by Richard Toye
Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell – a handful of philosophic people – in the wasted sun-scorched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan continue to flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea.124
Later, in the 1930s, he declared during the course of an argument about Palestine ‘that the Arabs were barbaric hordes who ate little but camels’ dung’.125 Nevertheless, attempts to portray Churchill as a lifelong, ardent Zionist fail to convince, even though Zionists themselves often praised him for their own purposes.126 Churchill supported Zionism only insofar as it was compatible with British power, and over the coming years the aspiration for Jewish statehood was to conflict increasingly with imperial rule.
If, in some moods, Churchill was willing to advocate withdrawal from Mesopotamia and Palestine, this was in part because of his awareness that staying there might have consequences for the rest of the Empire. In the post-war years he frequently spoke of Britain’s position ‘as the greatest Mahommedan Power’.127 In 1920 the Muslim population of the Empire was 87 million, including 70 million in India and 13 million in Egypt.128 He believed that a policy hostile to the defeated Turks, and the retention of the former Ottoman territories, could alienate these people. In other words, he criticized ‘dreams of conquest and aggrandisement’ in the Middle East precisely because he wanted to avoid dissipating British power elsewhere.129
V
If his approach to ‘new enlargements’ was, like his treatment of Ireland, relatively pragmatic, his view of the established non-white territories of the Empire was less so. Egyptian, Indian and African issues prompted strong emotional responses in him. In 1919 an uprising broke out in Egypt after the British tried to clamp down on the nationalist Wafd party. At this point the Colonial Secretary was Lord Milner. He had bounced back from the difficult aftermath of his South African years to take office under Lloyd George during the war, and now led a commission to investigate the discontent. Its report, published in February 1921, recommended the abolition of the British protectorate (which had been established formally in 1914) and the granting of internal self-government to Egypt under a constitutional monarchy. Churchill fought against these proposals every step of the way and annoyed Curzon – who was himself uneasy about the policy – through his public pronouncements. Just before the Milner report came out, for example, Churchill spoke of his hope that in the future both Ireland and Egypt would unfold their destinies ‘peacefully and prosperously within the elastic circle of the British Empire’.130 This raised the hackles of the nationalists in Cairo, who did not wish Egypt to be part of the Empire at all but instead demanded full independence.131 In spite of Churchill’s ‘difficult and insolent’ behaviour the Milner plan was implemented in 1922.132 Not long beforehand Curzon complained that ‘the Jingoes in the Cabinet, of whom the strongest are the PM and Winston, want to concede nothing and to stamp out rebellion in Egypt by fire and sword’.133 To a high-minded imperialist like Curzon, nothing was more debased and insincere than vulgar, pseudo-patriotic ‘Jingoism’. Churchill, who deplored Jingoism too, would have recognized the insult.
Churchill’s public attitude to the concurrent disturbances in India to some extent contradicted his growing reputation as a diehard. The troubles arose because of the Government of India’s extension of wartime measures to suppress sedition, including drastic restrictions on freedom of expression. Since his return to India at the outbreak of war Gandhi had made no direct challenge to British rule, but in early 1919 he launched a campaign of satyagraha directed at the new law. To his distress, the campaign turned violent. Trains were derailed, telegraph wires cut, buildings burnt and property plundered. A number of Europeans were killed. This – as many British conservatives liked to emphasize – was the context for General Reginald Dyer’s decision to order his soldiers to shoot at an unarmed mob in Amritsar, the administrative capital of Punjab. Trapped within the Jallianwallah Bagh, a walled area near the Golden Temple, the crowd had little chance to escape. The official inquiry into the massacre led by Lord Hunter found that 1,650 rounds were fired and estimated that 379 people were killed. It is probable that around three times that many were wounded.134 In the aftermath, as peace was restored to the city, Dyer issued the so-called ‘crawling order’: Indians passing along a narrow lane where a female missionary had been attacked were to be forced to do so on their hands and knees. A few days after the massacre Gandhi called off his campaign, confessing to a ‘Himalayan miscalculation’ in having launched it before his supporters were spiritually ready for the practice of non-violence.135
In Britain, opinion on Dyer was bitterly divided between those who saw him as a monster and those who thought him the saviour of the Raj. The Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, was one of those who were horrified. Five years younger than Churchill, he was first elected to Parliament in the sweeping Liberal victory of 1906, and his career flourished under Asquith. Asquith himself, however, mocked his protégé as ‘the Assyrian’ – a slighting reference to Montagu’s Jewishness – in the stream of passionate letters that he poured out to his young confidante Venetia Stanley. In a further twist, Montagu married Stanley in 1915: ‘this breaks my heart’, the Prime Minister told her when he learnt of the engagement.136 Montagu lost office when Asquith fell in 1916, but was given a new job by Lloyd George shortly afterwards. His promotion to the India Office a few months later was as unpopular with Tories as Churchill’s simultaneous appointment to the Ministry of Munitions. He was a self-tormented individual whose private comments (not least about Churchill) often had an air of cynicism, but his interest in India was genuine and longstanding. In August 1917 he made an official declaration that the country should move towards ‘responsible government’, which implied an eventual move to Dominion status.137 The so-called Montagu–Chelmsford reforms that followed after the war were a severely limited but nonetheless significant step on the road to Indians taking charge of their own affairs. After Amritsar, Montagu attempted without success to stiffen the Hunter report’s criticisms of those responsible.138 When the report was debated in the Commons on 8 July 1920 he faced the impossible job of squaring his own convictions with the need to appease Dyer’s powerful supporters in Parliament. The previous day Churchill had told the House of the Army Council’s decision that Dyer, who had been removed from employment in India by the Commander-in-Chief, would not be offered a post elsewhere. (This meant that he would be placed on half pay but his status and rank would not be affected.) In response to this announcement there were passionate cries of ‘Why?’ and ‘Shame’.139
