by Richard Toye
82 Robert Rhodes James (ed.), ‘Chips’: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1993 (first published 1967), p. 290 (entry for 5 Feb. 1941).
83 Bruce to Menzies, 5 Jan. 1941, DAFP, vol. IV, p. 325.
84 Martin and Hardy, Dark and Hurrying Days, p. 64 (entry for 23 Feb. 1941).
85 Dilks, Cadogan Diaries, p. 358 (entry for 24 Feb. 1941).
86 Day, Menzies & Churchill, p. 84. WSC to Anthony Eden, 7 March 1941, in WSC, The Second World War, vol. III: The Grand Alliance [first published by Cassell, London, 1950], CW, vol. XXIV, p. 69; and generally, Sheila Lawlor, ‘Greece, March 1941: The Politics of British Military Intervention’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 933–46.
87 Reynolds, In Command of History, p. 232.
88 Martin and Hardy, Dark and Hurrying Days, p. 83 (entry for 6 March 1941).
89 Day, Menzies & Churchill, p. 191.
90 Dilks, Cadogan Diaries, p. 358 (entry for 24 Feb. 1941).
91 Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 684 (entry for 18 April 1941).
92 Menzies to A. W. Fadden, 4 March 1941, DAFP, vol. IV, p. 469.
93 Martin and Hardy, Dark and Hurrying Days, p. 112 (entry for 14 April 1941).
94 Ibid., pp. 118–19 (entry for 26 April 1941). Emphasis in original.
95 Advisory War Council minute, 28 May 1941, DAFP, vol. IV, p. 685.
96 Menzies to Bruce, 13 Aug. 1941, DAFP, vol. V, p. 71.
97 W. A. Riddell to Secretary of State for External Affairs, 21 Nov. 1941, in Documents on Canadian External Relations, 1939–1941, vol. VII, Department of External Affairs, Ottawa, 1974, p. 451.
98 Day, Menzies & Churchill, p. 151.
99 Mackenzie King diary, 23 Aug. 1941.
100 Francis Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers: The War and Post-War Memoirs of Rt. Hon Earl Attlee, London, Heinemann, 1961, p. 45.
101 Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941–1945, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, pp. 121–2.
102 Reprinted in ‘Declaration by United Nations’, Cmd. 6388, London, 1942.
103 Robert E. Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, vol. I: September 1939–January 1942, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1948, p. 361.
104 Mackenzie King diary, 24 Aug. 1941.
105 See WSC to Clement Attlee, 11 Aug. 1941, CWP, vol. III, p. 1054. Beaverbrook’s effort to take the credit does not seem convincing. For a different view, however, see Kenneth Young, Churchill and Beaverbrook: A Study in Friendship and Politics, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1966, pp. 201–2.
106 Mackenzie King diary, 12 Aug. 1941.
107 Reprinted in ‘Declaration by United Nations’.
108 Reginald Dorman-Smith to Leo Amery, 16 Aug. 1941, attached to Leo Amery, ‘Interpretation of Point III of Atlantic Declaration in respect of the British Empire’, WP (G) (41) 85, 29 Aug. 1941, NA, PREM 4/42/9.
109 Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 710 (entry for 14 Aug. 1941).
110 Extract from ‘West Africa’, 23 Aug. 1941, NA, PREM 4/43A/3.
111 WSC to Amery, 20 Aug. 1941, CWP, vol. III, p. 1087.
112 War Cabinet minutes, 4 Sept. 1941, WM (41) 89th, NA, CAB 65/19/25.
113 Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th Series, vol. 374, 9 Sept. 1941, col. 69.
114 J. G. Winant to Cordell Hull, 4 Nov. 1941, FRUS, 1941, vol. III, pp. 181–4.
115 Louis, Imperialism at Bay, pp. 130–2. Quotation (from a minute by Macmillan of 1 Sept. 1942) at p. 132.
116 ‘Prime Minister’s interview with U Saw and U Tin Tut, 18 October 1941’, Leo Amery Papers, 2/3/20.
117 ‘Blunt Saw’, Time, 17 Nov. 1941.
118 Wallace Murray, memorandum, 7 Nov. 1941, FRUS, 1941, vol. III, p. 185.
119 Robert H. Taylor, ‘Politics in Late Colonial Burma: The Case of U Saw’, Modern Asian Studies, 10 (1976), pp. 161–93, at 190–1; Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the War with Japan, Allen Lane, London, 2004, p. 104.
