[Pacific Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry] / Arthur Frederick Richards, 1st Baron Milverton (High Commissioner for the Western Pacific 1936 – 1938) / Dawe, A.J. (Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office (also operating from Downing Street)) / Kennedy, Donald Gilbert] / J.C. Barley [R.C. (Resident Commissioner on Ocean Island)].

Four Original, Typed Letters from A.F.Richards [that was Arthur Frederick Richards, 1st Baron Milverton] in his capacity of High Commissioner for the Western Pacific during the years 1936 – 1938. These four letters were compiled as Memorandum of the British Western Pacific Islands, particularly the Gilbert Islands and were compiled by Richards for A.J.Dawe, then Under Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, who sent them on to Sir Harry Luke in an official envelope “On His Majesty’s Service” , stamped with the seal of the Secretary of State – Colonial Department. The letters with manuscript annotations and markings bear manuscript annotations and markings by Sir Harry Luke in pencil. The four letters stretch over 44 Folio-pages and are a detailed “Situation-Report” of nearly all the islands in the realm of the Gilberts and some other Islands. Richards reports for example about Ocean Island, Tarawa, Nauru, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Rotuma and Taveuni, Marshall Islands and Butaritari, Beru, Nanumanga, Vaitupu, Samoa, Fiji, Apolosi, etc. etc. which was forwarded by the Secretary of State-Office to Sir Harry Luke, who succeeded A.F.Richards as High Commissioner for the Western Pacific in 1938, after a brief period in which Sir Cecil Barton was installed as actiong High Commissioner only. The Letters / Memorandum are very detailed and strikingly honest in its assessment of certain colonial officers in charge of their stations. Richards does not hold back in criticism for the lack of style and efficiency in running their stations.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. [Pacific], June 1937 – August 1937. Slim Folio. 44 pages, stapled. Harry Luke’s (Lukach) personal working copy. Very good condition.

The four lengthy letters/memoranda are a stunning Document of an extensive tour of the Gilbert Islands and othe rIslands in the Realm of the British Western Pacific Colonies and these letters constitute a thorough personnell – evaluation of Colonial Administrators and Commissioners by A.F.Richards (″Old Sinister”), who at this point was in office since November 1936 and does not camouflage his thoughts:

I. August 1st [1937] at Tarawa [Atoll and the capital of the Republic of Kiribati, Micronesia] Pages 1 – 9:

Richards starts with praising Commander Garsia, who he visited on Nauru (Australian Mandate): “My dear Dawe, I am sitting in Tarawa after completing my Tour of the Northern Gilberts….I decided to put in to Nauru, so as to be able to compare it with Ocean Island. It was well worth while. We spent the 21st July [1937] there….here at last were the happy, smiling people of the Southern Seas and here – at long last – was a competent administrator”. Richards then goes on to Ocean Island “Barley is rather a calamity. He is of the type that will talk for 3 weeks about and around a subject with no decision at the end, rather than spend 3 minutes doing something…..He talks too much and drinks too much – a garrulous weakling, somewhat afraid of the Phosphate commission and determined to be their most obedient and humble servant. The flesh pots of Ocean Island are too much for him….He sits there in comfort, travels too little and doesn’t use the Nimanoa (the Nimanoa is the R.C.‘s Yacht, 150 tons gross, about 70 ft. long and can do 6 knots on her engines, ketch rig) nor does he allow other officers to have her much. Incidentally he is immune from sea-sickness and is one of the few people who can use the Nimanoa without being ill. He does not give any of his officers any power of initiative and has none himself. Complains of the excess of office work which ties him to Ocean Island. This is bunkum ; the Gilbert and Ellice Island Colony is today in a state of administrative paralysis – lack of transport and lack of purpose being jointly responsible……

The assessment of Resident Commissioner J.C. Barley, who was headquartered on Ocean (Banaba) Island, located west of the Gilberts, goes on for about four full pages.

II. August 15th [1937] [Pages 9 – 16]:

″I continue this in a very rough seas, which makes writing a trial, between Rotuma and Taveuni” / Richards goes on to talk about a trip he took “on the Nimanoa to Niutao, the first of the Ellice Group…..thence to Vaitupu and on to Funafuti”. ALso trip to Rotuma and lots of detail about Islands and Islanders.

III. July 18th [1937] “On board H.M.S.Leith” – [Pages 17 – 29]:

Tunabuli Ysabel, British Solomon Islands [This is 16 days after Amelia Earhart vanished and no word of it in this letter to Dawe. “My dear Dawe, my last day in the Solomons I propose to use in dealing you another shattering blow with my private depressions……..One has to remember that Suva is as far from Tulagi as Jamaica is from Downing Street….Of course there is wireless communication which is largely used…The only way to run the Solomons is to pick a good man, aged about 40, with the right experience, give him a pretty freehand and plenty of backing and retain only a guiding control of policy…..″

″Richards then goes into a delicate story of infidelity between the wife of the Chief Magistrate on Tulagi (Solomon Islands) and the General Manager of Lever’s, “a strong and lusty Australian, a bachelor and trier”.

