A WAY OF LIFE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 890, 24 August 1956, Page 12

A WAY OF LIFE

KENYA’S OPPORTUNITY, Memories, Hopes and Ideas, by Lord Altrincham; Faber and Faber, English price 25/-. T has been said that intelligent, civilised conservatism is the most original British contribution to Western political experience. It is the choice fruit of the public schools and the ancient Universities; it has administered India, governed the Colonial Empire, and made of sport a health-giving fetish for diverse peoples. It has kept British politics supple and courteous, illuminated The Times and found an eloquent voice in that admirable quarterly, the Round Table. Of this element in English life Edward Grigg, Lord Altrincham, was an ornament; and this book, published almost on the day of his death, is a worthy monument. Its illustrations show the English administrative upper class at its best, strong, clean living, public spirited, and deeply anxious to confer

‘on other peoples the benefits which they themselves have derived from the British way of life. And the text lives up to an able and courageous foreword. At the end of a long life Grigg pleaded with his fellow aristocrats to open their minds to the problem of Africa, to realise that for all their success in subduing their personal prejudices in racial matters, judgment was still obscured by an old faith persisting in new and subtle forms, the faith that the political system which suited the English would be found in the end to be equally valid for all mankind. This book is eloquent and moving, Saye only on the tiresome occasions when the Old School Tie breaks briefly from an urbane control. It pleads that African solutions should be based on African realities, and specifically that self-government should be based on tribal structure, and freed from the "fetish" of Parliamentarianism. The way that this might function is worked out over part only of the field; and the doubt arises subtly as to whether Lord Altrincham’s approach — broad, human and civilised as it is-has worked its way quite into the complex heart of black Africa. However, the book is charged with good will. It has a firm grip of concrete experience, and attacks with force part of that hard core of preconceptions which has made it hard for the English to understand other races. Sometimes it happens that only a conservative can fruitfully be radical, and maybe it would be ungracious to regret that Lord Altrincham was not more radical still. It may be added that, though Samoa has been spared some of the toughest conundrums that vexed Lord Altrincham and his contemporaries, his. experiences and reflections are very relevant for those wrestling with problems of Pacific island administration.

F. L. W.

Wood