о
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When again challenged on the non-consultation of the inhabitants, the Colonial Secretary again replied that with such a nomad population "it is quite impossible to arrive at any form of political judgment from those people" but HMG had taken great care to secure their primary interest in the conditions of living. Further, there was no question (which had also been raised in the debate) of a change of officials in. the area to be ceded - it had virtually no administration. The most important practical effect of the Agreement, he said, was to give Italy control of the whole Juba valley which would facilitate its economic development. He did not reply to Kenworthy's charge that whereas in the recent case of a USA proposal to purchase from us the Bahamas (in connexion with their Prohibition Law) HMG had replied that "no part of the British Empire is for sale", we had now departed from this principle, even though Jubaland was only a Protectorate [part of it was in fact a Colony] and this was a dangerous precedent.
1
When one MP defended the treaty as the payment if a debt of honour to Italy for her participation in the late war, another denounced such an attitude of "any govt in this country taking it for granted that where the inhabitants are ordinary natives of little education, they have no right to consultation and that we have the right..... to hand over people who are under the British flag just as we please and to transfer them from British to Italian.... or any other nationality without their wishes...being consulted at all".
Finally vigorous pleas
were made for British traders in the area to be ceded and especially for the British Protected Persons who could only keep their British status under the treaty by moving out of the territory.
nevertheless read without a division.
The Bill was