My one regret of this timeline is that Bertie did not take the opportunity to steal Captain Saunders' helmet as he fled Buckingham Palace.
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Jolly Good! A Bertie Wooster TL
- Thread starter Danielassos Caesareos
- Start date
You can happily steal this idea. Glad I could assist. I couldn’t imagine a better vicar, especially when that image is place with Dawn French reading the longest sermon on brotherly love (The Great Sermon Handicap)This is actually a good idea! I'm going to just ask if I can steal the idea
Again, I am glad to assist, adding wood to this beacon of comical genius.
It’s also pleasing to see a member of the House of Lords actually working for his pay.
Captain Saunders would only be wearing his uniform, no hats in the presence of the monarch unless in wartime 😂
I shall do my best 🫡🫡
Haha thanks!
Yes it is quite surprising that people in The Other Place actually do anything other than snort champagne with their daily medication. Weirdly I met a Lord once, and he did take his job seriously, that's why I made him a PM in my fic.
There are still the Queen's Guards at the gates. Who have more spectacular headgear in any event.
True but here I've only left Captain Saunders in the capacity of Aide-de-camp who escorts dignitaries to HM
Gods no but I'm far too lazy to change it now 😂 thanks for letting me know tho!
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Chp7
Shush-Shush
Yaxburgh Castle, Fife, Scotland, UK.
Home once more! Evenings spent at Wooster House may be the crème de la creme, if Jeeves bundles along, although with Chilvers, one has to toe the line as a more subdued sort. Better than the heave-ho into the spartan digs at the Drones, however, as Claude normally squeals like a wailing cat after his two snortings, and Smethers is not up to tosh to arrest that caterwauling. Not that I did mind the p's and q's, away from the bassinet, I did indulge in a bit of the hooch, but I was up sharpish on orders for the engagement with the PM. I even partook a glass of the ‘Buck-U-Uppo’ that Cousin Augustine had posted from his vicarage at Steeple-Mummery and good thing too! That will sell like hot cakes if they get round to it.
I reckon it went rather swimmingly, considering I came out as master of the Jewel in all but name. Admittedly, there was more of the J for Joker in it that a noble Wooster would fancy, it was still progress, nonetheless. To imagine I accurately had to be capable to recollect the responses Jeeves had furnished blindfolded. I did assent, however, that the consultation with the PM was daunting. Not distressing enough to trigger one of the stiffening fits Bingo is notorious for when his eyes set upon a sweet lady, but scaring, nevertheless. The Buck-U-Uppo may have augmented my bluster a smidge, it absolutely felt that way. The dreadful mos. came afterwards. Buck House telephoned Yax to alert Vicky of the hearsay and the roaring seas on our shores are no contest for the blazing fury of my dearest darling.
“Jeeves, I have appeared as the conqu’ring hero! Gaze upon me and quake!” I proclaimed on ambling through the front doors. I had accepted a wire before I departed that the new-old PM had consented on shuffling me off to Troy after all, and in my sovereign conviction, I was jovially petrified.
Bellingby faltered through first, to haul the hat, gloves and coat and stumbled away before Jeeves shimmered in as quiet as a cat, as ever, behind him. I often suppose Bellingby should be pensioned off, the man was doubtless ancient in old Queen Vic’s day but Jeeves seems to judge he’s got zest still.
“Very good, sir. Her Royal Highness commands your consideration, at your earliest convenience, sir” he imparted, though I sensed a disquiet on his brow. Ever with my sterling charge at heart, Jeeves was a decent chappie. A fine cove. A blighter of the highest cream. A good egg.
“For why, Jeeves?” I probed. Obviously, we’d settled to let the lacquey who presented the cable bear the brunt of the thunder, so I was taken aback by this infidelity, and I displayed it with my expression.
“The Palace telephoned this morning, sir, to toast the Princess on becoming the Vicereine of India,” he expressed in his matter-of-fact fashion.
I must have fainted then, the floor shuddered, and I stirred in my bedstead, with Jeeves and his sound restorative close at hand. I quaffed it down in one nip, sensing the fire surging and my eyes bulging out before bidding to speak, but I was interrupted by the delightful and petrifying form of my mate along with that infernal wireless.
“…..From ev’ry kind of man,
Obedience I~~ expect!
I’m the Emperor of Japan!
And I’m his daughter-in-law-elect~!
He’ll marry his son! He’s only got one!
To his daughter-in-law-elect~!........”
Obedience I~~ expect!
I’m the Emperor of Japan!
And I’m his daughter-in-law-elect~!
He’ll marry his son! He’s only got one!
To his daughter-in-law-elect~!........”
“Bertram Wilberforce Wooster! What is the meaning of this, you dolt?” she boomed at me, and I shall avow on my dear Aunt Agatha’s grave that flames surged through her eyes. “Why do you gallivant about like a cloth-headed bally Robin Hood trying to rescue the government from each catastrophe, you oaf?”
“Vicky, my love….” I attempted to babble, but the dam had exploded. I spotted Jeeves squeeze out like a ghost, such treachery. I was genuinely wounded then.
“When was it resolved that your two-month-old daughter would accompany you all the way to India, outwith my consultation? Why did you accept this tainted chalice, you chump? Do you even recognise how obstruse this is, daft man? How this will sink your Titanic in Belfast?” she cried, though it turned to a gloomy declaration by the end.
It was then Jeeves resurfaced with another one of his corkers, and I inhaled that before trying again.
“Vicky, my love…..”
“No, don’t speak, you’re either dimly daring or imbecilically idiotic, putting your neck out like that,” she sniffed, “I love you, but the upstairs leaves much to be desired. Jeeves will know. Jeeves, what is to be done?”
“His Lordship’s name was counselled by the King himself, Your Royal Highness, there was little to be done but accede to such a commission,” Jeeves stated, “I had envisaged such an endeavour would be made by the inveigling of the India League to dishonour his lordship’s career, Princess.”
“Of course, Father put them up to this, demanding far too much of everyone! He should’ve understood his lesson with my brothers! One philanders away with a married woman, one has debilitating troubles with self-confidence, and one is a poor soul restrained to never leaving his own head! I had assumed that Bertie would elude that doom, sadly not,” Vicky declared.
“Dearest…” I sought. And got a sock in the jaw for it. So broadly, Fists were shaken, jaws socked, and the Wooster stock was substantially depreciated in the homestead.
The stinging was severe, and I withdrew from the exchange to nurse my wounds, cranial and chinly.
I had recognised rather on the double that Vicky had inherited her razor-sharp tongue from her mother the Queen and liberally dished out her tongue-lashings on those ill-fated that peeved her, much like Her Majesty.
“…..A more humane Mikado,
Never did in Japan exist!
To nobody second,
I’m certainly reckoned,
A true philanthropist!....”
Never did in Japan exist!
To nobody second,
I’m certainly reckoned,
A true philanthropist!....”
I still recall the creamer emptied on my head for some rash remark at our first banquet, and I was in love. And the gift of my little Alex, the most phantastic phaenomenon in the world, Vicky had granted me everything. It lessened the hurt on the pride. We Woosters are notorious for our tender mercy, after all.
“It was foreseen, Princess,” spoke Jeeves, finally dashing to my rescue, “that success in his position at the Treasury would draw his lordship into deeper waters. I had ensured my utmost to equip him with the resolutions that would sufficiently influence the Prime Minister, in likelihood that you may evade the King’s scrutiny, Princess, as you requested.”
I must’ve made rather a comical hullabaloo, at being made a hostage to fortune in such sport as Vicky simply stood up, snorted at me and enfolded Jeeves in a tight embrace, who returned the squeeze rather awkwardly and civilly. Noblesse oblige and all the rot, don’t you know.
“Oh, Jeeves, you absolute marvel!” she exclaimed after allowing the now fairly embarrassed Jeeves out of the intense hug. I must say, I’m all for the causal separation of upstairs and downstairs, and I was tickled to the bone to see Jeeves squirm when the Lady of the House gave him so familiar an embrace. Feudal spirit is the rub for him.
He coughed softly, as is his wont, and then beamed, “One endeavours to give satisfaction, Princess.”
“This doesn’t revolutionise the point that I have been most ruthlessly used and landed in hot water for my scrapes!” I exclaimed. We Woosters are fine unflappable fellows, but all this backroom dealing does take the giddy biscuit!
“Oh come, come, Bertie! This is an occasion to be away from Father! Think of that~~~!” Vicky maintained gaily and she walked out to tend to a peckish little Alex.
I focused my full gaze on Jeeves, and I am convinced my eyes in ire are just as dangerous as my dear wife.
“Jeeves!”
“Sir?” he inquired, innocently.
“Don’t you ‘Sir?’ me, you’ve been caught red-handed stealing the sheep!” I voiced tetchily.
“As you say, sir,” he returned, serenely, though I did notice his brow rise ever so slightly.
“Well? What am I to do? When I am found wanting? When HM and his government see the Empire dissolve into dust?” I questioned, bothered and cross in equal measure, “Why bite the hand that fed you for so long?”
“Don’t you start with Hyperbole, Bertram Wooster!” pronounced my wife from the other room.
“When Mrs. Travers and Lady Worplesdon induced the Chancellor to honour you, the Chancellor and your relations presumed great triumphs of you, sir,” he responded, slowly, “and as your star has ascended, so has their estimation of you, sir. Naturally, this is the succeeding rung on that ladder to soar to reverence and soft power, sir.”
“That was your doing, Jeeves! I may not be as feckless as Cousin Freddie, or as oblivious as Cousin Clarence and I’m emphatically not in dearth of sense like Gussie in London-town, but I am not you, Jeeves!” I cried, yearning to get my argument across, “Yes, Aunt Agatha no more desires to mould me like some jelly, and Aunt Dahlia invites me to Anatole’s best more still, but my point still stands!”
“…..My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!.....”
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!.....”
Vicky called out from the other room as the crying resumed, “Oh, shush, Bertie, you’re agitating her, and cease hounding Jeeves!”
I stood up, after Jeeves, the old bean, gave us a hand, blew a raspberry at my wife which earnt me one in return, and went to turn the wireless off. It has eternally baffled me why so many Gilbert and Sullivan features were favoured by the BBC, mayhap they had little else to play.
Jeeves coughed, in his inimitable fashion, “The circumstances are not as calamitous as you have been led to believe, sir, and with significant dominion at your disposal to proceed sovereignly of deliberative examination designed to pose an impediment, much can be accomplished, sir. Should we collaborate with judicious agents, they would indubitably do the same.”
“That is placing stock on an ass in a horserace, Jeeves, and don’t you deny it,” I specified.
