In order to try and persuade his colleagues in the Commons, the Press and the public, Mr Stewart nevertheless went to some remarkable lengths, even for a politician. When the International Red Cross, under pressure from Lagos, handed over its multimillion-dollar relief operation to the Nigerian Rehabilitation Commission and suspended its night flights to Biafra, cutting as it did relief supplies to Biafra by fifty per cent, the move was openly backed by Britain. Defending the move in the House during June, Mr Stewart said the IRC action had the support of the combined relief operations. This was a blatant untruth and was promptly and vigorously denied by the churches concerned under the umbrella of Joint Church Aid.* On 17 November in the Commons, after the failure of an attempt to reach agreement between Lagos and Biafra on daylight relief flights, Mr Stewart made much effort to belittle General Ojukwu’s military reasons for declining to open the Uli Airport during daylight hours. During the course of this he stated that if there were such daylight flights the Americans would be ready to guarantee that there would be no military advantage to the Federal side. In fact no such American guarantee is or ever was available. Indeed, it was significant that no power at all was prepared itself to guarantee that the Nigerian Air Force would respect the inviolability of the airplanes and the airport during a daylight flights agreement.†
Commenting about this particular performance of the Foreign Secretary in the Commons, the Guardian Weekly Magazine the following Saturday observed: ‘Once again Mr Stewart has been disgracefully misleading about Britain’s role in the Nigerian war.’‡
It is lamentable to have to state that during Mr Stewart’s term of office as Her Majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, distortions and untruths, which it is extremely hard to believe were the result simply of bad briefing, became so frequent, at least on this issue, that they no longer continued to arouse much editorial comment at all.
* Hansard, 25 January 1966, col. 21.
* Hansard, 20 December 1966, col. 263.
* To the author, Enugu, July 1967.
* References to these occur in Financial Times, 9 August 1967; Birmingham Post, 15 August 1967; The Times, 3 January 1968; Hansard, 22 July 1968, col. 68.
* Hansard, 29 January 1968, cols. 599 and 600.
† Hansard, 16 May 1968, cols. 1397 and 1398.
* Hansard, 2 March 1966, col. 316.
† ibid., 12 June 1968, col. 290.
‡ ibid., 12 June 1968, cols. 289–90
§ Hansard, 22 July 1968, col. 106.
* BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Part 4B, Non-Arab Africa, ME/2677/B/2.
* Hansard, 27 August 1968, cols. 754–5.
* Speech at Kaduna, 24 November 1967; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Non-Arab Africa, ME/263l/B/2.
* George Knapp, Aspects of the Biafran Affair, London, 1968, pp. 27, 28, 53 and 54.
* Hansard, 20 June 1967, col. 1376.
* Hansard, 25 January 1968, cols. 437–8.
† ibid., 13 February 1968, cols. 90–91.
‡ ibid., 21 May 1968, col. 266.
* Hansard, 27 August 1968
, col. 1446.
* Hansard, 27 August 1968, col. 1527.
* ‘Yesterday in Parliament’, Daily Telegraph, 23 October 1968.
* Walter Schwarz, ‘Mr Wilson and Biafran Starvation’, Guardian Weekly Magazine, 22 November 1969.
† ‘Britain’s Role in Nigeria’, editorial comment, ibid.
‡ ibid.
CHAPTER 11
Refugees, Hunger and Help