.
Women were not allowed to vote in the North. Voting registration was voluntary
in the East and West, but in the North tax rolls were used to ensure maximum
voting. In the crucial 1959 General Election voting in a backward, largely
illiterate, desolate Region the size of
The whole of the proof of the
legitimacy of the transfer of power in
Ken Post who carried out the 1959
election study concluded, 'And so in 1960
However, what was beyond doubt was
that, fair or foul, the outcome of the 1959 General Election was to have the
most decisive effect on Nigerian history. Post added that this election was in
a sense 'the last great act of the British Raj.' In fact, as we have seen, it
was the last great treacherous act of the British Raj because what was missing
was the one great essential condition for the holding of free elections, an
honest, competent non-partisan administration to run those elections. The
condition is the one laid down by Professor W.J.M. Mackenzie in his book, 'Free
Elections.'
Even Post acknowledged 'the many
different ways in which the campaigns of certain parties were hampered in the
North.' The North may have got away with it, but the memory left a very bitter
legacy. Not content with a very questionable election result, the
Northern-dominated Federal Government, fully aware of the doubtful legality of
its regime and perhaps fearing the prospect of future elections when the
British would not be around to render assistance, set out to destroy Awolowo
and the official opposition.
In the treason trials of 1962 the
prosecution based its rather shaky case on the thesis that Awolowo had lost
faith in the ballot box as a result of his experiences in the North in the 1959
General Election. The truth was that Awolowo knew too much and had reason to
fear further unconstitutional action by his enemies in Government. He was to be
proved absolutely right. The Government was indeed planning the brutal
suppression of his party. Awolowo was preparing for that contingency.
One final point on this crucial 1959
General Election. Sir James Robertson, the Governor General, had come to
There was little more I could do. I
published a letter in the Observer regarding the awful treatment of Nigerian
workers in Spanish Fernando Poo. Later during the
Return to
Autobiography Chapter List
Chapter Fourteen
On 1 October 1960, the day
'There are no acts of treachery more
deeply concealed than those which lie under the pretence of duty or under some
profession of necessity.'
And Livy adds, 'Treachery, though at
first very cautious, in the end betrays itself.' But not if that once great
newspaper, the Guardian, has anything to do with it, for over many years they
refused to publish the story of the British Government's treacherous betrayal
of democracy in
He said, 'Time will not permit the
individual mention of all those friends, many of them Nigerian, whose selfless
labours have contributed to our
The sordid alliance between the North
and the East which was the result of considerable effort by the British
Government was to be referred to by Sir David Hunt, the Deputy High
Commissioner, after it had come unstuck as a state of 'happy stability.' My old
friend and colleague Francis Nwokedi was head of the Ministry for Foreign
Affairs and working closely with his British counterparts. Francis was trusted
and regarded as a good friend of
Sir David Hunt had more than a passing
acquaintance with the British Government's machinations before
Awolowo was not stupid. He had seen
the behaviour of the British administration during elections in the North, and
he knew who was behind the pact between the North and the East. Nevertheless in
1961 he made contact with elements of the NCNC in the East to try and break the
stranglehold which the North had over the Federal Government. This move came to
nothing but may have alarmed the ruling clique who already feared him. It has
been suggested that Awolowo's success as an Opposition leader in the first year
of Independence and his popularity throughout Nigeria gave the Northern/Eastern
coalition no alternative but to counter attack and adopt some highly questionable
tactics. Akintola, Awolowo's lieutenant, was persuaded that he could lead the
West and join the coalition. Rich rewards were on offer. Following stage
managed disturbances in the Western Parliament, the Federal Government
intervened and, following a judicial enquiry, Awolowo was sentenced to ten
years in jail for treason.
As the legitimacy of the Federal
Government was highly dubious, since they had been the willing beneficiaries of
British treachery, it was ironic that those politicians should have thrown in
jail a political leader whose belief in democracy was without question and
whose personal probity was never doubted. Awolowo most certainly did anticipate
that his enemies were intent on destroying him and his Party and made plans for
defensive measures. A train of events had been set in motion which was to lead
to near anarchy and civil war. Sir David Hunt and the British were friendly, as
he admitted later, with Igbos like Nwokedi who occupied the best places in the
public service.
