by Greg Malone
To begin with, an elected Newfoundland government would have become aware of the true significance of the iron-ore deposit in Labrador, elevating it immediately to a much stronger position in its negotiations with Ottawa. But that was precisely what C.D. Howe and Louis St. Laurent were so anxious to avoid. A Newfoundland government, especially one with a strong opposition, would have had to secure either development or a meaningful royalty for that iron ore.
Then, as High Commissioner Scott Macdonald pointed out, there was the issue of “the enormous per capita public debt of Canada which Newfoundlanders would have to share if they entered Confederation.”10 In 1948 the Canadian per capita debt was $1,068, and Newfoundland’s was $238. At the conference called to discuss joining Confederation in 1895, the delegation from the Newfoundland government had insisted that Canada take over the whole of Newfoundland’s public debt as a condition of union. Five decades later, Macdonald favoured this same arrangement and argued to St. Laurent: “The application now of the same criteria we applied to them in 1895 would result, not only in the assumption of the whole public debt, but in the payment by Canada of a subsidy to compensate them for the amount by which the per capita debt of the Dominion exceeds that of Newfoundland. Interest on this amount even computed at 3% would come to several million dollars per annum.”11 However, the delegation from Governor Gordon Macdonald was in no position to make any such demands, especially given that the vote had already been taken.
Similarly, although the Terms of Union carefully itemize every amount and source of revenue to be assumed by the Canadian government, there is no mention of the considerable revenue that the Canadian government would collect from Newfoundland air space. Newfoundland is on the flight path from North America to Europe, and, even a conservative estimate states it has generated over $8 billion for the federal treasury since 1949.12 There was no discussion of these potential revenues in the talks or documents leading up Confederation, but an elected government would surely have become aware of them—in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
There are other issues, too, that would have arisen in negotiations between two independent countries, issues that could not arise in the carefully arranged “negotiations” under British authority. Gordon Winter, the reluctant delegate who felt compelled to sign the final terms in 1948, was troubled by the event for the rest of his life. Before he died in 2003, he stated in an interview with CBC St. John’s that “there were no negotiations in Ottawa in 48.”13 If responsible government had been restored, it is quite possible that Newfoundland would have become a province of Canada in the fifties, though one of a very different character—not a pauper to be “saved,” but a more equal and respected partner in a stronger union. It is probable that a general election in 1948 or 1949 would have produced results similar to those in the referendum, with an evenly divided legislature: a minority pro-Confederate government under Smallwood, perhaps, or a minority pro-independent government under Major Peter Cashin or someone else. Either way, Canada would have had to make an attractive offer to be accepted—certainly better than the one agreed to by Governor Macdonald.
The official correspondence between Canada and Great Britain proves that Newfoundland’s right to self-determination was not respected or handled in 1948 in a transparent, fair and democratic fashion by those who held “temporary authority” over the Island. The claim that Great Britain and Canada were involved in a conspiracy to put Newfoundland into Confederation without the knowledge of the people is now a fact grounded in the evidence of their own official documents. This plot was unquestionably harmful to Newfoundland’s interests and reputation. As historian Phillip McCann states in his ground-breaking article “British Policy and Confederation,” the first work to seriously challenge the official history, “the belief of Peter Cashin and the Responsibles that Britain was engaged in a ‘plot’ or ‘conspiracy’ must be given greater credence. There can be little doubt that the situation which brought about Confederation was engineered by the British, almost entirely in secret and largely by the Treasury. Both Newfoundland and Labrador were used as pawns in a deal with the Canadians.”14
14
NEITHER WORTHILY NOR WELL
If the extent of Great Britain’s connivance with Canada had been known, the mother country would have been exposed to scandal and disgrace. Having gone so far and risked so much, was it plausible that the British would, in the final stage, leave the decision in the hands of Newfoundlanders, when previously they had done everything in their power to decide the matter for them? They established a controversial and troublesome National Convention rather than return the Newfoundland parliament. Is it likely they would risk returning it in a referendum? Conspirators do not conspire to fail.