“The Junior Sahibeaum has a tome of countless admissions, sir, with some longer than your own,” Jeeves grinned, “and much like the Junior Ganymede, they boast a participation of the gentlemen’s personal gentlemen of all the critical grandees.”
I must’ve left my mouth open as when Vicky came back, “Close your mouth, Bertie, we’re not a codfish,” she ordered like the old governess.
“I have been heartlessly used and I shall have my pound of flesh, Jeeves,” I uttered confidently.
“Very good, sir. Congratulations on your appointment, sir. Will that be all, sir?”
A/N: Not exactly enthused about this one, but after struggling with it for a while, this is all it's come to.
The Commonwealth in 2024
Tweedle-dum!
Joint memorandum on the Commonwealth– 5th January 2024.
The Bank of England and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
To the Parliamentary Select Committee on Commonwealth Affairs.
Joint memorandum on the Commonwealth– 5th January 2024.
The Bank of England and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
To the Parliamentary Select Committee on Commonwealth Affairs.
The Commonwealth in 2024: On the Adoption of ‘The Resolution of the Expansion of the Commonwealth” after the successful expansion of the Sterling Area from 1955 – 2005.
Monarch and Head of the Commonwealth:
Elizabeth II, By Grace of God of all her Realms, Dominions, and Territories Queen, Empress of India, and Defender of the Faith. [Elizabeth R. IMP. IND. D.G. F.D.]
Members with Her Majesty the Queen as Head of State: The Commonwealth Realms
- The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
- (Colloquially known as the UK, Britain, or the Home Isles).
- Capital: London.
- Prime Minister: The Hon. Reginald II Jeeves [NPC].
- The Kingdom of Canada.
- (Colloquially known as Canada. Poetically known as Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Dominion).
- Capital: Ottawa.
- Governor-General: Dame Mary Simon.
- Prime Minister: Justin Trudeau [Liberal].
- The Federation of the Caribbean and the Guianas.
- (Colloquially known as the Caribbean Federation).
- Capitals: Kingston (Legislative), Georgetown (Administrative), and Cayenne (Judicial).
- Governor-General: Admiral Sir Geoffrey Clarkson-Smith.
- Prime Minister: Andrew Holness [Caribbean Labour].
- The Dominion of Polynesia and the Pacific.
- (Colloquially known as Polynesia. Archaically known as New Zealand).
- Capitals: Auckland (Summer) and Wellington (Winter).
- Governor-General: Dame Cynthia “Cindy” Kiro.
- Prime Minister: Christopher Luxon [National].
- The Commonwealth of Australia.
- (Colloquially known as Australia).
- Capitals: Canberra (Legislative), Melbourne (Judicial), and Sydney (Administrative).
- Governor-General: General Sir David Hurley.
- Prime Minister: Anthony Albanese [Labour].
- The Dominion of Papua New Guinea.
- (Colloquially known as Papua).
- Capital: Port Moresby.
- Governor-General: Sir Richard “Bob” Dadae.
- Prime Minister: James Marape [PPP].
- The Commonwealth of Asia.
- (Colloquially known as East Asia, Hong Kong, or the Ports. Poetically known as the Queen’s String of Pearls).
- Capitals: Hong Kong (Legislative and Administrative) and Weihaiwei (Judicial).
- Governors-General: The Lady Boothroyd of Sandwell (Hong Kong) and the Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Weihaiwei).
- Prime Minister: Carole Chang [Asia Liberal].
- The Federation of Malaya, the Straits, and Northern Borneo.
- (Colloquially known as Malaya, Singapore, or the Straits).
- Capitals: Singapore (Administrative, Legislative and Judicial), and Georgetown (Cultural).
- Governor-General: Sir James Lionel-Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak. [For 2024].
- Prime Minister: William Lee Loong [PAP].
- The Union of India.
- (Colloquially known as India, Bharatvarsha, or the Subcontinent. Poetically named Her Majesty’s Most Reluctant Dominion).
- Capitals: New Delhi (Legislative), Calcutta (Administrative), Madras (Judicial), Colombo (Archival), and Simla (Cultural).
- Governor-General: Sir Padmanabh Singh, GCIE, Maharaja of Jaipur. [For 2024].
- Prime Minister: Maya Sarabhai, the Viscountess Riverdale [UPA].
- The Condominium of Tibet and the Himalayas.
- (Colloquially known as Tibet).
- Capitals: Lhasa (Summer), and Thimphu (Winter).
- Co-Monarch: The Amethyst Emperor of China.
- Lord Resident: The Lord Bassett of Totleigh-on-the-Wold.
- Chief Executive: The Panchen Lama.
- The Federation of Arabia, the Levant and Mesopotamia.
- (Colloquially known as Arabia).
- Capitals: Damascus (Administrative), Baghdad (Legislative), Mecca (Religious), Jerusalem (Religious, Cultural and Archival), and Aden (Judicial).
- Co-Monarch: Hussein bin Abdullah al-Hashimi.
- Lord Resident: The Lord Glossop of Ditteridge.
- Prime Minister: Yeshua Guldenberg [Liberal-National].
- The Dominion of Madagascar.
- (Colloquially known as Madagascar, Le Bonne Isle or The New Dominion).
- Capital: Port Bartholemew.
- Governor-General: Rear Admiral Sir Charles Durant.
- Premier: Marie Michel-David [CUP].
- The Union of South Africa.
- (Colloquially known as South Africa, the Diamond Dominion or Suid-Afrika. Poetically known as ‘The Gateway to Africa).
- Capitals: Cape Town (Legislative), Pretoria (Administrative), Bloemfontein (Judicial), Pietermaritzburg (Archival), and Durban (Cultural).
- Governor-General: George Wooster-Mountbatten, the Earl Chapman.
- Prime Minister: Grace Mandela [ANC].
- The Federation of Central Africa.
- (Colloquially known as Rhodesia or Zambezia).
- Capitals: Harare-Salisbury (Summer), and Livingstone (Winter).
- Governor-General: Dame Joyce Banda.
- Prime Minister: James Murunga [National].
- The Union of East Africa.
- (Colloquially known as East Africa).
- Capital: Equatoria.
- Governor-General: Uhuru Kenyatta.
- Prime Minister: John Matthews [Africa Arise].
- The Union of West Africa.
- (Colloquially known as Guinea, the Gold Coast, or the Ivory Coast).
- Capital: Meridia.
- Governor-General: William Nyere-Mongueot.
- Premier: Nana Akufo-Addo [Progressive-Patriotic].
- The Kingdom of the Nile.
- (Colloquially known as Egypt).
- Capitals: Alexandria (Administrative), Dalmietta (Judicial) and Cairo (Legislative).
- Co-Monarch: Fuad II.
- Lord Resident: Claude Mulliner, the Marquess Scilly.
- Prime Minister: General Abdel Fatteh Al-Sisi. [Military Nominee]
- The Zone of the Suez Canal.
- (Colloquially known as Suez or the Canal).
- Administrative Seat: Port Suez.
- Plenipotentiary Representative of Her Majesty the Queen to the Council of the United Nations Mandate of the Suez: The Lord Matherington-Phipps of Kensington.
- Co-Heads: The President of the United States, and The King of the Nile.
- The Principality of Cyprus.
- (Colloquially known as Cyprus or Kipros. Poetically known as ‘The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier’).
- Capital: Nicosia/Lefcosia.
- Governor-General: The Archbishop of Nicosia.
- Premier: Matthios Angelos [Unity].
- Deputy Premier: Ibrahim Ozcagatay [Unity].
- The Principality of Malta.
- (Colloquially known as Malta).
- Capital: La Valetta.
- Co-Prince: The Grandmaster of the Most Noble and Holy Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.
- Governor-General: The Lord Urqhart of Bassington.
- Chief Minister: Cecillio Bartellezzi [CDU].
- The Zone of the Panama Canal.
- (Colloquially known as the Panama Canal).
- Administrative Seat: Port North.
- Plenipotentiary Representative of Her Majesty the Queen to the Council of the United Nations Mandate of the Panama Canal: The Lord Fink-Nottle of Shrewsbury.
- Co-Heads: The President of the United States, and the President of the Republic of Panama and the Isthmus.
- The Commonwealth of Bombay.
- (Colloquially known as Bombay).
- Administrative Seats: (1) Government House, Malabar Hill
- Governor-General: The Marquess Walsingham.
- Chief Minister: Nita Ambani [Liberal-Progressive].
- The Kingdom of Afghanistan (In Civil War and Violation of the Commonwealth Charter)
- Capital: Kabul.
- King: Mohammed Shah III (disputed).
- Prime Minister: Vacant.
- Country unlikely to emerge from Communist and Islamist insurgenices unscathed. Conference on expulsion to be held in Bombay in March.
- Eranshahr (Violation of the Commonwealth Charter and the Resolution on Basic Freedoms)
- Capitals: Tehran and Persepolis.
- Shahanshah: Reza II Pahlavi.
- Prime Minister: Vacant.
- Recent authoritarian bent and undeclared nuclear assets have resulted in unilateral suspension. Unlikely to be repealed unless country meets the “Kinnock Declaration” conditions.
- Vasileo tis Ellados [Hellas].
- Capitals: Constantinopolis (Summer) and Athina (Winter).
- King: Pavlos II Glucksburg.
- Prime Minister: Kyrikos Mitsotakis [Liberal Progressive].
- Regno d’Italia [Kingdom of Italy].
- Capital: Roma.
- King: Umberto III di Savoia.
- Prime Minister: Mario Draghi [Crown Nominee].
- Reino de Espana [Kingdom of Spain].
- Capital: Madrid.
- King: Felipe VI de Bourbon.
- Prime Minister: Pedro Sanchez [PSOE].
- Reino Unido de Portugal e do Brasil [United Kingdom of Portugal, the Algarves and Brasil].
- Capitals: Lisboa and Rio de Janeiro.
- King: Dom Pio III de Braganza.
- Premier: Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa [SDP].
- Deutsches Kaiserriech [German Empire].
- Capitals: Wien (Legislative), Strassburg (Archival), Berlin (Administrative), Frankfurt am Main (Judicial) and München (Cultural).
- Kaiser: Ferdinand II Zvonimir von Habsburg-Lothringen.
- Reichskanzler: Olaf Scholz [SDP].
- Krolestwo Polskie [Kingdom of Poland].
- Capitals: Warszawa (Legislative and Administrative) and Cracow (Judicial, Cultural and Archival).
- King: Karl Olbracht II von Habsburg-Lothringen.
- Prime Minister: Donald Tusk [Civic Platform].
- Federation of Scandinavia.
