‘From all this,’ wrote Gordon Walker wearily in his diary, ‘I have learned to stand up to much abuse and publicity.’ But he was also enjoying his high profile. ‘Though it has not been a pleasant experience,’ he observed, ‘I have not altogether disliked it. There is something to be said for having oneself talked about, whatever the cause.’33 He was helped by the South African High Commissioner in London, Leif Egeland, who had long discussions with influential people in the media, warning them against any agitation that would play into the hands of ‘Communist exploitation’ of the colour issue. But he had done this discreetly. ‘Nothing will play more surely into the hands of our enemies and enemies of the present United Kingdom Government,’ he told Malan, ‘than any overt sign of intervention on our part.’34
Egeland reported to Dr Malan that Gordon Walker did not think the Conservatives would want to bring down the government on the Seretse issue – ‘a damnosa hereditas to which they would not wish to succeed’. But Egeland was worried about Winston Churchill. ‘Churchill has got out of step with his Party,’ he told Malan, ‘most of whom would like to see [the] issue played down.’35 Churchill was deeply troubled by the Seretse affair. According to his friend Violet Bonham Carter, he had told her: ‘I believe firmly in 2 principles: (1) Christian marriage, & (2) the bond of strong animal passion between husband & wife. Both exist in this case.’36 On 15 March, two days after the failure of Baring’s Kgotla, Churchill sent an urgent telegram to Smuts in South Africa: ‘Should be grateful for full information about your views Seretse by swiftest airmail. Feeling here very strong against Government muddle. Winston.’37
Smuts replied immediately with a telegram, promising to send an air-letter by the next day’s mail, ‘which advises caution from Commonwealth viewpoint’.38 The letter set out this caution in detail. There was much to be said, acknowledged Smuts, for Churchill’s view that Seretse had been tricked into the London visit. But he did not see how the Government could change their decision without ‘very grave damage’ from the South African point of view. ‘A form of passive resistence [sic], or boycott,’ he pointed out, ‘has already been started by the tribe against the Government, and any change now by the Government will be looked upon as a capitulation… and it would be an inducement to Natives in the Union to do likewise,’ with farreaching consequences. ‘Natives traditionally believe in authority,’ he argued, ‘and our whole Native system will collapse if weakness is shown in this regard.’
If the British Government were to ignore South African hostility to Seretse’s marriage, warned Smuts, public opinion would harden behind Malan’s claim for the annexation of the High Commission Territories. And if this claim were refused, the ‘extreme course’ of declaring South Africa a republic would at once become an issue. This would undermine the Commonwealth. But such a calamity would be prevented if the situation were managed properly.
I believe the feud between Tshekedi and the Seretse factions is [a] plausible excuse which the British Government may have for banishing both from the Territory. Whether they will make use of this I cannot at present say.
‘But from all this,’ he concluded, ‘you will see that the Seretse case in its full implications is full of dynamite.’39 Churchill was persuaded. From now on, he ceased to confront the Labour front bench on the issue of Seretse.
But as Gordon Walker had feared, Labour backbenchers started to press their opposition. At a long meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, many of them accused Attlee and Gordon Walker of instigating a colour bar.40 Then there was a new challenge: the Liberal Party – which viewed ‘with deep misgivings’ the treatment of Seretse – tabled a motion for debate in the Commons.41
Gordon Walker needed to find some way of taking the initiative. He seized on the idea of a White Paper, as an alternative to the Harragin Report, that would satisfy the repeated requests to the government for a clear statement of its case. One of the people making this request was Isobel Cripps, the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps. ‘I am finding, even amongst people who try to take an unbiased view,’ wrote Lady Cripps to Gordon Walker, ‘that there are certain suspicions which are aroused, and if I were not as close to the picture as I am, I myself would probably be tainted by these suspicions.’ She understood, she said, that the chief point was ‘the very real danger which I gather exists of civil war being caused intertribally if Seretse went back’.42 This was not, of course, the chief point at all – rather, it was the ‘plausible excuse’ advocated by Smuts. Lady Cripps was deluding herself in the belief that she was ‘close to the picture’. But since it was the very point that Gordon Walker had been trying to make, he replied gratefully. ‘This has been a hideously difficult matter,’ he confided to her. ‘I am sure it has been right to take the immediate unpopular line, but it hasn’t been exactly fun.’43
Lady Cripps appears to have genuinely believed the official story. It had a trace of truth: the difference of opinion between uncle and nephew. But this difference had been puffed up and magnified to such an extent that it really did seem to threaten the good order of the Bangwato. Lady Cripps herself was free of racist prejudice: not only did she publicly denounce it, but also she did not object when her daughter Peggy announced in 1952 her wish to marry Joe Appiah, Seretse’s friend from the Gold Coast.
