CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 9

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Governor remarks in paragraph 10 of his despatch, placed the real blame the chaotic financial conditions in the Immigration Department upon the Government which selected Mr. Forrest to be the head of the new Department. Mr. Smith, the Colonial Secretary, has given, in enclosure 5, his riposte to this accusation, and the late Governor is inclined to disagree with the Commissioners' views. Nevertheless, in para. 11 Sir Geoffry Northcote recites that amongst the adverse comments in Mr. Forrest's confidential reports were an "insufficient power of leadership" and "a lack of tact in dealing with the public". In such an experimental and delicate piece of administration as this one would have thought that those two reports would have been enough to point to the risk involved in Mr. Forrest's appointment. Mr. Smith himself recognised that there was a risk for he says in enclosure 6 that when he recommended General Norton to appoint Mr. Forrest to the post he drew the Acting Governor's attention to certain papers concerned with Mr. Forrest's temperamental troubles in 1937. The Commissioners in para. 37 of their printed report pointed out that Mr. Forrest had been in the service of the Government for over 20 years, and that the Government must have been fully cognizant of his deficiencies in business knowledge and in administrative and organising abilities as well as in the qualities of discipline and self-control which rendered him entirely unsuitable to be placed in charge of a new department with its inevitable worries and complexities. Nevertheless, after Mr. Forrest had been appointed and had shown himself reacting to the new worries and complexities involved, the Treasury and the Colonial Secretariat, according to these findings, persisted in an unhelpful attitude "mordant minutes compact of destructive criticism where a little practical constructive advice would greatly have ameliorated things".

Mr. Forrest has gone from the Service, but there remain the persons and methods stigmatised by the Commissioners, and I do not find in the Governor's despatch any clear assurance that those nettles have been grasped. Sir G. Northcote himself may have found difficulty, for one reason or another, in making any definite proposals to the S. of S. for cleaning up the stable. I don't know whether anything effective could be done to meet the recommendation in para. 41 of the Commission's report that some officer should be specially charged with the duty of ensuring that orders given to departments by Government were carried out. One would have thought that instructions given in the Governor's name would necessarily be carried out by public officers, and that if they weren't the remedy lay in some other more effective action than the one proposed by the Commissioners. I suggest. that a telegram should go to the new Governor as in draft herewith.

EarGant.

26.9.41.

Peresse see also In Sunith's Promus. fill

below.

,

have suggested

amendments in the dift.

c.).9.29.9.41