142 SOCIAL SCIENTIST developed in an unhelpful way (though he does not elaborate on this), but he also says that officials and ministers assumed that the form of government that would emerge in Africa would be parliamentary.5 This paper reconsiders and challenges that view. It is argued that the more complex events and thinking of the 'long Second World War' period have been muddied by nationalist historiography which, in a rather Whiggish way, presented a gradual progress to parliamentary institutions, a progress which came about through struggle, but one where the nationalists eventually came into their inheritance as, partly, at any rate, the successors to British government, the old colonial state structures giving way to the Westminster model. Thus the nationalists had been able to demonstrate that they were not the children the colonial rulers had perceived them to be, but adults who could operate the democratic system/ The line being taken in this paper is that the period 1938 to 1947 was a complex and changing one, while at this time the imperial mind was for much of the time not looking to establish parliamentary democracies in the colonies, even in the very long term. THE WESTMINSTER MODEL OR AFRICAN STRUCTURES? A central figure in the debates about future constitutional development in African colonies was Malcolm Hailey, previously with long service in India, including governorships in the Punjab and the United Provinces, between 1924 and 1934. From 1935, for the next two decades, Hailey's attention was focused on Africa, and it is interesting to see where his Indian experience and perceptions related to his views on Africa. Hailey believed that a major problem in India had been the development of a political class who had pressed their demands through Congress, and that their activities had led to involvement in a Westminster sort of system, which Hailey considered was unlikely to succeed in Asia.7 At root of these views was the belief that Indian nationalism had been inimical to British concepts of political education,8 and that there was still time to channel African developments along what were seen as positive courses. Thus, in India he reflected that the slowing down of the emergence of a politicised educated elite would have averted many of the major problems facing British rule. It has been suggested by Cell that, as early as the First World War, Hailey had recognised that Indian nationalism was part of an Asian revolution, and would inevitably succeed, so that Britain would need to engage in a progressive set of retreats, but that this recognition was never quite accepted emotionally,