120 ‘Even Mr Churchill’, West African Pilot, 5 Nov. 1941, quoted in Sam O. Idemili, ‘What the West African Pilot Did in the Movement for Nigerian Nationalism between 1937 and 1957’, Black American Literature Forum, 12 (1978), pp. 84–91, at 87.
121 Bernard Bourdillon to Lord Moyne, 15 Nov. 1941 and Moyne’s reply of 25 Nov. 1941, NA, PREM 4/43A/3.
122 Idemili, ‘What the West African Pilot Did’, p. 87.
123 African National Congress, Africans’ Claims in South Africa, African National Congress, Johannesburg, 1943 – text available at www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/claims.html.
124 Ali A. Mazrui, Power, Politics and the African Condition: Collected Essays, vol. III, Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2004, p. 316.
125 WSC to Eamon De Valera, 8 Dec. 1941, CWP, vol. III, p. 1579.
126 Eamon De Valera’s contemporaneous note, quoted in the Earl of Longford and Thomas P. O’Neill, Eamon De Valera, Hutchinson, London, 1970, p. 393.
127 Ibid., p. 394.
128 Note by De Valera, 10 Dec. 1941, Eamon De Valera Papers, P150/2632.
129 FDR to WSC, 8 Dec. 1941, in Kimball, Complete Correspondence, vol. I, p. 282.
130 As Christopher Bell has shown, Churchill has been blamed too harshly for this calamity: ‘The “Singapore Strategy” and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the Admiralty, and the Dispatch of Force Z’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), pp. 604–34.
131 Day, Politics of War, pp. 220–31.
132 Ian Jacob diary, [27 Dec. 1941], CWP, vol. III, p. 1698.
133 ‘Battle for the Pacific Comes First’, Canberra Times, 29 Dec. 1941.
134 WSC to Clement Attlee, 29 Dec. 1941, in War Cabinet minutes, 29 Dec. 1941, WM (41) 137th, NA, CAB 65/20/29.
135 Mackenzie King diary, 29 Dec. 1941.
136 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965, Constable, London, 1966, p. 19.
137 Malcolm MacDonald to Lord Cranborne, 1 Aug. 1941, quoted in David Dilks, ‘The Great Dominion’: Winston Churchill in Canada, 1900–1954, Thomas Allen, Toronto, 2005, p. 152.
138 Speech of 30 Dec. 1941.
139 WSC’s press conference at Government House, 31 Dec. 1941, in Dilks, ‘The Great Dominion’, p. 221.
140 WSC to Archibald Wavell, 10 Feb. 1942, in WSC, The Second World War, vol. IV: The Hinge of Fate [first published by Cassell, London, 1951], CW, vol. XXV, p. 66.
141 Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781–1997, Jonathan Cape, London, 2007, p. 422.
142 WSC, Hinge of Fate, p. 60.
143 Talk by William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’), in English for England and North America, 16 Feb. 1942, quoted in Daily Digest of Foreign Broadcasts, 16–17 Feb. 1942, BBC Written Archives.
144 Vincent Sheean, Between the Thunder and the Sun, Random House, New York, 1943, p. 365.
145 ‘Feelings About the British Empire’, Mass-Observation File Report 1158, March 1942, Mass-Observation Archive.
146 John Harvey (ed.), The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1941–1945, Collins, London, 1978, p. 88 (entry for 25 Jan. 1942).
147 Lord Casey, Personal Experience, 1939–1946, Constable, London, 1962, p. 97.
148 H. V. Evatt to Bruce, 23 March 1942, DAFP, vol. V, p. 676.
149 Bruce, note of a conversation with WSC, 31 March 1942, ibid., p. 691.
150 Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall (eds.), Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1997, p. 119 (briefing of 30 Dec. 1942).
151 Day, Politics of War, p.5.
152 Moran, Struggle for Survival, p. 21.
153 John Ramsden, Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend since 1945, HarperCollins, London, 2002, esp. pp. 445–9.
154 Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 617 (entry for 13 May 1940).
155 Maharaj Singh to the editor, Sunday Statesman, 19 May 1940.
156 Lord Linlithgow to A
mery, 21 May 1940, Linlithgow Papers, MSS Eur. F125/8.
