Walking in the Shade by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Round about that time, I went to some meetings of the Movement for Colonial Freedom, Fenner Brockway’s creation. They were always held in a big room in the nether regions of the House of Commons. The twenty or so people might include future prime ministers and presidents who either had just emerged from British prisons in their respective countries or were about to disappear into prison. I did indeed find democracy in practice likeable. These meetings, which hastened, or marked, the disintegration of the British Empire, went like this. There was a long agenda, a list of the names of the British colonies or protectorates in various stages of unrest: Cyprus, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, British Guyana…and so on. Barbara Castle came down from above for these meetings: a most efficient and impressive woman she was. The names of the various countries were read out, and a report was given by someone on what was going on. Northern Rhodesia? Unrest. Riots. Stone throwing. Strikes on the Copper Belt. Harry Nkumbula and Kenneth Kaunda imprisoned. Nyasaland? Unrest, strikes, stone throwing, riots…and so on. But when it came to Southern Rhodesia, it was simply passed over. Nothing to be said about it. I asked why and was told that as Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing colony, Britain had no say in what went on. I really could hardly believe my ears. I said that Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing colony in 1924, but with two reserved clauses. One was Defence. The other was Native Policy. At any time since 1924, Britain had had the right to step in and protect the black population, forbid the passing of legislation, always copied from South Africa. Britain had never done this, not once. It was not too late. The blacks of Southern Rhodesia loathed the idea of Federation, and Britain had the right to intervene.

Nothing came of my remarks. I was looking at the polite, armoured faces of people who ‘didn’t want to know’. Britain had never said no to the whites of Southern Rhodesia, and clearly it was being judged, in that room, as too late to start now.

This was a traumatic experience, painful. I had come to terms with the fact that when the colonies were being discussed, the House of Commons was always empty. No one was interested except the people in this room, who were known everywhere as defenders of freedom for the colonies and freedom inside colonies. These were the people who surely should have known that Britain had a responsibility to the Southern Rhodesian blacks. And now, reminded, they did not care. To them it was irrelevant. I was remembering how often I had been with Charles Mzingele and his friends, hearing them say, ‘And when our brothers in England know how we are being treated, then they will support us.’ The ‘brothers’ here…but this was a complicated concept. The ‘brothers’ did include the trade-union idea of brotherhood and, too, the brotherhood of the labour movement; there was all kinds

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