It was the British who held the referendum in Newfoundland in 1948. They decided what options would appear on the ballot paper, and it was they who counted the votes. Governor Macdonald and the British exercised the tightest control over that process. In 1933 Alexander Clutterbuck wrote in the Royal Commission Report that, for Newfoundland, “considerations of constitutional status were regarded more as a matter for academic discussion than as a practical issue.”1 That thinking was essentially unchanged in 1948. Whether Britain did fix the vote or not, they had put themselves in every position to do so and it would be unrealistic to think they were not prepared to follow through. There is no official record even in the top secret files of any such plan—but that is not surprising. Nevertheless, over sixty years later, the belief in such a plan is active in Newfoundland and elsewhere. It is supported by personal accounts of those involved, and in personal papers such as those of Charles R. Granger.
Charles R. (Charlie) Granger was the executive assistant to Jack Pickersgill after Confederation, when Pickersgill ran for elected office and became Newfoundland’s representative in the federal Cabinet of Lester Pearson. Granger himself later became a minister in the Trudeau government. For a time he was also a member of the Newfoundland provincial government. Throughout his many years in public life, he interviewed people at both the federal and provincial levels about the Newfoundland referendum on Confederation. In all these interviews he found that they commonly did not want to talk about the vote—they found it a painful memory and, overall, described it as a bad business. In the end Granger came to believe that the vote had been tampered with.
Nehemiah Short was the chief electoral officer for the referendum and was stationed at the House of Assembly. He and the British officials with him received the returns there by telephone, and, as they were tallied, a uniformed member of the Newfoundland Constabulary took them across the road to the governor and his officials at Government House. Sir Gordon Macdonald had sole responsibility for compiling and publishing the results. There was no direct communication between the Returning Officer’s Office and the governor.2 According to Granger, it was that secrecy that made the vote tampering possible. As Jim Halley explained: “The British operated on a need-to-know basis. There would be no written record, and only those who absolutely had to know about the plans to change the election results were told. Joey [Smallwood], for instance, was not told. It would have demoralized him. He would have accepted it, but there was more to be gained from his performance by not telling him. The only Newfoundlander who would need to know was Nehemiah Short, the returning officer.”3
Two days after the vote and long before the results could be confirmed, Governor Macdonald wrote to Sir Eric Machtig at the Commonwealth Relations Office about the successful outcome obtained in the referendum. It would have taken at least a month for a full recount of the close result, but within eight days, in spite of calls for a recount on the west coast, both Great Britain and Canada accepted the results as conclusive.
Within two weeks of the vote, a number of ballots were burned in St. John’s. David Butler was a powerful bureaucrat in the Smallwood government after confederation, but during the summer of 1948 he was an assistant to Commissioner Herman Quinton. Shortly after the vote, Butler was o
rdered by Quinton to take a truckload of ballots to the General Hospital in St. John’s and burn them in the furnace there. When Butler arrived at the hospital he decided to open the burlap sacks before he destroyed them. The sacks were filled with ballots, and even the ballot boxes, from the second referendum. Butler was troubled by his orders from Quinton, so he telephoned the chief electoral officer, Nehemiah Short, whom he knew, and told him what Quinton had ordered. Short replied: “The ballots were counted neither worthily nor well. Burn them.” Butler burned the ballots but kept one of the boxes for a souvenir.4 Later on, when Short’s secretary was questioned about the ballot count after his death, she became extremely upset, burst into tears and would only say, “You better let sleeping dogs lie.”5
All these accounts, though unofficial, corroborate each other and are consistent with the official record of deception. The unusual placement of the returning officer at the House of Assembly in isolation from the governor, who received and announced the final results, ensured ample opportunity to tamper with that result. The haste in burning the historic ballots prevented any possibility of a recount. Why were the ballots not preserved for a conclusive recount, and to show off the “fine achievement,” as Whitehall called it? In addition, there is no record of any poll-by-poll compilation of results from the second referendum. All these points add credence to the argument that Great Britain conspired to control the result of the second referendum and put Newfoundland into Confederation regardless of the wishes of the people of Newfoundland.
