Defining community development: “not perhaps a masterpiece of streamline English”Footnote ¹³

In the framework of post-war development craze, community development represents the synthesis of post-war British colonial development policy, as noted in the beginning of this text.Footnote ¹⁴ It was inspired by the concept of mass education which derives from early 1930s ideas of rural reconstruction and village education in Africa and Creech Jones’ considerations on the importance of adult education in the context of social conflict in the West Indies and Rhodesia in the late 1930s.Footnote ¹⁵ Although the concept is not clearly defined in the 1944 report on “Mass Education in African Society,”Footnote ¹⁶ which was the culmination of two decades work by the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies (ACEC), it emerges as a generalised education that aims to improve the quality of life of a community. A crucial aspect was that the community should be actively involved and, if possible, initiate these projects. The new African policy promoted by Arthur Creech Jones and Andrew Cohen, head of the Colonial Office Africa Department, since 1947 placed the principle of community development and a reformed bureaucratic structure at the centre of colonial administration. As underlined by Joanna Lewis, this new policy was built on the post-war confidence in “the semiology of propaganda and the belief in the universal message of modernisation.”Footnote ¹⁷ According to John Holford, this new African policy – which emphasised a greater integration of Africans in the political process and the development of more participatory local governments –, as well as criticism from educationalists and anthropologists who had doubts about the concept of mass education from the outset, led the Secretary of State to abandon it in favour of the concept of community development.Footnote ¹⁸ This concept emerged for the first time from the Cambridge Conference of 1948 on “The Encouragement of Initiative in African Society,” which was chaired by Andrew Cohen and attended by members of the ACEC along with members of the Colonial Office, experts and officers from the main branches of the Colonial Service in the various African territories.Footnote ¹⁹ The term was first used officially in November of the same year in a letter from Creech Jones to the governors of the African colonies and was defined as:

In the Cambridge Conference and Creech Jones’ definition, community development was a movement aimed to promote a better life for the community, encompassing all forms of improvement in a wide range of different fields: “agriculture by securing the adoption of better methods of soil conservation, better methods of farming and better care of livestock; in the field of health by promoting better sanitation and water supplies, proper measures of hygiene and infant and maternity welfare; and in the field of education by spreading literacy and adult education as well as by the extension and improvement of schools for children.”Footnote ²¹ The community development policy aimed to encourage colonial populations to actively participate in the establishment and execution of local development plans that would have benefited the whole community.

It is interesting to highlight the duality of the concept of community development, noted above. On the one hand, it was intrinsically linked to the social development of the colonies, while on the other, it was part of the process of self-government, a self-declared objective of post-war British colonial policy. The active participation and collaboration of the population in programmes aimed at community welfare were to contribute, in the spirit of Creech Jones, to instilling a spirit of solidarity between the different members of the community and a sense of shared responsibility.Footnote ²² The latter was essential for achieving individual and community well-being, which was one of the British prerequisites for the achievement of self-government. The relation between social developmentFootnote ²³ and community development is clearly stated in the report of the Ashridge Conference on Social Development, which was held from 3-12 August 1954 and was attended by the heads of Social Welfare and Community Development Departments, administrative and professional field workers from thirty colonial territories. In the first section of the report the two concepts are described as “inseparable” and community development is presented as “an agent of social development.”Footnote ²⁴ Community development thus appeared as an appealing concept in post-war British colonial policy, since it outlived the late 1940s to be continuously mobilised well into the 1950s. It was a successful new iteration of colonial development that promoted the improvement of living conditions in the colonies along with the apparent preparation of colonial populations for self-government. Community development projects were disseminated throughout the empire from its first formulation, providing material for publication for Today magazine.

