Lord Hailey, the Colonial

Office and the Politics of

Race and Empire in the

Second World War

The Loss of White Prestige

Suke Wolton

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LORD HAILEY, THE COLONIAL OFFICE AND THE POLITICS OF RACE AND
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The Loss of White Prestige

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Lord Hailey, the Colonial
Office and the Politics of
Race and Empire in the
Second World War

The Loss of White Prestige

Suke Wolton

in association with

ST ANTONY

’

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OXFORD

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Wolton, Suke, 1962–
Lord Hailey, the Colonial Office and the politics of race and empire in the Second
World War : the loss of white prestige / Suke Wolton.
p. cm. — (St. Antony’s series)
Based on the author’s thesis (doctoral).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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1. World War, 1939–1945—Diplomatic history. 2. Hailey, William Malcolm
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Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Loss of White Prestige

The Question of Equal Treatment

Defending the Empire

Reformulating Imperial Authority

119

Conclusion

149

Notes

155

Bibliography

196

Index

213

vii

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Preface

More than any other war, before or since, the Second World War was
a war fought ideologically as well as militarily. It involved not merely
a clash of competing great powers but also a clash of competing polit-
ical visions and systems. Ideological success was crucial because the
Second World War was as much a civilian as a military war. Whole
societies were mobilized for the war effort. Political and military
leaders required the active engagement of the mass of the population
to fight for territory on a global scale, to meet the production targets
of an industrialized war, and to stay the course despite aerial bombard-
ment, food rationing and slaughter on an unprecedented scale.

It is unsurprising then that the Second World War was a turning

point in the history of ideas. In Britain, for example, the war led to the
abandonment of liberal laissez faire economics and the adoption of
welfare statism as the ruling outlook. For Britain’s leaders successful
mobilization of the population presented a considerable problem.
Their manpower needs in the Second World War were phenomenal.
Although the number of people in the armed services in Britain
reached, at its height, only half a million more than in the First World
War, the production levels had to be much greater to satisfy the needs
of a technologically advanced war. Production was the key to winning,
and the Axis powers were ‘ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer mass
of Allied firepower’.

Both in Britain and America, manpower was a

constant worry, which in turn increased the pressure to improve
productivity through encouragement and pep-talks. Moreover the
seriousness of aerial bombing raids made for a far more devastating
experience for civilians than the First World War. Although the
number of deaths of British servicemen was half what it was in
1914–18, civilian deaths were multiplied forty-fold.

In the face of these manpower needs, at the outset of the war the

government found it difficult to counter the background of cynicism
and disillusionment that had emerged after the First World War. As
E. M. Forster commented on the war in 1940: ‘I don’t expect Victory
(with a big V!), and I can’t join in any build-a-new-world stuff. Once
in a lifetime one can swallow that, but not twice.’

Paul Fussell has

argued convincingly that ‘between the wars, “belief” itself [had been]
eroded’. Even advertising reflected a mood of lost ideals.

The

economic stagnation and the Depression of the interwar years had not
helped the authorities’ cause.

It is against this background that the British government entered the

Second World War. Over the course of the war, great efforts were made
to ensure that the population believed nonetheless that they were
fighting to ‘build a new world’. The defeat of Nazi tyranny was not just
a struggle for political freedom but for freedom from the poverty and
economic crisis that had characterized the twenties and thirties. The
Beveridge Report symbolized that commitment in Britain; Keynesian
economic management and the postwar welfare state were its
outcome.

The ruling economic ideas were not the only ones to be transformed

by the experience of the war. Many of the traditions that were associ-
ated with the old order were also brought into question. Legitimate
authority and hierarchical social relations could no longer be
assumed, or articulated through the ideas that had been relied upon
in an earlier era. The elites, particularly in Britain, sought to imagine
themselves and their position of power through new ideas and in a
new language.

Before the Second World War, the idea that the white nations were

superior to the non-white nations of the world was largely assumed in
Britain and America. Colour bars and racial discrimination in the
British Empire or the American South were official policy. The attitude
in Britain in the thirties towards race issues was such that the eminent
anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski could write in the Spectator that:
‘the colour bar is at present a necessity’.

By the end of the war,

however, the victorious Allied powers agreed to a Charter for the new
United Nations Organization that included a clause enshrining the
right to racial equality.

This book deals with the transformation in the thinking of British

policy-makers on the race question, and the events which forced that
rethinking. In particular, it seeks to show how the emergence within
the British establishment of a non-racial presentation of relations
between Britain and the colonial empire was a response to the problem
of defending that empire during the Second World War.

Chapter 1 introduces and situates the themes of the book by briefly

reviewing the academic literature on the relation of the Second World
War and the race question, by explaining the usefulness of following
Lord Hailey’s contribution to the wartime discussion of the problem,
and by discussing some of the prewar trends that were to assume
importance during the war.

Lord Hailey

Chapter 2 considers the impact of Britain’s defeat by the Japanese

in 1941–2 on the way in which colonial policy was perceived, and the
reinterpretation of the role of colonial administration that resulted.
Chapter 3 investigates how the experience of the American practice of
race segregation impinged on British domestic politics, particularly
the way that British resentment of the GIs emboldened the Colonial
Office to take a clearer line on the problem of the colour bar. Chapter
4 focuses on the 1942 conference at the Institute of Pacific Relations
and on how Lord Hailey used his experience to defend the British
Empire in the face of American criticism. Chapter 5 outlines the
themes which British officials developed during the war to establish a
new language of authority and superiority. Finally, the conclusion
assesses the significance that this wartime story has for our under-
standing of how racial thinking changes in specific historical
circumstances.

This book is based on my doctoral thesis. My supervisor, Professor

Terence Ranger, showed uncalled-for faith when he took me on with
my optimistic and overly ambitious plans. I hope this work has not
proved too disappointing. Meanwhile, his work, both political and
academic, continues to inspire me, as it does so many others. His
ability to be precise, lucid and critical is a model for me and has
undoubtedly contributed to the success of the asylum seekers’ charity
that he and his wife, Shelagh, began. We talked of Campsfield House,
Home Office policy and the detention of refugees today almost as
much as of the attitude of the Colonial Office fifty years ago.

Professor Andrew Porter, Dr David Washbrook, Gavin Williams,

Professor Desmond King, Dr John Darwin, Anthony Kirk-Greene and
Professor Robert Paul Wolff were all kind enough to give me comments
and advice at various stages. They bravely tried to keep me focused. I
am indebted to Dr Frank Furedi, James Heartfield and Kenan Malik for
getting me to think about these issues in the first place. Dr Eugene
Rogan at St Antony’s, and Tim Farmiloe at Macmillan gave me support
and encouragement.

Librarians are our unsung heroes. I had help from many: Bodleian

(Oxford), British Library (London), India Office Library (London),
Columbia University Library (New York), Schomburg Centre, New
York Public Library (New York City), State Department Archives,
National Records, Sutland and College Park (Maryland) – and espe-
cially those in Rhodes House (Oxford) and the Public Records Office in
Kew (London). I owe thanks to all of them and I look forward to visit-
ing them again. I would also like to thank St Antony’s, where I was a

Preface

doctoral student, and St Cross, where I am a Junior Research Fellow,
for their intellectual stimulation.

My thanks to Judith Berry for her support and encouragement and

to Lynn Revell. Peter Ramsay has tried to teach me how to edit – I have
much to thank him for even though I clearly still have much to learn.
I hope his patience with me continues. My family and friends helped
more than they know, partly because their forgetfulness forced me to
re-explain and re-justify my work, reminding me too of what it was
about. My thanks to everyone. The responsibility, however, for any
faults or weaknesses, lies with me.

xii

Lord Hailey

Introduction

Many authors have commented on the Second World War’s signifi-
cance in the transformation of racial thinking. The Nazi genocide is
widely considered to have discredited racism. Elazar Barkan, the
Cambridge historian of science, has remarked that:

After World War II the painful recognition of what had been
inflicted in the name of race led to the discrediting of racism in
international politics and contributed to the decline and repudia-
tion of scientific racism in intellectual discourse.

Kenan Malik, in his history of racial thinking, has also confirmed that
a significant shift took place at this time. No longer, after the horror of
Nazi concentration camps, could racist attitudes be acceptable public
commentary. Succinctly, Malik notes that: ‘After the deathcamps and
the Holocaust it became nigh on impossible openly to espouse belief
in racial superiority.’

Paul Rich has noted the way that ‘British governmental thinking in

the early 1940s came increasingly to emphasize the colour-blind
nature both of British colonial policy and public attitudes in Britain in
general’,

while the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies has

pointed out that even the Picture Post magazine expressed horror over
the idea that there might still be a British colour bar in 1949.

In America, too, great changes were taking place during the Second

World War in the perception of racial segregation. The record of the
United States was now on international display, in a fight against
European tyranny, and the Americans were keen to present themselves in
more egalitarian terms. Celeste Condit and John Lucaites have surveyed
in detail the rhetoric of public America, of newspapers and politicians,

and have concluded that: ‘The national press thus underwent a substan-
tial, though still circumscribed, shift toward egalitarianism during World
War II, and it maintained its new posture in the postwar era.’

Desmond King confirms the importance of the Second World War in

the transformation of the way that racial questions were seen. His
book, Separate and Unequal, investigates the way that federal institu-
tions of the United States were, before the Second World War,
increasingly segregated, and after the war, gradually desegregated. For
King, as well as many others, the war was the pivotal experience.

In addition to observing the transformation in attitudes to race,

these studies also offer some ideas as to why it happened. The most
important conceptualization of the process of change in attitudes
involves the rejection of Nazi ideas. Racism, along with eugenics, lost
its respectability after it was associated with the doctrines of those who
had committed the Holocaust. For example, as John Rex and Sally
Tomlinson have stated: ‘The Allied nations had recently defeated Nazi
Germany whose doctrines of racial supremacy were at odds with all
three of the ideological traditions’ of ‘conservatives, liberals and social-
ists’ alike.

Kenan Malik and Elazar Barkan also take the view that the genocide

of the Nazis discredited the language, if not always the practice, of
racism. Many others have tended to conceive of a clash of ideas, or a
reaction to the Holocaust, disgracing the original notion of racial
supremacy. It is significant, however, that during the Second World
War many influential people began to change their ideas concerning
race before the full horror of the Holocaust was known. In fact, as Paul
Lauren points out:

Scholars of the Holocaust . . . have demonstrated that although the
Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews was documented beyond doubt
by November 1942, this generally was downplayed by American
and British leaders, and was ignored or buried in the mainstream
English-language media until after Germany collapsed and Western
correspondents actually entered the death camps. Periodicals that
regularly featured accounts of Japanese atrocities gave negligible
coverage to the genocide of the Jews, and the Holocaust was not
even mentioned in the Why We Fight series Frank Capra directed for
the US Army.

Paul Rich has argued that there were wider influences on the percep-
tion of racial issues ‘as a result of the changed set of political

Lord Hailey

configurations both in the Caribbean and internationally due to the
war’.

The present work attempts to get to grips with exactly what was

the ‘changed set of political configurations’ that was so important.

After the Second World War, the language of racial superiority

became unacceptable in mainstream public and political discourse. Of
course this did not bring to an end the practice of racial discrimination
or the appeal of racist ideas to some, but it does mark an important
turning point in the way race is imagined in Western societies. While
anti-Nazi ideology was clearly of great significance during the war, the
thesis proposed here is that it was not the decisive force in the rethink-
ing of race by the Allies at the time. Exhaustion of the idea of white
racial superiority occurred as one result of the military and political
contingencies of the war. In particular, the old racial ideas proved to
be ideologically inadequate for the new task of defending and justify-
ing colonial empires in the context of the emergence of the USA as the
globally dominant power.

Too often we tend to read the assumptions of the present day into

the past and presume the prevalent attitudes where we need to
explain. We now take it for granted that racism and democracy are
antithetical. But this was a novel point in the late 1930s. In fact,
Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish demographer employed by the Carnegie
Foundation to investigate race relations in the early forties, broke new
ground when he made the contradiction central to the argument of his
book, An American Dilemma. How these two concepts came to be seen
as antagonistic involves the way that changes in the social and polit-
ical framework of the time were understood.

In America, there were two key developments that aided the change

in perception: first, the wartime manpower shortage meant that black
employment rose in the north; second, the end to American isolation-
ism meant that it had become a global power and its domestic policies
had an impact on its ability to gain authority abroad. As Condit and
Lucaites put it, ‘As long as it treated colored people inequitably, the
nation was highly vulnerable to foreign propaganda challenging the
sincerity of its claim to democracy.’

Desmond King makes the same

point:

Many Americans, including President Truman, appreciated the
hollowness of US pretensions to promote democracy in the new
global community while tolerating the suppression of civil rights
domestically.

Introduction

Gunnar Myrdal was perhaps one of the most forceful exponents of this
view at the start of the war, particularly as he foresaw the challenge of
the Soviet Union. The public promotion (if not the reality) of equal
rights under ‘socialism’ and a lack of race discrimination laws were
held up as a counter example to the common practice of the western
nations. Arnold Rose, Myrdal’s colleague and editor who produced the
condensed version of nearly 1600 pages of the Dilemma, summed up
their argument thus:

Until recently, what the colored peoples thought of us did not make
much difference. Now it has become of crucial importance to us.
Whatever Russia’s faults may be, she has no color prejudice. . . . To
the colored peoples of the world, suffering under the double yoke of
prejudice and colonial exploitation from white people, this attitude
of Russia’s has strong appeal.

International political considerations increasingly affected the way
that members of the British establishment, as well as some Americans,
saw the significance of the race issue. The debate in the 1930s over
what to do with the former German colonies had raised the question
of how the ‘natives’ were treated. The British reaction to German
claims (which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2) was to
try to distance British policy towards the ‘natives’ from the racial atti-
tudes of Hitler’s Germany.

Wartime criticism of the British Empire

by Americans intensified the debate on colonial administration. This
work focuses on the response by the British Colonial Office and, in
particular, the impact this had on the political importance of race.

Paul Rich has charted the historical development of the discussion

of empire and of race over the period from 1890 to the late 1960s. The
main influence on the liberalization of the British government is
explained by Rich, in his chapter on ‘colonial development, war and
black immigration’, as being the influx of black people to Britain. In
the introduction he sums up his argument, saying:

The arrival of some 17,000 black American troops in Britain by the
end of 1942 produced a new race relations situation in Britain and
there was a renewed impetus, especially from the Colonial Office,
for the British government to pursue a clear liberal policy and
resist any segregation of these black GIs, despite the fact that the
American army had itself not yet been completely desegregated.

Lord Hailey

The relationship of the segregation of the American troops to colonial
policy is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3. Rich’s analysis,
however, poses the arrival of black people in Britain as the main
impetus towards change. This is particularly the case after the war
when the numbers of black people continued to rise.

It is true that

there was concern in some quarters that black people, many of them
students, arriving in Britain should be given hospitality, for fear of
creating a bad impression in the colonies. For example, Lord Listowel,
after the arrival of the Empire Windrush immigrants in 1948,
complained to the government: ‘We must see that the smoothest
possible arrangements are made to minimise the risk of any undesir-
able incidents or complaints that the Mother country does not bother
to look after colonial British subjects.’

Sir Charles Jeffries put it some-

what more strongly in his book on the Colonial Office, Partners for
Progress, published in 1949:

On the kind of welcome they [3000 colonial students] receive in
Britain, on the impressions which they form by their contacts with
the people of Britain, the future relationship of Britain and the
Colonies largely depends. Ignorant and foolish persons who treat
these visitors with discourtesy are not merely guilty of bad
manners: they are traitors to their country.

What the fear of colonial repercussions does not explain, however, is
why the Colonial Office back in 1942, with the arrival of the GIs, was
concerned to resist segregation. The sensitivity of the Colonial Office
to the race question cannot be explained by the issue of ‘social disrup-
tion’ caused by the new arrivals when they had only just arrived, nor
by the fear of a reputation of ‘inhospitability’ returning to the
colonies. After all, that fear had not prevented the common practice of
discrimination on British ships and an almost total ban on air flights
for black people.

Although there was a small black population living

in Britain, centred around certain ports, this too does not account for
the way that attitudes towards race changed in this crucial period.

In sum, it is clear from the overall perspective of the twentieth

century that the Second World War was an important step in the
transformation of ideas about race. But why that change took place
during the war is less clear. Who drove the changes in official attitudes
and in pursuit of which interests? This work is intended to begin to
offer an answer to those questions by taking a closer look at this
momentous period.

Introduction

Studying the change in racial views

In seeking to understand the history of race it is necessary to consider
what is not said as well as what is said. This is because the mainstream
position is often taken to be common sense by those of the period.
Therefore they have no need to argue for something that is agreed by
all sides. To decipher these ‘common sense’ positions 50 years later it
is necessary to look at how the protagonists in any debate establish a
common ground and where they expect agreement. To some degree,
this process is easier to work through at a time of changing ideas
because the underlying assumptions are being reformed. As new ideas
take hold, there is a moment beforehand where the old ideas no longer
work. The Second World War was clearly one of these times.

Often people today identify the racism of the prewar period with the

scientific racism that attempted to codify a racial hierarchy in biolog-
ical terms. Scientists tried to establish a set of ‘racial characteristics’
that included personality and intellectual ability in particular race
categories. As it happened, despite the best efforts of these scientists,
they found it extremely difficult to find any group of biological char-
acteristics that could be classified into discrete groups or find features
that were inherited with one another.

Despite this lack of scientific

evidence, not only were they a significant group in the 1920s and
1930s, but their ideas were influential in Europe, Britain and
America.

‘Scientific racism’ was criticized as a pseudo-science in the 1930s by

the biologist Julian Huxley. In the postwar period it has been deci-
sively discredited as science – there simply are no biological
characteristics that can be found in sufficiently well-defined groups to
constitute the different races that racial biology claimed to study.

However most people of the interwar period held the view that

humanity was made up of a hierarchy of races without expressing that
view in scientific language. The eugenicists, for example, although they
were vocal and their views influenced government policy indirectly,
were far from dominant in Britain. But a concept of racial categories
and hierarchy was a widely held assumption. Even though no pseudo-
scientific rationale may have been claimed, attitudes as to racial
categories and their meaning in terms of intellectual capabilities were
nonetheless commonly expressed.

Two important issues that often reveal underlying views about race

are education and government. Both of these involve questions about
the capability of people both now and in the future to make intelligent

Lord Hailey

and responsible decisions. If it is assumed that a certain category of
person cannot advance beyond a particular educational level then, it
is argued, there is no point providing such high-level schooling.
Furthermore, it is thought, how can such a person have the level of
knowledge, experience or sensitivity to make sensible political deci-
sions, which may have far-reaching consequences.

The Colonial Office provides a pertinent example of the racialized

discussion of education and government. The very presumption of
colonial administration involved a notion of authority and superior-
ity. Sometimes this involved a presumption about race – although this
was not a necessary result.

In the early nineteenth century the colo-

nial relationship was theorized very differently to the late nineteenth
century understanding. Richard Symonds, author of The British and
Their Successors, makes the point that it was the later decades of the
nineteenth century that saw the development of an assumption of
racial difference between whites and ‘natives’. In contrast, Thomas
Babington Macaulay, before his famous plan or ‘minute’ for education
in India, told the House of Commons in 1833:

we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government,
that, having become instructed in European knowledge they may in
some future age demand European institutions. Whether such a day
will ever come I know not. Whenever it comes it will be the proud-
est day in English history.

Edward Said has suggested the contrary interpretation of Macaulay
noting that Macaulay’s assumption was that ‘“our native subjects”
have more to learn from us than we do from them’.

Said notes that

Macaulay presumes that the Orient is unequal to European achieve-
ments. And indeed Macaulay did assume that an Indian required an
English education, not because Indians were incapable of reaching
high standards but the reverse. Macaulay presumed that Indians would
someday be able to replace Englishmen and was outraged if this
prospect were to be denied to them, demanding instead of the House
of Commons:

Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may
keep them submissive? Or do we think that we can give them
knowledge without awakening ambition? Or do we mean to awaken
ambition and to provide it with no legitimate vent? Who will
answer any of these questions in the affirmative? Yet one of them

Introduction

must be answered affirmatively by every person who maintains that
we ought to exclude the natives from high office.

Moreover, Macaulay’s conceptualization of Indian potential differs
starkly from the view that became popular after the experience of the
Indian mutiny in 1857 and especially after the late 1880s. For
example, as Sir John Strachey warned in his widely read book India:

There never was a country and never will be in which the govern-
ment of foreigners is really popular. It will be the beginning of the
end of our empire when we forget this elementary fact and entrust
the greater executive powers to the hands of natives on the assump-
tion that they will always be faithful and strong supporters of our
government.

And when Joseph Chamberlain became secretary of state for the
colonies in 1895 he confirmed this outlook, claiming that ‘the British
race is the greatest of governing races the world has ever seen’.

The

tradition of merging a sense of authority with the white racial identity
continued during the interwar years. George Orwell, who spent the
years 1922–8 serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, described
this sentiment in his autobiographical tale ‘Shooting an Elephant’. His
legitimacy as a representative of the rule of law, even when dealing
with a mad elephant, seemed to be intimately bound up with the pres-
tige of being white:

But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only
of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the
crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I
would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be
frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t fright-
ened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went
wrong those two thousand Burmese would see me pursued, caught,
trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up
the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of
them would laugh. That would never do. There was only one alter-
native. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on
the road to get a better aim.

Chapter 2 focuses on how the defeat in the Far East during the Second
World War affected the Colonial Office’s view of race discrimination

Lord Hailey

within their own administration. In part, their own military weakness
had been due to their underestimation of Japan, an attitude that was
largely underpinned by racial prejudice. But it was the loss of the ‘loyal
native’ and of deference to ‘white prestige’ that provoked the most
rethinking on the purpose of local administration.

Before the Second World War, it had usually been assumed that the

‘Westminster model’ of Parliament was inapplicable to ‘non-white’
races.

Places without settler – that is white – populations were consid-

ered to have administrations rather than government and this was
particularly the case for Africa. Although the question of legitimate rule
had been raised in an acute form in India and less directly in the West
Indies and Burma, it had not become of general concern until the war.
Unrest, when it did occur, was likely to be interpreted as a local
problem. The combined experience of the 1930s, of economic insecur-
ity and political instability, and the vulnerability of Britain at the start
of the war produced an unprecedented level of questioning in the
Colonial Office on the future of its administrations. This discussion
could not help but involve the fundamental attitude to the potential-
ity of other ‘races’.

The Colonial Office discussion on the future of its administration

during the Second World War provides a clear view of official attitudes
to race during this crucial period. The discussion was an excuse for a
variety of people to express their opinions in ways that would be influ-
enced by their underlying conception of ‘race’.

The problem for the researcher is then how to detect changes but not

overestimate their significance. The Colonial Office itself also underwent
a significant organizational transformation before and during the Second
World War. From 1930 onwards it developed ‘subject’ departments such
as welfare and personnel which worked alongside the existing geo-
graphical departments.

Furthermore, the workload of the Office had

massively expanded in the interwar years.

The Colonial Office also

created a new role – that of the expert adviser.

Even within the confines

of the Colonial Office, there were many different viewpoints, some more
vocal than others. As for colonial policy, final decisions were more often
than not marked by a simple yes or no in the margins of the files by the
secretary of state. It was usually the task of a less senior official to write the
memorandum on which the secretary of state would comment. As a
result, the views expressed in arriving at policy and those behind the final
decision were not one and the same thing.

Within the Colonial Office, people held different views, arguing

against one another, with the discussion sometimes never completely

Introduction

resolved. Conclusions, when they did occur, varied between the differ-
ent secretaries of state who were in charge during the war:

Malcolm MacDonald (May 1938 – May 1940)
Lord Lloyd (May 1940 – Feb 1941)
Lord Moyne (Feb 1941 – Feb 1942)
Viscount Cranborne (Feb 1942 – Nov 1942)
Oliver Stanley (Nov 1942 – Aug 1945)
George Hall (Aug 1945 – Oct 1946).

In the six years of the Second World War, not only was the inter-
national and domestic world changing, but the personnel who were
responsible for policy during that time also changed. This book seeks
to lessen the difficulties posed by the varying personnel and structures
through which the wartime debate took place by focusing on the
changing attitude of one important figure in the debate – Lord Hailey.

Hailey acted as a Colonial Office adviser, and largely took over from

Lord Lugard, who had been the chief Colonial Office ideologue of the
interwar years. Hailey became useful to the Colonial Office, and his
ideas became important for three main reasons. First, his breadth
of imperial experience, having worked in India and Africa, was
unequalled at the time and he had been schooled in the old traditions
of colonial administration. Second, his age and stature meant that his
ideas were taken seriously by others in the Colonial Office. Third, his
war work for the Colonial Office, in defending the Empire against
American criticisms, put him in a position to be at the forefront of
developing new arguments for British interests.

Hailey’s approach to the future of the Empire developed in relation

to the social and political changes of the period. Moreover, some of his
ideas were adopted by the Colonial Office, and so provide an illustra-
tion of the relationship between social changes and particular policy
changes. Hailey’s contemporary significance, however, does not
primarily derive from his influence over Colonial Office plans,
although he undoubtedly did influence them at certain times. Hailey
provides a useful prism through which to examine the changing racial
and imperial concerns because he was not a maverick, nor an outsider,
but one of the old establishment, who, despite his background,
changed his views about colonial administration during the Second
World War. The way that his ideas changed to fit in with the prevail-
ing mood provides a guide to the process of transformation.

Lord Hailey

Lord Hailey

Malcolm Hailey’s life, as John Cell’s biography points out, coincided
with Britain’s imperialist period. Hailey was born the year that Disraeli
is said to have launched New Imperialism in his Crystal Palace speech
in 1872.

Hailey worked for the Empire on two continents: India and

Africa, and defended the record of the Empire in a third: the United
States. By the time he died, in 1969, much of the Empire had gained
self-government and some of the new states had used their new found
freedom to leave the Commonwealth. Hailey’s early career was a rapid
development through the rigid hierarchical structure of the Indian
Civil Service while his later work in Africa and America forced him to
rethink many of his early assumptions.

In his youth, Hailey won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College,

Oxford, then a first in Classics three years later and came third in the
Indian Civil Service examinations. In 1895 he left for India, imbued,
according to Cell, with Kipling’s ‘belief in the White Man’s burden’ as
his inspiration.

In the Punjab Hailey was assigned to the secretariat,

but Cell reports that ‘the ideal officer was not a desk man’. The imper-
ial administration in the Punjab took a particular form: it aimed to
build a relationship between the British and local landowners and
jointly maintain control. Cell recounts that: ‘with an enthusiasm that
sometimes made it seem as though they might have invented the
concepts, the Punjab school stressed authoritarianism and paternal-
ism.’

In this way, Hailey’s founding years in colonial administration

were spent learning a paternalistic outlook.

India seems to have taught Hailey two things that were to play an

important part in his development during the Second World War.
First, he was attuned to the question of minority groups and the idea
of ‘race relations’. Second, he became aware of the issue of presenta-
tion and propaganda – which would become useful when defending
the British Empire in the face of American criticism.

A necessary consequence of British paternalism in India was the prac-

tice of ‘separate development’. Between 1901 and 1906, Hailey served as
‘first colonization officer’ in the Punjab. His job entailed the ‘social
engineering’, under the 1900 Land Alienation Act, of a reclaimed area
(opened up through the building of a new canal).

The Land Alienation

Act differentiated between ‘agricultural’ and ‘non-agricultural’ tribes.
The idea behind the act was that the agricultural tribes (that is, the
Muslims) would be prevented from becoming indebted to the non-
agricultural tribe (the Hindus) and hence landless. The presumption was

Introduction

that development should take place within a particular framework to
maintain social stability – and the framework the British used was reli-
gious and cultural.

In this way, the British response to the fear of social

instability was to further segregate different cultures.

Hailey’s work in the Punjab was a success and in 1912 he was

promoted to the post of Chief Commissioner of New Delhi. In 1919
Hailey was appointed the Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Council. In
1922 he was knighted and made Home Member of the Council. He
remembered the Punjab in his peerage – becoming Baron Hailey of
Shahpur and Newport Pagnell (Shahpur in the Punjab, and his birth-
place, Newport Pagnell). In 1924 he returned to the Punjab as
Governor, ruling a population of 23 million. In 1928 Hailey was made
Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh which then had
a population of 48 million.

As Governor, Hailey appears to have continued the habit of think-

ing that social stability was promoted by separating religious
communities. For example, he agreed with Sir James Crerar, the Home
Member of the Council, when he wrote to Hailey saying:

If, for example, owing to a bad season or any other cause, there
arose a grievance which pressed equally on the Mohammedan as
well as the Hindu agrarian classes, there might be a possibility of their
uniting. The danger seems considerably more remote than in the
years from 1919 to 1933, but I should not be prepared to regard it
as negligible.

Hailey also noted the way in which the protection of minorities
provided justification for Britain’s continued presence in India. Hailey
wrote to Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the former Governor of the Punjab,
when O’Dwyer was in London, commenting:

I am sure that you are right, when dealing with the Labour
Government, in making an appeal to Trusteeship . . . and I notice
that Ramsay MacDonald is somewhat inclined to treat the Muslim
position in India with an eye to the same policy of guaranteed
minorities as obtains in Eastern Europe.

Underlying Hailey’s conception of the usefulness of social segregation
was an assumption that some of the Indian people were inferior and
incapable of taking charge. After the First World War, having served as
Commander of the Delhi volunteers, he claimed that Indian troops

Lord Hailey

had not yet ‘proved their superiority to white troops’.

Hailey further

commented to Sir John Simon, who had been to India to investigate
the possibilities of constitutional reform in 1927, ‘I have never been
able to see where you were going to produce people there [in Bengal]
who will be able to run a local government.’

From Hailey’s experience it seemed that a politically aspirant people

had been contained through exploiting differences. Hailey had also
learned in India how important propaganda was in the practice of
modern colonial government.

As Chief Commissioner of New Delhi one of Hailey’s tasks had been

to inform the public both in India and in England on the progress of
constructing Lutyens’s new capital.

He was first sensitized to the

political importance of presenting a case in the press after the massacre
at Amritsar in 1919. Hailey wrote to the Viceroy to complain that the
Congress Party was ‘filling the Indian press with attacks on the
Government, based on their own version on the incident’. Providing a
government version of events was ‘necessary, not only for official
publications in England, but for satisfying public opinion in India’.

Hailey was dispatched to the Punjab to help prepare the case (both for
immediate press use and for the Hunter Commission) defending
Reginald Dyer’s order to fire nearly 2000 rounds directly into the
crowd at the Jallianwala Bagh.

Later, as Governor of the United

Provinces, Hailey, anxious about the propaganda in the trials of ‘sedi-
tionists’ in Meerut,

wrote to Sir Arthur Hirtzel at the India Office: ‘I

wish we could get on with the Meerut trial which does undoubtedly
form a kind of focus for the spread of ill-feeling.’

Perhaps in considering public opinion, Hailey realized that ‘the

strength with which opinion is held is of more importance than its
logical basis’. Certainly he became aware, while he was stationed in
Delhi, that there was a belief in a risorgimento of the East among the
Indian intellectuals who repudiated the ‘tacit assumption that the east
[was] inferior to the west’.

Hailey finally retired from India in 1934 (he was 62 years old). The

previous year he had agreed to direct a survey of colonial administra-
tion in Africa, later published as An African Survey, which was financed
by the Carnegie Foundation.

The research involved several trips to

Africa and in 1936 Hailey succeeded Lord Lugard as the British repre-
sentative on the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission.
Hailey’s reputation as a conservative and experienced ruler in India
meant that the Colonial Office saw in him a sober ally and welcomed
his assessment of African administration.

Introduction

This was, in hindsight, quite an important moment. Lord Lugard,

Hailey’s predecessor at the Mandates Commission, was also his prede-
cessor in terms of his articulation of the direction of colonial
administration. Lugard’s book, the Dual Mandate, had been the hand-
book of colonial administrators in the 1920s and 1930s.

Hailey’s

African Survey came to play the same role as the ‘bible of colonial
administrators’ after it was published in 1938.

Although both Lugard

and Hailey brought issues of international politics to bear on Britain’s
colonial plans, Hailey’s succession represented a transition to a new
approach to colonial administration. Lugard’s views illustrate how the
international concept of mandated territories, created after the First
World War, had influenced British colonial policy.

At the end of the First World War, the ‘civilization’ of the European

powers had been called into question. At the Paris Peace Conference in
1919, the Japanese request for a clause to uphold racial equality in the
Covenant for the League of Nations (discussed in more detail in
Chapter 2) was refused. Despite this rejection, there was, at the confer-
ence, a consciousness that white sovereignty over black was no longer
acceptable in the way it had been before. The territories that were
taken from Germany were distributed as ‘mandates’ rather than as
colonies or protectorates.

To distance themselves from the practice of an ‘imperialist carve-up’,

the territories were given under mandate, that is, like wards of court to
a guardian who was trusted to ensure their development. From this
point on, colonial domination in Africa was increasingly justified ‘for
the sake of the Africans’. The Archbishop of Canterbury suggested to
the Colonial Office in 1923 the wording for the Duke of Devonshire’s
declaration in support of ‘African paramountcy’. He pointed out,
following an earlier suggestion to him from the missionary Joseph
Oldham, ‘we are in East Africa for the sake of the Africans and that our
position is that of trusteeship rather than primarily ownership or
domination’.

Although it is worth noting that the term ‘native para-

mountcy’ was palatable to the European community in Kenya because
of its role in ‘counter[ing] Indian demands for equality’.

Lugard’s Dual Mandate put paternalism at the centre of colonial

policy. The imperial nation became a ‘trustee’ controlling African
welfare, and trusteeship entailed, according to his interpretation, the
preservation of African culture. Lugard’s new method of ‘indirect rule’
mediated British administration through local chiefs, thereby, suppos-
edly, upholding the ‘traditional’ structures while under British overall
administration (see Chapter 2). Lugard’s policy was largely developed

Lord Hailey

in West Africa and was probably influenced by the cultural relativism
of Mary Kingsley’s anthropology at the turn of the century.

An African Survey was supposed to be the beginning of new direc-

tion in colonial policy. According to Lugard the Survey was meant to
lead to ‘a clear and unequivocal statement of opinion as to the place
which the African races are hereafter to occupy in the body politic’.

During the Second World War, however, Hailey began to criticize
Lugard’s idea of indirect rule and articulated a new notion of ‘part-
nership’ to replace trusteeship. But it is debatable whether the first
edition of the Survey either expresses much of what Hailey thought at
the time or much that is critical of the past forms of administration
in Africa.

John Cell makes the point that Hailey did not write much

of the Survey because, after the death of his wife and overwork, he
suffered a breakdown.

Although An African Survey was consulted by colonial administra-

tors, in itself, its wider significance, especially because of its length and
lack of compact argument, is hard to judge. In Paul Rich’s view the
Survey was meant to give coherence to empire administration because
Hailey judged African administration with the eyes of an Indian
specialist. Rich suggests that the comparison of Africa and India
implied that what was under consideration was the broad issue of
black/white relations.

Rich’s argument that the Colonial Office was interested in promot-

ing a ‘comprehensive’ policy may have been true prior to the outbreak
of the Second World War, but during the war the Colonial Office
followed a very different policy. First, while the question of self-
government was under debate in India and Burma, the Colonial Office
was sceptical about considering it in the context of the African
colonies, which were regarded as being ‘centuries away’ from that
possibility. Second, during the war, the Colonial Office tried to deflect
criticisms of the Far Eastern empire away from the African empire –
especially as it was thought at the time that Britain might lose the
colonies in the Far East.

And third, the Colonial Office increasingly

argued that colonial administration was much more ‘complex’ than
the Americans realized, and different countries should not be ‘lumped
together’ (an argument which is taken up in greater detail in the
following chapters). From his diary, it is apparent that, at the start of
the war, Hailey tended to reinforce this distinction between Africa and
Asia, through his own prejudiced preference for India.

Hailey’s wife died in 1941, after long years of deteriorating health

following the death of their daughter. His remaining son, Billy, died in

Introduction

the RAF in 1943. Without a family, Hailey appeared to throw himself
into work.

He toured Africa in 1940 completing a single-volume

survey of British administration, most of which the Colonial Office
used as a confidential report for Governors.

In 1941, he led the

mission to the Belgian Congo to try to bring the Free French colony
into the Anglo-American orbit of supply lines.

He toured Canada and

America in 1942. In 1946 he toured South West Africa to document
the native administration and the desirability of integration with the
Union of South Africa.

He returned to America in 1944, and again in

1949 and 1953. Between 1950 and 1953, approaching eighty years old,
he managed to document and produce a five-volume update on British
administration arrangements.

Lastly, he revised and republished An

African Survey in 1957. In total, he completed four major studies on
native administration in Africa.

Hailey’s work, especially during the war years, was of some impor-

tance to the Colonial Office. Sir Cosmo Parkinson, a permanent
under-secretary of state in the Colonial Office, recalled in his memoirs
published in 1947 that Hailey was ‘one who holds a special position
among those attached to the Colonial Office today’. Of his first
hearing of Hailey, Parkinson said: ‘it was in 1933 that stories first came
from the East of a new star of the first magnitude, which was going to
make its appearance in the colonial firmament.’

Hailey was made chairman of the Committee for Research and

Development in Africa (sometimes called the Colonial Research
Advisory Committee), set up to commission research in the wake of
the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act. Due to lack of
personnel the Colonial Research Committee only started meeting in
1942.

Lord Moyne also requested that Hailey chair the Committee

for Post-War Reconstruction in the Colonies (often called the Postwar
Problems Committee).

Questions considered by this committee

included: ‘What is the general objective of our social policy? Are we
aiming at giving the Colonial peoples the same kind and quality of
social services that we should consider desirable for this country? Is the
underlying idea that they should participate in western civilization, or
are they to be encouraged to develop a culture and civilization of their
own?’ and ‘The desirability or otherwise of encouraging colonial
students to come to the United Kingdom for education.’

For the postwar problems committee Hailey wrote to colonial gover-

nors around the world to solicit their views on likely problems in the
postwar world. Race issues cropped up time and again. Bermuda was
concerned with ‘the question of the extension of the franchise, [and]

Lord Hailey

the position of the coloured population’.

Several colonies were

concerned that demobilized African soldiers should not become a ‘law
unto themselves’.

These comments in turn produced further sugges-

tions for inquiry by the Committee such as dealing with ‘the
suitability of British parliamentary institutions and procedure as the
models for any advances in Colonies where an indigenous native
population predominates’.

Furthermore, the minutes noted:

The problem is complicated in some dependencies by the mixing of
indigenous with Asiatic blood; and by the certainty that persons of
mixed blood will increase at a much faster rate than Europeans
against whom they often have a feeling of revenge for their
neglect.

Some of the work of the committee reached other departments. The
Anglo-American Caribbean Commission requested its important find-
ings, but were told by an official that: ‘The memoranda prepared for it
[the postwar problems committee] are of very unequal value. Some,
prepared personally by Lord Hailey, are first class; others are of a very
different calibre.’

John Cell has argued, however, that after September 1944 Hailey was

dropped as a spokesman for the Colonial Office under Oliver Stanley’s
(then secretary of state) instructions and that his advisory role was
virtually ignored.

But Hailey was never officially accorded the role of

a spokesman for the Colonial Office; only the secretary of state ever
held such a position. His advice was still given great credibility and
undoubtedly the Americans continued to regard him as a senior offi-
cial even when his role was advisory rather than departmental. Each
time that Hailey visited the States the Colonial Office covered his
expenses and paid him a stipend.

It appears that Hailey represented

a significant outlook and influenced many members of the Colonial
Office, even if Stanley thought that Hailey was ‘going rather beyond
what we actually have in mind’. The context in which Stanley made
this comment, however, suggests that it was not a particular criticism
of Hailey but rather Stanley was using Hailey’s statements to put pres-
sure on Churchill to approve Stanley’s own elaboration of colonial
policy.

One of the main arguments of this book is that Hailey’s views

changed with the times. John Cell takes the view that, as Andrew
Porter put it in his review of Cell’s book, ‘India permanently shaped
Hailey’s outlook’.

There is no doubt that Hailey’s experience in India

Introduction

influenced the insights and arguments that he was to develop later in
relation to Africa. For example, one important issue was whether
policy-makers for Africa could learn from India. At first Hailey saw
Africa as fundamentally different. Later he began to see the inter-
national repercussions of Britain’s policy in India and started to
consider how, in fact, the question of legitimacy and assimilation into
the structures of power applied just as much to Africa as to India. He
also began to question the paternalism that he had learned in the
Punjab, a paternalism which, Cell argues, he never lost.

As will be seen Hailey began to lean towards more egalitarian ideas

upon which to base colonial administration. But he still retained a
deep respect for Britain’s authority and an ingrained assumption about
the importance of British rule for any indigenous people, particularly
in the face of what he may have felt was American rivalry for global
influence. For this reason, Hailey sought to modernize the form of rule,
but saw the content (that is, rule by Britain) as unchanging. As a result
he sought to highlight the problems facing indigenous peoples which
would hinder their long-term ability to rule themselves (racial minori-
ties, for example) and underplayed British responsibility for
intensifying such divisions. In reposing the issue of race, Hailey also
saw its political significance, not only in the danger of the colour bar
to British imperial interests, but also as a way of stymieing American
criticism of empire (discussed further in Chapter 4). For example, in
The Times in July 1944, Hailey favourably quoted Wendell Willkie,
President Roosevelt’s rival, without acknowledgement, to emphasize
the significance of the race issue in modern international politics:

Nor can we overlook the effect of the growing recognition by the
American public that in a conflict which is so largely a war of ideas,
their country occupies a somewhat exposed position as a defender
of the democratic faith. “When we talk of freedom and opportunity
for all nations”, it has been said [by Willkie], “some of the mocking
paradoxes in our own society become so clear that they can no
longer be ignored”.

What is interesting about the development of Hailey’s views on colo-
nial policy during the war is that they brought together several
different strands. Some of the influences on his thinking had built up
during the interwar period, trends that involved discussions about the
role of the state in society for example, while others involved his
experience in combating the Indian Congress Party. These were the

Lord Hailey

longer-term trends that came to fruition in the Second World War.
There were also new experiences for Hailey. One of the most important
was having to deal with the criticisms of the Empire from Americans,
particularly after the collapse of the Far East to the Japanese, which
also had ramifications for Britain’s policy towards India. It will be
useful to introduce briefly some of these longer-term trends to set the
stage for the developments of the war discussed in later chapters.

Interwar trends

One effect of the Second World War on the Empire was the confluence
of several apparently separate prewar developments into a single
stream of political pressure on colonial administrators. The cumulative
effect of this process was to force a profound change in the way race
was perceived.

Three interwar problems were to interact with particular force

during the war:

(a) colonial economic development and the Depression;
(b) India’s constitutional position;
(c) Britain’s relationship with America.
There is a considerable literature associated with each of these themes

and each involves many contested issues. Here it is necessary only to set
the prewar scene for the wartime discussion of race and empire.

Colonial economic development and the Depression

The idea that the British state could and should play a role both in the
economic development of the colonies and the welfare of its colonial
subjects provided a new justification for imperial rule during the war
and in the postwar period. As will be seen in subsequent chapters the
adoption of a welfare and development policy stands in a significant
relationship to the decline of racial thinking.

However, some of the academic literature treats the ‘development

idea’ as an already established prewar influence on policy. Certainly its
roots lay in the prewar period. But it became Colonial Office policy
only during the war, and saw fruition after the war in terms of direct
investment in certain government-led schemes and the expansion of
social services. The Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1940
was the key development. The academic debate concerns whether this
legislation was a reaction to the economic failures of the past, a reac-
tion to the experience of the 1930s riots in the West Indies, or a more
recent reaction to the anti-imperialist charge that Britain was

Introduction

exploiting the Empire. The answer seems to be that it was a mixture of
all three factors, but a mixture that required the war as the catalyst for
the adoption of the policy.

The Colonial Office itself claimed the 1940 Colonial Development

and Welfare Act as another ‘stage’ in a British ‘tradition’.

Postwar

scholarship, for example the work of Kenneth Robinson, started to
question this presentation and suggested instead that ‘British compla-
cency’ had been given a ‘shock’ in the late 1930s by the riots and
strikes that had spread from island to island in the West Indies.

Trinidad, for example, Uriah Butler had inspired island-wide action
and ‘strident anti-white rhetoric’. The local black police refused to
confront the demonstrators and it took six weeks for British soldiers to
restore order.

The Times confirmed Robinson’s view as to the signifi-

cance of the West Indian troubles for the rest of the colonial empire:
‘Recent events in the West Indies have shaken the complacency with
which most people in this country have been accustomed to regard the
Colonial Empire.’

There is undoubtedly some truth in the suggestion that the riots

stemmed from the poor economic and social conditions. The recession
of the early 1930s had hit the colonial empire very badly, particularly
in areas where export was concentrated on one product.

In the world

economic slump, commodity prices fell and squeezed poor farmers
with smallholdings, of which there were many in the West Indies,
especially hard.

The fear that such grievances might also be

expressed in other colonies with similar resultant disruption worried
the Colonial Office, but it was not necessarily the main cause of a new
policy according to the historian, Michael Lee.

Lee emphasizes the direct experience of the economic crisis of the

early 1930s as key to the adoption of the ‘development’ policy by the
‘official classes’, rather than the later reaction to the West Indies.

Certainly by the mid-1930s there was a growing section of the colonial
establishment that thought that Britain needed to do more to prompt
economic development in the colonies. Hailey confessed in the journal
International Affairs: ‘I sometimes wish that we could place our hands
on our hearts a little less, and set them to explore our pockets a little
more.’

What most historians seem to agree on, however, is that despite the

fact that the 1940 Act held a similar title to the 1929 Colonial
Development Act, it was actually very different. Stephen Constantine
has pointed out that ‘In spite of its apparent pedigree leading back to
the CDA of 1929 it is less the continuity than the novelty which

Lord Hailey

should be emphasized.’

The 1929 Act preserved the principle that

colonies should be self-sufficient and even the Colonial Development
Fund established by the Act did not in fact allow colonies to have any
greater resources than those they could already afford.

Constantine

concludes that the 1929 Act had more to do with election constraints
than colonial concerns and, moreover, the subsequent economic
recession ‘discouraged’ colonial governments from indebting them-
selves by constructing infrastructure for primary production when
prices were so low throughout the 1930s.

The motivation behind the

1929 Act was the stimulation of the British economy through encour-
aging trade with the colonies with the aim of reducing unemployment
at home, rather than the needs of the colonies per se.

The experience of the 1930s did, however, undermine a belief that

private enterprise would by itself create development.

Instead, by the

1940s, many people, inspired by the economic theories of John
Maynard Keynes, started to look towards state intervention to boost
the economy. It is arguable whether this alone would have been suffi-
cient to shift colonial policy to state-led development, although the
experience of the social crisis of the 1930s certainly forced people to
look for new ideas.

Dave Rampersad argues that the fact that the

government agreed to send a Royal Commission to investigate the
West Indies meant ‘an acceptance of the need to spend more money
in developing the dependent empire’. He notes, however, that the
Treasury continued its opposition to Colonial Office spending plans
causing Arthur Dawe, the assistant under-secretary of state, to
complain that ‘Politically the whole point is that we should make a big
thing of the “welfare” side’. Without such an emphasis, as Rampersad
comments, ‘Economic development on its own could be construed as
a means of exploiting the colonies for the war effort.’

It is clear that there was a change in policy between 1938 and 1943

but quite what was the deciding factor is hard to judge. Malcolm
MacDonald’s reappointment as colonial secretary was the start of the
process, as he provided ‘much of the incentive which set the Colonial
Office thinking along new lines’.

MacDonald managed to have a

Royal Commission, led by Lord Moyne, investigate the riots in the
West Indies, which had continued to erupt and grow from 1935 to
1938. The 1938 riots had produced widespread public discussion in
London.

Hailey’s African Survey also appeared that year to provide

‘further ammunition’ for MacDonald.

It is questionable, however,

whether these events alone could have produced the necessary polit-
ical will without the war’s commencement.

Introduction

For Michael Lee, the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act

(CDW), was less a product of the war and more a consequence of
changed attitudes precipitated by the prewar experiences.

And

certainly, the 1940 CDW Act emphasized, according to Butler’s new
study, ‘welfare provision rather than economic development as
such’.

But, despite the ‘conversion’

100

of the ‘official mind’ of the

Colonial Office before the war, Constantine has pointed out that the
Treasury remained opposed to such a policy change. If MacDonald
were to succeed, he needed Treasury agreement. MacDonald was,
nonetheless, deeply concerned, and complained:

If we are not now going to do something fairly good for the
Colonial Empire, and something which helps them to get proper
social services, we shall deserve to lose the Colonies and it will only
be a matter of time before we get what we deserve.

101

With the demands of the war and rearmament, the Treasury’s response
to the Colonial Office was: ‘We shall have to resign ourselves to stand
still now, that we may have the power to progress in future.’ In turn
the Colonial Office replied that it was the very fact of the war which
made the changes in colonial development policy so necessary,
warning the Treasury that:

A contented and loyal Colonial Empire will, from the point of view
both of production and of prestige, be a distinct asset to us in our
struggle; any growth of discontent or disloyalty would damage us
seriously and help the enemy.

102

The effect of the war on the new development policy is complicated,
however. On the one hand, the political importance of the colonies
lent weight to the Colonial Office’s argument against the Treasury.

103

This was a factor that grew in strength rather than diminished over the
years 1939 to 1942. On the other hand, the strains on the British
economy during the war, both in Britain and within the colonies,
meant that there were limited prospects for investment and little
money.

104

As a result, it seems that the political effects of the 1940 Act

ended up being more significant than its practical consequences on
the colonial economies.

Butler’s recent research highlights this last point. It is noticeable that

only after the granting of military bases in the West Indies to the
United States did Churchill instruct Lord Moyne, then secretary of

Lord Hailey

state for the colonies, to implement the welfare proposals of the West
India Royal Commission in order to minimize American criticisms of
Empire.

105

Furthermore, the Colonial Development and Welfare

Advisory Committee, established in November 1941, was discovered
in January 1942 to be meeting for only an hour a week as so few colo-
nial governments were sending in suggestions. Only once colonial
possessions began to be perceived as problematic, following the losses
in the Far East (discussed in Chapter 2), did the Colonial Office
respond by further emphasizing the need for more welfare
programmes.

When Oliver Stanley, the new secretary of state, proposed that the

development policy be extended and greatly expanded, it was, as
Butler has argued, ‘ultimately, on political grounds’.

106

Stanley’s

memorandum on the new bill was considered by the War Cabinet on
21 November 1944, and passed with substantial funding in early
1945.

107

Stanley’s argument was that without welfare for the colonies,

Britain’s future was at stake:

without the Commonwealth and Empire, this country will play a
small role in world affairs, and . . . here we have an opportunity
which may never recur, at a cost which is not extravagant, of setting
the Colonial Empire on lines of development which will keep it in
close and loyal contact with us. To say now in 1945 that with these
great stakes at issue we shall not be able to afford £15m in 1949 or
£20m in 1953, is a confession of our national impotence in the
future.

108

The assumptions which lie behind the change in development policy
are more important here than its origins. The shift towards welfare for
the colonies was used, as the following chapters will argue, in a partic-
ular way to reveal a new conceptualization of the relationship of the
colonial peoples to Britain. The discussion over the need to develop
welfare in the colonies shows the way that many in the British estab-
lishment felt that colonial rule itself required new justification. But it
also indicates that the relationship between Britain and the colonies
was being reconceptualized because a welfare policy that had origin-
ated domestically was now considered relevant overseas. Prior to the
Second World War, British institutions were not thought of as applic-
able to colonial situations (unless there was a significant settler – that
is, white – population). Now certain policies were applicable across the
colour bar. Even if the actual development programmes were slow, and

Introduction

sometimes ineffectual, the underlying assumption involved a qualita-
tive transformation.

While the transfer of British state-led welfare programmes to the colo-

nial situation may have indicated that black people were now being
considered in the same light as white British people, the necessity of the
state-led intervention was further justification for colonial rule. This is
perhaps the most interesting problematic. Colonial people were increas-
ingly supposed to receive equal treatment but, at the same time, their
relation to welfare from the British state had renewed their dependent
relationship. As British authority in black–white relations was eroded
ideologically, so the British authorities sought to enhance their legitim-
acy in the practical business of economic development and welfare
provision to the poor. This was particularly pertinent at a time when
Britain’s position in the world was being threatened by the United States.

India’s constitutional position

The question of self-government for India provides a valuable insight
into how the British authorities regarded the race question. Moreover,
it was a key political problem for the Empire during the war. The rise
of Indian nationalism forced consideration of the constitutional issue
on the British authorities in the interwar years. The attitude of the
British to the argument that India was capable of self-government is
indicative of the understanding of race.

The Montagu Declaration of 1917 had suggested that Britain’s aim

was to see India self-governing.

109

The practical developments of the

interwar period, however, implied that Britain’s view of India’s future
was not quite this clear cut.

In 1930 Lord Hailey was appointed as special adviser to the secretary

of state for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, at the Round Table Conference on
constitutional development in India. Hailey was experienced in the
debate over constitutional status, having been the Home Member of
the Government of India. Then, in 1924, he had reassured the India
Office that the 1917 Montagu Declaration did not promise dominion-
hood because ‘full self-governing Dominion status’ was a step beyond
responsible self-government.

110

Not only was this a setback for the

Indian independence movement, but the appointment of the Simon
Commission, the statutory body to review the constitutional arrange-
ment, exacerbated friction. The historian R. J. Moore has remarked:
‘the all-white complexion of the decennial review body, the Statutory
Commission (1927–30), revealed only too clearly Britain’s persistent
assumption of superiority.’

111

Lord Hailey

One of the reasons that dominion status was not synonymous with

self-government for Hailey was that dominionhood had been
extended to include an independent foreign policy (so that South
Africa could survive as a dominion without the fear of the internal
political problem that had been created in the First World War). The
problem was that denying India dominion status, with or without an
independent foreign policy, maintained a ‘gulf’, as noted by Kenneth
Robinson, ‘that existed between what Milner in 1906 had described as
“The Two Empires”, “the one”, to quote an Indian historian, “white
and self-governing, the other non-white and dependent”’.

112

The ostensible, rather than the strategic, reasons why India would be

one step removed from dominionhood were, according to Hailey,
Britain’s responsibilities in India, towards the minorities, the princely
states and for India’s defence.

113

This was an important argument, as

it was to persist into the 1940s and perhaps, as some say, end up being
responsible for a divided continent. The key question is, did Britain
encourage the tensions in India in order to justify continued rule, or
did Britain respond to the threat of conflict by feeling the burden of
responsibility and keeping the peace for as long as possible? This ques-
tion, unfortunately, is beyond the scope of this work even though the
answer informs the way that British arguments for racial superiority
are evaluated here. As a result, I have tried to give a brief summary of
the way that R. J. Moore has considered the evidence and judged the
question.

When, in 1929, Hailey tried to repair the damage done to relations

between Britain and the emerging independence movement by
suggesting for India’s position the wording: ‘in due season recognition
as a self-governing Dominion’, the former Viceroy, Lord Reading,
together with former prime minister Lloyd George, ensured that the
precise wording was changed to reduce it to a mere reiteration of the
1917 statement.

114

Even the Viceroy at the time, Lord Irwin, was

concerned that Britain’s reluctance to state plainly the goal of
Dominion status for India, even in the distant future, might be
construed as intending that India ‘occupy a permanently subordinate
place in an Empire of white nations’.

115

In Britain, however, even Irwin’s reworded declaration was thought

to have gone too far. The Daily Mail blamed Baldwin for the ‘blunder’
of promising ‘full Home Rule’ to the ‘natives’ and the ‘countless races’
of India without consulting the cabinet, while Birkenhead complained
‘We are not dealing with the case of a daughter nation of our own
creed and of our own blood.’

116

As Moore has noted:

Introduction

It is significant, however, that the racial test could not, in 1929, be
swept contemptuously aside. Baldwin could not ignore it, and his
Commons speech contained a long passage on the common Aryan
background of Indians and Europeans.