Montagu opened the debate in an electric atmosphere, with Dyer himself looking down from the gallery on to the packed benches. Although Montagu’s own commitment to the Empire was profound, his speech was not calculated to soothe the diehards. Although he paid lip service to Dyer’s ‘gallant’ personal record, he denounced his attempt to use the shootings to teach ‘a moral lesson’ to the whole Punjab as ‘a doctrine of terrorism’. He denounced the outrages that had taken place after the massacre, and demanded: ‘Are you going to keep your hold upon India by terrorism, racial humiliation and subordination, and frightfulness, or are you going to rest it upon the goodwill, and the growing goodwill, of the people of your Indian Empire? I believe that to be the whole question at issue.’140 He persevered courageously as the mood became angrier and angrier. Some MPs seemed ready to hit him for his effrontery, and there was an undoubted anti-Semitic element in the response.141 ‘A Jew, a foreigner, rounding on an Englishman and throwing him to the wolves – that was the feeling’, noted Austen Chamberlain, who was soon to become leader of the Conservatives himself.142
After Montagu sat down, things continued to go badly for the government until Churchill rose to speak. He proceeded, with great skill, to extract the government’s chestnuts from the fire. He first gave the House time to simmer d
own by delivering a long, dry exposition of the technicalities of how the conduct of military officers could be dealt with. He then turned to the merits of the case, about which he was unequivocal. The massacre, he claimed, was an episode ‘without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire’. He conceded that British officers who had to decide whether or not to open fire in such circumstances were in a difficult situation. However, Churchill made clear that it was the job of such officers to weigh up the situation appropriately. ‘ “I was confronted,” says General Dyer, “by a revolutionary army.” What is the chief characteristic of an army? Surely it is that it is armed. This crowd was unarmed. These are simple tests which it is not too much to expect officers in these difficult situations to apply.’
He went on to restate, in essence, the argument made by Montagu, albeit in a rather more emollient way:
There is surely one general prohibition which we can make. I mean a prohibition against what is called ‘frightfulness’. What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or the whole country.
Furthermore, he said, the claim that the massacre had ‘saved India’ was not credible. Indeed, ‘Our reign in India or anywhere else has never stood on the basis of physical force alone, and it would be fatal to the British Empire if we were to try to base ourselves only upon it.’ Finally Churchill offered what he said was his personal opinion. This was that Dyer deserved not merely the loss of employment but to be subjected to ‘a distinct disciplinary act, namely, his being placed compulsorily on the retired list’. Churchill had in fact battled for this with the Army Council and lost; its military members sympathized with Dyer. He now said that such a solution was not really possible, given that Dyer’s actions had in effect been condoned subsequently by a succession of his superiors. Therefore he invited the House to endorse the Army Council’s ‘moderate and considered’ decision to deny Dyer future employment without formally disciplining him.143 The speech as a whole was utterly masterful. It emphasized that the massacre was horrible but also made the claim that it was unique.144 It criticized Dyer’s conduct severely, while at the same time stressing that he was not actually going to be punished. The effect was to calm the House, and although many MPs rebelled against the government, the hostile amendment put down by Dyer’s supporters was defeated.
Churchill, with no little skill, had distanced himself clearly from the position held by the diehards even while he assuaged their wrath. Yet his speech still received some criticism in Punjab itself. The Tribune, a newspaper published in Lahore, offered some trenchant comments:
What does Mr Churchill mean by describing the Jallianwalla Bagh incident as a ‘monstrous event standing out in sinister isolation’ . . . The Jallianwalla Bagh incident stands on exactly the same footing as the shooting at most of the other places. Whom were the crowd attacking at the Upper Mall, for instance, or at the railway bridge at Amritsar itself until the crowd was fired upon? And is it not the case that in both these cases as well as almost all other places the crowd was unarmed? Lastly, if, as Mr Churchill said, frightfulness is not admissible in any form, can it be denied that the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre was not an isolated instance of frightfulness in the dark days of April and May, when frightfulness was more the rule than the exception.145
A recent commentator has written that the Amritsar speech was Churchill’s finest hour ‘from a moral point of view’.146 One could equally say it was one of his finest hours from the point of view of parliamentary politics. During the episode he showed a tactical skill which belied his bull-in-a-china-shop reputation. The moral heroics were Montagu’s – and they led directly to political failure.
