[1] Keith was the District Commissioner at Ndola during the Copperbelt strike of 1935.
[2] He told the following Commission of Enquiry that although the Employment of Natives Ordnance prohibited Africans from striking under threat of criminal prosecution, it would be inevitable that they would sooner or later create a mechanism of representation, and that the authorities would be well advised to establish legally recognised trade unions.
When the Guyanese journalist Rudolph Dunbar wrote a critical article about the conditions the workers in this unit had to endure, Keith responded defending the conditions in their camps, which he had visited several times.
Whilst he admitted the food had been of poor quality, he claimed that this had been remedied.
Whilst Keith denied that there were no problems with the sanitary arrangements, Dunbar's account of their inadequacy had also been born out by Dr Patterson, the Medical Officer of the unit.