117

There were, however, serious constitutional problems in devolving
government to India. The Indian Congress Party and Mohandas
Gandhi were demanding full dominion status (although what this
exactly entailed was not clear). The Muslims were wary of Hindu domi-
nation, via the Congress Party, especially in the northern states where
the Muslim communities had formed a close working relationship
with the British Raj. Finally, the princely states were the most difficult
entities – having some measure of formal independence while depend-
ent on British support for their survival and even their everyday
functioning.

118

Finding a constitutional agreement that would satisfy

all three parties was never going to be easy – the question remains,
however, whether the British conceded to princely and Muslim
demands because, in the end, those were the least radical, and in doing
so they further entrenched the division of India. The consequences of
the ‘devolution of power by stages’ approach, was summed up by
Moore:

From 1920 Congress had rejected devolution by stages and
demanded immediate Swaraj [freedom]. Britain was not prepared
either to recognize Congress as the representative of India at large,
nor to accept the possibility of India providing for its own defence,
nor to jettison its own financial and commercial interests. The
stability, security, and solvency of India continued to demand a
gradual demission of empire. As the Congress would not co-operate
the Raj must look to the minorities and the princes to help with the
work of constitutional devolution. . . . In the absence of the
Congress, the constitution that was made between 1930 and 1935
favoured the princes and the Muslims. It seemed to take India a step
closer to responsible self-government but it really contributed to
disunity.

119

It is possible that the damage of the 1935 India Act, which had served
to entrench Muslim and Hindu disunity, was so severe that a united
India was no longer possible by the start of the Second World War. The
way that the British government reacted to renewed demands for inde-
pendence, however, now from the Americans as well as from Indians,

Lord Hailey

seems to have continued to exploit that tension to slow down the
process of change. This, and the contribution of Cripps’s mission, is
discussed in Chapter 5.

Moore blames Winston Churchill as the politician most responsible

for sabotaging independence, as Churchill’s ‘constant interventions
gave the Muslim League precious time in which to substantiate its
claim to separate nationhood’.

120

Churchill’s intransigence is not so

surprising considering his declaration in the face of American anti-
imperialism: ‘We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s
First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British
Empire.’

121

But a great many other politicians and civil servants, while

seemingly much more progressive than Churchill, effectively stalled
on developing India’s position because they considered that Indian
politicians could not be expected to handle the ‘responsibility’ of
power without a (long) period of education.

Hailey regretted that the Indianization of the Indian Civil Service

had not taken place sooner so as to engender ‘responsible’ administra-
tion.

122

For example, at the Round Table Conference in 1930, Hailey,

chief adviser to the secretary of state for India, was convinced, as
Moore puts it, that ‘a democratic legislature would be unable to find
experienced ministers’ and he ended up favouring the ‘status quo, in
spite of its disadvantages’.

123

It is the way underlying assumptions about race – for example who

is ‘responsible’ – were affected, and politicized, by developments in the
Second World War that is the central theme of this book.
Consequently, the questions of the historical record, like who, for
example, was to blame for the failure of Cripps’s mission in 1942 to
produce agreement on a declaration from all parties, are not at issue
here. What I am trying to investigate is the way that the failure, once
it had occurred, became an opportunity for a British official, such as
Hailey, defending the Empire to American critics. The problem of
disunity in India, a continuing conflict of the whole interwar period,
was used in the Second World War, for the first time internationally,
to promote Britain’s role as an umpire between competing factions.
However, the development of this propaganda angle probably had
more to do with facing down American criticisms than with new
developments in India.

Britain’s relationship with America

Today the great alliance between Britain and America during the war
and especially during the Cold War often obscures the history of

Introduction

tension between the two nations. In the interwar period there were
two particular sources of conflict: the Japan Naval Treaty and the
Ottawa agreement over trade in the Empire. What these represented,
however, was the difficult balance between America’s potential for
global power and the reality of isolationism after the First World War.
British officials were on the one hand annoyed with the United States
for not playing a larger role in maintaining a peaceful world order and,
on the other hand, irritated by American pretensions to tell the British
what to do especially within their own domain such as the Empire.

The British undoubtedly looked down on Americans, seeing their

system and their press, according to Donald Watt, as ‘embodying the
rule of an ill-educated plebs’. Moreover, Watt continued, the Foreign
Office ‘looked with near contempt on the American’s inability to
handle their colonial problem in Cuba and the Philippines’.

124

International affairs were indeed problematic for the United States in
the interwar years. After the war with Spain, and the conquest of the
Philippines in 1898, The Times had commented: ‘In future America
will play a part in the general affairs of the world such as she has never
played before.’

125

Rudyard Kipling wrote ‘The White Man’s Burden’

especially for this occasion and it was printed by the New York Sun the
day before the Senate agreed to make the Philippines a protectorate.

126

America’s assistance during the First World War had been decisive but
afterwards the United States retreated into isolationism. The British
elite, according to Watt, had reacted with some disgust and caricatured
America as ‘“Uncle Shylock”, the reluctant Achilles, the obstinate
amateur, [and] the “uncertain ally”’.

127

In reply, the General Board of

the US Navy cynically suggested that ‘the idea’ behind British imper-
ial policy was ‘that even the most unpromising detached ocean rock
will, if kept long enough, develop some useful purpose’.

128

The economic depression of the 1930s was a further cause of fric-

tion. The assumption in the United States was that Britain had fared
better than the USA, even to the point where, as late as August 1944,
President Roosevelt could write to Henry Morgenthau, the American
secretary of the Treasury, to say: ‘I had no idea England was broke.’

129

Meanwhile, conceding the Pacific arena to the United States, Britain
had terminated the Anglo-Japanese alliance, permitted naval parity to
America, and hoped that the States would aid Britain and France to
rearm to deal with Europe.

America’s Neutrality Act, however, made it difficult for Britain or

France to use the productive capacity of the States in their rearmament
programme. The Neutrality Act, amended in 1937, permitted America

Lord Hailey

to trade with belligerent nations but without any credit. Nicknamed
‘cash and carry’, buyers had to pay cash and arrange delivery, that is
airplanes, ships and munitions had to be collected in the States by the
buyer – and once war broke out this process of collection was an
expensive use of manpower.

130

Roosevelt assumed that Britain and

France could also evade the Johnson Act, which prohibited loans to
defaulters on war debts. In fact, David Reynolds suggests, Roosevelt
‘attributed Britain’s problems [in 1939] less to a lack of power than to
a lack of nerve’.

131

Meanwhile, Oliver Stanley, then president of the

Board of Trade in the British government, complained of ‘the state of
bitterness and exasperation which usually results from dealing with
the US government’.

132

In the 1930s one of the ways that the United States justified its isola-

tionism and started to articulate a sense of national pride was by
eschewing the imperialism of the European nations. In 1934 Congress
passed a bill which would grant the Philippines self-determination in
1946. Looking back on it, Foster Dulles claimed that America had been
‘denying her heritage’ in dominating the Philippines.

133

And, he

continued in a later volume, ‘the tremendous cost, in both lives and
money, of subduing the Filipino revolt against American rule at the
turn of the century had been an important factor leading to the
popular revulsion against imperialism’.

134

Surprising it might be,

considering the treatment in the United States of black people and
native Americans, but in the late 1930s anti-imperialism was an
increasingly popular political stance.

Within America, growing global influence was given a benevolent

interpretation. For example, Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian and
philosopher, professed that the American people were ‘awkward
imperialists’, not using force to exercise domination because ‘our
legions are dollars’ and ‘it is our virtue rather than our power which
the nations envy’.

135

The Americans were also convinced that the

British system of imperial preference was thwarting American trade.

136

Even though the trade involved was small scale, once Britain’s position
had been weakened by the start of the war, the States forced Britain to
adopt an ‘open door’ policy and cut tariffs.

137

Despite the tension, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt

managed to form a working relationship. At the start of the war
Roosevelt wrote to Churchill, who was head of the Admiralty at the
time, saying that he would ‘welcome it if you will keep me in touch
personally’.

138

When Churchill became prime minister on 15 May

1940, his first order of business was to write to Roosevelt, particularly

Introduction

as, according to Watt, ‘Churchill was an unashamed Atlanticist; and
his hopes of Britain’s survival and ultimate victory were pinned firmly
on the US’.

139

The correspondence of these two heads of state, though

unusual, was probably essential to create an alliance out of two coun-
tries previously so out of step. According to David Reynolds, one of
the foremost historians of the ‘special relationship’ of Britain and
America, Churchill sent Roosevelt a message, on average, every 36
hours between May 1940 and April 1945. ‘No lover’, Churchill said
after the war, ‘ever studied the whims of his mistress as I did those of
President Roosevelt.’

140

America’s support for Britain was still not a foregone conclusion.

Roosevelt, doubtful of Britain’s ‘nerve’ and capability, and concerned
about his own position in an election against Wendell Willkie (which
Roosevelt won 449 to 82 on 5 November 1940), waited until August
1940, two months after France had fallen, to vouchsafe some material
support. Even then it took until 11 March 1941 to pass what was called
‘Lend-Lease’ through Congress and transfer 50 old destroyers to Britain
(as it would have taken too long to build them from scratch) in
exchange for leases on army bases in the West Indies.

141

The bases in the West Indies were a source of some anxiety. The

Governor of Trinidad, Hubert Young, reported that the ‘great question
which is uppermost in everyone’s mind here’ was whether there was
any ‘intention or possibility of this Colony being handed over to the
United States after the war’.

142

The Colonial Office promised him an

announcement by Lord Moyne on the continued British sovereignty
of the islands. The Americans, at least President Roosevelt, said they
had ‘no desire to acquire the British West Indies’. In fact, it was
reported, Roosevelt ‘regarded the Islands as headaches, and he wanted
no “British headaches”’.

143

William Roger Louis has looked extensively at the debate between

Britain and America over the future of British colonies and provided a
thorough account of the history of diplomatic relations between
Britain and the States during the war. He describes this work,
Imperialism at Bay: the United States and the Decolonization of the British
Empire, 1941–45, as ‘an enquiry into the economic element of trustee-
ship in relation to strategic and ethical considerations’.

144

Louis’s

focus is the way that British officials interpreted American demands
for international trusteeship for colonies as a covert interest in
expanding their own influence in the Empire. However examining the
same material that Louis has researched from the point of view of the
changing perceptions of race – both in terms of the image of the

Lord Hailey

‘natives’ and the self-image of the imperialists – leads to a rather differ-
ent interpretation of the underlying issues.

Louis tended to interpret the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office

as being anxious about Britain’s future economic position and fearful
of America’s expanding sphere of influence. The Colonial Office files
of the period, however, reveal another anxiety. Especially after the loss
of the Far Eastern empire, their concern is as much with their weak-
ened authority in the colonies (discussed in more detail in Chapter 2).
Particularly after the experience of the late 1930s, when the debate on
colonial administration intensified over Germany’s colonial record
and new riots flared up in the West Indies, many British officials were
sensitized to the fact that certain questions only raised further ques-
tions. The very admission that an argument was required to justify
imperial rule reflected a loss of assumed power. The Colonial and
Foreign Offices instinctively avoided such a challenge to the assump-
tion of rule – and, interestingly, tried to warn the Americans against
entering into such a debate.

This point can be clarified with the example of Foreign Office offi-

cial Cavendish-Bentinck’s caustic comments on American plans:

If Indo-China is not restored to France on the ground that ‘the poor
Indo-Chinese’ have no education and no welfare (I have never
heard that the Indo-Chinese were any more unhappy than the
share-croppers of the Southern United States), the Dutch and
ourselves may later on be told that the oil resources of the
Netherlands East Indies and Borneo have never been properly
developed, nor the rubber resources of Malaya, that the natives are
insufficiently educated according to Washington standards and
that these territories must be placed under United Nations trustee-
ship (perhaps with United States oil and rubber controllers).

145

Louis interpreted this comment in the following way: ‘Thus the
Foreign Office clearly identified the economic element in Roosevelt’s
trusteeship policy.’ But the passage can be read in more than one way.
First, Cavendish-Bentinck relativizes Roosevelt’s comment by stating
that black workers in the Southern States are no better off than workers
on rubber plantations in South East Asia, and therefore the Americans
have no higher moral basis from which to criticize others. Second, he
points out that once the Americans criticize the French empire in
Indo-China they are opening Pandora’s box, since all colonial admin-
istrations could be investigated and found deficient on some grounds.

Introduction

It is important to consider the way that Cavendish-Bentinck’s response
is motivated by a desire to defend a right to rule as much as by British
economic concerns. His underlying assumption is that the right to rule
is an unquestioned authority and he is doubtful if it can sustain inter-
rogation.

Chapter 4 looks at the way in which the issue of economic develop-

ment became a new way to assert British authority, through welfarism
rather than financial interests. This point is illustrated by Sir Edward
Grigg when he justified British rule in the Middle East as a force for
progress:

Britain will stand or fall in the Middle East by her influence upon
the promotion of social justice and betterment, claming no arbi-
trary power over or even open influence upon its national
Governments, but helping and advising unobtrusively at request, so
that all parts of the population can feel the benefit of progress in
opportunity, education, living conditions and health.

146

But Louis’s immediate comment on such a statement was:

Did Grigg also see the purpose of this British presence as securing
the oil resources of Iraq or, more remotely, the rubber and tin of
Malaya? Certainly yes, for the wealth and prosperity of the British
Empire were inseparably linked in his mind with its power as a force
for good in the world.

147

Now Louis is undoubtedly correct to say that the ‘wealth and prosper-
ity’ of Britain was ‘inseparably linked in [Grigg’s] mind with its power
as a force for good’, but perhaps what is more interesting is that Grigg
felt the need to justify and say that Britain would be a force for
progress. What is unusual is that Grigg fears the loss of Britain’s influ-
ence in the Middle East if Britain failed to provide an advisory and
developmental role. It is this defensive tone that is new in the circles
of the British establishment. Certainly it is not something that Hailey
would have, for example, ever argued while a provincial governor in
India – for even in the 1930s the British Raj did not really conceive of
leaving India in the immediate future. The examination of the Anglo-
American debate during the Second World War in the present work is
not intended to confirm or to challenge Louis’s presentation of the
two countries’ competition for resources. It is intended to investigate
the separate but related question as to how British officials gave

Lord Hailey

expression to the assumption of their own authority, especially as the
language of white superiority became increasingly unacceptable.

The preoccupation with the fate of ‘white prestige’ in the Pacific has

also been investigated by Christopher Thorne in his magisterial history
of the Pacific War, Allies of a Kind. According to Thorne, both British
and American officials shared a common interest in maintaining a
sense of white superiority. Succinctly, Thorne notes: ‘Time and again,
as will be seen, it was the threat to Western, white prestige that trou-
bled those in power in Washington and London.’

148

Where Thorne and Louis are primarily concerned with the military

and diplomatic history of the period, the present work is entirely
concerned with the form in which the imperialists imagined the
source of their authority over the colonized peoples. The tension
between America and Britain was essential to the process by which
individuals in the Colonial Office came to view race as important.
Under pressure to defend Britain’s position in world affairs, and in
particular the ownership of the Empire, British officials shaped their
arguments to fit the new circumstances.

In countering the argument against empire Hailey played a import-

ant role, on the one hand, in taking on American criticisms and, on
the other, bringing back his insights to the Colonial Office discussion.
Hailey’s arguments were reinforced by a renewed sense of confidence
in Britain as the war progressed.

By the winter of 1942–3, several things had happened to strengthen

Britain and the Colonial Office’s position. First, the war against the
Nazis had begun to turn as Montgomery repulsed Rommel in North
Africa and the Red Army overwhelmed the Germans at Stalingrad.
Second, the alliance of Britain, America and the Soviet Union was
beginning to outpace German production levels and the existence of
the alliance had boosted the public’s confidence. Third, India had not
fallen to the Japanese as first feared. Fourth, the Colonial Office had
realized that the British public were not as racist as expected and, in
fact, partly to do with resentments over rationing and shortages, were
quite hostile to the American practice of racial segregation (see
Chapter 3).

To indicate just what a step this was, consider Lord Hailey’s own

reaction at the start of the war to the French use of African troops:
‘very few Frenchmen seem to realize the political consequences
involved in the conscription of big numbers of Africans; there is
bound to be an unsettlement of ideas, a change of outlook, and
increased demand in standards of living.’

149

By the end of the war, the

Introduction

Colonial Office was trying (unsuccessfully), through the War Office, to
get the West Indian troops into a position where they could be seen to
be involved in active service so that ‘honour could be satisfied’. The
transformation of the Colonial Office’s own attitude to black troops is
revealing, as it illustrates how the interaction with the United States
provided the mechanism for the development of new ideas.

The new, slightly improved, position of the British establishment by

1943 gave them more confidence in relation to American criticisms.
Instead of conceding, they began to develop new arguments to make
the Americans think twice about their demands for change. It is the
interaction of these ideas and their political context that provides the
mechanism for the transformation of thinking about race. In the
process, the British and Americans began to develop a new language of
moral authority that superseded the old language of the ‘Anglo-Saxon
alliance’.

150

In public, racial language was largely unacceptable by the end of the

Second World War, and race was clearly a political issue. The United
States Armed Forces began the process of desegregation.
Discrimination, in Britain, the United States and much of the Empire,
continued in many arenas, but those that maintained the ‘colour bar’
were aware that it had to be discreet.

151

More importantly, even colo-

nial officials and men like Hailey saw their own work more in terms of
a moral duty to the colonies than of some special right to rule which
had often, in the past, been racially justified. What is important about
understanding this process of change is that it brings out how imper-
ial rule could continue while the authority upon which it was based
was transformed from that of white race superiority to a new moral
and developmental legitimacy.

Lord Hailey

The Loss of White Prestige

Introduction

Colonial Office policy on ‘colour discrimination’ was never explicitly
codified in any detail. Before the war, if asked, most colonial officials
would probably have denied being in favour of ‘colour discrimination’
while condoning it in practice. At the same time, however, they would
hold views on many administrative issues that assumed different racial
capacities and therefore, of necessity, required different policies for
different ‘races’. This chapter outlines how colonial policy on race
discrimination began to change during the Second World War.

One example of the prewar contrast between official policy and the

underlying assumption is illustrated by Winston Churchill when he
was the secretary of state for the colonies. In January 1922 Churchill
claimed, in a speech at the Hotel Victoria in Uganda, that ‘the demo-
cratic principles of Europe are by no means suited to the development
of Asiatic and African people’.

In the same speech, however,

Churchill made the point that the Colonial Office had ‘laid down the
principle that, so far as is practicable throughout the whole range of
the British Empire, colour is not by itself to be a bar’.

So, according to

Churchill, African and Asian people were not fit to have the vote but
apparently it was not the colour of their skins that determined this.
The key point here is that, as far as the British Colonial Office was
concerned, colour by itself should not be the basis for discrimination.
This did not mean, however, that there were not other factors, such as
culture, that appeared, for the foreseeable future, to constitute suffi-
cient grounds for differential treatment.

Using material from the Public Record Office we can investigate the

preoccupation with race in the colonial administration prior to the

war, and how that influenced the reaction to Japan’s victories in the
Pacific, especially in the context of American anti-imperialism. As a
result of these events, the issues of colour and of discrimination began
to take on a new political significance that forced the Colonial Office
to reformulate some of its most fundamental ideas. Lord Hailey
advised a new approach to native administration. The new approach
involved rethinking both who could be part of the colonial adminis-
tration and the role of the ‘Westminster model’ in the administration.

Prior to the Second World War, Lord Lugard was considered to be

the key policy adviser to the Colonial Office. Lugard was a former
Governor of Nigeria and author of the doctrine of indirect rule. He
explained his philosophy of separate development in an article in the
Journal of Philosophical Studies. In spirit, he argued, ‘races’ were equal.
In practical matters, they were not. In the arena of social interaction
and the issue of the development of institutions, customs and laws,
Lugard considered Africans to be intrinsically different. He supported
the ideal of ‘equal opportunity for those who strive’ but contended
that in ‘matters social and racial a separate path, each pursuing his
own inherited traditions, preserving his own race purity and race
pride’ was the proper approach. By excluding ‘matters social and
racial’, Lugard confined the possibility of equal treatment to an ideal
never realized, indeed a spiritual realm, as he concluded: ‘equality in
things spiritual; agreed divergence in the physical and material.’

Even Julian Huxley, the influential biologist known for his liberal

ideas, was concerned that giving ‘equal rights for all men of equal civi-
lization’ would, in the real sphere of politics, create future conflict.

The step of ‘granting the franchise to educated Africans’, cautioned
Huxley, ‘will eventually mean a large majority of native voters and
presumably of native members of the assembly: And a parliament of
whites, browns, and blacks is hardly calculated to promote peaceful
interracial development.’

In the 1920s, Lugard’s book The Dual Mandate, which explained the

concept of indirect rule, was adopted as the handbook of colonial
administrators. With hindsight, indirect rule is now generally inter-
preted as an administrative policy that aimed to constrain the effects
of development and even slow political and economic progress to
prevent political and social instability.

At the time, indirect rule was

posed as a progressive notion; adapted from the developmental
concept of trusteeship from the mandate of the League of Nations and
applied to day-to-day colonial administration. Britain’s duty to the
League of Nations, to develop the mandated territories (in terms of

Lord Hailey

‘social progress’

) was translated by the policy of indirect rule to an

on-the-ground policy of separate development and, in practice,
‘ossification’.

The colonial administration created a two-tier structure where white

colonial administrators supervised ‘native authorities’.

The ‘chiefs’ of

certain tribes were given the responsibility to pursue certain govern-
ment-backed policies and could in turn ask of the white administration
certain considerations of his district.

The ‘chief’, however, had little

independent power, and the power of the people was strictly limited
by the way in which successive chiefs were chosen, although this took
a variety of different forms.

Any emerging middle class was excluded

from the political process by virtue of being outside the supposedly
traditional ‘tribal’ structures. By maintaining African traditional
community networks, indirect rule was supposed to maintain social
stability and ‘race purity’ within a framework of ‘development’. It was
in this context that Hailey started work on An African Survey, while
maintaining the prevailing outlook of separate development.

To Hailey, the basic idea of indirect rule was not unfamiliar as it had

its roots in the Punjabi administration. The Punjab, where British rule
relied on rural loyalties and existing hierarchies, had been Hailey’s
formative experience. In the Punjab, Hailey had been schooled in the
Land Alienation Act that protected the peasant from indebtedness to
moneylenders. The idea that the ‘primitive’ people should be
‘protected’ from the forces of modernization was repeated in Lugard’s
work.

Indirect rule, like the Land Alienation Act, acted to preserve

‘custom’ by using ‘traditional’ practices to mediate British rule. Both in
the Punjab and in Nigeria the system of administration was justified
by a strong paternalistic outlook.

Hailey’s attitudes were influenced by the common practice in the

Punjab of the segregation of people of different cultures. His first
posting in India with responsibility was the colonization of the Lower
Jhelum colony in Jhech Doab tract lying between the Jhelum and
Chenab rivers. His job was to construct a ‘new society’. The social
engineering rested on the concept of segregation. John Cell records, in
his biography of Hailey, the standard procedure:

On the assumption that colonists would fare better if they settled in
primary groups, the government tried to aggregate people from
different religions and castes. The Chenab therefore became more
segregated than the colonists’ original homes.

The Loss of White Prestige

Although the primary reason for this segregation was an attempt to
minimize social disruption, it could be said that the aggregate result
had the opposite effect. In the long term, the impact of encouraging
Muslim, Sikh and Hindu to view each other with suspicion had the
most traumatic consequences for social stability. In December 1934,
however, Hailey left India still confident in the Indian form of indirect
rule, both in its tendency to segregate according to religion and in its
use of ‘Native Princes’.

In 1935–6, Hailey toured Africa to begin research for the African

Survey. At this point, he made few criticisms of indirect rule and separ-
ate development. When he returned from Africa he proudly claimed
that ‘our whole instinct is to encourage each unit to develop on its
own lines’.

As late as May 1941 Hailey referred to indirect rule as a

‘characteristically British doctrine’ and supported General Smuts’s
opposition to ‘assimilation’.

The Punjabi experience and indirect

rule were icons, at the time, of the tradition of British ‘native admin-
istration’. As Penelope Hetherington has explained, indirect rule,
although developed to fit in with the post-First World War develop-
mental consensus, followed the British tradition of paternalism
informed by a sense of racial superiority.

W. M. Macmillan, the

South African academic, admitted in the late 1930s that: ‘there are
many Africans who suspect indirect rule of marking a departure from
older ideals towards a new imperial version of South African “segrega-
tion”.’

In so far as indirect rule was seen as characteristically British, Hailey

continued to show support for the colonial policy. Privately, however,
and in certain informed circles, Hailey began in the early 1940s to
voice criticisms of administration by indirect rule and raise questions
about its future in colonial policy. Indirect rule rested on the idea, as
Sir Donald Cameron, Governor of Tanganyika in the 1920s and of
Nigeria from 1931–5, put it, that colonial policy should involve ‘using
their own indigenous institutions in order to promote higher stand-
ards of civilization amongst them’.

In contrast, Hailey began to argue

that the British state, rather than African institutions, ought to
promote colonial development. As a result, he started to articulate a
new understanding of the relationship between Britain and the
colonies. Although Hailey was still strongly influenced by the tradition
of paternalism, he began, during the Second World War, to move away
from that outlook. Changing his earlier views, he began to disassociate
British colonial policy from South African practices.

As discussed in

later chapters, Hailey put forward the idea that the relationship

Lord Hailey

between colonies and Britain should be understood in terms of a
‘partnership’.

Some of the new thinking was evident in Hailey’s 1940–2 report on

African administration. It is the change in Hailey’s attitude, despite his
training in an earlier tradition, which illustrates how much the
Colonial Office was forced to rethink basic tenets of its administrative
policy at this time. In particular, as we shall see, the question of race
was key in the process of reformulating the common understanding of
native administration.

Hailey’s views on native administration during this crucial period of

the Second World War were influenced by particular events and
discussions in such a way as to illustrate the wider process of change.
To put it bluntly, Hailey’s transformation, from segregationist to inte-
grationist, is an indication of the shift in outlook of the British
Colonial Office.

Disillusionment and the idea of the ‘race revolt’

When Hailey started work on the African Survey one of his briefs was to
examine the importance of what was called the ‘Bantu problem’.

was to judge the significance of African nationalism and the role of
the colonial administration in maintaining stability. Hailey had had
experience of India in the 1920s and 1930s, at the height of Swarajist
(independence) agitation, which had placed him amidst tense
conflicts. After the Amritsar massacre, for example, Hailey produced
the Indian Civil Service’s account to counter the pro-independence
argument of the Congress Party.

In Africa, Hailey perceived a very different situation. He wrote about

‘Nationalism in Africa’ for the Journal of the Royal African Society, where
he was fairly dismissive of talk of insurgents in Africa and wrote that
signs of nationalism were not ‘those incidents which have merely spelt
trouble for the administrations’. Instead, he argued, nationalism is
marked by movements ‘which have some real significance in that they
testify to the growth of racial feeling’ or those that prove that ‘natives
of different tribes or areas can combine on a common basis’.

According to this criteria he had found no movements of ‘real signifi-
cance’ in Africa.

The way in which Hailey viewed the growth of nationalism,

however, assumed a certain relationship between the colonial powers
and Africans. Hailey presumed that anti-colonial feeling would develop
along racial lines rather than within national borders. He expected that

The Loss of White Prestige

bonds would form between black Africans and against Europeans,
rather than between only, for example, Yoruba and Ibo to form a
community of Nigerians, or just against the Belgians in the Congo. His
assumption, that all Africans would unite against all Europeans, indi-
cates that he felt that Africans would reply to European racism by
forming their own common bond. He predicted that ‘certain things we
may reasonably foresee. Where there is inequality of treatment, or
undue insistence on colour superiority, one may look to find a growth
of resentment which will show itself in political discontent’.

Hailey was not alone at this time in holding the view that some

communal or nationalistic feeling was likely to be based on a sense of
race community and perhaps race discontent. The presumption that
political or social conflict would occur along race lines was particularly
prevalent in the interwar period. This predisposition to fear race
conflict was to become an important factor in the way that events of
the Pacific theatre of the war were interpreted by the Colonial Office.

Much of the interwar elite had had direct experience of the First

World War.

After that brutal experience, it was hard to conceive of

abstract ideals such as civilization. Paul Fussell, in his book The Great
War and Modern Memory, gives the example of Ernest Hemingway’s
description in A Farewell to Arms: ‘abstract words such as glory, honor,
courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages,
the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments
and the dates.’

After the supposedly superior European nations had created such

carnage, it was hard to think of Europe ‘civilizing’ the ‘dark continent’
of Africa. Morris Ginsberg, writing alongside Lugard in the Journal of
Philosophical Studies, admitted that: ‘it is idle to maintain that the
White peoples have undertaken the government of the simpler
peoples from humanitarian motives or civilizing zeal.’

In his book,

Africa View, Julian Huxley regretted that white supremacy could no
longer be taken for granted:

In 1914 we Europeans could have pointed with some pride to the
fact that we had for all practical purposes suppressed the constant
violence of intertribal war in Africa. But by 1919 that boast seemed
a little empty. . . . The native has lost his childlike belief in the white
as an inherently superior being. He has become more critical and
more restive; but we are to blame for the new spirit, not he.

The new critical climate did not exist only in Africa. A disillusionment

Lord Hailey

with the colonial empire was voiced by people who, a generation
earlier, would have been loyal to the British establishment: men like
John Hobson,

Leonard Woolf and Leonard Barnes. Sir Edward Grigg

complained in the House of Commons that: ‘the attack on our posi-
tion in Africa is not, in my opinion, coming from Africans or from
anybody outside ourselves. It is coming from within our own ranks.’

Harold Macmillan, writing in 1938, also felt that the First World War
had been a great trauma for colonialism:

The Great War, which, by the horror and waste fully displayed to
Africans, cost Europeans some of their old prestige in native Africa,
also caused widespread disillusion in Europe about the bases of our
own civilization and gravely weakened faith in the universal effi-
cacy of democratic institutions.

Hailey, in his confidential Colonial Office Report, 1940–2, echoed
Huxley and Macmillan. ‘It seems certain’, Hailey wrote in his chapter
on racial consciousness, ‘that the effect of the conflict between
European nations, which extended to the soil of Africa itself and
involved the use of native troops, must have affected the general pres-
tige of Europeans.’ And, although it was ‘too early to judge the full
reactions of the present war on the African outlook’, he continued,
‘they cannot fail to be far-reaching’.

The idea of a black revolt against white racism tapped into a fear

stimulated by the elite’s own disillusionment with the European order.
This was intensified in the Second World War by the European powers’
failure to maintain their strength in the Far East against Japan. As a
result, it was the sense of the loss of white prestige, and a loss in their
own sense of confidence, which informed the assumption that anti-
colonial resentment would crystallize around ‘colour feeling’. Once
the Colonial Office had made this assumption, their own sensitivity to
the ‘colour bar’ increased so that ‘race consciousness’ really did
become a measure, for administrators and policy-makers, of the level
of discontent.

In Africa, Hailey was concerned about the possibility of ‘Pan-African

feeling’ despite the ‘lack of any common African culture’. Not only did
he remark on the impact of the First and Second World Wars, but he
also raised the ‘Russo-Japanese War’ and the ‘Italian invasion of
Abyssinia’ as having possibly ‘evoked race solidarity among Africans’.

Some people saw the Italian military campaign to annex Abyssinia

in October 1935 as revenge for Italy’s defeat in 1896. In 1896, The

The Loss of White Prestige

Times had regretted the Italian humiliation, complaining of the disre-
pute it had brought to all white armies: ‘The chief feeling expressed is
one of sincere regret, not merely because by this defeat the prestige of
European arms as a whole is considerably impaired.’

By the mid-

1930s, in the middle of the world economic crisis, Italy’s annexation
was no longer respectable. The Times did not applaud Italy’s act of
retaliation. But neither did any of the European countries, even those
with colonies in Africa, try to restrain Italy. Either, as Hailey
commented, France, Britain and Belgium were too weak to prevent
Italy’s aggression, or they had consented to the further extension of
imperial rule by force. Either way, it was inevitable, in Hailey’s eyes,
that the June 1936 ‘All-Bantu Convention’ would pass a resolution
‘condemning imperialism’.

William E. B. Du Bois, the American

black academic, brought out the consequences of European racism in
an article on the ‘Inter-racial implications of the Ethiopian crisis’ in
the journal Foreign Affairs:

The moral of this, as Negroes see it, is that if any colored nation
expects to maintain itself against white Europe it need appeal
neither to religion nor culture but only to force. That is why Japan
today has the sympathy of the majority of mankind because that
majority is colored.

The sense of a racial divide in the interpretation of conflict was
strengthened by the identification of the rioting West Indians with the
people of Abyssinia. As late as 1938, when a British journalist, Arthur
Calder-Marshall, visited Trinidad he was struck by the ‘fervent interest’
in the continuing war between Italy and Abyssinia. Calder-Marshall
went so far as to claim that ‘Britain’s betrayal of Abyssinia is nearly as
much to blame for the riots in Trinidad as the high cost of living’.

As the Italian manoeuvres had demonstrated, and the Second

World War was about to confirm, diplomacy could no longer contain
the tensions among the European powers. One of the problems facing
the British Colonial Office was that comparisons of the methods of
colonial rule by different European countries had exacerbated, rather
than resolved, existing tensions. Competition over colonial resources
and imperial spheres of influence had spilled over into competing
claims of superiority in ‘native administration’. This again was inter-
preted primarily as a question of the different ‘race relations’ involved
in different nations’ colonial administrations. Hailey commented
that:

Lord Hailey

there is some tendency among English writers on African subjects
to emphasize features in which foreign colonial administration is
held to be superior to our own. They find typical instances of this
in the relative absence of colour bar in French colonies, or in the
character of the labour organization in Belgian mining centres, or
in the systematic efforts made in the Congo to utilize native labour
in skilled industrial employment.

In 1890 transferring African territory between European powers was
seen as unproblematic.

By the 1930s, however, when Germany

requested the return of colonies removed after the First World War and
mandated under trust to other imperial powers, Winston Churchill,
First Lord of the Admiralty, announced that he would not agree to
Germany’s ‘repulsive talk of handing over millions of human souls
irrespective of their wishes like cattle or slaves to new sovereignties’.

The League of Nations arranged a conference in 1939 to investigate
European demands for colonies and to conduct a ‘survey of inter-
national opinion on claims for relief from population pressure’. The
debate between British delegates and German representatives at the
League of Nations was fought over the treatment of the ‘natives’ by the
colonial authorities.

The Italian delegates repeated Virginio Gayda’s criticism that Britain

was pursuing ‘strong racial tendencies’ because British emigration
policy ‘favours the Anglo-Saxon and keeps the other races out of an
empty Empire’. Margery Perham, the Oxford expert on colonial
administration, responded that the only reason that Germany’s record
was being ‘cleaned’ was because there had been an increase in ‘sympa-
thy’ with the German claim for colonies. In fact, she replied, British
administration was the ‘result of centuries of experience in the
government of native peoples’ that was incomparable to the mere
‘thirty years of German occupation’.

A disillusioned British polit-

ician, Lord Arnold, with a ‘gasp’, promptly counter-attacked and
brought up

the question of the colour bar in South Africa, the confiscation of
the political rights of the Cape natives during the last two or three
years, the forced labour which was still a part of British policy in
certain African territories, and also the loss of the best territory in
Kenya by the natives so that white settlers should be supplied with
the best land. The British assumption of moral rectitude must be
intolerable to Germany.

The Loss of White Prestige

Discord between the imperial nations had created space for criticisms
of each other’s colonial policies. The uneasy peace that had been
brokered in 1919, and sealed with the redistribution of colonies as
mandates, began to fall apart in the late 1930s. No longer, amid the
claims and counterclaims, could imperial authority be assumed over
the mandated territories. The future of the colonial relationship had
been brought into question. In these conditions, of the breakdown of
the fragile framework of the League of Nations, Asian and black rebel-
lions began to symbolize a disintegration of the old order. Just as black
people in Africa, Asia, the West Indies, America and India started to see
themselves in solidarity with one another against white racism, so the
Europeans found that they could no longer rely on each other to
form a pro-imperialist consensus that might have maintained white
prestige.

The role of Japan in race relations

The pro-imperialist consensus had first faced problems after the First
World War. Then, the delegates to the League of Nations had put
colour before colonialism and refused Japan’s request for a racial
equality clause. Japan’s premier had announced before the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919 that Japan’s ‘inferiority must end’ and that they
had ‘plans to gain equality’ at the negotiating table. But when it came
to the vote, Wilson declared that Japan’s proposal for an amendment
for a right of race equality had failed, despite 11 out of 17 in favour,
because, he claimed, it needed unanimous approval – unlike two prior
amendments. At the end of the conference all the imperial powers,
however, remembered their common interest and simply succumbed
to the ‘desire for territorial acquisition’. And, as Paul Lauren has
explained, in case ‘this taking and trading appear too crass, the powers
agreed not to call their new acquisitions colonial possessions, but
rather mandates’.

The position of Japan, and thereby racial equality,

was thereby dismissed while the authority of imperial rule continued,
albeit in a different form – one where the principle of mandates
ensured that imperial powers gave formal progress reports to the
League of Nations.

After 1905 and the Russo-Japanese war, the growth of Japan’s

economic and military strength had disturbed the international
balance of power and had stimulated a certain racial anxiety.

Some

of the contemporary titles give an impression of the intensity of the
fear of the decline of the ‘white race’.

For example, Lothrop

Lord Hailey

Stoddard produced two books titled: The Rising Tide of Color Against
White World Supremacy (1920) and The Revolt Against Civilization: the
Menace of the Under Man (1922) while Jack London wrote of the
‘Yellow Peril’.

The success of Japan against Russia in 1905 and the Japanese occu-

pation of Manchuria had not entirely dislodged the common view of
Japan as a subordinate power. For example, the success of Chinese
resistance to the Japanese campaign in 1937 encouraged a view in the
West of a militarily incompetent Japan. Even after America had
cancelled its 1911 trade agreement in 1939, Winston Churchill
remained confident enough to remark: ‘Consider how vain is the
menace that Japan will send a fleet and army to conquer Singapore. It
is as far from Japan as Southampton is from New York. . . . Do not there-
fore let us worry about this bugbear.’ Christopher Thorne, the leading
historian of the Pacific War, notes that as late as 25 July 1941, when
Britain and the United States froze Japanese assets, ‘examples abound
of complacency, even scorn, among those who were maintaining the
position of the West in the Far East’.

The view that the Japanese were inferior, or, as General Robert

Brooke-Popham, commander-in-chief of the British forces in the Far
East, described those he had seen in occupied China in December
1940, ‘sub-human specimens dressed in dirty grey uniform’, clouded
the judgement of the Allied command. Brooke-Popham arrogantly
concluded: ‘I cannot believe they would form an intelligent fighting
force.’ Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent under-secretary at the
Foreign Office referred to the Japanese in his diary as ‘beastly little
monkeys’ and ‘yellow dwarf slaves’.

These sorts of assumption of racial inferiority were not uncommon

at this time. For example, Hailey’s own diary of his research tour in
Africa in the early months of 1940 gives many instances of his under-
lying racial prejudice against Africans.

Winston Churchill was wont

to use the words ‘baboos’, ‘Chinks’ or ‘pigtails’ instead of Indian or
Chinese. According to Christopher Thorne, the racism of the Allies was
not confined, however, to just a few ill-chosen phrases nor to a select
group of people.

Thorne and John Dower have made the point that the Pacific War of

1941 to 1945 can be seen as a ‘racial war’. This is not to argue that
racist views alone were the cause of the war but that those views
shaped the interpretations of the military developments. It was the
question of perceived strength of the different ‘races’ that seemed to
take priority over strategic issues. ‘Time and again,’ Thorne has noted,

The Loss of White Prestige

‘it was the threat to western white prestige that troubled those in
power in Washington and London.’

Just two warships were thought sufficient to deter the Japanese, the

Repulse and the Prince of Wales, although it is doubtful whether the
British had the resources available to strengthen their Far Eastern
defences. The notion of racial superiority did not just lead to an under-
estimation of Japanese abilities, it also influenced considerations of
manpower resources. According to the New Statesman and Nation in
1942, maintaining ‘white prestige’ was more important than increas-
ing British forces in Malaya with Chinese troops. ‘The British
authorities’, suggested the Diary Columnist, did not want to be seen
relying on non-white assistance as they ‘thought that the Chinese
Army would be bad for British “prestige” amongst the coloured
people’.

Three days after bombing Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on the 7 December

1941, the Japanese invaded Malaya and the Philippines, and sank the
two British warships, losing only three aircraft. By 31 January 1942
they had reached the outskirts of Singapore. Less than 10 weeks after
Pearl Harbor, Singapore surrendered. Since Hong Kong had fallen on
Christmas Day 1941 after only three weeks of fighting, and Singapore,
the so-called ‘fortress of the East’, had collapsed on 15 February 1942
after a campaign of just 70 days, it was clear that the Japanese had
humiliated the British. Winston Churchill’s telegram to General
Wavell in Singapore illustrates the degree of desperation:

There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or
sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end
at all costs. . . . Commanders and senior officers should die with their
troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is
at stake. I rely on you to show no mercy to weakness in any form.
With the Russians fighting as they are and the Americans so stub-
born at Luzon, the whole reputation of our country and our race is
involved.

The Foreign Office itself admitted that: ‘The system in Singapore was
faulty. The policy, laid down by the Services, was to emphasize and
exaggerate the strength of our forces in this area. Japanese successes
therefore came as a shock to the public.’

The exaggeration itself,

however, was a result of the assumption of racial superiority on the
part of the British. For example, one soldier was quoted as saying: ‘a
British soldier is equal to 10 Japanese, but unfortunately there are 11

Lord Hailey

Japanese.’

In fact, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival had 100 000

men in Singapore against Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s
30 000.

The post-Singapore world

Immediately after the surrender of Singapore, Walter Lippmann,
usually known for his column in the New York Herald Tribune, wrote an
article in the Washington Post entitled ‘Today and tomorrow: the post-
Singapore war in the East’. In this article, which became widely talked
about, he equated imperial rule with white prestige, referring to
Kipling’s poem written especially for the States on the eve of the
annexation of the Philippines. But unlike Winston Churchill’s aim to
uphold the old honour, Lippmann sought to imagine afresh the role
of the West rather than renovate an old one. He argued that:

The United Nations [of the Allies] have found themselves in a posi-
tion where they could be accused, not without warrant, of fighting
to preserve the rule of the white man over the peoples of Asia and
of being committed at fearful cost to a war for the restoration of
empire. . . .

For the western nations must now do what hitherto they lacked

the will and the imagination to do: they must identify their cause
with the freedom and the security of the peoples of the East, putting
away the “white man’s burden” and purging themselves of the taint
of an obsolete and obviously unworkable white man’s imperialism.

More significantly, shortly after Singapore, Sumner Welles, Roosevelt’s
chief foreign policy adviser, used his Memorial Day Address at the
Arlington National Amphitheatre on 30 May 1942, to restate the
United States government’s war aims:

If this war is in fact a war for the liberation of peoples it must assure
the sovereign equality of peoples throughout the world, as well as
in the world of the Americas. Our victory must bring in its train the
liberation of all peoples. Discrimination between peoples because of
their race, creed or color must be abolished. The age of imperialism
is ended.

This statement was widely aired, reprinted in many newspapers, and
certainly noted in Colonial Office circles. It held out the promise of

The Loss of White Prestige

two things: ‘the liberation of all peoples’ and the ‘abolition’ of discrim-
ination between peoples. Welles had, in this short statement, made it
clear that future liberation required ‘sovereign equality’ and an end to
racial discrimination. The fall of Singapore thus symbolized, in the
eyes of many, the beginning of the end of colonialism. Not only
because colonial rule had collapsed in the Far East, but because colour
was no longer an acceptable justification for the denial of sovereignty
or the practice of discrimination. For example, in one of his weekly
reports from Washington on American opinion of Britain, Isaiah
Berlin stated that ‘in any postwar planning it is assumed that the white
peoples have lost their Asiatic possessions forever’. In the margin
beside Berlin’s comment in the Foreign Office file, ‘yes’ was pencilled
in.

Wendell Willkie, who had been President Roosevelt’s rival in the

1940 presidential election campaign, summed up the new status of
white against black. ‘The day is gone’, he remarked in a speech in
Rochester on 23 April 1942, ‘when men and women of whatever
colour or creed can consider themselves the superior of other creeds
or colours.’

‘Racially’ Pearl Harbor and Singapore marked the ‘end of

an epoch’ to Walter White, the secretary of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in his letter to
Fortune in May that year. ‘To assume’, he wrote, ‘that the postwar
world will be determined and directed exclusively by so-called white
peoples and nations with the acquiescence of black, brown and yellow
peoples who constitute four-fifths of the world’s population is exceed-
ingly dangerous.’

In Britain some of these concerns had started a little earlier. The

susceptibility of the Far Eastern empire to the propaganda of the
Japanese had already rung warning bells in the Foreign Office in 1941.
The slogan ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ used by the Japanese ‘certainly finds
an echo among the people living in colonies or possessions of
European nations’ according to one Foreign Office memorandum.

The ‘natives’’ lack of loyalty to the British, French and Dutch imperial
administrations was not only causing a military disaster but was
forcing the administrators to think twice about colonialism.

The first response by the British administration was to blame

Japanese propaganda for the anti-European feeling. The head of the
Ministry of Information section in Singapore, R. H. Scott, cabled to the
Ministry in London that a fifth column was to blame for the collapse
of Malaya. He telegrammed that: ‘Cunning use was made by the
enemy – who had already planned a well-organized fifth column – of

Lord Hailey

the weaknesses of our position to foster suspicion and distrust between
races, and to excite anti-European feeling.’

The British Foreign Office attempted to deal with the ‘cunning’ ploy

of the Japanese by adjusting its own propaganda. In considering ‘polit-
ical warfare’ for the Far East, one Foreign Office report (on the
possibility of cartoon stories) made the point that even Germans
should not be criticized: ‘It is, however, important at the present junc-
ture that the enemy should not be depicted as a German or as a Japanese,
the former because it might only arouse anti-Western feelings in
general.’

The India Office was of the same opinion as the Foreign

Office that racial propaganda, particularly anything that denigrated
Europeans, was problematic.

Those producing British propaganda for

the Far East seemed to oscillate between worrying about white prestige
and self-representation and trying to affirm the savagery of their non-
white enemy.

The following year Isaiah Berlin noted that there were some in the

United States who had similar fears of disloyalty about their own
population. On 20 March 1942 he reported, in his usual abbreviated
style: ‘Meanwhile both members of Administration and others are a
good deal perturbed by development of Negro problem under influ-
ence of colour propaganda by Japanese.’

According to Berlin, the concern over black agitation in the States

was manifested by the administration in two ways: in encouraging
employers to look more favourably on black workers; and in directing
the criticisms elsewhere – to colonialism in Africa.

The influential

Phelps-Stokes Committee, in particular, produced a report ‘critical of
British administration in Africa’.

In October, Sir William McLean,

head of the British Information Services in Washington and instructed
on this occasion by the Colonial Office, replied to the Phelps-Stokes
Fund. To Dr Jesse Jones, one of the directors, he wrote calmly:

I note that your Report . . . refers to the newspaper reports, published
at the time of the loss of Singapore, which suggested that our defeat
was due to defects in our colonial administrative system and treat-
ment of colonial peoples. These are now recognized as having given
an untrue picture, and it is unfortunate that, in the shock of our
defeat they were given undue prominence.

Although this was the official response of the Colonial Office, it was
not their internal assessment. Colin Thornley, a former district officer
in Tanganyika, seconded to the Colonial Office during the war, was

The Loss of White Prestige

then principal private secretary to the secretary of state for the
colonies. His memorandum reiterated the American criticisms.
Frankly, Thornley wrote:

The events of the last few months have shown the immense diffi-
culty of successfully defending areas in which the native population
is secretly hostile or sullenly indifferent. Our failure to win the
sympathy and co-operation of the native inhabitants has largely
contributed to the Japanese victories in the Far East.

It was the phrase ‘secretly hostile and sullenly indifferent’ that seem to
preoccupy the Colonial Office despite some evidence of local popula-
tions actually ‘taking up arms’ against British forces. Hostility and
sullen indifference, rather than open conflict, were denied by Lord
Cranborne, then secretary of state for the colonies, in the House of
Lords.

Nonetheless, it would prove to be a haunting phrase in future

discussions on the empire. Moreover, the Colonial Office had been
forewarned. In December of 1941, Scott, of the Far Eastern Bureau of
the Ministry of Information, had written to London to suggest that all
was not well:

Public morale in Malaya: This is of paramount importance to the
defence of Singapore, and therefore to the war in the Pacific. Of all
forms of government a British Crown Colony is one of the worst
fitted to cope with a crisis. It is neither a democratic partnership
with the public, nor a dictatorship: it is a kind of mild and benevo-
lent despotism, the people treated as children politically and the
government regarding themselves as trustees, not as overlords.

The expression of disillusionment with colonial administration among
members of the British elite intensified after the fall of Singapore. Noel
Sabine, who was head of the publicity committee in the Colonial
Office, brought to the Office’s attention The Times’s phrase ‘out of
touch’ which had often been repeated about the administration in the
Far East. Sabine spelled out in his confidential report that ‘Criticism of
the civil administration in Malaya (perhaps extended to colonial
policy generally) will probably tend to be vague and difficult to
answer’, and will assume the government ‘failed because it was out of
touch with the mass of the Asiatic population’.

The rapid loss of the Far Eastern colonies to Japan had a major

impact on those concerned with colonial administration. Part of the

Lord Hailey

shock at the defeat of Singapore was caused by underestimating
Japanese military experience and capabilities, which was itself largely
a result of racial views of the Japanese as inferior.

The sense of crisis,

however, was magnified by doubts about the future of colonial admin-
istration. A letter to the Manchester Guardian implied, according to
Sabine, that ‘our whole colonial policy is at fault’.

Hailey concurred

in an article in the Spectator that:

One of the first results of the shock caused by the late unhappy
events in the Far East was to provoke a demand for a radical change
in a colonial policy which seemed to have failed to rouse in the
peoples concerned the necessary desire to defend themselves
against Japanese aggression.

Later that year, Hailey wrote Britain and Her Dependencies. His views
expressed there indicate that the fall of Singapore had convinced him
that even the work of a ‘disinterested and well-intentioned adminis-
tration’ can be ‘nullified’ by ‘the contact of communities of a widely
different racial composition’. He expressed some concern over racial
discrimination and a separation from those in a ‘position of political
or economic superiority’. Echoing The Times and Sabine, Hailey noted
that, in the Far East, this separation been characterized as a ‘lack of
touch’ between the government and the people where the resident
Europeans ‘remained aloof from the native population’.

As a solu-

tion, Hailey proposed ‘a new conception of a common citizenship and
common ideals’. In particular, he suggested, local people ought to be
employed in the administration:

A new conception of our relationship, possessing the dynamic force
that some have sought for it, may emerge as part of the movement
for the betterment of the backward peoples of the world, which
stands in the forefront of every enlightened programme for the
planning of postwar conditions. But there are some points of imme-
diate policy which demand our attention. We must in the first place
expedite the process of associating the more advanced section of
the peoples of the dependencies in the actual administration of
their own affairs.

Hailey was starting to develop a new mission for colonial administra-
tion – one that departed from the practice of indirect rule and one that
tried to address the ‘task’, as he spelled it out in the Spectator, ‘of

The Loss of White Prestige

rehabilitating our rule in these territories, with the added drawback of
a grave loss of prestige’.

The impact of the fall of Singapore on native
administration

Native administration had been under discussion for some time, but
the fall of Singapore was the event that retrospectively gave weight to
those negotiations. There had been memoranda, meetings and
committees to investigate the future for colonial administration but
until Singapore they had been inconclusive. It was the pressure of
criticism, from many sections of society, that forced the pace of
decision-making after Singapore.

There were three aspects to the discussion on native administration.

The first was the broadest: the problem of a general direction of colo-
nial policy and whether self-government, with its attendant political
institutions, was thought to be viable in the colonies, especially in
Africa. This meant deciding whether to maintain or discontinue the
use of indirect rule. The second question was how to organize the
administration to realize that aim – did this mean allowing Africans
into the existing administration or building up separate African insti-
tutions? The third was a result of the discussion of question two. Once
there was a new accord on the need to ‘Africanize’ colonial adminis-
trations, so imperial control could be expressed in a new rationale. The
relationship of London and the colonies could be justified in terms of
‘partnership’ and state-led development.

The transformation in the justification of colonial rule is both

indicative of how far ideas on racial discrimination had changed and
of the significance, in the longer term, of the change in those ideas.
Note that here, however, what is under examination is how these rela-
tions were justified, not the actual practices of the time. Through
studying the justification for the practice, the aim is to see how the
elite anticipated or expected change to take place even if, in the end,
they practised only the rhetoric or minimal levels of intervention.

Shortly after the declaration of war against Germany, Malcolm

MacDonald, then secretary of state for the colonies, had convened a
special meeting to consider ‘Future policy in Africa’. MacDonald
brought together, in the Carlton Hotel, the key thinkers on colonial
administration: Lord Hailey, Lord Lugard, Professor Coupland,
Professor Hancock, Dr Julian Huxley, Margery Perham; and from the
Colonial Office: Sir Cosmo Parkinson, Arthur Dawe, Sir John

Lord Hailey

Shuckburgh and Frederick Pedler.

Huxley made the point that:

‘unless we could establish the dependent Empire on a firm moral basis,
it would be a continual source of weakness.’

Although the Carlton

Hotel discussion was inconclusive, certain points achieved some
consensus. Both Lugard and Hailey raised the issue of the suitability of
parliamentary institutions.

Lugard claimed that: ‘Parliamentary insti-

tutions were not, however, suited to Africans.’

Later on, Hailey raised

the problematic nature of the future of native administration, echoing
his concern first voiced in the African Survey,

and recommended

that, instead of continuing with indirect rule, they should follow ‘the
alternative course of integrating the native administration’.

Margery Perham, in reply, voiced doubts about the desirability of

integration. The political demands of the African intelligentsia were
‘rapidly acquiring political consciousness’ and, rather than ‘give in to
them too soon’, she proposed ‘setting up large regional councils of
native administration’ which should aim ‘to speed up the political
education of the native authorities and to head off the intelligentsia
from the state system’.

Harold Butler commenting later on the

minutes did not agree: ‘Indirect rule, to my mind, had better be used
as a means to the end of educating Africans to take their parts in those
institutions than as a means to preserving them as interesting museum
exhibits.’

Arthur Wright protested that ‘you cannot keep the

educated African within the sphere marked out for him by anthro-
pologists and politically nervous administrations’.

This debate was

unresolved in 1939, and Hailey was commissioned to research native
administration in the British territories in Africa.

Prior to the war,

Hailey’s views seem to have contained a measure of criticism of the
‘orthodoxy’ of indirect rule but, at the same time, he viewed Africans
as belonging to several distinct races.

More importantly, Hailey

doubted African administrative capability and feared the demand for
elections, doubting Africans’ ability to handle democracy.

The other unresolved issue discussed at the Carlton Hotel was the

question of employing Africans in native administration.

The

Carlton Hotel group doubted whether Africans were ‘suited’ to democ-
racy but, through the prism of political and economic expedience,
they saw a certain advantage in increasing the numbers of Africans
employed.

Lugard was of the opinion that employing Africans in

place of British staff, ‘especially in the technical and clerical posts’,
would be the ‘best way’ of ‘effecting economies’. Hailey questioned the
savings possible, but raised the more important political question of
‘what place Africans ought ultimately to fill in the services’. Anxious

The Loss of White Prestige

about future resentment, Hailey insisted there should be a ‘general
determination to employ more Africans’.

There was already a significant discussion within the Colonial Office

on the topic of African employment. The discussion had begun as a
result of two factors – neither a result of actual increased employment
of Africans. First, the economic slump of the 1930s had put the prin-
ciple of self-sufficiency of colonies under strain. Second, in an attempt
to address economic and social problems, an expansion of the African
social services was planned under the 1940 Colonial Welfare and
Development Act, then under consideration.

‘As Lord Hailey has

repeatedly pointed out,’ a Colonial Office memorandum explained,
‘the somewhat negative doctrine of political trusteeship has been
transformed by the acceptance of our primary responsibility for the
promotion of social welfare, which involves the abatement of poverty
and the building-up of health and other services.’