'They might be ruling
The British had not complained when
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Nwokedi as its Permanent Secretary had
given the Russians a very hard time when they wanted to establish diplomatic
relations. Francis had probably not forgotten being snubbed by the Russians
when he attended an ILO Conference in
This anti-Communist activity was not a
marginal interest for the British, though it often seemed totally irrelevant
and farcical to Nigerians, but central to and almost the driving force of
British policy in
The massive power of the North rested
on the census figures produced by British officials in the early 1950's. All
attempts to confirm those census figures since have proved a failure and this
has become the most bitterly contested issue in Nigerian politics. After the
census in 1962 it was found that the Northern Region no longer had a numerical
majority over the rest of the country combined. The NPC leaders found these
results unacceptable and cancelled the results. The 1962 census returns were
never officially published. In a fresh census in 1963 the North improved on its
1962 figures. If Southerners had thought that the new figures would end the
North's absolute majority they were to be bitterly disappointed. It was little
wonder that Awolowo commented bitterly that for himself and his party 'the
twilight of democracy and the rule of law in
The role of the Federal Government and
its dubious politicians in destabilising the Western Region Government and
jailing the Action Group leader, Awolowo, began to alienate the majority of the
educated elite. Another factor was the failure of the Government to pursue a
vigorous anti-colonialist foreign policy. Because democracy failed in
The military coup led by the six young
majors in 1966 was greeted with rapturous support by the Nigerian masses. They
were not seeking to destroy democracy but were affirming their belief in it.
Democracy had been a force in
This was the first Commonwealth
Conference to be held outside
The British did not plan the military
coup of 1966. They simply made it inevitable. And they signed Sir Abubakar
Tafawa Balewa's death warrant. Balewa had never wanted the British to leave. In
March 1947 he had warned those who wanted the British to leave, that if the British
withdrew, the Hausas would carry their conquest to the sea. By all accounts
Balewa was a gentleman and he endeavoured to serve
The six majors were seen by Nigerians
initially as public benefactors. But when it was realised that no Igbo
politician had been executed (and were not most of the majors Igbos?) the coup
began to appear like an Igbo plot, although this seems unlikely. If only Zik or
other Igbo politicians had shared Balewa's fate, hundreds of thousands of Igbo
lives might have been saved. The Sardauna of Sokoto, the leader of the North,
had been executed with Balewa. Akintola, the Western leader, had been gunned
down. Okotie Eboh had almost been overlooked sitting in a military truck, but
was recognised and shot. Early reports, which were inaccurate, said that he had
been castrated and cut to pieces because of his bestiality to the youth of
A martial law decree by Major Nzeogwu
broadcast from the North by Radio Kaduna on 15th January 1966 included
homosexuality in the list of offences punishable by the death sentence. Why
this illiberal and draconian measure should have featured in the first aims of
the young soldiers was not explained. Although the coup was abortive and was
taken over by General Ironsi, the majors had destroyed the totally discredited
Ironsi wanted an end to regionalism.
He appointed Nwokedi to be Commissioner on Administrative Unification. As Igbos
like Nwokedi already occupied many of the top civil service jobs, this appeared
to Northerners as an attempt to dominate them. Nwokedi was to report as a
one-man commission of enquiry on the 'establishment of an administrative
machinery for a united
He was extremely intelligent and
capable but could also be mischievous. Francis was always being judged by the
very highest standards because he was enormously talented. Perhaps his critics
expected too much of him. His cheerful demeanour and tendency to fits of
laughter indicated that he did not take himself too seriously. His friends
persuaded themselves that he was totally dependable and would do what they
expected. Then they felt let down when they found he was playing a game of his
own. Francis had not risen to the very top of the colonial regime by being
independent, difficult or awkward. He always appeared extremely agreeable to
his masters, and was a consummate artist in the use of flattery to achieve his
purposes. Those who thought they were using Francis were in for a surprise for
they were the ones who were being used. The curt dismissal would come as a
shock. Gone was the friendly grin. In its place was a glacial stare. The Igbo
elite had been propping up the Northern rulers of
My own feeling, if I had been a
Northerner, would have been one of alarm. The Eastern elite had joined with the
North in British-inspired election skulduggery in 1959. They had worked
together to settle old scores with Awolowo and the Action Group in the West,
and at that very moment Awolowo was serving a ten-year prison sentence. The
Ironsi/Nwokedi team was not proposing to set Awolowo free. The Northerners had
reason to fear the new Igbo initiative. It seemed as if the Igbos were going to
settle some old scores with the North.
