The Officials' Report

To a man of Roy Welensky’s mettle, a door not bolted and barred against him, as well as locked, was no real obstacle. The door was now not even locked, but there were still many difficulties. Mr Creech Jones, who had visited Central Africa in May, 1949, had left the door unlocked, although he had made it plain that there would be little point in opening the door until the Africans wanted it to be opened. Arthur Creech Jones’s visit had in fact shaken rather than reassured the European protagonists of federation, and his dictum that permanent white settlement in Northern Rhodesia should be strictly controlled was to them a grim indication of the Territory’s destiny. For white immigration on a large scale, with assisted passages and other incentives, was another plank in Roy Welensky’s policy. It was an impossible policy, and could never have been carried out, since the economy of the country could not have carried large-scale immigration.