The importance of

this discussion for the Colonial Office, despite the few posts involved,
is shown by the number of files taken up with this topic. This discus-
sion is also important because it is a useful indication of the Colonial
Office’s general views and prejudices about Asian and African people.

On 3 August 1939, G. L. M. Clauson produced a memorandum on

the salaries of African civil servants and their relation to the expan-
sion of the social services. He warned about the present arrangement
where the majority of Africans earned, if anything at all, between £5
and £10 a year, while the small minority that had gained qualifica-
tions could expect as a Clerk in the Service between £27 and £200 (for
example, in Nyasaland) or as an African Native Medical Officer
between £200 and £720 (in Nigeria).

To some extent this ‘great gulf’

was very rare as the higher salaries were only available to Africans who
had been educated in Britain.

But the common concern in the

Colonial Office was, as Frederick Pedler (who travelled with Hailey on
his 1940 research tour) put it, that ‘so long as you have Europeans on
high salaries in Africa, the exceptional African will demand European
standards or turn seditious’.

100

It is noticeable that at this stage of the debate, in 1939, the concern

was about the resentment of Africans at the obvious discrimination of
being paid less than their European contemporaries. The Colonial
Office aimed also to uphold colonial self-sufficiency and wanted to
minimize the cost of civil servants. Eastwood minuted, quoting Hailey
at the Education Committee, ‘the primary need of Africa was for more
subordinate staff and not for superior staff’.

101

This issue was compli-

cated by the creation of the Unified Services which meant that a

Lord Hailey

particular colonial service job in one country was formally equivalent
to the same job in another country.

102

Its introduction provided more

career opportunities for the existing Colonial Service personnel.
Inadvertently, however, it meant that a Nigerian employed by the
Unified Service could be, or could apply to be, redeployed in
Ceylon.

103

The idea of inter-racial rivalry, within the existing context

of a colour bar, provoked fears of conflict and further discontent.

104

It was thought to be to the Colony’s advantage to have cheaper

personnel. For this reason, supposedly, Africans were paid less than
Europeans. In 1939 some of the Office wanted Africans to be excluded
from the Unified Services with the idea that those posts would be
phased out as African personnel were recruited.

105

The official line was

that Europeans and Africans were paid the same for the same job but
Europeans received extra remuneration by virtue of an ‘expatriation
allowance’.

106

This, combined with the practice of employing

Europeans on ‘work of an organizing or specialist character to differ-
entiate them from Africans’, effectively adding extra grades, was
thought to be the best way of giving Africans administrative work
while maintaining a black/white distinction.

107

The ‘most awkward

single point in the whole problem’, according to Sir Thomas Lloyd, the
assistant secretary, was ‘keeping down costs’ while providing an
‘answer to the criticism of the scheme that it is designed to debar
Africans from the Unified Services’, which would be a ‘departure’ from
the ‘avowed policy of equal opportunity for all, irrespective of
colour’.

108

The concept of ‘trusteeship’ was invoked to create another justifica-

tion for the separate treatment of colonial people from Europeans. The
Colonial Office worried that Indians employed in Africa would hinder
‘trusteeship’ – as if Indians were indeed to blame for lack of employ-
ment opportunities for Africans.

109

Frederick Pedler thought that the

Colonial Office might have some ‘embarrassing situations’ unless the
European colleagues accepted the Africans ‘as equals’ and ‘where
necessary as superiors professionally’. The problem, Pedler continued,
was not the fault of the Colonial Office, it was that:

most Africans are still savages and this sometimes renders it difficult
to make an exception for the African who has acquired “culture”;
and because it sometimes happens that although European and
African men could get on well together, the wives on both sides are
bundles of prejudice and ignorance.

110

The Loss of White Prestige

But the cultured African was simply invoked to suit. Hailey argued the
opposite point: he claimed that there was a ‘characteristically British
desire to champion the merits of the unsophisticated against those of
the sophisticated African’.

111

Evidently, with or without ‘culture’,

Africans were rarely considered polite company. Uniquely, Sir Alan
Burns had tried to improve relations by starting a dining club for
Africans and Europeans in Lagos.

112

Burns’s meagre efforts were pretty

isolated at that time. Discrimination was general practice. For
example, Africans were forced to travel in French or Italian boats
because of the ‘treatment on the British lines’. There were rail ‘restric-
tions’ for Africans, and until 1936 ‘Imperial Airways booking agents
had instructions to turn away enquiries from Africans on the excuse
that all seats were booked’.

113

In the spring of 1940 the Colonial Office Committee on the

Employment of Africans, which had been set up ‘with a view to the
then Secretary of State making a public statement of policy’, was put
on hold for two reasons:

114

one, because they preferred ‘to wait for

Lord Hailey’s return’ from Africa, and two, because the Committee
needed a new chairman.

115

And when, in November 1940, a message

came from the Gold Coast asking for advice about whether Mr S. O.
Quashie Idun, a District Magistrate, could become a member of the
Colonial Legal Service, part of the Unified Service, the Colonial Office
was still waiting for ‘Lord Hailey’s views’ before deciding.

116

In the spring of 1941 the issue of employment resurfaced, partly, it

seems, due to the persistent questioning of Dr Harold Moody of the
League of Coloured Peoples. Dr Moody wrote often to the Colonial
Office when he suspected ‘colour discrimination’, and although most
of the replies were courteous, they were often vague and non-commit-
tal. In 1940, when the British Government felt isolated in the face of
Germany aggression and rationing had begun, the Colonial Office
were contemptuous of Dr Moody’s complaints. Sir John Shuckburgh,
the deputy under-secretary of state for the colonies, sneered that: ‘Dr
Moody is very glib about “justice” for the coloured man; he had better
wait until it is rather more certain than at the moment that there is
soon again going to be any justice for anybody.’

117

The combination, in the spring of 1941, of Dr Moody’s collaboration

with the magazine New Statesman and Nation, and the return of Hailey
from his investigations into African native administration reinvigor-
ated the internal Colonial Office discussion. Hailey had concluded
from his African tour that Colonial Office ‘sincerity’ would be tested by
the ‘readiness to admit Africans to such posts’ in the administration.

118

Lord Hailey

New Statesman and Nation revealed, however, that the Service regula-
tions ‘stipulated that candidates must be of European descent’.

119

Publicly, the Colonial Office disagreed with the New Statesman.
Privately, Charles Jeffries, assistant under-secretary of state, admitted
that ‘the difficulty in dealing with this sort of lie is that if one is to
answer it properly, it is necessary to go into a certain amount of expla-
nation which arouses suspicion that one is trying to evade the issue’.
Instead, he suggested, Sabine, in charge of the Publicity and
Information department, should try to see the editor to ‘make him
understand the true position’.

120

Lord Moyne, the secretary of state for

the colonies, confessed to his staff that:

Unfortunately we are on very weak ground in this matter.
Paragraph 3 of Appendix III makes it clear that no one can be a
candidate for admission to the united branches unless of European
descent, etc. It is no remedy for this disqualification that the
Secretary of State has discretion to admit non-Europeans under
paragraph 4. The Secretary of State cannot know about suitable
candidates under paragraph 4 if they are barred from applying
under paragraph 3. I realize that these regulations are framed partly
in view of Indian applications but as Indians are admitted to the
Indian Civil Service, I don’t think there is any grievance if they are
not given equal treatment in the Colonial Services.

121

Throughout May and June of 1941, many in the Colonial Office
attempted to rewrite the precise wording of the regulations so as to
maintain the position of excluding Indians from the Unified Service
while trying to uphold the principle of ending colour discrimin-
ation.

122

Even Sir Owen Williams, one of the old generation, realized

that ‘the African will be likely to attach a certain “prestige” to being
a member of a Unified Service’.

123

‘An earlier concession’ to the idea

of Africans being part of their administration could, suggested
Hailey, ‘delay’ the demand for ‘popular institutions’ and the issue of
independence.

124

Furthermore, Hailey cautioned, ‘general discontent’ could impel

‘race consciousness to express itself in a permanent state of racial
antagonism’.

125

Jeffries, meanwhile, thought that the political issue

could be defused by changing the wording alone. The Colonial Office
could uphold the ‘principle that a coloured candidate is equally eligi-
ble with a white candidate for membership of a Unified Service’,
proposed Jeffries, and, he continued, ‘there is no reason why we

The Loss of White Prestige

should not continue to exercise complete discretion both as to selec-
tion and as to the assignment of a selected candidate to a post in the
Service’.

126

In other words, the Colonial Office would avoid public

criticism of its practice of discrimination because it had removed the
necessity to discriminate from the regulations.

Jeffries’s idea to remove the discriminatory language was too late to

prevent further embarrassment. The League of Coloured Peoples
published the correspondence between Dr Moody and Lord Moyne,
and the New Statesman and Nation commented that the revised version,
where ‘British protected persons’, ‘natives’ and ‘residents in the
Empire’ were to be accepted as candidates, still involved wording
which ‘separates Europeans from others’.

127

By September 1941 J. J. Paskin, private secretary to the secretary of

state and head of the Ceylon and Pacific department, admitted in his
memorandum on the ‘colour bar’ that ‘it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that the unification of the Colonial Services must neces-
sarily restrict the opportunities of the advancement of coloured people
in those Services’. Paskin was still, however, convinced that the secre-
tary of state would be ‘ill-advised to come out with a strong public
condemnation of all discrimination in the Colonies without a very
careful consideration of the logical consequences of a determined
attempt to do away with racial discrimination’.

128

He, and others in

the Service, proposed a different tactic to Jeffries’s rewriting of the
rules. Either discrimination was problematic and the minister should
set an example and try to eradicate it, or, as Paskin and Sir George
Gater thought, discrimination was part of the service and a public
condemnation would only lead to more charges of hypocrisy, thus
raising the political temperature.

129

A few months later, in the spring of 1942, the colour bar took on a

new meaning. The loss of the Far Eastern empire, and more importantly
the lack of loyalty displayed in the process, put everybody associated
with colonial policy under new pressure. Colour discrimination was an
obvious way in which the colonial administration had compelled the
‘natives’ to become ‘secretly hostile or sullenly indifferent’.

The report from the American Phelps-Stokes Fund, published in

August 1942, intensified the demand that ‘European officials should
gradually give way to a trained native African Civil Service’ to forestall
a ‘dangerous’ situation.

130

Jeffries argued that ‘it is a case for playing

for time’ while watching out for the ‘intolerable position in which the
Secretary of State is placed if colourable charges of “racial discrimin-
ation” can be brought’.

131

Lord Hailey

The charge of ‘racial discrimination’ had only too visible conse-

quences, particularly after it was known that ‘preference [had been]
given to Europeans in evacuating from danger areas’ in Malaya.

132

Learning the lessons of Singapore, Colin Thornley, principal private
secretary, explained that ‘they cannot be certain that this is a black as
well as a white man’s war, unless they are persuaded beyond a shadow
of doubt that the peace which follows it will be a black as well as a
white man’s peace’.

133

The fall of Singapore had brought home the

significance of racial discrimination and its importance for the rela-
tionship between the ‘natives’ and the colonial administration.

Later in 1942, a black and white segregated American army arrived

in Britain and ‘raised in an acute form’ the issue of discrimination
within Britain (examined in Chapter 3). The new secretary of state for
the colonies, Lord Cranborne, commented that ‘the full implication of
this most unfortunate development of the war cannot yet be
gauged’.

134

What emerges from Chapter 3 is, however, that the

Colonial Office, although initially dismissive of the problem of
discriminatory treatment, changed their tack as the British public
rejected American segregation.

A new language for the Colonial Service

By August 1943 the draft White Paper on Colonial Service
Reorganization included the statement that ‘the practice of distin-
guishing certain posts as normally filled by European Officers should
be discontinued as should any other discriminatory reference in the
title of posts as given in staff lists’.

135

Jeffries noted that ‘instead of

posts being classified as “European” and “African” appointments, new
grades of an intermediate kind would be created’.

136

In March 1944

Oliver Stanley, then secretary of state, sent this telegram to the
Governors of the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Gambia:

Following question is being asked in Parliament tomorrow. Begins.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether he will now
consider the removal of racial discrimination in the payment of
salaries in the professions in West Africa, particularly in view of the
fact that the development of these Colonies will largely depend
upon increasing numbers of Africans qualifying for posts in these
professions. Ends.

Following will be my reply. Begins. I do not accept the suggestion

that there is racial discrimination in West African salaries. The

The Loss of White Prestige

differentiation that exists is based on the factor of expatriation
which affects staff recruited from outside West Africa. . . . I agree
with my Honourable Friend as to the importance of stimulating and
encouraging the staffing of the Colonial public services by the
people of the Colonies themselves and I emphasized this in the
House last July when speaking on the Colonial Office Estimates.
Ends.

137

The long internal discussion on African employment had finally
concluded that there should be an end to the formal requirement of
discrimination, although in practice salaries would still diverge. The
Colonial Office had stuck to the point, as expressed by Hailey, that to
pay ‘natives’ the ‘same salary, or something approaching it, as that
formerly paid to Europeans’ would impose ‘an unreasonable burden
on the finances of the territory’.

138

Anxious of the consequences of

this policy, however, the Colonial Office with the Ministry of
Information had commissioned a pamphlet from Hailey on The British
Colonial Empire – Some Problems.

139

Much of this material, on the ‘race

relationships’ of the West Indies, East and West Africa and Ceylon, was
used again by Hailey in his book Britain and Her Dependencies. Despite
the fact that Hailey thought that ‘racial self-respect’ was just a ‘natural
outcome’, Hailey also counselled, to a Colonial Office that was increas-
ingly attempting to change, that:

No one can afford to belittle the formative influence which the
grant of political responsibility can exercise in satisfying the spirit
of racial self-respect, a force which can be as dangerous if thwarted
as it can be beneficial if directed to constructive purposes.

140

And it was after the experiences in the Far East that the question of
political responsibility was raised in a concrete form in relation to
Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Sir Alan Burns had been appointed
Governor of the Gold Coast, from the autumn of 1942 and before he
left for Africa, he pressed for permission to admit Africans to the
Executive Council.

141

He discussed his plan with Lord Moyne, then

secretary of state for the colonies, who agreed in principle to his
proposal. In February 1942, however, Moyne became the Deputy
Minister in Cairo, and was replaced by Lord Cranborne as the secre-
tary of state for the colonies. Cranborne decided to take advice from
Hailey,

142

rather than continue Moyne’s policy, particularly since, as

Dawe advised Cranborne, Moyne had in fact ‘specifically charged

Lord Hailey

Lord Hailey with the task of formulating a policy for Africa on exactly
these questions’.

143

Hailey accused Sir Bernard Bourdillon (then Governor of Nigeria)

and Sir Alan Burns of political naivety for requesting changes that were
not even being demanded by Africans at the time.

144

Hailey was not

against integrating Africans into the administration (which he had
argued for earlier), but took a particular view as to how this process
should take place.

145

He argued against African admission to the exec-

utive, the ‘centre’ as he saw it. Instead, Hailey proposed that Africans
become representatives in the legislature, where they would be forced
to ‘take responsibility’ and learn the practice of compromise. This issue
of responsibility had concerned Hailey since the interwar debates on
the constitutional future of India. In 1930 he had argued that it had
been a ‘tactical error for the Government of India to go to the [Round
Table] Conference with any scheme for granting responsibility at the
Centre, even on a modified scale’. As in Africa twelve years later, he
thought the political focus on the centre, the pressure for change,
would divert the delegates from autonomy on a provincial level; the
place to start, according to Hailey, and ‘the only way of creating a
sense of responsibility’.

146

In the summer of 1942, when the legitimacy of colonial administra-

tion was at its nadir, the idea of developing responsibility appeared a
luxury that those on the ground could ill afford. Burns wrote back to
the Colonial Office requesting permission to ‘make this concession
now, as a voluntary act, and not to wait until popular clamour has
made it necessary’.

147

Considering that Burns had already formulated

his idea for constitutional change before arriving in the Gold Coast,
and he also admitted that this was before popular demand arose, it
seems that Burns was more influenced by international changes than
those of a local nature. Burns’s telegram was fearful of ‘Negro resent-
ment’ before it had developed, and he claimed that waiting for that
anger to show itself would only make things worse.

148

This anticipa-

tion of disaster seems to have been influenced by the loss of Singapore.
Burns’s reaction and, more importantly, Cranborne’s agreement to his
demands in September,

149

were a distinct step away from the trad-

itional path followed by the Colonial Office. It certainly was a break
with the tradition that Hailey had seen in India.

The main impact, however, of Colonial Office awareness of African

discontent was, as Hailey had first pointed out, that the ‘native author-
ities’ were not proving to be suitable channels

150

for the aspirations

and activities of ‘politically minded Africans’.

151

The question of

The Loss of White Prestige

‘acquiescence to our rule’, of which in 1940 Hailey was generally confi-
dent,

152

was no longer, after the fall of Singapore in 1942, something

that could be assumed. Hailey tried to emphasize the progress made by
the Colonial Office towards employing non-Europeans.

153

He argued

that, for the future of the empire administration, the Colonial Office
must ‘educate the European communities to realize that in the adjust-
ment of racial differences social attitudes are fully as important as
moral rectitude or political liberality’.

154

The Colonial Office had also realized the importance of the public

presentation of respect for colonial peoples. Having noted in 1940 that
‘generally speaking there is an unfortunate tendency to regard
coloured people as belonging to a sub-species of the human race’, the
Colonial Office began to suggest alternative presentations to the
BBC.

155

The Colonial Office requested that the Ministry of Information

‘allude on suitable occasions to the presence of Africans in the military
and civilian defence services’.

156

Meanwhile any use of the word

‘nigger’ in BBC broadcasts was discouraged, complaints having been
received from George Ernest London, the colonial secretary in the Gold
Coast (although he dismissed them as ‘African idiosyncrasies’)

157

and

from Sierra Leone.

158

By March 1941, the BBC also considered the

word ‘natives’ as derogatory and edited it out of Colonial Office radio
talks.

159

Hailey and Chatham House were encouraged to begin research

on ‘colour discrimination’ that could be used to ‘stimulate a number of
small improvements’,

160

although it seems such a report appeared only

in January 1947, and then only in a preliminary form.

161

Hailey became sensitive to the question of language in stimulating

‘race consciousness’. In a debate in the House of Lords, he had brought
up the problem of the unpopularity of the concept of trusteeship: ‘The
use of the term is irritating to the Colonial people. It was intensely
unpopular in India. It is becoming equally unpopular in the Colonies
. . . if I were a native of the Colonies, I should equally resent [it].’

162

This

was an example of a break with old-fashioned paternalism. Hailey, now
aware of race as a political issue, was searching for a new way to articu-
late the colonial relationship. In October 1941, Hailey had told the
Royal Empire Society that it was time for ‘a new definition of the prin-
ciple which inspired colonial policy, for the principle of trusteeship
was not in its truest sense constructive’.

163

Two years later, in his

lecture at Toronto University in Canada, he pronounced that:

There is no place in the British Commonwealth of Nations for
peoples who are condemned to be permanently ‘backward’; nor for

Lord Hailey

areas that must be always ‘depressed’. It can have no place for
communities which cannot expect a future in which they will rank
as free members of a society of free peoples.

164

By this time, in 1943, Hailey had severed his allegiance to indirect rule
and separate development. Now he was keen to claim that the
‘doctrine of segregation’ or ‘parallel rule’ could not be found in any of
Britain’s dependencies.

165

He replaced the concept of ‘trusteeship’,

with its associated concepts of guardian and ward, with the idea of
‘partnership’ which, he hoped, would emphasize equal status.

166

Hailey conceded that much of the rethinking of colonial affairs had

arisen from the ‘shock’ and the ‘outburst of popular feeling produced
by our military disasters in the Far East’.

167

But he also suggested that

he had lost his ‘loyalty to the policy of “indirect rule”’ because it had
‘limitations as a means of education in political self-rule’.

168

As it was

no longer a ‘basis for political advance’, Hailey was open to other ideas
about developing African societies. Noticeably, apart from the concept
of ‘partnership’, however, he did not attempt to systematize a new
administrative system for Africa.

169

In contrast to Hailey’s earlier doubts about the relevance of British

parliamentary institutions for Africa, in his lecture at Princeton, he
talked of how the conception of ‘the state as an agency for promoting
the welfare and safeguarding the standards of living of the population’
had been ‘projected from domestic into colonial policy’.

170

As Robert

Pearce has remarked, ‘the most fundamental novelty after the war was
the assumption that British methods and institutions were exportable
to Africa.’

171

Furthermore, Hailey also compared Britain’s relationship

with its colonial people with America’s relations with its black popu-
lation. Since ‘America has had similar experiences in many of its
Southern States and among its Negro population’ so ‘both’ Britain and
America needed to ‘revise their system’ to ‘enable the State to give
more help to the development of under-privileged areas’.

172

The way Hailey proposed that the state become an agency for devel-

opment and protection will be further examined in Chapters 4 and 5.
But it was the shock defeats by Japan – a non-white power – that forced
the Colonial Office to rethink colonial administration. In the subse-
quent debate, Hailey pushed the need for increased African
employment and also for a reconsideration of the assumption of separ-
ate development. Intertwined with Hailey’s notion of progressive state
action was the idea that the same state which dealt with social ques-
tions in Britain could be relevant to people in Africa. Given the doubts

The Loss of White Prestige

that Hailey had expressed in the 1930s about the applicability of
British institutions to Africa, this was quite a transformation in his
views. Although in practice the need for Africans to learn ‘responsibil-
ity’ would, in Hailey’s eyes, delay independence, nonetheless starting
to see British ways as applicable to Africans was an important step in
the dismantling of the colour bar.

Lord Hailey

The Question of Equal Treatment

Introduction

When Lord Hailey was in America in the winter of 1942–3 he visited
several major universities and was invited to many important gather-
ings of businessmen, politicians and journalists as well as the crucial
Institute of Pacific Relations conference (which is discussed in the next
chapter). Arranged by the British Embassy and the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, they gave Hailey the opportunity to put the case
for the British Empire in America. One of his important messages,
however, related to the United States rather than the British Empire.
Hailey argued for conserving the status quo to prevent further instabil-
ity, already increasingly apparent within America. Hailey was
conscious of the black–white tension in the States when he warned his
Princeton audience that: ‘it may well be found that the matters which
cause unrest and unsettlement in the world arise mainly within the
borders of its major powers.’

This chapter provides the background to that comment of Hailey’s.

Segregation in America and the British response to GI segregation in
Britain was the backdrop to the changed outlook of Hailey and the
Colonial Office. In particular, this chapter explains how the moral
balance of power seemed to shift between 1942 and 1944. In 1942,
American critics of British imperialism had the upper hand. But by
1944, the American criticisms were far more muted and, in some areas,
the British were setting the agenda. The apparent success of Hailey’s
arguments was not, however, due to his particular insight. It was the
social, military and political circumstances that gave his arguments
substance.

American criticisms of the British Empire had implied that the

‘natives’ were unhappy with imperial rule and would be better served
by a new international body. Hailey used his trip in America to point
out that the real test of a future international body would be ‘seen in
the measure of the compliance accorded by the major powers of the
world to its recommendations regarding disabilities existing within
their own borders and arising from their own domestic policy’.

other words, international authority would be tested by control over
the United States as well as elsewhere. Perhaps, Hailey thought that the
vision of being told how to treat black people inside America would
persuade the Stateside critics to be more careful with their words.

The issue of equal treatment, however, was not just raised by Hailey,

but also by the changes that were taking place during the war. This
chapter examines the way in which equal treatment became an
important political demand in the Second World War and how Hailey
and the Colonial Office reacted to this pressure.

Hailey, before this important trip to America, had been briefed by

the Foreign Office and Colonial Office about American public opinion
and given newspaper clippings of important articles. From this mater-
ial he had an idea of some of the changes that were affecting the
United States and the way that these developments had impacted on
popular opinion. One of the issues in which Hailey was interested was
the position of black people in the States. Some of his interest had
been prompted by his investigation of the discussion in the West
Indies about the effect of American bases there. His own research into
the assimilation of ‘natives’ into the colonial administration had made
him aware of the problem of segregated development. Moreover, a
dominant issue in the American press was the issue of black employ-
ment in the war industries and in the armed forces.

Race in America

Increased production in America in readiness for war had started to eat
into the unemployment left over by the Depression. Black people had
been hit hardest by the Depression. In desperation thousands of black
people from the southern States moved north to look for work. The
manpower needs of the American government combined with the
continuing struggle for jobs, created tensions, as Desmond King has
noted:

The number of black Americans working in Government rose from
approximately 40,000 in 1938 to over 300,000 during the war.

Lord Hailey

However, racial tension was palpable, frequently exploding into
riots, both in southern towns with training camps and in northern
cities with defence production industries.

The Carnegie Foundation had, since its inauguration in 1911, exhib-
ited concern over the conflict of black–white relations.

Dr Frederick

Keppel, president of the Foundation from 1923 to 1941, helped to set
up the Carnegie Poor White Commission that published five volumes
on South African poor whites.

Keppel was also key in financing

Hailey’s study, An African Survey (1938). After Gunnar Myrdal had
delivered the Godkin lectures at Harvard University in 1938,

Keppel suggested that the Swedish social scientist would be the ideal
person to dispassionately investigate the race question in the United
States.

Although much of the research was delegated, Dr Keppel was

insistent that Myrdal and his wife tour America in 1939 to form his
own opinion before reading any ‘biased literature’. Myrdal agreed,
reasoning, so David Southern reports, that ‘if Americans could go into
a foreign country and inoculate the people to protect them from
deadly pathogens, two Swedish scholars might be able to do the same
for the disease of American racism.’

Myrdal’s own work, and those of

his commissioned authors, was largely written in 1942, a time when,
after the fall of Singapore, there was a certain sensitivity to the strate-
gic importance of race.

His book, An American Dilemma; the Negro

Problem and American Democracy, was finally published in 1944, but it
maintained that spirit, established at a key moment, of warning the
West that race would be crucial to the postwar world:

Whether any promises to the Negro are fulfilled or not, it can be
predicted with a fairly high degree of certainty that this War, when
and if it is won, and its sour aftermath will act like the First World War
did – as a great shock to the Negro people and as a stimulant to their
protest.

Apparently, according to Myrdal, the war had created a new restless-
ness amongst black domestic workers. He remarked, sardonically, that
‘many white housewives notice strange thoughts and behaviour on
the part of their Negro servants these days.’

More importantly,

however, as the defence industries grew so did the demand for equal
access to employment, particularly as black people had been excluded
from the jobs created in the New Deal.

According to Southern, the

trip did indeed make a deep impression on Myrdal as he found that the

The Question of Equal Treatment

‘race problem was worse than he had imagined’.

In An American

Dilemma Myrdal echoed the concern the British had voiced about
Malaya:

Reading the Negro press and hearing all the reports from observers
who have been out among common Negroes in the South and the
North convinces me that there is much sullen scepticism, and even
cynicism, and vague, tired, angry dissatisfaction among American
Negroes today.

Before America entered the war, black employment had become a
source of tension as black people experienced, in the supposed free
North, segregation in jobs, the army and housing.

In January 1941

Asa Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters’ Union and former president of the National Negro Congress,
started to organize for a march of black people on Washington to
‘exact their rights’, forming the March on Washington Movement
(MOWM).

Although the march was eventually called off after

Roosevelt met with the march leaders, the committee continued to
apply pressure and organize local demonstrations throughout the
war.

The March on Washington Movement clearly worried the American

State Department. On 25 June 1941 President Roosevelt, the Secretary
of the Navy Frank Knox and the Assistant Secretary of War Robert
Patterson met Asa Philip Randolph, Walter White, of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and T.
Arnold Hill, the leaders of MOWM, to discuss the issue of employment
discrimination in both war industries and the army. After the meeting
Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 ‘Reaffirming Policy of Full
Participation in the Defense Program by All Persons Regardless of Race,
Creed, Color, or National Origin’ and creating the Fair Employment
Practices Committee. The Assistant Secretary of War issued a press
statement that agreed to ensure that the War Department’s policies
toward the services of Negroes would be on a ‘fair and equitable basis’.
The Armed Forces, however, would remain segregated because, the
War Department claimed, ‘no experiments should be tried with the
organizational set-up of these units at these critical times’.

In the defence-related industries and in the civil service, discrimin-

ation was outlawed by the Ramspeck Act (November 1940) and the
Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). As employment prac-
tices changed, due largely to the chronic shortage of labour, so the

Lord Hailey

representation of black people in the media improved, according to
Celeste Condit and John Lucaites.

By 1942 the United States Office

of War Information (OWI)

admitted that a ‘narrow majority’ of

newspapers were ‘supporting various phases of the demand for
improved status for Negroes’.

The bill, however, which planned to

outlaw lynching was filibustered out of the Senate.

Once America had officially entered the war, racial discrimination

became more important as internal issues gained an international
hearing. At the same time, however, restrictions on travel and on polit-
ical opposition during the war made it harder for black organizations
inside the United States to criticize racist policies. For example, such a
March on Washington would have been prevented by rationing of
train travel; moreover, it would have been taken as virtually treason-
ous in wartime conditions.

Outside the States, however, US race

discrimination, known as Jim Crow, had become politically much
more significant.

First, emigration of black people to northern cities made segregation

and job discrimination into a live issue in the north. Racial antago-
nism was no longer a peculiarity of the South, it was now a central
issue, particularly in the run-up to the 1940 presidential election, in
the industrial and political heartland of America.

Second, the political message of the war mobilization, crucial in

turning Americans away from the previously isolationist consensus,
was that America was going to fight the tyranny of the Axis powers.
The main argument against tyranny at the time involved championing
democracy – but democracy in the States was a hollow slogan when,
because of the poll tax, few black people could vote.

Furthermore, events in the Pacific arena had put race equality on the

international agenda. The Japanese attack on American warships at
Pearl Harbor and the rapid success of the Japanese in South-East Asia
undermined white prestige both in Britain and in America. Myrdal
warned of the growing political consciousness, awakened by recent
international developments:

In this war there was a ‘colored’ nation on the other side – Japan.
And that nation had started out by beating the white Anglo-Saxons
on their own ground. The smouldering revolt in India against
British rule had significance for the American Negroes, and so had
other ‘color’ incidents in the world conflict: the wavering sympa-
thies of several native populations in the Dutch and British
possessions in the Pacific, the mistrust against Great Britain among

The Question of Equal Treatment

the Arab peoples, the first abandonment of Ethiopia, and the ambi-
guity of the plans for the colonial chessboard of Africa. Even
unsophisticated Negroes began to see vaguely a color scheme in
world events, although their thoughts are usually not yet organized
in a definite pattern.

Even if Myrdal exaggerated, many others, often influential, echoed his
views. Some of the philanthropic foundations hoped that after the war
Africa might look to the United States for development programmes,
and race relations would matter far more for America’s international
reputation.

Meanwhile the US War Department complained of a

‘serious morale problem among Negro troops’ in the summer of
1942.

Isaiah Berlin, reporting from Washington, smugly recounted

(although using a capital letter for Negro for the first time

) that:

Americans who are fond of criticizing the treatment of subject races
by other people found similar troubles nearer to home this week.
The Navy authorized for the first time the enlistment of negroes for
general service, though not for commissioned rank, and this
concession was criticized as both belated and inadequate by the
negro organizations. On 12 April the Administration found it neces-
sary to warn ten industrial concerns holding big war contracts that
they would incur severe penalties if they did not cease discrimin-
ating against Negro, Jewish and Catholic workers.

What was perhaps most worrying for the American establishment was
Myrdal’s report of virtually treasonous sentiments: ‘There have been
reports that poor Negro sharecroppers in the South sometimes indulge
in dreams of a Japanese army marching though the South and killing
off a number of “crackers” [southern whites].’

Myrdal was not alone. Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, felt

that disloyalty was a problem in Washington. ‘There seems to be a
feeling that the Japanese’, he wrote in his diary, ‘are doing a good deal
of disturbing undercover work among the Negroes.’

Berlin reported

to the British Foreign Office that: ‘both members of administration
and others are a good deal perturbed by development of negro
problem under influence of colour propaganda by Japanese.’

The preoccupation with Japanese influence indicates how many

Americans sought to locate the problem of race relations outside the
United States. By blaming Japanese undercover agents, the
Washington establishment could ignore the conditions that black

Lord Hailey

people faced in the USA and the inspiration that Japan offered the
oppressed. Japanese-Americans were confirmed as the problem by
Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt four days after the
fall of Singapore, which interned all enemy-aliens in the States. The
next order gave a special exemption to 80 000 German and Italian resi-
dents, leaving 110 000 Japanese-Americans (including 71 000 citizens)
to face the camps in the desert.

After the establishment of the FEPC, the focus of discontent became

the Armed Forces. It was not until April 1942 that black Americans
became eligible to join the Marines and as late as 1949 there was only
one black officer out of 8200 officers in the Marines (75 000 total
strength).

The US Air Force was even more restrictive.

Throughout

the armed forces black people were confined to menial tasks, and
when America entered the war there were only five black officers in its
entire army, three of whom were chaplains.

During most of the Second World War, black citizens of the USA

were denied a fighting role. This was in contrast to the American Civil
War. Then, there had been two black regiments (the 54th
Massachusetts – freemen, and the 1st South Carolina – ex-slave) and
many medals of distinction had been awarded.

The twentieth-

century segregation of black and white personnel led to a systematic
marginalization of black soldiers.

There were few openings for black

officers, barred, as they were, from leading white men.

Even the

placement of enlisted men was difficult for an army preoccupied with
maintaining the ‘colour line’. The official guidelines given to white
field-grade officers in charge of black men indicates the contempt that
was rife in high command:

As an individual the negro is docile, tractable, lighthearted, carefree
and good-natured. If unjustly treated he is likely to become surly
and stubborn, though this is usually a temporary phase. He is care-
less, shiftless, irresponsible and secretive. He resents censure and is
best handled with praise and by ridicule. He is immoral, untruthful,
and his sense of right doing is relatively inferior.

The ‘most bitterly resented aspects of American racism’ were, accord-
ing to Harvard Sitkoff, discrimination in the armed services and the
lack of black combat units. Riots and racial violence at the military
bases in America grew through 1941 and 1942 until, ‘after a bitter
summer of violence, the war department officially acknowledged the
existence of a serious morale problem among Negro troops and

The Question of Equal Treatment

urged all white officers to treat blacks with the utmost care and
diplomacy’.

There was much resentment of the way in which black divisions

were manoeuvred to keep them out of combat.

When one division,

for example, arrived in North Africa they were redesignated service
troops and assigned the work of unloading ships in the Port of Oran.

Just before the Battle of the Bulge, however, General Eisenhower
‘offered’ a ‘limited number of coloured troops who have had infantry
training, the privilege of joining our veteran units at the front to
deliver the knockout blow’. According to Russell Buchanan, though,
Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) thought
that dropping the colour bar ‘might embarrass the War Department’
and General Eisenhower was persuaded to rewrite the directive.

In the end, over four and a half thousand black troops volunteered

before the revision and were trained and fought alongside white
men.

This, the only unsegregated unit in the American Army, fought

successfully from March to VE Day and ‘interviewers later found that
attitudes of whites toward Negroes improved during this exposure to
coloured men in combat’.

Despite this, the Pentagon moved them

back into segregated regiments for the journey home.

When the US Navy decided to permit black enlistment, there was a

modicum of improvement. Previously the Navy had restricted black
recruitment to menial jobs like cooks and stewards. Finally, on 7 April
1942, the Navy agreed to enlist black personnel for more positions,
including the Coast Guard and the Marines. Initially the Navy
attempted to segregate its personnel by trying to create black ships and
submarines, which were staffed by white officers until sufficient black
officers had been trained. The shortage, however, of trained black men
meant that the Navy began to assign men to white ships without segre-
gation (although with a limit of 10 per cent). The success of this policy
and the increasing shortage of men meant that eventually, in July
1944, the Navy was training its black and white personnel together.

Right from the start of the war, however, black people had tried to
fight. The eyewitness account of the sinking of the battleship Arizona
at the battle at Pearl Harbor, published in the New York Times, told how
a ‘Negro mess attendant who never before had fired a gun manned a
machine gun on the bridge until his ammunition was exhausted’.

Dorie Miller, the first hero of the war in America, was a sharecropper’s
son awarded the Navy Cross. He was finally killed in action in the
South Pacific, still a messman and still barred from carrying a loaded
gun because he was black.

Lord Hailey

The experience of the war, however, ‘revolutionized the way that

Americans talked about equality’.

Wendell Willkie, the former presi-

dential candidate, proclaimed towards the end of the war that: ‘every
time some race-baiter ill-treats some man in America he lessens the
ability of America to lead the world to freedom.’

Under the leader-

ship of Dr Thomas Jesse Jones of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and Father
John LaFarge, Chairman of the Committee on Employment and
Vocational Guidance of the New York Welfare Council, a select few
‘men and women carrying weight in the fields of industry, labor,
education and the formation of public opinion’ signed a statement
putting the case for the ‘rights of minorities’. The statement illustrated
the way that the international politics of the war impacted on
American domestic politics – it stated that:

Dictatorship aims to dominate the world by force, and to condemn
certain racial groups permanently to subservient and inferior status.
If we oppose Axis doctrines we must, to be consistent, oppose all
race prejudice at home.

Celeste Condit and John Lucaites, historians of political rhetoric, have
pointed out that:

Concerns about international ethos greatly amplified the issue
of internal consistency. As long as it treated colored people
inequitably, the nation was highly vulnerable to foreign propa-
ganda challenging the sincerity of its claim to democracy.

And one of the ways in which the importance of ‘international ethos’
was brought home to the Americans was through their relationship
with Britain and with China. While American critics of empire were
having an impact on British policy, British criticisms of segregation
were weakening American resolve. Both the critics and the policy-
makers were influenced by the circumstances of the debate. They were
engaged in a war fought for a ‘new world order’ where support from
China and India, two non-white nations, was essential.

Race as an international issue

The initial response in America to the fall of Singapore was that the
problem of race discrimination was a British, not an American,
problem. It appeared, from across the Atlantic, that the collapse of the

The Question of Equal Treatment

Far Eastern empire was due to poor race relations. Raymond Buell, the
American sociologist, famous for his book The Native Problem in
Africa,

followed up Walter Lippmann’s attack in the Washington Post

(see Chapter 2) with an article damning British, and more importantly,
white, imperialism in Fortune magazine in May 1942. He presented the
argument that:

The aim of this proposal is not to revive a dead or dying imperial-
ism nor to impose a white man’s peace on a world that is only half
white. Its aim is to cut the remnant cords of white imperialism, so
that the nations of the world may become more nearly equal. Its
immediate aim is to enlarge the practical area of human freedom.
Its ultimate goal is the collective security of equal, self-respecting
nations.

One reason that Buell and Lippmann were prepared to criticize ‘white
man’s imperialism’ was because it appeared to legitimate American
leadership. As Lippmann put it, for ‘this drastic reorientation of war
policy, the leadership of the western nations must be taken by the
USA’.

It was precisely this assumption of American superiority that

worried the British Foreign Office. One response of the Foreign Office
was, in contrast to Buell and Lippmann, to say that Britain’s interests
were best served by promoting a language of equal relations so that
Britain could maintain its status in relation to the United States.

The discourse of equal rights did not, however, come easily to the

British establishment. First, there was the question of India (discussed
in Chapter 5). From the point of view of the American press, and
particularly the black press, Britain seemed to be wilfully refusing to
grant India independence from the Empire.

Stories of disloyal

‘natives’ during the fall of Singapore only served to entrench the
opinion that the British maltreated Asians and Africans.

Second, the British had had interwar treaties with Japan, and did not

easily transfer their allegiance to China. In contrast, the Americans felt
that courting China was essential to stop the development of a war of
‘yellow against white’ in the Pacific. Lippmann, in his famous
Washington Post article, had argued that American’s sincerity towards
Asian peoples could be seen in the loyalty to China shown by the
United States. Instead of the ‘black treachery’ of a bargain with Japan,
the US had avoided a ‘terrible and endless struggle of the white and
yellow peoples’ and ‘thus’, Lippmann claimed, ‘we are at war with
Japan because we would not and could not betray China, and these are

Lord Hailey

the credentials of our sincerity in our alliance with the peoples of
Asia.’

The American State Department concurred with Lippmann,

the Joint Intelligence Committee stating that ‘China’s position as a
member of the United Nations is of definite aid in favorably affecting
public sentiment towards the United Nations among Asiatic
peoples.’

American sympathy for China was, however, a new position for the

United States. When Lord Halifax (later the British ambassador to
Washington) was charged to ‘sound out the Americans with respect to
a £3m Chinese loan’ to support their war effort after the Japanese inva-
sion in 1937, the diplomats in Washington responded, according to
Ian Drummond and Norman Hillmer, only ‘after a long delay’ and
then only opted for a ‘parallel and simultaneous but not identical
action’.

Once the Pacific War had begun, however, the alliance with China

became crucial. In September 1942, Ashley Clarke, for the British
Foreign Office, met with Walter Lippmann to discuss Far Eastern
policy. Lippmann was concerned that ‘without China you would
inevitably get a set up of east against west’, which is what prompted
an ‘interest in China in America [that] was profound as well as wide-
spread’.

The need for the Chinese alliance was no longer a point of

dispute. The disagreement was over the future of Hong Kong.

Ashley Clarke and the Colonial Office wanted to wait and see the

‘state of affairs in China after the war’ and whether Hong Kong might
have some ‘special role’ to play in the relationship between the USA,
China, Britain and Russia. In reality, the Foreign Office did not want
to lose the emblem of British achievement that Hong Kong repre-
sented. ‘Psychologically at the back of all English thought on this
subject’, Clarke explained, was the idea that ‘Hong Kong was a barren
island when we took it over and that we had created and built up the
Hong Kong of today.’

The combination of strategic and ‘psychological’ interests meant

that Britain refused to transfer its sovereign rights over Hong Kong to
China. Both Britain and the United States, however, agreed to make ‘a
symbolic gesture toward China’s equality’

and gave public ‘declar-

ations of intention to give up extraterritorial rights in China’.

Although these were only statements of intent they were greeted, espe-
cially in the States, as ‘tangible evidence that the old age imperialism
is ended’.

In private, Washington was putting pressure on British officials to

let go of Hong Kong. In public, however, the State Department was

The Question of Equal Treatment

attempting to reform America’s own anti-Chinese legislation. In 1882,
Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which made further
Chinese immigration illegal and forbade first generation Chinese to
become citizens or own property.

It was not until late in 1943 that

the US Congress finally annulled some of the restrictions on Chinese
immigration – a restriction that was largely seen, according to John
Dower, Pacific war historian, as a ‘pure “colour” law’ that ‘placed a
“stigma of biological inferiority” on the yellow races’.

The racism of America’s immigration controls was common know-

ledge at the time. Even the Report of the Detroit Committee (a number
of ‘leading professional and business men’ who were in the Foreign
Office’s opinion ‘a good cross section of the views of the leaders there’)
admitted that: ‘As for Orientals it is well known that for many years
they have been personae non gratae. Our immigration laws now exclude
them both from entry and from becoming US citizens.’

After the

experience of the 1943 summer of very intense race riots and a palpa-
ble black–white tension in the United States, the Detroit Committee
appear to have been almost relieved to point out that the ‘conflict
between Japan and China demonstrates clearly that colour and racial
ties are not a binding force’.

The recognition of the significance of China in the Pacific alliance

was not without its ramifications for British imperial relations. In
February 1942 Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party and Lord
Privy Seal, made the point to the prime minister, Winston Churchill,
that:

The fact that we are now accepting Chinese aid in our war against
the Axis powers and are necessarily driven to a belated recognition
of China as an equal and of Chinese as fellow fighters for civiliza-
tion against barbarism, makes the Indian ask why he too cannot be
master in his own home.

The status of the Asian nations was further highlighted when the
American State Department suggested to Lord Halifax, the British
Ambassador, that America and Britain produce a new colonial charter
(examined in Chapter 5). Cordell Hull, from the State Department,
suggested to Halifax that, once the joint statement had been worked
out between Britain and the United States, other nations could be
approached and included in its public signing. In particular, Hull was
keen to involve the Chinese, who, he claimed, ‘always had an infer-
iority complex vis-à-vis the United States and ourselves and he would

Lord Hailey

like to bring them into it. They would not do any harm. It would
soothe feeling’.

By gaining the support of an Asian nation such as China, the

United States was hoping to show that the Pacific War was neither
racist nor directly pro-imperialist. Lord Halifax, however, as Britain’s
representative, was uncomfortable with this idea. The issue was not
just race relations – imperial prerogative was also at stake. Halifax
hoped that ‘not all’ of the United Nations would be invited to sign,
and Halifax agreed that just ‘a few of the principal nations’ would be
included. Halifax admitted that the British were ‘very conscious’ of
certain ‘dangers’, one of which was ‘giving any encouragement to
Chiang Kai-shek that it was his job to run empire or tell us how to
do it’.

In Britain, the connection between race and international politics

had already been established by the war effort support provided by
people from the colonies. Already, in late 1941, the Minister of Labour,
Ernest Bevin, had taken the US ambassador, John Winant, to visit a
training centre ‘for coloured workers brought over from India and the
Colonies for war work’. In Winant’s company, Bevin announced that
‘in future Indians were not to be referred to as “coolies” and Africans
as “niggers”, but as the great peoples they are’. Winant followed suit
and talked of the recent foundation of the FEPC in the United States.
According to the West African Pilot this news was appreciated: ‘the
coloured workers said that they were glad to hear this, and following
the President’s policy on the “race question” in America with keen
interests, as it is bound to have great influence on the British colour
bar policy in the Colonies.’

Segregation comes to Britain

In the summer of 1942, American segregated troops started arriving in
Britain. The reaction of the British public to Jim Crow segregation
came, in the long term, to affect the way in which the Colonial Office
responded to American criticisms of imperial race relations. Public
opinion seemed to give the Colonial Office a new-found confidence.
The rough treatment of black soldiers from the colonies by the US
Army, in particular, gave the Colonial Office a certain leverage with
the Americans which they had previously lacked.

Time magazine, for example, commented that ‘it seemed as if the

English people and American Negroes, if uninterrupted, might teach
anybody something about democratic possibilities’. The problem

The Question of Equal Treatment

seemed to be no longer the Blimpish Imperialists, but ‘the fact that
Southern soldiers have carried anti-Negro attitudes to England’.

The Colonial Office, and particularly John Lucien Keith from the

Welfare Department, were alarmed by reports of the ‘generally rude
attitude’ of the American soldiers toward ‘coloured Colonial people’.
Keith made a representation to the secretary of the Victoria League,
Miss Leaf, to restrict the hostel accommodation of the Victoria League
to ‘Dominion and Colonial people’ so that the Americans did not turf
out the ‘coloured Servicemen’. The War Office, however, had a very
different outlook on the matter to the Colonial Office.

While the Colonial Office presupposed that American policy was the

opposite of British policy,

the War Office was ‘endeavouring to’

improve relations with the US authorities ‘by arranging for lectures to
be given by Americans on the colour question’. In addition, the War
Office would take ‘unobtrusive steps’ to find out the location of
‘coloured British soldiers or airmen’ so as to ‘avoid bringing together
American white troops and our Colonial troops’.

In other words, the

War Office was of the opinion that Britain should begin to follow
America’s example and introduce segregation.

Keith, at the Colonial Office, was critical of the War Office policy. By

the middle of 1942, Keith wrote, ‘the presence of large numbers of
American negro troops in this country is already having repercussions
on our work for coloured Colonial people, and the treatment the
Americans mete out to their negroes is the subject of comment by
coloured Colonials’. Keith was adamant that ‘it would be very unde-
sirable for the Americans to lecture British people on colour bar!’
Moreover, he argued:

Any open attempt to segregate the coloured American troops and
keep them away from British civilians, white or coloured, or out of
cinemas, etc, will I believe result in lively resentment in many quar-
ters. Above all I think we should prevent Americans from instilling
their colour bar ideas among British troops or civilians.

Keith also raised the fact that British Honduras Foresters had been
ousted from the Scottish Rest House for Servicemen and that ‘coloured
civilians complain bitterly about the attitude and rudeness of
American white troops towards them’.

But W. L. Rolleston advised

‘considerable caution’ because ‘any attempt to “educate” the
Americans would be greatly resented’.

Sir George Henry Gater, the

permanent under-secretary of state for the colonies, tried to maintain

Lord Hailey

that ‘our principal objective should be to safeguard the interests of our
Colonial coloured people who are resident in this country and main-
tain for them the policy that there should be no discrimination on the
ground of colour’. But while he thought that ‘this does not mean,
however, that we should accept any differentiation in our attitude
towards white or coloured American troops’, he also considered, prag-
matically, ‘if our hostels for Colonial people can in an emergency be
used for negroes, I do not think that we ought raise any difficulty’.

In other words, the Colonial Office would, in effect, sanction the
American policy of segregating troops by providing hostel accommo-
dation for United States’ black troops with their own Colonial
servicemen.

This discussion, by August 1942, was no longer confined to the

Colonial Office. The Bolero Combined Committee, the ‘most impor-
tant body dealing with the reception, accommodation and
maintenance of the US forces in Great Britain’, devoted ‘one special
meeting and parts of many others to racial issues’.

What was absent

from this distinguished committee of civil servants and military men
was any representative of the Colonial Office. The conclusions drawn
from the committee, in its pro-American stance, indicate a lack of
sensitivity to the issue of racial equality in Britain.

The Bolero special meeting concluded that ‘the American attitude to

the coloured problem should be explained to the British public’ and US
segregation followed as far as ‘practicable’.

The Colonial Office, led by

Lord Cranborne, the secretary of state for the colonies, rejected the
Bolero conclusions. Cranborne’s paper, for the War Cabinet, insisted
that ‘British coloured persons in the UK and in the Colonies are
extremely sensitive to colour discrimination’, and that the aim of the
Colonial Office was to ‘secure’ the ‘equality of treatment for all races’.
Any plan to ask people in Britain to ‘adopt’ the attitude of the US Army
was ‘likely to cause serious resentment’ and even ‘a reaction gravely
prejudicial to Anglo-American relations’. Cranborne brought to the
Cabinet’s attention the broadcast, on the 28 July 1942, made by Harold
Macmillan, then parliamentary under-secretary of state for the colonies,
and the recent article by Brendan Bracken, minister for information, in
the Sunday Express, ‘both of which express very clearly the attitude
which we would like the British public to take towards our own coloured
people’.

In the end the Cabinet agreed on a compromise wording:

The Americans are making a great experiment in working out a
democratic way of life in a mixed community, with races of very

The Question of Equal Treatment

different characteristics and traditions. In doing so they have to
take account of the legacy of the past and fears of the future. It is a
difficult task and it is not for us to embarrass them, even if we have
different views on how race relationships should be treated in our
own country and in the Empire.

One of the reasons for Cranborne’s insistence was that the Colonial
Office was already sensitized to the issue of discrimination and that it
had also spent some time considering the question of black recruit-
ment into the services from British colonies. Like the issue of native
administration discussed in the previous chapter, the war had forced
the Colonial Office to reconsider its attitude to the treatment of black
people from the colonies.

British black servicemen

Before the segregated American forces arrived in Britain, the Colonial
Office had had to consider the question of black recruitment. In
general the Colonial Office advocated support for the war effort by
colonial people while, at the same time, being reluctant to train them
in the skills of warfare. The issue was further complicated by the War
Office, which was hostile to black troops, believing them to be less
competent than white soldiers. Gradually the Colonial Office realized
that the accusation of colour discrimination caused political problems,
although it was doubtful of the value of stating any unequivocal oppo-
sition to the colour bar.

In October 1939 the government ‘clearly stated’ that its policy was

that ‘candidates from the colonies, including those not of pure
European descent, would be placed on the same footing for voluntary
enlistment into the armed forces and for the grant of emergency
commissions as British subjects belonging to the United Kingdom’.

But in January 1940 Hilton Poynton of the Colonial Office realized,
after Parliamentary Question Time, that the rules of the Admiralty did
not fulfil these conditions. The rules for eligible enlistment were differ-
ent for those of ‘pure European descent’.

Although the conditions in

question were fairly obscure, Poynton persisted, complaining: ‘I do not
see that there is any logic in the argument and in the second place I do
not think we can accept the resultant colour discrimination which is
now reintroduced.’

John Alexander Calder, however, cautioned Poynton that it was

‘their business’ how the Admiralty dealt with the apparent lack of

Lord Hailey

‘logic’ and ‘at the most we might ask that they should not publish that
they make special exceptions in the case of Europeans only’.

Sir

George Gater backed the attempt to avoid publicity.

Malcolm

MacDonald, the secretary of state for the colonies at that time, was
more doubtful about whether publicity could be sidestepped and
whether the Colonial Office might be charged with a ‘breach of
faith’.

Despite this apparent desire on the part of the Colonial Office to

appear in favour of equal treatment, in fact it had strong reservations
about black recruitment when it came to the issue of a West Indian
contingent. There had been some possibility in 1940 of funds being
raised in Trinidad to pay for a contingent to travel to Britain – but then
Sir Alan Burns, then assistant under-secretary of state, realized that
‘the coloured men would certainly resent not being included in the
contingent’ and that ‘if the War Office were to refuse such coloured
men the effect in the Colonies would be most unfortunate’.

The view

taken by the Colonial Office and the War Office, in the end, was that:

while [the War Office] welcome any white volunteer who arrives
here, they do not think that for the sake of a few hundred white
recruits it is worth running the risk of having to take coloured West
Indians. They deprecate any organized move in the West Indies to
send over white contingents, unless they can be assured that it will
not give rise to colour difficulties.

From this correspondence, however, it is apparent that the Colonial
Office’s only worry about a white Caribbean contingent at this time
concerned ‘irritating the native population’.

In 1940, the immorality

of such discrimination was not under debate. Instead the War Office
assumed that black West Indians were unsuitable because, they
remarked, black men did not have the ‘capacity to stand cold
climate’

and they preferred ‘white men who are better fighting ma-

terial’.

Although, later, after the fall of Singapore, Noel Sabine of the

publicity department of the Colonial Office reacted defensively to the
criticism that Britain had been ‘afraid’ to ‘arm the natives’ and claimed
that ‘fear lest the arms be turned against ourselves was not a factor’.

In retrospect, various people in the Colonial Office did feel the

weight of American criticism as they, in contrast, had armed people in
the Philippines. Hailey, too, commented in the Spectator that: ‘subse-
quent reflection has no doubt served to suggest that the attitude of the
population might well have been different if Imperial military policy

The Question of Equal Treatment

had foreseen the need for equipping the native population for its own
defence.’

In the early years of the war, however, it is evident that discrimination

was not a real problem in the eyes of the Colonial Office. This can also
be seen in relation to the treatment that colonial people experienced on
British ships and in British hotels (see Chapter 1). In 1938, the Colonial
Office had conferred with the India Office on the level of ‘colour
discrimination’ producing a report that significantly downplayed exist-
ing discriminatory actions. The report claimed, for example:

We do not know of any education institution that rejects applicants
on grounds of colour alone. . . . The number of House Posts in hos-
pitals is very small compared with the number of eligible candidates
and competition is accordingly keen. But Indian students are from
time to time selected . . . A difficulty in placing students in India for
training as chartered accountants arises from the fact that reputable
firms always insist on a personal interview before coming to a deci-
sion, but it has always been possible to place qualified candidates
able to pay the necessary premiums. . . . Colour discrimination in
Ships. No such case has been brought to our notice.

From letters that the Colonial Office received on a regular basis from
Harold Moody, the National Secretary of the League of Coloured
Peoples, it is clear that complaints had been made about specific cases.
When cases of discrimination did occur, however, the Colonial Office
tended to assume that the problem was merely one of etiquette. For
example, in the case of segregation on board British ships, one
Colonial Office response was to exclaim: ‘after all we cannot undertake
to teach good manners!’

The notion, in the first few years of the war, that racial discrimina-

tion could be put down to discourtesy continued to influence Colonial
Office discussions on the matter. In 1941, the Colonial Office began to
take the question of colour discrimination more seriously as people
arrived from the colonies to help in the war effort. Despite a long
period of sending notes back and forth on the usefulness of new legis-
lation, the Colonial Office, generally, however, continued to hold the
opinion that Sir Alan Burns expressed:

I doubt whether we can improve people’s manners any more than
their morals by passing laws. If our manners were better we would
have less political trouble in the colonies.

