The Peace of Amiens

by Nicholas Sumner

  ​Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian owner of the Express Newspapers empire, had been dismayed by the chaos and weakness that characterised the British political scene after May 1940. Unimpressed by the leaders of the other parties, he saw Sinclair not only as the anti-appeaser but the man who carried the torch of much-needed reform without blinkered Socialism. At this time, newspapers held a firm grip on the news agenda, few people had radios and only a handful of televisions existed in private homes. The Express appealed to all classes and in the 1930s became the first newspaper to garner a circulation of two million copies. From June 1940 Beaverbrook and Express newspapers supported Sinclair both politically and financially. Beaverbrook freely admitted that his newspapers promoted his political agenda and his support for Sinclair, was extremely welcome. Surprisingly it came with few strings. Like Sinclair, Beaverbrook believed in fundamental Liberal principles, but more importantly, he saw him as the best man to lead the country.

  ​In January 1941 Beveridge, who had been made Chairman of the Liberal’s campaign committee, vowed that “If the people of Britain . . . want to have a Liberal government with a radical programme, they will be able to secure it. The party will put up enough candidates to make that possible.” He was only able to do this because of Beaverbrook’s support for the party.

  *

  The formation of a coalition National government in September 1939 was all that saved the Labour Party from being forced to call an immediate election. Although the separate Independent Labour Party led by James Maxton could usually be relied on to vote with the government, Labour’s majority as the German and Russian tanks rolled across Poland amounted to a single seat in the Commons. By the time the Treaty of Leamouth was signed and the National government dissolved at the end of 1940, six by-elections had left no party with an overall majority. The position in the House was as follows:

  Labour: 304

  Conservative: 256

  Liberal: 32

  National Liberal: 8

  Independent Labour: 3

  Others: 12

  Dalton frantically cobbled together a coalition with Independent Labour and a rag-bag of independents and in so doing staved off an immediate election. This did little other than buy the Labour party time to try and rescue its severely tarnished image in the eyes of the electorate but Dalton’s Government might have soldiered on had it not been for the ego of Oswald Mosley. Dissatisfied with his reduced role in British politics and buoyed by the recent notoriety of the report on the British Empire that bore his name, Mosley orchestrated a backbench revolt of 12 disgruntled Labour MPs in late January. With them, he formed a new political faction which he named the New Party [106] and he led them across the floor of the House of Commons to sit on the opposition benches to thunderous applause from the Conservatives and Liberals who realised that this precipitous action left the Government with no option but to call an election. As one political observer noted of the revolt; “This was typical Mosley – the action of a man hungry for power and innocent of principals.”

  ​Dalton was thunderstruck and had no option but to see the King and request the dissolution of Parliament. He considered hanging on, but it seems that in the end he realised that the political tide had turned against him and did not want to face the humiliation of losing a vote of no-confidence. The election was called for Thursday 20th February 1941 but the MPs who joined in Mosley’s revolt did not do well, only one of them, apart from Mosley himself, retained his seat.

  *

  In spite of the February weather, the 1941 general election saw a very large turnout. Dissatisfaction was palpable in a country riven by political turmoil and the agony of defeat. Not one of the political parties could look forward to the results with confidence. Campaigning was robust and at times vicious, attacks by one party upon another were frequent. There were three great surprises, firstly the scale of the Liberal revival, secondly that no party had an overall majority and thirdly that Oswald Mosley, the disgraced former Prime Minister, retained his seat.

  ​Labour were routed, losing 163 seats. The party’s flip-flopping on policy between Mosley and Attlee, the defeat in the war and the legacy of the Mosleyite policy of ‘Accommodation’ all proved fatal to their prospects. Their adherence to a doctrine of widening socialism also worked against them. The left of the party demanded ever more concessions and their uncritical support for Stalin contrasted starkly with the view propagated by most of the newspapers that he was quite as dangerous a threat to world peace as Hitler. The newspapers also kept the question of the financial viability of Labour’s plans very much at the forefront of the debate.

  Although they lost fewer seats than the Labour Party did, the Tories also suffered from their association with the policy of Appeasement. The choice of Lord Halifax as leader was very damaging. A man perceived by the British public as yet another old, distant, out of touch British aristocrat was a calamitously poor decision.

  ​In the first decade of the 20th Century, the Conservative Party was torn apart by the issue of Empire. That led to the Liberals winning their huge majority of 1906. In the fifth decade of the century the Labour Party was torn apart by the issue of Appeasement; again, the Liberals were the party to profit. The full results of the election were as follows:

  Liberal: 226 (+194)

  Conservative: 209 (–47)

  Labour: 141 (–163)

  National Liberal: 3 (–5)

  The New Party: 2 (–10)

  Others: 34 (+22)

  When it became clear that the results would be close and a hung parliament was likely, both the Liberals and the Tories tried to woo the minor parties to support them in forming a government. Before all the results were known, but after it had become apparent that the Liberals had massively increased their share of the vote, Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Liberal Party leader, initially ruled out a Coalition with either of the two largest parties. This was because Labour had been utterly discredited and Halifax of the Conservatives was an Appeaser. It was a typically principled stand from a highly principled man, but when it became apparent that Halifax would stand down immediately and that the Tories, whose confidence was badly shaken, would not contemplate a coalition with Labour but were open to being the lesser partners in a Coalition with the Liberals, the Liberal-Conservative Alliance was formed and Sinclair was asked by the King to form a government.