- Capitals: Kobenhavn (Administrative), Oslo (Judicial), Stockholm (Legislative) and Reykjavik (Archival).
- Monarchs: Margarethe II of Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland; Haakon VI of Norway and Svalbard; Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and Aland.
- Head of State: Margarethe II [For 2024].
- Prime Minister: Mette Fredriksen [SDP].
- Suomen Kuningaskunta [Kingdom of Finland] (In talks of joining Scandinavia).
- Capital: Helsingfors.
- King: Ernst August von Hannover.
- Prime Minister: Sanna Marin [SDP].
- Nihon Teikoku [Empire of Japan].
- Capitals: Tokyo and Kyoto.
- Emperor: Naruhito, the Reiwa Emperor.
- Prime Minister: Fumio Kishida [LDP].
- Daehan Minguk [Republic of Korea].
- Capital: Hanseong.
- President: Min Joon Hae [KDP].
- Koninkrijk der Nederlanden [Kingdom of the Netherlands].
- Capitals: Den Haag (de jure) and Amsterdam (de facto).
- King: Willem-Alexander von Oranje-Nassau.
- Prime Minister: Mark Rutte [VVD].
- Kingdom of Belgium.
- Capital: Brussel.
- King: Philippe-Albert of Belgium.
- Prime Minister: Alexander de Croo [OFLD].
- Groussherzgotum Letzebuerg [Grand Duchy of Luxembourg].
- Capital: Letzebuerg.
- Grand Duke: Heinrich von Letzebuerg-Nassau.
- Prime Minister: Luc Freiden [CSPP].
- Ratcha-anachak Thai [Kingdom of Thailand].
- Capital: Bangkok/Krung Thep.
- King: Rama X Chakri.
- Prime Minister: Pita Limjaroenrat [Move Forward].
- Confederatio Baltica [Baltic Confederation].
- Capitals: Tallinn (Judicial), Riga (Administrative) and Vilnius (Legislative).
- King: Mendog V von Hesse.
- Council President: Alar Karis [Grand Coalition].
The United States of America (USA).
Capital: Washington, D.C.
President: Bernard “Bernie” Sanders {Democrat].
Senate Control: Democrat Majority by 1 vote.
House of Representatives Control: Democrat Majority by 5 votes.
The Empire of China (China).
Capitals: Beijing (Imperial and Administrative), Nanjing (Legislative and Judicial) and Guangzhou (Military).
Emperor: The Amethyst Emperor.
Prime Minister: Hu Jintao [SDP]
Commonwealth Common Market - £83.561 trillion in value by GDP. Growth forecast of 6.2% overall, mostly due to India and China.
In Accession Talks
The Russian Empire – Talks remain suspended on violation of Candidacy Requirements and unlikely to restart unless a sea-change is observed. The democratic situation in the Empire has deteriorated steadily since the accession of Vladimir Putin, a former Okhrana agent, of the “Russia Forward” party to the premiership in 2000. By recommendations from the FCO, all diplomatic talks over Commonwealth accession have been withdrawn. The Bank of England shares concerns over the weakness of the Ruble, lacking economic policy and high reliance on resource extraction as a basis for the economy under PM Putin. Cabinet disfavours restarting any talks.
The Kingdom of France Indivisible (France) – 9th re-entry into talks after change of government. Talks suspended the previous time due to De Gaullite rhetoric by preferiti candidates in the election cycle. Current PM has a milder, if still prideful, stance. Macron may not remain PM for long, however as recent polls show declining approval, and several by-election defeats make the majority in the Parlement doubtfully small. The Elysee Palace, has, as usual, made derisive noises about the French becoming British subjects. Talks are likely to be halted again in near future.
The Kingdom of Georgia – While this country meets economic development requirements, questions are raised over rule of law and democratic backsliding. Talks progress slower than expected as implementation of the Commonwealth Council recommendations has stalled in the Russophile controlled lower house of Parliament. The soft war between the Queen and her Prime Minister, the growing resentment of the population against the Russophillic lower house and the royalist leanings of the new army chiefs portend a coup.
The Armenian Federal Republic – Talks almost concluded and the building of a modern port facility at Alexandretta may remove the final hurdle for accession. BOE expresses praise for the National Bank of Armenia’s strict fiscal controls and FCO has expressed appreciation for extension of civil rights and freedoms to the Turkish minority since 2002. May join the CCM and the CMU within the year. Full accession is likely next year.
The Social Republic of Transcaspia – Recent steps in liberties for minorities have accelerated talks. BOE makes pleased noises about this country as a gateway to trade with Central Asia after the suspension of Afghanistan and Eran. FCO concerned with rise of Wahabbism over the majority Sufi Islam. Unlikely to join this year.
The Kingdom of Romania – Corruption and mismanagement remain a great problem here and it is unlikely that the new judicial overhaul will aid in accelerating talks. FCO wishes for port access to the Black Sea to connect to Hellas and BOE hopes for investment opportunities. Talks continue slowly.
The Kingdom of Hungary – Talks restarted after a change of government. Kaiser Ferdinand in his capacity as Apostolic King of Hungary is rumoured to be delighted with the defeat of Viktor Orban. Already meets all BOE economic requirements. Democracy, Press Freedom, and Corruption Indices improving since the change in government. Talks look to continue into 2025.
The Czechoslovak Federation – Talks almost concluded. All requirements met. Likely to receive a unanimous vote of accession in March. FCO and BOE, both, express praise over the booming industry in Bohemia. Kaiser Ferdinand, in his capacity as King is rumoured to have been delighted by the country’s successful turn from strict isolationist neutrality.
The Tsardom of Bulgaria – The recently ratified new constitution has accelerated talks. BOE interested to connect Hellas and the Black Sea through Bulgaria. FCO concerned over significant influence of Simeon II in governance, however, with Italy’s example, this should not prove a hinderance. Minority rights still a challenge to overcome and bureaucratic overhaul needed for tackling corruption. Unlikely to join this year.
The Plurinational Federation of Argentina, Atacama and Patagonia (Argentina) - Talks resumed after restoration of diplomatic ties by No. 10. The Falklands War is still in living memory and all attempts by successive Argentinian governments following the fall of the Junta have received the Veto. The country is valuable for trade links if its economy can be stabilised. BOE has grave doubts about fiscal policy and the volatility of the Argentine Peso. It also expresses doubts over the boom-bust nature of the Argentine economy and high national debt. FCO and even the Home Office have expressed concern over Free Movement and Leave to Remain. The new President is a right-wing populist, talks are likely to be suspended by No. 10 again.
The Republic of Chile – Recent expansions of liberties and significant capital spending in infrastructure and public uplift has improved nature of the talks. Will join CCM and CMU this March, may join CEA in October but full accession unlikely this year.
The Kingdom of Insulindia – Has undergone rapid and remarkable progress in the past decade under PM Widodo. BOE and FCO both endorse accession and talks have been accelerated since the passing of the Controls Act last year. Rule of Law and democratic franchise are increasing with alacrity, and it is like the full accession on meeting Candidacy Requirements may happen by 2026. Likely to be unanimously voted into the CCM, CEA and CMU in March.
The Kingdom of Morocco – An essential supplier of several foodstuffs. Recent £16 billion investment in the world’s largest solar array a big talking point in accession. Concerns expressed by FCO over minority rights and lack of constitutional protections for democratic franchise. Talks will proceed but accession unlikely this year.
The Solomonic Empire of Abyssinia – One of the fastest growing economies in Africa. BOE extremely pleased with rising standard of living and stricter corruption controls. FCO pleased with the outcome of the Gondar Conference over the GERD. Home Office expresses concerns over rising Oromo-Amhara-Tigray tensions. May join CCM and CEA but any further accession is unlikely unless drastic constitutional reforms are undertaken.
The Federal Republic of Central Africa – Talks likely to be suspended within the year as the country no longer has free and fair elections or a free press. Both FCO and BOE claim the country’s resources for alternative energy solutions make it a credible and vital partner if it overcomes its current challenges. Corruption is growing rapidly with household incomes falling. Unlikely to join.
The Indochinese Confederation - Talks suspended due to Lao Insurgency. FCO claims it was expected that the Viet-favoured government would eventually make missteps and plunge the country into civil strife. This has begun with the current insurgency in the Lao and Khmer areas. BOE and Treasury express many great things about the economy though doubts remain over the declining value of the Dong. No. 10 suspended talks until a settlement amicable for all sides is reached.
The Select Committee must select the representative of the United Kingdom to the Commonwealth Conference in Bombay as the UK assumes Presidency in the Commonwealth Council this year from India.
The candidates are – The Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton; Ian Mckellen, The Viscount Westerley; The Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty and Portia Travers-Glossop, the 2nd Countess Brinkley.
With the Lord Kinnock being the favoured candidate. The candidate is to replace Sir Manavendra Gohil, KCIE, Maharaja of Rajpipla.
The Select Committee must also debate the setting of the agenda, the goals and the date for the commonwealth elections in the month of May.
UPDATE #5 Definitely on a high
Up next will be the first episode of "From Empire to Commonwealth" It will feature quite a few worldbuilding tidbits!
Of course, that will take a boatload of time to write but I'll make sure it comes in as quickly as possible!
Following that will be A cabinet meeting on a summer morning in 1958 dealing with a certain would-be dictator in Egypt
After that will be an excerpt from "The Sequel" by Eliza Stuart
Beyond that we'll make it up as we go along!
So stay tuned!
Also Also, I'm thinking of an ASOIAF fanfic as well, because ofc I love torturing myself with juggling many things at once. As usual, it'll be an ASB transporting me as an absolute OP god on terra firma to the Planetos, because I like happy endings. The question is, which time-period would you like to see? I'm leaning more towards the book timescale, I'm queasy about dragon killing and I don't generally enjoy the Targaryens - Maester Aemon is my favourite Targ. So let me know! If there's little interest in that I'll just continue with this as best I'm able!
Though fanfic rec - definitely read A Prophet from Maine on A03 and A Prancing Stag by @Knight Vigilant Koren.
Of course, that will take a boatload of time to write but I'll make sure it comes in as quickly as possible!
Following that will be A cabinet meeting on a summer morning in 1958 dealing with a certain would-be dictator in Egypt
After that will be an excerpt from "The Sequel" by Eliza Stuart
Beyond that we'll make it up as we go along!
So stay tuned!
Also Also, I'm thinking of an ASOIAF fanfic as well, because ofc I love torturing myself with juggling many things at once. As usual, it'll be an ASB transporting me as an absolute OP god on terra firma to the Planetos, because I like happy endings. The question is, which time-period would you like to see? I'm leaning more towards the book timescale, I'm queasy about dragon killing and I don't generally enjoy the Targaryens - Maester Aemon is my favourite Targ. So let me know! If there's little interest in that I'll just continue with this as best I'm able!
