Ultimately these two issues would appear to have been the most heavily worked on with political and civil service input coming from far and wide. That is not to say that there were not other important areas that were highlighted. Other papers were submitted on education matters, post-war shipping policy and the disposal of former Italian colonies. As the committee secretary noted, these were only part of a rather 'formidable array'; 'International regional bodies in colonial areas', 'Future of the French Colonial Empire', 'Migration' and items focused on the actual mechanics of how the conference itself would be run were all included.21 Investigations were also made about a possible appreciation of American thinking over its future role in the Pacific but this proved too difficult to arrange beyond a series of unofficial comments.22 There was also the question of the future intentions of the Soviet Union to be considered, a subject of particular interest to Smuts.23 Additional preparations also needed to be made, Eden being asked to prepare a statement on the proposed post-war settlement under two headings, the political aspect of post-war organization and the future of Germany.24
The curtain raiser to the Dominion prime ministers' visit took place the month before when, in April 1944, a two-day debate on Dominion affairs was held in the House of Commons. This offered an opportunity for parliamentarians to express their opinions while the press coverage recognized that it could not be seen as 'an occasion for a declaration of Imperial policy'. This was the first time since he had become prime minister that Churchill would speak specifically on the Dominions and, as such, Cranborne was asked to prepare him a lengthy briefing paper. The Dominions secretary was asked to identify any points that critics of the government might raise and, while he considered this a difficult challenge, he did offer seven areas that he thought were of greatest concern. These included any suggestion that the government should take a lead in pressing the Dominions to enter into closer cooperation. There was also a chance that the levels of pre-war cooperation—both in terms of defence and foreign policies—might be criticized as having been inadequate or that participation by the Dominions in any future war could not be counted upon. Curtin's proposal was an obvious subject that could be raised, migration, Imperial Preference and the Dominions' interest in colonial affairs made up the list. Cranborne was able to provide simple single sentence rejoinders to deal with any questions that might focus on these issues; just to be on the safe side, he also provided another ten pages of notes and reference material.25 The line it was suggested Churchill take was that the meeting was an informal discussion, nothing more and nothing less, and it would be wise not to advocate to any particular suggestion or proposal in advance.
The debate itself was recorded as having been marked by some 'plain and straightforward speaking'. There were 27 speakers on the first day, drawn from all the parties, including in their ranks Messrs Winterton, Granville and Shinwell, each notable contributors to the wider debate that had taken place throughout the war. Added to these was an intriguing mix, some from rural wards, others from large cities, some self-avowed Imperialists, others talking of the shameful exploitation that had been suffered by the Colonial Empire. At the end of this opening salvo Hugh Dalton finished on behalf of the government. Time and again he returned to the central position, the forthcoming meeting was to be informal in nature 'conducted between equals at the family council table'.26 Fourteen new speakers rose the following day to add their observations, reflections and, more often than not, their advice as to how the 'Imperial Idea' should be developed in the years to come. Beverley Baxter, Canadian by birth, journalist by trade and Conservative by calling, made perhaps the most telling observation when he noted: 'The neglect of the Empire over the last 25 years is not one of the proudest moments of this great Assembly. It did not matter in those fateful days between the two wars what the particular subject of foreign affairs was, it drew this House like a striptease revue. But once the Dominions or the Empire was being discussed, the indifference was chilling to a degree.' As he concluded, all sides had been as bad as one another and if there had been greater interest in all things Empire, both at home and abroad, it might have been the case that Hitler would have been restrained and the Nazi party would have collapsed.
When Churchill finally rose he did so to tell the House that the debate had been a great success. There followed an opportunity for him to wax lyrical on his understanding of Empire, ideas extolling the spirit of Kipling and sprinkled liberally with historical and anecdotal metaphor. It was the by now traditional tour de force although low on harangue, instead much more soothing in tone and structure. The British Commonwealth and Empire had never been more united but the system needed to be modernized so that those nations involved could be better advised of world events and better aware of what each was thinking. It was a surprisingly progressive speech, in light of many of his wartime observations and instructions, and would appear to have augured well for the conference soon about to begin. According to Time, 'for two days men of all parties hailed Commonwealth and Empire' and it had provided the prime minister with 'a jubilant stage ... in his imperial role'. Even Shinwell, previously noted for his clashes with Churchill on Empire-related questions, seemed prepared to offer him his support. As the magazine noted: 'Every Churchillian turn got a cheer [as] he beamed, waved, chuckled ... Ever jealous of Empire, and now equally committed to world association, Churchill hoped for the best.' Nonetheless it was clear from his comments and the tone of his speech that he was still thinking of a Commonwealth centred in London where the British government could bring greatest influence to bear.27
