The Meade and Titmuss Reports

From Our Archives – A Glimpse into 1961

By Peter Ibbotson

At last, the long-awaited Meade and Titmuss reports have appeared. The serious daily papers in London — Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph — all give prominence to the two reports, but their columns dealt with the Titmuss Report at much greater length than the Meade Report. All emphasised the family planning recommendations and spoke of the overwhelming need to restrict births to stave off economic disaster. That, too, is something which I shall be emphasising when I come to write about the reports for Asia and African Review and News of Population. 

Professor Meade: “Family planning is a pre-requisite of economic advance”

In the past Mauritius has not wanted for expert advice based on comprehensive enquiries into this or that aspect of the economy. “There has been no lack of pertinent enquiries” says the Titmuss Report; “We trust that our Report will not suffer the fate of many of its predecessors”. That is, of course, the fate of being pigeonholed; of being gently shelved because the action recommended would cut across someone’s racial or communal preserve. Professor Meade and his colleagues have a forthright comment on the same subject: “Mauritius has for many years not lacked advice but only the will to accept it and act on it”. Forthright criticism, but nonetheless well deserved; to give but three examples, little has been done to implement the many important proposals of the Ward and Nichols Reports on education, while the Population Report still remains a dead letter.

Racial Non-Co-Operation

In the Meade Report there are other very valid points on an unfortunate aspect of Mauritian life, especially of racism, communalism, and inter-racial non-co-operation. “The wounds inflicted upon education in Mauritius by recent quarrels and disagreements in the service are very grave, but they are no graver than is the less obvious but more lasting damage caused by the prejudices and animosities arising from the racial and political loyalties which mock the idea of community and nationhood in Mauritius”. Harsh and forthright words, but nonetheless well deserved. The example is given of the failure of the three Chambers of Commerce to combine and produce a periodical devoted to commercial intelligence; the three Chambers represent three racial groups. Or again, on a matter which touches deeply and intimately the whole economic future of Mauritius: “It would be difficult with present attitudes in Mauritius to conceive of a man with business acumen (who happened to be Chinese) managing a firm for which a wealthy person (who happened to be Indian) had provided the capital to exploit an imaginative idea of an engineer (who happened to be of European extraction). And yet it is from combinations of diverse contributions of this kind that much economic growth might spring”.

There are two lessons to be learned from these criticisms by the Meade and Titmuss commissions of enquiry.

The first is that having been given good advice, Mauritius must act on it in order to profit from it. The second is, that inter-racial co-operation must replace the present inter-racial strife which is, unfortunately to the country’s detriment, being fostered for nefarious political reasons by certain irresponsible demagogic elements. Anyone who reads the Meade Report carefully will realise that when over the past two years I have levelled charges of economy against those whom I have, been fully justified. Those political and economic and social anarchs who I have called “The Destroyers” are the people who by their myopic communalism have hindered and inhibited the emergence of a true spirit of non-communal consciousness, have stunted the growth of l’entité mauricienne, and have endangered (by their activities of which they surely cannot feel proud) the very future of their country.

Family Planning

Frankness is the keynote of the Meade Report, its criticisms and recommendations. Its language is unequivocal, now more so than when referring to the absolute necessity of family planning. What does Professor Meade say? “Indeed, the population situation is so serious that, in order to solve the economic problems of the island, Mauritius needs not family planning or emigration, but family planning and whatever emigration is possible. Mauritians are thus faced with a choice on this issue which only they can make; but they should be in no doubt that by refusing to encourage effective family planning they will be choosing economic disaster”. Family planning, says Professor Meade, is a pre-requisite of economic advance; this blunt statement in his report is sure to be attacked by certain sections of the population and in such periodicals as Le Mauricien, Le Cerneen, La Vie Catholique, Tribune Ouvriere and La Voix De l’Islam. But before the vehement contributors to these periodicals vent their spleen on the absent heads of Professors Meade and Titmuss and their colleagues, let them ponder at length and carefully on this extract from the Titmuss Report.