157 Wm. Roger Louis, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1992, pp. 130–3.
158 Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 637 (entry for 26 July 1940).
159 Louis, In the Name of God, p. 135; Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 637 (entry for 30 July 1940).
160 ‘Constitution Of India’, The Times, 9 Aug. 1940.
161 Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India, Abacus, London, 1998 (first published 1997), p. 542.
162 Nehru to Josiah Wedgwood, 21 Nov. 1941, in Selected Works, vol. XI, pp. 741–2.
163 Reginald Coupland diary, MSS Brit. Emp. S15, 29 Jan. 1942.
164 Coupland diary, 22 Feb. 1942. However, according to one American observer, the prominence given to the Atlantic Charter issue in the US press was not matched in Indian newspapers: Thomas M. Wilson to Cordell Hull, 28 Nov. 1941, FRUS, 1941, vol. III, p. 188.
165 Peter Clarke, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps, 1889–1952, Allen Lane, London, 2002, p. 277.
166 Tej Bahadur Sapru et al. to WSC, enclosure to Gilbert Laithwaite, 2 Jan. 1942, TOPI, vol. I, p. 4.
167 WSC to Attlee, 7 Jan. 1942, ibid., p. 14.
168 Amery to Linlithgow, 13 Jan. 1942, ibid., p. 22.
169 R. J. Moore, Churchill, Cripps and India, 1939–1945, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979, pp. 53–6.
170 WSC, Hinge of Fate, p. 137.
171 M. S. Venkataramani and B. K. Shrivastava, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Churchill: America and the Last Phase of India’s Freedom Struggle, Sangam Books, London, 1997 (first published 1983), p. 23.
172 Amery to Linlithgow, 10 March 1942, TOPI, vol. I, p. 404. Emphasis in original.
173 Dilks, Cadogan Diaries, p. 440 (entry for 5 March 1942).
174 Peter Clarke and Richard Toye, ‘Cripps, Sir (Richard) Stafford (1889–1952)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept. 2004; online edition, Jan. 2008.
175 WSC to Mackenzie King, 18 March 1942, in TOPI, vol. I, p. 440.
176 WSC, Hinge of Fate, p. 140.
177 J. C. Smuts to WSC, 5 March 1942, John Curtin to WSC 6 March 1942, Mackenzie King to WSC, 6 March 1942, in TOPI, vol. I, pp. 327–8, 349–50.
178 Coupland diary, 14 March 1942. Emphasis in original.
179 ‘Indians and Sir S. Cripps’, The Times, 24 March 1942.
180 Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 309 (entry for 12 Dec. 1940).
181 Geoffrey Wilson, ‘My Working Life’ (unpublished memoir), p. 16.
182 H. R. Trevor-Roper (ed.), Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944: His Private Conversations, Phoenix Press, London, 2000 (first published Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953; repr. 1973), p. 368 (27 March 1942).
183 Louis P. Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1948, p. 109 (entry for 31 March 1942).
184 Clarke, Cripps Version, p. 305.
185 Robert Pearce (ed.), Patrick Gordon Walker: Political Diaries, 1932–1971, The Historians’ Press, London, 1991, p. 110 (entry for 25 April 1942).
186 Coupland diary, 8 April 1942.
187 Speech of 21 May 1942, in Nehru, Selected Works, vol. XI, p. 324.
188 WSC, Hinge of Fate, p. 142.
189 Clarke, Cripps Version, p. 329.
190 Barnes and Nicolson, Empire at Bay, p. 786 (entry for 8 March 1942).
191 ‘A Vote of No-Confidence’, National Herald, 3 July 1942, in Nehru, Selected Works, vol. XII, p. 381.
192 James, Raj, pp. 564–5.
193 Linlithgow to WSC, 31 August 1942, TOPI, vol. II, p. 853.
194 Subhas Chandra Bose, ‘Guerrilla War and Plan of Action’, 4 Sept. 1942, in W. J. West (ed.), George Orwell: The War Commentaries, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987 (first published 1985), pp. 230–1.
