Much thought had been devoted throughout the last years of the war to how the alliance could move forward intact and with a sense of Imperial unity that would provide Britain a voice in the new international system greater than its shattered economical position should allow. Even with a change in government -the new Labour government was determined to maintain British influence in the world—the Empire was not to be surrendered. It was seen as the solution to most problems in the post-war period, what one writer has described as 'a convenient framework for projecting a certain image of Britain'. Broadly speaking it was still a British Commonwealth; out of a population of about 87 million spread around the globe, about 15 million were not British and these were predominantly in South Africa and Canada. Unfortunately this goal did not materialize as the nature of the Dominion idea quickly changed. Sweeping political changes were about to take place and this would alter the balance beyond all pre-war comprehension, in the eyes of some commentators actually giving the Dominions a key role in preserving the Empire's future. It would also bring with it issues of British citizenship and allegiance to the Crown and the realization that none of the new club was prepared to unhesitatingly follow the ideas developed by British officials. Some of this had been foreseen by Lord Halifax in the spring of 1944, when commenting on the FO memorandum discussing the alliance's future. He had already identified that the use of the terms 'Dominions' and 'Dominion status' would likely cease at some future point as 'they may be held to imply that there is some difference in status between the United Kingdom and the other Dominions'. His conclusion was that some other phrase would be required such as 'nations of the Commonwealth' or 'Member States of the Commonwealth'. This prediction came to pass with the London Declaration, the result of the April 1949 gathering of Heads of State from the Commonwealth, which has been said to have marked the birth of the modern organization and formally changed the name from 'British Commonwealth' to 'Commonwealth of Nations'.30 This was a collapse that, with hindsight, some saw as being inevitable. One post-war view held that the 'white' commonwealth had always represented 'a triumph of sentiment over strategy'.31 Many years later the same author argued that with British armed forces reduced during the inter-war years to operational impotence, realpolitik should actually have dictated that the Dominions were told that they would need to defend themselves. Instead sentiment intervened and the result was that 'strategic overstretch of Empire ended in strategic collapse, and Australia and New Zealand passed under American protection'. Of the many factors that kept it together so long, the most enduring was the idea that these distant people, while not always faithful to the idea that they owed some sort of fealty to the parliament in Westminster, were prepared to defend their monarch who lived a few streets away. This point was illustrated in a lengthy and effusive March 1944 portrait of King George VI published in Time which referred to a recent speech by Richard Law given to the American Chamber of Commerce in London in which he talked of 'the British Commonwealth'. As the widely read American publication put it, 'what Statesman Law calls "Commonwealth" practically all Britons call, without shame, "Empire"'. The war had 'at once tightened and loosened the bonds of Empire' and the link that undeniably held it together was 'the King-Emperor'.32 Even Churchill, speaking post-war as the Leader of the Opposition, was prepared to agree with this assessment. He argued that the Statute of Westminster had swept away what he termed 'constitutional safeguards' and left the unity and cohesion of the British Empire reliant solely on the link to the Crown. What he did not go on to say was the degree to which he thought this still existed.33
Speaking a few months after the article referred to above was published in a Westminster debate Lord Cranborne had taken the opportunity to praise the British Commonwealth: 'that strange, unprecedented combination of self-governing nations, bound, not by visible bonds, but by ties of spirit is in a unique position at the present time'. He saw a great future as while there were bigger nations there was no other Power of a similar nature. 'Sprawled over the whole world, the British Commonwealth partakes of the qualities both of the Old and of the New World. It is firmly based in the past by its traditions and Constitutions, and it looks out fearlessly into the future.'34 The reality was that at the war's start the Dominions had still been relatively inexperienced in diplomacy but their international recognition, self-confidence and connections had all quickly grown in the years that followed. Their active participation in various wartime theatres had been accompanied by marked signs of British military weakness. By the time church bells were rung throughout Britain, for the first time since the summer of 1940, to celebrate the final victory at El Alamein in November 1942, the alliance had already altered beyond any hope of repair.35 For the most part at this point British leadership was still accepted, but on occasions even this was qualified or more obviously carried overt reluctance. The establishment of the United Nations organization effectively signalled political emancipation and the DO warned that in the post-war system the ideal policy for dealings with the Dominion governments would be based on 'private wisdom and public silence'. While South Africa and Canada had shown a readiness to put up with this guarded approach when it suited them, even before the game of chance really got started Australia and New Zealand had shown that they seemed determined to take the opposite line.36 The exertions shown by each of them in the war enhanced their national pride and, by something of a paradox, eroded imperial unity. An alliance that had started the war as 'Dominions' had ended it as a 'British Commonwealth', and in the process an Empire had been lost.