IV: 26th June [1937] “At Sea. H.M.S.Leith” – [Pages 30 – 44]:

″My dear Dawe, I am minded to write to you some private impressions of this tour. You need not – probably will not have time to – read them, written as they are on a heaving sloop. But have them you shall, though it is but an ill return for your lately glorious letter which left Creasy so sadly lamenting. Punish him by making him read this. – New Hebrides. Tanna.: No high commissioner has visited this island for 27 years. It is the Headquarters of the District Agents (British and French) for the Southern group. In the centre of the island is a very active volcanoe, which we climbed at sunset towatch it belching fire and smoke with loud explosions. The British Agent is one Nicol, quite hopeless, an uneducated, low-class engineer who originally came out in that capacity on the Euphrosyne, one-time Resident Commissioner’s yacht. He drifted into the Condominium service at a salary of about £200 p.a. and when in 1922 the separate British service started he was taken over at the enhanced scale (G.O.K. why). He is utterly unsuitable for administrative work and as B.A. is a calamity. Fat and Lazy, with a white-faced anxious-looking wife, of the cook type-Australian. Gets £600 p.a. + £30 + quarters. Is not worth £200 p.a. He regards natives with kindly indifference, does nothing for them, knows nothing about them. Has not the education or the intelligence to appreciate the need. Wanders from island to island in fine spells in a small unseaworthy motor-boat tending whose engine he is at his proper job. Does nothing when he arrives and leaves without knowing why he has comeor even reflecting on what he was trying to do. He is not in fact trying to do anything – and he is very successful.″

On 13 further pages Richards reports about visits to Erromanga, Vila, Bushman’s Bay, Tangoa – Lolowai,[″Perhaps the Solomons and Gilberts will not be so outrageous. None the less it is high time the truth was told about the New Hebrides”], Hog Harbour, Solomon Islands Protectorate / Vanikoro, Swallow Islands etc.


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Arthur Frederick Richards, 1st Baron Milverton GCMG (21 February 1885 – 27 October 1978), was a British colonial administrator who over his career served as Governor of North Borneo, Gambia, Fiji, Jamaica, and Nigeria.

Richards was born in Bristol in 1885, the son of William Richards. He was educated at Clifton College in Bristol, and graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1907 with a BA.
Richards entered the Malayan Civil Service in 1908. By 1921, he had become the Acting 1st Assistant Colonial Secretary for the Straits Settlements. He served as Acting Under-Secretary of the Federated Malay States in 1926, and became full Under-Secretary from 1927 to 1929. He was the Acting General Advisor in Johore between 1929 and 1920, and from 1930 to 1933 he served as the governor of Northern Borneo. Following this, he served as Governor of the Gambia from 1933 to 1936.

He served as Governor of Fiji from 1936 to 1938, holding this office concurrently with the position of High Commissioner of the Western Pacific. From 1938 to 1943, he served as Governor of Jamaica. From 1943 to 1948, he served as Governor of Nigeria.
He was known in the Colonial Service as ‘Old Sinister’. He became the first Colonial Office official to be raised to the peerage while still in office. In 1986, his former private secretary in Nigeria, Richard Peel, published a memoir of Richards, titled Old Sinister: A Memoir of Sir Arthur Richards.

In the House of Lords Milverton sat for the Labour Party until 1949 when, objecting to Labour’s nationalisation plans, he joined the Liberal Party. Soon after that he joined the Conservative Party.
He was made a CMG in 1933, elevated to KCMG in 1935, and again to GCMG in 1942. In 1947 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Milverton, of Lagos and of Clifton in the City of Bristol. He was also appointed as K.St.J., and was awarded the US Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm.

In 1927, Richards married Noelle Bënda Whitehead (18 December 1904 – 11 September 2010), daughter of Charles Basil Whitehead. He died in October 1978, aged 93, and was succeeded in the Barony by his eldest son, the Revd Fraser Arthur Richard Richards. The Second Baron Milverton died in August 2023 and was succeeded in the title by his brother, Michael Hugh Richards (born 1 August 1936), Third Baron Milverton. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: British Colonial Administration · British Colonial History · British Foreign Office · British Foreign Policy · British Western Pacific Material / Sir Harry Luke Collection · British Western Pacific Territories · Caribbean Content / Sir Harry Luke Collection · Gilbert Islands · Harry Luke – Pacific (1938 – 1947) · Ocean Island (J.C.Barley) · Pacific · Sir Harry Luke · Sir Harry Luke – Personal Archive of Books and Correspondence · Sir Harry Luke Collection · South Sea Material – Sir Harry Luke Collection
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 31779AB

EUR 275.000,--