195 Brendon, Decline and Fall, p. 396; ‘The Time is Now’, Time, 5 Oct. 1942.
196 War Cabinet minutes, 31 Aug. 1942, WM (42) 119th, NA, CAB 195/1.
197 Amery to Linlithgow, 1 September 1942, in TOPI, vol. II, p. 875.
198 War Cabinet minutes, 31 Aug. 1942, WM (42) 119th, NA, CAB 195/1.
199 Amery to Linlithgow, 1 Sept. 1942, TOPI, vol. II, p. 875.
200 Amery to Stafford Cripps, 2 Oct. 1942, ibid., p. 71.
201 WSC, ‘The Indian Representatives at the War Cabinet’, 7 Sept. 1942, ibid., p. 920.
202 A. R. Mudaliar to G. Laithwaite, 21 Sept. 1942 and Amery to Linlithgow, 13 Nov. 1942, TOPI, vol. III, pp. 3, 251.
203 Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 832 (entry for 9 Sept. 1942).
204 Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th Series, vol. 383, 10 Sept. 1942, cols. 302–5.
205 Barnes and Nicholson, Empire at Bay, p. 832 (entry for 10 Sept. 1942).
206 The Indian press reaction is summarized in ‘A Chorus of Criticism’, The Times, 14 Sept. 1942.
207 ‘Our Indian Observer’, ‘Political Comments’, Sunday Statesman, 20 Sept. 1942.
208 India League, The Prime Minister on India: An Examination of Mr Churchill’s Statement on India in the House of Commons on the 10th September 1942, India League, London, 1942, in Fabian Colonial Bureau Papers, Box 1/5, MSS Brit. Emp. S365. The speech also inspired another published attack on Churchill: Hira Seth Lal, Churchill on India: Let His Past Records [sic] Speak, First National Publishers, Lahore, 1942.
209 ‘Reports of a Press Conference held by Mr Jinnah’, 13 Sept. 1942, TOPI, vol. II, p. 958.
210 Lord Halifax to Anthony Eden, 14 Sept. 1942, Lord Halifax Papers, HLFX 2.
211 Pearce, Gordon Walker: Diaries, p. 113 (entry for 1 Oct. 1942).
212 Rhodes James, ‘Chips’, p. 341 (entry for 21 Oct. 1942).
213 Nicolson, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, p. 251 (entry for 21 Oct. 1942); Barnes and Nicolson, Empire at Bay, p. 839 (entry for 21 Oct. 1942).
214 ‘General Smuts on Aims in War and Peace’ The Times, 22 Oct. 1942.
215 R. A. C. Parker, The Second World War: A Short History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 (first published 1989), pp. 105–6.
216 Speech of 10 Nov. 1942.
217 Ibid.
218 ‘ “Great Design” in Africa’, The Times, 11 Nov. 1942.
219 Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p.8.
220 ‘Commonwealth of the World’, The Times, 28 Oct. 1942.
221 Speech of 10 Nov. 1942.
222 Martin Gilbert rightly notes that the sentence about democracy is rarely quoted, but he appears to take it as a simple statement of Churchill’s (undoubted) commitment to majority rule in Britain: Churchill’s Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981, p. 88.
223 ‘Double Noncooperation’, Time, 23 Nov. 1942.
224 Nehru diary, 13 Nov. 1942, in Selected Works, vol. XIII, p. 29.
225 ‘ “Old Imperialistic Order” ’, The Times, 18 Nov. 1942; H. G. Nicholas (ed.), Washington Despatches, 1941–45: Weekly Political Reports from the British Embassy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1981, p. 122 (report of 8 Dec. 1942).
226 ‘Episodes of the Month: Mr Churchill’s Declaration’, National Review, 119 (1942), pp. 462–3; ‘Empire Union Chides Mr Spender’, Canberra Times, 20 Nov. 1942.
227 Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th Series, vol. 385, 26 Nov. 1942, col. 938.
228 ‘Imperialist Order’, Washington Post, 20 Nov. 1942.
229 Mackenzie King diary, 5 Dec. 1942. In 1944, FDR commented privately to a journalist that Churchill ‘has that grandiose statement haunting him all the time – the one about not becoming the King’s first Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the “empah” ’. Quoted in Auriol Weigold, Churchill, Roosevelt and India: Propaganda During World War II, Routledge, London, 2008, p. 95.
8. HANDS OFF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
1 Quoted in ‘Britain “Tottering Colossus” ’, Irish Times, 17 Dec. 1943.
2 Axis broadcast, quoted in ‘Battle of Babble’, Time, 16
Feb. 1942.
3 John Charmley, Churchill, The End of Glory: A Political Biography, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1993, p. 455.