Lord Hailey

Nevertheless concern was shown by the Colonial Office over the treat-
ment of colonial people in Britain, especially after the case of
discrimination of Sir Hari Singh Gour. Lord Moyne, the secretary of
state for the colonies, admitted to the Home Secretary, Herbert
Morrison, that:

So many cases are brought to our notice that there should be little
difficulty in bringing prosecutions if the law were defined and
simple machinery provided for its enforcement. Our Assistance
Welfare Officer who is a coloured man was quite recently refused
accommodation in an hotel in the north of England, but when the
management learned that he was employed by the Colonial Office
they changed their ground and gave him a room.

100

In the summer of 1941, the Colonial Office had tried, but failed, to
persuade the India, Home and Scottish offices to agree to the intro-
duction of legislation against colour discrimination. Moyne had hoped
that legislation would act as a ‘deterrent against this form of racial
discrimination’. It was raised, however, that the legislation would not
work, as hotels were in effect private clubs (and ‘cater for guests of a
particular class’) and only inns could be imposed upon legally to
accept applications for accommodation. The India Office, with Home
Office support, assured the other departments that the problem arose
mainly in middle-class hotels for which ‘the legislation would be to a
great extent ineffective because, once it was passed, hotel managers
would be very careful to avoid refusing admission to a coloured person
on the grounds of his race and would find some other excuse’.

101

The Colonial Office then tried to persuade the other departments on

the basis that the legislation would be largely ‘declamatory’, as a ‘polit-
ical gesture on the part of the Government, as indicating its views on
the question of colour prejudice, and as a means of educating public
opinion’. The India Office resisted this suggestion, saying that Minister
of Labour Ernest Bevin’s speech a short while ago should be enough.
Furthermore, they thought that it was problematic to ‘legislate with
reference to colour’ and that such a law might ‘do more harm than
good by crystallizing colour prejudice in cases where it already exists’.
The only conclusion that the meeting could arrive at was that ‘the real
remedy lies in the steady education of public opinion’.

102

What this

actually meant was left traditionally vague.

The discussion continued in the Colonial Office after this meeting,

largely as officials, such as John Keith, felt thwarted by such a ‘negative’

The Question of Equal Treatment

response at the meeting. Most of all, Keith wanted some sort of
‘declamatory’ legislation which would have ‘the effect of preventing
insults to colonial people by telling them that they are not acceptable
because of the colour of their skins’. Keith viewed it as a ‘matter of high
policy that colonial people should not be insulted’.

103

Jeffries largely

agreed with Keith, desiring ‘some sort of much more general law to be
introduced which would have much the same effect for coloured
people as the Sex Equality Act had for women’.

104

Owen Williams,

however, was adamant that to enact a law ‘so patently ineffective’
would have been greeted as ‘further evidence of our national
hypocrisy’. He claimed that he too was ‘for educating public opinion’
but also said that ‘we must have some kind of snobbery to keep us
going and the more levelling there is of class distinctions the more
racial distinctions are likely to acquire snobbery value’.

105

At least Owen Williams gave an honest reply. Most of the other

contributions to the circulating minutes tended to put off the issue, as
did Sir Cosmo Parkinson, by pronouncing that ‘the only way to get rid
of colour prejudice is by education. It will take at least a generation to
do that’.

106

John Paskin concurred, saying that ‘the more unobtrusive

our propaganda on this matter is, the more effective it is likely to
be’.

107

Meanwhile Miss Audrey Richards, the government anthropolo-

gist, proposed that Lord Hailey and Chatham House commission some
further research – especially on the practice of the colour bar in the
colonies.

108

Finally, after a copy of Norman Ley’s book, The Colour Bar in East

Africa, had circulated through the department, in the autumn of 1941,
Paskin wrote a long memorandum where he admitted that the colour
bar in the colonies was a ‘thorny question’. Paskin made a distinction
between ‘the purely social problem which its manifestation is a dis-
inclination on the part of white people to be brought into close
association, socially, with coloured people’ and the policy implications
of removing the colour bar in the colonies. He tried, for example, to
show how housing segregation in Accra, Nairobi and Mombasa could
be maintained without a formal colour bar since colonial governments
could ‘substitute for the restrictive covenants a strict enforcement of
sanitary rules’ which would separate out ‘Africans with primitive ideas
of sanitation’.

109

Paskin conceded that there was a ‘very strong and bitter feeling’

caused by the fact ‘largely owing to racial prejudice that such a small
proportion of higher appointments in the Colonial Service go to
persons of colour’. Another problem, to which the others were

Lord Hailey

‘insignificant by comparison’, was the ‘questions of high politics’ such
as the ‘reservation of the Kenya Highlands for European occupation’.
As a result, Paskin cautioned that ‘the secretary of state would be ill-
advised to come out with a strong public condemnation of all
discrimination in the colonies without very careful consideration of
the logical consequences of a determined attempt to do away with
racial discrimination’. In the end a ‘dispassionate review of every form
of colour or racial discrimination in the colonies’, assigned to Hailey’s
committee, seemed the preferable course of action.

110

The Constantine affair

The Colonial Office never quite managed to put aside the question of
the colour bar for a committee to consider quietly. In 1942 American
troops arrived in Britain. By the summer of 1943, people in Britain had
become familiar with the American practice of segregation, and, at the
same time, rather envious and irritated by the relative wealth of the
average GI. It was in this context that the discrimination against Leary
Constantine hit the headlines.

In August 1943, Mr and Mrs Leary Constantine and their daughter

were refused accommodation by the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square,
London, on the grounds that the manageress ‘could not accept the
coloured members of the party in the hotel, as the presence of
“niggers” would cause trouble with the Americans who frequented the
place’.

111

Leary Constantine was a ‘cricketer of international reputa-

tion’ from Trinidad who had been working as a welfare officer for the
Ministry of Labour, looking after West Indians recruited for work in
Liverpool, since 1942.

112

The insult caused a ‘great deal of comment

amongst colonials’, who had to be ‘restrained from making a demon-
stration against the hotel’.

113

The Constantine case became a cause célèbre and appeared in many

newspapers.

114

Constantine gave a talk on the BBC Home Service

115

on which Labour MP Tom Driberg commented that ‘the paltriness of
the hotel-keeper’s conduct became the more conspicuous in contrast
with the dignity and humanity of the Negro’s broadcast’.

116

Even the

Evening Standard remarked that the name Imperial was ‘inappropriate
for this particular hotel’

117

and David Low satirized the Hotel in a

cartoon where the reception gave out pamphlets on ‘Hitler’s race
theories’.

118

Noel Sabine, of the publicity department of the Colonial

Office, suggested:

The Question of Equal Treatment

we should consider the possibility of a speech at an early date by the
acting Secretary of State in which as clear an exposition as possible
should be made of the legal position and a strong statement of our
views made: this should stress the recognition of the right of
coloured people in this country for absolute equality of treatment
and an appeal to all people of good will to welcome our guests
many of whom are in this country often at their own expense and
all of their own free will to help us in the war.

119

This time around the Colonial Office was a bit more prepared to make
this a ‘test case’. They realized that, since Constantine was so well
known and admired, ‘public opinion would undoubtedly be on his
side’ and realized that the Imperial Hotel was ‘in the legal position of
an inn, and [was] therefore under an obligation to accommodate any
person who applies for rooms’.

120

The only drawback was the legal

issue of a civil claim for material damages because Arnold Watson, the
accompanying Ministry of Labour official, had persuaded Constantine
to accept alternative accommodation that night.

121

On this occasion,

however, the Colonial Office’s political concerns were not so much
about the repercussions in the colonies, but whether or not it was
‘undesirable to have the attitude of Americans towards coloured
people discussed in open court’.

122

The Colonial Office’s willingness to stand by Constantine was possi-

bly due to the fact that, with the arrival of the segregated American
troops in Britain, it had perceived a certain anti-Americanism that had
fuelled anti-segregation feeling. In the autumn of 1942 Jeffries made
the point that already ‘things have moved a bit lately’ and that:

It is probably true that there is less colour prejudice in this country
than ever before. This is due (a) to the presence of colonial people
in this country for war work; (b) to the reaction caused by the atti-
tude of the Americans.

123

John Costello, Second World War historian, has researched the rela-
tionship between the British and the American soldiers stationed in
Britain, typified by the then common slogan of ‘oversexed, overpaid
and over here’. He recounts that ‘Popular opinion remained steadfastly
on the side of the oppressed black regiments’ even to the extent of
supporting, in a campaign run by the Daily Mirror, a black GI accused
of raping a white woman.

124

Ian McLaine’s work on the Ministry of Information confirms this

Lord Hailey

reaction. The reports reaching the Ministry, showed that race discrim-
ination was ‘by far the most important’ factor contributing to ‘tension
between the civil population and the Americans’, which led to ‘strong
feeling’ and ‘considerable indignation’.

125

Peter Fryer, historian of the

West Indies’ relationship to Britain, confirms the resistance to segre-
gation in Britain, and tells of a West Country farmer who said: ‘I love
the Americans but I don’t like those white ones they’ve brought with
them.’ Apparently, some pubs displayed signs reading: ‘For British
people and coloured Americans only.’

126

This was the background to the Constantine case, and it meant that

the Colonial Office for the first time seriously considered standing up
to American opinion. Apparently there were, however, ‘grave difficul-
ties’, wrote Sabine, ‘attending this course of action’. Frankly, Sabine
minuted, there were two issues:

(a) American opinion: on this I should like to see a broad hint given
to our American visitors that while in this country, they should
observe our customs and conventions rather than their own (as
indeed we should certainly do in theirs)
(b) Colour prejudice in the colonies: on this I think the least said
the better.

127

In the end – partly because, so Jeffries claimed, Constantine was taking
legal proceedings and ‘it would not be proper for any comment to be
made in reply to these questions on the incident which is now sub
judice’

128

– the Colonial Office, according to Graham Smith, author of

When Jim Crow met John Bull, decided against saying ‘anything to the
US authorities and therefore acquiescing in their treatment of British
blacks’.

129

Despite the realization of the significance of the issue both

in Britain and in the colonies, the Colonial Office had decided to
maintain the policy that Cranborne, the secretary of state, had laid
down the previous summer when he had stated that:

A public declaration, at the present juncture, by HMG that they are
opposed to any form of colour bar is likely to be interpreted by
white American troops in this country as a direct rebuke, indeed,
insult to them, and can only have the result of exacerbating an
already sufficiently difficult situation.

130

By the summer of 1943, however, it appears that the Americans had
begun to feel a little embarrassed by their colour bar policy that was

The Question of Equal Treatment

causing so many problems in Britain.

131

The Americans decided to

cooperate with the Ministry of Information’s new film, Welcome to
Britain, produced by Stand films and directed by Anthony Asquith. It
was an hour-long film for newly arrived American servicemen which
‘included a quite remarkable sequence on race, asking the American
soldiers to respect the different attitudes they would find in Britain’.

132

The American actor Burgess Meredith says, face to the camera, after a
scene where a white Englishwoman invites a black GI to tea:

You hear an Englishwoman asking a coloured boy to tea. She was
polite about it and he was polite about it. Now . . . look; that might
not happen at home but the . . . point is, we’re not at home, and the
point is too, if we bring a lot of prejudices here what are we gonna
do about ’em?

133

The film is an illustration of how much had changed. The very fact
that social segregation was referred to as ‘prejudice’ in the film rather
than a ‘way of life’, which had been the Cabinet’s initial position, indi-
cates the transformation in the moral and political framework
surrounding race issues. Previously the War Cabinet’s policy was to
educate British servicemen and the British public in America’s ‘great
experiment in working out a democratic way of life in a mixed
community’.

134

After just over a year of the experience of Jim Crow

practice in Britain, as Smith points out, the Ministry of Information
had made a film with ‘American actors and senior American staff offi-
cers, encouraging the Americans to respect racial integration in Britain
because that was the British way’.

135

Although the Colonial Office may

have continued to worry about the ‘grave difficulty’ involved in ques-
tioning Jim Crow, colonial officials felt that they were at last
beginning to regain their confidence. After having received so much
criticism during 1942 for the Empire, they could now take their turn
in criticizing the Americans.

Welfare for colonials in Britain

This is not to say that the Colonial Office had eradicated the colour bar
in Britain, nor even begun to properly investigate the issue in the
colonies. It was more that the Colonial Office had become aware that
black people were treated marginally better in Britain than in the
United States and, most importantly, that this was now widely known
by the British public. As a result, it was harder for Americans to take

Lord Hailey

the moral high ground in relation to their British hosts. As far as the
Colonial Office was concerned, the grand ideals of freedom, with
which America had entered the war, no longer appeared so threaten-
ing to the imperial way of life.

136

The shift in the attitude towards racial segregation and its relation-

ship to Anglo-American relations was complemented by military
developments. By the summer of 1943, with Allied production surpass-
ing what the German U-boat campaign could destroy and the victory
in the battle of the Atlantic, the war was moving into a new phase.
Although there was still much for the Allies to do, the Axis powers
were on the defensive after July 1943. The Allies decision, in January
1943, to pursue the war until they won an ‘unconditional surrender’
was a measure of their confidence in ultimate victory. In particular, in
August 1942 Montgomery had taken over the Eighth Army at El
Alamein in Egypt and managed to turn the previous summer’s defeats
into winter victories, leading ultimately to the complete defeat of
German forces in North Africa by the Allies on 12 May 1943.

137

Although the American press had failed to credit the British for the
success of the North Africa campaign, especially before the Anglo-
American landings in Morocco on 8 November,

138

the news in Britain

was a great boost to morale.

139

It meant that for the first time, espe-

cially since Hong Kong and Singapore, the British could conceive of
themselves as having a part to play in building the postwar order.

The greater confidence within the Colonial Office, also seen by L. J.

Butler,

140

meant that some problems, like that of fair treatment of

colonial soldiers, which had been dismissed before as trivial, began to
be constructively considered. At the start of 1944, the Colonial Office
expanded its welfare department to deal with the increasing enquiries
and problems of colonial servicemen and also persuaded the Air
Ministry to set up a liaison officer to have ‘special responsibility for
colonial personnel and particularly coloured personnel’.

141

Wing Commander Gibb, himself a white Jamaican, professed that in

the RAF there was a ‘certain amount of colour prejudice’ which he
thought ‘he could help to remove if he were allowed to do so’. Keith,
reporting on this to Poynton, commented that the complaints of the
colonial RAF men were usually of a ‘very small nature’, but that ‘every
now and then we have a difficult case where there is a definite allega-
tion of colour prejudice or unfair treatment’. Keith proposed that
Wing Commander Gibb could deal with these cases on the spot by
being recognized as the ‘father’ of the West Indians because he ‘under-
stands the mentality of his compatriots’.

142

A letter from Gibb to

The Question of Equal Treatment

Colonel Stanley, secretary of state for the colonies, later that year gives
an idea of what Keith meant by ‘understanding his compatriots’. Gibb
wrote, requesting again that his position be made official: ‘surely the
coloured West Indian, especially, needs help. He is far more simple in
mind than his brother from the Dominions.’

143

At the time, Poynton

preferred to ‘let matters drop’ as he felt that:

Compared with the ‘blimpish’ attitude hitherto shown by the
Admiralty and the War Office on the colour question, the Air
Ministry’s record as been quite magnificent. The manner in which
they have taken coloured men into the Air Force and have recog-
nized their merits by the very large number of decorations for
operational duties, has been one of the biggest contributions to the
colonial empire during the war. Most of the complaints that I have
seen have been for mere disciplinary matters affecting coloured
people rather than colour problems proper. The serious colour cases
that I have seen in respect of members of the RAF have been cases
where the offending party was not another member of the RAF at
all but, eg, neighbouring American troops.

144

By the autumn of 1945, however, the Welfare Department of the
Colonial Office had seconded four RAF officers: Wing Commanders
Links, Gibb and Shone and Flight Lieutenant Cross to deal with
enquiries from the ‘7000 odd West Indians in the RAF’

145

(although

2000 men had been recruited only a year before for ground staff
duties

146

). Despite the increased personnel, discrimination still

remained a problem. On the one hand some thought that it was
‘important that colonials calling at the Colonial Office should go away
satisfied, otherwise they will complain about their treatment when
they get back to the Colonies’.

147

On the other hand, Poynton replied,

and Keith agreed, that ‘it would be most undesirable to draw a distinc-
tion of functions between the Welfare Department and the Defence
Department by the criterion of the race of the persons whose cases
they deal with’.

148

Providing a different complaints procedure for

black servicemen could involve the office in ‘unpleasant charges of
racial discrimination’.

149

As the war was drawing to a close, the Commander in Chief of the

Middle East Forces, J. Paget, reported back to the War Office the prob-
lems he was having with the Caribbean regiment. The unit was
concerned about its future as it was apparently insufficiently trained to
take part in the Italian offensive and then there was the question,

Lord Hailey

given that the unit had been raised especially to satisfy ‘demand from
the colonies’ for ‘more active participation’, of whether to send the
men home or on to the Far East. What the Commander in Chief was
also finding especially difficult was the question of segregation –
because it was not on the grounds of colour. He said that he found it
problematic, with both Caribbean and African troops present in the
Middle East, to insist ‘on dual standards for troops of the same colour’.
He complained that:

The question of ‘colour’ is raising a very difficult problem affecting
not only the Caribbean, but also African and white troops stationed
in same neighbourhood. Though mostly black, the Caribbeans are
extremely colour conscious and expect to be treated in every respect
as UK soldiers on the grounds that no official colour bar exists in
their territories.

In the Middle East certain restrictions have necessarily been

imposed on African troops, and, in view of the similarity in colour,
these restrictions are naturally apt to be made applicable to the
Caribbeans. Every endeavour is made to avoid difficulty on this
head, but in doing so we are faced firstly with the resentment of
African troops who, quite naturally, fail to understand why a
restriction placed on one type of black troops is not applied equally
to others of the same colour, and secondly with the objection of
white troops, particularly those of the UDF and the Women’s
Services, to sharing their amenities with coloured soldiers.

150

The Colonial Office was more concerned about the pressing issue of
whether the colonial troops were going to be allowed to participate in
an ‘operational role’.

151

The Colonial Office realized that it was an

‘open secret’ that the Middle East command was ‘only too glad to get
rid of the West Indians’ and wanted to avoid South East Asia
Command being ‘prejudiced against them before they arrive’.

152

March 1945, the War Office agreed to send the unit to Italy as ‘owing
to the difficulties of colour it is inadvisable to attach it to an Indian
formation’. The regiment was held up until the ‘weather, which previ-
ously was not suitable, should have improved’

153

because the War

Office was convinced that black West Indians were particularly suscep-
tible to cold weather.

154

But by the time they were due to arrive in

Italy, the war in Europe would be over.

155

The War Office cabled,

pleadingly, that ‘honour would be satisfied if this regiment was used
in any minor op in the Aegean or to take part in receiving capitulation

The Question of Equal Treatment

of Crete’.

156

In the end the regiment was forced to stay in the Middle

East to guard German prisoners.

157

The Colonial Office spent the next

few months trying to persuade the War Office to make a quick deci-
sion on the future of the regiment

158

– particularly because it was

anxious about the morale of the troops and the Governor of Trinidad
had requested that the formation be broken up on return as otherwise
it might ‘supply focus for discontent’.

159

Neither the Americans, with Jim Crow segregation, nor the British,

with a discarded regiment in the Middle East, could claim the moral
high ground in terms of race discrimination. But the experience of the
GIs in Britain had demonstrated one important thing to the Colonial
Office: they were not alone. The United States could no longer criticize
colonial policy with equanimity, fearing criticisms of their own treat-
ment of ‘non-white’ people. As a result, Hailey, especially when he
visited America, and others in the Colonial Office, were given the
confidence to challenge Americans’ arguments over high-sounding
ideals such as freedom and equality. Britain’s own treatment of its
colonial troops, particularly outside the RAF where the manpower
question was not so acute, was nothing to be proud of – but this had
only become apparent when all eyes were turning to the military
successes of the war and away from the failures and difficulties of the
1941–2 period.

At the end of the war, the Colonial Office did start to direct some

resources into an investigation of how much race discrimination actu-
ally existed in the colonies. In 1940, Keith’s report on colour prejudice
had hoped for an ‘improvement of public taste and knowledge’ to
tackle a problem he then considered ‘largely educational’.

160

Only in

May 1946, after some initial survey work by Hailey’s committee on
Postwar Reconstruction, did the welfare department of the Colonial
Office produce a survey of race discrimination during the war, which
finished by arguing:

Now that the war has ended, the feeling among coloured Colonial
people in this country about their relationship with the English
people is one of paramount importance to them, and one which
engages their close and constant attention. It is also related in a very
real way to the delicate position of the racial relationships in the
colonies.

161

In the end, the Colonial Office had largely managed to maintain
control, organize welfare and keep the discussion on discrimination to

Lord Hailey

a manageable level, despite virtual riots and quite regular race fights
across Britain. This may have encouraged the department to eventu-
ally consider race relations not only as something politically
important but also as something that they could contain. Certainly, in
relation to American criticisms of the Empire, the question of race rela-
tions as we shall see eventually proved to be more of an asset than a
liability. This result was probably due more to the reaction of the
British public at home than to any common practice in the colonies,
which largely continued to operate colour bars in hotels and restaur-
ants and clubs until independence from Britain.

162

In 1947, the Colonial Office started to produce a memorandum

cataloguing legislation which defined racial categories or created
racial discrimination in the colonies.

163

The new United Nations

Organization, with its Commission on Human Rights, was thought
likely to pursue ‘the question of removing discriminatory legislation’
and Arthur Creech Jones, the new secretary of state for the colonies,
wanted to be ‘fully seized of the implications of this question in rela-
tion to colonial territories’.

164

The experience of the war had suggested

that having the moral edge, being able to maintain morale and control
in the face of the critics, was perhaps more important than the increas-
ingly redundant ‘white prestige’.

The Question of Equal Treatment

Defending the Empire

Introduction

This chapter concentrates on the debate at the Institute of Pacific
Relations (IPR) conference at Mont Tremblant, Canada in December
1942. The arguments raised at the conference engaged many of the
issues of race and empire at stake during the war. The conference and
Hailey have hitherto been regarded from separate fields of enquiry.
Hailey has been recognized as a leading articulator of and influence
upon British colonial policy. IPR conferences were supposedly un-
official. However, the conference of December 1942 was different
providing an important forum for the development of postwar inter-
national policy. Hailey’s presence as leader of the British delegation
allows us an entry to the key moment of transition in the Atlantic
debate on race and empire.

Returning to this period to look again at the arguments, it is hard

not to prejudge them according to the present-day relationship
between Britain and America. Britain’s status, economic power and
international influence have all declined in the postwar world and it is
hard not to see this as the issue when examining the archive material.
It is important to try to imagine what these debates meant from the
standpoint of participants who had experienced the Depression,
survived the Axis onslaught and were not yet guaranteed victory.

In the midst of the Cold War, when international politics was

dominated by the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet
Union for spheres of influence, it was possible to see the Anglo-
American rivalry during the Second World War in a similar light, as
did William Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson.

This is not to say that

there was not an element of competition between the two great

powers.

Here, however, the material is examined from the point of

view of the British participants’ problem of imperial authority and the
perceived loss of it.

Much of the wartime discussion was imbued with a deep sense of

crisis, a sense that the structures of the past were unlikely to continue
into the postwar period. This sentiment had been influenced by the
experience of the 1930s – which both Gabriel Kolko and Donald Watt
have emphasized was a time of social upheaval – and by wartime
defeats.

As a result, the Anglo-American debate did not have a clear

framework. There were few institutions, particularly in the inter-
national arena, on which officials could depend. In the early years of
the war, it may have seemed that everything was open to question.

Without traditional rules or guidelines, competition between Britain

and America was not always the primary issue. The matter at hand was
to establish a framework for discussing the shape of the postwar world.
For instance, it must have been hard to conceptualize competing over
spheres of influence when the means by which that influence was to
be exerted was still under debate. International dialogue, in this
context, became particularly important because it was a forum where
the rules and boundaries of the new framework could be worked out.

Furthermore, the postwar arrangement could not rest on tradition

for its justification. The failure of tradition can be seen in the fact that
much of the discussion at this time contained a strong emphasis on a
new morality. With a wide acceptance that the world needed changing,
many people were anxious to work out how it should change and
therefore on what basis, on what grounds, it should change. The
ethical component of the Anglo-American debate was not simply a
‘cover’ for economic self-interest – it indicates that there were doubts
and disagreements not just as to who would influence which region
but on whether the imperial powers would have any continuing
authority to interfere in the colonized countries. Establishing the
framework in which this authority could be sustained was central to
the Anglo-American debate because, in the end, the white Western
elites still believed in their fundamental superiority.

Understanding how the elite saw its own position and status is the

object of this study. Prior to the war, the language of racial groups had
been relied upon to articulate a position of superiority. Realizing that
race was a political issue, particularly after the fall of Singapore, the
British elite was forced to look for new ways to assert its superiority.
To establish this new language of authority on a firm foundation it
was important that there was agreement between the major powers,

Defending the Empire

especially between Britain and America. The Institute of Pacific
Relations conference, provides a window on to the debate, and offers
an insight into how agreement was achieved.

On 10 June 1942, Lord Hailey was invited by Lionel Curtis (who had

asked Hailey to direct the African Survey) to head the British delegation
to the Institute of Pacific Relations conference that winter.

Hailey’s

career had already covered more empire administration than almost
any other individual. After his ‘brilliant career’ in the Indian Civil
Service, and the publication of An African Survey in 1938 Hailey,
according to John Cell, came to be ‘regarded as a principal spokesman
for colonial reform and development, which in turn became the
prevailing rationale and ideology of empire during and after World
War II’.

During the Second World War, his first-hand knowledge of

both India and Africa put him a unique position to advise the Colonial
Office on defending the Empire. He was considered a leading expert on
empire by his contemporaries, and his ideas often influenced policy.

The IPR conference was a two-yearly event, usually a low-key affair

of intellectuals and academics with some business interests, with the
Royal Institute of International Affairs (often called Chatham House,
the site of the RIIA) acting as the British representatives of the IPR. In
1942, however, so soon after the fall of Singapore and America’s entry
into the war, the conference was taken far more seriously.

The so-

called ‘unofficial’ delegates from the various countries were in fact
handpicked by the relevant government departments.

Both Chatham

House and the Colonial Office regarded the conference as ‘a most
opportune chance of combating some of the opinions held about the
British Empire’

and they were most ‘anxious’ that Hailey be

persuaded to be the leader of the delegation.

The secretary of state for

the colonies, Viscount Cranborne, ‘warmly’

supported this proposal

with the note ‘no one could do it better’.

The IPR conference, held in Mont Tremblant, Canada, was promoted

as an unofficial discussion on international cooperation in relation to
the Pacific and the Far East, but the British government was not about
to leave their case up to chance. One memorandum on the need for a
clear policy remarked that the ‘conference presents a danger and an
opportunity’.

Suggestions as to the composition of the delegation

were discussed in the Colonial Office and the then permanent under-
secretary of state, Sir George Gater, liaised with the Foreign Office, who
were also most concerned that a ‘really adequate group’ should attend
the conference.

The personnel list was finally decided through

consultation between the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, the India

Lord Hailey

Office,

the Ministry of Information, the secretary of state for the

colonies, the secretary of state for the dominions,

the Deputy Prime

Minister Mr Attlee,

Chatham House and Lord Hailey.

But sorting

out the delegates

was only half the task; the main work was formu-

lating the arguments.

The key assumption that needed to be challenged, especially with

Americans, as Ashley Clarke saw it, was that:

the Asiatic possessions of the white peoples will be lost to them for
ever. This is a form of loose thinking which may gradually harden
and against which I have suggested that, at the proposed IPR confer-
ence and in other ways, we must prepare a counter-offensive by
producing new and positive ideas of our own.

In the event, at the conference, Hailey’s counter-offensive would both
make use of American criticisms to bolster Britain’s position and argue
for the ‘new and positive’ idea that the British Empire was engaged in a
mission to promote the economic and social development of the
colonies.

American criticisms of colonial policy

By 1942, when the IPR conference was being planned, there were
several major political problems facing the Colonial Office in particu-
lar, and British policy-makers more generally. First, the rhetoric of the
Allies against the Axis powers pitted the forces of democracy and
progress against tyranny and backwardness. According to most
Americans the British Empire appeared to be the epitome of back-
wardness. Second, the fall of Singapore had stimulated American
anti-imperialist criticism of the lack of loyal relations between the
British and their subjects. Third, for many British officials, relations
between Britain and America generally needed to improve for further
wartime cooperation and for future international stability.

One of the ways that the Allies tried to build up an association

between their war aims and the idea of a ‘free world’ was the declar-
ation that they were fighting for ‘Four Freedoms’. This idea was first
articulated by President Roosevelt, in a broadcast in January 1941,
to gain American support for Britain, which was later firmed up in
the formal arrangement of Lend-Lease. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms
were:

Defending the Empire

1. Freedom of speech;
2. Freedom of worship;
3. Freedom from want;
4. Freedom from fear (of other nations).

It was the last two ‘freedoms’ that were stressed during the war. To

be ‘free from want’ was a guarantee that the experience of the
Depression would not be repeated and that the Allies were committed
to economic development and not ‘exploitation’. The slogan was an
important message to say that the postwar world would not be a return
to the deprivation of the prewar years.

The fourth ‘freedom from fear’ was written as a clear criticism of

Nazi Germany, its attacks on the Jewish population of Europe and its
forcible occupation of large parts of the European continent. It
contained the idea that international peace, and the means to enforce
it, was one of the clear aims of the Allies (who were then known as the
United Nations which subsequently became the title of the inter-
national organization with greater powers than its predecessor, the
League of Nations).

These ‘Four Freedoms’ were expressly directed at the American

public and after that the European nations. They could, however, be
interpreted by other countries further afield as indicating that they too
should be able to end foreign domination. This definition of the
fourth ‘freedom’ was apparently confirmed by the Atlantic Charter.

Since 1940, when France had surrendered to Germany, Britain had

been desperate for America to enter the war. As an interim measure, on
14 August 1941,

Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter

to show a symbolic alliance of common democratic goals, demon-
strating to the Axis countries a strong formal, if not yet military,
opposition. When Roosevelt and Churchill met in Argentia in
Newfoundland they aimed to lay down ‘certain broad principles’ to
outline the war aims of both countries.

Despite the careful wording,

however, by Sir Alexander Cadogan and the amendments by Sumner
Welles, directed by Roosevelt,

the Atlantic Charter proved to be a

further source of friction.

The Atlantic Charter aimed to make an explicit treaty out of the

basic ideas contained in the Four Freedoms. The first three articles
repudiated territorial ‘aggrandizement’ through force or against the
wishes of the people. The fourth and fifth articles supported free trade
to stimulate economic growth, and an end to the protectionism that
was often blamed for the friction between nations leading to war. The

Lord Hailey

sixth, seventh and eighth articles enshrined the building of a peace
which would enable people to live free from fear, by producing an
international system of security with national disarmament. Along
with such peace, the fifth and sixth articles gave commitment to social
security, economic advancement, improved labour standards and a
general freedom from ‘want’.

On the whole the wording was grand but vague and therefore left the

future open to a certain amount of interpretation. The third article,
however, was one of the clearer ones, specifying that America and
Britain ‘respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of govern-
ment under which they will live; and they [the US and UK] wish to see
sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been
forcibly deprived of them’.

The article was not a demand but a wish

because at this stage America was not formally at war with the Axis
countries and, although the Charter was meant as a statement of intent,
it was not intended to bring the States automatically into the war.

It was the phrase ‘sovereign rights and self-government’, however,

which was to cause most indignation. William Roger Louis explains
that it was Churchill who inserted the phrase ‘sovereign rights’ intend-
ing, according to Louis, to make the clause ‘inapplicable to the
dependent British Empire’. Furthermore, the American press, accord-
ing to Louis, ‘saw the Atlantic Charter almost totally as a European
document’.

Having raised the issue of ‘self-government’, however,

other people questioned whether it did apply to the colonies. Lord
Moyne later commented that:

The phrase in Point III of the Atlantic Charter that we ‘respect the
right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which
they will live’ is frankly an unfortunate one from the colonial point
of view. It was, of course, used, as is obvious from the context, with
the nations of Europe in mind. But in the colonies we cannot admit
a right of unfettered choice to those who, in the words of the
League of Nations Covenant, are ‘not yet able to stand by them-
selves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world’.

But many people, particularly in America, did not agree with Moyne
and saw the Charter as a promise of liberation given to the colonies.
For example, two days after the signing of the Charter, the Daily Herald
headlined: ‘The Atlantic Charter: it means the dark races as well.’

Louis

has documented the debate that ensued between different sections of
the government, especially between the ‘staunchest of all British

Defending the Empire

imperialists’, Leopold Amery, secretary of state for India and Burma,
and Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, and Arthur Creech
Jones, who went with Hailey to the IPR conference and later became
the first postwar secretary of state for colonies.

Disconcertingly for

the Colonial Office, for example, the Governor of Nigeria, Sir Bernard
Bourdillon, cabled Winston Churchill to ask ‘Are we fighting for secur-
ity of Europeans to enjoy the four freedoms while West Africa
continues on a prewar status?’

Leo Amery, concerned about the way that the Atlantic Charter had

‘let loose a lot of questions about its application to the Empire’, wrote
a memorandum for the War Cabinet to examine what he saw as the
destructive impact of the Charter and to propose some ‘guidelines’ for
the colonies, for example:

It will be seen from the telegrams appended that Point III of the
Eight-Point Declaration has already been fastened upon by the
Burman Ministers as an argument for a promise forthwith of full
self-government immediately after the war, regardless of the actual
circumstances whether of Burma itself or of the international
situation.

But the guidelines themselves had also to take into consideration
American opinion as well as views in the colonies. The Ministry of
Information, in its confidential digest of transatlantic letters through
the censors, noted that: ‘few people in England have any conception
of the reality of the Empire bogey in the American mind and else-
where. The Nazi radio keeps at it all the time and upon this topic it is
effective.’

In the eyes of the censors, one of ‘the chief obstacles in

the way of 100 per cent American co-operation’ was ‘mainly British
imperialism’.

The reluctance of the British establishment to embrace Article Three

of the Atlantic Charter only further confirmed, in the eyes of many
Americans, the anti-democratic nature of the British Empire. Even
before the Charter, many British officials were aware of the negative
image held in the USA of the Empire. Americans doubted the possibil-
ity of forming a pro-democracy alliance against the Axis powers if
Britain’s empire was itself undemocratic. A confidential report from
the Ministry of Information’s American department recorded as
‘typical’ the comment that ‘British tyranny in India is an argument
used with terrible effect by the Nazis to make British democracy appear
hypocritical.’

100

Lord Hailey

Meanwhile, British officials, who doubted America’s willingness to

come to the aid of Europe under siege, worried about the possibility of
forming a postwar peace without substantive agreement between the
two major powers. In May 1941, the deputy parliamentary under-
secretary of state for the colonies, Sir John Shuckburgh, noted that an
Anglo-American consensus would be essential for the survival of the
British Empire after the war.

Certainly the debate between Britain and America meant much

more than just an article in a charter. Nor was it just the question of
which colonies were associated with which countries. Sorting out the
debate between Britain and America was at base about which country
would shape the postwar world and who would underwrite that peace.
The desperate position of Britain in 1941, so soon after the First World
War, signalled that Britain could no longer guarantee peace alone. The
editors of Fortune magazine in the States advised that ‘America . . . owes
the world a substitute for the Pax Britannica, which is dead’.

The United States was certain to be the predominant force in any

postwar settlement – the question remained whether Britain would
have much say in that arrangement. In 1941–2, after the Atlantic
Charter and the ignominy of the fall of Singapore, it seemed likely that
any future rules would be anti-imperialistic and would undermine, as
a consequence, Britain’s postwar status. For instance, William Keith
Hancock, the Oxford professor of colonial history, was deeply troubled
by what was at stake:

For let us make no mistake: the debate [over the empire] is an
important one, so very important that we must take sides in it. It
isn’t merely concerned with the destiny of those territories which
happen to be marked red on the map. It raises the deepest issues of
human freedom.

Although Pearl Harbor ended the problem of American isolationism,

the subsequent victories of Japan over the Far Eastern empire had weak-
ened Britain’s standing in the world still further.

In May 1942, Isaiah

Berlin wrote a report titled ‘Things which the Americans hold against
the British’. His first point was that Americans thought that ‘British
colonial policy has been oppressive, stupid, inefficient and insulting to
the natives, with the result that Malays and Burmese have been
conspicuously disloyal in contrast to the loyalty of the Filipinos.’

The Colonial Office and the Ministry of Information were well aware

that American opinion had tended to suppose that imperialism meant

Defending the Empire

101

exploitation and backwardness. For example, at one meeting at the
Ministry of Information to discuss propaganda on the empire, the
minutes illustrate their main concerns:

Firstly it was necessary to show the American people what was
being done in the British colonial empire since there was a
tendency to believe that this colonial empire was the subject of
exploitation. Secondly, we should show that we are not backward
(generally speaking) in our methods of colonial administration, and
that we are prepared at all times to receive new ideas from any
quarter. Thirdly, that we should convince the USA that in the
British Empire in general, and the British colonial empire in partic-
ular, she has a good ally.

Noel Sabine, head of publicity in the Colonial Office, was of the
opinion that ‘a firm basis for Anglo-American friendship’ was of the
‘highest conceivable importance’ and therefore ‘every source of misap-
prehension or misunderstanding should be resolutely attacked’. At the
same time, however, Sabine was optimistic that it was simply a ques-
tion of making a ‘comprehensive effort to let America know all about
our colonial policy’ to gain their confidence and produce a basis even
for other, ‘more fruitful’, forms of cooperation.

Sabine’s optimism,

however, was expressed before the fall of Singapore.

The collapse of the Far Eastern empire undermined British confi-

dence and caused a wave of criticism of the Empire in the USA.
Margery Perham provides an example of the crisis in British self-confi-
dence. Perham, a friend of Lord Lugard and Donald Cameron,
Governor of Tanganyika in the 1920s, had travelled in Africa and
taught colonial administration in Oxford. She had had little sympathy
for Fabian-type criticisms of the Empire in the interwar years. At a
League of Nations conference in 1939, she had proudly defended
Britain’s colonial record. On 13 March 1942, however, four weeks after
the surrender of Singapore, Perham started her article in The Times
with the comment that ‘the Malayan disaster has shocked us into
sudden attention to the structure of our colonial empire’. She admit-
ted that, if she were to imagine the Japanese Navy at Mombasa
harbour in Kenya, she doubted whether the whole community would
fight ‘shoulder to shoulder with the Europeans’.

If Hailey was going to make Sabine’s ‘comprehensive effort’ to tell

Americans about Britain’s colonial policy, then he was going to have
to override the fears and deal with the criticisms. This meant working

102

Lord Hailey

out ‘a clear statement of our postwar policy in relation to the
colonies’,

creating more pressure on Hailey’s Committee for Postwar

Reconstruction. Especially since the Foreign Office was, according to
Gerard Gent, ‘extremely nervous at the prospect of having to formu-
late even the outline of one [policy] for the forthcoming Pacific
Relations Conference’.

After Singapore, many Americans assumed that the unpopularity of

the colonial administration had simply paved the way for the
Japanese. More importantly, many people within Britain were also
beginning to have doubts about colonialism. ‘To many here and in the
colonies’, said Sir Cosmo Parkinson, under-secretary of state for the
colonies, ‘the loss of the great naval base of Singapore’ on 15 February
1942 was ‘the worst moment of the war.’

And Captain Gammans,

the Conservative MP who later joined the team for the IPR conference,
wrote a letter to The Times saying that:

When the Union Jack was lowered on Fort Canning, in Singapore,
on that Sunday morning, it marked the sudden and dramatic end of
an epoch in our colonial empire. . . . The fall of Singapore is either
the end of our colonial empire, or the beginning of a new chapter
which can be even more honourable and glorious than the past.

So that Hailey would know exactly what to expect from the Americans,
he was kept informed of American opinion.

In particular, the Foreign

Office and Colonial Office worked together to ensure that Hailey had
reports from the British Information Service in America, reports on the
‘call for a Pacific Charter’, and access to the correspondence about
‘conditions in the British West Indies’.

These reports were vital

because Hailey needed to be able to judge whether he could challenge
the idea that, as Professor Tawney described it, ‘the British Imperial
game is up and that it is to America that the world will look for polit-
ical and economic leadership’.

Hailey at the Institute of Pacific Relations conference

At the conference Hailey challenged the Americans’ claim to moral
authority on three issues: security, race relations and their monopoly
on humanitarianism. Although Hailey may not have convinced all of
the delegates of his case at the time, some of the themes that Hailey
developed reappeared in the later compromise position taken by the
Americans.

Defending the Empire

103

Hailey made one of the opening statements to the conference (the

other was made by China’s representative) and his first words were
that ‘the fundamental consideration on which we must proceed is that
of security’. Hailey talked of the need for ‘collective security’ and
argued that security was the ‘basis of the Four Freedoms’.

This may

seem like an innocuous point but for government delegates at that
time it was loaded with meaning.

Hailey, by using the issue of security, was pointing to the Americans’

interwar isolationism, their lack of support for the League of Nations,
as a key factor in the transformation of international tensions into
world war. He avoided the loyalty issue in relation to the defeats in
Malaya and Singapore, and instead tried to put the Americans on the
defensive. His approach echoed that of Lord Cranborne, then secretary
of state for the colonies, in the House of Lords:

As we both know, the chief sinner was the United States. Had she
been willing to throw in her weight in the Pacific in the years
preceding the war, when we were preoccupied with the deterior-
ating situation in Europe and she was not, the Japanese menace
might have been strangled before it became really dangerous.

Towards the end of the conference, this argument was repeated by one
of the other British delegates when he complained, throwing Article
Six of the Charter back at the Americans, ‘what meaning is there in the
words freedom from fear for the peoples of the world if the United
States goes back to isolationism?’ The success of Hailey’s tactic was
shown by the response of one of the Canadian delegates to this discus-
sion. He turned to the Americans and protested: ‘frankly, you haven’t
given us the kind of leadership we expected here. The British came
here on the defensive and then passed the blame to the Americans
who have remained on the defensive ever since.’

The turn away from

isolationism in America had been so rapid that perhaps they were
indeed embarrassed by their previous isolationist stance, and therefore
easily placed on the defensive with this criticism.

The issue of security and defence of the world order was not the

only way that Hailey tried to humble the Americans. He included
hints and innuendoes concerning race relations to try to keep the
Americans off the moral high ground. By the winter of 1942–3 the
race tensions in America, American reluctance to permit blacks to
fight and the experience of American segregation in Britain were
known to Hailey. He felt that America had more to answer for than

104

Lord Hailey

Britain had and he was determined to face down their assumption of
superiority.

There were several ways that Hailey would have been informed of

the discussion on race in the United States. The Foreign Office passed
on Isaiah Berlin’s reports amongst others. Also, Edgar Tarr, who had
been working with Edward Carter, the director of the Institute of
Pacific Relations, to organize the forthcoming conference, had written
to Ivison Macadam, the British IPR representative, warning him that:
‘the fundamental weakness in our cause is the Anglo-American-Dutch
counterpart of the German theory of the master race.’ It was ‘vital’, in
Tarr’s view, to establish ‘the laying of a foundation for real cooperation
with the Pacific peoples on the basis of genuine equality’.

Tarr had

also tried to persuade Carter to place the issue of race under the ‘spot-
light’ at the conference by reorganizing the agenda:

It seems to me that an important feature of the agenda would be to
place Canada, the United States, and Australia in the positions of
defendants with respect to their policies of racial discrimination,
and the white races generally as defendants because of their attitude
of superiority.

Carter did not accept Tarr’s plan, even though, at the Mont Tremblant
conference, Tarr was elected the new president of the IPR, which
shows the influence of his ideas.

Tarr’s comments serve as a useful

indicator of the mood of some of the delegates.

Hailey played on the sensitivity to the issue of race discrimination

without openly criticizing the Americans, which could have been
problematic. The first issue that Hailey raised was that of arming the
‘natives’. He made the point in his opening statement that ‘dependent
peoples’ must be given the ‘means to organize for their own
defence’.

This may not seem like a pointedly anti-American thing to

say, but denial of combat to non-whites was already something of an
issue.

The second point that Hailey brought up was the issue of immigra-

tion. At the IPR conference, various people were already aware that ‘to
the Chinese and the Indians present, the question of immigration was
largely one of racial discrimination’.

The infamous ‘white Australia’

policy and the quota laws in the States had already made the connec-
tion between discrimination and immigration. Even though Britain
and America had cancelled their extra-territorial rights in China to try
to signal its equal status, the refusal of the United States to allow

Defending the Empire

105

Chinese immigration was seen as a reminder that the ‘yellow peril’ was
still a factor in American politics.

When Hailey spoke of the ‘critical

issue’ in his opening statement of the ‘status to be held by Chinese
emigrants domiciled in countries to which they have emigrated’, he
was not only referring to the Chinese minorities in Burma, Malaya and
the Philippines, but also to those inside the United States.

The report

of Sir George Sansom, stationed at the Foreign Office in Washington,
confirms that this issue of immigration was particularly sensitive. He
noted in his report on the IPR conference that:

The problem of Asiatic immigration into ‘Western’ countries was
too delicate for thorough discussion, but there was a general dispo-
sition among Americans, Australians and Canadians to condemn
discriminatory immigration laws in principle, while hoping that in
practice it would be possible to keep Asiatics out of their respective
countries.

In this way Hailey used issues like security and race to show the dele-
gates from the United States that they could not assume the moral
high ground with the British delegation. The record of the Americans
on segregation and isolationism meant that when these issues were
raised, albeit in a subtle fashion, the American delegates were forced
onto the defensive. This allowed Hailey the space to argue for a posi-
tive role for Britain in the working out of the postwar order. Hailey
reinforced this point by reminding the Americans that they could not
claim sole ownership of an ethical stance. Instead, he implied, Britain
and America could boost each other’s humanitarian reputation by
avoiding criticizing each other. For example, Hailey announced that:
‘we cannot allow the present-day advocates of this demand [for self-
determination] the sole prerogative of its authorship. It is all in line
with our own tradition.’

The tone of Hailey’s claim stands out in contrast with, in fact, his

own background. Hailey had spent the 1930s trying to thwart Indian
independence. This is the man who wrote of Gandhi’s hunger strike
that ‘we should lose less by his death than by allowing India to believe
that he has forced the hand of Her Majesty’s Government by the threat
of suicide’.

At the IPR conference, however, Hailey quietly put aside

his own experience and spoke of the ‘moral principle of trusteeship’
that had ‘always’ guided British imperial policy. Undoubtedly, Hailey
intended his political manoeuvre to take the moral high ground.

Once Hailey had established a relatively authoritative moral position

106

Lord Hailey

for the British delegates, he invited the other countries’ delegates to
consider what to do with ‘dependent peoples’. Hailey already knew
that Cordell Hull, in the autumn of 1942, had suggested approvingly
the phrase ‘parent state’ to conceptualize the relationship of imperial
nation to its colonies.

Hailey’s presentation of the problem rested on

the idea that ultimately both the British and the Americans were pater-
nalistic towards undeveloped areas.

Hailey mentioned self-government, but only as the ‘natural destiny’ of

a dependent unit – in practice a question for the distant future. As far as
Hailey was concerned, ‘political liberties are meaningless unless they can
be built up on a better foundation of social and economic progress’.

other words, self-determination and other such liberties had to wait, as
Hailey saw it, for social developments to be engineered by the imperial
senior partner (the discussion on ‘partnership’ will be developed in the
next chapter). Hailey reinforced, in his last few sentences, the import-
ance of restricting the demand for self-determination:

That does not mean that we have not a high purpose and high
hopes of what may be achieved for the peoples whose future we are
considering. But while we keep our eyes on the heights, let us not
forget the realities with which we have to deal in seeking to attain
them. Many of these peoples have had an unfortunate past. Many
of them are now suffering the Calvary of an aggressive war. Do not
let us add to that the tragedy of disillusionment.

This was Hailey’s warning to the Americans. Many of the people who
had ‘had an unfortunate past’, such as the experience of slavery, were
inside the United States and they were now campaigning for equal
rights and an end to discrimination. Some of them had become influ-
ential in their campaigns for equal rights, while others had demanded
an independent state for black Americans.

One report from the

Office of War Information that had been passed back to the Foreign
Office, and from there on to Hailey, noted that in the November issue
of Collier’s, the magazine with the largest circulation in the United
States, a leading article had commented:

If anyone tells you that a common enemy has united the United
States so solidly that the Negro problem is in abeyance for the dura-
tion, you may assume correctly that either he is making a political
campaign speech or is a very unreliable source of information or
both.

Defending the Empire

107

Another report that Hailey had seen was from Sir R. I. Campbell, the
British Minister in Washington. Concerned with America’s interest in
the West Indies, Campbell reported back in October 1942 that the
Americans ‘don’t want discontent and racial effervescence among the
Negroes’, and ‘they don’t want bad health or social conditions near
them (especially among Negroes)’.

Armed with this knowledge,

Hailey aimed to establish common ground with the Americans. This
new common ground was to be based on an agreement that they
should avoid raising the aspiration for political independence of
certain peoples, the non-whites, and instead look for ways to promote
stability in the postwar world.

Hailey continued this theme with a remark at a lecture at Princeton

University the following month: ‘It may well be found that the matters
which cause unrest and unsettlement in the world arise mainly within
the borders of its major powers.’

Here Hailey was indicating that,

while Britain might have distant colonies that wished for independ-
ence, America’s propaganda on the issue of self-determination could
create unrest within America – potentially a much greater problem. As
Christopher Thorne, the historian of the Pacific War, has noted, Hailey
calculated that ‘there were those in Washington who feared that,
given a chance, America’s blacks, too, would side with Japan’.

Since Hailey had managed to put America on the defensive about

the race issue – which was evident in the way that the Americans at
the conference tried to patronize China as a nation of ‘saints and
heroes’

– he could concentrate on explaining, and justifying,

Britain’s role in the colonies on a different terrain, that of social and
economic development.

In some ways, the Colonial Office was not unprepared for the criti-

cal discussions at the IPR conference, although the speed of the
developments and the depth of the crisis in early 1942 were unex-
pected. As we have seen, as early as March 1941 the Office had set up
a new Departmental Committee on Postwar Reconstruction in the
Colonies that was headed by Hailey.

Lord Moyne, the secretary of

state for the colonies, had written a lengthy ‘memorandum on the
Constitutional Future of the Colonies’ to inform the War Cabinet and
to encourage further discussion in the Colonial Office.

Moyne was

anxious to give guidance ‘as to what to say and what to avoid saying’
and recommended Hailey’s Romanes Lecture as having ‘given expres-
sion’ to some of the Colonial Office’s ideas.

In the Romanes lecture, Hailey had concluded with the ‘hope’ that

‘we should not give our native population cause to complain that

108

Lord Hailey

when they had asked for bread, we had offered them a vote’.

This

was Hailey’s way of turning the tables on those who put forward self-
government as the immediate goal of the colonies. Instead of stressing
political development, Hailey put the emphasis on the need to develop
the economy of the colonies. Sir R. I. Campbell noted Hailey’s point
and its usefulness in relation to American criticisms, in his
‘Memorandum on British imperialism and its relation to American
opinion’, when he commented that:

This suggested distinction in the American mind between emphasis
on political progressiveness and economic progressiveness in
respect of the Empire and the possible difference of outlook
between Americans and British are illustrated in Lord Hailey’s
Romanes lecture of May 1941.

Instead of political independence, Hailey argued, ‘our’ goal is the
‘active and systematic promotion of native welfare’.

In this way,

Hailey justified Britain’s role in the colonies as the stimulator of
economic development, and, he implied, this process was a necessary
condition before political development could begin.

The separation of political development from economic develop-

ment was not something unusual or dreamed up by Hailey. What was
unusual was Hailey’s emphasis that economic development needed to
precede political development. The American traditional view of
democracy, particularly influenced by the history of the United States,
was the reverse: that economic development followed political inde-
pendence. By stressing the third and fourth freedoms, the need for
people to live ‘free from fear and want’, however, Britain could place
the focus on economic development and put aside the difficult ques-
tion of the rights of the individuals who happened to live in the
colonies.

The Atlantic Charter reaffirmed this emphasis by stating in Article

Six that: ‘all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom
from fear and want.’

This notion of ‘freedom from fear and want’

would play an increasingly important part in the justification of
postwar imperial rule. At the start of the war, some were opposed to
this direction. For example, in the British Colonial Office, Gerard Gent,
the assistant under-secretary of state, commented that the Colonial
Office should ‘face frankly the political problem and [should] not take
refuge in economic ideals of material betterment’.

But Hailey found

it an essential argument in the face of American criticisms and, towards

Defending the Empire

109

the end of the war, the Americans started to concede. The important
evidence for Hailey’s presentation of Britain as a colonial power where
the state’s ‘primary function’ was to ‘concentrate its attention on the
improvement of the standards of living and the extension of the social
services in the Dependencies’

was the 1940 Colonial Development

and Welfare Act.

Prioritizing economic development

The 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act was in some ways
more of a response to the 1930s than the war (see Chapter 1 for the Act’s
origins). One of the most important influences on both American and
British thinking during the Second World War had been the experience
of the Depression in the 1930s. The experience of the economic slump
with the spectre of unemployment (and possible social unrest) haunted
those in power. Melodramatically The Times recalled in 1943 that ‘next
to war, unemployment has been the most widespread, the most insidi-
ous, and the most corroding malady of our generation: it is the specific
social disease of Western civilization in our time’.

The concern of the

authorities to avoid a repetition of the slump shaped much of the
response to the problem of the Second World War.

The Colonial Development and Welfare Act proved to be very timely

in 1940. Although many of the elements of the act had been planned
for some time, it was a tremendous aid to the Colonial Office in
substantiating their claim to be developing the colonies, particularly
once its budget for research had been increased. Christopher Thorne
called the budget a ‘niggardly amount’,

although Viscount Bledisloe

proudly claimed that ‘no country except Great Britain would dream of
embarking during a great war on social and industrial development
involving a great outlay from the national exchequer’.

The interesting point about the introduction of the Colonial

Development and Welfare Act was the recognition of the importance
of the propagandistic element of economic policy. Malcolm
MacDonald, when he spoke for it in the House of Commons, argued
that the bill ‘breaks new ground’. In particular, he emphasized that the
bill would increase the cost to the taxpayer of bringing about colonial
development – implying that this was the morally higher goal.

When later, in 1942, Harold Macmillan reiterated the need for the
Colonial Development and Welfare Act, he reminded the House of
Commons of the political embarrassment of the problem of poverty
and exploitation in the colonies.

110

Lord Hailey

Given that rights, citizenship and political status were major

demands, it is significant that the Colonial Development and Welfare
Act proposed changes on the level of economic support rather than
increased moves towards self-government and equal political status.
One of the expenses of the Act, however, was to establish a research
committee to investigate both political and economic development.
Hailey was appointed to chair and organize this committee once he
had returned from a fact-finding mission in Africa to investigate ‘the
volume and tempo of calls for self-government in the colonies’ and the
future policy for native administration.

In his report, he presented

colonial policy as changing as a result of changed domestic politics,
which viewed the ‘government as an agency for the active promotion
of social welfare’.

Hailey recognized that economic development was

a way of reinvigorating the imperial relationship, of reposing in this
‘new conception’ the ‘basis of a new philosophy of colonial rule’,

the Colonial Office repositioned itself as a vital guide in the path
towards independence:

The interest now taken in this must not be viewed merely as the
outcome of a humanitarian impulse or a manifestation of the
general sentiment of ‘trusteeship’. This improvement of the
economic and social life of the colonial population is an essential
part of the policy, to which we stand committed, of fitting them to
achieve a self-governing status.

The need to distance the Empire from any association with ‘exploita-
tion’,

particularly in the eyes of America, was not just a semantic

question. Lord Bledisloe, in his attempt to back up Hailey’s argument
for a ‘constructive interpretation’ of colonial trusteeship and, in partic-
ular, for the budget earmarked for colonial development and welfare,
told the House of Lords frankly that:

Enemy propaganda which tried to disparage our treatment of the
native races, and, on the other hand, the magnificent support in
money, material and endeavour which the native races had
afforded this country, made it desirable to emphasize that this was
not a window-dressing policy which it was not our intention to
carry out.