Notes
*All references to archive documents are taken from the National Archives, Kew, unless otherwise stated.
Notes to Introduction: A Special Relationship
1 Psalm 48:12, the injunction to which Mansergh was apparently mindful when undertaking his study; Nicholas Mansergh, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of Wartime Cooperation and Post-War Change, 1939-1952 (London, 1958), p. xvi.
2 Mansergh, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of External Policy, 1931-39 (London, 1952); Mansergh, Documents and Speeches on British Commonwealth Affairs 1931-1952: Vols. 1&2 (London, 1953); W. K. Hancock, 'Nicholas Mansergh: Some Recollections and Reflections' in Norman Hillmer (ed.), The First British Commonwealth: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Mansergh (London, 1980), pp. 3-9; Ronald Hyam, '(Philip) Nicholas Seton Mansergh (1910-1991)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Kenneth E. Miller, 'Book Review, The Journal of Politics (Vol. 21, No. 3; August 1959), pp. 549-51; K. C. Wheare, International Affairs (Vol. 35, No. 2; April 1959), p. 227.
3 John Darwin, 'A Third British Empire? The Dominion Idea in British Politics' in Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume IV- The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 64-87 [hereafter 'OHBE4']; W. David McIntyre, 'The Strange Death of Dominion Status' in Robert D. King and Robert Kilson (eds), The Statecraft of British Imperialism: Essays in Honour of Wm. Roger Louis (London, 1999) pp. 193-5; Fred Nash, '"Salutem adferre reipublicae" (Cicero): The Dominion Concept and the Empire', BISA/PSA Political Science Group Workshop Conference, July 1998.
4 John Darwin, 'The Fear of Falling: British Politics and Imperial Decline Since 1900', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Vol. 36, 1986), pp. 28-9.
5 A. P. Thornton, 'The Transformation of the Commonwealth and the "Special Relationship"' in Wm. Roger Louis and Hedley Bull (eds), The 'Special Relationship': Anglo-American Relations since 1945 (Oxford, 1986), p. 367.
6 Bill Nasson, Britannia's Empire: Making a British World (Stroud, 2004), pp. 164-70.
7 John Gallagher, The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2004), p. 141.
8 'Migration within the Empire', 24 May 1944, House of Lords Official Report (Vol. 81), pp. 931-41.
9 H. Duncan Hall, 'The British Commonwealth of Nations', The American Political Science Review (Vol. 47, No.4; December 1953), pp. 997-1015.
10 Denis Judd, 'Britain: Land
Beyond Hope and Glory?', History Today (April 1999), pp. 18-24; David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (London, 2002); Cannadine, 'Ornamentalism', History Today (May 2001), pp. 12-19; Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004); Porter, 'What Did They Know of Empire', History Today (October 2004), pp. 42-8.
11 Clair Wills, That Neutral Island (London, 2007); T. Ryle Dwyer, Irish Neutrality and the USA, 1939-1947 (Dublin, 1977); Donal O'Drisceoil, 'Neither Friend nor Foe? Irish Neutrality in the Second World War' (Book Review), Contemporary European History (Vol. 15, No. 2; 2006), pp. 245-53.
12 'Constitutional Relations between the United Kingdom and the Dominions', Note prepared by Charles Dixon, August 1946, DO35/1112.
13 Dierdre McMahon, 'Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth, 1900-1948', in OHBE4, pp. 155-8; Mansergh, Problems of External Policy, pp. 270-328.
14 'The Neutrality of Eire', Memorandum by Eden, 16 September 1939, CAB66/1.
15 'All In', Time, 18 September 1939.
16 Andrew Baker, 'Anglo-Irish Relations, 1939-1941: A Study in Multilateral Diplomacy and Military Restraint', Twentieth Century British History (Vol. 16, No. 4; 2005), pp. 359-81.