Though fanfic rec - definitely read A Prophet from Maine on A03 and A Prancing Stag by @Knight Vigilant Koren.
Thanks a lot! I'll try and keep up to your expectations!You're doing an amazing story here
UPDATE #6 Gathering Sticks
I'm not dead, writing an episode of a fictional TV show, however, takes quite a lot of time and a clean bill of health! I'm a 3rd of the way through, The Boer Wars, but a lot more to add. When it comes, it'll be a massive update!
The Commonwealth Realms in 1948
The borders of Arabia are still nebulous as in 1948 the disputes between what was Kurdistan, Armenia and Assyria have not yet been resolved.
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Chp7 Part I
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“From Empire to Commonwealth”
‘An eye-wateringly expensive and extravagant venture by the BBC to milk the Commonwealth nostalgia gripping the nation with the recent release of “YAXLEY”. However, it is incredibly informative with the interesting commentary by Stephen Fry and does reveal some useful unknown information. Worth tuning in to on Fridays at 9PM on BBC1.’ – review by The Times.
‘Stephen Fry makes the history of the Commonwealth fun! One watch is recommended!’ – review by The Guardian.
‘Not dry or dull in any way shape or form. A documentary that parodies itself! Nice watch, worth recommending!’ – review by The Telegraph.
EPISODE 1
(VO is Stephen Fry voiceover with requisite clips play in the foreground)
Locations within the Houses of Parliament, Stephen Fry walking through them.
Sir Stephen Fry (SF): Bertram Wilberforce Wooster (Pictures of Wooster flash), The Lord Yaxley, The Duke of Albany and Pembroke, names that, reverberating through this hallowed house of peoples, garner admiration and apprehension in equal measure.
As they should! Perhaps no man has had an impact, greater than Lord Yaxley, save perhaps Walpole or Cromwell, in these Houses of Parliament, and the less that is said about the latter here, the better it is.
Some, admire Wooster for transforming our nation, some revile him for breaking centuries of tradition. Certainly, “Progress Brooks No Ceremony” won and lost many hearts for him. (Campaign poster for the Liberal Progressive Party saying, “PROGRESS BROOKS NO CEREMONY!”).
For two decades, this one man, with his iron grip on the highest office in the land, changed the face and nature of British Politics and Britain in general.
(Clips of Lord Yaxley at No. 10 and in the House of Commons).
We all now live in a Britain completely unrecognisable from a century ago, thoroughly modern, and irrevocably changed. Back then, the Empire was all the rage. Britain ruled the Seven Seas with a firm grip, as master of a quarter of the world.
The Sun never set on the British Empire! (The popular newspaper drawing flashes).
Now, Britain leads a sovereign sisterhood, a vanguard of democratic values, liberties, and freedom, through the Commonwealth of Nations. And the Empire, with its odds, ends, faults, and praises all, is safely confined to the pages of history.
Naturally, behind every Wooster, there is a Jeeves. (In Jeeves’ characteristic manner.)
(Laughs) Something Lord Yaxley said fondly, and something, which was absolutely true.
(Promo clips of the series play with voiceover)
<VO: In this series, in collaboration with the Crown Estate and No. 10 Downing Street, and a herculean cooperative effort of several Commonwealth governments, agencies, and organisations, giving us access to never-before-seen archives, secrets, films, and redacted documents, we will uncover how Britain sailed to modernity. How, through much opposition, quite fervent in some cases, Britain, went from having a globe-spanning Empire to being part of a Commonwealth of Nations spread across the world.
We will see how our relationship with the Dominions evolved from that of mother and daughter to sister nations of the same family. From master and servant to equal subjects of the same Crown. We will witness the evolution of the lion cubs starting their own pride, out of their old father’s shadow.
Through it, of course, we may learn some interesting titbits about the life in this grand Palace of Westminster, where the Parliament of this nation has met for centuries, meet holders of many august and significant offices and observe the genealogical chart of the British Commonwealth.
We may also perhaps brush up on a bit of history and politics. Of the Commonwealth and beyond.>
SF: You may ask yourself why the BBC roped me in to present this monumental undertaking. It would certainly be a rational and rather pertinent question! A most germane question.
And to that I must answer, rather plainly, that I have had the honour of playing and representing Lord Yaxley, on the silver screen, in that Christopher Nolan motion picture, or biopic - as they’re called, named ‘YAXLEY’, (Poster flashes) which was lauded at the BAFTAs (whispers with a grin – We’ll find out about the Oscars soon enough!), and, I have also had the honour of playing and portraying the Lord Easeby, that is, Jeeves, in a now famous TV dramatization of P. G. Wodehouse’s novels (Picture flashes) opposite the commensurate talents of Hugh Laurie as the eponymous Wooster.
So, I can say with some good authority that I am intimately familiar with the characters of Lord Yaxley and his staunch confidante, from a perspective, at the very least.
It might also be of profound help that I was dandled on his knee as a wee babe and once spilt the contents of my dinner on him as a stripling – that was after a particularly vigorous chasing of the Wooster House pet, a snow-white Siberian Husky named Snowmane. God! I remember his face when his white waistcoat! It brings a joyful tear to my eye. I’m certain Harring the valet went through several seizures at that. (Laughs and wipes a tear).
I spent many wild years of eager frolick at Yaxburgh in Scotland - that thousand-year-old, beautiful, grand old pile, that has seen Woosters since before Brunabruh (Picture of Yaxburgh Castle), and Wooster House in Belgravia Square – that fashionable Victorian palace of the Marquesses of Pembroke, and the ‘IT’ place of high society at the time (Picture of Wooster House flashes), with Lord Yaxley, courtesy of the Princess, naturally. She was always fond of me. Many a sweet would unwittingly find it’s way to me, many thanks to her machinations. (Smiles wistfully).
And so, the BBC has decided I would be the man to reveal his indelible impact on our nation. It might also be the case that they asked Hugh (Laurie) or Maggie (Smith) or Lord Westerley (Sir Ian McKellen) or Emma (Thompson) or many other big names and they were elsewise occupied.
I shall, rather happily of course, have some sorely needed help.
Over the course of this series, we will meet several experts, historians, chroniclers, and personages - The Prince of Wales, Her Majesty the Queen, and Her Majesty the Dowager Queen of Prussia to name but a scant few. We will pick their brains for the facts that are so crudely condensed in a few lines in the textbooks. We will ask their opinions and learn some well-kept secrets. And we shall see Britain go from 1933 and beyond, “From Empire to Commonwealth”.
Title Sequence plays. Score by Howard Shore and John Williams.
We start, naturally, in the House of Commons, where some 90 years ago, Lord Yaxley rose to this dispatch box as His Majesty’s Most Loyal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, beginning his meteoric rise into power. Golly gumdrops and good heavens indeed!
But that is a lie. As barefaced a lie can get.
Bertram Wooster’s career in politics began long before then, when he joined Parliament in 1927, as the Marquess of Pembroke taking up a seat in the Lords. His uncle, the previous Marquess, tragically died when the roof of the vicarage at Twing descended on him and his wife-to-be, and left “Bertie” Wooster, as he would call it, “the family shack”, to much horror and amusement from his relations.
Yes, his Aunts Dahlia and Julia were rather elated and his Aunt Agatha positively apoplectic in horror. (Laughs)
It wasn’t until his election by his alma mater (Picture flashes of Magdalen College, Oxford), as a Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford, that he made his first appearance in this House – the House of Commons. And by Jove was it an appearance!
Life in this House is seldom quiet or easy – Lord Urqhart would’ve told you it’s rather raucous, and that the MPs get up to all sorts of silly business. Lord Yaxley learnt that rather quickly, after getting into a fracas with Sir Oswald Mosley on his first day.
Mosley was, of course, a former inspiration for Lord Yaxley’s close friend and ally in the Foreign Office, Sir Roderick Spode, the last Earl of Sidcup.
(Whispers) It is still rumoured here, in quiet whispers, that he flattened Winston Churchill’s nose too when he heard derisive and racist remarks about several rising personages in the vastness of our Empire. Though the Churchill family, naturally, vehemently denies that. They were, of course, at loggerheads over India, so the enmity was organic and expected.
If only these walls could talk, eh?
(Newspaper clipping flashes reading, “Fracas in Parliament!”)
His rise began with the success in the Spring Budget of his first year, when then Chancellor Sir Neville Chamberlain agreed, on his suggestions, and backed up by some serious projections by renowned experts, to stimulate the flagging economy by spending on infrastructure. And then…
Location change to Dwaravati Bhavan (also known as Flagstaff House), New Delhi (the official residence of the Prime Minister of India) for a clip.
<VO: Building on his success in the Treasury, his 2nd major impact was convincing the ailing Prime Minister, Sir Ramsay Macdonald into being named plenipotentiary ‘Viceroy of India’, a title of which he would be the final incumbent.
Though Macdonald sent Wooster to India only to stabilise the situation and negotiate a return to peace there, he got far more than he asked for. Lord Yaxley arranged the Round Table Conferences, seeking India’s independence as a Dominion of the Crown, and succeeded!>
(Picture of Lord Yaxley in full viceregal regalia flashes, followed by a newspaper clipping from The Times – “Yaxley named Viceroy plenipotentiary – Is India lost?”, The Financial Times – “The Cost of losing India”, The Times of India – “New Viceroy, Lord Yaxley”, Dawn – “Our Chance!” and The Herald – “New page or same story?”)
SF: Naturally, as we’ve learnt from his very detailed and highly informative, and also terribly amusing, memoirs, Jeeves was behind all the successes. We’ll talk more about his term as Viceroy in the final episode of this series, but right now, it suffices to say, India became a Dominion and the Empire, for better or worse, was changed forever. Would you agree, Your Excellency?
Maya Sarabhai, the Viscountess Riverdale. (Prime Minister of India): Oh certainly! It changed the trajectory drastically! From clinging on to the past for dear life, like the French Empire, it forced the British Empire to evolve, adapt and change to what it eventually became.
India still is a Dominion, thoroughly changed from 1933, and yet it is. And never a day goes by without the Opposition claiming that we still slave away under the British yoke. To be fair to them, however, they have their imagination fixed on the depredations of the Raj and have scarce made the effort to move on to more modern challenges. (Laughs heartily).
Her Majesty is Empress of India in her own right, and her vicegerent, the Governor-General, is as Indian as it gets! I don’t think the His Serene Highness, Nawab of Pataudi, would find any amusement in being referred to as British in any sense of the word, however much he may love his cricket. I can imagine the sour faces he’d pull. (Laughs). Much like the rest of the Commonwealth, we are an independent, sovereign kingdom in a state of personal union with Britain, such that we share Her Majesty as our Sovereign Lady and Empress, and there lies the boundary, our Constitution clearly establishes that.