A Cabinet meeting was arranged for 16 March. One of the items on the agenda was the question of the conditions under which Seretse would be able to return temporarily to Bechuanaland. Gordon Walker had asked Baring for his views. ‘I am more than grateful for your decision to consult me again,’ replied the High Commissioner. He suggested that Gordon Walker grant permission for Seretse’s visit – but only for so long as Seretse’s behaviour did not make it impossible to maintain order. This proviso, he argued, would create a ‘loophole’, which he thought was necessary to maintain stability in the reserve.44
At the Cabinet meeting, Gordon Walker explained to his colleagues that he had offered to pay Seretse an allowance of £1,100 a year for so long as he was in exile. Subject to good behaviour, he added – thereby building in Baring’s ‘loophole’ – Seretse would be allowed to visit Bechuanaland briefly in connection with his lawsuit. But Cabinet members objected. They could not see why it was necessary to prohibit Seretse from taking up residence in the Protectorate, so long as he was outside the Bangwato Reserve. If Tshekedi was allowed to live in the Protectorate, then why not Seretse? They also thought that the Commonwealth Secretary should say at once that he would be prepared to review the whole matter, if Seretse’s presence in the reserve did not prejudice good government.45
The day after the Cabinet meeting, Gordon Walker went to the Colonial Office for a meeting with representatives of the Seretse Khama Fighting Committee, who included Learie Constantine and Nii Odoi Annan. The meeting was also attended by James Griffiths, who had replaced Creech Jones as Colonial Secretary after the February election. The Fighting Committee put forward strong views. The feeling of ‘the coloured people in this country and throughout the Colonial Empire,’ they protested, ‘was one of extreme anger’ at the British Government over this affair, which should have been left as a domestic affair for the Bamangwato. They described a general feeling that – as Joe Appiah was to put it in his memoirs – ‘Labour in office, as in the Seretse case, [had] adopted a policy of drift unworthy of any responsible government.’46 Some extremists on the Fighting Committee, they said, wanted the whole colonial empire to boycott British goods and even to shoot British officials; but they had been firmly told to conduct the fight on constitutional lines. Constantine added that so far as he was concerned, the Seretse Khama affair was just one more example of racial discrimination. He gave examples of insulting treatment received in London by himself and his family and, in addition, he produced a copy of a concise Pocket Encyclopaedia published by Asprey, an exclusive shop in London’s Mayfair district, ‘which included as part of the description of a Negro the words “breeds fast and is showing menace”.’47
The White Paper – ‘Bechuanaland Protectorate. Succession to the Chieftainship of the Bamangwato Tribe’ – was finally released on 22 March. It made a great deal of the danger to tribal unity posed by the rivalry between Seretse and Tshekedi and of the future attitude of the tribe towards the children of Seretse’s marriage. No colour bar, it said, had been imposed on the tribe:
His Majesty’s Government are fully aware of the very strong feelings that are aroused on the subject of the merits or demerits of mixed marriages, but that is not the issue which is here raised. This particular marriage assumed importance because of Seretse’s position as a prospective Chief of the Bamangwato tribe.
Regarding South Africa, the document repeated the lie that Gordon Walker had given two weeks earlier:
His Majesty’s Government were of course aware that a strong body of European opinion in Southern Africa would be opposed to recognition; but, as stated in the House of Commons on the 8th March, no representations on this matter have been received from the Government of the Union of South Africa or Southern Rhodesia.49
The full text of the White Paper was cabled to every British colony throughout the Empire.50
The White Paper had a mixed reaction in the UK. As far as the Seretse Khama Fighting Committee was concerned, it had not disclosed anything that was not known before.51 From Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury sent a letter to the Prime Minister, expressing deep concern that the Government seemed to be taking a new – and unacceptable – policy on race relations. He enclosed with his letter a set of resolutions on the Seretse Khama affair, which had been passed by the British Council of Churches.52 The serious weeklies remained unanimous in their disapproval of the Government and letters to the editors were running about three to one in Seretse’s favour.53 But The Times and the Manchester Guardian thought the White Paper put a somewhat better face on the banishment. The Daily Telegraph welcomed the Government’s decision to release a written account of the situation. Some of the Labour Party members who had complained about the banishment now felt reassured.