The gathering of Dominion prime ministers followed shortly afterwards. Because the emphasis was on it being a personal exchange of views and not a full Imperial Conference, they did not bring any ministerial colleagues and were accompanied by a small staff. Fraser and Curtin travelled via the United States. The Canadians flew direct. Smuts flew in his own aircraft to Cairo, accompanied in the end by Sir Godfrey Huggins, the Southern Rhodesian leader, to whom it had been decided to extend an invitation; there Churchill's personal plane was waiting for both of them to complete the journey to London.28 The seven-strong Canadian delegation were centred at the Dorchester Hotel, the Australians and New Zealanders, 18 in total including the prime ministers' wives, settled into the Savoy, while the much smaller South African party, just four in total, made do with the Hyde Park Hotel. Special telephones with scrambler equipment were installed in the suites of each of the Dominion leaders. In addition Curtin and Fraser were allotted offices in the War Cabinet Rooms; Mackenzie King and Smuts preferred to work in their hotels and arrangements were made to assist them.29 The Dominion leaders were invited to attend the Monday War Cabinet and any other war-related meetings that were deemed appropriate. In addition there would be two meetings a day of the actual Conference both held in the Cabinet Room at No. 10 Downing Street; the only exception was the two general reviews of the war situation which took place in the Prime Minister's Map Room at the War Cabinet office.30 The timetable covered ten days, but there were plenty of gaps with only eleven specially convened sessions and the invites to attend the War Cabinet gatherings; on seven of the days there was just a single meeting. A draft schedule showing a two-week programme was also given to each of them upon their arrival, but it was subsequently found to be impracticable to adhere to these plans. The Dominion leaders made various suggestions as to the order on which the subjects should be discussed and it proved impossible to forecast with any degree of accuracy how long would be spent on each. As a result the detailed agenda issued the night before a meeting was the only firm indication of arrangements. To keep each of the prime ministers fully informed it was agreed that, aside from messages received from their home governments, that they would receive various FO telegrams and the weekly résumé of the military situation during their stay. Ultimately no papers were circulated in advance, only the main points for discussion were sent to them. Ten papers were circulated during the course of the meeting and several of
these were intended as providing further clarification about points that had arisen during the discussions. A reviewer of the events that took place, writing some time afterwards, commented that because it had not been intended to produce a series of formal resolutions this 'made it all the easier for discussion to be developed on broad lines and unnecessary detail to be avoided'.31
Socially no effort was spared to impress the Imperial guests. The Conference opened with a dinner party at Buckingham Palace; the King had asked beforehand for a briefing of the current political situation in each of the Dominions and this was augmented by a personal report from Cranborne in late April of the most recent developments.32 Each of the overseas leaders was also the guest-of-honour for their own hosted lunch as Cranborne was keen to ensure that they would all have an opportunity to make an important public speech. Smuts would visit Birmingham where he would receive the Freedom of the City. In addition Mackenzie King was invited to address members of both Houses at Westminster—he was said to 'excel' in parliamentary surroundings—while both Curtin and Fraser had the Freedom of the City of London conferred upon them in a grand ceremony at the Guildhall.33 Initially it had been agreed that private individuals and bodies were to be discouraged from extending social invites to the assembled leaders. The official record noted that 'in the event it turned out that the prime ministers were rather embarrassed by the number of invitations they received to attend official or semi-official parties'. The problem was that many of these were issued by Whitehall departments with no reference to what other engagements were taking place. Also it was clear that the secretariat had been largely ignored.34
At the first meeting there were 28 British ministers, military officers or civil servants present; the Dominions between them—not including representatives from India and Southern Rhodesia who had also been invited—mustered 15 in total. The number of British officials—with the exception of those most directly connected—was supposed to be based on the number of Dominion officials present; the rule was that they should not attend unless specially needed. Dominion high commissioners were also to be discouraged from attending. As it had been repeatedly stressed that these were to be intimate meetings, some of the Dominion guests were a little annoyed at the consistently large numbers of British officials who tried to attend subsequent meetings. So much so that Churchill was asked to offer a soothing comment or two along the lines of how important the topics were and how important it was thought to hear the views of the visiting statesmen from the Empire.35 The meetings were recorded in the normal form used for War Cabinet Conclusions with the possibility of additional confidential annexes being added at a subsequent date. The draft minutes were sent to each of the prime ministers for them to make amendments but very few were forthcoming; a bound final version was available for when Mackenzie King, the first to leave, departed for Ottawa. They also received a completed set of records as did members of the War Cabinet, the Service ministers and chiefs of staff in London and the DO and supporting secretariat. Copies with the confidential annexes removed were given a much wider distribution. Finally, the Ministry of Information was responsible for dealing with the media. This was clearly an important part of a meeting for which the intention was to demonstrate Imperial unity and the arrangements had been discussed in some detail as part of the pre-conference committee process. Cranborne held four press conferences during the period and the Dominion leaders also spoke individually, both to correspondents from their own Dominions and to the British press.36 The Conference's opening was reported prominently in The Times and the other leading newspapers, and regular stories were published throughout the meetings and in leading journals.37
The most detailed account of the Conference is provided by the meticulous summary sent the following month to British Heads of Mission. Understandably this was dominated by references that had been made to foreign affairs and it was stressed to the readers that accounts of the proceedings had been given a most restricted distribution in London and should therefore be regarded as being 'most secret'.38 The Conference began at noon exactly on 1 May with a brief address from Churchill on the immediate war situation. He told his audience that they had gathered to take stock of affairs and whilst he did not expect them to reach conclusions to all the problems that 'confront the British Empire and vex mankind' this would be an overdue opportunity to exchange views and ideas. More than that, it would allow them to show the watching world and the 'very powerful Allies' with whom they had fought, what they were about. With a typical flourish he had concluded that the meeting would demonstrate that the British Empire and Commonwealth 'stands together, woven into one family of nations capable of solving our common problems in full loyalty to the supreme cause for which we have drawn the sword'.39 Mackenzie King thought these comments to be 'most impressive' and 'reassuring'.
