Empire Lost: Britain, the Dominions and the Second World War

by Andrew Stewart

  Despite his drive and passion for the project, it was not until the middle of June 1925, eight months after he had first been appointed, that the 'sudden' announcement was made to the House of Commons of the DO's establishment; a department that would be headed by Amery in addition to his continuing oversight of the CO. Much of the delay had been caused by the Westminster debate that had followed the release of the Scott Committee's report which outlined the financial implications associated with the establishment of a new department.29 The argument put forward by Treasury Chambers was that this was merely duplicating existing duties and so adding to costs. In defending the necessity for change however, both Amery and Baldwin were quick to point to the differences in the nature of the departmental work involved in Dominion relations, on the one hand, and colonial administration on the other.30 The colonial secretary's cause was helped, not just by the strong backing he enjoyed from the prime minister, but also the high profile he had established for himself in the public eye.31 But it remained Amery's sheer determination to see Dominion affairs separately managed which in many ways ultimately enabled him to overcome the many obstacles he faced. Such was his passion that he even managed to persuade at least some of his opponents to soften their hostility towards the 'Foreign Office with a family feeling'.32 It would still take another five years though before his desire for a truly separate ministry responsible for the Dominions would be fully realized.

  From the date of its establishment the DO operated out of the 'Government Offices, Whitehall, North Block', a building of five floors, one below ground level, located at the corner of Whitehall and Downing Street which was the CO's home.33 Known affectionately by those who worked within it as 'the Office', the DO remained here for the whole of its short existence. The building had originally been erected between 1862 and 1875; the famous architect Sir George Gilbert Scott presiding over a controversial project which initially suffered repeated delays from the interventions of the then foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston. In order that a self-contained area might be found for its new, junior colleague, the CO was reorganized and the DO took rooms in the basement, ground and first floors on the Whitehall front of the building. In the first-floor corridor a partition was erected, largely for the benefit of outsiders, although it was said to be difficult to point to an actual boundary between the two departments.34 The majority of the department's staff was actually located in a cluster of rooms on the ground and first floors.35 Some of these overlooked Whitehall and the Cenotaph, the remainder the prime minister's residence at No. 10 Downing Street.36 Above these rooms there was the library and below the Telegraph Section, both of which were common to the two departments. Although Amery thought it would not create 'the slightest difficulty or possibility of friction', for many years to come some of those moved would 'look with envious eyes at the comparatively few rooms [the DO] occupied'.37 Conditions were often difficult as space was at a premium and there were few luxuries. During the original construction period the CO's staff had petitioned about the unsatisfactory working conditions they faced. The greatest complaint was that 'the sky was visible through a large hole in the roof with rain and snow running down into one room'.38 As for the room for the secretary of state for Dominion affairs, on the Whitehall front, it was said to 'lack the splendour of the Colonial Secretary's room and was apt to be noisy'. But despite expenditure on the interior being kept to a bare minimum, a report prepared just before the outbreak of the Second World War nevertheless proved quite complimentary about the building's structure and its well-built, thick, solid walls and high ceilings.39

  From the outset the department faced considerable challenges. Perhaps the most immediate was the fact that, according to one of the DO's own people, not everybody in Whitehall was willing 'to accept the full implications of equal partnership'.40 Put in another fashion, this meant that for the majority of the 22 years it existed, with only limited resources and manpower, the department's often difficult job was to try and reconcile the agendas of seven different governments, its own being one of them. Indeed the DO often found itself having 'to act as the conscience of the British government to ensure that they lived up to their part of the bargain'. It was widely derided by other civil servants and even the Dominions themselves were not always entirely sure as to its role.41 Even one of its own could only conclude that there were no grounds to claim 'that the DO ever loomed large on the stage in Britain itself or that it made any dramatic impact on Parliament, the Press or public opinion. Indeed to a wider public it remained largely unknown ... In Parliament, the fixed opinion died hard that [it] was nothing but a Post Office'.42 Meanwhile its senior cousin strode like a colossus. The Canadian diplomat Lester Pearson offered his assessment from his many years spent watching from Canada House:

  The Dominions Office, in its people, its attitudes, and atmosphere, was similar to other civil service departments. But the Foreign Office was the Holy of Holies, occupied by an aristocratic, well-endowed elite who formed part of the British diplomatic service, and who saw to it that the imperial interest was protected and enlarged in accord with policies worked out in their high-ceilinged, frescoed Victorian offices, to be accepted, they usually assumed, by their political masters in Cabinet and Parliament.43