There is also the haunting testimony of Dr. Harold Paddock, a linguist and professor emeritus at Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1972 to 2002. In 1967, when Paddock was a graduate student at the University of London, he became friends with Margot Davies, a journalist who had a popular BBC weekly radio show, Calling Newfoundland, which was broadcast in Newfoundland from 1941 until just before her death in 1972. The daughter of D.S. Davies, Newfoundland’s trade commissioner in the United Kingdom, Margot Davies loved Newfoundland and devoted her life to helping Newfoundlanders in London.
During the three years he was there, Paddock was a guest on several of Davies’ shows and, in February 1967, he was at Bush House, the home of the BBC Overseas Services, waiting to record one of his poems. Seated next to him was an older English gentleman—a friend of Davies. He told Paddock in conversation that he had been in Newfoundland for several years working with the Commission of Government, and that he had married an “unreal” Newfoundlander, meaning a “townie.” But the young graduate student knew very little about those years. The Englishman asked about the small outport of Beaumont in Green Bay where Paddock came from and about the poem he was going to record for Davies—“Keep Up the Fince” (see Appendix F). As Paddock recounted:
The man was quiet for a while after reading the poem and obviously very moved. He then told me he had something he wanted to tell me, that he had a confession to make. He did not have long left to live and he wanted to tell someone from Newfoundland, a “real” Newfoundlander, meaning a “bayman.” He said to me, “Your poem is about how badly the Newfoundlanders treated the native Beothuk Indians. But what you don’t know is how badly the British treated you. You became the new natives, even though you were white.”
In 1948, while working for the Commission Government, he was recalled to Whitehall. “We were told that there would be a Referendum and the result that we would have to announce would be Confederation with Canada, and if there was another result we would have to change it to Confederation. This of course was very unusual and we questioned it and we were told that the reason for this was that it had already been agreed to by Churchill and Roosevelt during the war that Newfoundland must never again be allowed to go unprotected as an ideal advance base for any attack from across the Atlantic. Churchill, wanting to keep Newfoundland in the Commonwealth, brought in Mackenzie King, who staked his claim—to which both Churchill and Roosevelt agreed.
After this directive he returned to St. John’s. The two Referenda were held and on the second ballot on July 22 the results were virtually the same as on the first one. Confederation did not win. Responsible Government won by approximately 51% to 49% for Confederation. Those, he said, were the percentages rounded off to the nearest figure. It was a very slight majority for Responsible Government. “We were all very relieved because we didn’t know what we would do if we’d had to make a big change. If it had been 55% to 45% or worse, that would have been hard, but the population was virtually split down the middle. We only had to nudge it the other way. I believed at the time that Britain was doing it for the best but I regret it now,” he said.
Paddock recalled that at just this moment he was called in to record his poem. He was in such a state of shock that he could barely get through the reading: “I realized that I didn’t even know the man’s name, but when I got out of the studio both he and Margot had gone.” Paddock was so disturbed by what the Englishman had told him that he couldn’t work for a week. Confederation was seventeen years old in Newfoundland then, and after much thought he decided not to tell anyone about what he’d heard. “I am sorry now,” he said, “that I didn’t telephone Margot Davies for the gentleman’s name and then get him to put his confession in writing and sign it.”6 Paddock finally shared his story with journalist Ray Guy in 1974 and later with Bren Walsh and Gwynne Dyer. He has since learned a great deal about that period of Newfoundland history.