The furore which greeted news of
Nwokedi's appointment caused Ironsi to have second thoughts and to appoint
someone - a non-Igbo - to serve with him. It made little difference. Francis
travelled widely throughout
Ironsi/Nwokedi wanted a strong and
unified
As for Awolowo, he had been plotted
against by the British and the Northern and Eastern political elite and was in
jail. As it turned out, the shedding of blood had only just started and his
enemies had done Awolowo a great service. He was safe and, being locked up, he
did not become tainted with the deadly corruption and machinations of the other
politicians.
Ironsi/Nwokedi abolished the
Federation and the Regions. The various civil services were to be united and
run from
General Gowon emerged as the new
national leader, but it was too late to stop the indiscriminate slaughter of
Ibo officers and men and civilians by Northern soldiers and civilians. Igbos
fled back to the East accompanied by Nwokedi and the Igbo elite politicians and
civil servants.
Some anti-Ibo riots in the North had
occurred in May 1966 before Ironsi's death and both Ironsi and Eastern
newspapers had tried to implicate the British High Commissioner, Sir Francis
Cummings-Bruce, because he had been touring in the North for several weeks. The
High Commissioner strongly denied any involvement. He was later to plead with
General Gowon to pull the country together and, along with the
The horrible atrocities committed
against many thousands of Ibos in the North and elsewhere did not attract much
sympathy outside the East. The reaction noted by John De St Jorre was one I was
to hear in
The Eastern Treasury was taken over
and Francis Nwokedi was despatched by Colonel Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, to
travel abroad buying arms. Francis was an extremely efficient and highly experienced
former head of the Foreign Service so that what purportedly happened seems
extraordinary. It appears that very few arms were obtained for the very large
sums of money taken out of
The Nigerian Government responded by
cancelling Nwokedi's passport and belatedly trying to stop the flow of currency
from the East. Francis had once been the dutiful advisor to the British, and
then after
From the start I judged the Biafran
venture totally ill conceived and doomed to failure. If it had worked, perhaps
the commentators would have been less critical of Francis Nwokedi and his role
in the colossal tragedy which followed. For myself, I was less interested in
the personalities than in the conditions which allowed them to flourish.
Francis Nwokedi was made by the British; he was their creature and they were
responsible for him and the terrible tragedy in which he played a central role.
There was near panic in
Dutifully the Russians arrived in
Awolowo, released from jail, became
Minister of Finance. It was a miracle, but an honest and dedicated politician
had been found to fill the post which Okotie Eboh had exploited to the point of
destroying
And Doctor Azikiwe? To the disgust of
the Igbo people he had changed sides in September 1969 when it was obvious that
their battle was lost.
Francis Nwokedi reappeared in
As Ruth First was to write later,
coup, counter coup, civilian massacre and war - was there ever anywhere else so
rapid and gruesome a sequence?
The Nigerian Civil War was on a scale
with the American Civil War in the last century and the Spanish Civil War in
this. Estimates of the number of those who died were between half a million and
one million. John De St Jorre's figure for those who were killed was 600,000.
In victory General Gowon and the
federal forces behaved with great magnanimity to the defeated Ibo. Every effort
was made to rehabilitate individual Igbos and to rebuild the East and
reintegrate the Region into the Republic. This was perhaps the only good thing
to come out of this disastrous civil war.
Return to Autobiography
Chapter List
Chapter Fifteen
I began work on these memoirs by
collecting all the books which have been written by academics and politicians
and journalists on the transfer of power in
One day Lulu accompanied me into
We began to note some very strange
happenings on our telephone. We assumed the cause was a branch (just an
ordinary branch, not a special branch) touching the line; then we noticed that
they occurred at exactly the same time each day. I consulted a retired GPO
engineer who examined my telephone and he was very perplexed.
"You have some unusual wiring in
that 'phone," he informed me.
Surely Mrs Thatcher had not decided
that I was a Russian spy or some kind of threat to our democracy? I was defending
democracy in
As a first measure I decided to return
my telephone to the British Telecom shop at Debenham's department store in
Had I placed that multipoint adapter
in that socket on the wall? The adapter had obviously been interfered with and
a rough hole had been bored inside it. And was our mail being opened? It
appeared so. Could it be that we were meant to know that I was under
surveillance? I was reluctant to inform my wife but we have no secrets and she
quickly became suspicious and then, I am afraid, greatly distressed. This was
not surveillance but harassment. The hurt was deliberate. We were finally
convinced when a farmer friend made it clear that the police were very
interested in my activities. It seemed there was great interest in some memoirs
I was writing! But I had told no one I was engaged in such a work... except Mrs
Thatcher.