  Making matters worse, if the new department were to have any chance of success, it was essential that it maintained a strong voice in the decision-making process of the British government, and at the earliest possible stage. Only then could it keep policy-makers informed of any difficulties that it believed their proposed approach might create. Instead, the DO found itself often faced by a certain degree of distrust and even disdain from within Whitehall, with the commonly made complaint that it was 'much too inclined to take the extreme Dominion, as opposed to the Imperial, point of view'.44 Hostility such as this made it hard for the department to secure any real measure of influence at the critical stages of policy formulation. Certainly in its early years even some of those who were generally supportive could see the new office as no more than 'a quasi-diplomatic machine', to be short-circuited on urgent occasions.45 Faced by growing Dominion requests for information from London, the DO almost inevitably therefore tried to achieve a compromise between those parties concerned while facing complaints from each side that its case was not being sufficiently pressed.46

  Politically there were big developments to match the changes that had taken place in Whitehall. Lengthy negotiations were being conducted behind the scenes between London and various Dominion politicians in which some sympathy was shown towards claims that there should now be a more publicly developed role for them in international affairs. The British rationale, although it was never stated, seemed to be based upon a belief that the Dominions should take greater responsibility for their own problems, leaving the authorities in London free to focus on more important 'Great Power' issues. These negotiations were effectively made public at the 1926 Imperial Conference, with the celebrated opening address given to the Committee of Inter-Imperial Relations by the Lord President of the Council, Lord Balfour. The famous declaration, which Amery claimed to be his idea, identified Great Britain and the Dominions as autonomous communities within the British Empire, united by a common allegiance to the Crown, but freely associated and equal in status to one another in all matters domestic and external.47 What this did was 'to emphasize the complete equality of status between the United Kingdom and the Dominions. It in fact made the United Kingdom one of the Dominions.' It did not transform self-governing colonies into Dominions, 'that particular transformation had taken place well before the war'.48

  With the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which attempted to formalize it and other, earlier statements, the Balfour Declaration provided the basis from which analysis of the inter-war Anglo-Dominion relationship would be conducted.49 The provisions of the statute dealt only with the removal of certain legal restrictions on the power of the Dominions. From this point on Britain could only legislate for a Dominion at its request and with its p
ermission. The Dominions could also repeal or amend Acts that had their origin in Westminster but also affected them. As one report written much later—in 1946—by a member of the DO put it, this document was a 'landmark' in the British Empire's constitutional development as it established legally the equality of the Dominions with Britain and 'their complete independence to this country, subject only to the binding link of the Crown'. The Sovereign was still common, Britain's king remained their king, they shared a common allegiance to the Crown and the inhabitants of the Dominions were still deemed to be 'British subjects'.50 Crucially, in Balfour's opinion, it was 'the only constitution possible if the British Empire is to [continue] to exist'.51 The statute would be adopted formally by each of the Dominions but it would take time. It was an offer for the Dominions to accept and, in the case of the last to do so, New Zealand, it was not until late November 1947 that the Adoption Act was passed finally in its own parliament.52

  The importance of constitutional change remains influential in any study of the Dominions' relationship with Britain; one argument has it that the statute marked the creation of a 'Third Empire' of real partners, the ultimate triumph of the 'liberal empire' concept. British world power came to depend more and more upon this relationship, the 'economic resources, manpower reserves and political fidelity' of the Dominions turned them into vital Imperial assets.53 On the other side of the equation migration, commerce, common ideals and sentiment were just some of the factors that kept them bound to Britain.54 There was now both legal recognition and an administrative apparatus in place but their often complicated national characteristics presented considerable problems for Whitehall. Canada, geographically within the North American continent, contained a growing body of opinion that saw the United States as having become more important to it than Britain.55 Added to this was the fact that by 1939 over one-third of the population were French-speaking, the vast majority of these living in Quebec. Although liberal opinion in the country as a whole was generally internationalist in outlook, this province tended to be far more isolationist, saving its energies for promoting the idea of the Canadian nation. This meant that in terms of the Dominion idea there was scant support within the province and amongst the significant proportion of the national population that it contained. In an attempt to reconcile the French-dominated province and maintain some sense of national unity, successive Canadian leaders chose to keep consultation with Britain and the other members of the Commonwealth of Nations on an informal level.

