The Fan Club

Towards the end of 1981 the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons decided to hold an inquiry into CDC, stimulated by the government’s reformulation of aid policy that it intended to give greater weight to political, industrial and commercial considerations. There was also a specific concern that ‘CDC’s financial future and very existence as a publicly funded quasi-autonomous public body was in doubt’.1 It was not made clear what precisely gave rise to the alarm over CDC’s future, since the matter was not an explicit theme in the Committee’s hearings. It had presumably caught wind of the concerns generated by the cut-back in funding and the delay in re-establishing a financial planning framework. Its report, The Work of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, was published in October 1982. The Committee therefore had the benefit of the 1980 quinquennial review report which had been finalised in January 1981, as well as of the government’s conclusions on the review, announced in December. More intriguingly, the Eccles report was contemporaneous with the period during which the Committee was taking evidence – the autumn and winter of 1981. There is no indication that the Committee was aware of CDC’s own soul searching exercise while it was taking place, or while preparing its own report.