Sympathetic Governor

For the most part, Britain's Labor government had been content to let Colonial Office veterans run the unliquidated portions of the empire. Whenever it tried to make socialists shoulder the white man's burden, something had gone wrong. Out under the never-setting sun, one of the socialist governors turned more blimpish than Colonel Blimp. Another took his socialist mission a bit too seriously. The latter was Oliver Ridsdale, Earl Baldwin, the socialist son of the late Stanley Baldwin.

Wells & Chains. "I wouldn't," beefy bachelor Baldwin once said in explanation of his single state, "bring a child into a capitalist world, and I like children, too." As Governor of the West Indies' Leeward Islands (pop. 109,000), the pipe-smoking scion of the pipe-smoking symbol of the Conservative Party seemed determined to erase all trace of capitalism from his Caribbean domain.

The Leewards' working folk, whose income averages some $50 a year, liked Lord Baldwin fine. He plumped for unemployment insurance, hospitals and new industries. He dug deep into his own pocket to provide schooling for native children, and spent -L-150 ($600) to bring a water-diviner from Jamaica to find wells on the parched islands. He told the Antigua legislature: "Being the only governor you've had who's been in prison [he was twice captured, once by the Turks and once by the Bolsheviks, while fighting as a volunteer for the Armenians in 1921], I naturally take an interest in that unfortunately necessary institution. Having worn chains myself, I have had them abolished here."

A Vest & a Smile. With the white upper crust, however, Earl Baldwin fared less well. He affronted Whitehall by suggesting that the Colonial Office stop sending him suggestions and start sending money. He snooted officials of the U.S. military base on Antigua, and at one ball for blacks and whites condescended to dance only "with the blackest and ugliest" woman in the room. His favorite luncheon guest was a small pickaninny who wore nothing but a vest and a broad smile. Such eccentricities, the white colony complained, were a bad influence on the restless natives. Earl Baldwin was summarily ordered to take a plane home "to discuss Leeward's problems."

After a leisurely trip on a frigate and a banana boat, he turned up in London. "Poor little Creech Jones," the Daily Express quoted him as saying, "he's had a bad time . . . Acted like a fool. I will tell him a thing or two when I see him."

Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones last week refused to say how the meeting had gone. But West Indian union leaders voiced the feeling of the natives. "Violence will break out among our people," said one, "if he does not return. Lord Baldwin is a sympathetic governor."

The earl's main worry at that moment seemed to be what would become of an all-native production of Pinafore which he was staging when he left the islands.

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