Hailey even claimed that the existence of racial consciousness in the
colonies was itself proof of economic growth that had improved

Defending the Empire

111

education and living standards.

Hailey was using the policy of

planned economic development to explain Britain’s future action in
the colonies and to morally justify past colonial rule. Explicitly, Hailey
argued at the end of the war, that, for him, the Empire:

has a great mission in the world, a mission it can only fulfil if it
maintains its moral leadership. And its influence is impaired so long
as it includes within its orbit units which are weak in their
resources, with low economic standards, and of marked inferiority
in their social conditions.

This meant, according to Hailey, that the colonies could only develop
with British help – help that was ethical because it was developing the
colonies. In other words, the new morality of British rule was that it
was going to promote development, although development was
limited to economic growth before steps could be taken towards polit-
ical independence. The British had insisted upon the separation of the
goal of independence and its precondition, and then determined that
the precondition required British rule. In the final analysis, British rule
was still justified by British rule. Economic development may well
have been desired by people in the colonies, but the British were more
concerned with justification than effect and rarely, if ever, considered
the possibility that imperial rule may have hindered economic or
political development. It was not until later, Kenneth Robinson points
out, that the failure of imperial rule to benefit the local economy was
recognized.

The argument that an increased level of state intervention could

take the colonies towards, rather than away from, self-government was
to facilitate the setting up of a new framework for postwar cooperation
between Britain and America. Part of the reason for the new justifica-
tion was the way that the image of the state had been transformed
during the war and by the experience of the 1930s. This was expressed
in the popularity of Keynesianism that had been further stimulated by
the publication of the Beveridge Report on social security in November
1942.

The real effect of such a policy direction was, however, the expan-

sion of the colonial administrative apparatus in the immediate
postwar period which John Lonsdale, the Cambridge historian of
Africa, has called the ‘second colonial occupation’.

The increase in

the numbers of personnel following the war has been documented by
Anthony Kirk-Greene who notes, despite Hailey’s wartime call to

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Lord Hailey

Africanize the administration, that ‘it was after rather than by inde-
pendence that most provincial administrations passed the 50:50 ratio
of African to expatriate DCs [District Commissioners]’.

The increase

in investment and administration was proposed, according to Hailey,
as a way of developing colonies to prepare for self-government. In
practice, the increased level of intervention may have been one of the
contributing causes to the development of mass independence move-
ments that rejected this level of interference in the life of the people.

At this stage, putting social and economic development first was

useful for the British administration because it sidetracked the issue of
political independence, and thereby postponed self-determination.
More importantly, in providing a clear reason for intervention, devel-
opment maintained Britain’s ‘unquestioned right to administer’ its
colonies. This was the ‘principle’ that the Colonial Office were so
desperate for the Americans to acknowledge.

In this light, we can see

that promoting economic rather than political development was in
Britain’s interest at this time because it put aside the question of self-
determination, the earlier pressure point for US criticisms.

By the end of the war the Americans had come to see that collab-

oration with Britain would be essential in rebuilding postwar stability.
By the next IPR conference, in Atlantic City in 1944, British and
American interests had converged. The Rapporteur’s report on the
conference discussion noted that: ‘It was generally agreed that a
radical change has taken place by the general acceptance of the neces-
sity for international collaboration in the future.’

There were still

many disagreements on details, but there was a consensus on the
essential direction of withholding political independence.

One of

the reasons for the new convergence was the United States’ interest in
the Pacific islands which had already been noted by the Colonial
Office in one memorandum that suggested that ‘if the Americans
needed stronger supervisory powers for the Pacific islands’ then that
would ‘fit’ in with the ‘idea of dividing the world into several regions
for postwar security and political purposes’.

The issue of regional

authorities overseeing colonial territories will be considered in
Chapter 5; the point here is that as the interests of Britain and America
converged towards the end of the war, so they came to an agreement
on the language that would underpin the new international frame-
work.

The compromise position was that colonial rule was now under-

written by a new morality rather than by race superiority. The moral
aim, declared by all, was that colonial rule was to ensure economic

Defending the Empire

113

development primarily, with political development being a secondary
and more long-term goal. Still using the terms of the Atlantic Charter,
but by concentrating on Article Six and the ‘hope’ that ‘the men in all
the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want’, the
British and the Americans had managed quietly to put aside the terms
of Article Three and the idea of ‘the right of all peoples to choose the
form of government under which they will live’.

The Foreign Office had succeeded in its avowed aim to ‘concentrate

in these backward territories on freedom from fear and freedom from
want’.

100

Indeed, this was the very phrase to which the American state

department agreed. In the spring of 1944 Dr Isaiah Bowman, whom
Hailey had met just after the IPR conference in January 1943,

101

visited

London and conferred with the Foreign Office. Richard Law reported
on this meeting to the Colonial Office:

In talking to us, Dr Bowman has told us that the State Department
have now come round to the view that the colonial problem should
not be approached from the point of view of the rate at which we
should aim at granting political independence to the territories in
question. They think that the approach should rather be from the
angles of Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. This is, of course,
eminently satisfactory as far as it goes. . . .

He pointed out that while the normal American approach to colo-

nial questions was a political one, the President and the State
Department realized that such an approach was unpalatable to us
and was probably, in any case, out of date. That was why they were
now advocating an economic approach from the point of view of
resources, standards of life, and so on, instead of the purely political
approach which they had hitherto favoured. Dr Bowman told me
that he had been charged by the President with the task of discov-
ering whether there was not some common ground in colonial
questions upon which we could both take our stand.

102

Eighteen months earlier Hailey had insisted upon this very point to
the Americans on the conference floor. Evidently, the real complaint
of a critical observer who had written home that ‘The worst thing of
all was that the British reported that they had won a complete victory
at the conference’

103

was that the British claims were true, even if the

effects were not obvious until a certain time later.

114

Lord Hailey

Hailey’s impact

In January and February of 1943 Hailey visited New York, Boston,
Chicago, Providence, Princeton, New Haven and Washington, giving
many university lectures and after-dinner speeches.

104

From the lists

of dinner guests and the letters of thanks from universities and others,
it is apparent that Hailey made an impact on the many influential
people that he met. While in America he wrote an unsigned editorial
for Reader’s Digest and an article for Foreign Affairs. He gained essential
first-hand experience of defending Britain and the Empire before some
of the more hostile audiences. Even in 1953, when Hailey opened the
Chicago conference on Africa in the Modern World, his apparently
popular address was broadcast over 150 radio stations.

Through this sort of discussion, the American and British diplomats

began to learn how to work with each other in the context of their new
relative positions of power and the new international framework. After
the initial shock to the system, especially after the Allied Forces had
regained some of their early losses, extensive work was done on the
plans for postwar reconstruction. During his trip in 1942–3, Hailey, as
chair of the Colonial Committee for Postwar Reconstruction, talked
with Stanley Hornbeck who was an important member of the
American Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, among
others, at the Institute of Pacific Relations conference. The debate, at
times, was heated and some people doubted whether Americans would
ever concede the return of the Empire to Britain. But the criticisms
were also the seed of a new solution.

Even before Hailey’s American tour, the IPR conference had had a

certain impact. After all it had, for the first time, a ‘considerable official
element, though, of course, it remained technically an “unofficial
body”’.

105

One anti-British letter, intercepted by the censors, admitted

that the ‘British sent a strong delegation that had prepared its line for
months in advance’.

106

D. M. MacDougall, Head of the British

Information Service in the United States, who had been part of the
British delegation, supported Hailey’s leadership, writing back to the
Colonial Office that: ‘only Hailey’s generalship succeeded in dragging
out for a share in the unfriendly limelight America’s complete inability
to say whether she would take part in postwar world security arrange-
ments, or retreat again to isolation.’

107

But then, MacDougall was a

particular fan of Hailey and his work at the conference.

108

More importantly, the representative from Thailand and the Indian

delegation had backed up the British argument, and this was without

Defending the Empire

115

Hailey visiting India beforehand to brief the delegation as the under-
secretary of state for India had suggested.

109

For example, the Thai

Minister had argued against international administration because, as
he put it, ‘we prefer to deal with the one devil we know than with 15
or 16 we haven’t yet met.’

110

This point was reiterated by Hailey when

lecturing at Princeton, when he claimed that the colonies ‘have stated
that they have greater confidence in the intention of the British
government to promote self-governing institutions than they could
feel in an international body with the members of which they have
had no previous contact’.

111

The Indian delegation did not include any Congress members – in

fact, the opposite. The British had, as ‘a clever move’, brought over ‘a
sweet but self-conscious untouchable, the most anti-Congress of all’,
as described by one critical observer.

112

According to Sir George

Sansom’s conference report, the Indian delegation had made the
Americans and Canadians, the biggest critics of the British Empire,
quite uncomfortable:

Before the meeting it had been supposed by some American and
Canadian members that the Indian representatives were poor,
deluded ‘stooges’ of the British, who would welcome advice and
comfort from their American friends. These friends were soon un-
deceived when they discovered that the Indian delegation included
men of high calibre and independent mind who had great experi-
ence of affairs and were quite capable of holding their own. It was
made very clear that the Indian situation was much more complex
than the Americans in general supposed, and that it was not one in
which they could meddle without risk.

113

In particular, one Indian delegate had raised a similar point to Hailey’s
earlier comments about race by suggesting that ‘America had better
solve her own communal problems before proffering advice to
others.’

114

The other ‘delicate’ subject, confirmed by Sir George

Sansom, had been that the ‘question of racial discrimination was
touched on by Indian delegates in reference to immigration and other
issues’.

115

The issue of race was clearly one that simmered under the

surface at the conference. Although either side of the debate could have
charged the other with racial discrimination

116

– America at home and

in its army, Britain in the colonies and in colonial administration –
neither could comfortably speak openly about it for fear of awakening
a wider discussion amongst all the delegates, particularly the Chinese

116

Lord Hailey

and Indians. Using it to score points was, however, par for the course,
as is illustrated by MacDougall’s remark on defending the Empire at the
conference: ‘How much would any of us at Mont Tremblant have given
to have been able to quote a coloured politico in this sense!’

117

It seems that Hailey established, in this way, a certain space for

Britain to reclaim some of the moral authority that had been lost
during the military defeats of the early years of the war. Lord Halifax,
Ambassador in Washington, noted that ‘the conference which was
originally designed to some extent as a forum for an indictment of
British policy, eventually moved to a more realistic and appreciative
attitude towards that policy’.

118

And by the end of the conference, Sir

George Sansom recalled that: ‘Dr Hornbeck [of the US delegation] even
found himself defending the past record of the British Empire and
pointing out the contribution made by Great Britain to the world’s
stock of progressive ideas and liberal institutions.’

119

The key mechanism that Hailey found for defending the Empire was

the adoption of a moral tone and the ability to use the terms that were
under scrutiny, those that Sansom listed as: ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’,
‘racial equality’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘colonialism’.

120

Hailey was able to

undermine America’s monopoly on these terms by redefining Britain’s
imperial mission . At Princeton Hailey tried to evoke the ‘better quali-
ties’ of colonial rule by talking of Lord Lothian’s ideas of ‘heroism’ and
‘devotion to the cause of weaker peoples’.

121

Hailey used his experience gained in India, not in administration

but in propaganda, to retake the moral high ground from the
Americans. It is this new language of morality that is the focus for the
next chapter. Hailey had realized, in the reappropriation of this moral
rhetoric, as had Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish social scientist working
for the Carnegie Foundation, the importance of the race question in
international politics. Hailey had worked with Dr Keppel of the
Carnegie Foundation for the African Survey,

122

and now Keppel was

working with Myrdal on An American Dilemma on the position of black
people in America. In this book, Myrdal wrote of the implications of
the morality of racial discrimination that:

The main international implication is, instead, that America, for its
international prestige, power, and future security, needs to demon-
strate to the world that American Negroes can be satisfactorily
integrated into its democracy. . . . The treatment of the Negro in
America has not made good propaganda for America abroad and
particularly not among colored nations.

123

Defending the Empire

117

The Institute of Pacific Relations conference had been an opportunity
for a skilled operator, such as Hailey, to take Myrdal’s problematic and
use it against the American delegates. The fact that some of his ideas
and methods of presentation, such as prioritizing economic rather
than political development, became important later has more to do
with the broader geopolitical convergence of British and American
interests. Looking at the arguments involved, however, provides a way
to understand how issues that involved national interest were actually
perceived and expressed at the time. The conference illustrates how,
once politicized, the issue of race was a useful tool for intellectual
combatants, such as Hailey, to set out a new framework for negotiation.

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Lord Hailey

Reformulating Imperial Authority

Introduction

The British Colonial Office was sensitive to the need to fight an ideo-
logical battle for the Empire. Stressing Britain’s commitment to
enhance rather than ‘exploit’ the colonies had become crucial after
Roosevelt’s Four Freedom declaration. The idea that the Allies made up
the ‘free’ world while the Axis powers ‘enslaved’ the others, did not
quite square with the image of the British Empire especially within the
United States. The Colonial Office tried to forge a new language to
articulate their authority since the old expression had been discred-
ited. It is not possible here to attempt to assess the influence of these
ideas on actual administrative practice. The task here is to reconstruct
the history of the ideas deployed to justify empire rather than the
actual methods used.

As the war continued, the British sought to find common ground

with the Americans on questions of colonial policy for the postwar
period. The debate over race and empire provided the means to find a
new language of imperial authority, untainted by the notion of white
racial superiority, as new themes came to the fore in response to the
political pressures of the day. This chapter examines the related themes
of ‘partnership’ in the Empire; the postponing of self-government
through the issue of minority protection; and the question of
jurisdiction.

The idea of a colonial charter

One of the problems facing the Colonial Office in the early phase of
the war was the Atlantic Charter, which Britain had signed. The

119

wording in Article Three of the Charter seemed to promise liberation
to all countries in the world including the colonies. As the Charter was
not specific about its application, however, many people called on the
Colonial Office to spell out a new charter for the colonies. The
Colonial Office sought to put together a ‘colonial charter’ jointly with
the India Office as an ‘authoritative interpretation’ for the War
Cabinet.

The India Office and the Colonial Office, however, held

different underlying concerns about the current political situation.
Leo Amery, of the India Office, was anxious to limit the application of
the Atlantic Charter while not causing any inflammation of Indian
nationalist sentiment. The Colonial Office, meanwhile, assumed that
independence was a distant and even impossible issue for most of the
dependent empire and especially for Africa. Amery drafted the first
attempt at a ‘colonial charter’. He opened the document with the
statement:

Though animated by the same spirit of liberty that has guided the
development of self-governing institutions in the British Empire –
with regard to which both the general aim of our policy and its
particular application in the case of India, Burma and certain of the
more fully developed Crown Colonies, has been made abundantly
clear – [the Charter] has no direct reference to that process.

Despite wishing to ‘agree to a formula over both India and the
Colonies’, Lord Moyne, the secretary of state for the colonies, could
not accept Amery’s first two sentences. Fundamentally, for Moyne,
self-government was not the ‘general aim of our policy’. Frankly, he
wrote:

Some Colonies are so small, or strategically so important, that
complete self-government seems out of the question; and I cannot,
for instance, imagine any conditions under which we would give
dominion status to Aden, Gibraltar, the Gambia or British
Honduras.

Instead, Moyne proposed the condition that: ‘while not in any way
whittling down the principle which, as has been stated, they regard as
of universal application, HMG must retain to themselves the right to
judge whether any such request is justified by the capabilities of the
people in question.’

Amery’s prompt reaction was that such a state-

ment would ‘send both India and Burma right off the deep end’ as it

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Lord Hailey

implied that Britain was still of the view that non-Europeans could not
administer their own countries.

After another attempt from both

sides of the debate, Moyne finally admitted that they could not
express in one paper ‘two divergent ideas’. It was clear, instead, that:

In India and Burma, the people definitely demand self-government
and you are committed to grant it. In the colonies, it is otherwise.
The right to choose the form of government has never till now been
definitely laid down and, unlike you, we are not committed, in your
words at the top of the paragraph of the second page, to a declared
policy of ‘development of self-governing institutions to the fullest
practicable extent within the British Empire’.

The problem of the issue of self-government could not, however, be
ignored. Amery warned Moyne that Winston Churchill was bound to
be questioned on this issue on 9 September 1941 in parliament –
although at that stage Amery wondered whether both Amery and
Moyne should make separate statements and ‘if Winston does make a
statement we can leave it to him to combine the two in whatever
fashion he pleases’.

In the end, Hailey,

the Viceroy of India,

and the

rest of the War Cabinet were drafted in, where the India and Colonial
Offices had failed, to try to create a consensus before Parliamentary
Question Time.

The final statement drafted for the Prime Minister dealt with the

issue of colonial self-government in two steps. First, Churchill noted,
the Atlantic Charter did ‘not try to explain how the broad principles
proclaimed by it are to be applied to each and every case, which will
have to be dealt with when the war comes to an end’.

In other words,

the application of the Joint Declaration of the Atlantic Charter
depended on circumstance, which would be judged by the British
government. The condition was modified for India and Burma so as
not to further antagonize relations.

Second, Churchill claimed that:

We have made declarations on these matters which are complete in
themselves, free from ambiguity; and related to the conditions and
circumstances of the territories and peoples affected. They will be
found to be entirely in harmony with the high conception of
freedom and justice which inspired the Joint Declaration.

This final comment was not a rhetorical flourish, nor an off-the-cuff
overstatement, but a precise wording that had been agreed by the War

Reformulating Imperial Authority

121

Cabinet – even though, as the Colonial Office quickly realized, it was
entirely without foundation.

Five months later, when Lord

Cranborne took over the position of secretary of state for the colonies,
the lack of colonial promises was thought to be ‘embarrassing’ and
Cranborne complained that ‘declarations on colonial policy seem to
have been mainly conspicuous by their absence, and, when any have
been made, they are vague in the extreme’.

The lack of clear declarations was a problem particularly in the face

of American criticisms. The preference on the part of the Americans for
‘slogans’, as Harold Butler stationed in Washington put it, exacerbated
the sense of weakness in the colonial office. If only the office could, as
Butler proposed, simply ‘show that [the Atlantic Charter] is applicable
to our colonial policy’, then perhaps, as Butler hoped, ‘three quarters
of the talk about “imperialism” will evaporate’.

The fact that the Colonial Office had agreed to Churchill’s parlia-

mentary statement, claiming that the declarations existed when they
clearly did not, indicates the level of pressure that the Colonial Office,
in particular, faced over this issue of self-government. Not only was
there pressure from the colonies (although that was more a problem
for the India Office), but the ideals of ‘freedom and justice’ were being
held up by the Americans as the only justification for foreign inter-
vention. For example, the Washington Post argued that: ‘if India does
not get her freedom then this war of freedom which we are waging
would be a fraud and a delusion.’

The idea of partnership

By replacing the term ‘trusteeship’ with ‘partnership’, Lord Hailey
attempted to rephrase Britain’s colonial policy. Hailey, according to
Michael Lee and Martin Petter, tried to ‘convey “a new vision of the
future” which might serve as the basis of a Colonial Charter’.

Not

only was the term partnership used by Harold Macmillan, in a
Commons debate in June 1942, but it was also adopted by Arthur
Creech Jones, Labour Party spokesman on the colonies, who wanted a
term that expressed ‘equality and friendship, the idea of service and
practical assistance and which expresses it in dynamic and construc-
tive terms’.

As early as May 1942, Hailey had begun to note the inadequacy of

‘trusteeship’, particularly when he needed to promote the role of the
Colonial Office. At the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society,
for example, Hailey, in his address, announced that:

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Lord Hailey

with the progress of events our relations to the dependencies are
now coming under the influence of a conception which if it should
not be considered as replacing that of trusteeship, at all events
embodies a more constructive interpretation of it.

Hailey regarded partnership as giving a ‘more constructive interpret-
ation’ to the Colonial Office role for two reasons. First, the notion of
partnership suggested that, although initially there would be senior
and junior partners, eventually they could become equal partners.
Unlike the notion of trustee and ward, which seemed to imply a fixed
hierarchical relationship, Hailey wanted to capture the notion of
development. The racial, and propagandistic, significance of the ques-
tion of development was picked up by Moyne, the secretary of state for
the colonies, at a meeting of the Royal Empire Society. After Hailey
had spoken, Moyne, who was chairing, commented:

if we were fighting for liberty we could not set bounds to the
advance of other races. We must avoid any reproach that, when we
blamed Hitler for his poisonous doctrine of the Herrenvolk, we had
a similar doctrine lurking in our own hearts.

Second, by introducing the notion of development Hailey was placing
stress on the economic sphere as well as the political. Hailey empha-
sized this type of development by using the Colonial Development
and Welfare Act 1940. The new role of the Colonial Office was to
stimulate economic growth and a social welfare programme, just as
domestic ministries were planning for postwar Britain. Hailey
supported this domestic policy and argued for its extension, thus
producing a:

conception of the State not merely as an agency for maintaining
justice and equal rights, or for preventing abuse, as it was held to be
in earlier political theory, but as the most active agency for promot-
ing social welfare and improving the general standard of living.
That is a conception which increasingly dominates our domestic
policy, and it is forcing its way from domestic into colonial
policy.

As the British government stepped in to promote the welfare of the
people of the colonies, so Hailey envisaged the beginning of a new
relationship between the centre and the periphery – where the state

Reformulating Imperial Authority

123

regarded ‘standards of living in its own domestic backward areas’ in
the same light as poverty in the Empire.

The extension of domestic

policy into the colonial arena, treating British and colonial people as
equally deserving of welfare, showed how Hailey dismissed, as Moyne
had suggested, ‘the bounds to the advance of other races’, considering
instead that ‘other races’ required the same welfare as the ‘poor whites’
back home.

The development of the ‘native races’ was, however, thought to be

limited in one important respect: the sphere of politics. Hailey was not
sure whether, in the political sphere, the colonies ought to have the
same political institutions as the British. Instead, he feared that:

an attempt to develop a parliamentary system of government based
on representation of the usual type may produce situations which,
so far from assisting a community on the road to self-government,
may in the end create an argument for withholding it.

Hailey maintained this doubt about the capabilities of the colonial
people, but learned to couch it in terms of the possibility of improve-
ment, through his idea of partnership. For example, Hailey used to
suggest that the interwar system of ‘indirect rule’, based on separate
paths of development for different races, could provide ‘a structure
better suited to the conditions of certain of the dependencies than that
based on the methods of representation which we ourselves follow’.

Given Hailey’s presumption of racial difference, it was not surprising
that he still doubted the capacity of colonial people for self-govern-
ment and objected to the fact that ‘America is now interested mainly
in the question of political status’, because, by implication, a signifi-
cant change in the political status of the colonies would have caused
the disintegration of the Empire.

One of the important audiences for the concept of partnership was

the Americans, and Hailey used the Institute of Pacific Relations
conference at the end of 1942 to promote his ideas.

Even before the

conference, the ‘partnership’ concept had been appreciated in the USA
according to the Foreign Office.

The pressure by the United States for independent political status for

the colonies, and in particular India, did not entirely eclipse issues of
economic poverty. For example, Americans were horrified at condi-
tions in West Africa. What really embarrassed the Colonial Office was
the fact that on ‘several occasions’ Americans had remarked that the
British ‘should do more for these people’. Lieutenant Colonel Cantlie,

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Lord Hailey

reporting to the Colonial Office, blamed the ‘primitive tribes’ because
Americans ‘compare the West Africans, who a few years ago were
living a primitive tribal existence, with their own coloured people who
have been at least semi-civilised for 100 years’. But Cantlie also noted
that the Americans’ attitude was ‘curious in that they fraternize to a
great extent with the Indians, while at the same time refusing their
own coloured troops the right of remaining in public places with
themselves’.

It was this discrepancy in American racial attitudes that

had proved so useful to the Colonial Office delegates to the Institute
of Pacific Relations conference.

Finding a compromise

After Britain’s loss of Singapore, many Americans proudly defended
their relationship with the Pacific islanders who fought with the US
Army. The Americans shared much of British paternalism towards
colonial peoples but, particularly after Singapore, feared that British
incompetence would bring white prestige as a whole into disrepute.
For example, P. D. Butler, stationed in Cairo, reported that:

The Americans feel that they have got to win this war; Malaya, etc,
has convinced them that we are not only Imperialists, but bungling
Imperialists (in the past they had always given us credit for knowing
our Imperialist job), and they are thinking of and discussing futures
for our colonies in which we play no very prominent part.

In contrast, the United States administration put itself forward as the
agency for liberation. An example was the new pro-self-government
policy for Puerto Rico, celebrated by, for example, Anne O’Hare
McCormick in the New York Times:

The proposal to extend a large measure of self-government to the
people of Puerto Rico implies more than a change of status for the
largest America possession in the Caribbean. It is at once a reaction
to the events that have shaken the pillars of power in the Pacific, a
sign of our own good intentions in respect to a new postwar order,
and a clear suggestion to other colonial powers to go and do like-
wise.

In the summer of 1942, with the added pressure of the defeats in the
Pacific, the debate over a public statement on the future of ‘colonial

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125

peoples’ was revived. This time British and American officials aimed to
produce a joint colonial charter, one that could both re-express their
common front and involve China thereby demonstrating an alliance
with the East. The hope was to issue a statement against the view that
the Pacific War was a war of white against Asian. Some officials also
saw it as a way of patching up the differences of opinion between
Britain and America.

For the British Foreign and Colonial Office, advice was not some-

thing they appreciated. The question of ‘being told how to run empire’
was something on which the British Foreign and Colonial Offices were
particularly sensitive. One reason given was that they felt that nobody
else appreciated the complexity and the variety of imperial rule and
instead, as Halifax complained, others attempted an ‘over-simplifica-
tion which would fit India, Jamaica and Nyasaland all at once’.

In the summer of 1942, Cordell Hull, US secretary of state, talked

with ambassador Lord Halifax, about how they needed to ‘guide
opinion wisely in relation to backward peoples of differing grades and
capacities’. According to Halifax, Hull, ‘with an eye on India’, wanted
to ‘reassert some of the principles of his speech, ie, necessity of fitness
for and willingness to fight for freedom’ as a condition for self-govern-
ment. Hull shared Halifax’s conception that they were dealing with
‘backward peoples’ and proposed that the British could improve their
relations with India by withholding the promise of self-government
until India joined forces in the fight against Japan.

Encouragingly for the British officials, Hull had introduced the

phrase ‘parent states’ as a euphemism for the imperial nation. This was
positively received in British official circles because it upheld imperial
hierarchy.

The Foreign Office (informed by the Colonial Office)

argued that any process of changeover to an international body could
delay the development of self-governing institutions. Arnold Toynbee,
stationed at the British Embassy in Washington, was commissioned to
discuss this point with Benjamin Gerig, the ‘wise man’ at the American
state department, and he requested that Hailey also see Gerig when
Hailey was over for the IPR conference.

Toynbee reported that Gerig

had conceded that ‘the Western-educated native intelligentsia doesn’t
like the idea of international administration, because it thinks this
would delay full self-government’.

Arriving at a joint statement had already proved impossible for the

Colonial and India Office – this time they were hoping to overcome
their differences and accommodate the views of the Americans. There
was, however, a certain impetus to the process this time around. First,

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Lord Hailey

the Foreign Office wanted to have some sort of draft statement with
which to brief Hailey and the delegation to the IPR conference in
December 1942.

Second, the overture had originated with the US

State Department and there was some fear that if the British did not
provide a response quickly, then they might ‘be confronted by a draft
Declaration composed by the Americans which may be far less satis-
factory from our point of view’.

The two factors combined pushed

the secretaries of state concerned to work much harder at achieving a
consensus for the cabinet draft.

Lord Cranborne suggested the use of regional committees, after

Hailey’s proposal, to organize international influence over colonial
areas. The advantage was thought to be that they would involve ‘no
explicit derogation of sovereignty’ but by using ‘consultative commit-
tees’, Cranborne thought it would ‘be acceptable to Attlee and the Left,
for it has in it the element of internationalism’. More importantly the
regional committees would involve the Americans – but only in
certain areas, so that: ‘no doubt, the Americans would be a great
nuisance to us on the Caribbean Committee, where they would
constantly be interfering in the internal affairs of our West Indian
Colonies. But they will do that in any case.’

Despite the use of the regional committees, the inclusion of ‘parent

states’ and the committee’s power to be ‘co-ordinating the policies’
(rather than just the ‘collaboration and consultation between’), and
the fear that ‘if we submit to them too bare a platter, they may reject
it out of hand’,

the Americans did just that. In March 1943, the

Foreign Office received a draft declaration from the US state depart-
ment, ‘which it is true takes some cognizance of our draft, but its basic
idea is wholly different’.

Sir George Gater, permanent under-secre-

tary of state for the colonies, minuted dramatically:

After reading the American draft two or three times, I am left with
a feeling of complete hopelessness. I do not think it is possible to
secure such amendment of the draft as would make it acceptable to
us and, I would add, to the colonies. The whole theme of the draft
is wrongly conceived and exhibits on the part of the draftsmen
ignorance of actual conditions in British colonies. It is only neces-
sary to think of applying its principles to colonies like Mauritius to
realize its full absurdity.

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127

The American colonial charter

On 3 May 1943, Attlee, Eden, Cranborne, Stanley, Jebb and Eastwood
met to discuss the American draft. Mr Winant of the US State
Department had already held a brief discussion with Cranborne who
had complained that the ‘emphasis on independence seemed to him
most unfortunate’, as he thought ‘it was likely to encourage half-baked
ideas in many colonial dependencies’.

At the meeting at 11 Downing

Street, the secretaries of states decided that the American draft was
altogether unsatisfactory for several reasons.

The consensus at the meeting was that the draft, which covered both

ideas of independence

and liberation, was apparently intended to

apply to colonial dependencies and to enemy-occupied states. The
ministers present considered it ‘quite unrealistic to deal in one docu-
ment with Czechoslovakia and the Gambia, Poland and Barbados’. It
was also assumed that the result would be the impracticable ‘multipli-
cation of small and completely independent entities all over the world’
which would be a ‘retrograde step’ in establishing an ‘enduring secur-
ity system’. The ministers feared that the American draft would
‘encourage separatist tendencies all over the world’ and the idea of a
‘definite timetable’ towards independence, or even the possible use of
the more ‘acceptable’ term ‘self-government’, was seen as ‘quite un-
acceptable to Her Majesty’s Government’. Not only was it ‘not possible
to say when that time will be’ that colonial dependencies ‘might be
ready’ for self-government, but, it was said, ‘many parts of the colonial
empire are still so little removed from their primitive state that it must
be a matter of many generations before they are ready for anything
like full self-government’.

As a consequence of their discussion, the secretaries of state

decided not to report to the War Cabinet but instead to approach
John Winant, then American ambassador, and, once told of their
objections, ‘ask his advice on how we ought to proceed’.

Hailey, on

the recommendation of Lord Halifax, was also given a copy of the
American draft and asked for his interpretation, especially in the light
of his experience of talking with the Americans in the winter of
1942–3.

Despite many criticisms, Hailey was not quite as despairing

as his colleagues in government. On the issue of independence, he
agreed that ‘it is one thing to propose international control for the
ex-Italian areas; it is another to contemplate it for British, French or
Dutch areas recovered from the Japanese’. Although Hailey was
against the ‘attempt to insist on fixing dates upon which the colonial

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Lord Hailey

peoples shall be accorded the status of “full independence within a
system of general security”’, he was also doubtful ‘whether the
President himself would insist on this; he has spoken rather about the
necessity for a period of “graded education” than about the need for
“liberation”’.

Hailey also recognized that it would be difficult for Britain to

distance itself from the common interpretation of Article Three of the
Atlantic Charter. Furthermore, Hailey argued, ‘to imply that there is a
distinction between self-government and independence suggests a
refinement which will be viewed with a great deal of suspicion in the
USA’. The problem, as he saw it, was that ‘the use of the word “inde-
pendence” may create an awkward reaction in some of the colonies’.
On the other hand, any redefinition away from Article Three would be
seen as the British refusing to ‘toe the line’. Hailey advised that a
unilateral declaration would not ‘carry weight’ with the Americans
and the only purpose would be to make ‘our position clear to the
people of the colonies’.

Hailey’s concern about the impact of the Anglo-American debate on

the colonies echoed Cranborne’s views when secretary of state for the
colonies in October 1942. Cranborne had commented then that the
phrase ‘as yet unable to bear the full burden of complete independ-
ence’ would encourage the colonies to ‘keep up a simmering agitation’.
As far as Cranborne was concerned he ‘could not agree to a phrase
which is likely to have such deplorable effects, just to placate the
Americans, who do not understand the conditions under which we
have to work’. The underlying issue was, for Cranborne, in his ‘heart
of hearts’, that ‘most of the colonies, especially in Africa, will probably
not be fit for complete independence for centuries’.

By the spring of 1943, however, Hailey had experienced at first hand

the debate at the IPR conference in Canada. As a result, Hailey was
inclined to go beyond Cranborne’s conservative viewpoint. In contrast
to the Colonial Office’s crisis mentality, Hailey was beginning to put
together a constructive role for colonial administration. Hailey,
echoing the climate in Britain of increasing self-confidence by 1943,
began to argue that the development of ‘backward and dependent
peoples’ was in fact the way that Britain could both reduce political
tension in the colonies and advance the presentation of the Empire in
America. Hailey’s approach was to focus on Britain’s role in develop-
ing the colonial economy rather than on the formal political
relationship of Britain with the colonies. In discussion with Hailey, the
Foreign Office in Washington reported back that:

Reformulating Imperial Authority

129

While therefore placing due stress on defence, it will be advisable to
show that in our view security depends not only upon provision of
means for preventing aggression, but also on attaining improved
social and political conditions amongst backward and dependent
peoples.

Christopher Eastwood had pointed out that ‘the Americans are quite
ready to make their dependencies politically “independent” while
economically bound hand and foot to them and see no inconsistency
in this’.

Hailey, however, had taken advantage of the American atti-

tude while in America. He had sought to establish common ground
while also maintaining the right-to-rule principle that was essential for
Britain (and, as Eastwood had seen, also for the United States). What
Hailey took from his long experience in colonial administration was
that the issue of control was more important than its particular form.
How control was practically achieved seemed to matter less than the
principle at stake.

Whereas officials such as Eastwood saw only the dangers associated

with American criticisms of empire, and then were angry at apparent
American hypocrisy, Hailey, after his intense discussions in America,
had realized that what appeared as hypocrisy to Eastwood was, in fact,
the basis for a new working relationship. At base, according to Hailey,
the British and the Americans were concerned to maintain a certain
level of control over their effective empires. This had, for the British
Empire, been expressed in the past through political and racial sub-
ordination. Hailey, in dialogue with US policy-makers, had grasped
that in essence imperial authority could be maintained by a new form
of state intervention – one that had the authority to intervene because
it was promoting the colonial economy.

Britain and America never did manage to agree on a colonial charter

per se, although they did, much later, settle on the preamble for the
founding of the United Nations. The important question, however, is
how, despite the lack of a colonial charter, both Britain and America
came to agree on central issues. These issues were important because
they expressed the language of concern and humanitarianism, appro-
priate to the emerging postwar world, and, at the same time,
maintained the authority of the key imperialist powers. The major
powers would continue to be able to determine the future of the colo-
nial territories – only this time the source of their legitimacy was based
less on racial difference and more on their new role as protector and
developmental economist.

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Lord Hailey

We can see this trend when we consider the debate in the Colonial

Office over the American draft of the colonial charter. Hailey’s sugges-
tions included a change in substance as well as in form. Most of the
discussion in the Colonial Office had been of whether it was possible
to shift the Americans to use the words ‘self-government’ instead of
‘independence’.

Again, in comparing Eastwood’s views with

Hailey’s, we can see the difference in approach. Hailey’s instinct was
to sidestep the semantic issue of the title of the goal and shift the focus
of discussion onto the new arena of the future role of Britain. Whereas
Eastwood, pessimistically and honestly, admitted that:

It seems to me utterly wrong to set up independence as the goal for
the greater number of the colonies and even if we had said some-
thing of this sort in the past (which I do not think we have) I think
it would be great mistake to say it again. I do not think the phrase
‘self-government’ is really much better. I suppose it does leave a
loop-hole for arguing that what we really mean is only local self-
government, but that would not be a very honest interpretation of
the phrase.

Hailey had, in contrast, attempted to lead the Colonial Office into
incorporating, rather than reacting to, American thinking. Hailey’s
submission was circulated to the ministers,

but they decided, against

Hailey’s advice, to make a unilateral statement and forgo an Anglo-
American charter at this time.

Stanley made a statement to the

House of Commons on 13 July 1943, having told Winant, the US
ambassador, of the rejection of the American draft in May. As Hailey
had predicted, Stanley’s statement went ‘unnoticed’ and in November,
when the Prime Minister was in Canada, Roosevelt handed Churchill
a document entitled ‘Declaration by the United Nations on
International Independence’.

To the surprise of British officials, the

‘new’ document was much the same as the last, and the Americans had
made no attempt to incorporate Stanley’s comments. Hailey was thus
not entirely successful by himself in shifting policy, but other events
helped to nudge the Colonial Office in Hailey’s direction.

Withholding political independence

Hailey, through his discussions at the IPR conference and after, was
sensitized to the question of political control and racial discrimina-
tion. This was partly due to his experience of the Indian independence

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131

movement, but also partly because the impact of the war had changed
his opinions. Hailey’s approach, at the start of the war, was to with-
hold political independence because, he claimed, it would give
political power to a minority over an uneducated majority. In particu-
lar, Hailey argued:

There is always some temptation to seek to reach a further stage on
the road by entrusting political powers to a dominant section of the
population, or to an elite which commends itself by its superior
education or its closer contact with European ways of life.

Though Hailey was doubtful of the wisdom of the transference of
political power to the indigenous people, the argument he directed at
the Americans was more subtle. Rather than concentrate on the in-
ability, in his eyes, of the colonial people to handle political
responsibility, he focused on the positive role that the imperial power
needed to play in developing the right conditions. For this relation-
ship was, according to Hailey, common to both powers:

America has had similar experiences in many of its Southern States
and among its Negro population. Both in Great Britain and in the
United States we now realize that it is necessary to revise our system
so far as will enable the State to give more help to the development
of the under-privileged areas or communities without affecting the
vitality of private enterprise and initiative.

By comparing the situation in Africa to that in the southern United
States, Hailey was using the underlying race prejudice of the American
officials to gain support for his ideas. At the IPR conference in
December 1942, Hailey had met Dr Stanley Hornbeck, the adviser on
Far Eastern Affairs at the US State Department. They both shared a
common prejudice that only white people could develop the colonial
economy. Only the previous summer, in consultation with the
Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, Hornbeck had argued:

On the one hand, we want to do away with imperialism and on the
other we want to develop freedom and also want all peoples of the
world better off in every way. Now when it comes to the economic
matter the more freedom some peoples have the less well off they
are economically. The average negro does enough work to get
enough to live on and no more. Peoples of the South Seas are

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Lord Hailey

similar. He is not interested in property or culture and you have to
impair his freedom to make his economic standards higher.

When Hailey argued that the priority was economic development
rather than political freedom, he was tapping into the racist viewpoint
that believed that black people were unable to develop the economy
on their own. But the emphasis on state provision and on develop-
ment and welfare made Hailey’s presentation appear progressive for its
time.

One other major factor is the way in which domestic policy in regards

to the role of the state was also transformed at this period. The plans,
through the war, for the welfare state and the reorganization of British
industry through state intervention, were based on support across the
political spectrum for a new conception of the role of the state. The
move away from laissez-faire economics and towards Keynesianism
implied that the state was no longer seen as a neutral arbiter, standing
back from the proceedings of modern life, but instead had become a
state whose function was to promote development in all areas of
society. The fact that this new, interventionist state operated in Africa
as well as in Britain would also transform the colonial relationship in
the postwar period. Hailey himself referred to this process, noting: ‘It
seems to me that our own outlook on colonial policy is in the process of
being recast; partly because of the new conception . . . of the position
which the state must occupy as an agency for social welfare.’

In America in 1943, and also in Britain later that year, Hailey empha-

sized the role of the state not only in terms of the ‘treatment’ of its
own ‘depressed areas’,

but also in terms of maintaining security.

This, in the middle of the war, was obviously an important point to
both people at home and in the colonies. Hailey’s comment that ‘inde-
pendence is meaningless without external security’ was especially
directed at India,

which in many ways had been the focus for

American criticism of the British Empire. Both in terms of state-led
development and in terms of keeping the peace, Hailey was raising
issues that, in the long run, would serve to stress the dependent rela-
tionship of the colonies to Britain. Although the imperial relationship
was presented in a new form, in essence Hailey was trying to uphold
the integrity of imperial authority.

The general feeling in the United States before April 1942 was that

Britain should grant India independence. Fuelled by the rapid collapse
of the Far Eastern empire in the face of Japan’s advance, many
Americans saw British unpopularity as the root of the problem. In

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133

1939, the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, had brought India into the war
without consulting the Indian National Congress Party. In response,
Congress opposed India’s participation in the war and distrusted
Britain’s promise of dominion status ‘at the end of the war’. The
British replied by arresting Gandhi and other Congress leaders.

Once America had entered the war and, more importantly, Japan’s

advance started to approach India’s frontiers, India’s political situation
developed a strategic importance for the Allies. The Indian National
Army, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, decided, although a minority
movement, to take sides with the Japanese and against the British.
Meanwhile, Gandhi, a pacifist, argued that if Britain were to ‘quit
India’ then the Indians would have nothing to fear from the Japanese
as they would not invade. Many Americans, shocked by the rate at
which Britain had lost the apparently loyal dependencies of Burma,
Malaya and Singapore, thought that Britain could only redeem its
status and perhaps some loyal defence in the Far East by granting
freedom to India. For example, Isaiah Berlin reported that Sumner
Welles, of the US State Department, had said that ‘the offer to India
should have been made sooner and endorsed the view that some
dramatic statement should have been made to rally the Eastern
peoples to the war against the Axis’.

In April 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps, a Labour member of the cabinet,

went to India to try to arrange a compromise. Cripps had met
Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader of the Indian Congress Party, in 1938 in
London and had corresponded occasionally since then while also
writing articles on Indian freedom for Tribune, a Labour newspaper.
After the fall of Singapore, Labour Party and American pressures on the
government increased and Cripps, who had returned from an ambas-
sadorship in Moscow, was appointed to a new India Committee of the
War Cabinet, set up on 26 February 1942, with the aim of drafting a
new constitutional statement.

The draft declaration that Cripps took to India in April 1942 was an

advance on previous offers. For the first time, according to R. J. Moore,
Muslim majority provinces could ‘opt out of the new Union once the
constitution was formed’. The formation of the constitution was
‘solely’ the responsibility of Indian political groups, but under the
condition it had to be accepted unanimously (although the consitu-
tion could, for the first time, admit ‘plural dominionhood’).

The

main problem at this stage, after 25 years of prevarication since the
Montagu declaration and the imprisonment of some 23 000 people,
was a lack of trust between the involved parties.

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Lord Hailey

Moore argues that Cripps went to India thinking that he could nego-

tiate with the Indian leaders. The War Cabinet was of the view that
Cripps was simply going to ‘discuss matters’ because negotiation
implied an elevation of the Indian parties to equal status.

The

Cabinet wanted India’s independence on British, not Indian, terms.
Cripps attempted to woo Indian support by planning a new Indian
executive but the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, felt this was undermining
his authority. More importantly, Cripps had gone so far as to see the
new Indian executive as being in the position of an Indian cabinet or
national government, even having a limited power over defence,
something over which the British Cabinet had planned to retain
control. Churchill’s renunciation of Cripps’s position as negotiator,
after Linlithgow had reported that Cripps was forming a ‘national
government’, made the Congress Party suspicious and the offer was
rejected.

Lord Wavell, who was at the time Commander-in-Chief

and later took over as Viceroy from Linlithgow in 1943, sided with
Cripps, however, admitting: ‘I have discovered that the cabinet is not
honest in its expressed desire to make progress in India.’

The Indian Congress Party and the Muslim League dismissed

Cripps’s offer by 11 April 1942. As a move towards Indian independ-
ence, the Cripps mission was a failure. In a significant arena, however,
in the eyes of Americans, the Cripps mission succeeded in demon-
strating that Indian opinion was itself divided. Isaiah Berlin reported
back from Washington that:

The breakdown in India is generally regretted, but Sir Stafford
Cripps’s final statement was very well received and so far there has
been no disposition to blame His Majesty’s Government. . . . Never
again should glib generalizations about the simplicity of the Indian
problem be accepted by the majority of people and never again
should the Congress emissaries find it as easy to sow mistrust of
Britain here. America has become better educated about India this
past month.

The benefit of the Cripps mission was that it made disunity in India,
rather than British colonialism, liable for hindering Indian indepen-
dence. Britain’s message to the Indians, as presented by Hailey, was
‘you are to frame your constitution and to choose independence if you
so desire’.

To the American public, it signalled that the British

government would listen to Indian wishes. The India Office, the
British government and Hailey were quite aware, however, that the

Reformulating Imperial Authority

135

internal tensions within India between the Hindus, Muslims and the
princely states had made building any constitutional framework into a
minefield. The idea of Indian ‘choice’ or ‘desire’ was not, despite
Hailey’s assertions, really part of the process of gaining independence,
given the terms set by Britain.

The Indian internal conflicts had, however, been exacerbated by

imperial intervention, and were therefore Britain’s responsibility.
Britain had, in many ways, brought modernization to India but it had
tried to maintain control over a rapidly changing social system by
backing social traditions of the past. Religious communities and
princes were thought to be easier to negotiate with than a dislocated
modern society.

Hailey, in his early career, had been party to reset-

tlement programmes that ended up creating more segregated religious
communities than had previously existed (see Chapter 2).

The irony

of the British involvement in reifying ‘communal tensions’ was that
these very tensions were exploited by Britain to maintain control.

Even as late as the 1920s, British manipulation of the Muslim commu-
nity and the princely states had brought, according to Moore, ‘two
Indias’ into being.

Churchill, according to Christopher Thorne,

gained satisfaction from the Hindu–Muslim feud, calling it ‘the
bulwark of British rule in India’.

President Roosevelt, however, hearing from his personal representa-

tive in India, Colonel Louis Johnson, that ‘London wanted a Congress
refusal’, was less taken in by the positive reception of the US press.
Roosevelt complained to Churchill that ‘the deadlock has been due to
the British Government’s unwillingness to concede the right of self-
government to the Indians’. Churchill’s reply was that only the
Muslims, ‘the military classes’, could be trusted, while the Congress
party only ‘represents mainly the intelligentsia of non-fighting Hindu
elements, and they can neither defend India nor raise a revolt’.

When Chiang Kai-shek pressured Roosevelt again on the Indian ques-
tion, Churchill’s reaction was a further attack on Congress:

You could remind Chiang that Gandhi was prepared to negotiate
with Japan on the basis of a free passage for Japanese troops through
India in the hopes of their joining hands with Hitler. Personally, I
have no doubt that in addition there would have been an under-
standing [between Gandhi and the Japanese] that the Congress
would have the use of sufficient Japanese troops to keep down the
composite minority of 90 million Moslems, 40 million untouch-
ables, and 90 million in the Princes’ States.

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Lord Hailey

The combination of Churchill’s direct put-down of Congress in his
private correspondence with Roosevelt, the propagandistic success of
the Cripps mission (so much so that Churchill told Cripps not to
bother with reporting back to the Cabinet), and, most importantly, the
failure of the Japanese to continue their advance meant that the pres-
sure from the United States on Britain in relation to India had ‘passed
its peak’ by the autumn of 1942.

The Office of War Information

noted that the presentation of India in the United States’ newspapers
was often insulting and racist.

From Berlin’s weekly reports, it is also

clear that American criticisms of British policy in India did continue,
but in a more muted fashion. Hailey, too, remarked in the House of
Lords, that despite having ‘failed in their main objective’, the main
reward of the Cripps mission had been that ‘we had regained the polit-
ical initiative’.

As the war shifted in the Allies’ favour, so the political

pressure that had been caused by earlier failures started to deflate.

The form that the debate had taken, however, was to influence

much of the tone of the following discussion on Britain’s postwar
imperial role. This is not to say that the protection of minorities was a
new development in the language of the Colonial Office – far from it.
For example, Hailey often commented on the diversity within the
empire, of ‘communities which are divided by strong differences of
racial origin, reproduced in equally strong differences of tradition and
social habit’. And he had already judged that ‘representation through
an electoral system’ was inapplicable where people were ‘divided by
strong racial or cultural differences’.

But after the experience of India

in 1942, the protection of minority groups was more than just a barrier
to representative self-government, it created a new essential role for
Britain. The lesson of India, even if short-lived as a tactic there, could
be applied elsewhere to create a new role for imperial rule as arbiter. As
Hailey now argued in the House of Lords: ‘any scheme put forward
must recognize our obligations to the great minorities. That was not
merely a question of moral justice but of political necessity.’

And the

‘political necessity’ was Britain’s international reputation, more than
the conditions in India.

Protecting minority groups

One way that the change in the Colonial Office’s view of race relations
can be seen most clearly is through the issue of minority groups.
Immigrant groups, especially Indians and Chinese, had often been
used in other parts of the colonial empire to aid in the administration

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137

of a colony, but their demands were often seen as troublesome: for
example, the Asians in Kenya had challenged the supremacy and land
rights of the white settlers. Britain had traditionally backed the settlers
because, to Arthur Dawe of the Colonial Office, ‘it seems unthinkable
that any British government would bring military force to bear upon a
community of our blood’.

Prior to the Second World War, ‘race rela-

tions’ was a term used to describe the mapping of characteristics to
‘races’. Now, in the midst of global conflict, ‘race relations’ was seen as
the study of the conflict between the so-called races as British colonial
officials saw themselves as peacekeepers.

Lord Halifax, ambassador to the United States and former Viceroy of

India (1926–31), was so impressed with the way that the realization of
the Muslim–Hindu divide in India impacted on American opinion,
that he suggested that a similar tactic be used for other parts of the
Empire. He cabled the Ministry of Information in London to bring to
their attention that:

Americans who have hitherto been overwhelmingly pro-Hindu
have at last realized that there is a Moslem problem in India. Now
might be the time not only to keep the Moslem problem in India
constantly before the American public but to point out the exist-
ence of a Moslem problem in Palestine.

Lord Hailey had been appointed Lord Lugard’s successor at the
Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) at a time, in 1937, when the
riots of Palestine had been a particular issue. Palestine was then a
mandate and Hailey’s task was to justify British actions in the territory
before the international commission. His experience in India and then
of Palestine, even before the war, probably predisposed Hailey to see
‘race relations’ as a conflict that only Britain could sort out.

The idea that ‘diversity’ was a problem for the political development

of the colonies had already been noted by Hailey in his investigation
into native administration in Africa in 1940. Hailey’s initial reaction
was that the divisions in Africa would be less entrenched and less prob-
lematic than those in India.

By 1943, however, Hailey was concerned

that India was ‘an example’ of what might happen in Africa without
‘serious study’ and ‘conscious experiment’ by, of course, the Colonial
Office.

Michael Lee confirms that colonial policy became preoccu-

pied with the problem of ‘plural societies’.

In 1959, on practically the eve of decolonization, Hailey took this

point to its extreme, arguing that: ‘The great diversity in the policies

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Lord Hailey

and the political circumstances of the many countries comprised in
Africa makes it impossible to accept the conclusion, now so often
advanced with complete confidence, that we are within sight of the
end of the colonial system throughout the continent.’

In 1943, in regard to India, Hailey was proud that a few ‘reserved’

powers remained in the hands of the British for the purpose of the
‘protection of minorities’.

In fact, Hailey continued, the ‘sectarian

divisions which are an obstacle to the working of democracy’ were a
result ‘largely due to the substitution of a political for administrative
regime, in which the British held the dominant part and kept the
peace’.

As far as Hailey was concerned, Indian political control

exercised by sectional parties had intensified the problem and,
instead, Britain should have maintained the Indian polity as largely
administrative.

The Colonial Office maintained the argument that it was ‘our

responsibility’ to be the guarantor of peace in these divided commu-
nities. The Colonial Office saw themselves as the friend of the
minority. For example, ‘even in Ceylon where responsible government
is in fact demanded by the Sinhalese majority, no solution has yet
been found to secure the interests of Tamil and other minorities’.

Colonel Oliver Stanley, in early 1943, who had recently taken over the
position of secretary of state for the colonies, echoed Hailey’s empha-
sis on diversity in his lecture at Princeton:

There is a great diversity in the resources of the colonies; there is an
equal diversity in the ability of their peoples to adjust themselves to
the conditions and the needs of the modern civilization with which
they are now in contact.

Stanley maintained, when he spoke at the Conservative Association in
Oxford, that such diversity in the colonies ruled out the single, simple
solution of self-government:

The first thing that strikes anyone in a study of our colonial Empire
is its infinite variety. Over 50 territories of every size, of every
climate, of every race, of every stage of economic and social devel-
opment. Neither in politics, in economics, nor in social welfare is it
possible to find any common yardstick, any one measure, that is
applicable to all. In each one of them the problems are quite differ-
ent, and so in each one of them will have to be the solutions.

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139

Since every territory required a different political arrangement, to suit
the different ‘races’ and the ‘plurality of races’, so each colony could not
presume that self-government would be the ultimate goal. In Stanley’s
words, the reason was that ‘the stages by which we advance must be
necessarily slow’, and ‘in our 50 territories today we find all differing
stages of political development’. ‘Self-government’, Stanley argued, is ‘a
responsibility’, and Britain’s responsible action, according to Stanley,
was to maintain differences between Englishmen and Africans:

Now, lastly, with regard to social development our object is to see
the various peoples of the various territories develop themselves –
develop along the lines of their own national aptitude, of their own
culture and of their own tradition. In other words we want to see
good Africans, good West Indians, good Malayans, and not imita-
tion Englishmen.

That winter of 1942–3, while Hailey had been defending the Empire in
North America, there had been a discussion between the Colonial
Office and the Cabinet on the regional committees that Hailey had
originally suggested to monitor colonial development (as an alterna-
tive to administration by an international body). These regional bodies
were never to happen, but in 1943 they still appeared to be an option
for the British Cabinet most unwilling to let the British Empire be
taken over by an international administration which was bound to be
dominated by the Americans.

The regional commissions were likely to have an effect on Britain’s

role in both developing the colonies and, in particular, protecting
minorities. The problem, as the Cabinet saw it, was who else should be
in these regional commissions. They were prepared to receive
comments from Australia and New Zealand and from the European
colonial powers. What they were concerned about was that the newly
emerging powers, that is, the non-white powers, such as China and
India, should be prevented from interfering in colonial administra-
tion. It is noticeable, from the Office minutes, that the decision to
exclude India was made before the Cabinet discussed why. Or rather,
the real reason, that India had not ‘the requisite status for member-
ship’ could not be admitted in public. It was not just the fact that India
had ‘no knowledge or experience of colonial administration’, but the
fear that:

If we open the door to her, we shall have to open it to many other

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Lord Hailey

nations, both in the Pacific and in other colonial areas where
Regional Commissions are to be set up.

The Cabinet was concerned that India might have a ‘claim’ to
membership of the regional commission on the grounds of ‘the
considerable Indian population in Malaya’. The Cabinet draft policy
paper gave the assurance that ‘the British Government, which will be
responsible for the administration of the Malayan Peninsula, can be
trusted to look after this element, and it is better that we should do
so’.

But Oliver Stanley, the secretary of state for the colonies, when

he wrote to Lord Cranborne, the former minister for the colonies and
then Lord Privy Seal, was much more direct and to the point:

But if we concede [to India] a right to membership on the specific
ground that there is a large Indian population in Malaya with
whose conditions she may properly concern herself – and to my
mind this is the only respect in which she has a greater economic
interest than numbers of other States, who are equally buyers of
rubber and tin – then we shall have to concede the same right to
China, which has also a large population in Malaya. This would be
sealing the pass, for it would mean legalizing interference by
members in the internal affairs of territories of other members, the
one thing which we are both, I gather, anxious to avoid.

100

This discussion reveals that the crucial issue for the Colonial Office
was their right to determine policy without interference. Although
neither the British nor the Americans wanted to make public their
fears about immigration, it is clear that in private they shared the same
concern that non-whites could move to Britain and America.

