Sir Harry Luke and Fiji’s wartime politics
JOHN Kamea's recent articles on Sir Harry Luke which featured in The Sunday Times under the weekly Discovering Fiji section, are a vivid and entertaining account of some aspects of the career of this energetic and colourful colonial governor. But there is more of interest in Luke's Fiji service than revealed in this rather rosy depiction based mainly on Luke's own memoirs.
Luke was in fact a very controversial figure and the only colonial governor of Fiji compelled to resign after complaints about alleged incompetence. Within 18 months of taking up of his appointment he had alienated some of the leading local personalities, including Ratu Sukuna and pre-eminent European politicians and businessmen.
Sukuna was aggrieved about Luke's indifference to iTaukei and Indo-Fijian anger over an inequality in salaries and conditions between local Europeans and non-Europeans introduced in the civil service just before Luke's arrival.
Sukuna was angered even more by Luke's indifference to his concern about the further downgrading of provincial governors [the Rokos] under the authority of European district commissioners and district officers. Sukuna felt disrespected and betrayed after his crucially important work for native land leasing reform.
The mood against Luke was intensified by his social aloofness toward the European and iTaukei establishments, in sharp contrast with the more socially open disposition of his predecessor
Sir Arthur Richards with whom Sukuna had worked well on the land reform.
Within the first year of Luke's term Sukuna, in a satirical speech at Suva's Defence Club, famously lampooned European customs and pretensions as iTaukei, he said, saw them. Luke was in the audience and was not amused, perhaps suspecting that Sukuna's barbs were directed particularly at people like himself.
It was during Luke's governorship that for two years most iTaukei and Indo-Fijian members of the unofficial side of the legislative council, led by Sukuna, formed a political block frequently voting against government motions.
This unprecedented phase in local politics culminated in a bitterly worded petition early in 1940 to the secretary of state for colonies protesting against the new racial discrimination in the civil service and giving a veiled warning of the risk of a disaffection with colonial government during the world war crisis. Luke delayed for several months his forwarding the petition to London.
Luke's difficulties worsened with the outbreak of war in the Pacific at the end of 1941 and the occupation of Fiji by American forces. In their attempts to take the lead in preparing the colony for its part in the war with Japan, American commanders were soon in conflict with the governor who seemed to them in his personal manner and behaviour to embody British colonial pomposity and presumption of superiority.
The Americans had come to Fiji already harbouring disdain for colonial power and almost from the start they and Luke could not get on.
As Fiji faced the very real threat of Japanese attack and invasion, the military commanders often felt impeded in their efforts to achieve the preparations they deemed essential.
Luke seemed unable to appreciate the gravity of the colony's situation and was content to allow his various government departments to continue to operate with their accustomed degree of independence at a time when authoritarian directions from the centre were required.
The upshot was that the Americans, in a mood of angry exasperation and backed by British government officials who had recently visited Fiji, called for Luke's urgent replacement. An official in London advised the War Cabinet office on the basis of the complaints that ''it is essential something should be done about [Luke] at once''.
In advising the Colonial Office about the Fiji situation another senior UK official declared : ''The governor must go …. Sack Luke, and do it at once …. Put the US in charge if you like, but I suggest a war council created out of the present Executive Council plus Sir Henry Scott, King Irving, Ratu Sukuna, and someone to represent the Indians''.
Luke was replaced in July 1942 by Sir Phillip Mitchell, a seasoned colonial official with long service in east Africa where he had acquired a reputation as fervent opponent of racial discrimination and had gained much experience supporting indigenous African leaders, most recently as governor of Uganda.
A man with a strong military background, Mitchell was pragmatic and flexible in his cooperation with the American commanders and got on well with them.
At the height of the Japanese threat he also worked enthusiastically with Sukuna to plan reconstruction of the Fijian Administration which, after the war, would restore the chiefs' authority over Fijian affairs.
Sukuna was exactly the kind of highly able and strong indigenous leader Mitchell had enjoyed encouraging in Africa but whose concerns and abilities Luke had little respected. Sukuna was very soon the first non-European on the governor's executive council. It was also under Mitchell that the decision was made to abolish racial discrimination in the civil service.
UK colonial officials had persuaded Luke to resign following the American complaints. He soon agreed but was most concerned that his leaving Fiji should not give rise to speculation about a retreat in the face of the war. He made a dignified departure, officially justified on grounds of his age and the need for ''a younger man'' in the war emergency, though at 57 Luke was only five years older than Mitchell.
In the final six months of Luke's term, Fiji had become a local stage on which the tension between representatives of an impatiently emerging new global power and those of a fading but tenacious old imperialism was starkly expressed. In fairness to Luke it should be emphasised that quite apart from their contrasting personalities and backgrounds, the two governors' relationships to Fiji were very different.
During three years since arriving in Fiji in 1938 Luke had developed his routines of personal control in the colony's affairs. In contrast, Mitchell was sent to Fiji with the directive to work strongly and often deferentially with the American commanders. Though not very happy with his relocation from Africa, he undertook his new responsibility with zeal and great ability. Unlike Luke he was not hampered by the challenge of adapting to a sudden foreign intrusion into an established domain of personal power.
By ROBERT NORTON is an honorary senior research fellow in Anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney. Since 1966, he has been studying and writing on Fiji's politics and political history and is the author of the book ''Race and Politics in Fiji'' originally published in 1977 and in a substantially revised edition in 1990. He has also published numerous journal articles and book chapters on these topics. The views expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.