CHINESE ON THE RAND.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2041, 28 March 1907, Page 4

CHINESE ON THE RAND.

Tho decision of the Transvaal Government' to re-enact the Labor Importation Ordinance.places the BritishGovernment in an awkward predicament in view of the emphatic opinions which Sir Henry Campbell-Ban-nerman and liis colleagnes have expressed at different times on the question of tho Chinese on the Rand. Sir Henry himself described them as “bondsmen under degrading condiions” (March 21, 1904) and their labor as “servile” (eloction address). He also told Mr.• Mackarness that ho could not “under any circumstances” bo a party to “slavery under the British flag” (July 31, 1905). Mr. John -Burns, President of the Local Government Board, was still more emphatic when he spoke of “slavery naked and unabashed” (May 27, 1904), when ho wrote, “enslaved, indentured, abomnuibly treated” (election address),’ w ion U 0 said, “the late Government' soUlie- £3O0 ’ 00 °’° 00 and Idllcd 20,000 (Jnnmf,. ons bive Chinese laborers” spoke o'! .««’ tlpyti George slavery” tantamount to “poor CbiuamT’' l 6 ’- 190G) ’ hlul pounds” (January shS 111 COm_ Lougli said, “Th e Chhmsc o'r keeps men in slavery” v t Uu hnance 1906) ; Lord Spencer ref<^ 1 } Uary 12 > as “confined in cages” 1904); This was before tl lo /pji. * 18, by Mr. Winston Churchill of ° v “p 7 “terminological iiiactitude” of word “slavery" (February 22, ItJOG) It was Mr. Winston Churchill w ] lo said (October 14, 1,905) that should a Liberal majority result from the next; election “the .importation of .Chinamen into South Africa would cease, and that meant that within three years the whole of the yellow coolies employed on the Rand would be repatriated to their own country.” During tho past 12 months it has been lei t to the unofficial members of tho Liberal party to call for the repatriation of tho Chinese. In Juno, 1906, 166 Liberal and Labor members petitioned the Government to slop further importations of Chinese. With the revelations of tho Bucknill report in November, the Government tried to pluck up sufficient courage to repeat its bold statements aboutridding the Rand of Chinese. Lord Elgin said that tho report strengthened tho view that “the permanent adoption of the system would be impossible.” Mr. Winston Churchill asked the House of Commons whether tho Liberal and Labor parties had not “for two or three years been inveighing against Chinese labor.” This statement was olieered by a House which had just applauded Mr. Lehmann’s wish that it were possible to repatriate 53,000 men at once, and liis belief that “a beginning could be made and could be continued until we had cleared the soil of South •Africa of the taint- that had been set upon it.” What will Sir Henry and his Ministers say and do now?