In Britain’s colonies, there was widespread disgust. From Lagos an angry telegram was sent to the Colonial Secretary: ‘Nigerians advise hands off Khama and let him rule his people as Britons do theirs.’54 The United Gold Coast Convention complained that, ‘We in the Gold Coast deplore any act likely to worsen the deterioration of colonial Africa’s shaken confidence in the British justice.’55 ‘I am afraid the White Paper has been very badly received,’ wrote the head of the Bureau of Public Information in Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana, to the Colonial Office, ‘to judge from the conversations wherever I go.’ He added, ‘I should myself have wished that the White Paper had been worded with an ear for possible West Indian reactions. I do not think I have seen people of African descent, in all strata, so indignant since the Italo-Ethiopian war, and that is saying a lot!’56 In Jamaica, a resolution of ‘profound regret’ was passed in the House of Representatives.57
In the USA, reported the British embassy in Washington, the case had had ‘a very bad effect on Negroes generally, who felt much moved and almost personally affected by it.’58 The Council on African Affairs, of which Paul Robeson was Chairman and W. E. B. Du Bois Vice-Chairman, was appalled by the White Paper. It sent a letter of objection to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, pointing out that the British Government had violated the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 7 – ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile.’59
The Government had intended to publish the White Paper while Seretse was en route to Lobatse, well out of the way. But Seretse was determined to see it before he left and he postponed his flight for a day. The contents saddened him. From his flat in Airways Mansions, he wrote a long and thoughtful letter to The Times. ‘As hard as I tried,’ he said, ‘I have failed to discover one single charge against me where I have done wrong.’ He had committed no crime: all he had done was to marry an Englishwoman.60
Two days after the release of the White Paper, the Commonwealth Secretary was faced with a new crisis. He was told that in the House of Assembly in Cape Town, Sam Kahn, the Communist member, had confronted Dr Malan on South Africa’s role in the Seretse Khama affair, asking whether ‘any representation’ had been made to the British Government. Malan had been evasive in his answer and referred Kahn to the White Paper.61 But Gordon Walker was horrified. He knew that if the truth emerged, his lies to the House on 8 March and in the White Paper would be exposed. He quickly telephoned South Africa House and summoned Egeland to Whitehall.
For three hours, they sifted through the details of the meeting on 30 June 1949, when Egeland had presented Malan’s point of view on Seretse to Philip Noel-Baker, Gordon Walker’s predecessor. Liesching joined in the discussions. They were anxious to find a way of showing that the South African High Commissioner’s communication was ‘not a “representation” made on instructions from Dr Malan’.62 They looked at Noel-Baker’s record of the meeting, which stated that Egeland ‘was making only semi-official or private representations’ – even though, as Egeland now pointed out, Noel-Baker had fully understood that Egeland had been instructed by Malan to come and talk to him.63
This was the first time, cabled Egeland to his Prime Minister, that he had seen this record; he himself had kept no written account of the conversation. He did not remember every detail, but he was ‘extremely surprised’ to find that this had been Noel-Baker’s impression. And even though the issue was one of ‘interpretation and perhaps of rather fine distinctions’, he knew that he had left Noel-Baker ‘in no doubt about your attitude which, of course, would have been well-known to him in other ways’.64 In other words, Malan had made a representation to the British Government. This telegram from Egeland to Malan was copied to the Commonwealth Relations Office, from where it was forwarded to Attlee, to other senior officials in the British government, and to Baring in South Africa.65
Egeland also wrote a private letter to Malan, which was intended for his eyes only. Noel-Baker’s note, he said,
set out quite fairly and fully the implications which I had stressed and at the very start made it clear that my call was on your instructions. Noel-Baker’s reference lower down to ‘non-official’ representations may, I think, be fairly ascribed to the ‘woolly-mindedness’ which cost him his place in the Cabinet.66
It is unlikely, however, that Noel-Baker – as Secretary of State – would have written this record himself. Almost certainly it was written by a Private Secretary and its contents may have been influenced by Liesching, the Permanent Under-Secretary, as an insurance against any accusation of collusion with the South African Government.
But in any case, what Egeland described as Noel-Baker’s ‘woolly-mindedness’ was his successor’s lifeline. In a statement to Attlee, Gordon Walker insisted that his statement to the Commons on 8 March had been borne out by Noel-Baker’s record. And although Dr Malan had claimed in a speech to the Nationalist Party Congress in 1949 that he had sent a telegram to the UK Government, this was demonstrably untrue: ‘No such telegram was ever received by us from the Union Government.’67 No evidence existed, therefore, to suggest that South Africa had made an official representation to the British Government.
Egeland received a swift reply from Douglas Forsyth, the South Afric
an External Affairs Secretary. ‘Prime Minister appreciates, of course, delicacy of situation,’ he assured Egeland, ‘and wishes Secretary of State to understand that should question again be raised here he will deal with it with all possible discretion so as to avoid embarrassment to Gordon Walker.’ The Commonwealth Secretary was hugely relieved. ‘The most helpful and understanding reply which you returned to my telegram of the 24th’, wrote Egeland to his Prime Minister, ‘has been received with warm appreciation by the CRO.’68
But no sooner had Gordon Walker dealt with the issue of representations from South Africa, than once again he was on the defensive in the House of Commons. A debate on the Seretse Khama issue started two minutes before midnight on 29 March, lasting well over an hour. It was listened to by Seretse himself, sitting at the back of the Chamber. It began with Fenner Brockway describing the case as a symbol – ‘an issue of the division of the world between the white and what are known as the coloured races’. The colour bar, he said, ‘is the real issue behind the decision… against which this House should protest with its last breath’. Quintin Hogg was equally critical. ‘What we have to discuss here tonight,’ he said acidly,
is whether the Government have acted wisely, not in endorsing or refusing to endorse the marriage between a Bechuanaland prince and a London typist, but in over-riding the decision of the Bechuanaland tribe to accept this man and his wife as their prince and princess.
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