It has been ninety years since full patriation, one of the first Acts of our Parliament, and the passing of the Statute of Westminster, and also the promulgation of the Constitution of India. No Briton, save that rather pompous, delusional, and frankly ridiculous ‘India League’, claimed to control India since that time. To declare that India serves a mistress other than herself is folly, and Lord Yaxley is to thank for that.
Of course, without ‘the Jewel in the Crown’ as a long-suffering colony and cash-cow, things were bound to change. We kept the Empire in the green, and fed in sumptuous luxuries, while our people endured back-breaking poverty. When you wrest a source of such ample wealth from direct control, the coffers are naturally left wanting.
When I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Yaxley as a starry-eyed young MP some four decades ago, he laughed when we discussed Indian Independence, saying the Treasury never forgave him for that! (Laughs).
This of course forced even Churchill, in his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to admit that the Empire was a costly endeavour and a financial lossmaker, and that it needed to change. He might not have liked the changes Lord Yaxley made, but they were the right ones.
It was also often whispered among political circles at the time that we would be the first domino to fall or the snowflake that sets off the avalanche. When we became a Dominion, others in the Empire would soon follow. So yes, the Empire changed forever by our doing. Lord Yaxley’s subsequent terms are Foreign Secretary saw to that.
SF: Very true, Your Excellency.
Location changes back to the House of Commons
<VO: We shall greet the Prime Minister of India again in the final episode of this series, when we discuss India in greater detail. After all, much of Lord Yaxley’s career was because of India, and India forms an integral part of the Commonwealth family of nations. But for now, we must move to other things>.
SF: His appointment to those viceregal laurels was, of course, much due to his lady wife being a Royal Princess (Picture flash of Princess Victoria) and being “recommended” by the His Majesty the King himself to this office.
India, however, was only the beginning, the tip of the iceberg so to say. His success in keeping India in the “Empire” was met with much begrudging respect, if nothing else, even from those that considered themselves his nemeses, and despised his outlook on the empire as being a fellowship of equals.
The Round Table Conferences for India’s independence most definitely would look like “The Benny Hill Show” to us, with the amount of backroom dealing that went on in either delegation, but the result is as we see. India remained a united sovereign dominion of the Crown, the world applauded and promptly forgot, (The Times of India clippings – “Round Table Conference in London!”, “India Rules Itself!”, “Thank You, Wooster!”, “India Remains IN!”) and the BBC producer made several rude gestures for me to get a bally move on. (Laughs).
Location change to the Government House, Cape Town.
The true test of his mettle, his patience, and the outlay of his then revolutionary ideas for the “Empire” began with his rather cynical appointment by Stanley Baldwin, the returning PM, as Foreign Secretary.
Naturally, it was done on the recommendation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, with the idea to discredit him as a one-hit wonder, and to wait in the wings for his first faux-pas to exile him to the backbenches again, or, relegate him to the Lords for the remainder of his life even.
Still, to think about it! A Great Office of State in his 2nd term in Parliament! So many parliamentarians would do unspeakable things for that! I’m sure in our history, many have, we were not always this representative in our democracy, you know.
(Picture flash of Lord Yaxley entering KCS building)
Of course, a man as shrewd as Lord Yaxley, with the expansive and inimitable intelligence of Lord Easeby supporting and guiding him at every stage, saw through this poor ruse and the trap set for him, and demanded a carte-blanche to act as he felt necessary with the government granting him unquestioned support, as he put it, backing him to the hilt. In a way, not very different from his time in India. He naturally felt that evolution needed to be forced at this stage and debate would not do it, and he was right. It is however, quite undemocratic from a man who seemed to want to live and breathe democracy. Alas, we all have our faults!
After some initial opposition to the idea, the PM was somehow convinced to acquiesce. To this day, none can say for certain why the PM changed his position so drastically. I suspect some youthful indiscretions of the PM finally demanded a dear price.
(The Evening Standard clipping flashes – “EXTRA! PM endorses Yaxley! Full Foreign policy control!”)
I have with me, His Excellency, the Earl Chapman, the current Governor-General of South Africa, and Lord Yaxley’s great-grandson, to discuss more on his first term, starting in 1933, from office and personal records.
George Wooster-Mountbatten, the Earl Chapman: We have to naturally start with South Africa, it dominated so much of his earliest months at the Foreign Office, at least in the sense of the Commonwealth and Empire.
SF: I imagine, even today there is no love lost between Lord Yaxley’s memory and the Boers, or what remains of them, at any rate.
GW: Well, yes, that can be said with some certainty. Although the few Boers that remain in South Africa are not that well-liked by the majority of our people.
To be fair, however, the Afrikaners, who despise being lumped in with the Boers, don’t mind Lord Yaxley that much. They find Lord Yaxley’s vociferous support for the Hofmeyr-Smuts Reforms of 1935 to balance out the initial unpleasantness.
SF: The separation between Boer and Afrikaner today being?
GW: The Boers still continue to support the fragments of the National Party that have re-emerged in recent times, whereas Afrikaners subscribe to Hofmeyr’s moderate stance, the Afrikaners are generally Dominionists whereas the Boers are staunch republicans, the list could go on.
<VO: We’ll learn more about Hofmeyr in the final episode of the series when we discuss South Africa as well.>
SF: Shall we get to the juicy bits that people would be waiting for? Throw some meat to the tigers?
GW: (Laughs) To start, we can begin with the Boere Jeug and the Suiwer Afrika wings of the National Party, coming to prominence under Barry Hertzog after the Depression era.
<VO: Immediately on assuming office, Lord Yaxley was confronted with the National Party Government of South Africa instituting the first of its many planned segregationist policies starting with the ‘Enfranchisement Act’ or ‘Stemregwet’ of 1933.>
(Clips of PM Hertzog waving a newspaper which is brought into focus reading “APARTHEID, Ons Oplossing!”)
GW: We must remember, all the dregs, the odds and ends of Empire, with even a shred of xenophobia, drained themselves generally in our South African possessions then, which would be South Africa and Rhodesia. The Boers created an absolutely ideal climate for it. The National Party was simply an amalgamation of that petty superiority complex of the Boers. Their feverish fantasies of imposing neo-slavery were published in their writings extensively. Though those writings are banned in much of Africa, including South Africa, I’m told you can read the if you choose in the British Library.
Where wars failed, they tried to bend the law to do their bidding. They called it Apartheid.
This pettiness, came to the fore even more violently after Prime Minister Smuts had second the Identification Papers debacle. Where Smuts represented the moderate if conservative wings of the political spectrum, Hertzog was very much on the right. Not as far on the right as some of the rather “delightfully fruity” members of his own party, who would cause Hitler and Himmler to blush in their lack of sheer dedication, but on the right, nonetheless.
<VO: South Africa was always the most self-centred of the Dominions back then, chafing under any restrictions or impositions. It was also the Dominion, aside from Canada, to have the largest share of trade outwith the Empire, even with Imperial Preference, which it rarely abided by. So, when Wall Street crashed, it was very badly affected. And, where the rest of the Empire came out that Depression rather quickly, thanks to the Imperial Preference, South Africa defiantly endured a slump because of the National Party’s bullheadedness and the genuinely stubborn nature of the slump. They had, after all, lost their second largest trade partner in the US.
In 1933, on finally eking out of the slump at a snail’s pace, the NP, feeling the need the flex themselves even more and prove their independence from Westminster, decided on abandoning all moderation and that they would begin on their project of creating ‘the white man’s utopia’ in South Africa, starting of course, by limiting any democratic franchise offered to non-whites.>
(Graphs of South Africa’s declining economic growth from 1929-33 flash, then the text of the Enfranchisement Act)
GW: Remember, non-whites were already second-class, if not third-class, citizens, as we know from Mr Gandhi agitating for Indian rights in the first Identification Papers debacle, the NP wanted to effectively make them stateless and subservient to their ghastly ideal – in a word, slaves.
SF: Ah! So that is where the first of the famous Orders-in-Council features! If memory serves, Lord Yaxley forced the “Statute of Whitehall” through Parliament without debate so they could gag any legislation or executive action throughout Africa or the Empire at large, wherever the “Statute of Westminster” had not yet been enacted. I’m sure South Africa saw the imperious finger pointing at them in abject anger.
Still, I personally thought it was most authoritarian, Britain dictating what the dominions, who had effectively been granted self-rule, could and couldn’t legislate on.
<VO: Several instances emerged where this ‘Statute of Whitehall’ was used in the Empire, though, in most cases it was against legislation that actively discriminatory or criminal. In Rhodesia it was used against the “Native Representation Act”; in the Caribbean against the “Forestry Act”; and famously in Madagascar against the “Language Act”. South Africa remained the black sheep, however, a source of constant headaches and two more Boer wars.
It was only under the National Government in 1948 that this Statute was repealed.>
(Pictures of the Apartheid concentration camps and the Boer Wars.)
GW: His Private Office suggested it, Lord Easeby meant for it to be a stop-gap measure. Of course, the Boers changed the game with the declaration of another Republic an inevitable declaration of war.
Peaceful negotiations were out of the question; they’d have been laughed out of Cape Town. Westminster needed to be assertive. And they couldn’t ask the other Dominions to pressure South Africa, considering this was an outright infringement on self-government.
Australia and Canada were going through the same vehement debate about the Indigenous Peoples too, though thankfully, they came to more rational, inclusive, and amicable answers. I believe the fact that Parliament, or Lord Yaxley with his statute in hand, was willing to block Australian legislation to ensure we moved to more inclusive and representative government everywhere, jollied them to the right answers, if with a lot of grumbling and simmering discontent. New Zealand took on the suggestion quite brilliantly with the “Equality Act” of 1934 – its first step to becoming the Polynesia of today.
SF: (laughs) If our viewers were previously unaware, His Excellency is a scholar of Commonwealth Law and Parliamentary History, from his great-grandfather’s alma mater no less. So you say that the statute was merely to curb the excesses that some persons might engender ill views and use the Union Jack as protection against those excesses?
GW: Very much so, yes.
<VO: This infringement of the right of self-government did not go down well in Rhodesia, South Africa or Egypt, those being the only three with any amount of self-governance in the African continent under British administration. Some Colonial Governors did raise a fuss, but Lord Samuel, Lord Yaxley’s ally in the Colonial Office, put his foot down with that. Those that continued to protest, drew the ire of the Prime Minister even, and were swiftly replaced.>
(Clips of PM Hertzog making fiery speeches in front of the South African Parliament about infringement.