Promoting social and community development in the colonies

Today offers a privileged source to investigate the promotion of social and community development rhetoric in the colonies. It was an illustrated magazine produced specifically for a colonial audience by the Colonial Office between 1946 and 1957 and distributed to the colonial empire. Its publication was the result of the Colonial Office’s desire to replace War in Pictures, a magazine distributed throughout the Empire to promote the British war effort in the Second World War. Today was published in English, Hausa, and Swahili and distributed throughout all the colonial territories as a propaganda tool to promote British colonial rhetoric. With an initial print run of 63,650 copies in 1946, this was increased and stabilised at 100,000 copies in 1952.Footnote ²⁵ Concerning the composition of the magazine, it was characterised by a large proportion of images, mainly pictures from the various territories of the empire but also from Great Britain, and short texts, easily accessible to an elementary educated public. The issues were generally built around seven sections that clearly defined Today’s editorial line.Footnote ²⁶ From this list it is possible to draw two main themes that structure the magazine: firstly, Britain’s contributions to the progress in the colonies and its achievements; secondly, the representations of Britain and the desire to give an accurate picture to the colonial audience of the metropole and its inhabitants - of the British Way of Life - and to show the interest of the British public for the colonies.

The theme of colonial progress is widespread is widely spread in all the issues of the magazine and the British contribution to the economic and social development of the colonies is also broadly emphasised. The tenth issue of the magazine, published in winter 1947, which features King George VI on the cover consulting a book, is mainly devoted to the history and progress of the colonies between 1939 to 1947 and to the trends of British colonial policy. This timespan was described by the magazine’s editors as “the most eventful eight years in the history of the British Empire.” The Colonial Development and Welfare Acts (CD&WA) of 1940 and 1945 are presented as “important milestones of colonial progress which express the will of the British people to take steps to promote the development of the resources of the colonies and the welfare of the colonial people.”Footnote ²⁷ As a way of increasing a positive view of these and of emphasising the benevolent and altruistic character of British colonial policy, it is stressed that these acts were initialised in a wartime context:

Furthermore, the road to progress, referred to in the magazine as “Towards a better living,” is depicted through a reportage on the advances in agriculture, health, education and social welfare. Among the achievements highlighted are the mass education programs implemented since 1944. Through these developmental policies and their visual representation in the magazine, the British aimed not only to preserve the colonial state but also to reshape it by transforming it into a tool for re-legitimising the colonial project and promote it to the colonial populations.

The economic and social development theme is depicted widely through all the issues of Today and ten photo-reportages are devoted to portraying and promoting community development projects implemented throughout the empire. Out of the ten, six concern Africa (four on Nigeria and two on Kenya) and four Asia (two on Malaya and two on Fiji), spanning from 1947 to 1956. As for the themes illustrated in the articles, they show the variety of community development fields addressed: mass education (Nigeria), co-operative societies (Malaya), healthcare and hygiene (Malaya), housing (Fiji), infant and mother care (Nigeria), roads building (Nigeria), rehabilitation (Kenya), improving community spirit between students (Nigeria). Each reportage is composed by a short text and a series of pictures representing the characteristics of the project and the people involved. The following three examples offer a glimpse of the community development projects carried out in the African colonies and the lexicon attached to it. First, a reportage published in 1948 presents a mass education project in Udi, Northern Nigeria, adopting the mass education terminology.Footnote ²⁹ A short text accompanying the images states that the project is run by Nigerians and aims to teach people in the most rural parts of the country to read and write and is “likely to be taken as a model for similar campaigns in other parts of Africa.” It also underlines that the mass literacy campaign is not seen as an end in itself but is used as a tool to “awaken interest in anything that can improve the living conditions of these people.” The second article deals with maternity homes and mother care in Eastern Nigeria, financed by women on a cooperative and share-holding basis, topics (reproduction and the role of women in the production process) that were to concern all colonial powers in the late colonial moment. It highlights the “growing sense of community action” among the Ibo people.Footnote ³⁰ The caption accompanying the pictures of smiling mothers and healthy babies underlines that the Ibo community “know that setting up such social services as maternity homes, better water supplies and sanitation, they are making a better life for themselves and their children.” The third example is very interesting because, in Kenya, community development served an additional purpose. It was used as a tool for “rehabilitation” and re-education in the Mau Mau detention camps.Footnote ³¹ This was a prerogative of the Minister for Community Development, while the reabsorption of released detainees fell under the responsibility of the Minister of African Affairs.Footnote ³² In a photo-reportage included in the 64^th issue of Today (published in 1954) about the work of Benaiah Apolo Ohanga, the Kenyan Minister for Community Development and the first African to gain access to the Kenyan cabinet, the “rehabilitation” of Mau Mau is described as his most important task:

This case is just one of those in which idioms of development were clearly related to those of security.Footnote ³⁴ In the official rhetoric, the British sought to present decolonisation as the culmination of the “liberal”Footnote ³⁵ imperial project. This interpretation, which Larry J. Butler describes as a “long-cherished national myth,” argues that unlike other European colonial powers, Britain managed to disengage from the Empire in a relatively peaceful manner, focusing on political reform and economic and social development in the colonies, both of which were necessary steps towards self-government.Footnote ³⁶ In reality, this myth clashed with the reality of events. As Sarah Stockwell and Larry J. Butler point out, there was a considerable gap between the British perception of a liberal, enlightened and benevolent imperial mission and the often-brutal nature of colonialism on the ground. Especially during the 1950s, British colonial policy fell victim to a paradox: in its determination to maintain a form of liberal imperialism, Britain increasingly relied on repressive methods.Footnote ³⁷ This repression was an expression of the security state, which according to John Darwin is one of the main features of the late colonial state. The Kenyan example portrayed in Today represents a clear intersection between community development and security and military issues. In addition, in the conception of community development applied in Kenya, there is a willingness to go further in the objective of shaping colonised populations “in the image of the British”, which was one of the long-term objectives of colonial policy in order to maintain influence in the post-colonial states.

Using a rather simple arrangement of text and pictures, Today magazine presents community development as an actual achievement of British colonial policy, albeit deeply ingrained in the complexities and tensions of late colonialism. Not only does it portray apparently successful projects in domains as diverse as literacy, healthcare and political involvement, its content is specifically addressed to colonial populations who should thus be convinced of the value of themselves becoming involved, as Africans are portrayed not only as recipients but also as the actual actors of community development. This was a key goal at the time: it served important rhetorical aims, demonstrating, supposedly, local acceptance and compliance with particular projects of social change. Today magazine thus gives a pictorial version of the principles of community development being applied on the ground: higher living standards and social development along with the preparation for self-government (the case of Minister Ohanga being the ultimate example). Nonetheless, the publication of the Colonial Office reiterated the leading role and even the superiority of the British, who acted as gatekeepers of the whole process, from the implementation of the projects to their depiction on the pages of the magazine.

Advocating for British community development at the United Nations

The Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories was created as an ad hoc committee in 1946-47 and renewed annually until 1949, when the General Assembly, at the request of the Indian, Soviet, Chinese and Venezuelan delegations, discussed the possibility of making it permanent. In the end, it was the solution proposed by the United States, i.e. to renew the Special Committee for a period of three years, that was adopted by the majority of the members and applied from the 1950 session onwards, despite the firm opposition of Great Britain, France and BelgiumFootnote ³⁹. This year represented a new beginning for the Committee, whose semi-permanent character led to a change in the way the meetings were conducted. It became a forum for discussion of specific topics, with each annual session devoted to a specific subject, namely: education, economic conditions and social conditions in the non-self-governing territories.Footnote ⁴⁰ The British government’s strategy towards it is well summarised in a note of 1950 by the Colonial Office which stated that: “without compromising on the basic principle of accountability, our [British] objective is to get entirely away from the defensive and negative attitude we have often been driven to adopt in the past, and to use the Special Committee and later the Fourth Committee, as a forum for gaining maximum publicity, in a positive and vigorous way, for our aims and achievements as a colonial power.”Footnote ⁴¹ The British were represented on the committee, in succession, by John Fletcher-Cooke (1947-1950), Will Mathieson (1951–1953), former head of the Economic Relations Department of the Colonial Office, and B. Gidden (from 1954). Coming from the ranks of the Colonial Office, they served as Colonial Affairs Advisers in the British delegations to the United Nations and had the duty to promote the strategic principles put forward by their government.