  ​Three days after the election results were counted, a Napier-Heston Racer aircraft recaptured the world airspeed record from the Germans at a speed of 479.36 mph, 10.14 mph faster than the previous record held by a Messerschmitt 209 VI.

  From ‘The Indian Independence Movement and the Imperial Audit of 1941’ by Eugene Goldblum, Stevens and Samuel 1973

  “...one of the most idle and ill contrived systems that ever disgraced a nation.” John Arthur Roebuck, describing the British Empire in a House of Commons debate, 24th May 1849

  In attempting to deal with the Indian independence movement, British policy fell between two stools. On the one hand, the British colonial government in India pursued the time-honoured and previously effective method of asserting its moral right with brute force. It is important to note here that there was little difference in the way the British maintained control of India and the way in which any of the previous regimes including the Moguls, the Muryahs, the Guptas or the Marathas had accomplished it. In the traditional Indian system opposition to the rule of the Government was a crime far worse than banditry and was generally met with violent reprisal. The British merely continued that policy, they did not invent it. It had the benefit of being understood and accepted as a normal function of government by the Indian people. Elected Indian governments post British colonial rule have also been compelled to utilise force to keep order in the country.

  What had changed was the outlook of the governing class of the United Kingdom, who were of course the overseers of the colonial government of India. Their view of the British Empire had gone from regarding it in purely commercial terms
– those of asset or liability, profit and loss – to an emphasis on what Kipling called ‘the high and holy work’ of Britain’s ‘civilising mission’. India, indeed the entirety of the British Empire was no longer a market to be exploited, it was now a ward that needed (in another of Kipling’s memorable phrases) to be ‘…humoured (Ah slowly!) towards the light.’

  One of the British conceits regarding the Empire was that its peoples would be, or could be made to be, willing participants in the process of ‘civilising’ them. This is hardly surprising given the marked differences in scientific and social development between Europe and much of the rest of the world. However, it does not seem to have occurred to the British that the native peoples of their empire might be oblivious to this subtlety, or misinterpret its implementation. While modern approaches to medicine, agriculture and commerce benefitted many Indians; others, particularly the poor, saw little of that benefit and consequently had little use for these advances. The relaxation of the general firmness of British rule; the toleration of such organisations as the Indian Congress Party (which was founded in Britain by a Scot) and the encouragement of the Indian independence movement in British universities were seen by Indians of all classes and castes as signs, not of helpful coaching in a spirit of brotherly love and co-operation; but of weakness.

  It is important to note here the genius and potential limitations of Gandhi’s non-violent protest movement. In initiating it, he clearly identified the main weakness in British policy and the ideal way in which to exploit it. At that time, the non-violent movement could only have worked in a British colony. Imagine Gandhi attempting to disseminate the notion of non-violent resistance in German Tanganyika, the Belgian Congo, the Dutch East Indies or Portuguese Mozambique. In these places too there was protest and opposition to the colonial government; it came to a rapid and bloody end. Fortunately for the Mahatma, this was not the British way and he suffered no more than imprisonment.

  It is also important to note that generally speaking, the urging of Gandhi notwithstanding, the Indian independence movement was far from being non-violent. A mythology has grown up in our own age that only peaceful forms of protest were used to achieve the goal of Indian independence, this is quite false.

  *

  The outline of the debate on India and indeed the debate on the direction that the Empire should take can be clarified by Sir John Seely’s question in 1883 as to whether the Empire was capable of further development (and if so, what kind of development) or whether it was ‘a mischievous encumbrance’ to be got rid of as quickly as possible. He further asked; ‘…whether the possession of India does now, or ever can, increase our power and our security while there is no doubt it vastly increases our dangers and responsibilities.’

  The Montagu – Chelmsford Report on India and constitutional reforms of 1918 pointed out that India depended for both internal and external security upon the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, an assessment echoed by the Simon commission in 1930. One third of the British Army was stationed in India, possession of India forced upon Britain extensive commitments in the Middle East and southern Asia.

  The British attachment to India was essentially romantic. Since the displacement in British government in the late 19th century of the commercial middle-class by the academic middle-class, British rule in India had very little focus on economic development. Although hailed as the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of Empire it appeared that the British had almost no idea what to do with India other than to hang onto it. While the British recognised that India was in many ways a burden, they also felt that it was somehow the proof of Britain’s status as a world power. Describing this as policy would be essentially incorrect. It was a negation of policy, a continuation of the status quo for reasons no one had really thought out. But it is also true to say that without the British, India would never have been a single united country.