17 Denis Judd, The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj (Oxford, 2004), pp. 148-65; Judith M. Brown, 'India' in OHBE4, pp. 421-46; Robin J. Moore, 'India in the 1940s', in Robin W. Winks (ed.), Historiography: Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 5 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 231-42.
18 Empire Information Service, Origins and Purpose: A Handbook on the British Commonwealth and Empire (London, 1946), pp. 66-8.
19 E. M. Andrews, The British Commonwealth and Aggression in the East, 1931-1935 (Sydney, 1987), p. xi.
20 Anne Thurston, Records of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office (London, 1995), pp. 57-9, 63-7.
Notes to Chapter 1: The Great Experiment
1 W. Y. Elliot, 'The Riddle of the British Commonwealth', Foreign Affairs (Vol. 8, No. 3; 1930), pp. 442-64; W. K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of Nationality, 1918-1936 (London, 1937); K. C. Wheare, The Statute of Westminster and Dominion Status (London, 1942); D. K. Fieldhouse, 'Autochthonous Elements in the Evolution of Dominion Status: The Case of New Zealand', Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies (Vol. 1; 1961-1963), pp. 85-7.
2 Wheare, The Constitutional Structure of the Commonwealth (London, 1960), pp. 10-11.
3 J. D. Latham speaking in the Australian federal parliament in 1931; cited in W. R. Brock, Britain and the Dominions (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 415-16.
4 Viscount Bennett, 'The British Commonwealth of Nations: Its Constitutional Development', United Empire (Vol. 35, No. 2; March-April 1944), p. 43.
5 Lord Blanesburgh, 'The Statute of Westminster', Lecture at Royal United Service Institution, 18 January 1933.
6 Joseph Chamberlain, House of Commons Debate on Commonwealth of Australia Bill, 14 May 1900; Handwritten Note on 'Inter Commonwealth Relations', Patrick Duncan, n.d., (Duncan Papers, University of Cape Town), A15.4 (BC294).
7 Mansergh, South Africa 1906-1961: The Price of Magnanimity (London, 1962), pp. 15-35; Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (London, 1969), pp. 84-9; D. Judd and P. Slim, The Evolution of the Modern Commonwealth, 1902-1980 (London, 1982), pp. 11, 21; Donald Gordon, The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defense, 1870-1914 (Baltimore, 1965), p. 194.
8 Martin Kitchen, The British Empire and Commonwealth (London, 1996), pp. 61-3; Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience (London, 1996), pp. 214-25; James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (London, 1985), pp. 148-54; Robert Holland, Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance, (London, 1981), pp. 1-4; James Williamson, Great Britain and the Commonwealth (London, 1965), pp. 178-80; BBC Research Manuals, 'Number 4, The Development of Self-Government in the British Empire', Abrams Papers (Churchill College, Cambridge), ABMS1/7/9, p. 3.
9 Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience, p. 21.
10 Hyam, 'The British Empire in the Edwardian Era' in OHBE4, pp. 56-7.
11 Paul Hayes, 'British Foreign Policy and the Influence of Empire, 1870-1920', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (Vol. 12; 1984), pp. 113-14.
12 Max Beloff, Imperial Sunset, Vol. 1: Britain's Liberal Empire, 1897-1921 (New York, 1970), pp. 191-3.
13 Judd and Slim, The Evolution of the Modern Commonwealth, pp. 39-40; Porter, Britain, Europe and the World, (London, 1987), p. 79; Porter, The Lion's Share, (London, 1975), p. 228.
14 C. P. Stacey, Canada and the Age of Conflict Vol. 1 (Toronto, 1983), pp. 203-11; R. C. Brown, Robert Laird Borden (Ottawa, 1975), p. 85; I. M. Cumpston, The Evolution of the Commonwealth of Nations, 1900-1980 (Canberra, 1997), pp. 4-5; Heather Harvey, Consultation and Cooperation in the Commonwealth: A Handbook on Methods and Practice (London, 1952), pp. 90-2; Sir Percival Griffiths, Empire into Commonwealth (London, 1969), p. 250.
15 Judd and Slim, The Evolution of the Modern Commonwealth, pp. 38-40; Holland, 'The British Empire and the Great War,' in OHBE4, pp. 127-30.
