Percy Selwyn-Clarke

Sir Percy Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke KBE , CMG , MC (December 1893 in North Finchley ; † March 13, 1976 in Hampstead ) was a British colonial official who served as the director of the Hong Kong Medical Service from 1937 to 1943 and from 1947 to 1951 Was governor of the Seychelles . Selwyn-Clarke was a trained doctor and lawyer.

Life

Selwyn-Clarke was born in December 1893 and attended Bedales boarding school in Petersfield, Hampshire . From 1912 he received medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he graduated in 1916. During World War I , Selwyn-Clarke served in France, where he was wounded twice and received the Military Cross in 1918 .

After the war he joined the British Colonial Administration's medical service and worked on the Gold Coast from 1919 . He married in 1935, had a daughter and was transferred to Hong Kong in 1937 as director of the Crown Colony's Medical Service . During the Second World War , Selwyn-Clarke tried against the will of the Japanese occupiers to maintain medical care in Hong Kong until he was arrested on May 3, 1943. Several months of solitary confinement followed, during which Selwyn-Clarke was tortured. Twice he was placed in front of a firing squad for pretense.

In July 1947, the appointment as governor of the Seychelles followed by the new post-war Labor government Clement Attlee . Selwyn-Clarke was a socialist and had no experience as a colony governor. British class society meant little to him. In his first address in the presence of the local elite, he made it clear that he would not tolerate racial and religious discrimination and that he intended reforms. Selwyn-Clarke turned down the usual invitation to become a member of the exclusively “white” reserved Seychelles Club . He appointed the singhalesischstämmigen Homer Vanniasinkam to court President of the Supreme Court of the Seychelles. Local Creole attorney Charles Evariste Collet became Attorney General .

Under the aegis of Selwyn-Clarke, reforms in the tax law and education system were initiated, which should lead to the building of a democracy. The 1948 constitution provided for universal suffrage and expanded the number of advisory members of the local colonial administration. In October 1948, elections were held for the first time in Seychelles history. The elites united in the SPTA (Seychelles Planters and Taxpayers Association) were hardly opposed to candidates, so that initially little changed. The reforms of the "socialist governor" were boycotted by the SPTA where possible. In 1951 the Colonial Office decided that sufficient reforms had been initiated in the Seychelles for the time being. Selwyn-Clarke, who had hoped for a second term, was called back to London.

Selwyn-Clarke worked in the UK Ministry of Health until his retirement in 1956 and later in prisoner care. In 1973 he published his memoir Footprints . Percy Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke died on March 13, 1976 at the age of 82 in Hampstead, London. He bequeathed his remains to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for research purposes.

In the Seychelles, the market named after Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke in the capital Victoria is a reminder of the former governor.

literature

• Charles G. Roland: Long night's journey into day: prisoners of war in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945 . Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2001. ISBN 9780889203624 . (Retrieved from Google Books on January 31, 2010)
• Kevin Shillington: History of Modern Seychelles . Macmillan, Oxford 2009. ISBN 978-1-4050-6034-9 . Pp. 56-61.

predecessor	Office	successor
Sir William Marston Logan	Governor of the Seychelles 1947–1951	Frederick Crawford