Word: devlin
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...tactics of the two ministers have left the mild Mr. Macleod helpless. It was hoped, when Mr. Macmillan chose him to replace Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd (who was able to deny harshly the no doubt valid Devlin Commission report that found the imprisonment of Dr. Banda quite unnecessary) that some softer glances might be directed toward nationalism in Central Africa. But it is at least clear now that unless some official of very great authority removes Sir Roy and Sir Edgar, the Federation, in Dr. Banda's words, "is dead. All that remains now is to bury...
...Commons, as the Opposition charged the government with condoning lynch law in Africa by refusing to accept responsibility for the Hola murders. He was not helped much by a volunteered defense from a Tory backbencher that the African victims were "desperate and subhuman individuals." Next day came the Devlin debate...
True enough, said Attorney General Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, leading off for the government, the Devlin commission had found no reliable evidence that a "massacre" was about to take place. But then, said the Attorney General, the Colonial Secretary, in explaining to the House what had gone on in Nyasaland, had used the word "massacre" only once. "Apparently," snorted Labor's Colonial Expert James Callaghan, "if the Right Honorable Gentleman says it once, we are not to take him seriously...
...final determination of the Tightness of the Tory course. Negro and Asian delegates, anxiously following the debate from the galleries, were dismayed by the government's bland rejection of an impartial judicial commission: Was this the noble British justice they had been taught to respect? The Devlin commission had cleared Dr. Banda of inciting violence; regardless, said Lennox-Boyd, Dr. Banda and some 500 others would still be held in jail...
Even London's Conservative and independent press had misgivings about so rigid a course. Said the Economist in one of its sharpest attacks on the government to date: the Devlin report "was testimony to British justice and fair play. It could even have been regarded as a feather in the cap of the government that set [it] up. Instead, the government's response has been roughly, 'Tell the truth and shame the Devlin.' Politics has overridden the appearance of detached justice. Mr. Macmillan has involved the whole credit of himself and his government...