The Development of the Overseas Civil Service
| Published date | 01 December 1958 |
| Date | 01 December 1958 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1958.tb01064.x |
| Author | A. R. THOMAS |
The Development
of
the Overseas
Civil Service
BY
A.
R.
THOMAS,
C.M.G.
Mr.
Thomas
is an Assistant Under-Secretary
of
State
in
the Colonial
Ofice, responsible
for
the Overseas Service Division
of
that
Department,
and also is Director
of
Recruitment.
T
a time when many Governments, as well as the United Nations
A
Organisation and its specialised agencies, are stressing the importance
of giving technical assistance to the underdeveloped countries,
it
is a
source of pride and satisfaction to all who know of the work of Her Majesty’s
Colonial Service (as
it
was called until 1954) and
of
Her Majesty‘s Overseas
Civil Service (as
it
is called today) to reflect that through that Service the
United Kingdom, with some help from other countries of the British
Commonwealth, has been providing a continuing stream of skilled manpower
to
aid in the administration and development of the dependent territories
of the United Kingdom for the past two generations.
To give some measure of the present extent
of
that assistance,
it
may
be
noted that the number of
“
overseas
”
officers at present serving under the
various Colonial Governments is not far short
of
20,000:
and that in 1957
approximately 1,300 appointments, mostly of higher professional personnel,
were made through the Colonial Office selection machinery. The latter
figure includes some
300
education officers
for
service as teachers in
secondary schools, lecturers in training colleges, inspectors
of
schools and
administrators in overseas Education Departments
;
170 engineers (mostly
civil, but also mechanical and electrical) to assist in the construction
of
roads, schools and hospitals and the multifarious other activities of overseas
Public Works and other technical Departments;
100
medical officers;
and close
on
100 administrative officers, for service
in
field duties (which
include the planning and co-ordination
of
development schemes and the
promotion of local government institutions), and in Secretariats and
Ministries. Other categories include agricultural, forestry and veterinary
officers, architects and town planners, surveyors and geological surveyors,
and a wide variety of other specialist officers. Generally speaking, the
appointments dealt with by the Colonial Office are ones requiring a University
degree or full professional qualifications.
Alongside the Colonial Office,
the
Crown Agents for Oversea Governments
and Administrations recruit extensively
on
behalf of the Colonial Govern-
ments in fields which call for technical qualifications or experience, but not
university degrees or full professional qualifications. The intake through
the Crown Agents’ appointments machinery in 1957 was approximately 1,350
and included engineering inspectors of works, radio and telecommunications
technicians, agricultural superintendents and livestock officers, railway and
marine technicians, accountants, health inspectors, assistant meteorologists,
hydrological inspectors and many other categories.
319
RECRUITMENT
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
There are, of course, other channels of recruitment from the United
Kingdom to the overseas dependent territories including the Inter-University
Council which assists in the provision of academic staff for overseas
Universities, and the Council for Overseas Colleges of Arts, Science and
Technology, which recruits on behalf
of
overseas Technical Colleges. Certain
overseas public utilities, such as railway and coal corporations and harbour
boards, have their
own
separate recruiting organisations. These, however,
are autonomous bodies, whose staff are not part
of
the Government Services
or
members of Her Majesty’s Overseas
Civil
Service, and
it
is unnecessary
in the present context to do more than mention them
as
making up the
general picture of the extent to which skilled personnel from the United
Kingdom is at present being provided to meet the needs of the dependent
territories.
Some recruitment also takes place from
this
country into the Public
Services of independent Governments. The Governments of Ghana and
of
the Federation of Malaya, for example, are continuing
to
do a certain
amount
of
recruitment through their official representatives in the United
Kingdom. In those particular countries, moreover, there remain considerable
numbers of overseas officers who, while now wholly members of the Ghana
and Malayan Public Services, were recruited in the pre-Independence era
as members of the old Colonial Service
or
Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil
Service and, by agreement with the Governments concerned, retain their
former eligibility to be considered by the Secretary of State for the Colonies
for
transfers and promotions to the territories in which Her Majesty’s
Overseas Civil Service operates.
THR
TERRITORIES
CONCERNED
The territories in which that Service operates are then the dependent
territories of the United Kingdom. They fall for the most part into
fairly
obvious regional groups. There is West Africa, with its three dependent
British territories
of
the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria; East Africa,
comprising Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika and the Protected Island State
of
Zanzibar
;
the Central African territories of Northern Rhodesia and
Nyasaland which form part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with
Southern Rhodesia, in which latter territory, however, Her Majesty’s Overseas
Civil Service has never operated; the three High Commission Territories
of
Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland
;
the British Somaliland
Protectorate and Aden
;
the Mediterranean Colonies
of
Cyprus, Malta and
Gibraltar (although
it
is only in Cyprus that any sizeable
“
overseas
”
staff
is
maintained)
;
the Far Eastern group comprising Singapore, British North
Borneo, Sarawak and Hong Kong
;
the Pacific territories of Fiji, the Solomon
Islands and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
j
the Colonies
of
the Caribbean
region, comprising the mainland territories of British Guiana and British
Honduras, as well as Jamaica, Trinidad and the other islands which form part
of
the new Caribbean Federation
;
Bermuda and the Bahamas
;
and a number
of
other scattered islands such as Mauritius, St. Helena and the Falklands
which defy any efforts by the tidy mind to
fit
them conveniently into any
regional group.
320
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