And the King of Egypt threatening to expel the British Resident.
Newsreels of protests.
Newsreels of Governors changing throughout the Empire.)
<VO: To save face, PM Hertzog hoped to negotiate clandestinely to water down the measures in the Act that resulted in this Statute, as far that it would nullify it almost completely, but Lord Yaxley stood resolute in disallowing such evil to take root in our Commonwealth>
(Picture Flash of The Times saying “Yaxley Unmoved! Hertzog’s turn”)
GW: With their magnum opus, the shield that they could rely on to oppress non-whites, thwarted and dead in the water, and the South African government unable to act on it any further, the NP turned to think of other ideas.
SF: Wasn’t this a constitutional crisis?
GW: Well, not really, as the Statute of Whitehall simply empowered the British Government to withhold legislative powers on this matter from the Government of South Africa. They couldn’t sidestep that.
So they decided to increase taxes on the poorest in society, the lions’ share of whom were non-whites, by claiming that the Exchequer demanded a fix to the running deficit and a better servicing of the national debt.
This ironically named “Equal Share Budget” or “Gelyke Deelbegroting” couldn’t get through the Royal Assent bar, causing a true constitutional crisis, as Parliament and Crown had a conflict of interest, until Hertzog backed down again.
Lord Clarendon refused Assent thrice, so, many thought Lord Yaxley instructed the Gov.-Gen. to refuse assent, but the man had done it out of his own volition, seeing no good could actually come of wringing the poor drier than a desert. Also, only the PM, by recommending an action to the King, would’ve had the power to ask the Gov.-Gen. to act in a certain manner, and no other member of his Cabinet, so it was moot speculation anyway.
SF: Surely, there’s only so many times that Assent can be denied to an Act of Parliament.
GW: Back then, such measures were still in flux. The duties of a constitutional monarch are to ensure the laws his Parliament debate and pass benefit the lion’s share if not all, not the other way around. Until the Constitution was formalised, Lord Clarendon, as His Majesty’s plenipotentiary vicegerent to South Africa, embodied all his powers and thus could refuse assent at his discretion for as many times as he saw fit.
Sounds absolutist I know, but no monarch had truly refused assent for two centuries before this. Oh, there would be blackmail, and hints of intrigue, but that was the settlement made of parliamentary supremacy. However, the prerogative remained with the monarch to exercise at they will. Until the Constitution formally delimited that, of course.
You might say that is what led to the English Civil War, and you would be right. However, monarchs had rarely refused Assent to anything unless it was gravely against the values of the country, so in a way it acted as a delicate final check on any policies such as the ones the NP was hoping to turn into law.
SF: Now its three times, if memory serves.
GW: Yes, that’s right. Its constitutionally limited to three times, no more. If the monarch refuses Assent a fourth time, which has never happened in our history, the bill would automatically become law if both Houses of Parliament pass it in a joint session.
SF: Couldn’t the NP government petition Westminster to have the Governor-General replaced with someone more amiable to their cause? That would still lie with the remit of their powers as His Majesty’s Government of the Union of South Africa.
GW: True, but the NP simply wanted an excuse to declare an emergency and use the Prime Minister’s discretionary powers to fulfil their desires. To rule by decree is what they wanted. Going by the law would mean it would take far longer to get what they desired, and they could be easily rebuffed. So they had lost patience for going by the book.
SF: Didn’t this infringement, this interference from London, cause the call for independence from under Britain’s thumb to grow louder and more forceful? Especially amongst the generally more republican establishment in South Africa?
GW: Of course, it did, and it culminated in the war.
They were hoping for it, or at least the odious elements that pressured the Prime Minister were, so, they tabled a bill so drastic and frankly shocking, it was bound to be blocked by Westminster. They called it “Aandklokwet”, or the “Curfew Act”. It was meant to grant the constabulary unchecked power to essentially oppress all non-whites.
<VO: There was once more an outcry from the moderate elements of society, and not just in South Africa. Everyone saw this blatant attempt for what it was, and Lord Clarendon even denied the Prime Minister an audience over this. Thoroughly frustrated and pressured by the more radical elements in his party to act, Hertzog took drastic action.
On the 4th of October 1933, using the excuse of the second constitutional impasse, and declaring the government to be in a complete gridlock, Prime Minister Hertzog unilaterally subverted the Governor-General Lord Clarendon and declared a state of national emergency himself.>
(Pictures of protests throughout India, Canada, and Britain flash. Clip plays of Hertzog making a heated speech in Parliament.)
(Pathe Reel plays – “Late on the evening of the 4th of October, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, General J. B. M. Hertzog, declared a state of national emergency, citing discord between his government, the Government of the United Kingdom, and the Governor-General of the Union, Lord Clarendon. He declared that this discord had brought the Parliament of the Union to a grinding halt and unable to exercise its duty of government. In a historic use of his discretionary powers, he declared all civil liberties curtailed and martial law active throughout the Union. With these actions, Crown rule in South Africa is now in question. It is His Majesty’s fervent desire that an amicable solution be found, therefore, the Prime Minister has decided to dispatch a delegation from the Foreign Office to negotiate a return to normality. We hope they succeed in returning peace to the Empire.”)
SF: Is there any truth to the ‘pie-in-the-face’ legend that has become so synonymous with the Yaxley myth in general? I must know. I asked him plenty of times, but he always gave me a wry smile at that changed the topic of conversation.
GW: In a way. To smooth the kerfuffle over this mess, Lord Yaxley was dispatched from Whitehall. Baldwin was clear and concise in his words, Yaxley made this bed, and he would sleep in it. Or so the rumour goes. Churchill gave all Tories a bad reputation, even the sound ones like Baldwin, so we don’t know what actually transpired on the night of October 4th. More like as not, Baldwin worried about chaos in the other Dominions’ reactions, especially India to such blatant interference and hoped that negotiations could bring about a fruitful outcome.
Of course, most people forget that India had already passed the “Statute of Westminster” along with Canada and so any interference from Westminster was impossible, it would come as a mere recommendations or suggestions to them at best.
SF: Hadn’t South Africa done the same? Considering the situation?
GW: The Status of the Union Act came after the Fifth War. And the National party was undergoing substantial turmoil to take advantage of the situation properly. The moderate wing of the party was shorn of all patience with all the antics that had transpired. So, there was considerable infighting there.
SF: So they didn’t manage to do it then.
I don’t understand the numbering of the Wars, there were only two Boer Wars before then.
GW: There were two Boer rebellions in 1919 and 1921 after Gandhi and Smuts’ dance around the Identification papers, most people disregard that. According to the newspapers, they called those rebellions the Third and Fourth Boer Wars.
I do question that, just as much as any sane man, drunken fools with sharpened sticks and guns older than their grandfathers do not rebel armies make, but we digress.
<VO: Protests erupted in Cape Town when Lord Yaxley, his deputy Sir Austen Chamberlain and Lord Samuel arrived to negotiate with Prime Minister Hertzog to restore parliamentary government in South Africa. Though insulted to be snubbed by Baldwin, Hertzog agreed to meet with the delegation to come to some settlement while saving face and keeping his seat of power.>
(Pictures of the delegation arriving in Cape Town and the protests in Cape Town by Boer farmers flash.)
(Pathe Reel plays – “A delegation from His Majesty’s Government has left for South Africa to negotiate an end to the political turmoil and impasse there and restore full constitutional sovereignty in Cape Town. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Yaxley, who heads this delegation, has been tasked by the Prime Minister to make Mr. Hertzog come to reason. His Majesty has wished him every success in this endeavour. With him are Sir Austen Chamberlain, his deputy and Lord Samuel, his Colonial Office peer. Negotiations will take place in Cape Town to restart the full function of government. We wave goodbye to them in hopes that a settlement is reached in this matter.”)
GW: A greater share of the protestors were Boer farmers, of Transvaal extraction, one of which thought it would be a right lark in the newspapers if the head of the British delegation was pie’d in the face. Naturally, Lord Yaxley gave as good as he got, and the chaos descended.
<VO: Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Yaxley were enemies over a myriad subjects and views, however, such a grave affront to one of His Majesty’s Great Officers of State could not go unanswered, even for him. >
(Clip of Churchill making a fiery speech in Parliament plays.)
(Pathe Reel plays – “The delegation from His Majesty’s Government in South Africa has been assaulted by agitators on the streets of Cape Town. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have warned this insult cannot go unpunished. The President of the Board of Trade has announced a full sanction on several goods through South Africa. Parliament is shocked and appalled by South Africa’s actions and urges of calm and caution have come from across the Empire. Time will tell if it is to be another Boer Rising to face the sons of the Empire.”)
GW: We have to remember that Hertzog wasn’t truly hoping for things to spiral so far out of his control. Much as most of the settler dominions, he was hoping this agitation, and willingness to abandon common sense in this case, would simply exasperate Westminster enough to wash its hands from interfering. It was the likes of Verwoerd, making trouble from the backbenches, getting increasingly vociferous, inching for war and “freedom”.
The NP finally fractured under all this, of course.
SF: When Hofmeyr and his moderates did the ‘ten-metre walk’?
<VO: Jan Hendryk Hofmeyr, the leader of the liberal and moderate wings of the National Party, increasingly frustrated with the direction that the government was taking in antagonising Westminster and Whitehall, finally decided enough was enough. During a heated debate in the South African Parliament between the Prime Minister Hertzog and the Leader of the Opposition, Field Marshal Smuts, Hofmeyr and all his moderate colleagues walked across the chamber to the Opposition benches, to the shock of everyone, to assume seats there, causing a parliamentary crisis and the fall of Hertzog’s government.>
(Pictures flash of several celebrities from across the Commonwealth doing the ten-metre-walk, a symbol of protest against any form of oppression.)
GW: Precisely! The implosion of the National Party was a shock to most people, including Smuts who could overnight re-assume premiership under the aegis of a revived United Party. Hertzog retired, having tired himself out with this mess, but like Kruger, the Boers used him as a martyr to declare another South African Republic, a spiteful slight spat in the Empire’s face.
SF: A slight no self-respecting power could let pass unanswered. Especially in an era where haughty politicians looked for an excuse to take umbrage at something.
GW: Exactly, once a river becomes a torrent, a man in no match to stay its course.
<VO:The wars have been made into ample feature length documentaries by the likes of Dan Snow, Tony Robinson and Mary Beard, and so we shall avoid stepping on their toes. It can be said however, that the Empire descended on the nascent rebellion in full force and patriotic vigour, and the Fifth War ended in the Armistice of Kimberly. >
(Picture flashes of the signing of the Armistice of Kimberly)
Location change to the War Archives Building, London.