With the introduction of the thematic sessions, the new configuration of the Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories became the ideal place for the British delegation to promote specific achievements in the colonies and to highlight British expertise in the fields of education, economy and social welfare, relatable to such territories. Community development appeared as a handy argument. The use of expertise was part of the strategy promoted after the 1949 annus horribilis and aimed to overcome the loss of legitimacy, to counter criticism and to gain international approval, and less condemnation. 1949 is considered a major turning point in British colonial policy at the United Nations. The session of the Fourth Committee (held from 20-5 September 1949) proved to be a nightmare for the British, to an extent that the Colonial Office issued a memorandum to explain the attitude of its delegation, which rejected eight out of the ten proposed resolutions and abstained in two cases.Footnote ⁴² Notwithstanding the British delegation’s arguments, all of the resolutions were adopted by the General Assembly and Britain was defeated on all counts. For its detractors, the non-collaborative attitude demonstrated by the British highlighted the ambiguity and contradiction between the reality of the facts and “the enlightened and progressive colonialism” they claimed to represent. This defeat led to the realisation that the position of the delegates at the United Nations made Britain appear to be “an imperialist and reactionary power”Footnote ⁴³ and to the implementation of a more positive strategy that focused on highlighting the achievements of the British colonial policy.

This debacle led to the inclusion in the delegation of a series of experts who were charged with presenting the situation and progress in the British Non-Self-Governing Territories through “long and detailed”Footnote ⁴⁴ speeches, enriched with concrete examples of achievements reached and difficulties encountered. Although British archival documents do not provide the background to the choice of experts, it is possible to justify it by their skills and professional background.Footnote ⁴⁵ For the period considered, five experts were involved in the committee’s discussions: William E. Ward, Special Adviser on Education and chairman of the 1948 Cambridge conference discussion group on the content of mass education; J. L. Leyden, Economic Advisor for East and Central African Territories; Wilfried H. Chinn, Social Welfare Advisor and Eric Pridie, Health Advisor and Chief Medical Officer at the Colonial Office. Their expertise was used to explain the principles and accomplishments of British policy in the fields under discussion.

A careful analysis of the committee’s debates shows that the British representatives put forward the doctrine of community development throughout the thematic sessions.Footnote ⁴⁶ Henry Hopkinson claimed in his speech to the Fourth Committee on 21 October 1952 that community development was the “main characteristic of British colonial policy.”Footnote ⁴⁷ The community development argument served a triple purpose that allowed British representatives and experts: to present their government’s allegedly unique approach to colonial development (although similar move were being made by other colonial powers), to respond to criticism accusing British colonial policy of using developments in social welfare and education as a snare aimed primarily at creating complacency among the colonised populations rather than instilling political responsibility and the qualities necessary for self-government,Footnote ⁴⁸ and to establish synergies with other committee members. Wilfried H. Chinn, one of the British experts in the committee, was one of the leading proponents of the doctrine and one of the best-placed people to discuss it. In his role as Colonial Office Social Welfare Advisor (1948-1961), member of the Colonial Social Welfare Advisory Committee and of the Advisory Committee on Mass Education (Community Development) he had first-hand experience of visiting British African and Asian territories and writing a series of reports detailing social conditions in these countries. Chinn presents community development as the “backbone of British policy in African territories”Footnote ⁴⁹ and defined it as “a movement designed to promote a better life for the whole community, with the active participation and through the initiative of the community.”Footnote ⁵⁰ According to Chinn, the population’s initiative was the main component of the doctrine:

This quote is twice as interesting. Firstly, it shows the active promotion of the community development approach which included a series of activities that were in line with the themes at the heart of the discussion of the committee such as, to name but a few, literacy campaigns, public hygiene, the construction of schools and hospitals, soil conservation and agriculture. Secondly, the wording used by Chinn as “arouse, stimulate, combat inertia, get into the minds of people” enable to point out the still paternalistic approach behind the doctrine.

