Dr Mont Follick: That is a great deal.
Dr Mont Follick: He is a Front Bench speaker.
Dr Mont Follick: I have been to Norfolk Island.
Dr Mont Follick: I thoroughly agree with the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Braine) and also hope that there will not be a Division on this Amendment, but I wish to say something about the conception of the "White Australia" policy. The way in which we are talking about it is as if it were something new, but when I first went to Australia, in 1906, they had a "White Australia" policy. The "White Australia"...
Dr Mont Follick: This matter has been brought up on account of a little discussion I had with my hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer). He looked down on me because I had not been there more recently than he had, but I certainly had been there before he was born. Even in that far-off epoch they had a "White Australia" policy. The idea was not to keep out a few of their own citizens, but to keep...
Dr Mont Follick: The right hon. Gentleman is making a mistake. When we handed Heligoland over to Germany we laid it down that no citizen of Heligoland should serve in the German Army unless he volunteered. He must not be conscripted.
Dr Mont Follick: The inhabitants of the Cocos Islands have privileges in Britain, but has the right hon. Gentleman any record at all of any inhabitant of the Cocos Islands ever having come to Britain?
Dr Mont Follick: I have not a word to say against our colonial system. I have nothing but praise to utter for it because I happen to have been in a Negro territory which was never a Colony. In December and January I visited nearly all our own Colonies in West Africa, and the French possessions there, including the Sahara and Liberia.
Dr Mont Follick: Liberia has never been a Colony. It was founded as a Negro republic. Whenever I hear anything about the white exploitation of the Negro, I advise people to go to a territory where there has been no white exploitation, and where they will find that the Negro exploits the Negro far worse than ever the white coloniser did, and without giving anything in return.
Dr Mont Follick: We may have exploited territories, but we do put something back in return for what we take out. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, there is no street. There is a little bit of asphalt road, about three miles long, which the American Firestone Company put there, leading to the port. There was no bank in Liberia until the Firestone Company needed one for its staff, and that company opened...
Dr Mont Follick: Sometimes my colleagues here read my books and talk to me about them, but they do not seem to buy them. We have nothing to be ashamed of in our colonial system. Anyone going to East Africa and seeing that lovely city of Nairobi appreciates what Britain has done for East Africa. East Africa has only been a Colony for about 50 years. It started with the Uganda Railway. In Nigeria there is the...
Dr Mont Follick: I am trying to show how the amount of money we have spent in those Colonies has brought them—
Dr Mont Follick: It is the social services of which we are proud in those countries—social services for which we have paid, many of them from our own taxation in this country. I should therefore like to add, in conclusion, with your permission, Sir Rhys, that he who decries the British colonial system does not know what he is talking about, and probably has never been to the Colonies.
Dr Mont Follick: Three per cent.
Dr Mont Follick: Forty thousand vehicles.
Dr Mont Follick: I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the introduction of a decimal currency. My predecessor received the leave of the House to introduce a Bill of a minor character, and I now ask leave of the House to introduce a Bill of enormous importance, namely, one which will reform our currency by replacing our antiquated monetary system of guineas, sovereigns, pounds,...
Dr Mont Follick: I am talking about America. India is in Asia. Even our own Colonies have gone over to decimal systems. Among the very many and varied nations of Europe, Britain is the only country which has not adopted a decimal currency. Apart from certain parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, all the African territories have gone over to decimal currencies, including such backward places as...
Dr Mont Follick: I should mention that the coins I am producing are not mine. They have been lent to me by Messrs. Baldwin & Sons, the famous numismatists, who themselves wonder how it is that every country except Britain finds it an advantage to use a decimal currency system. I believe that the House will admit that I have some knowledge of the world. I have been in many different parts, and have found that...
Dr Mont Follick: The husbands, but I am a bachelor.
Dr Mont Follick: There is an enormous tourist industry there.