  The debate in Parliament over India during the early 1930s was at times fierce; however the death of Winston Churchill in December 1931 meant that the diehard opponents of Indian self–government lost their eloquent and politically adept leader. Shortly after coming to power as Britain’s Prime Minister in the summer of 1932, Oswald Mosley sought to toughen policy with regards to dissent throughout the Empire. This bought him into conflict with the Viceroy of India, the Earl of Willingdon. Willingdon did not shrink from the use of force in governing India, though his use of force was certainly limited compared to previous regimes, and he resisted Mosley’s insistence that he be more forceful still. Mosley wanted him dismissed, but Governor’s General were appointed not by the Prime Minister, but by the Privy Council.

  The instinctive feeling within the Labour Party, both pre- and post-Mosley, was to grant independence or dominion status to every territory under the Crown as quickly as possible, providing that the rapid transfer of government did not cause chaos in the territory concerned. In the turmoil and climate of harsh national self-appraisal that swept the British government after the debacle of May 1940, it was decided to undertake a survey of the British Empire. This was to appraise the relative strengths and weaknesses, in strategic and economic terms, of each of the Empire’s territories. Only then could a calculation of each colony’s viability as an independent state be made, and a schedule whereby it might become independent, drawn up.

  The Idea of an Imperial Audit had first been put forward in 1938 by Oswald Mosley. Under Mosley, British policy had changed sharply with regard to its attitude to the rest of the world. Before he had taken office British Governments were increasingly inclined towards the view that the world was one unitary society that was naturally harmonious and armed conflict was a breakdown in that natural harmony. This of course was very different from Britain’s 19th-century view of the world as characterised and codified by Palmerston. To 19th century Britain, the world was an arena where nation states competed for advantage. One where national interests – though they might sometimes conflict with the interests of others and sometimes coincide – were always paramount, and where relations between states were governed not by legal or moral principle but by power and ambition. It was a place of perpetual struggle, and the possession of empire was not immoral or wicked but simply a natural function of the pursuit of national interest.

  Mosley’s view was much closer to that of Palmerston than to that of the majority of Britain’s governing class. All parties were split on the issue of the Empire but many MPs on both sides of the house were convinced that the Audit would reveal that the Empire was a pillar of strength that supported the mother country, only a few realised that it would reveal a very different picture.

  The obvious choice for the chair of the committee was Mosley himself. Mosley was very much an Empire-centric figure, and the Empire was central to his idea of Britain as a Great Power. After his resignation from the office of Prime Minister, Mosley had taken up an appointment as British Ambassador to the League of Nations. The new leadership of the Labour Party were keen to have Mosley out of the way – it would hardly have been comfortable for men like Clement Attlee and Hugh Dalton to have the former Prime Minister looking over their shoulders from the back benches. Always a strong advocate of the League, Mosley quickly became frustrated with the glacial slowness of its workings and its general ineffectiveness and resigned the post in early 1940. This left him without a task that might keep him at a safe distance from the British Parliament.

  Mosley was enthusiastic about the appointment from the first and bought all of his customary energy and powers of observation to the work. It must be noted that the committee had no mandate to take into account the world geo-political situation, it was meant to be only an analysis of the internal conditions and external trade prospects of the territories it covered. Mosley however, could not resist the temptation to suggest policy changes with strategic realities (as he perceived them) firmly in view. He produced an unflinching and thorough investigation of the economic and strategic issues concerning the British Empire, one that surprised
even him.

  Known as the Mosley Committee it convened in early 1940 and reported in January 1941. In sharp contrast to its initial brief, it could be read as a commercial and strategic audit of the Empire to establish which parts were assets or had the potential to be assets, and which parts were liabilities. Its findings therefore, were strongly indicative of which of the many British territories were in reality worth keeping.

  The report’s findings burst upon Parliament like a bombshell. It clearly drew the surprising conclusions that:

  1.) Instead of being a powerful alliance, the Empire was a ramshackle collection of mismatched lands with little in common.

  2.) That far from being any sort of asset to the UK, the Empire was a collective liability.

  3.) The best way to limit that liability was by either investing heavily in the empire to stimulate economic development or by releasing most of its unprofitable and indefensible territories from the Imperial yoke and giving them independence immediately.

  In recommending a way to proceed, the report noted that although Imperial Preference had caused an improvement in the Empire’s general trading position, the fundamental problem, which was the poverty of most of the Empire’s territories, could only be addressed by development. However, it also observed that the kind of capital outlay required to stimulate such changes was unlikely to be forthcoming in the climate of financial reticence and high defence spending following the War of 1940.

  It also addressed the argument that release from the Empire would inevitably mean the loss of the market presented by the territory concerned to British goods by arguing that:

  1.) Political independence from Westminster did not mean exclusion from the sterling zone.