From Empire to Commonwealth: Reflections on a Career in Britain's Overseas Service

Description

John O'Regan pursued a long career in the British Colonial Service. He served in Ceylon, Jamaica, Nigeria, Uganda and, finally, Iran. In this book he gives an account of the concerns of the Overseas Civil Service during the period spanning the end of the empire and the emergence of independent nation-states. He profiles figures such as Sir Andrew Caldicott and D.S. Senanavaka in Ceylon, Sir Hugh Foot, Sir Alexander Bustamente and Norman Manley in Jamaica, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in Nigeria and more.

After Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read botany, John O'Regan joined the Ceylon Civil Service in 1935 and remained in Ceylon right through the war. Among the posts he held was that of Private Secretary to the Governor, Sir Andrew Caldecott, whose daughter he married in 1941. His last post in Ceylon was as Assistant Government Agent Trincomalee, after Independence. In 1950 he was appointed Deputy Colonial Secretary Jamaica, and in 1955 was awarded the OBE. He was transferred to Nigeria as a Permanent Secretary in 1956, serving first in the Western Region and then in the Federation where he remained for two years after Nigeria's independence. Appointed a Temporary First Secretary in the Diplomatic Service after his retirement from Nigeria, he administered British aid in the British High Commission in Uganda from 1962 to 1968, and in the British Embassy in Iran from 1968 to 1973. He finally retired in 1973, never having had a paid job in the UK. Following his retirement he has played an active part in the Overseas Service Pensioners' Association and in the Overseas Service Pensioners' Benevolent Society, and has also maintained links with the countries in which he served.