16 The speech in January 1884 included the comment that 'there is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a commonwealth of nations'. He is subsequently said to have forgotten the phrase but in his Rectorial address in Glasgow on 'Questions of Empire' delivered in November 1899 he used 'commonwealth' three times as a synonym for Empire which he acknowledged had acquired 'some taint of disagreeable association'. Adopted by Liberals and Fabians for similar reason from this point the term became freely used. Smuts also pointed to his reference to 'the British Commonwealth of Nations' in a 1917 address to the members of the House of Commons in London, a descriptive term which was subsequently endorsed by Imperial Conferences. This, he argued, became the official name for 'Britain plus the free Dominions' but it was not officially used until 1921 when it featured in the Irish Treaty; Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs: Vol. 1, Problems of Nationality, 1918-1936 (London, 1937), p. 54; Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience, pp. 7, 122; Duncan Hall, 'The Genesis of the Balfour Declaration', Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, pp. 169-70; 'The British Colonial Empire', Life, 28 December 1942.
17 Brian Farrell, 'Coalition of the Usually Willing: the Dominions and Imperial Defence, 1856-1919' in Greg Kennedy (ed.), Imperial Defence, 1856-1956: The Old World Order (London, 2007), pp. 251-302.
18 Frank Underhill, The British Commonwealth (London, 1956), pp. 46-53.
19 'Memorandum by General Smuts on Constitutional Relations', 1921, DO117/33.
20 Darwin, 'The Dominion Idea in Imperial Politics' in OHBE4, pp. 67-9; Robert Holland, The Pursuit of Greatness, Britain and the World Role, 1900-70 (London, 1991), pp. 87-120; Norman Hillmer, 'The Foreign Office, the Dominions and the Diplomatic Unity of the Empire, 1925-29' in David Dilks (ed.), Retreat From Power, Vol. 1 (London, 1981), pp. 64-5.
21 Cited in 'Whitehall and the Commonwealth: The Distribution of Department Responsibility, The Round Table, (Vol. 45; 1954/1955), p. 234.
22 'Lord Elgin's Despatch on CO Reorganization', September 1907, Cd.3795; Cross, Whitehall and the Commonwealth (London, 1967), pp. 14-16; Holland, Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance, pp. 40-5.
23 The latter had been created in 1904 as a purely advisory body headed by the British prime minister, its role being 'to investigate, report [and] recommend' on matters which affected the Empire; Cecil Hurst (et al.), Great Britain and the Dominions (Illinois, 1928), pp. 39-41.
24 Frederick Madden and John Darwin (eds), Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth, Vol. VI, The Dominions and India since 1900 (London, 1993), pp. 16-26; I. R. Hancock, 'The 1911 Imperial Conference', Historical Studies (Vol. 12, No. 47; October 1966), pp. 156-172.
25 Philip Wigley, 'Whitehall and the 1923 Imperial Conference', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (Vol. 1; 1972-1973), pp. 223-36.
26 David Walder, The Chanak Affair (London, 1
969), pp. 215-16, 229-30, 353; Mark Arnold-Forster, 'Chanak Rocks the Empire: The Anger of Billy Hughes', The Round Table (Vol. 58; 1968), pp. 169-77.
27 'The Dominions and Colonial Offices—Proposals for Reorganisation', Memorandum prepared by Amery, 20 February 1925, DO121/1.
28 L. S. Amery, My Political Life: Vol. II, War and Peace 1914-1929 (London, 1953), p. 335.
29 'Report by R. R. Scott, H. P. Hamilton and R. V. Nind-Hopkins to Baldwin', 20 February 1925, DO121/1.
30 Mansergh, Problems of Wartime Cooperation, pp. 398-401; Joe Garner, The Commonwealth Office (London, 1978), pp. 10-12; John Rimington, 'Sir Warren Fisher's Civil Service', The Source Public Management Journal (19 January 2000).
31 For example Amery to General Sir C. Ferguson, 19 March 1925, DO121/1; ibid., Amery to Bruce and Massey, 19 March 1925; Wm. Roger Louis, In the Name of God Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill (London, 1992), pp. 88-9.
32 Sir Walter Runciman cited in Gerald Palmer, Consultation and Cooperation in the British Commonwealth (London, 1934), p. 24.
Empire Lost: Britain, the Dominions and the Second World War Page 27