Community development programmes were applied, with varying degrees of intensity or success, to all territories under British responsibility. According to Chinn, with its mass education programme in the rural areas set up with the cooperation of the villagers, the Gold Coast represented the spearhead of the programmes.Footnote ⁵² Chinn’s presentation to the committee also provided an insight into how the programmes worked on the ground through the example of Uganda. The Social Welfare Advisor praised Uganda for its pioneering work in initiating “team systems of community development.”Footnote ⁵³ These teams were constituted entirely by Africans (one leader and from six to ten members) and aimed to “persuade people in the provinces to improve their standard of living through demonstrations to groups of villagers or through advice to individual families.”Footnote ⁵⁴ We see here that the use of this type of team highlights two important aspects: the underlying paternalism that characterises the ulterior motive of these programmes, as was noted above; and the use of African staff, which was part of the British attempt to, in principle, “empower” African populations, on the one hand, and, on the other, to emphasise the “partnership” that was supposed to characterise the relationship between colonisers and colonised after the Second World War, along the lines defined by Lord Hailey in 1942.Footnote ⁵⁵

The interest of the community development concept also lies in the advocacy of the interdependence of the economic and social dimensions of development, an important aspect that shaped the thoughts of many politicians, bureaucrats and experts dealing with late colonial situations, and related challenges, in different colonial empires. During his intervention in the 1955 debate on social conditions, British representative Gidden highlighted the importance that the British government attached to community development, the essence of which he characterised by these words: “a new society can only be built by the combined and coordinated efforts of government and the people, in town and country, at all levels.”Footnote ⁵⁶ In his intervention Gidden underlined the complementarity between economic and social progress, pointing out that the social changes brought about by economic development were likely to lead to the development of “social ills such as slums, vagrants, petty crime and juvenile delinquency,”Footnote ⁵⁷ another connection that was argued for by many in other colonial formations. As per their promoters, community development programmes were therefore used in the colonial territories in a preventive way, to anticipate the impact of economic development - such as industrialisation and urbanisation - on colonial societies and to create “stable urban communities, infused with a spirit of mutual help.”Footnote ⁵⁸ It is interesting to note that Gidden draws a parallel between the Industrial Revolution that disrupted English society in the nineteenth century and the economic development in the colonies, in order to emphasise that the experience gained from this revolution was made available to the colonies and realised through the community development programmes.

The analysis of the committee’s discussions also makes it possible to grasp the abovementioned duality of the concept of community development. While it was intrinsically linked to economic and social development, it was also part of the process of self-government in the colonies. According to Gidden, the active participation and collaboration of the population in programmes aimed at social welfare were pivotal in instilling a spirit of solidarity among the various members of the community and a sense of responsibility – which was seen as indispensable for achieving well-being at the individual level and for society as a whole – a prerequisite for self-government.Footnote ⁵⁹ This interpretation was shared by the United States representative, Curtis C. Strong, who in an intervention in the 1955 committee debate described community development as “an approach in contrast to 19th century colonialism, the extension of which could contribute significantly to the achievement of self-determination, which is essential to the fulfilment of the objectives of Chapter XI of the UN Charter.”Footnote ⁶⁰ The American support for British community development can be considered a success of the rhetoric promoted by British representatives, but it could also be explained by pragmatic reasons. During his intervention, Strong linked the United States interest in community development programmes to the United States Point Four Programme and the United Nations technical assistance programme to underdeveloped countries, the former of which could be a tool to implement the latter.Footnote ⁶¹ The support of the United States was not isolated within the committee: the French supported the British initiative because they themselves were pursuing a similar doctrine in their colonial territories, which was called éducation de base, Footnote ⁶² while other members of the committee without colonial responsibilities, such as Brazil and India, also expressed a positive opinion and praised British work.Footnote ⁶³ Throughout the 1950s, the emphasis on community development programmes allowed British representatives at the United Nations to prove Britain’s commitment to the welfare of colonised populations on the international stage and at the same time to align themselves with the programmes of other United Nations bodies such as UNESCO – whose first director-general, Julian Huxley, had himself been a member of the ACEC in the 1930s and took part to the 1948 Cambridge conference – that increasingly envisioned community development as a legitimate tool for development tout court. Footnote ⁶⁴ Not least, in an international context where the balance of power was gradually tilted against colonialism, development became a tool of propaganda replacing the discredited notion of the “civilising mission.” Furthermore, the promotion of the community development doctrine allowed Great Britain to perpetuate the colonial project by adorning it, from a discursive point of view, with the moral legitimacy necessary to maintain its sovereignty over the non-self-governing territories and avoid any international interference in their administration.