Montagu did survive in office for the time being, although his position was much weakened. Nevertheless he stuck to his principles, as his position on the issue of Indians in East Africa demonstrates. This became a point of tension with Churchill once the latter had moved to the Colonial Office. The white settlers in Kenya were becoming increasingly militant in the face of Indian demands for an end to commercial and residential segregation, admission to the franchise on the same terms as whites and the right to buy land in the highlands.147 In the face of Montagu’s support for equitable treatment, Churchill – in his own eyes – did his best to be helpful. ‘At the present time I am inclined to think that I cannot meet you fully in regard to franchise and representation’, he wrote in May 1921. ‘I hope to be able to meet you in regard to segregation by substituting for invidious segregation on race lines, a very strict system of sanitary, social and building regulations which will in fact ensure that the only Indians who will live in the white quarters will be those who are really suited by their mode of living for residence amid a European community.’ Regarding the highlands, ‘I fear that a virtual pledge has already been given to the white settlers.’148 After an unsatisfactory meeting in June, Montagu disputed this final point in a long and heartfelt letter. He could not help it, he said, if Europeans refused to sell land to Indians; nor did he object to sanitary regulations so stringent ‘that no Indian who does not live completely in European fashion can live in the Uplands’. Yet he would continue to protest ‘so long as there is upon the statute book a regulation which differentiates between European and Indian subjects of the King’.149
Some weeks later, Churchill met with an Indian delegation. He told it that its demands, if granted, would lead eventually to ‘the leadership of the country in [sic] the Indians, with the white man underneath’. However, an exchange with one of the delegates, S. S. Varma, revealed certain shared assumptions:
MR CHURCHILL: Broadly speaking, would you subscribe to Mr Rhodes’ formula – Equal Rights for Civilised Men?
MR VARMA: I say exactly in those words, for civilised men, even including Indians.
MR CHURCHILL: Certainly, if the individual becomes civilised and lives in a civilised way, in a civilised house, and observes civilised behaviour in his goings on, and in his family life, and he is also educated sufficiently – that principle seems to be a very valuable principle, and it is very practical too. It is absurd to go and give the naked savages of the Kikuyu and the Kavirondo equal electoral rights, although they are human beings – you cannot do that.
MR VARMA: No.150
There was no overall meeting of minds, of course, and Churchill’s patience eventually wore thin. ‘The Indians in East Africa are mainly of a very low class of coolies, and the idea that they should be put on an equality with the Europeans is revolting to every white man throughout British Africa’, he told Montagu in October.151 In his reply, Montagu spoke of his despair at Churchill’s attitude, whose remark about coolies might, he said, ‘have been written by an European settler of a most fanatical type’.152
For their part, the whites feared that Churchill would not safeguard their interests sufficiently, and sent a delegation to Britain to press their case.153 While they were in London, Churchill made his controversial speech at the Kenya Colony and Uganda dinner, in which he declared that the government looked forward to Kenya becoming ‘a characteristically and distinctively British colony’ and promised that the highlands would be reserved for the whites.154 Montagu was enraged at his failure to consult him or the Cabinet. (Churchill claimed to have been speaking in line with the advice of his officials.) In another long letter he said that he supported the principle of ‘equal rights for all civilised men’ that Churchill had invoked in the speech. However, ‘what distresses me is that you seem to think that the existing residents in the country can only mean the European residents. Under every rule of equal rights for all civilised men, the term must mean the residents in the country regardless of race.’155 Churchill was unbending, and told fellow ministers that the demands of Indians in East Africa were unreasonable and that the whites might rebel if there was any repudiation of his statement at the dinner.156 The settlers, indeed, took a
slightly dim view of Churchill, and were underwhelmed by his promises.157 The East African Standard portrayed him as a beguiling post-prandial speaker who revelled in ‘the loftier regions of Imperialism’, but who failed afterwards to give substance to his eloquence. Although he was supposedly committed to full white self-government, his real masters, it claimed, were radical anti-imperialists such as the Labour MP Josiah Wedgwood. The settlers had somehow ‘to free Mr Churchill from the tyranny in which he is at present bound’.158
Just a few weeks later Montagu committed an extraordinary indiscretion by publishing a telegram revealing the Government of India’s critical views on Lloyd George’s anti-Turkish foreign policy. He was forced to resign for having breached the doctrine of collective Cabinet responsibility. In a speech to his constituents justifying his conduct, he pointed out that Churchill’s Kenya speech, which had had ‘a most terrible effect in India’, had been made without consulting the Cabinet at all. ‘Where was collective responsibility there?’159The Times’s correspondent in Delhi reported that ‘Indian politicians undoubtedly feel that if Mr Montagu goes, Mr Churchill must go; otherwise there is no justice in the Cabinet’.160 The difference, of course, was that Montagu had launched a direct political assault on the Prime Minister without having the allies he needed to back him up. He had in effect committed political suicide. He lost his seat at the general election of November that year; broken-hearted and embittered, he died just two years later, at the age of forty-five, from a combination of arteriosclerosis and septicaemia.