Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1954-1955 — Page 48

of squatter clearance; but it was nevertheless of great im- portance that full advantage should be taken of the valuable experience gained in previous years and that such changes in outlook and method as were now needed should be carefully worked out and extended down through the organization to the level of junior field staff.

58. These changes in outlook and method, and consequently of organization, did not happen overnight; rather they were allowed to suggest themselves in the light of events and of the re-appraisal of policy which has been described in earlier chapters. A good deal of thought was given to the squatter's own position and his relationship to the clearance organization. On the one hand he was breaking the law and there was certainly no reason why he should be offered privileges or favours denied to the rest of the community. In other words squatter clear- ance and resettlement was not a welfare operation in any sense. What was required was not primarily to improve the living conditions of that section of the community which happened to be breaking the law relating to the occupation of Crown land: the task was to devise a rapid and practical method, at a cost at least less than prohibitive, of removing, in the interests of the whole community, the fire risk and the threat to public health and public order presented by the worst squatter areas. On the other hand the fact had to be faced that in ninety nine cases out of a hundred the squatter was breaking the law through no fault of his own. He had simply been obliged by force of circum- stances to rent accommodation in an illegal structure. There was little to be gained by singling out an individual for treatment as an offender when he could show that one person out of every ten in the whole urban population had been committing the same offence for years. Section 9(1) of the Summary Offences Ordinance the section which provides that no-one may occupy Crown land without a lease or permit-had in fact been allowed to become a dead letter through the compulsion of the circum- stances described earlier in this report. There could be no question of suddenly depriving tens of thousands of persons of their homes or their employment, and whilst some squatters would obviously, in their own particular circumstances, not wel-

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