Eden's review of foreign affairs followed. According to the comments given to Britain's ambassadors these were well received with general praise being given for the way in which wartime foreign policy had been handled. It was further, pointedly, noted that there was 'entire satisfaction with the arrangements that had been made to keep them in close and effective touch with developments'. These comments were 'particularly gratifying'. Fraser thought that British policy had been right; Curtin did not know how it could have been done better than it had; even Mackenzie King thought that difficult situations had been 'handled marvellously' and in such a way as to command 'the strongest possible admiration'. All this seemed very different to some of the stinging comments that had been received on the DO's deciphering systems during the course of the war. While brief reference was made to the other meetings—monetary and commercial, colonial policy, shipping and migration—special mention was also given to the two full meetings that had been devoted to the post-war settlement. Even in the flowery diplomatic prose of the Foreign Service, it was clear that there had been some tensions during these discussions despite these having been confined to 'broad principles'. Mackenzie King had made it clear that there could not be a single Commonwealth spokesman at any future discussions; each would speak with their own voice. He was willing to offer British representatives the 'fortification' that the Dominions would be 'of one mind with them', and the knowledge that this was 'a body of nations that normally acted in concert'. But such balm would only be given if adequate consultation had taken place beforehand.
The issue identified beforehand as being potentially the most contentious, future Commonwealth cooperation, was saved for the penultimate meeting. Curtin began by announcing he no longer intended to pursue his proposals of the previous year which he now recognized were clearly unacceptable to Canada and also possibly to South Africa. This, in the end, was not entirely unexpected. Curtin had given a press conference soon after his arrival in which he extolled some of his thinking about a permanent secretariat. It was reported back to the FO by somebody who had been present that at this the Australian leader was 'very frank throughout' and had said that he would be prepared to take what he could get and explained that 'if three would agree, why then, let's have a secretariat for three'.40 Discussion had followed among the Dominions about the idea, the result of which seemed to be that he was now prepared to confine himself to ideas for improvement based on generally informal means such as periodic meetings of ministers and expansion of liaison staffs; not a permanent executive group as had been contemplated in the text of the Anzac agreement. His final proposal was very similar to that which the FO had argued for, that a small technical committee might be formed including representatives from Britain and the Dominions to consider the whole question of cooperation.41 He would later confide that he had been disappointed that his plans for closer unity did not receive more of a hearing and it was noted that neither Churchill nor Smuts had attended the meeting that discussed the proposals.42 He was though prepared to accept the inevitable and the conclusion following the meeting was that the prime ministers seemed most satisfied with the existing methods of consultation.43
/> The conclusion of the FO's long review of the Conference sent to the overseas diplomatic corps was that it had been 'successful beyond our hopes'. The atmosphere had been 'strikingly friendly' and discussions had been completely frank. There had, however, been one striking exception to this and, unsurprisingly, it had come from Churchill. With their enthusiastic support for the League of Nations, the New Zealanders were especially interested in ideas regarding any future world organization and it had been the British leader who had submitted the relevant paper. His ideas for Regional Leagues under a World Council had been politely dismissed even by Cranborne who, having seen them at the draft phase and in his attempt to dissuade the prime minister from introducing them to the Conference, had pointed to his knowledge of how the League of Nations had failed. He had spent a long period at Geneva while serving in the pre-war FO and had seen first-hand how it had worked, but this did little to improve the merits of his observations.44 Churchill was pressing for a United States of Europe with a Council in which Britain, the United States and the Soviets would all be members. While Fraser was prepared to recognize the British paper as 'a valuable contribution', Berendsen was said to be highly critical of the British proposals.45 A protest ensued forcing the FO to convene a special meeting at which it was agreed that the British leader would withdraw his paper. The alternatives of 'the supreme body versus general mob' would be reconsidered by the professional Whitehall bureaucrats who would put the argument in a more balanced way to produce a revised version that would be amenable to all of the Dominions. The DO was upset at this outcome, believing the FO to have adopted an 'unfortunate' approach; Machtig thought that the contents of the revised paper were quite different from what had been agreed at the Conference. The DO believed that it was entirely clear that the Dominions had rejected both of Churchill's key suggestions, the unitary representation of the British Commonwealth and the idea that regional organizations would act as representatives on any future World Council.46 Yet the new document still supported Churchill's point of 'capital importance', and that there should be some European regional machine.47 The re-draft was savaged when it was put before the Dominion diplomats who had been left behind in London to discuss such matters, the allegation being that it contained ideas which had not been approved at the full conference. The proposal that Britain alone might represent all of the Dominions on any future World Council was particularly abhorrent to the overseas representatives.
Empire Lost: Britain, the Dominions and the Second World War Page 22