“We are very conscious of the fact that in urging the need for a policy of family limitation we are challenging the attitudes and beliefs of a considerable section of the population. Nevertheless, we do so on the grounds that every man and woman should have the dignity of freedom to make decisions for themselves in obedience to conscience; a doctrine of society in which men and nations are bound to care for one another, and to help one another to ease the present suffering, and avert the threatened cataclysm, of over-population. While this knowledge and these services should be available to everyone in the island, it would be illiberal to compel anyone to take advantage of them. We could not subscribe to any policy which entailed compulsion. Similarly, we would think it wrong if medical officers and others with religious scruples were not permitted to abstain from taking part in the provision of family planning facilities. The right of any individual on religious or any other ground to refuse to use these services or any particular method of family limitation must be safeguarded. The right of those who wish to know and who wish to use the services must equally be upheld. The tolerances and courtesies of a liberal society must be practiced by all. The illiberalities of some must not thrive on the courtesies of others”.

In April last year, the Government put forward — in the aftermath of the disastrous cyclones of January and February — its proposals for a social security scheme and family planning, based on the first draft of the Titmuss Report. Bitter opposition ensued, led in the Legislative Council by Roman Catholic Members (and it is pertinent to keep in mind that 40 per cent of the island’s population is Roman Catholic) which caused the Government to adjourn the debates on these proposals pending the publication of the Meade and Titmuss Reports in full. (In the light of Professor Titmuss’ comments about illiberality and courtesy, it is wry to recall that the Roman Catholic-dominated local press compared George Wilson — then Financial Secretary — to Hitler).

With the publication of the reports, therefore, family planning debates and struggles will be resumed. But the recommendations of the Titmuss Report, in the words of their authors, “should be accepted or rejected as a whole. They stand or fall together”; and the Meade Report statement must not be forgotten: by refusing to encourage effective family planning they (i.e., the people of Mauritius-P.I.) will be choosing economic disaster …we regard family planning as a prerequisite for any long-run economic advance”.

In view of the foregoing, therefore, the Government (some of whose MLC’s and many of whose supporters are Roman Catholics) faces a stern challenge to its courage and integrity. With particular interest will be watched the reactions of the Roman Catholic Church and the periodicals associated with it and its various organisations for the case for family planning can never have been stronger than in Mauritius to-day. The pamphlet The Titmuss Report In Outline which is being distributed in three languages to the general public says categorically on the subject of family planning, “No compulsion…. The simplest way is by moral restraint. And this conflicts with no one’s religious beliefs… Only on certain days in the month can a mother start to produce a child. The advice service would tell her how to recognise those days… Family Planning Could Save Mauritius.”

The Challenge

The Government, I have said, faces a stern challenge to its courage and integrity. I am confident that it will react to the challenge with courage and integrity, and seek to put into effect the far-sighted proposals made by Professor Titmuss, Professor Meade, and their various colleagues. After all, despite Professor Meade’s many criticisms of the communalism which detrimentally pervades Mauritius to-day, the implication is nevertheless that to abandon communalism will be to work for the benefit of Mauritius; and the Government enjoying as it does support from people of all races and creeds, is the only multiracial body in the island capable of operating the comprehensive plans needed under the two reports. The alternative Governments (PM, or IFB or PM-IFB in coalition) are too dreadful even to contemplate. In any case, only the present Government has espoused policies resembling those recommended by the Meade Report; the other parties who might form an alternative government have repudiated in advance suggestions for diversification of the economy such as have now been put forward; or else they are committed to the idea that massive emigration will solve all the problems — which Professor Meade’s team has shown to be demonstrably false. And, of course, they are communalist.

If I am prejudiced in favour of the Meade and Titmuss reports, it is for two reasons. First, and more important, because they chart the course for the future prosperity of the island and the future well-being of its inhabitants; and the wellbeing of a human community is something in favour of which I am, as a Christian, naturally pre-disposed.