101

While

hostile to any idea that Indian or Chinese immigration should give
India or China influence in Malaya, by contrast, their own emigrants,
the settlers in East and Southern Africa, were very much a reason for
Britain’s involvement in those areas.

Eventually the language of ‘protecting minorities’ spread across the

Atlantic. For example, Celeste Condit and John Lucaites’s study of the
rhetoric of newspapers notes that ‘minorities’ became an issue in
postwar America. They argue that ‘Finally, they were able to transcend
the rhetoric of black/white difference with the broader concept of
“minorities”.’

102

For the British War Cabinet, the language of minority protection

provided a new way of confirming Britain’s prerogative. In this light,

Reformulating Imperial Authority

141

it is clear that the minority issue was another means by which a sense
of British predominance could be spelled out without having to invoke
the old language of white prestige.

Upholding Britain’s prerogative

This is not to say that the Colonial Office and Foreign Office connived
to make minorities into an important issue in itself. The very develop-
ment of the idea in relation to India and Palestine, two regions with a
long history of British involvement, shows that similar ideas had been
current for some time. This idea gained in importance, however, at a
time when Britain needed a new justification for imperial rule. Also, the
sequence of events, particularly in relation to Japan and India, meant
that these were the ideas available just at the time that these authorities
began to regain their confidence. As the war started to shift in the Allies’
favour at the end of 1942, and the Colonial Office started to feel that the
charge of exploitation of the colonies was no worse than the American
practice of segregation, so the British government began to consider
political questions with a more robust attitude. More and more, the
postwar position and integrity of Britain and the Empire became a non-
negotiable quantity. As a result, increasingly the role of Britain in
relation to the colonies was upheld with whatever material was to hand.

For example, in 1945 Hailey raised similar fears but this time about

Burma. He claimed, in the House of Lords, that the idea that all Burma
was demanding ‘immediate independence’ was ‘not perhaps quite
realistic’. Furthermore, he hoped that there would be ‘some treaty of
understanding to protect Indian rights in Burma, and that particular
care would be taken in dealing with the Shan States’.

103

When the

discussion returned to Malaya and its future at the start of 1946, Hailey
again noted the importance of the position of minority immigrants. In
the House of Lords, he argued that:

As regarded the new conditions of citizenship, we must recognize
the political rights of the immigrants, but due regard should be had
for our obligations to the Malays. We must endeavour to secure that
political advance was achieved in a form which would neither injure
the self-respect of the original inhabitants nor impair the value of
their cooperation in achieving the defence of the country.

104

Controlling immigration and, through the minority, the political posi-
tion of the majority population, had become an important strategy by

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Lord Hailey

the end of the war, and it was one backed by the United States govern-
ment. Sir Gerard Gent, the under-secretary of state for the colonies,
had met up with Dr Stanley Hornbeck, chief of the State Department’s
Far Eastern division, during his visit to London at the end of 1943.
Gent reported:

On Chinese immigration in the future Dr Hornbeck said that
opinion in the US was definitely against any extension of the
admission of Orientals to US territory and indeed in favour of
further restriction. He did not see how there could be any American
criticism of control of Chinese immigration into British territo-
ries.

105

The most important question underlying the discussion on immigra-
tion was the question of sovereignty – who would have control over
the flow of people. In this matter, the British government considered
that its prerogative should be maintained, and that it would not allow
any interference in its internal affairs. When the race equality clause
came up for discussion at the San Francisco conference, when writing
the founding document for the United Nations, Sir Alexander
Cadogan cabled the Foreign Office to warn:

Argument strongly advanced is that it would be against our interest
and tradition as a liberal power to oppose the expression of a prin-
ciple denial of which figures so predominantly in Nazi philosophy
and is repugnant to the mass of British and foreign opinion. . . .
Recognition of the principle commits us to nothing more than we
have always stood for. But there might be a revival of the quite
unfounded fears of 1919 that immigration problems are involved.
These are, of course, matters of domestic jurisdiction and would be
covered if a satisfactory solution of this question is reached. We
may be sure that if it were thought that such question were
involved by the recognition of the principle, the United States
Delegation would oppose it.

106

So the Colonial Office was prepared to agree to the principle of race
equality on the condition that such a principle would not have the
power to affect issues of domestic jurisdiction. In other words, within
the Empire, particularly in relation to challenging the way that immi-
gration laws tended to discriminate on grounds of race, the clause, as
far as the British government were concerned, would have little

Reformulating Imperial Authority

143

impact. The Americans, who also had discriminatory laws, were insist-
ent that the UN Charter would not have such power. Britain and
America clearly shared the same point of view – to uphold their rights
in regards to their own ‘backward’ areas, they were prepared to come
to a compromise position. They had rejected the language of white
race superiority while managing to invigorate an imperial authority
based on the protection of minorities and the evasion of any investi-
gation into domestic affairs.

In the meantime, and despite taking on board the race equality

clause, the Colonial Office’s investigation into this issue had already
revealed that the ‘protection’ slant offered a possible mitigation of the
charge of racial discrimination. As early as October 1941, C. J. Jeffries,
in his summation of the ‘colour problem’ in the colonies, had
commented that ‘Mr Paskin’s point about discrimination in the inter-
ests of the natives is a good one’ but doubted its practical use for the
Office.

107

Then Jeffries went on to conclude that such ‘protective legis-

lation would be unnecessary if the natives had the full rights of
citizens’. This simple point would be forgotten by the end of the war
when protection issues had become so much more useful.

After the war’s end, the Colonial Office recognized that ‘racial discrim-

ination is one of the subjects which has been specifically remitted for
examination’ by the UN Commission on Human Rights. To this end, the
Colonial Office began a study of the way that legislation in colonial terri-
tories discriminated ‘between different races, more especially between
Europeans and non-Europeans’. A survey was sent out to Colonial
Governors for comments in January 1947. Arthur Creech Jones, by then
Labour secretary of state for the colonies, reassured the Governors by
commenting: ‘I am far from suggesting that all discriminatory legislation
can be immediately swept away in colonial territories. Some may be
required in the interests of the local or non-European races.’

108

Creech

Jones, as a last resort, had repeated Paskin’s earlier point that the last
refuge of race discrimination might be found in the language of protec-
tion. In fact, as Clive Harris has pointed out, discrimination in
employment in the colonial and civil service continued as standard after
the war, the only difference being that colour was no longer specified in
the rules, it was just noted at the interview.

109

The moral justification,

however, that gave a sense of authority to the officials had changed, by
using security issues and protection of minorities, but in either case, the
role of protector had replaced the old idea of white prestige.

As a result, despite the antagonism between America and Britain

over empire at the start of the war, imperial authority had been

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Lord Hailey

reformulated. In 1941, it had appeared that postwar legitimacy would
be founded on anti-imperialism. In contrast, by the end of the war,
France and Britain were able to rebuild their Far Eastern empires, and
the colour bar, if not eradicated, had been fatally discredited.

As the end of the war approached, United States officials, planning

for the future peace, started to see that Britain’s stability in a war-torn
world was going to be a crucial asset. Instead of overturning yet
another prewar institution, the European empires, the Americans
decided that listening to British ways of maintaining stability and
emphasizing continuity was worthwhile.

As Gabriel Kolko has outlined in the Limits of Power, the United

States, although the largest economic power at the end of the Second
World War, could not dominate the whole world.

110

Instead, it settled

on a compromise position. It allowed Britain to maintain its sterling
bloc, which aimed to stabilize the British postwar economy. With the
Marshall Plan America focused its resources on rebuilding Western
Europe, leaving the Soviet Union to maintain social stability in the
other half. America occupied Japan, but its Marshall Plan to China was
insignificant in comparison with Europe’s, and could not bolster
Chiang Kai-shek’s ailing regime.

Despite America’s difficulties, permission for Britain, France and the

Netherlands to rebuild their empires in the Far East was a distinct
change of policy for the United States. Earlier in the war, cynical
soldiers stationed in the Pacific arena nicknamed the Southeast Asia
Command (SEAC) ‘Save England’s Asiatic Colonies’. Even as late as
1945, General Wedemeyer stopped supplies being flown in by
American planes to the French resistance to the Japanese in Indo-
China for fear that it would encourage the French to rebuild their
empire there.

111

By the end of the war, however, the American forces were over-

stretched. More importantly, planners in the State Department for the
postwar world began to reconsider their task. Ending the war was one
thing, maintaining world peace was quite another. Institutions that
could be relied upon to maintain stability were now essential. For
example the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA,
admitted that ‘the world requires the maintenance of the British Empire
as a going concern’. Furthermore, the OSS report continued, interest-
ingly using the term ‘partners’ that Hailey had tried to popularize:

In a world threatened mainly by disintegration, such integrations as
history has left should not be lightly torn apart. They should

Reformulating Imperial Authority

145

instead be made the nucleus of large integrations of associations in
which none shall dominate but all be partners. Americans are
reminded that the British Empire saved the world from the threat of
Nazi dominance and that American economic and political security
partially depend on the continuation of a stable and integrated
British empire.

112

This was a very different attitude to that expressed only two years
earlier. American critics of imperialism, although shocked by the speed
of Japanese attacks, were smug in their criticisms of European colonial
administrations that had collapsed so quickly. Some thought that the
colonial powers had only themselves to blame for the disloyalty of
their ‘natives’. Two years later, however, US officials concurred with
British officials that the principle of Western authority was more
important than the question of self-government. To maintain the
position of European powers, and to leave unquestioned their author-
ity, the United States government had allowed the reinstatement of
the European empires in the Far East. Control and administration,
however, was no longer legitimized in terms of superior civilization or
race; instead they had developed a new language of development and
of protecting minority groups.

An example of the change in outlook on the colonies is the conflict-

ing reports on the capability of the Vietnamese to hold political
power. Christopher Thorne has investigated the changing views of the
Americans in relation to Indo-China. In March 1942 when criticisms
of the British and French empires were at their height, an OSS report
recommended that ‘the Annamites have proven themselves capable of
self-government’. By August of 1944, however, despite continuing
strong criticisms of the French colonial record, William Langdon,
the consul general in Kunming, wrote in a ‘highly-praised’ dispatch
that:

the Annamites are not yet materially or politically prepared for
independence or capable of resisting aggression from neighbours.
Nor would they be able to alone hold back the peaceful but
nonetheless racially annihilating, smothering penetration of
Chinese immigration. Therefore . . . independence at this time
would be doing the Annamite people no real kindness . . . a further
period of dependence and protection seems to be the only logical
proposition . . . As to which power should exercise this temporary
dominion, obviously must be France for practical reasons.

113

146

Lord Hailey

This example confirms the tactic taken by Hailey at the Institute of
Pacific Relations conference in the winter of 1942. The ground that
was common to both Britain and America, in the end, was that of a
shared paternalism towards the non-white peoples. The way that this
superiority was justified, however, was no longer in the language of
race. Instead, taking his cue from the terms already available, Hailey
emphasized economic and practical dependence of the colonial
peoples. Promoting freedom from fear and want, Article Six rather
than Article Three of the Atlantic Charter, the British explained to the
Americans that the imperial relation involved protecting small nations
from invasion and maintaining the peace between different racial
groups in the colony. In Langdon’s assessment of Indo-China, and the
reason why France should be reinstated as the colonial power, the
same themes had been repeated.

In the final analysis, however, it is possible that it was not the influ-

ence of these arguments that led America to return Indo-China to
France but the direct exigencies of war. According to Thorne, even
Roosevelt, who had been adamantly anti-French, shifted his ground
and authorized American aid for the French Resistance, conceding to
his closest advisers that following the war, France would have Indo-
China, as the United States Army was increasingly occupied with
mainland Japan.

114

The other concern of the US Navy and War depart-

ments, to control the Japanese mandated islands in the Pacific,
contributed to the pressure on the US State Department to quietly drop
the issue of independence for the colonies. Gabriel and Joyce Kolko
explain that:

The broader issue of colonialism at the end of the war seemed to
Washington, by comparison, very minor in importance. During the
last months of the war the United States had arranged a quid pro quo
with England, and then France, to obtain support of a transfer of
the Japanese-mandated islands to American control, or opening the
economic resources of the colonial regions to American interests, in
return for a tacit approval of a continuation of colonialism suitably
updated with United Nations (UN) rhetoric and sanctions.

115

Dr Isaiah Bowman, the special adviser to the US State Department,
who met Hailey on his trip to the States in the winter of 1942–3,
visited Britain in the spring of 1944 with a view to arriving at an agree-
ment on international affairs. Oliver Stanley, the secretary of state for
the colonies, reported on his conversation with Bowman that:

Reformulating Imperial Authority

147

‘Although wrapped up in a rather diaphanous cover of the usual ideal-
ism, it was plain that the real object of any Colonial plan is to enable
the United States to get away with the retention of the Marshalls and
Carolines.’

116

The Foreign Office concurred with Stanley’s assessment

of American foreign policy that: ‘It was essential in their view that the
US should by one means or another control the Japanese Islands in the
Pacific.’

117

Through a common language of paternalism, America and Britain

could avoid criticizing colonialism as such. The United Nations
Charter backed an end to colour discrimination. But the notion of
superiority still underpinned the Colonial Office’s assumption of
paternalism, only now it was justified by the plan to develop the
colonies’ economy. The politicization of the issue of race may have
provided the means by which a new language of authority emerged
suited to the new world order.

148

Lord Hailey

Conclusion

In 1941 the postwar survival of the European empires seemed doomed
by American hostility to colonialism. It appeared that the legitimacy
of the postwar world order would be founded on anti-imperialism. In
fact by the end of the war, France and Britain were able to rebuild their
Far Eastern empires, while the colour bar, although not abolished, had
been politically rejected. This book has explained how the undermin-
ing of empire was transformed into the discrediting of race.

It seems that dealing with race-sensitivity was the mediating link

between the experience of the Second World War and the develop-
ment of a new discourse concerning race, and eventually new policies
against discrimination. The horror of the Holocaust, when it was fully
in the public eye after the war had ended, reaffirmed the new moral
language adopted by Britain and America. But the framework of the
new world order, which saw a continuation of European empires but
the discrediting of colour discrimination, had been established in the
later years of the war.

The step between the experiences of the 1930s and 1940s and the

new ideology of race and empire has not been elucidated before. With
hindsight it has been too easy to see the anti-Nazi alliance and to
equate that with the development of anti-race discrimination ideas in
the Allied nations. Contemporary discussion of the Second World War
invariably involves discussion of the Nazi genocide.

The Holocaust has become a symbol of barbarity, of hell, for a

modern largely secular world. As an article in the Sunday Times put it,
‘the constant reference to the Holocaust, [is] the one determining
moral boundary we can all agree upon.’

As a result, there is nothing

but disgust for the associated ideas of racial categorization. It has
become easy to assume that a rejection of Nazi ideas involved a reac-
tion to their racism. Elazar Barkan has pointed out:

149

Because racism nowadays is perceived as irrational and unscientific,
its elimination from culture and science is deemed, at least implic-
itly, to have been inevitable: once Nazi atrocities had been revealed,
racism was rejected. An extension of this view is the historical
misconception that Nazi racism was renounced as early as the
1930s. In fact, the response in both the United States and Britain
was neither immediate nor of sufficient strength to discredit theor-
ies of racial superiority.

Today, the idea of the Holocaust appears to have an even greater effect
on us. The Holocaust is more widely talked about today and discussed
than it has ever been.

The Holocaust today does seem to represent

something that appears, in this time of sleaze, fat cats and miscarriages
of justice, a moral benchmark which is unquestioned and universal. For
example, Zygmunt Bauman, the sociologist, argues that ‘the present-day
significance of the Holocaust is the lesson it contains for the whole of human-
ity.’

The Holocaust symbolizes evil in a world that has secularized its

morality. The image of the Holocaust has become part of our lives, and
it seems that, even as an image rather than as a direct experience, it
cannot but have shaped our world. For us today, it is hard to conceive
of a world where the Holocaust did not symbolize a modern hell.

Yet the Second World War was just such a time. Although some

people knew about ‘The Final Solution’ and were trying to evacuate
Jews from German occupied areas, the Holocaust, or the Nazis’ plans
for it, was not central in British or American propaganda.

In particu-

lar, although the Nazis were known to base their philosophy on racial
purity and supremacy, anti-Nazi propaganda did not use this as a start-
ing point. For example, one of the Ministry of Information’s
pamphlets at the start of the war claimed that ‘National Socialism
began as an honourable experiment.’ The secretary of state for the
ministry, Lord Macmillan, produced a summary of his department’s
propaganda in 1939 which, as well as failing to inspire, made little
mention of Nazi policies.

The moral opprobrium heaped on fascism today did not exist in

Britain in the late 1930s. Although a section of British society opposed
Nazi ideas, fascism was regarded as a pressing political issue of the
time, not, as it is today, a settled issue – a universal ‘moral boundary’.
From today’s standpoint, it is possible to look back on the war and
imagine that the moral divide was as clear then. But this was not the
case. As a result, the Holocaust in itself does not explain how racial
discrimination came to be seen as politically problematic.

150

Lord Hailey

The Nazi doctrine of purifying an ‘Aryan race’ did have an impact in

Britain, particularly because, once at war, almost everything German
was despised. The association of racial policies with the German state
meant that it became increasingly difficult to expound such argu-
ments in Britain without being accused of having German, and
therefore treasonous, associations. For example, Lord Moyne, secretary
of state for the colonies, was adamant that ‘the Nazis with their false
doctrine of the Herrenvolk have made it clear that there is no place in
our conception of life for the doctrine that any one race is inherently
superior to any other.’ But in the same document, Moyne could assert
that ‘the idea of election is quite foreign to the African mind’.

In fact,

‘racism did not disappear,’ as Elazar Barkan has noted, ‘but racial
ideologies ceased to command respectability.’

For those in the Colonial Office, the awareness of race discrimin-

ation as a political problem resulted not so much from hostility to Nazi
racism, as from their own experience of trying to uphold British colo-
nial rule. It was in the context of the crisis of the old imperial
legitimacy, when new ideas were paramount, that Margery Perham
could speak of the ‘reforming spirit, to which Lord Hailey has done
much to give substance, [which] has lately appeared in this country
and needs reinforcement from the new intolerance of official delay
and privileged incompetence which the present crisis has aroused
within Britain.’

Developing mechanisms for maintaining, as Hailey

put it, ‘acquiescence to our rule’

was more important in the long run

than a commitment to racial segregation.

What the archives show is that race became a political issue during

the war, not because conscience demanded the abandonment of the
old ideas in the face of the Nazi atrocities but because of the combined
experience of three factors: the importance of being anti-German and
therefore anti-Nazi, the fear of revolt in the colonies, and the sense of
failure of the old imperial system and thus the need for a new language
to fit a new world system. This study has concentrated on explaining
the last two, largely unrecognized, factors that demonstrate how race
became a sensitive issue in the ‘official mind’ of the Colonial Office.

The particular circumstances at the start of the war had put the

future of the Empire in question. By mid-1941, Britain had begun to
establish an alliance with the United States, on which Britain
depended to win the war. Opinion in the States, however, was already
hostile to European imperialism. The United States had developed a
self-image, particularly in the years of interwar isolationism, which
distanced America from the international interests of the European

Conclusion

151

powers and celebrated the history of America’s independence from
Britain. Hostility to imperialism in America presented a problem for
the British Colonial Office, interested in promoting an Anglo-
American alliance for the war, while remaining doubtful about the
sincerity of American anti-imperialism when it came to expanding the
States’ global influence in the postwar order.

When Britain lost the Far Eastern empire, and particularly

Singapore, to the Japanese in early 1942, American criticisms of
imperialism only strengthened. The situation seemed to confirm the
worst fears of the Colonial Office. The colonial administration had
proved to be unpopular with the ‘natives’ and some had even joined a
fifth column. The fears of a ‘race revolt’, stimulated by the riots in the
West Indies in the 1930s, were confirmed in the eyes of certain colo-
nial officials. The assumption of white race superiority, which had
underpinned the arrogance of so many colonial administrators, was
now challenged by the military effectiveness of a non-white power,
Japan. For the Colonial Office at this time, it was assumed that they
had lost forever much of the Far Eastern empire. With it, many
thought at the time, had gone the argument for empire.

The exhaustion of the old racial ideology of imperialism had not,

however, diminished the underlying paternalism of the Colonial
Office. What had become apparent, though, was that the charge of
racial discrimination was a political liability. The fall of Singapore had
discredited what was seen as ‘white imperialism’. Colonial officials
argued that it was the practice of the colour bar that had alienated the
population. One solution proposed was to employ more of the locals
in the administration to establish loyal ties. The discussion in the
Colonial Office centred on reorganizing imperial rule in order to save
its legitimacy.

As the discussion within the Colonial Office continued, officials like

Lord Hailey were involved in debates with Americans. Learning more
about American attitudes to race allowed Hailey to develop new argu-
ments to justify imperial rule, using the issues of the time. One
important factor in the debate was that although Americans were keen
to criticize the Empire, they also practised racial discrimination and
segregation.

The Colonial Office learned first-hand about American segregation

once GIs were stationed in Britain following the summer of 1942.
Public opinion in Britain was generally hostile to the American atti-
tude towards their black soldiers, and race attitudes were often the
cause of local disputes and fights. The Colonial Office, which had

152

Lord Hailey

increasingly argued with the War Office against its practice of discrim-
ination, was now in a position to criticize the Americans, although this
never became a public debate. The common problem, however, of the
colour bar did allow British officials to deflect the charge of ‘white
imperialism’ and develop a new justification of empire with renewed
confidence. Since both America and Britain were tainted by the colour
bar, officials on both sides of the Atlantic were looking for a new moral
language to express legitimate authority.

The political crisis in India during the war was used as an opportu-

nity by the British to exploit the existing problems they faced in the
Empire as an education, for the Americans, in the difficulties of grant-
ing independence to the colonies. The sectarian political division,
which had been fostered under British rule, became the basis of an
argument that imperial rule was necessary to prevent conflict between
local parties and prevent instability. The presumption of the problem
of racial, now redefined as ethnic, conflict within the colonies re-
inforced the paternal role of the imperial administration, justifying its
existence in more ‘humanitarian’ terms.

The Colonial Office also adapted ideas that were already being used

to promise a new postwar order, such as welfarism, which gave a new
active role for the metropolitan state both at home and abroad. Hailey
emphasized the role of the state in developing certain ‘backward’
areas. By focusing on the ‘active’ state, Hailey avoided relinquishing
the key question of sovereignty over the colonies. But by looking at
the relationship in terms of the question of development and progress,
Hailey had modernized the argument for empire and given it appeal to
a New Deal-style politics.

The policy of state-led development gained supporters both in

Britain and America during the war. Hailey took this idea and applied
it to the colonial situation. It meant that he had overturned the idea
of ‘separate development’ of indigenous people. The idea of the colour
bar in local administration, and even in some social arenas, had also
been undermined. Instead the new plan was that colonial people
would receive the same assistance that British people were about to
receive with the building of the welfare state. It was a revolution in the
Colonial Office’s way of thinking about race relations. Perham had
been right when she had interpreted the fall of Singapore as ‘a very
practical revolution in race relationships’.

It was not, however, to be

any revolution in the degree of control that the Office had over the
colonies; the immediate postwar increase in interference has been
named the ‘second colonial occupation’.

Conclusion

153

Once the Americans were faced with the task of reconstructing a

peaceful world order, they began to look more sympathetically
towards the European empires as institutions of stability. In this light,
they too picked up on the issues first presented by the British as
reasons for delaying colonial independence. Since they also shared the
racial prejudices, so they were inclined to agree with British paternal-
ism. What the war had shown, however, was that white racial
superiority was no longer publicly acceptable. The paternalism of the
postwar language no longer rested on racial superiority and the colour
bar. The new welfarism and the protection of minority peoples
provided justification enough for the European powers to re-establish
their empires, at least for the immediate postwar period.

The combination of defeat by the Japanese, the fears for the Empire

and the difficulties presented by the Allies’ own war aims turned race
from a set of assumptions in the British official mind into a political
issue. Nothing in the new language of racial equality was entirely new.
Elements of prewar thinking were forged into a new synthesis under
the intense political pressures of defending both Britain’s Empire and
America’s position as the standard bearer of ‘the free world’ during a
world war in which the Anglo-Saxon powers were at once rivals and
allies, threatened by and allied to non-white nations. Those very
specific political circumstances forced upon British imperialists, such
as Hailey, the abandonment in public of the old racial ideology. The
immediate significance of these changes in the practice of race rela-
tions was no doubt very limited, but the language of racial superiority
was gone from official discourse and so far it has not returned.

154

Lord Hailey

Notes

PREFACE

1. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 458.
2. In the First World War deaths of UK service personnel were 722 785, and

civilians’ 1414. Whereas in the Second World War deaths of UK service
personnel were (including merchant navy) 336 642 while civilian deaths
were 60 284. Thorpe, Britain in the Era of the Two World Wars, pp. 49–50.

3. Cited in Fussell, Wartime, p. 131.
4. Fussell, Wartime, p. 140.
5. Malinowski, ‘A Plea for an Effective Colour Bar’, Spectator, 27 June 1931.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1. Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism, p. 1.
2. Malik, The Meaning of Race, p. 124.
3. Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, p. 149.
4. ‘On 2 July 1949, for example, the Picture Post enquired “Is there a BRITISH

COLOUR BAR?” and found to their evident surprise that indeed there
was.’ CCCS, The Empire Strikes Back, pp. 68–9.

5. Condit and Lucaites, Crafting Equality, p. 173.
6. King, Separate and Unequal, p. 113.
7. Rex and Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City, p. 38.
8. Lauren, Power and Prejudice, p. 35.
9. Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, p. 149.

10. Condit and Lucaites, Crafting Equality, p. 171.
11. King, Separate and Unequal, p. 114.
12. Rose, The Negro in America, pp. 320–1.
13. ‘The intense phase of racial prejudice in the British Empire did not last

very long. By the 1930s, as Dr. Perham has pointed out, the interest of the
British in continuing to occupy the former German colonies caused them
to emphasize the difference between their own racial attitudes and those
of Hitler’s Germany.’ Symonds, The British and Their Successors, p. 237.

14. Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, p. 9.
15. Rich records government estimates in July 1950 as stating there were

30 000 black people in Britain (Merseyside 10 000, London 5000, Cardiff
5000 and Tyneside 2000). Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, p. 167.

16. Lord Listowel to Edwards, 5 June 1948, LAB 20/218, cited in Rich, Race and

Empire in British Politics, p. 164.

17. Jeffries, Partners for Progress, p. 197.
18. The first investigations by the Colonial Office on the ‘colour bar’

suggested that a colour bar either did not exist or was a problem of bad-
mannered Africans. For example, J. E. W. Hood, Crown Agent for the
Colonies, wrote to C. G. Eastwood, Colonial Office, on 1 February 1939 to
say of his representative (in CO 323/1613/7):

155

he has never in his experience heard of any case of difficulty owing to
colour. In fact, the impression he had got is that these students are
exceptionally well looked after on board ship, and are treated with great
kindness both by the crew and the passengers. He thinks, as I do, that
any trouble that there is does not arise from the actions or possible
actions of the ship’s company, but from unmannerly passengers, and no
amount of representations from the SofS to the shipping companies
could have much effect thereon. Another thing is that when a coloured
gentleman complains of being despised, it is very frequently his own
fault for making himself aggressive, but that is not a matter over which
official action could have any effect.

But some of the younger officials in the Colonial Office realized that colo-
nial students chose not to travel on British ships because of discrimination
and the students were often told that flights were unavailable. For
example, Pedler, working in the personnel department, prepared a memo-
randum on Employment of Africans in the Higher Ranks of Service
(Memorandum by Pedler, 16 December 1939, CO 850/137/10):

When Africans wish to travel from East Africa to the UK they usually
come by French or Italian boats because of the difficulty of securing suit-
able accommodation and treatment on the British lines. In 1936 it was
discovered that Imperial Airways booking agents had instructions to turn
away inquiries from Africans on the excuse that all seats were booked,
but representations by Lord De La Warr to the London Office immedi-
ately secured accommodation for the African member of the Makerere
Commission. Restrictions are sometimes imposed on educated Africans
travelling by rail.

19. Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism, p. 29.
20. Recent newspaper revelations have indicated that Winston Churchill was

in favour of enforced sterilization of the mentally insane and thirty
American States sterilized mental patients without their consent or knowl-
edge in the 1920 and 1930s. As late as 1972, Alberta, Canada, continued
the practice started with the Sexual Sterilisation Act, 1928. Buchanan, The
Guardian, 25 February 1997.

21. See Richardson and Spears (eds), Race, Culture and Intelligence; Jones, Social

Darwinism and English Thought; Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science; Gould,
The Mismeasure of Man; Rose et al., Not in Our Genes; Jones, In the Blood.

22. As Anthony Kirk-Greene has commented: ‘At the end of the day it may be

that the most revealing way of analysing colonial administration and race
relations is to interpret them through the prism of class, that amalgam of
professional, bourgeois, middle-to-upper-class family, friends, values,
ethos and duty in which the average British District Officer had, at least to
1945, been brought up.’ Kirk-Greene, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol.9, no.3,
July 1986, p. 280.

23. Macaulay, (House of Commons, 10 July 1833), cited in Symonds, Oxford

and Empire, p. 294.

24. Said, Orientalism, p. 152.
25. Macaulay, (House of Commons, 10 July 1833), cited in Symonds, The

British and Their Successors, p. 18.

156

Notes to pp. 6–8

26. Strachey, India, London 1888, p. 359 cited in Symonds, The British and

Their Successors, p. 36.

27. Cited in Symonds, The British and Their Successors, p. 125.
28. Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, pp. 96–7.
29. Lee, Colonial Development and Good Government, p. 1.
30. ‘Between April 1939 and December 1942 the number of administrative

class officers on the “geographical” side was reduced from 73 to 53, and in
personnel from 83 to 53, while those in the “subject” departments
increased from 66 to 170.’ Lee, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, vol.6, no.1, October 1977, p. 66.

31. Colonial Office mail rose from 93 053 items in 1909 to 300 841 items in

1939 according to Parkinson, The Colonial Office from Within, p. 53.

32. Parkinson, The Colonial Office from Within, p. 56. Also Lee notes that: ‘the

office housed an increasing number of advisers who were appointed by the
secretary of state in various technical fields. . . . Twenty-five advisers and
assistant advisers were listed in the 1946 office directory . . .’ Lee, Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.6, no.1, October 1977, p. 66.
Moreover, from 1909 to 1937, 17 new advisory committees were set up to
add specialist knowledge to the Colonial Office’s work, such as the
Imperial Bureau of Mycology, the Imperial Forestry Institute, and the
Colonial Advisory Council of Agricultural and Animal Health. For full list
and dates see Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development
Policy, p. 282.

33. Cell, Hailey, p. xi.
34. Cell, Hailey, p. 3.
35. Cell, Hailey, p. 4.
36. Hailey referred to his work as ‘complex social graduations properly

adjusted’, India Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur. E/220/6c, p. 342.

37. ‘As a press communiqué of 1914 put it, selecting colonists from the land-

less would lower the quantity and raise the price of agricultural labor, it
being obviously inappropriate for the government to “upset the existing
social and economic order.” The Chenab colony reflected the Punjab trad-
ition, which it was intended to reinforce.’ Cell, Hailey, p. 18.

38. Letter to Hailey from Sir James Crerar, Home Member of the Council, in

Simla, 3 July 1929, India Office Library, Hailey MSS Eur E/22015B (empha-
sis added).

39. Letter from Hailey to Sir Michael O’Dwyer, London, 11 July 1929, India

Office Library, Hailey MSS Eur E/220/15B.

40. Undated letter, India Office Library, Hailey MSS Eur E/220/1B, p. 299.
41. Letter from Hailey to Sir John Simon, 29 August 1931, India Office Library,

Hailey MSS Eur E/220/21B, p. 467.

42. Articles from the Times of India, 1911, India Office Library, Hailey MSS.

Eur. E/220/1B, see also cartoon by W. Wicloth of Hailey and Lutyens as
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, India Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur.
E/220/1A, p. 336.

43. Note on Amritsar written by Hailey, India Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur.

E/220/57, p. 1.

44. Hailey’s Report on the Punjab Disturbances (Confidential), April 1919,

India Office Library, Hailey Mss Eur. E/220/57, p. 40. The massacre

Notes to pp. 8–13

157

happened on 13 April 1919 and the Hunter Commission was appointed on
14 October 1919. Despite being the author of the official report, Hailey
was not called to give evidence to the Hunter Commission.

45. Meerut was also the place where the Indian Mutiny had begun on 10 May

1857.

46. Letter from Hailey to Sir Arthur Hirtzel, India Office, London, 18 July

1929. Hailey also wrote to Sir Geoffrey de Montmorency, the Governor of
the Punjab, on the same theme on 12 July 1929: ‘I see that you have begun
your Saunders trial. I suppose it was necessary to give it so wide a range,
but it looks to me as if it is bound to drag on a very long time, like the trial
at Meerut. I am a little disturbed about the latter; but it seems to me that
the prosecution is concentrating on propaganda rather than on convic-
tion, and for publicity purposes their stuff will become horribly stale
before they are finished, with the result that it will lose entirely its value
as propaganda.’ India Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur. E/220/15B.

47. Memorandum on Indian loyalty for the Viceroy Viscount Chelmsford by

Hailey, India Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur. E/220/1B, p. 298.

48. The Carnegie Foundation agreed to fund $75 000 for the survey.
49. ‘Next to Lugard the most influential administrator who joined the debate

about African colonial policies was Lord Hailey’ Hetherington, British
Paternalism and Africa, p. 17.

50. Sir Frederick Sykes, Chairman of the Royal Empire Society, reported in

United Empire, New Series, vol.30, 1939, p. xi.

51. Cell (ed.), By Kenya Possessed, p. 50.
52. Gregory, India and East Africa, p. 496, p. 246 and p. 495 respectively.
53. Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, p. 31.
54. Notes of informal discussions on Survey, 15–16 July 1933, CO 847/2/4204

cited in Cell, African Affairs, vol.88, no.353, 1989, p. 491.

55. Cell, Hailey, p. 231.
56. Cell, African Affairs, vol.88, no.353, 1989, p. 481.
57. Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, p. 148.
58. Louis confirms this point, noting that: ‘there developed an ideological

split of the first magnitude. Cranborne wanted to keep Far Eastern ques-
tions separate from those of Africa. By opening the international door in
Asia he did not intend to welcome the Americans into Africa. “Conditions
varied widely in the different colonies,” Cranborne stated, “especially in
regard to their capacity for self-government.”’ Louis, Imperialism at Bay,
p. 192.

59. For example: ‘the African servants are a very, very long way behind those

in India.’ Also: ‘The African intellectuals cannot at present compete with
the Indian, and may never do so. But the ordinary peasant is equalitarian
[sic]; he is as good as his neighbour, and likes to show it; he can keep his
independence and respect in the face of authority. If his practical ability
and sense of business were anything like his deliberative capacity, he
would do well.’ Hailey, Diary, 13 and 19 February 1940, Hailey Papers,
Rhodes House, MSS Brit. Emp s.342 correspondence, §7, p. 6 and p. 11.

60. Cell, Hailey, p. xiii.
61. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa.

158

Notes to pp. 13–16

62. Lee, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.6, no.1, October

1977, p. 68.

63. Hailey, A Survey of Native Affairs in South West Africa.
64. Hailey, Native Administration in the British African Territories.
65. Parkinson, The Colonial Office from Within, p. 121.
66. Jeffries (ed.), A Review of Colonial Research, Appendix 1. See also

Rampersad, Colonial Economic Development and Social Welfare, pp. 225–6.

67. ‘I am sending you this now to say how glad I am that you are willing to be

Chairman of a Departmental Committee here to advise on post-war recon-
struction in the Colonies. There is no one whose help I should value more,
and I am indeed most grateful to you.’ Letter from Lord Moyne to Hailey,
19 March 1941, CO 323/1858/12.

68. CO 323/1858/12.
69. Letter to Hailey from Governor Knollup, Bermuda, 28 April 1942, CO

323/1858/13.

70. Letter to Hailey from Governor Barton, Zomba, Nyasaland, 22 July 1942,

CO 323/1858/13.

71. Suggestions for study, category B, CO 323/1858/13.
72. Suggestions for study, category B, CO 323/1858/13.
73. Letter from the Colonial Office to Eric Hazelton, Anglo-American

Caribbean Commission (British Section), 9 February 1943, CO
323/1858/13.

74. ‘Finally, in September 1944, on specific instructions from the Colonial

Office, Poynton told an American that Hailey was a private individual who
spoke only for himself. . . . The last two years of the war can therefore be
treated rather briefly, summarizing his attitudes on specific issues instead
of connecting them to a narrative of events in which, after all, he was
playing little part.’ Cell, Hailey, p. 274 citing evidence from Louis,
Imperialism at Bay, pp. 384–5. I am not convinced by this point. First, it
was standard Colonial Office procedure to disown statements, unless
made by a secretary of state, which they did, for example, after General
Smuts’s speech in America for which he had, in fact, been briefed before-
hand. Noel Sabine minuted, after briefing the BBC, that ‘the general line
we shall take with the Press in case of enquiries will be designed to avoid
any impression that we are unduly concerned about the content of the
article. If they ask whether the article was written with the approval or
authority of HMG, we shall tell them that General Smuts does not need
anyone’s approval to express his opinions and that in any case this would
not apply to a newspaper article.’ 24 December 1942 and later a note
confirms that Smuts’s talk with Lord Cranborne should not be discussed
with the press, 26 December 1942, CO 323/1858/22. Second, and more
importantly, it seems from the Colonial Office files and the Hailey Papers
that Hailey did continue to play a useful advisory role, albeit that his
increasing age must have caused certain restrictions.

75. See correspondence in Hailey Papers, Rhodes House, MSS. Amer. s.5.
76. ‘I am likely [in Parliamentary Question time] to be pressed for a further

definition of the international co-operation in the Colonial field, to
which you referred in your Parliamentary Answer on the 17th March last.
Various people, including Field Marshal Smuts and Lord Hailey, have

Notes to pp. 16–17

159

made statements on this subject, going rather beyond what we actually
have in mind, and I think it would be all to the good if the matter could
be put in proper perspective. I do not intend to raise the subject myself,
but if I am pressed on it, I should like with your permission to deal with
it on the lines agreed by the War Cabinet in the discussion upon a possi-
ble Anglo-American declaration.’ This is the full text of the letter that Cell
(p. 274) uses to justify the argument that Stanley effectively dismissed
Hailey from his position as adviser. Letter from Stanley to Churchill, first
drafted 2 July 1943, sent 9 July 1943, CO 323/1858/23.

77. Porter, Journal of African History, vol.35, no.1, 1994, p. 165.
78. Cell, Hailey, p. 213.
79. Hailey, ‘America’s Colour Problem: review of Myrdal’s American

Dilemma’, Times, 25 July 1944, p. 5. The quote is from a speech by Wendell
Willkie to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People in July 1942, cited in Myrdal, An American Dilemma, p. 1009.

80. Lee, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.6, no.1, Oct 1977,

p. 66.

81. Robinson, The Dilemmas of Trusteeship, p. 52.
82. Palmer, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.14, no.3, May

1986, p. 206.

83. The Times cited in Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development

Policy, p. 231.

84. Butler, Industrialisation and the British Colonial State, p. 19.
85. Macmillan, Warning from the West Indies, p. 88.
86. Lee, Colonial Development and Good Government, p. 44.
87. Hailey, ‘Some Problems Dealt with in the African Survey’, International

Affairs, vol.18, 1939, p. 201.

88. Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, p. 258.
89. Johnson, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol.15, no.1,

March 1977, p. 65 (reference Cmd 6175, 1940, p. 5).

90. Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, p. 179 and

p. 204.

91. Robinson notes that ‘When he introduced the 1940 Act, the secretary of

state, Malcolm MacDonald, claimed that the primary purpose of the
earlier [1929] Act was “not to help colonial development . . . but . . . to solve
our own unemployment problem”.’ Robinson, The Dilemmas of
Trusteeship, p. 56.

92. Butler, Industrialisation and the British Colonial State, p. 21.
93. Watt argues that the whole of Europe felt, during the 1930s, ‘a dissolution

of the normal social and political processes in civil disorder or civil strife.’
Watt, Too Serious a Business, p. 15.

94. Rampersad, Colonial Economic Development and Social Welfare, p. 170,

citing Dawe,12 January 1940, p. 199.

95. Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 2.
96. Johnson, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol.15, no.1,

March 1977, p. 56.

97. Cell, African Affairs, vol.88, no.353, 1989, p. 505.
98. ‘Although it was passed only six weeks after the battle of Dunkirk, it [the

1940 Act] represented not war-time expediency but a change of opinion in

160

Notes to pp. 17–22

official circles which had taken place during the preceding five years.’ Lee,
Colonial Development and Good Government, p. 6.

99. Butler, Industrialisation and the British Colonial State, p. 21.

100. Lee, Colonial Development and Good Government, p. 41.
101. Minute by MacDonald, 14 January 1940, CO 859/19/7475 cited in Lee and

Petter, The Colonial Office, War, and Development Policy, p. 45.

102. Correspondence between CO and Treasury in September and October

1939, cited in Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development
Policy, pp. 248–50.

103. Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, p. 204.
104. Paskin minuted, in a review of the Act’s impact, 4 March 1941: ‘The

“blitzkrieg” circular telegram of the 5 June 1940, included the following
passage in relation to the Colonial Development Bill which had just
received its Second Reading: “it is clear that at present it will not be possi-
ble to make any substantial progress under the new policy . . . Many
Colonial Governments will not at present be in a position to prepare
development programmes, though I am anxious that where this can be
done without detriment to the war effort, the preparation plans for the
future should be continued.” Then again in our circular despatch of the
10th Sept. 1940 . . . the following passage appeared: “So large a part of the
energies of Colonial government has now been diverted, to a greater or
less degree, to work directly related to the prosecution of the war, that it
will have little or no opportunity to prepare long term programmes of
development”.’ CO 859/80/3.

105. Butler, Industrialisation and the British Colonial State, pp. 58–9.
106. Butler, Industrialisation and the British Colonial State, pp. 141–2.
107. ‘The new Colonial Development and Welfare Act was passed early in 1945.

In place of the fixed maximum of £5 millions for development and welfare
and £500,000 for research in any one financial year under the old Act, it
made available a total of £120 millions over a period of ten years ending
on 31 March 1956. These funds could be drawn upon at any time but were
not to exceed £17.5 millions for development and welfare and £1 million
for research in any one year. Allocations would be made to individual
colonies to enable them to plan for the future.’ Rampersad, Colonial
Economic Development and Social Welfare, p. 358.

108. Stanley (in CAB 65/44) cited in Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and

Development, p. 226.

109. ‘The earliest official statement on India’s eventual status was the declara-

tion of Edwin Montagu (Secretary of State, 1917–22) on 20 August 1917
that Britain’s policy was “the progressive realization of responsible govern-
ment”. It was incorporated in the Preamble to the India Act of 1919, with
the condition that Parliament was to decide the time and nature of each
successive advance.’ Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 10.

110. Hailey’s memorandum, 27 October 1928, India Office Library, Hailey MSS.

Eur. E/220/30.

111. Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 11.
112. Robinson, The Dilemmas of Trusteeship, pp. 9–10 citing S. R. Mehrotra,

‘Imperial Federation and India 1868–1917’, Journal of Commonwealth
Political Studies, vol.1, 1961, p. 34.

Notes to pp. 22–5

161

113. Moore, Endgames of Empire, pp. 10–11 and see Hailey’s memorandum, 27

October 1928, India Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur. E/220/30.

114. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 68–9.
115. Irwin, 4 October 1929, cited in Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 70.
116. Daily Mail and Birkenhead (House of Commons, 7 November 1929) cited

in Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 80–1 and p. 94 respectively.

117. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 94.
118. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 174.
119. Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 15.
120. Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 105.
121. Churchill, reported in The Times, 11 November 1942.
122. ‘Unfortunately’, Indianization had come ‘very late in the day’ according to

Hailey and, Indians of the ‘right class’, if it had been earlier, ‘could possi-
bly though by no means certainly, have prevented the rise of a large class
of agitators and politicians whose sole program was opposition to an alien
government.’ Letter from Hailey to Colonel W. Palin, 13 July 1927, India
Office Library, Hailey MSS. Eur. E/220/15B, pp. 1–2.

123. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 148.
124. Watt, Personalities and Policies, p. 29.
125. Cited in May, Imperial Democracy, p. 221.
126. New York Sun, 5 February 1899, according to Hitchens, Blood, Class, and

Nostalgia, p. 67.

127. Watt, Personalities and Policies, pp. 41–2. The term ‘Uncle Shylock’ referred

to the US demand to have Britain pay war debts from the First World War
which Britain and France felt should be written off as ‘what the US had
provided in gold, they had given in blood’. Reynolds, The Creation of the
Anglo-American Alliance, p. 15.

128. General Board of the US Navy, memorandum 24 January 1918, GB 414-3,

serial 780, cited in Watt, Royal United Service Institutional Journal, vol.108,
no.631, August 1963, p. 224.

129. Cited in Watt, Succeeding John Bull, p. 82, citing Blum, From the Morgenthau

Diaries, vol.1, p. 308.

130. Dimbleby and Reynolds, An Ocean Apart, pp. 122–3.
131. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 43.
132. Cited in Watt, Succeeding John Bull, p. 85.
133. Dulles, America in the Pacific, p. 264.
134. Dulles, America’s Rise to World Power, p. 135.
135. Niebuhr, Atlantic Monthly, vol.145, May 1930, p. 670 cited in Dulles,

America’s Rise to World Power, p. 143.

136. ‘. . . even if a tariff cut were to double Britain’s imports – a most implausi-

ble outcome – the US gain would be insignificantly small.’ Drummond
and Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade, p. 153.

137. Drummond and Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade, p. 158.
138. Roosevelt to Churchill, 11 September 1939, cited in Hitchens, Blood, Class,

and Nostalgia, p. 205.

139. Watt, Succeeding John Bull, p. 89.
140. Cited in Dimbleby and Reynolds, An Ocean Apart, p. 125.
141. See Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 287–8.
142. Letter from Hubert Young, Governor of Trinidad, to Hailey, Postwar

162

Notes to pp. 25–30

Problems Committee, 4 February 1942, CO 323/1858/13.

143. Report by Sir George Gater on visit to Washington, October/November

1942, Appendix 1: note of interview with the President on 27 October
1942, CO 318/455/8 (71318).

144. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. vii. Further examples include: ‘To ask the key

question for the present work, how important was the economic element
in trusteeship, especially in relation to the ethical factor?’; ‘Such are the
dialectics that have to be borne in mind in attempting to get at the
economic element in trusteeship.’; ‘As they debated “trusteeship” and the
ethics of empire, British officials readily acknowledged the economic basis
of British Imperialism.’; ‘Particular attention will again be paid to the
economic element in trusteeship as viewed by the wartime protagonists.’
Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 23, pp. 24–5, p. 31 and p. 48 respectively.

145. Cavendish Bentinck, 22 December 1943, FO 371/35921 cited in Louis,

Imperialism at Bay, p. 39.

146. Grigg, ‘British Policy and Organization in the Middle East’, 2 September

1945, CO 732/88/79338 cited in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 51.

147. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 51.
148. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 7.
149. Hailey, Diary, 3 February 1940, Hailey Papers, Rhodes House, MSS Brit.

Emp. s.342 correspondence, §7, p. 4.

150. Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class, pp. 50–9.
151. Harris describes how the Civil Service Commission, responsible for

appointments, marked down black candidates or rejected them at inter-
view stage, in order to avoid recruiting black people to the Civil Service
without having to specify discrimination in the rules. Clive Harris, Race &
Class, vol.33, no.1, 1991, pp. 1–30.

CHAPTER 2

THE LOSS OF WHITE PRESTIGE

1. Winston Churchill (secretary of state for the colonies 14 February 1921 –

24 October 1922), speech at Kenya Colony and Uganda dinner, Hotel
Victoria, 27 January 1922, CO 323/1858/27.

2. Churchill, Hotel Victoria, 27 January 1922, CO 323/1858/27.
3. Lugard, ‘The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality’, Journal

of Philosophical Studies, vol.1, no.2, April 1926, p. 213.

4. Although Huxley was generally known for his liberalism and concern for

‘native welfare’, he wrote: ‘I am bound to confess that this first experience
of mine of being in a small minority among human beings of another
colour . . . gave me an emotional jolt; and I began . . . to understand why
white men living in such circumstances generally took to carrying
revolvers and developed a race-complex.’ Huxley, Africa View, p. 378.

5. Huxley, Africa View, p. 407.
6. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 216.
7. ‘The text of the mandates adopted in 1920 and 1922, whereby the Council

determined the rights and obligations of the mandatory Powers, were
somewhat more specific in this respect. Thus, the “C” mandates lay down
that: “The Mandatory shall promote to the utmost the material and moral
well-being and the social progress of the inhabitants of the territory.” This

Notes to pp. 30–7

163

text is repeated in a slightly different form in the “B” Mandates: “The
Mandatory shall be responsible for the peace, order and good government
of the territory, and for the promotion to the utmost of the material and
moral well-being and the social progress of the inhabitants.” On the other
hand, the “A” Mandates contain no explicit clause of this kind. In view of
the special character of these mandates, the idea was rather, in principle,
to leave the inhabitants of these territories – of course with the protection
and advice of the Mandatory – to provide for their own well-being and
development.’ League of Nations, The Mandates System, p. 52.

8. Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 25.
9. Huxley, Africa View, p. 105.

10. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, p. 201.
11. Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 32.
12. Hailey was concerned that the administrative system should: ‘seek to

moderate the pace of change, and allow full scope for the innate charac-
teristics of the people to assert themselves in the conflict of forces that
must ensue’, Hailey, An African Survey, p. 1281.

13. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, p. 8.
14. Cell, Hailey, p. 19.
15. Hailey, ‘Nationalism in Africa’, Journal of the Royal African Society, vol.36,

no.143, April 1937, p. 145.

16. Hailey, The Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations, p. 28

and p. 34.

17. Hetherington, British Paternalism and Africa (particularly chapters 3 and 8).
18. Macmillan, Africa Emergent, p. 298.
19. Cameron cited in Hetherington, British Paternalism and Africa, p. 143.
20. For example: ‘It would at the same time be contrary to our own tradition

if we were to resort to the system of “parallel” rule favoured in the philos-
ophy of the Union of South Africa.’ Hailey, Britain and her Dependencies,
p. 44.

21. Cell, Hailey, p. 221.
22. Note on Amritsar (written by Hailey in 1965), India Office Library, Hailey

MSS Eur. E/220/57, p. 1.

23. Hailey, ‘Nationalism in Africa’, Journal of the Royal African Society, vol.36,

no.143, April 1937, p. 137.

24. Hailey, Journal of the Royal African Society, vol.36, no.143, April 1937, p. 146.
25. Watt, Too Serious a Business, p. 86.
26. Hemingway cited in Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, p. 21.
27. Ginsberg, ‘The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality’,

Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol.1, no.2, April 1926, p. 220.

28. Huxley, Africa View, p. 438.
29. Hobson (1858–1940) famous for his book, Imperialism, London, 1902,

which blamed capitalism for recession and international conflict.

30. Grigg cited in Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, p. 12.
31. Macmillan, Africa Emergent, p. 14.
32. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 10.

33. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 10.

164

Notes to pp. 37–41

34. The Times, 4 March 1896.
35. Hailey refers to this convention occurring in 1935 (p. 139) and in 1936

(p. 143). The convention itself originated, according to Hailey, from the
All-Bantu Union (which was formed in 1919 to send a delegation from
South Africa to the Paris Peace Conference) coming together with the
African National Congress (ANC) and the Industrial and Commercial
workers Union (ICU) to campaign for legal rights in South Africa. Hailey,
Journal of the Royal African Society, vol.36, no.143, April 1937, pp. 134–47.

36. Du Bois, ‘Inter-racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis’, Foreign Affairs,

vol.14, no.1, 1935, p. 89.

37. Arthur Calder-Marshall cited in Palmer, Journal of Imperial and

Commonwealth History, vol.14, no.3, May 1986, pp. 207–8.

38. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 10.

39. According to Pakenham, it was pointed out to Her Majesty Queen Victoria

that she was gaining ‘three new protectorates (Zanzibar, Uganda and
Equatoria) covering at least 100,000 square miles of Africa, in exchange for
three square miles of Europe’. Furthermore, in August 1890, Britain signed
an agreement with the French ‘giving them a “sphere of influence” cover-
ing nearly a quarter of the continent, including several million square
miles of the Sahara – “what agriculturists would call very ‘light’ land”, as
he [Lord Salisbury] described in the Lords when asked why he had been so
generous.’ Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa, p. 357.

40. Churchill cited in Lugard, ‘The Basis of the Claim for Colonies’,

International Affairs, vol.15, 1936, pp. 3–17.

41. Cited in Wright (ed.), Population and Peace, p. 126, and p. 127. Virginio

Gayda wrote for the newspaper Giornale d’Italia and had been cited in The
Times, 1 August 1938.

42. Arnold cited in Wright (ed.), Population and Peace, pp. 127–8. Sydney

Arnold (1878–1945) had been a Liberal MP from 1912 to 1921. He then
resigned his seat due to ill health and in 1922 joined the Labour Party. In
1924, with the new Labour government, he was made a peer (Baron
Arnold of Hale) and became the under-secretary of state for the colonies.
In 1938 he left the Labour Party citing disagreement with its foreign
policy.

43.Tinker, Race, Conflict and the International Order, p. 9.
44. Lauren, Power and Prejudice, p. 93 and p. 97 (his emphasis).
45. Beloff, Britain’s Liberal Empire, p. 345.
46. A selection of the books published in Britain and America between 1905

and 1945 include: Richard J. Anderson, The Fate of the White Race, 1910;
Alexander G. Bell, How to Improve the Race, 1914; Viscount James Bryce,
Race Sentiment as a Factor in History, 1915; Clinton Burr, America’s Racial
Heritage, 1922; James H. Curle, To-day and To-morrow: the testing period of
the white race, 1926; Hannibal G. Duncan, Race and Population Problems,
1929; Henry H. Ellis, The Problem of Race-Regeneration, 1911; Ralph Gabriel,
The Lure of the Frontier: a story of race conflict, 1929; Mary H. Gayer, The
Heritage of the Anglo-Saxon Race, 1928; John E. Gorst, Education and Race-
Regeneration, 1913; Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the
Racial Basis of European History, 1917; Dr Isaac Harris, Race and Civilisation,

Notes to pp. 42–4

165

1939; John O. Hartes, The People of Destiny or the Goodly Heritage of the
British Race, 1924; Charles E. Hect (ed.), Rearing an Imperial Race, 1913;
Friedrich O. Hertz, Race and Civilisation, 1928; Robert F. Horton, National
Ideals and Race-Regeneration, 1912; James W. Johnson, The Race Problem and
Peace, 1924; Charles C. Josey, Race and National Solidarity, 1923; George F.
MacCleary, Race Suicide?, 1945; David MacConnel, Race Making, 1927;
William M. P. MacFee, Race, 1924; Basil J. Mathews, The Clash of Colour,
1924 and The Race of Heroes, 1924; John M. Mecklin, Democracy and Race
Friction, 1914; Frederick B. Meyer, Religion and Race-Regeneration, 1912;
Dora B. Montefiore, Race Motherhood, 1920; Earl Edward Muntz, Race
Contact, 1927; Lawrence W. Neff, Race Relations at Close Range, 1931; John
Oakesmith, Race and Nationality, 1919; Baroness Emmuska Orczy, Pride of
Race, 1942; Edward B. Reuter (ed.), Race and Culture Contacts, 1934 and
Race Mixture, 1931; Thurman B. Rice, Racial Hygiene, 1929; William S.
Sadler, Race Decadence, 1922; Caleb W. Saleeby, The Methods of Race-
Regeneration, 1911; James D. Sayers, Can the White Race Survive?, 1929;
Mary D. Scharlieb, Womanhood and Race-Regeneration, 1912; Edward J.
Smith, Race Regeneration, 1918; George Whitehead FRS, Birth Control and
Race Culture, 1925; Harris H. Wilder, The Pedigree of the Human Race, 1926;
Charles Williams, The Coming End of the Age: its imminent nearness and what
it means for our race, 1916; A. F. Wilson, Our Predestined British Empire, 1916;
Arthur C. Wire, The Genius of the British Race, 1917; and Baron John
Wrottesley, The English Race, 1939.