SF: This 2nd Republic of Zuid-Afrika warred with the rest of the Empire for all of two months, before running out of food and ammunition, as they had not expected so swift, sure and furibund a response from the Empire. Their government in Pietermaritzburg reluctantly agreed to come to negotiations, when it was clear that their preparations were sorely lacking. That was, however, only a halt to the fighting, a ceasefire.
The government of the Dominion, under the Field Marshal Smuts, with a flurry of uproarious activity, passed what are known as the “War Measures”- full proportional representation and a universal franchise being among them. The most eventful legislation was, naturally, the Status of the Union Act of 1934, which akin to the Statute of Westminster, that all other Dominions had also passed by then, restricted Westminster’s right to interfere in Dominion Affairs without their express consent. The Dominion government also received a sum total of £763,000 worth of Royal Army equipment for their soldiers from Britain and the Empire at large.
Both sides were underprepared but naturally the Dominion prevailed with greater resources at its disposal, causing the Armistice.
Why an Armistice though, not a peace?
Hamish deWitt-Totts, 12th Baron Llanberis (Lord Chief Archivist of the United Kingdom): Well by the time they agreed to come to talks, one of von Ribbentrop’s agents, a ‘Mr Frobisher’ and one of Nungesser’s agents, a’ M. Georges’, had manged to covertly pass messages of support and arriving aid to them and through Portuguese Mozambique, Action Francaise and Hitler’s Germany agreed to supply them against the Crown while Smuts was dealing with the chaos of resettling proper democratic government in Cape Town. Mind you, this betrayal would come the bite the Portuguese in the backside in a fitting fashion.
And the talks were to be for their return into the fold and their surrender, which they felt was an insult upon their honour. With flowing arms and a betrayal by both the Portuguese and the French, if only some of the latter, it was no wonder that the negotiations for peace broke down and the Sixth War started. The Portuguese is understandable, they were still smarting from the Salisbury Ultimatum that prevented them for making their Pink Map a reality, and the French was actually expected, but the PM forbade Lord Yaxley from acting against either, we couldn’t afford that then.
SF: We can’t even call the “Sixth War” a proper war, can we?
BL: The tabloids do, we in the Archives refer to all of them as uprisings. It has, either way, entered common parlance. And we can’t say it wasn’t a war, it certainly lasted longer than the Fifth and was far, far more destructive.
<VO: The Sixth War lasted for far longer and was more brutal, with the employment of work camps for PoWs on both sides. The final Treaty of Oudtshoorn that brought an end to the hostilities was perhaps the harshest it could have been. South Africa, however, was burned and tired.
While Lord Yaxley earned a hero’s triumph in Parliament, South Africa was silently left to pick up the pieces of the most devastating war on its soil in thirty years.>
(Pictures and clips flash of the devastation brought about by the Sixth Boer War.)
(Pathe clip plays – “After months of ceaseless endeavour and gruesome fighting, our boys in brown have returned home with victory in their hands. The Boer Rebellions in South Africa have now been thoroughly quashed, and His Majesty is pleased to announce the restoration of peace and order to our Cape Dominion. Lord Yaxley has been praised throughout Parliament for taking a tough stance on the evil of xenophobia within our Dominions and Colonies. As the Empire gears back to peace once more, South Africa must repair the damage and destruction wrought in its shires, bringing the Empire’s fruit garden back to life. The Treaty of Oudtshoorn while considered harsh, is a fairer peace than Versailles, and the Foreign Office hopes that this generous settlement, along with the promised £15 million in aid to repair damages will assist in rewarming relations between the old lion and his cubs.”)
“From Empire to Commonwealth”
‘An eye-wateringly expensive and extravagant venture by the BBC to milk the Commonwealth nostalgia gripping the nation with the recent release of “YAXLEY”. However, it is incredibly informative with the interesting commentary by Stephen Fry and does reveal some useful unknown information. Worth tuning in to on Fridays at 9PM on BBC1.’ – review by The Times.
‘Stephen Fry makes the history of the Commonwealth fun! One watch is recommended!’ – review by The Guardian.
‘Not dry or dull in any way shape or form. A documentary that parodies itself! Nice watch, worth recommending!’ – review by The Telegraph.
EPISODE 1
(VO is Stephen Fry voiceover with requisite clips play in the foreground)
Locations within the Houses of Parliament, Stephen Fry walking through them.
Sir Stephen Fry (SF): Bertram Wilberforce Wooster (Pictures of Wooster flash), The Lord Yaxley, The Duke of Albany and Pembroke, names that, reverberating through this hallowed house of peoples, garner admiration and apprehension in equal measure.
As they should! Perhaps no man has had an impact, greater than Lord Yaxley, save perhaps Walpole or Cromwell, in these Houses of Parliament, and the less that is said about the latter here, the better it is.
Some, admire Wooster for transforming our nation, some revile him for breaking centuries of tradition. Certainly, “Progress Brooks No Ceremony” won and lost many hearts for him. (Campaign poster for the Liberal Progressive Party saying, “PROGRESS BROOKS NO CEREMONY!”).
For two decades, this one man, with his iron grip on the highest office in the land, changed the face and nature of British Politics and Britain in general.
(Clips of Lord Yaxley at No. 10 and in the House of Commons).
We all now live in a Britain completely unrecognisable from a century ago, thoroughly modern, and irrevocably changed. Back then, the Empire was all the rage. Britain ruled the Seven Seas with a firm grip, as master of a quarter of the world.
The Sun never set on the British Empire! (The popular newspaper drawing flashes).
Now, Britain leads a sovereign sisterhood, a vanguard of democratic values, liberties, and freedom, through the Commonwealth of Nations. And the Empire, with its odds, ends, faults, and praises all, is safely confined to the pages of history.
Naturally, behind every Wooster, there is a Jeeves. (In Jeeves’ characteristic manner.)
(Laughs) Something Lord Yaxley said fondly, and something, which was absolutely true.
(Promo clips of the series play with voiceover)
<VO: In this series, in collaboration with the Crown Estate and No. 10 Downing Street, and a herculean cooperative effort of several Commonwealth governments, agencies, and organisations, giving us access to never-before-seen archives, secrets, films, and redacted documents, we will uncover how Britain sailed to modernity. How, through much opposition, quite fervent in some cases, Britain, went from having a globe-spanning Empire to being part of a Commonwealth of Nations spread across the world.
We will see how our relationship with the Dominions evolved from that of mother and daughter to sister nations of the same family. From master and servant to equal subjects of the same Crown. We will witness the evolution of the lion cubs starting their own pride, out of their old father’s shadow.
Through it, of course, we may learn some interesting titbits about the life in this grand Palace of Westminster, where the Parliament of this nation has met for centuries, meet holders of many august and significant offices and observe the genealogical chart of the British Commonwealth.
We may also perhaps brush up on a bit of history and politics. Of the Commonwealth and beyond.>
SF: You may ask yourself why the BBC roped me in to present this monumental undertaking. It would certainly be a rational and rather pertinent question! A most germane question.
And to that I must answer, rather plainly, that I have had the honour of playing and representing Lord Yaxley, on the silver screen, in that Christopher Nolan motion picture, or biopic - as they’re called, named ‘YAXLEY’, (Poster flashes) which was lauded at the BAFTAs (whispers with a grin – We’ll find out about the Oscars soon enough!), and, I have also had the honour of playing and portraying the Lord Easeby, that is, Jeeves, in a now famous TV dramatization of P. G. Wodehouse’s novels (Picture flashes) opposite the commensurate talents of Hugh Laurie as the eponymous Wooster.
So, I can say with some good authority that I am intimately familiar with the characters of Lord Yaxley and his staunch confidante, from a perspective, at the very least.
It might also be of profound help that I was dandled on his knee as a wee babe and once spilt the contents of my dinner on him as a stripling – that was after a particularly vigorous chasing of the Wooster House pet, a snow-white Siberian Husky named Snowmane. God! I remember his face when his white waistcoat! It brings a joyful tear to my eye. I’m certain Harring the valet went through several seizures at that. (Laughs and wipes a tear).
I spent many wild years of eager frolick at Yaxburgh in Scotland - that thousand-year-old, beautiful, grand old pile, that has seen Woosters since before Brunabruh (Picture of Yaxburgh Castle), and Wooster House in Belgravia Square – that fashionable Victorian palace of the Marquesses of Pembroke, and the ‘IT’ place of high society at the time (Picture of Wooster House flashes), with Lord Yaxley, courtesy of the Princess, naturally. She was always fond of me. Many a sweet would unwittingly find it’s way to me, many thanks to her machinations. (Smiles wistfully).
And so, the BBC has decided I would be the man to reveal his indelible impact on our nation. It might also be the case that they asked Hugh (Laurie) or Maggie (Smith) or Lord Westerley (Sir Ian McKellen) or Emma (Thompson) or many other big names and they were elsewise occupied.
I shall, rather happily of course, have some sorely needed help.
Over the course of this series, we will meet several experts, historians, chroniclers, and personages - The Prince of Wales, Her Majesty the Queen, and Her Majesty the Dowager Queen of Prussia to name but a scant few. We will pick their brains for the facts that are so crudely condensed in a few lines in the textbooks. We will ask their opinions and learn some well-kept secrets. And we shall see Britain go from 1933 and beyond, “From Empire to Commonwealth”.
Title Sequence plays. Score by Howard Shore and John Williams.
We start, naturally, in the House of Commons, where some 90 years ago, Lord Yaxley rose to this dispatch box as His Majesty’s Most Loyal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, beginning his meteoric rise into power. Golly gumdrops and good heavens indeed!
But that is a lie. As barefaced a lie can get.
Bertram Wooster’s career in politics began long before then, when he joined Parliament in 1927, as the Marquess of Pembroke taking up a seat in the Lords. His uncle, the previous Marquess, tragically died when the roof of the vicarage at Twing descended on him and his wife-to-be, and left “Bertie” Wooster, as he would call it, “the family shack”, to much horror and amusement from his relations.
Yes, his Aunts Dahlia and Julia were rather elated and his Aunt Agatha positively apoplectic in horror. (Laughs)
It wasn’t until his election by his alma mater (Picture flashes of Magdalen College, Oxford), as a Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford, that he made his first appearance in this House – the House of Commons. And by Jove was it an appearance!
Life in this House is seldom quiet or easy – Lord Urqhart would’ve told you it’s rather raucous, and that the MPs get up to all sorts of silly business. Lord Yaxley learnt that rather quickly, after getting into a fracas with Sir Oswald Mosley on his first day.