Paddock’s story should surprise no one. It has all the detail of truth and in all aspects conforms to the history of the period as we now understand it. The secret agreement reached early in the war between Roosevelt, Churchill and Mackenzie King is now generally known, but the full implications are rarely drawn. There was no way to predict with certainty which way Newfoundland would vote in the referendum, and both Great Britain and Canada thought it unlikely that Newfoundland would choose Confederation without a push. So, although responsible government might appear on the ballot, it would not be permitted to win. If somehow Britain bungled the referendum process and Newfoundland achieved independence, the Island would be up for grabs by the Americans. But Britain was not about to see Newfoundland and Labrador, that great “bargaining counter,” slip out of its hands. Nothing was left to chance.
Shortly after the results of the second referendum were announced, Sir Alan Herbert wrote in the Times of London: “I have felt from my first days in this affair that Whitehall (there is no Party question here) was set upon Confederation and stealthily working for it all the time. I am now sure of it.”7
Thomas Lodge was moved to write in a letter to the Guardian newspaper that Confederation had been achieved by “an unholy deal.” Lodge, not surprisingly, received neither a silver salver nor a knighthood for his work.
When the British government set up the National Convention in St. John’s, it sent out Sir Kenneth Wheare as a constitutional expert to the Convention. Later, when Wheare was rector of Exeter College, Oxford, he frequently expressed his disapproval of the process employed in Newfoundland.8
Harry Winter, the Newfoundland commissioner for justice and defence from 1945 to 1947, wrote that the setting up of the National Convention “was both a breach of contract as regards the Act and Letters Patent and breach of faith with the Alderdice government.”9 Indeed, Prime Minister Frederick Alderdice and all those who accepted the Commission in 1933 would have considered the National Convention and the referenda adopted by the Dominions Office in 1948 an unimaginable violation of both the letter and the spirit of the agreement of 1933.
From London to St. John’s there were many who cried foul about Newfoundland’s entry into Confederation, but none of them could hold raw power to account. However the “very nasty taste,” as one British MP put it, has never gone away.
15
TO THE VICTORS GO THE SPOILS
It is not uncommon for great powers to abuse the rights of lesser ones, and so it was with Great Britain in Newfoundland in 1948. Newfoundland’s becoming part of Confedera
tion falls into the pattern of British decolonization after the war. India was already gone and badly divided along religious lines. Palestine was abandoned to permanent conflict. As for the “problem child” of the Empire, it was traded to another empire, with a legacy of grumbling and discontent ever since. With the successful completion of the plan to “take over Newfoundland,” as Mackenzie King had put it, the key players received their rewards.
Charles Burchell was elevated to the Privy Council—the only high commissioner and non-elected official ever so honoured. Sir Gordon Macdonald was sent to the House of Lords. Gordon Bradley became the secretary of state for Canada, and Joey Smallwood the first premier of the new province of Newfoundland. “J.B. McEvoy did not get the senatorship he was seeking. Smallwood never forgave him for his letter to the Evening Telegram in February 1948. He was obliged to settle for a one-time payout of $3,000.”1 Herbert Pottle and Herman Quinton, both commissioners from the Commission of Government, and Gordon Winter all received positions in Smallwood’s Interim Government. Albert Walsh was knighted and appointed lieutenant governor, and later appointed to the Supreme Court. Leonard Outerbridge was also knighted and became lieutenant governor after Walsh. Nehemiah Short, the chief returning officer, received the Order of the British Empire. Malcolm Hollett went to the Canadian Senate—the pay-off destination for numerous useful party loyalists.
Lesser players received liquor licences or other sinecures. L.E. Emerson died just after the transfer over which he presided as chief justice. Sir Gordon, having wisely decided not to stay on for the “celebrations,” returned to England on March 6, 1949. On the occasion of his departure, the Evening Telegram printed a poem from a reader thanking the departing Raj. It seemed a flattering verse, but observant readers soon caught on that the first letter of each line spelled out “The Bastard”—a sentiment that pretty well summed up local feelings about Sir Gordon’s performance as head of state.