Second, the many recommendations of both reports vindicate what I have been saying in these columns for many years at one time and another. The whole principle of family planning is supported at great length and with authority. For years I have argued in favour of family planning in the Mauritius Times. Then take many others of the Meade recommendations. Large-scale emigration is only a minor mitigation of the population problem, but small-scale emigration on the Barbadian pattern should be studied (incidentally Seychelles has already not only studied, but adopted, such a proposal). This is a matter which I suggested in these columns long before the Meade Mission was set up. Don’t expand sugar production ad lib., pleads the report; and a suggestion other than a quota system is put forward for limiting overall sugar production. This plea is one which I have made repeatedly in this paper; the editors too have pleaded for some upward limit beyond which sugar production should not be allowed to rise.

Land misuse is deplored; since its inception the Mauritius Times has asked that valuable land be taken from stag-breeders and given over to food crops. Particularly welcome (from a personal point of view as well as from the standpoint of the future Mauritian economy) is the proposal that an Agricultural Marketing Board be set up to market vegetables on behalf of growers who would thus be guaranteed a market at a guaranteed price. Allied with this is the recommendation that cold storage availability be extended, for fish as well as vegetables; and the not too optimistic” thought of a future fish cannery. Then the Meade Report urges more sawmills, a bacon factory, development of milk production, development of the fishing industry (with the assistance of Japanese expertise, perhaps), introduction of the broiler poultry and rabbit industry, and an Industrial Development Board — all things which have been urged in my column in the months and years past.

Also vindicated is my insistence that English be the medium of instruction with Creole used in the initial stages of the primary school.

In the past, various columnists in Le Mauricien and Le Cerneen have suggested that as a Londoner I ought not to comment on Mauritian affairs; that I should not make suggestions about the future development of Mauritius. Now that they see how my past views have been vindicated by on-the-spot experts, I hope that in future they will cease such criticisms.

The proposal for an Industrial Development Board is one of the most important recommendations of the whole Meade Report. In my view, the Government cannot afford to lose any time in giving effect to this recommendation; they should at once get hold of copies of the Barbados Development act, 1955, and study the working of the industrial development boards in Barbados and Malta (there are other similar boards in, for example Uganda and Jamaica, but Barbados and Malta afford close parallels to Mauritius economically and/or demographically).

And, of course, in anticipation that the Meade Report would make such a recommendation, I have written at length about such boards in other colonies in the Mauritius Times over the last five months. Anybody who is at all seriously interested can get the relevant back numbers, I am sure, from the MT offices.

Wage-Pegging

Two suggestions of the Meade Report in particular are certain to come under fire, and from different sections of the community. The suggestion that wages be pegged for some years ahead will not, at first sight, commend itself to the trade unions, especially those unions associated with the Destructive element. The proposal that labour on the estates be decasualised will not meet with the approval of the estates, who have already (in the Chamber of Agriculture’s annual report) opposed decasualisation which Mr Luce put forward in his report two years ago. (Another example of the tendency to which both Meade and Titmuss Reports referred: the lack of will to act on advice when it has been tendered). The proposals designed to restrict the powers and activities of the job contractors will not be welcomed everywhere; though I for one would be glad to see the job contractor system, full of abuses real and potential, abolished. I welcome the Meade proposals to curb the job contractors as an interim measure; I welcome too the proposals (which anyway I welcomed when Mr Luce made them) that labour on the estates be decasualised.

I can understand those union leaders who will, on purely economic grounds, oppose the proposals to peg wages; I can even begin to sympathise with them. I cannot, on the other hand, begin to sympathise with those opportunists among the trade unions who will seize on the wage-pegging proposals for political reasons to oppose the Meade Report and embarrass the Govt. Such opportunists belong to the Destroyers’ faction and must be exposed.

8th Year – No 340
Friday 10th March, 1961

* Next Week: The Second and Concluding Part of this Article

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 17 july 2026