47. Tinker, Race, Conflict and the International Order, p. 7.
48. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 3 and p. 4.
49. Cited in Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 99 and p. 84.
50. Examples, Hailey’s diary, Rhodes House, MSS Brit. Emp. s.342

Correspondence:
Lagos 6 Feb 1940: ‘There is something very engaging about the breadth of
his [the African’s] smile. But he does get most powerfully hot in a ceremo-
nial dinner of this kind!’
Lagos 13 Feb 1940: ‘I am sorry to say that I did not need to resort to the
services of sight and sound to realise that I was sitting next to an African;
that is a feature of the country which I have not yet learnt to bear with
equanimity.’
Lagos 13 Feb 1940: ‘The African servants are a very, very long way behind
those in India. The whole life indeed in Africa is very crude and uncivilised
compared to India, even in a place so civilised as Lagos.’
Enugu 19 Feb 1940: ‘The African intellectuals cannot at present compete
with the Indian, and may never do so.’
Accra 25 Feb 1940: on the famous school at Achimota: ‘It had always struck
me as a very idealistic effort, which could with difficulty justify the three
quarters of a million it had cost.’
Cape Coast 26 Feb 1940: ‘We were accompanied by our temporary servant,
Paul, a melancholy long face creature with a mouth like a mud-fish, and
upper lip of portentous size and gravity.’
Sierra Leone 7 March 1940: ‘The Judge looked like the man of whom it was
said that God started to make a gorilla, but changed His mind before He
had quite finished’, and ‘One was struck all the more with amazement

166

Notes to p. 45

when three of their bandy legged Mandingos walked smartly forward,
saluted with military precision, and proceeded to croon in English the
words of the Lambeth Walk! Honestly, I do not think that this is the right
way to treat a decent and self respecting set of cannibals.’
Bo, Nigeria 11 March 1940: ‘Two of the chiefs I saw were quite unexpect-
edly intelligent.’

51. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 5 and p. 6.
52. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 7.
53. ‘Correspondents report to us that no foreign troops had ever been allowed

in Malaya, while local Chinese newspapers have been “discouraged” . . .
when they suggested that troops of the regular Chinese army should be
invited to Malaya to join the Allied defence. The British authorities
thought that the Chinese Army would be bad for British “prestige”
amongst the coloured people.’ New Statesman and Nation, ‘A London
Diary’, 17 January 1942, vol.23, p. 37.

54. Churchill to Wavell, 10 February 1942, cited in Hitchens, Blood, Class and

Nostalgia, p. 213.

55. Paper F 1345, FO 371/31754.
56. Cited in Dower, War without Mercy, p. 111.
57. Pimlott, Atlas of World War II, p. 90.
58. Lippmann, Washington Post, 21 Feb 1942, cited in CO 875/18/10. Rudyard

Kipling’s ‘The White Man’s Burden’ was published in the New York Sun on
5 February 1899, the day before the US Senate agreed to make the
Philippines an American protectorate after winning the Spanish-American
war. Hitchens, Blood, Class, and Nostalgia, p. 67.

59. Welles, reprinted in Holborn, War and Peace Aims of the United Nations,

p. 90 (Welles was the only man Roosevelt trusted according to Sir Isaiah
Berlin (stationed in Washington from 1942 to report on American opinion
of Britain). Interview with author, 3 November 1994).

60. Berlin, 14 May 1942, FO 371/30652.
61. Berlin, FO 371/30652, 30 April 1942. Berlin’s report was noted by both M.

Butler and F. E. Evans, who briefed the delegates to the IPR conference (see
Chapter 4).

62. Walter White cited in FO 371/30656.
63. FO 371/31770, Japanese propaganda in the Far East, 15 November 1941,

p. 12.

64. R. H. Scott, Ministry of Information, Singapore to London, 31 December

1941, FO 37131754, paper F 1345.

65. FO 371/31770, Japanese propaganda in the Far East, 15 November 1941

p. 29 (emphasis in original).

66. The IO report ‘issues warning against risk of unintentionally helping

Japanese racial propaganda by repetition of such stories as that of severe
treatment of Europeans in Manila, on the other hand stories of Japanese
brutality towards Asiatics would furnish excellent British propaganda.’
‘Japanese propaganda in the Far East’ Report from India Office, 17 January
1942, FO 371/31770/560.

67. For example, the Consul-General was recorded as saying that ‘pictures of

horrors should be avoided as they only terrify and paralyse the natives’.
Japanese propaganda in the Far East, 15 November 1941, FO 371/31770, p. 29.

Notes to pp. 45–9

167

68. Berlin, 20 March 1942 in Nicholas (ed.), Washington Despatches, p. 27.
69. ‘The influential Phelps-Stokes Committee has been stimulated to prepare

a report on the future of Africa, which will shortly appear as part of
campaign to arouse favourable interest in Negro problem among general
public. Findings of this Committee are said to be critical of British admin-
istration in Africa.’ Berlin, 20 June 1942, in Nicholas (ed.), Washington
Despatches, pp. 47–8. Whereas Perham thought favourably of the Phelps-
Stokes report on Africa: ‘a very well informed and appreciative analysis of
our African Administration has recently appeared entitled The Atlantic
Charter and Africa from an American standpoint.’ Perham, Colonial Sequence,
p. 238.

70. Berlin reported that they were: ‘a distinguished and influential committee

of forty Americans, under the chairmanship of Dr Anson Phelps-Stokes,
President of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, an American foundation which has
shown an active interest in African affairs for more than a quarter of a
century.’ CO 875/18/10. According to Berman: ‘From its incorporation in
1911 until 1945 the Phelps-Stokes Fund based its actions on several
premises: (1) that the experience of the Negro South was directly relevant
to black Africa; (2) that neither the African nor the American Negro would
be self-governing, or even have a large say in his welfare, in the foreseeable
future; and (3) that a narrowly defined vocational education could be used
to train American Negroes and Africans to become productive, docile, and
permanent underclasses in their respective societies.’ Edward Berman,
‘Educational Colonialism in Africa: The Role of American Foundations,
1910–1945’ in Arnove (ed.), Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism,
pp. 194–5.

71. McLean to Jones, 29 October 1942, CO 323/1858/22.
72. Thornley, 14 May 1942, Memorandum, CO 323/1858/25.
73. Cranborne, House of Lords, 20 May 1942: ‘So far as Malaya is concerned

. . . I do not think there is any evidence at present that the population as a
whole was either secretly hostile or indifferent. On the contrary it
remained perfectly friendly throughout.’ cited in CO 323/1858/22.

74. R. H. Scott, Far Eastern Bureau to MoI, London, 31 December 1941, Paper

F 1345, FO 371/31754.

75. J. B. Sabine, confidential report, CO 875/18/10.
76. Dower, War Without Mercy, pp. 108–12.
77. Sabine, 26 February 1942, CO 875/18/10.
78. Hailey, ‘The Colonial Problem’, Spectator, 27 March 1942, p. 298.
79. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 35.
80. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 37.
81. Hailey, Spectator, 27 March 1942, p. 298.
82. Carlton Hotel minutes, 6 October 1939, CO 847/17/11 (extracts in CO

850/137/10).

83. Carlton Hotel minutes, p. 12, CO 847/17/11.
84. ‘He had never seen any attempt to square native administration as we see

it now with the development of Parliamentary institutions. Any investi-
gation of this question must assume that the ultimate object is
self-government. But must we assume that the form of self-government
should be Parliamentary?’ Carlton Hotel minutes, pp. 5–6, CO 847/17/11.

168

Notes to pp. 49–53

85. Carlton Hotel minutes, p. 5, CO 847/17/11.
86. ‘Great Britain, in fostering the system of indirect rule, is promoting a wide-

spread agency of local self-government for which a place will eventually
have to be found in the political organization of the colonies . . . there is
much that is difficult to foresee in the future of indirect rule; but possibly
the most difficult problem of all, is to envisage the feasibility of integrat-
ing the system with the normal type of Parliamentary institutions.’ Hailey,
An African Survey, p. 252.

87. Carlton Hotel minutes, p. 10, CO 847/17/11.
88. Carlton Hotel minutes, p. 11, CO 847/17/11.
89. Butler, warden of Nuffield College, Oxford, (later stationed in

Washington) comment on Carlton Hotel minutes, 7 November 1939, CO
847/17/11.

90. Arthur Wright, comment on Carlton Hotel minutes, 2 November 1939,

CO 847/17/11.

91. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, p. 46 and p. 48.
92. ‘The peoples of Africa are believed to have been derived from three prin-

cipal stocks – Bushman, Negro and Hamite . . . there are few parts of the
continent in which adequate surveys of the physical characters of the
inhabitants have been made, and it is therefore impossible to classify the
different tribes accurately on a such a basis. Thus it is inevitable that
language and culture traits should be used as a basis for ethnic classifica-
tion, however unsatisfactory this may be from a scientific point of view.’
Hailey, An African Survey, p. 18.

93. Native administration and African employment had been linked in F. J.

Pedler’s memorandum on the ‘Employment of Africans in the Higher
Ranks of the Service’, paragraph 27: ‘Native authorities cannot hope to
keep up with the times unless they secure the services of highly educated
Africans; if the Government services absorbed all the available African
diplomats and graduates the native authorities would be left as curious
survivals of tribal ignorance. It ought therefore to be one of the objectives
of native policy to ensure that the native authorities and the educated
African class consist of the same people, so that no conflict can arise.’ 16
December 1939, CO 850/137/10.

94. J. L. Keith, head of the welfare department, expressed the political expedi-

ency of employing Africans: ‘Unless Africans can be brought into the
services of the central Government in large numbers and feel that they
have a growing interest therein and that all posts are open to them when
they are qualified to take them, they will look upon the central
Government as an alien institution and give vent to their feelings in polit-
ical agitation.’ Memo on Africans in Government Services, 22 January
1940, CO 850/137/10.

95. Extract of Carlton Hotel minutes, 6 October 1939, CO 850/137/10.
96. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, pp. 224–32.
97. C. H. Thornley, 14 May 1942, CO 323/1858/25.
98. ‘It was to a large extent this organization of society that caused the

Bolshevik Revolution.’ G. L. M. Clauson, CO 850/153/10.

99. A. J. Roysten, 4 August 1939, CO 850/153/10.

100. F. J. Pedler, 7 August 1939, and Gerald Creasy commented ‘I don’t think it

Notes to pp. 53–4

169

will necessarily be only the “exceptional” African’, 8 August 1939 CO
850/153/10.

101. Eastwood, 29 September 1939, CO 850/153/10 and supported by G.

Creasy, 7 February 1940, CO 850/137/10.

102. Lord Passfield, secretary of state for the colonies, had introduced the idea

of ‘unification’ of the colonial services in 1930. Services were unified
around a particular function, starting with the Colonial Administrative
Service in 1932 and ending with the Colonial Civil Aviation Service after
1945. Jeffries, Partners for Progress, p. 42.

103. Seel, spring 1940, CO 850/137/10.
104. ‘He [Mr Small, colonial secretary, Straits, Malaya] said that if we at this end

sent out a man who showed a trace of colour to fill a post normally filled
by pure Europeans, i.e. a post for which no local man of colour would be
recruited, there might be considerable discontent among people of the
latter class, who might not unreasonably complain that a post for which
they would not be considered eligible should not be given to a man
showing obvious traces of colour. Mr Small’s reasoning seemed to me to
be sound, and I hope it will give you a sufficiently clear line in dealing
with such cases in the future.’ 11 February 1938, CO 850/134/15.

105. ‘I have always, myself, pictured the United Services as a diminishing factor

as and when the various members of the Colonial Empire begin “to stand
on their own feet”.’ Seel, spring 1940, CO 850/137/10.

106. T. I. K. Lloyd, 3 January 1940, CO 850/137/10.
107. Pedler, ‘Employment of Africans in the Higher Ranks of the Service’, para-

graph 25, 16 December 1939 and TIK Lloyd, 3 January 1940, CO
850/137/10.

108. Lloyd, 3 January 1940, CO 850/137/10.
109. ‘. . . if it became the practice to treat the Colonial Empire as a unit so far as

the appointment of non-Europeans are concerned, there would surely be
the risk of starting a cross current working against the general policy of
trusteeship? It is one thing to maintain a gradually diminishing European
Service in a territory until the inhabitants can run it themselves: it is very
different to open the door to an increasing stream of non-European offi-
cials from other territories or belonging to other races.’ R. D. Furse, 15 May
1951, CO 850/193/2.

110. Pedler, ‘Employment of Africans in the Higher Ranks of the Service’, para-

graph 27, 16 December 1939, CO 850/137/10.

111. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 19.

112. Sir Alan Burns, 21 February 1940: ‘While I fully appreciate the importance

of the economic question, I am convinced that the real problem is colour
prejudice. . . . Governors should make it clear to heads of departments and
others that they will not tolerate colour prejudice in the Service and should
endeavour to encourage those who are trying to overcome it. I received
scant encouragement when I started the Inter-racial Dining Club in Lagos,
referred to in paragraph 40 of Mr Pedler’s memorandum, it has, however,
done a lot of good and believe it is still flourishing.’ CO 850/137/10.

113. Pedler, ‘Employment of Africans in the Higher Ranks of the Service’, para-

graph 38, 16 December 1939, CO 850/137/10.

170

Notes to pp. 54–6

114. J. B. Sidebotham, 20 April 1940, and A. C. Talbot Edwards, 26 June 1940,

CO 850/137/10.

115. Lord Dufferin, the former chairman, was no longer the parliamentary

under-secretary of state for the colonies. J. B. Sidebotham, 20 April 1940,
and Gerald Creasy, assistant secretary, 20 May 1940, CO 850/137/10.

116. Letter to Lord Lloyd from Accra, Gold Coast, 16 November 1940 and note,

Luke, 16 December 1940, in CO 850/192/10.

117. Sir John E. Shuckburgh, 13 April 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
118. Although according to Sir Arthur Dawe, assistant under-secretary of state,

26 February 1941, Hailey thought that ‘Africans in the public service
should only look for advancement in the colony to which they belong’,
CO 850/192/10.

119. New Statesman, 5 March 1941, Copy in CO 850/193/2.
120. C. J. Jeffries, 7 April 1941, CO 850/193/2.
121. Moyne, 10 April 1941, CO 850/193/2.
122. See CO 850/192/10 and CO 850/193/2.
123. O. G. R. Williams, 1 July 1941, CO 850/192/10, who in one file remarked:

‘No doubt the Creole type is inclined to be insolent,’ 7 October 1940, CO
850/179/13, and in another: ‘As for educating public opinion (including
my own prejudices) into a more tolerant attitude, I am all for it, but how
is it to be done?’, 29 August 1941, CO 859/70/7.

124. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 47.

125. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 8.

126. C. J. Jeffries, 16 May 1941, CO 850/193/2.
127. New Statesman and Nation, 16 August 1941, copy in CO 850/193/2.
128. J. J. Paskin, 26 September 1941, CO 859/80/13.
129. Paskin, 26 September 1941, CO 859/80/13 and Sir George Gater, 20 August

1942, CO 859/80/13.

130. Berlin, CO 875/18/10.
131. C. J. Jeffries, 25 November 1942, CO 850/192/10.
132. Scott, Far Eastern Bureau, British Ministry of Information, Singapore, 31

December 1941, Paper F 1345, FO 371/31754.

133. C. H. Thornley, 14 May 1942, CO 323/1858/25.
134. Cranborne, 27 August 1942, CO 859/80/13.
135. R. A. Whittle, 4 August 1943, CO 850/193/3.
136. Jeffries, ‘Relationship of European and African Salaries in West Africa’, 12

June 1944, CO 850/217/8.

137. Telegram 7 March 1944, CO 850/193/3.
138. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 37.
139. See discussion February 1942, CO 875/18/10.
140. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 36 and p. 7 respectively.
141. Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 115.
142. Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 118.
143. Dawe, 13 May 1942, CO 554/131/4.
144. ‘Lord Hailey feels that if we make the concession now it may only encour-

age agitation for further concessions: and it will be difficult for us to know
what more to concede. He argues that it is a great mistake to move in

Notes to pp. 56–61

171

advance of agitation and that it is best to keep concessions in reserve so
that when the agitation arises there will, if necessary, be something to
give.’ Dawe reporting on meeting with Hailey, 13 May 1942, CO
554/131/4.

145. ‘We ought to avoid bringing in Africans at the centre too early and thus

endeavour not to repeat the mistakes made in India. If Africans are to
come in at the centre, then they should not be brought on the Executive
Councils but onto the Legislative Councils, the representative basis of
which can be altered gradually and naturally to meet the pressure.’ Dawe
reporting on meeting with Hailey, 13 May 1942, CO 554/131/4.

146. Letter from Hailey to Sir Findlater Stewart (permanent under-secretary of

State for India 1930–42), 1 August 1930, India Office, Hailey MSS Eur.
E/220/19A, pp. 76–7.

147. Burns to Cranborne (his emphasis), 30 June 1942, CO 554/131/33702

cited in Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 123.

148. ‘I believe that the rising tide of Negro resentment of the British govern-

ment, and the disturbances which in recent years have been symptoms of
this resentment, are due to the policy of deferring constitutional conces-
sions until it’s too late for them to be appreciated by the people. The Negro
peoples, both in the West Indies and in West Africa, are learning that the
colonial administrations take no notice of popular feelings until this
feeling is manifested in disturbances. This is one of the principle reasons
why the people of these colonies choose as their leaders, not the moderate
and reasonable men, but those irresponsible agitators who stimulate racial
feelings against the whites and political movements against the govern-
ment.’ Burns to Cranborne cited in Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in
West Africa, p. 123.

149. Nordman, Prelude to Decolonisation in West Africa, p. 127. According to

Nordman, Africans were also admitted to the Executive Council in Sierra
Leone and Nigeria, p. 130.

150. ‘But they [native authorities] have a second and certainly not less impor-

tant function, in providing an avenue by which native opinion can be
expressed and to a certain extent “canalised”.’ Hailey, Native
Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa, p. 11.

151. ‘But the prospect which it [the native authority] opens to the more highly

educated and politically minded African of the towns, and even to the
middle class African in rural areas, is not one with which we can expect
him to remain content. Their dissatisfaction might take the form of an
active campaign to rouse a popular feeling against the native authorities
which would gravely impair their value as administrative agencies, and as
the means of introducing social reforms.’ Hailey, Native Administration and
Political Development in British Tropical Africa, p. 45.

152. ‘The general atmosphere of acquiescence which our rule now enjoys owes

much to the opportunities provided by the native authority system for the
expression of native opinion.’ Hailey, Native Administration and Political
Development in British Tropical Africa, p. 11.

153. ‘There are some territories in which this process has already gone further

than is usually believed. In Ceylon, for instance, there has been for some
years practically no recruitment from Europe for the State services. In the

172

Notes to pp. 61–2

West Indies, the services are predominantly of local origin. Even in Africa,
where circumstances have hitherto provided a much more limited field for
local recruitment for the more responsible posts, we have in the Gold
Coast and Nigeria between thirty and forty Africans holding medical and
judicial appointments of a class normally filled by Europeans, and Africans
have recently been admitted to the superior administrative service.’
Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 37.

154. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 37.
155. J. L. Keith, 7 November 1940 to Ministry of Information, for guidance for

Joint Broadcasting Committee , CO 859/40/4.

156. Arthur Dawe, assistant under-secretary of state, May 1940, CO 859/39/14.
157. Telegram from Gold Coast, 14 January 1941, to O. G. R. Williams after use

on 10 December 1940. BBC sent apology, 6 March 1941, CO 875/18/5.

158. O. G. R. Williams, 19 March 1941, CO 859/40/4.
159. N. J. B. Sabine, Head of Publicity department, 24 March 1941, CO

859/40/4. The Americans decided to do the same on 5 December 1942
according to Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 185.

160. Miss Audrey Richards, 17 September 1941, CO 859/80/13.
161. A. Creech Jones, secretary of state, Memorandum on Legislation involving

Colour Discrimination, 8 January 1947, CO 323/1879/5.

162. Hailey, 20 May 1942 cited in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 140.
163. Reported in the Manchester Guardian, 29 October 1941, copy CO

323/1858/27.

164. Hailey, Great Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War

World, p. 29.

165. ‘In none of our dependencies are there conditions such as those which are

characteristic of the Union of South Africa, where the doctrine of “segre-
gation” or “parallel rule” finds its practical expression in the refusal to
allow to the native any share in the political institutions of government,
and in the passing of “colour bar” legislation to regulate his position in
industry.’ Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 36.

166. ‘If we need to express ourselves in a formula at all, let our relations be

those of senior and junior partners in the same enterprise, and let it be said
that our contract of partnership involves the progressive increase of the
share which the junior partners have in the conduct of the undertaking.’
House of Lords, Hansard, 20 May 1942, cols 1095–6, and see Hailey’s
Opening Statement, War and Peace in the Pacific, pp. 11–12.

167. Hailey, A Colonial Charter, p. 3.
168. Hailey, ‘British Colonial Policy’, in Colonial Administration by European

Powers, p. 96.

169. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, p. 156.
170. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 53.
171. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, p. 205.
172. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 12.

CHAPTER 3

THE QUESTION OF EQUAL TREATMENT

1. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 57 (author’s emphasis).
2. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 56 (author’s emphasis).

Notes to pp. 62–6

173

3. King, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol.6, no.2, 1993, p. 125.
4. ‘From its [Carnegie’s] founding in 1911, the foundation had shown, as one

analyst put it, a “benign but fluctuating interest in the Negro”.’ Southern,
Gunnar Myrdal and Black–White Relations, p. 2. See also Lagemann, The
Politics of Philanthropy.

5. Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa,

Stellenbosch, 1932 – see Miller, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol.19,
no.4, December 1993.

6. Myrdal, Population.
7. Hailey reviewed Myrdal’s book saying: ‘In order that it should be as objec-

tive a basis as possible, its direction was entrusted to Dr Gunnar Myrdal, a
Swedish sociologist of high international reputation. It is now possible to
draw from its massive material a factual picture of the position actually
occupied by the American Negro today.’ The Times, 25 July 1944, p. 5.

8. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black–White Relations, p. 8 and p. 6 respec-

tively.

9. According to Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 9.

10. Myrdal, The American Dilemma, p. 756 (his italics).
11. Myrdal, The American Dilemma, p. 1007.
12. King, Separate and Unequal, p. 31.
13. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black–White Relations, p. 8.
14. Myrdal, The American Dilemma, p. 1006.
15. ‘In fact the Court had issued rulings with anti-segregation implications: in

Buchanan v. Warley, decided in 1917, the Court ruled that Black Americans
had the right to occupy housing in any part of a city and disallowed the
municipal practice of ‘racial zoning’, dividing residence into White and
Black sections. In practice, contra this ruling, until 1948 residential segre-
gation was accentuated by including restrictive covenants (specifying that
a property could not be sold subsequently to a Black American buyer) in
property ownership. Such convenants were outlawed by the Supreme
Court in 1948, but those existing prior to the ruling limited Black buyers’
choices and the Court ruling in 1917 outlawing racial zoning had actually
encouraged a greater use of covenants.’ King, Separate and Unequal, p. 19.

16. Cited in Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 18.
17. The MOWM finally dissolved in late 1947. See James et al., Fighting Racism

in World War II, p. 21.

18. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 16.
19. Condit and Lucaites, Crafting Equality, p. 172.
20. The Office of War Information was established by executive order on 13

June 1942. Foreign propaganda activities were at first divided between the
Office of Strategic Services and the OWI – the OSS dealt with secret activ-
ities and the OWI was limited to ‘open’ work. After 9 March 1943 OWI
conducted all propaganda abroad. The OWI was closed down on 15
September 1945 and its files were transferred, after a short interim, to the
Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (State
Department).

21. OWI reports, 24 October 1942, on Negroes in the media, paper 10131, FO

371/30689: ‘The period since Sept 1 has brought to the fore a number of
issues which have tested newspaper attitudes toward Negro relations. Most

174

Notes to pp. 66–9

notable has been the struggle of the poll tax, first in connection with the
vote for soldiers, and second in connection with the Congressional fight
to ban this tax in national elections. Concurrently there has been the
Talmadge defeat in Georgia, the friction between colored and white
soldiers in Great Britain, the arrest of 81 members of the Ethiopian Peace
League in Chicago, and more recently the three lynchings in Mississippi
and the attempted lynching in Tennessee. In addition to these events
there have been less dramatic ones, such as the DAR’s [Daughter’s of the
American Revolution] invitation to Marion Anderson, naming of the
Booker T Washington, and the appointment of a Negro as this ship’s
captain. In view of the evidence of growing tension, a survey has been
made of the treatment of these topics between Sept 1 and Oct 20 . . . It
shows that a narrow majority [of newspapers] are supporting various
phases of the demand for improved status for Negroes . . . (on the friction
between colored and white soldiers in Great Britain no comment was
noted) . . . The papers are still doing little for the positive contribution of
Negroes to American Society. This fact is brought out clearly in the chart
on page four. Despite the continued growth of Negro participation in the
war, manifested in such events as the effective organization of civilian
defense in Harlem, the increased participation of Negro women in volun-
tary nursing, the widespread entrances of Negroes into Industry, and the
greatly augmented representation of Negroes in the navy, news stories
signalising such developments are extremely rare.’

22. See James et al., Fighting Racism in World War II, p. 53.
23. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 25.
24. Myrdal, The American Dilemma, p. 1006.
25. The Phelps-Stokes report on Africa was, according to Berlin, a ‘call to

America to prepare herself for an increasing share in a constructive attack
on African poverty and backwardness’ CO 875/18/10.

26. King, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol.6, no.2, June 1993, p. 139. See also

chapter 4 in King, Separate and Unequal.

27. ‘In the correspondence of the war department officials, for example, often-

times the word Negro was written with a small n. Although I cannot prove
it, the use of the small n probably indicated contempt for blacks in and out
of uniform.’ McGuire, He, Too, Spoke for Democracy, p. xvi. I, too, have
found that a small n was largely used until 1942. Only after this date,
when black demands were increasingly recognized do official reports start
to use a capital N for Negro. Furthermore, when Myrdal started on his
research, ‘One of his first acts as director was to order all personnel
connected with the Carnegie project to capitalize the world “Negro”.’
Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black–White Relations, p. 20.

28. Weekly report from Berlin, FO 371/30652, 17 April 1942.
29. Myrdal, The American Dilemma, p. 1007.
30. Cited in Thorne, Proceedings of the British Council, vol.80, 1986, p. 354.
31. Berlin, 20 March 1942, FO 371/30652.
32. Dower, War without Mercy, p. 79 and Tinker, Race, Conflict and the

International Order, pp. 44–5.

33. King, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol.6, no.2, 1993, p. 144.
34. King, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol.6, no.2, 1993, p. 140.

Notes to pp. 69–71

175

35. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 78.
36. ‘The heroism of black soldiers in America’s wars is attested by the records

of the highest decorations awarded to American fighting men. Twenty
black soldiers won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Civil
War. Twenty black soldiers won the medal during the Indian campaign
from 1866 to 1890. Eight won the Congressional Medal during the
Spanish–American War of 1898. No black soldier was awarded the medal
during World Wars I and II; however, sixteen won it in the Korean and
Viet Nam wars.’ Motley (ed.), The Invisible Soldier, p. 17.

37. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 59.
38. McGuire, He, Too, Spoke for Democracy, p. 39.
39. Motley (ed.), The Invisible Soldier, p. 16.
40. Sitkoff, Journal of American History, vol.58, 1971, p. 666 and p. 669.
41. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 92.
42. Stillman, Integration of the Negro in the US Armed Forces, p. 25.
43. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, p. 98.
44. Stillman, Integration of the Negro in the US Armed Forces, p. 29.
45. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, pp. 84–5.
46. James et al., Fighting Racism in World War II, p. 147.
47. Condit and Lucaites, Crafting Equality, p. 171.
48. Cited in Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black–White Relations, p. 49.
49. Statement of Committee on Status of Negro Americans in War Industries

as adopted 29 March 1941, ‘National Defense and Negro Americans’,
Phelps-Stokes Fund Records, Box 38 Folder 1, Committee on the American
Negro in Defense Industries 1941–1944, minutes 1941, Papers in the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

50. Condit and Lucaites, Crafting Equality, p. 171.
51. Buell, The Native Problem in Africa, 1928.
52. Buell, ‘An American Proposal’, Fortune, May 1942: cited in FO 371/30656.
53. Walter Lippmann, ‘The Post-Singapore War in the East’, Washington Post,

21 February 1942, CO 875/18/10.

54. As F. Darvall, Ministry of Information working in America, wrote to the

Foreign Office, 13 June 1942: ‘We also had very much in mind of the
danger that the US might go imperialist after the war and accept collabora-
tion with Britain only on terms of superiority. For this reason it was
expressly stated in our list of aims that we should seek to create a popular
basis in both countries for collaboration between the UK and the US during
and after the war on terms of equality.’ FO 371/30669 paper 5722 (author’s
emphasis).

55. ‘. . . New York Daily News, the white paper with largest Negro circulation of

any, has not been slow to exploit alleged inconsistency between our treat-
ment of Congress Party demands and the Four Freedoms.’ Berlin, 22
August 1942 in Nicholas (ed.), Washington Despatches, p. 73.

56. Walter Lippmann, ‘The Post-Singapore War in the East’, Washington Post,

21 February 1942, CO 875/18/10.

57. Joint Intelligence Committee, Paper on ‘China’s relation to the United

Nations in the war against Japan’, JIC 154/2, Adopted by Committee 31
December 1943, p. 9, National Archives, Joint Chief of Staff Geographical
Files, RG 218, Box 28, Sutland, Maryland, USA.

176

Notes to pp. 71–5

58. Drummond and Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade, p. 160.
59. Notes from meeting of Ashley Clarke with Walter Lippmann, 15 September

1942, CO 875/18/10.

60. Notes from meeting of Ashley Clarke with Walter Lippmann, 15 September

1942, CO 875/18/10.

61. Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 164.
62. ‘They [media observers] greeted the British and American declarations of

intention to give up extraterritorial rights in China as evidence of the end
of the imperialism of the past and as proof that the American and British
Governments are sincere in pledging free new world after the war.’ Office
of War Information, Bureau of Intelligence, 17 October 1942 cited in FO
371/30689.

63. ‘In all the media there was agreement with the Richmond Times Dispatch’s

interpretation (11 Oct) that the declaration was “tangible evidence that
the old age imperialism is ended, and that the world will enter a new era
when peace returns”.’ Office of War Information, Bureau of Intelligence,
17 October 1942 cited in FO 371/30689.

64. Tinker, Race, Conflict, and the International Order, p. 19.
65. Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 164.
66. Report of the ‘Detroit Committee for 1943’ passed on to Colonial Office

from Alan Dudley, Foreign Office, 10 September 1943 with comment on
the Detroit Committee from the Consul General in Detroit, CO 875/19/3.

67. Report of the Detroit Committee passed on to CO via FO, 10 September

1943, CO 875/19/3.

68. Cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 61.
69. Reported in the telegram from Halifax to Foreign Office, 25 August 1942,

CO 323/1858/22.

70. Telegram from Halifax to Foreign Office, 25 August 1942, CO

323/1858/22.

71. Extract of West African Pilot, 11 December 1941, CO 859/80/7.
72. ‘Describing the fact that Southern soldiers have carried anti-Negro atti-

tudes to England, to the surprise of Englishmen who “had got along
excellently” with Negroes, Time (19 Oct) said, “it seemed as if the English
people and American Negroes, if uninterrupted, might teach anybody
something about democratic possibilities”.’ Office of War Information
report, 24 October 1942, file 10131, FO 371/30689.

73. ‘It is clear, however, that the official policy of the American military

authorities is that white and coloured troops should not consort together.
This, of course, is the reverse of our policy, which makes no distinction
whatever on the question of colour amongst troops in the armed forces.’
Note of interview with the Adjutant-General, War Office, 25 July 1942, CO
876/14.

74. Note of interview with the Adjutant-General, War Office, 25 July 1942, CO

876/14.

75. J. L. Keith to C. Jeffries, 31 July 1942, CO 876/14.
76. Memo J. L. Keith, 5 August 1942, CO 876/14.
77. Comment W. L. Rolleston, 10 August 1942, CO 876/14.
78. Comment Sir George Henry Gater, 11 August 1942, CO 876/14.
79. Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, p. 62.

Notes to pp. 75–9

177

80. Minutes of the Bolero Combined Committee, 12 August 1942 on the

‘problem of American coloured troops’ in CO 876/14.

81. Paper prepared for the War Cabinet WP (42) 442, 2 October 1942 on

United States Coloured Troops in the UK by Lord Cranborne, CO 876/14.

82. The final paper used the Lord Privy Seal’s suggestion, WP (42) 473,

October 1942, CO 876/14.

83. A. H. Poynton to Mr Calder, 30 January 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
84. ‘The Private Secretary at the Admiralty then said that this would make the

reply inaccurate, as persons of pure European descent were eligible
provided they were British born themselves, and their fathers were British
either by birth or by naturalisation, whereas coloured persons could only be
accepted provided that they and their fathers were British by birth.’ Poynton
to Calder, (his emphasis) 30 January 1940, CO 323/1801/13.

85. A. H. Poynton, 5 April 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
86. Calder in reply to Poynton, 13 April 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
87. ‘I think that we might indicate that any publication of the special excep-

tions made in the case of Europeans only could be highly embarrassing to
us, and that, as Mr Calder suggests we might ask the Admiralty to avoid
any publicity on the subject.’ Sir George Henry Gater, 15 April 1940, CO
323/1801/13.

88. Malcolm MacDonald, secretary of state for the colonies, 16 April 1940, CO

323/1801/13.

89. Sir A. Burns to Sir Cosmo Parkinson, 29 May 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
90. John Calder, 11 June 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
91. Sir A. Burns to Sir Cosmo Parkinson, 29 May 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
92. Telegram from the Governor of Trinidad to secretary of state for the

colonies, 2 June 1940, CO 323/1801/13.

93. Sir Cosmo Parkinson to secretary of state, 1 July 1940, CO 323/1801/13.
94. N. J. Sabine, 26 February 1942, CO 875/18/10.
95. Hailey, ‘The Colonial Problem’, Spectator, 27 March 1942, p. 298.
96. A. C. B. Symm, India Office to Trafford Smith, 23 December 1938, CO

323/1613/7.

97. J. E. W. Hood, Crown Agents to the Colonies, to E. B. Bowyer, 15

September 1938, CO 323/1613/7.

98. Sir Cosmo Parkinson agreed: ‘As Sir A. Burns says, it is largely a question

of manners, and you cannot legislate for that.’ 29 August 1941, CO
859/80/7.

99. Sir A. Burns, 29 August 1941, CO 859/80/7. Sir Alan Burns, the Governor

and then Commander in Chief of the Gold Coast, seems to have main-
tained his preoccupation with manners. Even in his book, published after
the war’s end, he maintained that: ‘It may be impossible to eradicate
colour-prejudice altogether, but it should be easy, given sufficient good-
will, to remove some of its more unpleasant manifestations, and so lessen
its effect, by no more than the avoidance of discourtesy.’ Burns, Colour
Prejudice, p. 12. Although, the fact that he wrote such a book indicates his
awareness of the importance of the issue and he did also write that ‘a civil-
isation which denies such equality of right to men of a certain colour,
because of that colour, is not logical and cannot be enduring.’ Ibid., p. 149
(his italics).

178

Notes to pp. 79–82

100. Lord Moyne to Herbert Morrison, 27 June 1941 (and copy to Amery,

Dominions Office) CO 859/80/7.

101. Minutes of meeting in the Colonial Office on Question of Introducing

Legislation regarding the admission of coloured persons to hotels etc.
Present: Mr Jeffries, Sir Grattan Bushe, Mr Paskin (all CO), Mr Mannatyne,
Miss Goode (HO), Mr Field (IO), Mr Lewis (Scottish Office), Mr Innes (Lord
Advocates Dept), 14 July 1941, CO 859/80/7.

102. Minutes of meeting on Question of Introducing Legislation regarding the

admission of coloured persons to hotels, 14 July 1941, CO 859/80/7.

103. J. L. Keith, 22 August 1941, CO 859/80/7.
104. C. J. Jeffries, 27 August 1941, CO 859/80/7.
105. O. G. R. Williams, 29 August 1941, CO 859/80/7.
106. Sir Cosmo Parkinson, 29 August 1941, CO 859/80/7.
107. J. J. Paskin, 16 September 1941, CO 859/80/7.
108. A. Richards, 17 September 1941, CO 859/80/13.
109. John Paskin, 26 September 1941, CO 859/80/13.
110. John Paskin, 26 September 1941, CO 859/80/13. After Parliamentary

Questions, 7 December 1941, where ‘Mr Sorensen asked the Under-
Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Government will consider
the desirability of making a pronouncement at an early date to the
coloured races of the Colonial Empire conveying the assurance that the
principles contained the Atlantic Charter shall be progressively imple-
mented respecting them, and that no fundamental distinction will be
recognised between the political and economic rights of white and
coloured peoples?’, J. B. Sidebotham noted that: ‘The work of collating the
various statements of declarations which have been made by HMG at
different times in this connection has been undertaken by Lord Hailey’s
Committee, and this is still in progress, Mr Pedler informs me.’ 16
December 1941, CO 323/1858/21.

111. J. L. Keith to Sir C Jeffries, 6 August 1943, CO 859/80/8.
112. Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, p. 86. Although Reynolds refers to

Learie Constantine and reports that he had been working in Lancashire
during the 1930s. Reynolds, Rich Relations, p. 306.

113. J. L. Keith to Sir C Jeffries, 6 August 1943, CO 859/80/8.
114. Evening Standard, 2 September 1943, Daily Worker, 20 and 23 September

1943, Reynolds News, 19 August and 26 September 1943, The Times, 14 and
21 October 1943, Daily Mirror, 27 October 1943, Daily Herald, 28 October,
12 and 18 November 1943, Daily Mirror, 30 October 1943, Guardian, 5
November 1943, Daily Telegraph, 21 December 1943. Recorded in CO
859/80/8.

115. ‘On the evening of 3 Sept, Mr Constantine broadcast a talk on the BBC

Home Service in which he dealt mainly with colour prejudice. I saw the
script but was not able to hear the talk. I have heard from many sources
that it was restrained moving and effective. The broadcast naturally led to
renewed comment in the Press on Saturday morning. Here again comment
was objective and restrained.’ Noel J. Sabine, publicity department,
Colonial Office, 20 September 1943, CO 859/80/8.

116. Tom Driberg, MP, 5 September 1943 reported in CO 859/80/8.
117. Noel J. Sabine, 20 September 1943, CO 859/80/8.

Notes to pp. 83–5

179

118. Copy of cartoon on title page of Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics,

p. iii.

119. Noel J. Sabine, 20 September 1943, CO 859/80/8.
120. C. J. Jeffries to Sir G Gater, 7 August 1943, CO 859/80/8.
121. J. L. Keith, 13 September 1943, CO 859/80/8.
122. C. J. Jeffries to Sir G. Gater, 7 August 1943, CO 859/80/8.
123. C. J. Jeffries, 30 September 1942, CO 859/80/7.
124. Costello, Love, Sex and War, p. 319.
125. McLaine, Ministry of Morale, p. 270 citing Home Intelligence Weekly

Reports, 25 August – 8 September 1942, INF 1/292.

126. Peter Fryer, New Statesman, 4 December 1987, p. 29.
127. Noel J. Sabine, 20 September 1943, CO 859/80/8.
128. C. J. Jeffries, 17 September 1943, CO 859/80/8. Rich notes that

Constantine was awarded £5 damages. Rich, Race and Empire in British
Politics, p. 161.

129. Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, p. 87.
130. Lord Cranborne, 27 August 1942, CO 859/80/13.
131. A special survey of the Office of the Inspector General of the US Army of

racial incidents over three months from 19 November 1943 to 19 February
1944 showed an average of four incidents a week. Smith, When Jim Crow
met John Bull, p. 140 and pp. 138–151.

132. Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, p. 86.
133. Cited in Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, p. 86.
134. WP (42) 473, October 1942, CO 876/14.
135. Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, p. 89.
136. Thorne, New Community, vol.3, no.3, Summer 1974, p. 270.
137. Weinberg, A World at Arms, pp. 439–46.
138. The Office of War Information (USA) admitted, in its report of 14

November 1942, that: ‘the success of the British in defeating Rommel in
Egypt has been widely commented on in all media, but they differ sharply
in awarding credit for the victory . . . Editors and columnists, on the
contrary [to the radio], did not consider the victory as a totally British
achievement and few were inclined to credit British generalship with the
success of the drive. Out of 52 newspapers commenting: 24 called it an
Allied victory, 15 called it a British victory, and 13 called it an Axis defeat.’
OWI report, FO 371/30689 Paper 11204.

139. McLaine, Ministry of Morale, p. 257.
140. Butler seems to support my thesis that after 1943 the Colonial Office

became more ‘adventurous’ in terms of thinking about postwar recon-
struction. Butler, Industrialisation and the British Colonial State, p. 5.

141. Air Ministry reply to Colonial Office, 4 April 1944, CO 537/1223.
142. J. L. Keith to Poynton, 9 March 1944, CO 537/1223.
143. Wing Commander J. C. M. Gibb to Stanley, 30 November 1944, CO

537/1223.

144. A. H. Poynton, 17 March 1944, CO 537/1223.
145. P. Wilkins to Poynton, 10 October 1945, CO 537/1223.
146. Keith to A. E. Beattie, Edinburgh office of the Colonial Office, September

1944, CO 537/1223.

147. P. Wilkins to A. H. Poynton, 10 October 1945, CO 537/1223.

180

Notes to pp. 85–90

148. A. H. Poynton to Keith, Cohen, Sir George Gater and Sir C. Jeffries, 10

October 1945, CO 537/1223.

149. J. L. Keith, 16 October 1945, CO 537/1223.
150. Report by J. Paget, Commander in Chief of the Middle East Forces, to the

War Office, 28 December 1944, CO 537/1266.

151. F. H. Anderson, 10 February 1945, CO 537/1266.
152. Sabben-Clare, 12 February 1945, CO 537/1266.
153. GHQ, Middle East to War Office, 26 March 1945, CO 537/1266.
154. Telegram from War Office to Commander in Chief, India, 17 February

1945, CO 537/1266.

155. Telegram from GHQ, Middle East, to War Office, 15 April 1945, CO

537/1266.

156. Telegram from War Office to AFHQ, 6 May 1945, CO 537/1266.
157. Telegram from AFHQ to War Office, 9 May 1945, CO 537/1266.
158. E. B. Sabben-Clare, 29 November 1945, CO 537/1266.
159. Telegram from Trinidad to secretary of state for the colonies, 28 June 1945,

CO 537/1266.

160. J. L. Keith, 7 November 1940, Report on the guidance of the Joint

Broadcasting Committee, CO 859/40/4.

161. Confidential Report on Colour Discrimination, welfare department of the

Colonial Office, May 1946, CO 537/1224.

162. Kirk-Greene, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol.9, no.3, July 1986, p. 282.
163. Circular to the Colonies from A. Creech Jones, secretary of state for the

colonies, 8 January 1947 and Memorandum on Legislation involving
Colour Discrimination, 8 January 1947, CO 323/1879/5.

164. Circular to the Colonies from A. Creech Jones, 8 January 1947, CO

323/1879/5.

CHAPTER 4

DEFENDING THE EMPIRE

1. ‘At Bretton Woods and later during the period of the Anglo-American

loan, both sides displayed a keen sense of economic self-interest which
enabled critics to see the rise of a new American informal Empire, or to
hear the death rattle of British Imperialism. Such are the dialectics that
have to be borne in mind in attempting to get at the economic element in
trusteeship.’ Louis, Imperialism at Bay, pp. 24–5. Also see Louis and
Robinson, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.22, no.3,
September 1994, pp. 462–511.

2. See Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance.
3. See Watt, Too Serious a Business, Kolko, Century of War and Kolko, The

Politics of War.

4. Letter from Ivison Macadam, Chatham House to Viscount Cranborne,

secretary of state for the colonies, 11 June 1942, CO 875/18/13.

5. Cell, Hailey, p. 236.
6. In the preface to the preliminary report of the conference, W. L. Holland,

the IPR Research Secretary, wrote ‘An important departure from previous
IPR practice was authorized in inviting persons holding government posi-
tions to participate in the discussions, though only in their personal
capacities.’ Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference of the IPR, War

Notes to pp. 90–6

181

and Peace in the Pacific, p. vi.

7. 4 June 1942, CO 875/18/13.
8. Minute by Sabine, 23 May 1942, CO 875/18/13.
9. Minute by Sabine, 4 June 1942, CO 875/18/13.

10. Minute by Thornley, 10 June 1942, CO 875/18/13.
11. Letter from Cranborne to Macadam, 15 June 1942, CO 875/18/13.
12. Memorandum (unsigned – possibly by Basil Newton), October 1942, in CO

825/35/5.

13. Minute by Gater, CO 875/18/13.
14. Minute by Sabine, 12 June 1942, CO 875/18/13.
15. Minute by Cranborne, 29 July 1942, CO 875/18/13.
16. Minute by Thornley, 10 September 1942, CO 875/18/13.
17. Minute by Gent, 15 July 1942, CO 875/18/13.
18. The full list of the British delegation was: Lord Hailey, H. B. Butler, H.

Byas, Sir J. Clague, L. D. Gammans MP(C), A. Creech Jones MP(L), Air
Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore, I. S. Macadam, D. M. MacDougall, I.
Maclennan, R. Opie, Sir J. Pratt, Sir G. Sansom, Sir Frederick Whyte, Miss
Margaret Wrong.

19. Note by Ashley Clarke, 20 June 1942, in FO 371/30652, paper A 5374.
20. Roosevelt and Churchill met over a couple of days. In his speech on 9

September in Parliament, Churchill stated that the Declaration was signed
on 12 August – see Cmd.6321, Parliamentary Papers (1940–1) VIII, p. 591.
Its signing was publicized on 14 August 1941 according to Porter and
Stockwell, British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, vol.1, p. 102.

21. Roosevelt cited in Balfour, Propaganda in War, p. 231.
22. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 123.
23. Article Three of the Atlantic Charter, reproduced in Porter and Stockwell,

British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, vol.1, p. 101.

24. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 123 and pp. 124-5.
25. Lord Moyne, Memorandum on the Constitutional Future of the Colonies,

undated – probably late 1941 or early 1942, CO 323/1858/20.

26. Daily Herald, 16 August 1941, cited in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 125.
27. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, pp. 121–33.
28. Telegram from Sir B. Bourdillon, 15 November 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
29. L. S. Amery to Lord Moyne, 25 August 1941, with suggested memorandum

titled: Post-War Policy and Reconstruction. Constitutional Development
in Relation to the Colonies. Ministerial Statements. CO 323/1858/20. The
telegram from Burma, 26 September 1941, complains that: ‘all Burmese
papers except Sun unanimously condemn Prime Minister’s statement of
9th September [about the liquidation of the Empire] in no uncertain
terms. For example, New Light of Burma says: “. . . It is deplorable that Mr
Churchill does not realise that in such a war it is necessary to enlist the
whole-hearted support of the subject countries and that in order to win
such support freedom should be granted to these countries which we [are]
no less worthy of the same than the European countries.”’

30. Confidential digest of the material passed through the American Division

of the Ministry of Information in the month of April 1941: ‘It is based on
incoming letters from the US.’ CO 875/11/13.

31. CO 875/11/13.

182

Notes to pp. 96–100

32. Ministry of Information report on censors findings for April 1941, CO

875/11/13.

33. ‘As I understand the proposition [of propaganda in the USA], it does not

look merely to immediate results, ie. American co-operation during the
war, but to the more remote postwar future when we may have to defend
our Colonial position in the eyes of the world and when American
opinion may count for more than anything else.’ Minute by J. E.
Shuckburgh, 13 May 1941, CO 875/11/13.

34. Editors, Fortune, May 1942, p. 59, cited in Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic

Ruling Class, p. 117.

35. Hancock, Argument of Empire, p. 8.
36. For example, printed Memorandum by T. North Whitehead, Foreign

Office, dated 6 July 1942, CO 875/18/10. Whitehead notes: ‘By their attack
on Pearl Harbor the Japanese not only brought every American into the
war, but, for the time being at least, they have killed the traditional
concept of American isolation in world affairs.’ Also, M. Butler notes on
file FO 371/30652, 22 May 1942: ‘The point about both the Wallace and
the Henry Luce schools is that they are both Interventionist, and we ought
to be able to work with either of them, especially as Henry Luce has just
come out with a full blooded plan for Anglo-American cooperation . . . I
don’t think we have yet heard any American ideas as to who is to rule or
control the “Asiatic possessions”. American imperialism has not so far
been territorial outside the Western Hemisphere, but rather economic or
commercial.’

37. F. E. Evans, 6 June 1942 notes in file FO 371/30652 paper A 5312: ‘The

depth of American ignorance of our Colonial practice is impressive and
stressing and the criticism of those who have attributed the loss of our
Eastern territories to the failure of our system of Colonial government
drowns the voices of the few who are informed of our contribution to the
advance and protection of backward peoples.’

38. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Things which Americans hold Against the British’, May

1942, FO 371/30656 paper A6681.

39. Minutes of a meeting held on 13 February 1942 at Ministry of Information

to discuss propaganda regarding the British Colonial Empire in the USA.
Present: Lord Dufferin (chair, MoI, Empire Division), Sir Donald Cameron
(MoI, Empire Division), Mr Usill (MoI, Empire Division), Mr Darvall (MoI,
American Division), Capt. Hamilton (MoI, American Division), Mr
Sidebotham (CO), Mr Sabine (CO, Publicity Committee), Mr Vernon
MacKenzie (British Library of Information, New York), in CO 875/18/10.

40. ‘It has occurred to me that since in the immediate and the more remote

future it is going to be of the highest conceivable importance that there
should be a firm basis for Anglo-American friendship, any and every
source of misapprehension or misunderstanding should be resolutely
attacked. There can be little doubt that the Colonial question is such a
source; and it may be that we could not only remove a cause of friction
and lack of understanding but that by making a really determined and
comprehensive effort to let America know all about our Colonial policy we
could make of it a common meeting-ground for the exchange of ideas
which would at the same time gain their confidence and perhaps serve as

Notes to pp. 100–2

183

a basis for other and even more fruitful forms of cooperation.’ Minute by
N Sabine, 28 April 1941, CO 875/11/13.

41. Perham, The Times, 13 March 1942, reprinted in Colonial Sequence, pp.

225–6.

42. Minute by J. B. Sidebotham, 15 June 1942, CO 875/18/10.
43. Minute by G. E. Gent, 17 June 1942, CO 875/18/10.
44. Parkinson, The Colonial Office from Within, p. 87.
45. Captain Gammans, MP, The Times (between 15 February and 10 March

1942) cited by Elspeth Huxley in her first correspondence with Margery
Perham which began their exchange published as, Race and Politics in Kenya,
p. 15.

46. Minute by C. G. Eastwood, 17 August 1942, CO 875/18/10, ‘As you know,

I think, Lord Hailey is going to America this winter to attend a conference
at the Institute of Pacific Relations and it is important for him, therefore,
to be kept in touch with American opinion.’

47. Letter from Neville Butler, Foreign Office to G. E. J. Gent, Colonial Office,

8 October 1942, CO 875/18/10.

48. Professor Tawney, working for the Foreign Office in the United States,

wrote to Dr Tom Jones describing the American attitude to Britain on 22
March 1942. Censorship record of letter in FO 371/30669 paper 4406.

49. Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference of the IPR, War and Peace in

the Pacific, p. 4.

50. Cranborne, Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, 24 February 1942, cols.

16–24.

51. Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference of the IPR, War and Peace in

the Pacific, p. 123 and p. 125 respectively.

52. Letter from E. J. Tarr to I. S. Macadam, 4 July 1942, IPR Collection, Box 62

Mont Tremblant Conference II – Tarr, Edgar J., Papers in Columbia
University Library.

53. Letter from E. J. Tarr to Edward C. Carter, 23 September 1942, IPR

Collection, Box 62 Mont Tremblant Conference II – Tarr, Edgar J., Papers
in Columbia University Library, New York.

54. Edgar Jordan Tarr (1881–1950), obituary in New York Times, 9 November

1950, p. 33 col.5.

55. Hailey’s Opening Statement, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference

of the IPR, War and Peace in the Pacific, p. 4.

56. Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference of the IPR, War and Peace in

the Pacific, p. 74.

57. ‘As was noted during the congressional debates of 1942–3, the naturaliza-

tion law amounted to a pure “color” law, and placed a “stigma of biological
inferiority” on the yellow races.’ Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 164.

58. Hailey’s Opening Statement, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference

of the IPR, War and Peace in the Pacific, p. 7.

59. Sir George Sansom, Foreign Office in Washington, report on the IPR

Conference, CO 875/18/14.

60. Hailey’s Opening Statement, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference

of the IPR, War and Peace in the Pacific, 1943, p. 9.

61. Cited in Cell, Hailey, p. 202.
62. ‘We are greatly attracted by Mr Hull’s conception of “Parent States”, and

184

Notes to pp. 102–7

something on the lines of his remarks on that point would be essential
basis of any Declaration.’ Draft telegram for Washington, October 1942,
CO 323/1858/22.

63. Hailey’s Opening Statement, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference

of the IPR, War and Peace in the Pacific, p. 10 and p. 12.

64. Hailey’s Opening Statement, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference

of the IPR, War and Peace in the Pacific, p. 15.

65. Marcus Garvey had organized a mass black separatist movement amongst

poor blacks in Harlem, New York City, in the 1920s which argued for black
people to return to Africa and found their own independent state. Myrdal
wrote in 1943 of Garvey’s movement that: ‘It testifies to the basic unrest
in the Negro community. It tells of dissatisfaction so deep that it amounts
to virtual hopelessness of gaining a full life in America.’ Myrdal and Rose,
The Negro in America, p. 243.

66. Walter Davenport, Collier’s, 21 November 1942, cited in OWI Weekly

Reports 21 November 1942, copy in file FO 371/30689 paper A11371, p. 29.

67. Memorandum by Sir R. I. Campbell, 14 October 1942, CO 875/18/19.
68. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 56.
69. Thorne, Proceedings of the British Council, vol.80, 1986, p. 354.
70. Letter from D. M. MacDougall, BIS in Washington, to Sabine, Colonial

Office, 22 December 1942: ‘The conference was conducted against a back-
ground of two prevailing feelings. The first was reverence for China. The
Chinese have taken American sympathy by storm: in American eyes, the
Chinese are a nation of saints and heroes, above and beyond reproach.’
CO 875/18/14.

71. Letter from the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Moyne, to Lord

Hailey, 19 March 1941, CO 323/1858/12.

72. See CO 323/1858/20.
73. Introductory paragraphs to ‘The Constitutional Future of the Colonial

Empire’ by Lord Moyne, in CO 323/1858/20. Hailey’s Romanes Lecture
was delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 14 May 1941 on ‘The
Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations’.

74. Hailey, The Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations, p. 41.
75. Sir R. I. Campbell, ‘Memorandum on British Imperialism and its relation

to American Opinion’, 14 October 1942, CO 875/18/19.

76. Hailey, The Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations, p. 11.
77. The Atlantic Charter, 14 August 1941, reprinted in Porter and Stockwell,

British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, vol.1, p. 101.

78. Minute by G. E. Gent, 17 June 1942, CO 875/18/10.
79. Hailey, United Empire, vol.32, no.8, Nov–Dec 1941, p. 165.
80. The Times, 23 January 1943, cited in Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, p. 85.
81. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 211.
82. Lord Bledisloe’s speech, House of Lords, reported in The Times, 10 July

1941, p. 2.

83. ‘In that respect, as in other respects, the Bill which we are discussing this

afternoon breaks new ground. It establishes the duty of taxpayers in this
country to contribute directly and for its own sake towards the develop-
ment in the widest sense of the word of the colonial peoples for whose
good government taxpayers of this country are ultimately responsible.’

Notes to pp. 107–10

185

Speech by Malcolm MacDonald, former secretary of state for the colonies
by four days and then Minister for Health, in the House of Commons on
the Colonial Development and Welfare Bill, 21 May 1940, Hansard
Parliamentary Debates, 1939–40, vol.361, cols 41–8, 50–1.