  The issues attached to the Union of South Africa were much more difficult. In 1906, when he was still just A. J. Balfour, the later Declaration writer had described plans to establish the Union as 'the most reckless experiment ever tried in the development of a great colonial policy' and with good reason.56 In the first instance, out of a total population of just over 11 million people, fewer than one quarter were of European origin, and of these some 60 per cent were Afrikaans-speaking against 40 per cent English-speaking. In proportion to numbers the latter played a comparatively small part in politics, their interests instead lying predominantly in the domination of industry and commerce. One contemporary writer noted that it was not easy for the English reader to recognize just how fundamentally apart the Afrikaans and English-speaking sections of the population were. As a consequence somebody looking from Britain would be 'apt to look upon South Africa as he does upon any other British possession that will spring like a young whelp to the defence of the Commonwealth and Empire'.57 In a devastating report written to London in October 1932, the British high commissioner left the Dominions secretary in little doubt about the serious nature of the political situation in the Union. Sir Herbert Stanley's conclusion was stark, 'the doctrine of sovereign independence is being pressed to a point at which membership of the Commonwealth becomes barely distinguishable from an alliance between friendly but foreign Powers'. The British connection was hanging 'upon a slender thread'.58 Many of the key figures dealing with Whitehall were men with distinctly Anglophobe outlooks who were opposed not just to the Dominion idea but to the British Empire as a whole. Generals J. B. M. Hertzog and Jan Smuts, the old Boer War colleagues, existed in an often uneasy coalition, the United Party overseeing a country which reflected the government, a sometimes unstable collection of peoples differing in language, religion and outlook.59 Even those individuals who were committed supporters of Britain, most notably Smuts, retained doubts about how the Union should respond in the event of another war in Europe.60 The full cabinet was only consulted intermittently; the prime minister's preferred style of leadership was to make a statement of his preferences when it met and expect its approval rather than to pursue any attempt at genuine consultation. Hertzog was secretive by nature and had 'the virtues and weaknesses of an autocrat'.61

  The two Dominions either side of the Tasman Sea, at the south-western edge of the South Pacific Ocean, apparently presented less cause for concern in London. Australia's approach differed considerably from that adopted by both Canada and the Union as its connections with, and indeed dependence on, Britain was far more pronounced. With its 'White Australia' policy actively discouraging the immigration of non-British Europeans, by 1939 nearly 90 per cent of the country's population came from the British Isles. Although the government in Canberra remained proud of the autonomy attached to its Dominion status, during the inter-war years there was a lack of interest in foreign affairs and a general willingness to defer to British policy. The only noticeable exception to this rule was the situation in the Far East. In neighbouring New Zealand, held by many within Whitehall to be 'the dutiful Dominion', there was an even greater sense of commitment to the 'Imperial Idea'.62 There was no mockery when a senior New Zealand government figure commented that the people of the Dominion tended to look at the Empire through English eyes—'it is English history that has been important and the parts of the world generally coloured red. The adult New Zealander knows more of Charles I, of Robert Clive, of Francis Drake and the rest than he does of the Treaty of Waitangi'.63 Amery had confirmed this view when he returned to London following his 1928 Empire tour and told his cabinet colleagues that in New Zealand he had found support for the Empire to be 'a passion almost a religion'.64 The government in Wellington was 'emotionally content to be seen as dependent'.65 The New Zealand high commissioner in London, William Jordan, although sometimes concerned about the direction of British policy also was vehement in his support for the 'Mother Country': as he told a group of British and Dominion statesmen 'New Zealand believed in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It would be beside Great Britain always. If Great Britain was at war, New Zealand would be at war.'66

  A key feature determining how London and the Dominions reacted to one another was finance and the global economy. In 1897 Canada had been the first of them to introduce a conditional form of 'Imperial Preference' into its tariff. From this point onwards, escalating economic dependency effectively required all of the far-flung Dominions to retain the closest possible link with the fiscal actions of the authorities in London.67 Figures for trade between Britain and its Empire before 1914 reveal a mixed picture. Less than a quarter of all imports came from the Empire: staples were especially significant with foodstuffs such as tea, cheese and spices all being major imports; certain raw materials were also significant, most obviously jute and tin. Exports were different, however, with just under 200 million pounds, or 37.2 per cent of all goods, going to the Empire. Although India was perhaps the largest market, the Dominions also took a significant share. The Empire was useful as a market for goods that faced major international competition but the pattern of imports was such that the Empire could not offer any real measure of independence to Britain in terms of a guaranteed supply of essential imports.68 The 'Final Report of the Dominions Royal Commission', released in 1917, recommended that there be greater exploitation of Dominion resources and it is clear that after 1919 the 'white Empire' did play a much greater role in Britain's trade.69

  The global financial cr
isis that worsened at the beginning of the 1930s only confirmed this, now placing even greater emphasis on the role played by the British government. With the world's economies in turmoil, at the Imperial Economic Conference held at Ottawa in September 1932, the importance of protective 'Imperial Preference' measures was re-endorsed by all sides. This took place against a backdrop of generally deteriorating political relations and the raising of more questions about the durability of the Dominion idea.70 But there seemed few economic alternatives to the agreements and although future commercial relations were often worse rather than better, the fiscal policies accepted by the Dominion governments kept them close to London, in mind if not always in heart. Following Ottawa there was a considerable increase in trade, with 41.2 per cent of all Britain's exports between 1934 and 1938 going to the Dominions and one-quarter of all goods imported into the British market. By the Second World War's outbreak the Dominions were effectively no less financially dependent on Britain than they had been 25 years before.