84. ‘Before the passing of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act there

was too much tendency to think of each Colony as a separate financial
proposition instead of thinking of the show as a whole. Some of the
Colonies are poor and some rich. The estate must be considered as a
whole. We want no depressed areas in the Colonial Empire.’ Speech by
Harold Macmillan, under-secretary of state for the colonies, House of
Commons, 24 June 1942, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 1942, vol.380,
cols 2002–20.

85. According to Kirk-Greene’s introduction and notes from MacDonald’s

memorandum to the Treasury (CO 554/116/33501/68) this was the
purpose of the research which became: Hailey, Native Administration and
Political Development in British Tropical Africa, p. xi.

86. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 3.

87. Hailey, meeting of the Royal Empire Society, reported by The Times, 29

October 1941.

88. Hailey, Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical

Africa, p. 5.

89. For example, Lord Moyne: ‘we should refuse the libels about our alleged

Colonial exploitation’ reported in The Times, 10 July 1941.

90. Lord Bledisloe’s speech, House of Lords, reported in The Times, 10 July

1941, p. 2.

91. ‘Where the sentiment [of racial consciousness] occurs, it has tended to

manifest itself most clearly as the people of the dependencies advance in
education and standard of living.’ Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies,
p. 36.

92. Hailey, World Thought on the Colonial Question, p. 11.
93. ‘In 1946 an economist made a pioneer investigation of the national

income of Northern Rhodesia, and calculated that the output of the highly
successful mining industry of that country had a gross value of £14.5
million. Only £6.5m of this was however spent in Northern Rhodesia and
of that the share of African employees was less than a fifth. Her calcula-
tions showed that £10.4m of Nyasaland’s territorial income of £13.8m in
1948 was earned by Africans. In Northern Rhodesia, with an African popu-
lation four-fifths that of Nyasaland, the total territorial income was £39m
but only £11.5m was earned by Africans. There were great problems about
calculations of this kind, notably in the valuation of subsistence produc-
tion; but none the less it seemed safe to assume that the benefit of the
copper industry had not, at that stage, been shared to any significant
extent by the African population as a whole.’ Robinson, The Dilemmas of
Trusteeship, p. 85.

94. Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley, p. 165.
95. Kirk-Greene, African Affairs, vol.79, no.314, January 1980, p. 30 and see

tables II and III.

96. ‘it is desirable to commit the Americans, if possible, to the principle that

186

Notes to pp. 110–13

we and the other colonial powers concerned should have the unques-
tioned right to administer our own colonies, including those which we
have temporarily lost to the Japanese.’ Draft Statement for the War
Cabinet, 6 November 1942 (final version 5 December 1942), WP (42) 544
in CO 323/1858/22.

97. Rapporteur’s report of round table 1, p. 1 and, for example, ‘The British

position, in its general features, did not differ very much from the
American. Whatever divergence there may have been largely revolved
around the coloration of British thinking on specific issues by the
uniquely British concept of the Commonwealth’, p. 23 of Rapporteur’s
report on round table 5a, IPR conference papers (confidential report –
subject to revision), IPR Conference, Atlantic City, 1944, IPR papers in
Columbia University Library.

98. ‘In other words, it was agreed that nothing should be promised to the

dependent peoples during the period of the prosecution of the war, which
the nations will not later be fully prepared to give.’ Rapporteur’s report on
round table 5a, IPR conference papers p. 21 (confidential report – subject
to revision), IPR Conference, Atlantic City, 1944, IPR papers in Columbia
University Library.

99. Unsigned and undated (probably 1944) memo on International

Supervision, CO 323/1877/4.

100. See letter from Arnold Toynbee, British Embassy, Washington to Nigel

Ronald, Foreign Office, 12 September 1942, CO 875/18/10.

101. On 6 January 1943, Hailey was guest of honour at the Dinner Council of

Foreign Relations, New York City, where Isaiah Bowman was the president.

102. Letter from Richard Law, Foreign Office to Colonel Oliver Stanley, secre-

tary of state for the colonies, 11 April 1944 in CO 323/1877/4, emphasis
added.

103. ‘Americans left the conference very depressed. The worst thing of all was

that the British reported that they had won a complete victory at the
conference.’ Letter to ‘Ma and Len’ from ‘Mike’, Mont Tremblant, 1
January 1943, copy of letter in CO 875/18/14.

104. Hailey spoke at Princeton University, published as The Future of Colonial

Peoples and, before that, at the University of Toronto, published as Great
Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War World. He spoke
informally after dinner at Columbia University, at the Council of Foreign
Relations, at the Ethnogeographic Board, at the Foreign Policy Association,
at the Fourth Africa Dinner, and after lunch at Brown University. In a full
itinerary, largely organized by Chatham House for the Colonial Office (IS
Macadam, RIIA, to Miss Cleeve, Colonial Office, 10 December 1942, CO
875/18/13), Hailey also had occasion to meet many of America’s influen-
tial and important businessmen and policymakers, such as Hamilton Fish
Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs; Dr John Foster Dulles, Chairman of
Commission to Study Basis for Just and Durable Peace; Dr Keppel, Director
of the Carnegie Foundation; Isaiah Bowman, President of the Council of
Foreign Relations; Dr Fosdick and Mr Willits of the Rockefeller
Foundation; and Dr Anson Phelps Stokes of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. See
itinerary and guest lists in Hailey Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford, HP Mss.
Am.s.5.

Notes to pp. 113–15

187

105. Minute by C. G. Eastwood, 28 May 1943, CO 875/18/13.
106. Letter to ‘Ma and Len’ from ‘Mike’, 1 January 1943, Mont Tremblant,

Canada, copy of letter in CO 875/18/14.

107. Letter from D. M. MacDougall, BIS in Washington, to Sabine, Colonial

Office, 22 December 1942, CO 875/18/14.

108. ‘Hailey throughout was truly superb. There was a good deal of intrigue at

Mont Tremblant: it was an education to watch Hailey deal with it. I had
no idea he was so effective in debate. If he had a fault it was that he was
too obviously head and shoulders above anyone at the Conference: even
his accomplished technique could never quite conceal the fact that much
of the time he was tucking up his mental trousers to step gingerly through
a great deal of intellectual ditch-water.’ D. M. MacDougall, BIS in
Washington, to Sabine, Colonial Office, 22 December 1942, CO
875/18/14.

109. Letter from D. T. Monteath to Hailey, 16 June 1942, permanent under-

secretary of state collection, India Office Library, MSS Eur. D 714/25.

110. Quoted in letter from D. M. MacDougall, BIS in Washington, to Sabine,

Colonial Office, 22 December 1942, CO 875/18/14.

111. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 58.
112. Letter to ‘Ma and Len’ from ‘Mike’, 1 January 1943, Mont Tremblant,

Canada, copy of letter in CO 875/18/14.

113. Report on IPR Conference by Sir George Sansom, Foreign Office,

Washington, 3 February 1943, CO 875/18/14.

114. Quoted in report on IPR Conference by Sansom, Washington, 3 February

1943, CO 875/18/14.

115. Report on IPR Conference by Sansom, Washington, 3 February 1943, CO

875/18/14.

116. For example, see note by W. L. Rolleston, 10 August 1942: ‘From a prelim-

inary talk I had with him [Lt-Col. Rowe], I think he will advise
considerable caution. The American and British points of view are so
different (though the Americans consider we have pretty effective colour
bar in some Colonies!) that he considers give and take on both sides to be
necessary. Any attempt to “educate” the Americans [against segregating
troops] would be greatly resented.’ CO 876/14.

117. Letter from MacDougall, BIS in Washington, to Sabine, Colonial Office, 24

February 1943, CO 875/19/14.

118. Accompanying letter by Lord Halifax to Sansom’s report on IPR Conference,

sent to Foreign Office, 3 February 1943. Also Sir J. Pratt wrote to Ashley
Clarke, Foreign Office, 29 January 1943 to say: ‘We are therefore half way
through the Conference and I am happy to report, that we have achieved a
very considerable measure of success . . . They no longer believe that an
immediate liquidation of the British Empire will provide a simple remedy
for all difficulties and to some extent we have been able to turn the tables on
the Americans and make them realize that it is American isolationism and
not British Imperialism that is the real culprit in the Dock.’ CO 875/18/13.

119. Report on IPR Conference by Sansom, Washington, 3 February 1943, CO

875/18/14.

120. Report on IPR Conference by Sansom, Washington, 3 February 1943, CO

875/18/14.

188

Notes to pp. 115–17

121. ‘As Lord Lothian once said, if the rule of dependencies has at times excited

the baser feelings of greed, of political passion, and of scramble for
control, it has also evoked many proofs of heroism, of devotion to the
cause of weaker peoples, and of disinterested administration.’ Hailey, The
Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 11.

122. Hailey presented Dr Keppel with a special bound edition of An African

Survey while in the United States on this trip. See letter from Walter A.
Jessup, President of the Carnegie Corporation to Hailey, 23 January 1943
in Hailey Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford, HP MSS Am. s.5.

123. Myrdal, The American Dilemma, p. 1016.

CHAPTER 5

REFORMULATING IMPERIAL AUTHORITY

1. L. S. Amery, 25 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
2. L. S. Amery, 25 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
3. Lord Moyne to Amery, 26 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
4. Lord Moyne to Amery, 26 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
5. L. S. Amery to Lord Moyne, 27 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
6. Lord Moyne to Amery, 29 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20 and he contin-

ued. ‘There are many Colonies where, for strategic reasons, we cannot
waive our reserve powers and there are others where we cannot renounce
the right to guide “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves in the diffi-
cult conditions of the modern world”.’

7. Amery to Moyne, 29 August 1941, CO 323/1858/20.
8. Moyne instructed Christopher Eastwood to send both US and UK draft

memorandums to Hailey, 3 September 1941, CO 323/1858/20.

9. Telegram from the Viceroy, 3 September 1941, CO 323/1858/20.

10. Statement of prime minister on Point III of the Atlantic Charter, CO

323/1858/20. See also Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol.372, cols 67–9,
9 September 1941.

11. ‘. . . the Joint Declaration does not qualify in any way the various state-

ments of policy which have been made from time to time about the
development of constitutional government in India, Burma or other parts
of the British Empire.’ Statement of prime minister on Point III of the
Atlantic Charter, Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol.372, cols 67–9,
9 September 1941.

12. Statement of prime minister on Point III of the Atlantic Charter, Hansard

Parliamentary Debates, vol.372, cols 67–9, 9 September 1941.

13. The Colonial Office attempted to bring together past statements on policy

on political advancement of the colonies. According to Louis, there was a
‘pandemonium’ caused in the Colonial Office by the search for suitable
‘declarations’, after prime minister Winston Churchill had stated in
Parliament that a ‘colonial charter’ was unnecessary. Louis, Imperialism at
Bay, p. 130.

14. Minute by Cranborne, 4 September 1942, CO 323/1848 cited in Louis,

Imperialism at Bay, p. 133.

15. Letter to Sir George Gater, Colonial Office from Harold Butler, British

Embassy, Washington, 15 February 1943: ‘As you know, American think-
ing is apt to work on slogans. The Atlantic Charter is one of them. If we

Notes to pp. 117–22

189

can show that it is applicable to our colonial policy, three quarters of the
talk about “imperialism” will evaporate.’ CO 323/1858/23.

16. Washington Post, 15 October 1942, cited in OWI report, 24 October 1942,

Paper 10131, FO 371/30689.

17. Lee and Petter, The Colonial Office, War, and Development Policy, p. 126.
18. Cited in Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, p. 27.
19. Hailey, A Colonial Charter, p. 5.
20. Lord Moyne, reported in The Times, 29 October 1941.
21. Hailey, A Colonial Charter, p. 5.
22. Hailey, A Colonial Charter, p. 7.
23. Hailey, The Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations, p. 26.
24. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 45.
25. Hailey, Foreign Affairs, vol.21 April 1943, p. 409.
26. Hailey’s Opening Statement, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference

of the IPR, War and Peace in the Pacific, pp. 11–12.

27. ‘A significant minority of educated people would subscribe to a statement

recently attributed to Lord Hailey, to the effect that in colonial relations
the doctrine of trusteeship should give way to a new doctrine of partner-
ship.’ T. North Whitehead, Foreign Office report, on visit in June to the
US, 6 July 1942 (U92/27/70), copy in CO 875/18/10.

28. Lt-Col. Cantlie’s Report on Anglo-American relations in West and East

Africa, June 1943, CO 875/19/3.

29. Letter from P. D. Butler, in Cairo, to Sir D. Scott, 22 June, FO 371/30652.
30. McCormick, ‘Abroad’, New York Times, 6 July 1942, extract in CO

875/18/10.

31. Telegram from Halifax to Foreign Office, 25 August 1942, CO

323/1858/22.

32. Telegram from Halifax to Foreign Office, 25 August 1942, in Postwar

Policy and Reconstruction, Joint Anglo-US Declaration on Colonies, CO
323/1858/22.

33. ‘We are greatly attracted by Mr Hull’s conception of “Parent States”, and

something on the lines of his remarks on that point would be essential
basis of any Declaration.’ Draft telegram for Washington, October 1942,
CO 323/1858/22.

34. Letter from Arnold Toynbee, 5 September 1942, CO 323/1858/22, also see

letter from Christopher Eastwood to G. Gent, 18 September 1942: ‘I have
shown this to Lord Hailey, who will certainly make a point of seeing Gerig
when he is in America.’ CO 323/1858/22.

35. Letter from Arnold Toynbee, stationed at the British Embassy in

Washington, to Nigel Ronald at the Foreign Office after having talked with
B. Gerig: ‘He had already taken the point that opinion in Great Britain,
from the Colonial Office to the Fabian Colonial Research Bureau inclusive,
is unanimously against international government and in favour of
keeping dependencies under the existing national administrations of the
Colonial Powers while raising them as quickly as practicable to something
like dominion Status. He also realized that the Western-educated native
intelligentsia doesn’t like the idea of international administration, because
it thinks this would delay full self-government.’ 5 September 1942, CO
323/1858/22.

190

Notes to pp. 122–6

36. Letter from Nigel Ronald, Foreign Office to G. E. J. Gent, Colonial Office,

15 September 1942, ‘requiring ministerial blessing for the purpose of
determining the instructions to be issued to the British representatives
attending the unofficial Pacific Relations conference in December and not
in connection with the projected Declaration.’ CO 323/1858/22 (empha-
sis in original).

37. Letter from R. K. Law, Foreign Office, to P. Emrys-Evans MP, Dominions

Office, 12 September 1942, CO 323/1858/22.

38. For example, Paul Emrys-Evans MP planning with Lord Cranborne

(written to as Bobbety), 8 September 1942, writes that: ‘Attlee, however,
said that you were the man to find a way out and I gathered he would go
a long way to meet you. I was delighted to hear this and Dick thinks that
the best thing is for Anthony to ask you and Attlee to dinner early next
week. Leo could be dealt with separately, I think once a policy had been
agreed between the three of you, Leo would not be obstructive.’ CO
323/1858/22.

39. Letter from Lord Cranborne to P. V. Emrys-Evans MP, 9 October 1942, CO

323/1858/22.

40. Letter from Anthony Eden, Foreign Office to Attlee: ‘The other alternation

is the use of the phrase “co-ordinating the policies of the parent States”
instead of “collaboration and consultation between”. You may think that
this is going beyond what we agreed upon, but I feel fairly sure that it is
not going very far beyond it, and that we ought to go at least as far as this
to try and meet the American point of view. I am afraid that if we submit
to them too bare a platter, they may reject it out of hand.’ 25 October
1942, CO 323/1858/22.

41. Note by Sir George Henry Gater, the permanent under-secretary of state

for the colonies, 27 April 1943, CO 323/1858/23.

42. Sir George Henry Gater, 27 April 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
43. Minutes of a meeting, 3 May 1943, 11 Downing Street, with chairman:

Attlee (deputy prime minister), Eden (secretary of state for foreign affairs),
Lord Cranborne (Lord Privy Seal), Colonel Stanley (secretary of state for
the colonies) and Mr Jebb (FO), and Mr Eastwood (CO), CO 323/1858/23.

44. Much to Christopher Eastwood’s horror ‘The theme of the preamble and,

indeed, of the whole draft is independence. The word “independent” and
“independence” are, indeed, mentioned 19 times in the [US] draft. We did
not use the word once.’ Comments on the American Draft, 21 April 1943,
CO 323/1858/23 (emphasis in original).

45. Minutes, 3 May 1943 at 11 Downing Street, CO 323/1858/23.
46. Minutes, 3 May 1943, 11 Downing Street: ‘it was not necessary at this stage

to report to the War Cabinet. It would, indeed, strengthen our position if
we could say that, while the American draft had not been seen by the
President, our reactions to it had not been seen by the War Cabinet.’ CO
323/1858/23.

47. Minute by Christopher Eastwood, 5 May 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
48. Hailey on the American Draft declaration, 5 May 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
49. Hailey on the American Draft declaration, 5 May 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
50. Letter from Cranborne to Anthony Eden, 28 October 1942, CO

323/1858/22.

Notes to pp. 127–9

191

51. Telegram (no.6230) from Washington to London Foreign Office, 24

December 1942, CO 323/1858/23.

52. Comments on the American Draft by Christopher Eastwood, 21 April

1943, CO 323/1858/23.

53. Minute by Thomas K. Lloyd, 7 May 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
54. Minute by Christopher Eastwood, 5 May 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
55. Minute by T. K. Lloyd, 7 May 1943, CO 323/1858/23.
56. The speech is reproduced in Porter and Stockwell, British Imperial Policy

and Decolonization, vol.1, pp. 156–67.

57. Minute by C. Eastwood, 9 November 1943, CO 323/1859/8.
58. Hailey, The Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations, p. 26.
59. Hailey, Britain and Her Dependencies, p. 12.
60. S. Hornbeck, 8 August 1942, cited by Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 166.
61.Hailey to Wilfrid Benson, 27 May 1942, Hailey Papers, Rhodes House,

Papers on African Survey 600.18 s.20.

62. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 53.
63. Hailey, reported in The Times, 14 December 1943.
64. Berlin, 23 April 1942, in Nicholas, Washington Despatches, p. 34.
65. Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 19 and pp. 25–6.
66. Moore, Endgames of Empire, pp. 27–8.
67. Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 89 and p. 90.
68. Moore, Endgames of Empire, pp. 91–9.
69. Wavell’s diary, 8 October 1943, cited in Thorne, Journal of Imperial and

Commonwealth History, vol.10, no.3, May 1982, p. 345.

70. Berlin, 16 April 1942, in Nicholas, Washington Despatches, p. 31.
71. Hailey, reported in The Times, 14 December 1943.
72. Bernard S. Cohn, ‘Representing Authority in Victorian India’, in

Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, p. 190.

73. See discussion in Chapter 2 and Cell, Hailey, p. 19.
74. The tragedy was that Britain further promoted tension between Hindus

and Muslims since: ‘The Government of India took advantage of its
wartime emergency powers to suppress opposition, following the Quit
India campaign of 1942–3, and coupled this with a further attempt to
promote the Muslim League, which was regarded as being a more conge-
nial associate than Congress.’ Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p.
195.

75. Moore, Endgames of Empire, p. 14.
76. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 243.
77. Cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 242, 235 and 244 respectively.
78. Cited in Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 245.
79. Thorne, Allies of a Kind, pp. 236 and 248 respectively.
80. Although generally US opinion had been critical of British policy in rela-

tion to India, certainly by August 1942 after Cripps’s mission, the US
public and their newspapers held a low estimation of Indians. The Office
of War Information’s survey of magazines and newspapers for that month
indicated that, while 11 per cent of cartoons were on the Indian situation,
38 per cent of them ‘definitely showed a favourable attitude toward
Britain’. The report noted that: ‘Related to the theme that England is being
opposed by India despite the stupidity of such a course are a number of

192

Notes to pp. 130–7

cartoons which show Gandhi destroying the structure which Britain has
built in India. . . . And Hungerford of the Toledo Blade shows Gandhi, a
little rat-like man, hoping to get along with the Japanese snake while the
British lion, nonplussed, looks on in amazement. . . . Extremely few of the
cartoons favor India. Only five cartoons, or 3 per cent of the group, took
stands favoring India and Gandhi. The Chicago Tribune Syndicate showed
India as faced with a difficult problem having to choose between the
frying pan of the British and the fire of Japan. Another cartoon from this
syndicate raises the question of the application of the Four Freedoms to
India. (This is the only cartoon in the entire group surveyed which made
an effort to show Gandhi as an intelligent human being; in all the others
he is caricatured in varying degrees of ridicule.) . . . Finally, in this group,
is one cartoon from the New York Daily Worker which demands that India
be freed in order to defend herself. This is the only cartoon which even
remotely suggests that India could defend herself, depicting it as a power-
ful man. Most of the other cartoons symbolize India as an elephant when
depicting it as stupid and recalcitrant and as a pretty and helpless Indian
woman when she is shown as a helpless victim of the oncoming
Japanese. . . . In all of these [Gandhi] is made to appear as ridiculous in his
person and policies as possible. . . . Here he has been given the stereotyped
Semitic nose and facial structure and made to look a fool who could not
possibly guide a country through a crisis.’ Copy of OWI report, 22 August
1942, in FO 371/30689, Paper A 8246.

81. Hailey reported in The Times, 30 April 1942.
82. For example, see Berlin, 29 November 1942, in Nicholas, Washington

Despatches, p. 120.

83. Hailey, The Position of Colonies in a British Commonwealth of Nations, p. 25

and p. 26.

84. Hailey reported in The Times, 27 February 1942, p. 8.
85. Arthur Dawe, Memo on a Federal Solution for East Africa, July 1942, cited

in Robinson, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.8, no.1,
October 1979, p. 100.

86. Lord Halifax to Ministry of Information, 20 April 1942, FO 371/30669

paper 3903.

87. ‘It is unlikely that we shall see in Africa a resistance to change so sustained

as that which has preserved the caste system in India, or the mystical value
ascribed to the cow. We need not expect to see an attachment to forms of
religious faith so pronounced as that which has driven the Moslems and
Hindus of India into two apparently irreconcilable political camps.’ Hailey,
Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa, p. 3.

88. Hailey speaking on ‘The Future of British Dependencies in Africa’ at a

luncheon of the Royal African Society, Connaught Rooms with Oliver
Stanley, secretary of state for the colonies, presiding. Reported in The
Times, 13 April 1943.

89. Lee, Colonial Development and Good Government, p. 189.
90. Hailey, Year Book of World Affairs, vol.12, 1959, p. 23.
91. Hailey, Foreign Affairs, vol.21 April 1943, p. 409.
92. Hailey, Foreign Affairs, vol.21 April 1943, p. 410. And in Hailey, Great

Britain, India and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War World, p. 23.

Notes to pp. 137–9

193

93. Colonial Office memorandum for the War Cabinet, 2 September 1941, in

Postwar Policy and Reconstruction (Hailey’s committee), CO 323/1858/20.

94. Hailey, The Future of Colonial Peoples, p. 62.
95. Colonel Oliver Stanley, secretary of state for the colonies, speaking at

Oxford Conservative Association, 5 March 1943, CO 825/38/7.

96. Colonel Oliver Stanley, Oxford Conservative Association, 5 March 1943,

CO 825/38/7.

97. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 213.
98. War Cabinet Colonial Policy, Draft WP (42) 614, 29 December 1942, CO

323/1858/22.

99. War Cabinet Colonial Policy, Draft WP (42) 614, 29 December 1942, CO

323/1858/22.

100. Letter from Colonel Stanley to Bobbety (Cranborne), 30 December 1942,

CO 323/1858/22.

101. For example Hornbeck was also worried about the impact of ‘free immi-

gration’ noting that ‘if the principle of equality is applied, any Japanese or
Negroes might also go.’ Cited in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 174 footnote
53.

102. Condit and Lucaites, Crafting Equality, p. 174.
103. Hailey, House of Lords, reported in The Times, 8 June 1945.
104. Hailey, House of Lords, reported in The Times, 30 January 1946.
105. Minute by G. W. Gent, 14 October 1943, CO 825/38/20.
106. Cited in Lauren, Power and Prejudice, p. 148.
107. Memo by C. J. Jeffries, 8 October 1941: ‘Mr Paskin’s point about discrimi-

nation in the interests of the natives is a good one; but it is one to be
considered in connection with subsequent practical action rather than in
connection with the general declaration of policy.’ CO 859/80/13.

108. Circular from A. Creech Jones, 8 January 1947, CO 323/1879/5.
109. Harris, Race & Class, vol.33, no.1, 1991, (pp. 1–30) p. 14.
110. ‘. . . Washington’s first perceived great postwar challenge. Not the threat of

revolution or the collapse of capitalism, but the failure of integration was
the initial and most basic issue at stake in Western Europe – and it was
never to disappear.’ Kolko and Kolko, The Limits of Power, p. 712.

111. Thorne, Pacific Historical Review, vol.45, no.1, February 1976, p. 75 and

p. 80.

112. Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch (R&A no.1398),

‘British Colonial Policy’, 28 April 1944, p. 34, Notter Files, RG59, Box 66,
File 484, Sutland, Maryland, USA.

113. Cited in Thorne, Pacific Historical Review, vol.45, no.1, February 1976, p.

82.

114. Thorne, Pacific Historical Review, vol.45, no.1, February 1976, pp. 90–3.
115. Kolko and Kolko, The Limits of Power, p. 35.
116. Note of conversation between Oliver Stanley and Dr Bowman, Colonial

Office, 18 April 1944, CO 323/1877/4.

117. Report of a conversation between Dr Isaiah Bowman and Mr Jebb, Foreign

Office, 12 April 1944, CO 323/1877/4.

194

Notes to pp. 139–48

CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

1. Sunday Times, 16 August 1992.
2. Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism, p. 1.
3. Take newspapers, for example. Over the past ten years there has been a

steady increase in the use of the word ‘holocaust’ to tenfold what it used
to be. Using the Financial Times database Profile to search English language
newspapers in Britain from 1984 to 1993 for the key word ‘holocaust’
provided these results. The number of articles using the word ‘holocaust’
increased tenfold in those years. The average number of articles (per
month) rose steadily: 6 in 1984, 13 in 1985, 21 in 1986, 33 in 1987, 34 in
1988, 36 in 1989, 50 in 1990, 54 in 1991, 76 in 1992 and 80 a month in
the first four months of 1993. Comparing 68 articles from 1984 and 1024
articles from 1992–3, indicated three main categories. Reference to a
‘nuclear holocaust’ went from 54 per cent in 1984 to 6 per cent in
1992/93, but doubled in actual numbers. References to the genocide of the
Jews in the Second World War went from 24 per cent to 83 per cent of the
articles. The remaining use of the word ‘holocaust’ increased almost
tenfold, although its percentage of the total declined slightly from 22 per
cent to 18 per cent. Overall the significant change was the increasing refer-
ence to the Second World War. This is not due to 50-year anniversaries, as
it is largely fictional accounts that have increased. As recorded by one jour-
nalist, ‘despite Adorno’s contention that “to write poetry after Auschwitz
is barbaric”, the Holocaust has proved an inspiration to a whole range of
poets, novelists, composers and visual artists’ (Independent on Sunday, 26
January 1992).

4. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 206 (his emphasis).
5. Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 35. and Lauren, Power and Prejudice, p. 144.
6. The themes were: ‘(a) the sanctity of absolute values, (b) the sanctity of the

individual and of the family, [and] (c) the comity of nations.’ Minister of
Information, 20 September 1939, cited in McLaine, Ministry of Morale,
p. 141.

7. Lord Moyne, Memorandum on the Constitutional Future of the Colonies,

CO 323/1858/20.

8. Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism, p. xi.
9. Perham, Colonial Sequence, p. 230.

10. ‘The general atmosphere of acquiescence which our rule now enjoys owes

much to the opportunities provided by the native authority system for the
expression of native opinion.’ Hailey, Native Administration and Political
Development in British Tropical Africa, p. 11.

11. Perham, The Times, 14 March 1942, reprinted in Colonial Sequence,

pp. 228–31.

12. Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley, p. 165.

Notes to pp. 149–53

195

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‘India’, Round Table, vol.12, September 1922
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1935

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‘The Colonial Problem’, Spectator, 27 March 1942
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and Aborigines Protection Society, 1942

Opening Statement: a British View of a Far Eastern Settlement, Preliminary

Report of the Eighth Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, War and
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london, 1943

Great Britain, India, and the Colonial Dependencies in the Post-War World, Falconer

Foundation Lecture, 8 February 1943, University of Toronto Press, Canada,
1943

The Future of Colonial Peoples, Stafford Little Foundation Lectures, February

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International Affairs, Oxford, 1943

‘India in the Modern World: a British View’, Foreign Affairs, vol.21, April 1943.
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‘America’s Colour Problem: a review of Myrdal’s American Dilmma’, The Times,

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196

‘Colonies and World Organization’, African Affairs, vol.44, April 1945
World Thought on the Colonial Question, Witwatersrand University Press,

Johannesburg, 1946

‘British Colonial Policy’, in Colonial Administration by European Powers,

Symposium at Kings College, London, November–December 1946, Royal
Institute of international Affairs with Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1947

‘South-West Africa’, African Affairs, vol.46, April 1947
‘A Turning Point in Colonial Rule’, address at Chatham House, 27 November

1951, International Affairs, vol.28, no.2, April 1952

A New Phase in Colonial Policy, Anti-Slavery Society, London, 1952
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‘Spotlight on Africa’, in Calvin Stillman (ed.), Africa in the Modern World,

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‘The Differing Faces of Africa’, Foreign Affairs, vol.36, 1957
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February 1957

Tomorrow in Africa, Africa Bureau Anniversary Address, Grange Press, Sussex,

1957

An African Survey: a Study of Problems Arising South of the Sahara, revised edition,

Oxford University Press, London, 1957

‘The Decline of the Colonial System in Africa’, Year Book of World Affairs,

vol.12, London Institute of World Affairs, Stevens, 1959

The Republic of South Africa and the High Commission Territories, Oxford

University Press, London, 1963

Lord Hailey reported in The Times

1935

13 February, 22, 31 May, 14, 26 June, 4 July, 20, 26 July, 3 October

1936

16 June, 21, 30 July, 21 September, 3 December

1937

19 January, 20 January, 13 February, 23 February, 13 March, 29 May,
25 June, 26, 27, 29, 30 October, 1, 2, 6, 9 November

1938

7 January, 1 April, 25 October, 7, 8 November, 1, 2, 15 December

1939

2, 7, 8, 9, 12, 20, 27, 31 January, 7, 25 February, 9, 17 March, 27 April,
9, 12, 19 May, 7, 8, 20, 23, 27 June, 15, 26 July, 9, 13 November

1940

9, 27 January, 24 July, 9 September, 2 October (away in Africa mostly)

1941

5, 20 February, 15, 16, 17, 19 May, 20 June, 10, 17 July, 7 August, 2,
16, 29 October, 18 December

1942

4, 5, 27 February, 30 April, 7 May, 11, 30 June, 28, 31 July, 16 October,
8 December

1943

7,13 April, 18 June, 8 July, 8 September, 21, 27, 30 (letter) October, 1
November, 14 December

1944

17 February, 29 May, 28 June, 20, 25(review) July

1945

1, 19 February, 27 March (letter), 11 April, 16 May, 8, 15 June, 2
November

1946

30 January, 7 March, 26, 29 July, 13 November

1947

30 January, 6, 27 February

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Bibliography

Abyssinia, see Ethiopia
Aden, 120
Amery, Leopold, 100, 120–1
Annamites, 146
Anti-Slavery and Aborigines

Protection Society, 122

Arnold, Lord, 43
Asquith, Anthony, 88
Atlantic Charter, 98–101, 104, 109,

114, 119–22, 147

Attlee, Clement, 76, 97, 100, 127, 128

Baldwin, Stanley, 25
Barkan, Elazar, 1, 2, 149–50, 151
Barnes, Leonard, 41
Bauman, Zygmunt, 150
BBC, 62, 85
Berlin, Isaiah, 48, 49, 70, 101, 105,

134, 135, 137

Bermuda, 16
Beveridge Report, x, 112
Bevin, Ernest, 77, 83
Birkenhead, Lord, 25
Bledisloe, Lord, 110, 111
Bolero Combined Committee, 79
Borneo, 31
Bourdillon, Sir Bernard, 61, 100
Bowman, Dr Isaiah, 114, 147
Bracken, Brendan, 79
British Admiralty, 80, 90
British Air Ministry, 89, 90
British Empire, fear of loss, 101, 102,

103, see also Singapore, fall of

British Honduras, 120
British Honduras Foresters, 78
British Information Service, 103, 115
Brooke-Popham, General Robert, 45
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’

Union, 68

Buchanan, Russell, 72
Buell, Raymond, 74
Burma, 8, 15, 100, 106, 120–1, 134,

142

Burns, Sir Alan, 56, 60, 61, 82
Butler, Harold, 53, 122
Butler, L. J., 22–3, 89
Butler, P. D., 125
Butler, Uriah, 20

Cadogan, Sir Alexander, 45, 98
Calder, John Alexander, 80
Calder-Marshall, Arthur, 42
Cameron, Sir Donald, 38, 102
Campbell, Sir R. I., 108, 109
Canadian delegates to Institute of

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104, 116

Cantlie, Lieutenant-Colonel, 124–5
Capra, Frank, 2
Carnegie Foundation, 3, 13, 67, 117

Poor White Commission, 67

Carter, Edward, 105
Cell, John, 11, 15, 17–18, 96
Centre for Contemporary Cultural

Studies, 1

Ceylon, 139
Chamberlain, Joseph, 8
Chandra Bose, Subhas, 134
Chatham House, see Royal Institute

of International Affairs

Chiang Kai-shek, 77, 136, 145
China, 74, 75, 76, 104

international relations, 74–6, 105,

108, 140

Chinese immigration, 76, 106, 142,

146

Chinese minorities, 105–6, 137–8,

141

Churchill, Winston, 17, 22, 27, 29,

35, 42, 45, 46, 47, 76, 98, 99,
100, 121, 122, 131, 135–7

Clarke, Ashley, 75, 97
Clauson, Gerard L. M., 54
Cold War, 94
Colonial Development Act (1929),

20–1

213

Index

Colonial Development and Welfare

Act (1940), 19–24, 54, 110–11,
123

Colonial Development and Welfare

Act (1945), 23

Colonial Office,

arguing for empire, 96, 101–3
discussion at Carlton Hotel, 52–3
discussion on colonial charter,

120–1

fear of armed resistance, 81–2
official mind, 5, 22, 151, 154
organizational changes, 9, 53–9,

112–13

reaction to fall of Singapore,

49–52, 81

sensitivity to race issue, 41, 57–8,

62, 79, 80, 81, 84–5, 116, 151

welfare department, 89, 90, 92

Colonial Office Committees,

Colonial Development and

Welfare Advisory (also known
as Research and Development
or Research Advisory), 16, 23,
111

Education, 54
Employment of Africans, 56
Postwar Problems (also known as

Postwar Reconstruction), 16,
17, 103, 108, 115

Colonial Office policy,

expatriation allowances, 55, 59–60
in relation to America, 113
indirect rule, 13–15, 36–8
on African employment, 53–60,

84, 113

on colonial self-government, 36,

61, 93, 99, 111, 112, 124,
128–9, 130–1, 139–40

on native administration, 42–3,

52–3, 61

on the Unified Services, 54–9
partnership, 15, 38, 51, 63, 119,

122–4, 146

policy making, 9, 110–11
possible statement on race discrim-

ination, 83–8, 143

promoting colonial welfare, 54,

110–12, 122–4

protecting minorities, 119, 137–42,

144, 147, 153

relation to colour bar, 1, 35, 52,

55–60, 77, 82–93, 138, 143–4

separate development, 36–8, 133,

147

towards black troops, 34, 77–84,

90–2

towards colonial recruits, 80–4
towards race relations, 138
towards US segregation, 78–80,

85–8, 142

trusteeship, 55, 111

colonies,

disloyalty, 74, 101, 146, 152
in war, 77, 81–2, 105
independence issue, 93, 111, 112,

128–9

colour bar, x, 1, 2, 5, 33–5, 38, 48,

55–60, 63, 64, 68–73, 77, 80–93,
105, 106, 116, 125, 144, 145,
149, 152, 154

discreet operation, 34, 153–4
in colonial context, 1, 35, 52,

55–60, 77, 82–93, 138, 143–4

Condit, Celeste, 1, 3, 69, 73, 141
Constantine, Leary, 85–7
Constantine, Stephen, 20–1, 22
Costello, John, 86
Coupland, Professor Reginald, 52
Cranborne, Lord, 9, 59, 60, 61, 79,

80, 87, 96, 104, 122, 127, 128,
129, 141

Creech Jones, Arthur, 93, 100, 122,

144

Crerar, Sir James, 12
Crete, 92
Cripps, Sir Stafford, 134–5
Cross, Flight Lieutenant, 90
Crown colonies, 50
Cuba, 28
Curtis, Lionel, 96

Dawe, Arthur, 21, 52, 60, 138
Depression of 1930s, x, 20, 28, 66,

94, 98, 110

Devonshire, Duke of, 14
Dower, John, 45, 76
Driberg, Tom, 85

214

Index

Drummond, Ian, 75
Du Bois, William E. B., 42
Dulles, Foster Rhea, 29
Dutch East Indies, 31
Dyer, Reginald, 13

Eastwood, Christopher, 54, 128,

130–1

Eden, Sir Anthony, 128
Eisenhower, General, 72
empire,

diverse societies, 138–40
Fabian criticisms of empire, 41,

102

Far Eastern empire, 31, 45, 48, 58,

74, 97, 101, 102, 133, 145–6,
149, 152

impact of Depression, 20–1, 54

Empire Windrush, 5
Ethiopia, 41–2, 70

fascism, 150–1
fifth column, 152
First World War, 28, 101

civilian deaths, ix
reaction to, ix, 38, 40–1, 67

Foreign Office, 28, 31, 48, 49, 75, 96,

103, 104, 114, 124, 126, 127,
142, 148

Forster, E. M., ix
France, 98, 145, 146, 147, 149
free trade, 98
Fryer, Peter, 87
Fussell, Paul, ix, 40

Gambia, 59, 120
Gammans, Captain, 103
Gandhi, Mohandas, 26, 106, 134,

136

Gater, Sir George Henry, 58, 78, 81,

96, 127

Gayda, Virginio, 43
Gent, Sir Gerard, 103, 109, 143
George, Lloyd, 25
Gerig, Benjamin, 126
German colonies, 4, 43
Germany, in propaganda, 49, 151
Gibb, Wing Commander, 89–90
Gibraltar, 120

Ginsberg, Morris, 40
Gold Coast, 56, 59, 61, 62, 84
Gour, Sir Hari Singh, 83
Grigg, Sir Edward, 32, 41

Hailey, Lord

An African Survey, 13–15, 16, 21,

37, 38, 39, 53, 67, 96, 117

as chief ideologue, 10, 51, 52, 54,

56, 60, 96, 97, 108, 115, 117

at Institute of Pacific Relations

conference, 94, 96, 97, 100,
103–10, 114, 115, 126, 127,
129, 131, 132, 147

at Permanent Mandates

Commission, 13, 138

at Princeton University, 63, 108,

115, 116, 117, 139

at Toronto University, 62
comparing Africa and India, 15,

138

critical of trusteeship, 62, 111, 122–3
defending the Empire, 103–10,

115–18, 129, 140

diary, 15, 45
expert adviser, 10, 11, 16, 17, 84,

121, 128

in America, 33, 65, 92, 130
in India, 11–12, 24–5, 32, 37–8, 39,

96, 106, 136

on ‘arming the natives’, 80–1
on American race relations, 63,

65–6, 104–8, 132

on Colonial Office committees, 16,

54, 84–5, 92, 103, 108, 115

on fall of Singapore, 51
on imperial mission, 112, 117,

131, 151

on indirect rule, 38, 63, 124
on international organisation, 66
on nationalism, 39
on native administration, 36, 38–9,

53, 61, 111, 138

on partnership. 15, 51, 63, 122–4
on racial feeling, 39–40, 41, 51, 60,

62, 65, 111, 137–9

on regional committees for inter-

national administration, 127,
140

Index

215

Hailey, Lord – continued

on roots of racial thinking, 40, 57,

60, 66

promoting development, 106,

109–10, 112–13, 118, 123,
129–30, 132–3, 153

promoting welfare in the colonies,

110–11, 123–4, 133, 153

protecting minorities, 139, 142
representative of official mind, 34,

39, 61

withholding independence, 130–3,

135, 136, 137, 142, 153

Halifax, Lord, 75, 76, 77, 117, 126,

128, 138

Hall, George, 9
Hancock, Professor William Keith,

52, 101

Harris, Clive, 144
Hemingway, Ernest, 40
Hetherington, Penelope, 38
Hill, Arnold T, 68
Hillmer, Norman, 75
Hirtzel, Sir Arthur, 13
Hoare, Sir Samuel, 24
Hobson, John, 41
Holocaust, 2, 149–51
Home Office, 83
Hong Kong, 46, 75, 89
Hornbeck, Dr Stanley, 115, 117, 132,

143

Hull, Cordell, 76, 107, 126
humanitarianism, 103, 111–12, 130,

153

Huxley, Julian, 6, 36, 40, 52, 53

Ickes, Harold, 70
Idun, S. O. Quashie, 56
immigration, as colour bar, 105–6,

116, 143

imperial mission, 112, 117
imperial policy,

Anglo-American colonial charter,

125–31

assumption of superiority, 24, 76,

105–6, 113, 117, 140, 146, 148

colonial charter, 120–1
development idea, 19–24, 110–11,

130, 146, 148, 153

imperial preference, 29
international administration, 30,

116, 126, 128, 131, 140–1

minority protection, 119, 137–42,

144, 147, 153

open door policy, 29
Ottawa agreement, 28
partnership, 15, 38, 51, 63, 119,

122–4, 146

paternalism, 14, 18, 37–8, 62, 106,

125, 132, 141, 144, 147–8,
152, 154

postponing colonial independence,

112–13, 119–21, 124, 126,
128–9, 154

relation of Africa and India, 15, 18,

138

separation of political and

economic development,
109–14, 133

welfare for colonies, 22–4, 54,

63–4, 106, 110–12, 122–4,
133, 153–4

imperial prerogative, 77, 113, 126–7,

133, 141, 143, 146, 153

India,

Amritsar massacre, 13
at war with Japan, 25, 126, 133,

134, 136

British Raj, 26, 32, 100
Chenab, 37
communal division, 37–8, 136,

137, 153

Congress Party, 18, 26, 18, 116,

134–7

Cripps’s mission, 27, 134–5, 137
delegation to Institute of

Pacific Relations conference,
115–16

dominionhood, 24–7
Hunter Commission, 13
independence demands, 7, 15,

24–7, 32, 39, 69, 74, 76,
120–2, 134–5, 140

India Act (1935), 26
Indian minorities outside India,

14, 55, 137, 141

Indianization of Indian Civil

Service, 27, 57

216

Index

Indians in Africa, 55, 138
Land Alienation Act (1900), 11
minorities, 25, 26, 134–7, 142
Montagu Declaration, 24
Muslim League, 27, 135
princely states, 26, 135–6
‘race consciousness’, 44, 62
Round Table Conference, 24, 27,

Simon Commission, 24
social engineering, 11, 37
‘untouchables’, 116
Viceroy of India, 121, 134, 135

India Office, 82, 83, 96, 100, 120–2,

135

Indian National Army, 134
Indo-China, 31, 145–7
Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR),

1942 conference, Mont Tremblant,

65, 94, 96–7, 103–10, 115–18,
124, 125

1944 conference, Atlantic City,

113

international administration, 30,

116, 126, 128, 131, 140–1

Iraq, 32
Irwin, Lord, 25
Italy, 41–2

Jamaica, 89
Japan,

American occupation, 145
Anglo-Japanese alliance, 28, 74
Anglo-Japanese Naval Treaty, 28
as non-white symbol, 42, 48, 71
occupation of Manchuria, 45
reports of atrocities, 2
request for race equality clause, 14,

victories in South Pacific, 36,

45–51, 59, 61, 62, 63, 67, 69,
71, 73, 81, 89, 95, 97, 101,
103, 104, 125, 133, 134, 152,
153, 154

Japanese,

in propaganda, 49
mandated islands, 147–8
racist descriptions of, 45, 51
supposed influence, 49, 70

Jebb, Gladwyn, 128
Jeffries, Sir Charles, 5, 57, 58, 84, 86,

144

Jesse Jones, Dr Thomas, 49, 73
Jews, treatment during war, 98, 150
Johnson, Colonel Louis, 136

Keith, John Lucien, 78, 83, 84, 89,

90, 92

Kenya, 43, 84, 85, 138
Keppel, Dr Frederick, 67, 117
Keynes, John Maynard, 21
Keynesianism, 112, 133
King, Desmond, 2, 3
Kingsley, Mary, 15
Kipling, Rudyard, 11, 28, 47
Kirk-Greene, Anthony, 112
Knox, Frank, 68
Kolko, Gabriel, 95, 145, 147
Kolko, Joyce, 147

Labour Party, 76, 100
LaFarge, Father John
Lagos, 56
Langdon, William, 146–7
Lauren, Paul, 2, 44
Law, Richard, 114
League of Coloured Peoples, 56, 58,

League of Nations, 36, 43–4, 98

mandated territories, 44, 99
Permanent Mandates Commission,

138

Lee, Michael, 20, 22, 122, 138
Leys, Norman, 84
Links, Wing Commander, 90
Linlithgow, Lord, 134, 135
Lippmann, Walter, 47, 74, 75
Listowel, Lord, 5
Lloyd, Sir Thomas, 9, 55
London, George Ernest, 62
Lonsdale, John, 112
Lothian, Lord, 117
Louis, Wm. Roger, 30–3, 94, 99
Low, David, 85
Lucaites, John, 1, 3, 69, 73, 141
Lugard, Lord, 53, 138

chief ideologue of Colonial Office,

13–15, 36, 52, 102

Index

217

Macadam, Ivison, 105
Macauley, Thomas Babington, 7–8
MacDonald, Malcolm, 9, 21, 22, 52,

81, 110

MacDougall, D. M., 115, 117
Macmillan, Harold, 41, 79, 110, 122,
Macmillan, Lord, 150
Macmillan, W. M., 38
Malaya, 31, 32, 46, 48, 50, 59, 68,

104, 106, 125, 134, 141, 142

Malik, Kenan, 1, 2
Malinowski, Bronislaw, x
Marshall islands, 148
Mauritius, 127
McLaine, Ian, 86
McLean, Sir William, 49
Meredith, Burgess, 88
Middle East, 32
Miller, Dorie, 72
Milner, Lord, 25
Ministry of Information, 50, 62, 79,

86, 88, 97, 100, 101–2, 138, 150

Montgomery, General, 89
Moody, Dr Harold, 56, 58, 82
Moore, R. J., 24–7, 134–6
Morgenthau, Henry, 28
Morocco, 89
Morrison, Herbert, 83
Moyne, Lord, 9, 16, 21, 22, 30, 57,

58, 60, 83, 99, 108, 120–1, 123,
124, 151

Myrdal, Gunnar, 3–4, 67–8, 69,

117–18

Nazi genocide, 1, 149
Nazi Germany, 98
Nazis, 100
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 134
Netherlands, 145
Newfoundland, Argentia, 98
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 29
Nigeria, 37, 38, 54, 59, 100
Nyasaland, 54

O’Dwyer, Sir Michael, 12
O’Hare McCormick, Anne, 125
Oldham, Joseph, 14
Orwell, George, 8

Paget, Commander in Chief, 90
Palestine, 138, 142
Paris Peace Conference (1919), 14, 44
Parkinson, Sir Cosmo, 16, 52, 84, 103
Paskin, John J., 58, 84, 85, 144
paternalism, see Imperial policy
Patterson, Robert, 68
Pax Britannica, 101
Pearce, Robert, 63
Pedler, Frederick, 53, 54, 55
Percival, Lieutenant-General Arthur,

Perham, Margery, 43, 52–3, 102, 151,

153

Petter, Martin, 122
Phelps-Stokes Committee, 49, 58, 73
Philippines, 28–9, 46, 47, 106
plural societies, 138–9
Porter, Andrew, 17
Poynton, Hilton, 80, 89, 90
Prince of Wales, 46
Princeton University, 63, 108, 115,

116, 117, 139

Puerto Rico, 125

race equality clause, 14, 44, 143, 154
race relations, 3, 5, 9, 36, 39, 50–1,

93, 102, 103, 152

etiquette, 5, 82
world divide, 44, 74, 76

racial discrimination, x, 1, 2, 5, 33–5,

38, 48, 55–60, 63, 64, 68–73, 77,
80–93, 105, 106, 116, 125, 144,
145, 149, 152, 154

covert, 34, 153–4
in Britain, 5, 56, 80–93, 105
in Colonial Services, 55–60, 144
in colonies, 35, 48, 57–9, 77, 84,

90, 92–3, 116, 144

in Soviet Union, 4
in United States, 2, 33–4, 63,

68–73, 77, 85, 88, 92, 106,
116, 125, 144, 152

in US armed forces, 4, 5, 33–4, 59,

65, 68–9, 71, 77–80, 85–8, 152

two empires, 25, 90, 100

racial images of India, 137
racial thinking, 6–8, 132, 152

changes, 6, 7, 153–4

218

Index

in colonial policy, 23, 130, 144,

151

Nazi ideology, 143, 150–1
scientific racism, 2, 6, 150
sensitivity to colour bar, 41, 57–8,

62, 79, 80, 81, 84–5, 116, 151

RAF, black recruitment, 89–90, 92
Rampersad, Dave, 21
Randolph, Asa Philip, 68
Reading, Lord, 25
Repulse, 46
Rex, John, 2
Reynolds, David, 29, 30
Rich, Paul, 1, 2, 4, 5, 15
Richards, Audrey, 84
Robinson, Kenneth, 20, 25, 112
Robinson, Ronald, 94
Rolleston, W. L., 78
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 18, 28, 29, 31,

47, 68, 71, 97, 98, 131, 136–7,
147

Rose, Arnold, 4
Royal Empire Society, 62, 123
Royal Institute of International

Affairs (also known as Chatham
House), 62, 65, 84, 96

Russia, 75
Russo-Japanese War, 41, 44–5

Sabine, Noel, 50, 57, 81, 85, 87, 102
Said, Edward, 7
Sansom, Sir George, 116, 117
Scott, R. H., 48, 50
Scottish Office, 83
Second World War,

battle of the Atlantic, 89
civilian deaths, ix
fifth columnists, 48
ideology, ix–x
impact on racial thinking, 41, 67
North Africa campaign, 89
Pacific War, 45–6, 69, 77, 101, 126

see also Singapore

Pearl Harbor, 46, 48, 72, 101
production levels, ix, 89
turning point, 89, 115, 142

self-government, see Colonial Office

policy

Sex Equality Act, 84

Shone, Wing Commander, 90
Shuckburgh, Sir John, 53, 56, 101
Sierra Leone, 59, 62
Simon, Sir John, 13
Singapore, as symbol, 48, 69, 125
Singapore, fall of, 45–51, 59, 61, 62,

67, 71, 73, 81, 89, 95, 97, 101,
103, 104, 125, 134, 152, 153

Sitkoff, Harvard, 71
Smith, Graham, 87, 88
Smuts, General, 38
South Africa, 43, 38
Southern, David, 67
Soviet Union, 145
Spain, 28
Stand films, 88
Stanley, Colonel Oliver, 9, 17, 23, 29,

59, 90, 128, 131, 139, 140, 141,
147, 148

Stoddard, Lothrop, 44
Strachey, Sir John, 8
Supreme Headquarters, Allied

Expeditionary Force, 72

Symonds, Richard, 7

Tanganyika, 38, 49, 102
Tarr, Edgar J., 105
Tawney, Professor, 103
Thailand, 115
Thorne, Christopher, 33, 46, 108,

110, 136, 146, 147

Thornley, Colin, 49, 50, 59
Tomlinson, Sally, 2
Toronto University, 62
Toynbee, Arnold, 126
Treasury, 21–2
Truman, Harry S., 3

Uganda, 35
United Nations, 31, 147

Commission on Human Rights, 93,

144

United Nations Charter, x, 130,

143–4, 148

United Nations of the Allied Forces,

47, 77, 98

United States,

Advisory Committee on Postwar

Foreign Policy, 115

Index

219

United States – continued

Anglo-American agreement on

immigration, 143

Anglo-American Caribbean

Commission, 17

Anglo-American colonial charter,

76, 126–31

Anglo-American common paternal-

ism, 106, 125, 132, 141, 144,
147–8, 154

Anglo-American debate, 32–3, 74,

94, 128–9, 144

Anglo-American relationship,

27–30, 34, 73, 95, 101, 102

Anglo-American relationship,

Atlantic Charter, 98–101, 104,
109, 114, 119–22, 147

Anglo-American relationship, new

framework, 112–14, 118, 130,
149, 153–4

anti-Chinese legislation, 76
anti-imperialism, 4, 29, 34, 47, 65,

88, 93, 97, 100, 102, 119,
122, 124, 133, 145–6, 149,
151–2

armed forces, 28, 33–4, 70, 71, 72,

147

attitude to Indian independence,

133–7

black resentment, 67–8
black soldiers, 4, 5, 59, 65, 71,

77–80, 85–8, 152

cash and carry legislation, 29
Fair Employment Practices

Committee, 68, 71, 77

Four Freedoms, 89, 97–8, 100, 104,

119

image abroad, 1, 3, 69–70, 73, 105,

107, 108, 116–17

internment of Japanese-Americans,

isolationism, 3, 28–9, 69, 101, 104,

106, 115, 151

Jim Crow, 69, 77, 88, 92 see also

Race discrimination

Johnson Act, 29
Lend-Lease, 30, 97
lynching, 69
manpower shortages, 3

March on Washington Movement,

68–9

Marshall Plan, 145
National Association for the

Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), 48, 68

National Negro Congress, 68
Neutrality Act, 28
New Deal, 67
New York Welfare Council, 73
Office of Strategic Services, 145–6
Office of War Information, 69,

137

pro-empire, 113, 125, 146, 147–8
race discrimination, 2, 33–4, 63,

68–70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 85, 88,
92, 106, 116, 125, 144, 152

race riots, 67, 71, 76
Ramspeck Act (1940), 68
relationship with China, 73, 75–7,

126

segregation, 33–4, 63, 69, 71, 72,

85, 106, 125, 152

sensitivity to race issue, 73, 105,

107, 108, 116–17

sharecroppers, 70, 72
slavery, 107
trade agreement with Japan, 45
treatment of black people in

Britain, 85–8, 90

US State Department, 75, 76, 127,

128, 132, 143, 145, 147

US War Department, 68, 69, 72,

147

Victoria, League, 78
Vietnamese, 146

War Cabinet, 78, 88, 108, 120, 121,

128, 134, 135, 140–1

War Office, 78, 80, 81, 90, 91, 92, 153
Watson, Arnold, 86
Watt, Donald, 28, 95
Wavell, Lord, 46, 135
Wedemeyer, General, 145
welfare statism, ix-x, 63
Welles, Sumner, 47, 98, 134
West Indies, 30, 42, 81, 92, 103

Caribbean contingent, 81, 90–2

220

Index

in solidarity with other non-

whites, 44

relationship with United States, 22,

30, 66, 108, 125, 127

riots in 1930s, 20, 42
Royal Commission, 21–2
war workers in Britain, 85

western authority, 24, 105–6, 113,

117, 140, 146, 148

White, Walter, 48, 68
white Australia policy, 105
white imperialism, 47, 74, 152–3

white prestige, 8, 9, 33, 41–2, 44,

46–52, 93, 95, 125, 141, 144, 152

Williams, Sir Owen, 57, 84
Willkie, Wendell, 18, 30, 48, 73
Wilson, Woodrow, 44
Winant, John, 77, 128, 131
Woolf, Leonard, 41
Wright, Arthur, 53

Yamashita, Lieutenant-General

Tomoyuki, 47

Young, Hubert, 30

Index

221

Document Outline

Cover
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
2 The Loss of White Prestige
3 The Question of Equal Treatment
4 Defending the Empire
5 Reformulating Imperial Authority
6 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Y

Suke Wolton Lord Hailey, the Colonial Office and the Politics of Race and Empire in the Second World War; The Loss of White Prestige (2000)

Document Outline