Mosley was, of course, a former inspiration for Lord Yaxley’s close friend and ally in the Foreign Office, Sir Roderick Spode, the last Earl of Sidcup.
(Whispers) It is still rumoured here, in quiet whispers, that he flattened Winston Churchill’s nose too when he heard derisive and racist remarks about several rising personages in the vastness of our Empire. Though the Churchill family, naturally, vehemently denies that. They were, of course, at loggerheads over India, so the enmity was organic and expected.
If only these walls could talk, eh?
(Newspaper clipping flashes reading, “Fracas in Parliament!”)
His rise began with the success in the Spring Budget of his first year, when then Chancellor Sir Neville Chamberlain agreed, on his suggestions, and backed up by some serious projections by renowned experts, to stimulate the flagging economy by spending on infrastructure. And then…
Location change to Dwaravati Bhavan (also known as Flagstaff House), New Delhi (the official residence of the Prime Minister of India) for a clip.
<VO: Building on his success in the Treasury, his 2nd major impact was convincing the ailing Prime Minister, Sir Ramsay Macdonald into being named plenipotentiary ‘Viceroy of India’, a title of which he would be the final incumbent.
Though Macdonald sent Wooster to India only to stabilise the situation and negotiate a return to peace there, he got far more than he asked for. Lord Yaxley arranged the Round Table Conferences, seeking India’s independence as a Dominion of the Crown, and succeeded!>
(Picture of Lord Yaxley in full viceregal regalia flashes, followed by a newspaper clipping from The Times – “Yaxley named Viceroy plenipotentiary – Is India lost?”, The Financial Times – “The Cost of losing India”, The Times of India – “New Viceroy, Lord Yaxley”, Dawn – “Our Chance!” and The Herald – “New page or same story?”)
SF: Naturally, as we’ve learnt from his very detailed and highly informative, and also terribly amusing, memoirs, Jeeves was behind all the successes. We’ll talk more about his term as Viceroy in the final episode of this series, but right now, it suffices to say, India became a Dominion and the Empire, for better or worse, was changed forever. Would you agree, Your Excellency?
Maya Sarabhai, the Viscountess Riverdale. (Prime Minister of India): Oh certainly! It changed the trajectory drastically! From clinging on to the past for dear life, like the French Empire, it forced the British Empire to evolve, adapt and change to what it eventually became.
India still is a Dominion, thoroughly changed from 1933, and yet it is. And never a day goes by without the Opposition claiming that we still slave away under the British yoke. To be fair to them, however, they have their imagination fixed on the depredations of the Raj and have scarce made the effort to move on to more modern challenges. (Laughs heartily).
Her Majesty is Empress of India in her own right, and her vicegerent, the Governor-General, is as Indian as it gets! I don’t think the His Serene Highness, Nawab of Pataudi, would find any amusement in being referred to as British in any sense of the word, however much he may love his cricket. I can imagine the sour faces he’d pull. (Laughs). Much like the rest of the Commonwealth, we are an independent, sovereign kingdom in a state of personal union with Britain, such that we share Her Majesty as our Sovereign Lady and Empress, and there lies the boundary, our Constitution clearly establishes that.
It has been ninety years since full patriation, one of the first Acts of our Parliament, and the passing of the Statute of Westminster, and also the promulgation of the Constitution of India. No Briton, save that rather pompous, delusional, and frankly ridiculous ‘India League’, claimed to control India since that time. To declare that India serves a mistress other than herself is folly, and Lord Yaxley is to thank for that.
Of course, without ‘the Jewel in the Crown’ as a long-suffering colony and cash-cow, things were bound to change. We kept the Empire in the green, and fed in sumptuous luxuries, while our people endured back-breaking poverty. When you wrest a source of such ample wealth from direct control, the coffers are naturally left wanting.
When I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Yaxley as a starry-eyed young MP some four decades ago, he laughed when we discussed Indian Independence, saying the Treasury never forgave him for that! (Laughs).
This of course forced even Churchill, in his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to admit that the Empire was a costly endeavour and a financial lossmaker, and that it needed to change. He might not have liked the changes Lord Yaxley made, but they were the right ones.
It was also often whispered among political circles at the time that we would be the first domino to fall or the snowflake that sets off the avalanche. When we became a Dominion, others in the Empire would soon follow. So yes, the Empire changed forever by our doing. Lord Yaxley’s subsequent terms are Foreign Secretary saw to that.
SF: Very true, Your Excellency.
Location changes back to the House of Commons
<VO: We shall greet the Prime Minister of India again in the final episode of this series, when we discuss India in greater detail. After all, much of Lord Yaxley’s career was because of India, and India forms an integral part of the Commonwealth family of nations. But for now, we must move to other things>.
SF: His appointment to those viceregal laurels was, of course, much due to his lady wife being a Royal Princess (Picture flash of Princess Victoria) and being “recommended” by the His Majesty the King himself to this office.
India, however, was only the beginning, the tip of the iceberg so to say. His success in keeping India in the “Empire” was met with much begrudging respect, if nothing else, even from those that considered themselves his nemeses, and despised his outlook on the empire as being a fellowship of equals.
The Round Table Conferences for India’s independence most definitely would look like “The Benny Hill Show” to us, with the amount of backroom dealing that went on in either delegation, but the result is as we see. India remained a united sovereign dominion of the Crown, the world applauded and promptly forgot, (The Times of India clippings – “Round Table Conference in London!”, “India Rules Itself!”, “Thank You, Wooster!”, “India Remains IN!”) and the BBC producer made several rude gestures for me to get a bally move on. (Laughs).
Location change to the Government House, Cape Town.
The true test of his mettle, his patience, and the outlay of his then revolutionary ideas for the “Empire” began with his rather cynical appointment by Stanley Baldwin, the returning PM, as Foreign Secretary.
Naturally, it was done on the recommendation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, with the idea to discredit him as a one-hit wonder, and to wait in the wings for his first faux-pas to exile him to the backbenches again, or, relegate him to the Lords for the remainder of his life even.
Still, to think about it! A Great Office of State in his 2nd term in Parliament! So many parliamentarians would do unspeakable things for that! I’m sure in our history, many have, we were not always this representative in our democracy, you know.
(Picture flash of Lord Yaxley entering KCS building)
Of course, a man as shrewd as Lord Yaxley, with the expansive and inimitable intelligence of Lord Easeby supporting and guiding him at every stage, saw through this poor ruse and the trap set for him, and demanded a carte-blanche to act as he felt necessary with the government granting him unquestioned support, as he put it, backing him to the hilt. In a way, not very different from his time in India. He naturally felt that evolution needed to be forced at this stage and debate would not do it, and he was right. It is however, quite undemocratic from a man who seemed to want to live and breathe democracy. Alas, we all have our faults!
After some initial opposition to the idea, the PM was somehow convinced to acquiesce. To this day, none can say for certain why the PM changed his position so drastically. I suspect some youthful indiscretions of the PM finally demanded a dear price.
(The Evening Standard clipping flashes – “EXTRA! PM endorses Yaxley! Full Foreign policy control!”)
I have with me, His Excellency, the Earl Chapman, the current Governor-General of South Africa, and Lord Yaxley’s great-grandson, to discuss more on his first term, starting in 1933, from office and personal records.
George Wooster-Mountbatten, the Earl Chapman: We have to naturally start with South Africa, it dominated so much of his earliest months at the Foreign Office, at least in the sense of the Commonwealth and Empire.
SF: I imagine, even today there is no love lost between Lord Yaxley’s memory and the Boers, or what remains of them, at any rate.
GW: Well, yes, that can be said with some certainty. Although the few Boers that remain in South Africa are not that well-liked by the majority of our people.
To be fair, however, the Afrikaners, who despise being lumped in with the Boers, don’t mind Lord Yaxley that much. They find Lord Yaxley’s vociferous support for the Hofmeyr-Smuts Reforms of 1935 to balance out the initial unpleasantness.
SF: The separation between Boer and Afrikaner today being?
GW: The Boers still continue to support the fragments of the National Party that have re-emerged in recent times, whereas Afrikaners subscribe to Hofmeyr’s moderate stance, the Afrikaners are generally Dominionists whereas the Boers are staunch republicans, the list could go on.
<VO: We’ll learn more about Hofmeyr in the final episode of the series when we discuss South Africa as well.>
SF: Shall we get to the juicy bits that people would be waiting for? Throw some meat to the tigers?
GW: (Laughs) To start, we can begin with the Boere Jeug and the Suiwer Afrika wings of the National Party, coming to prominence under Barry Hertzog after the Depression era.
<VO: Immediately on assuming office, Lord Yaxley was confronted with the National Party Government of South Africa instituting the first of its many planned segregationist policies starting with the ‘Enfranchisement Act’ or ‘Stemregwet’ of 1933.>
(Clips of PM Hertzog waving a newspaper which is brought into focus reading “APARTHEID, Ons Oplossing!”)
GW: We must remember, all the dregs, the odds and ends of Empire, with even a shred of xenophobia, drained themselves generally in our South African possessions then, which would be South Africa and Rhodesia. The Boers created an absolutely ideal climate for it. The National Party was simply an amalgamation of that petty superiority complex of the Boers. Their feverish fantasies of imposing neo-slavery were published in their writings extensively. Though those writings are banned in much of Africa, including South Africa, I’m told you can read the if you choose in the British Library.
Where wars failed, they tried to bend the law to do their bidding. They called it Apartheid.
This pettiness, came to the fore even more violently after Prime Minister Smuts had second the Identification Papers debacle. Where Smuts represented the moderate if conservative wings of the political spectrum, Hertzog was very much on the right. Not as far on the right as some of the rather “delightfully fruity” members of his own party, who would cause Hitler and Himmler to blush in their lack of sheer dedication, but on the right, nonetheless.
<VO: South Africa was always the most self-centred of the Dominions back then, chafing under any restrictions or impositions. It was also the Dominion, aside from Canada, to have the largest share of trade outwith the Empire, even with Imperial Preference, which it rarely abided by. So, when Wall Street crashed, it was very badly affected. And, where the rest of the Empire came out that Depression rather quickly, thanks to the Imperial Preference, South Africa defiantly endured a slump because of the National Party’s bullheadedness and the genuinely stubborn nature of the slump. They had, after all, lost their second largest trade partner in the US.
In 1933, on finally eking out of the slump at a snail’s pace, the NP, feeling the need the flex themselves even more and prove their independence from Westminster, decided on abandoning all moderation and that they would begin on their project of creating ‘the white man’s utopia’ in South Africa, starting of course, by limiting any democratic franchise offered to non-whites.>
(Graphs of South Africa’s declining economic growth from 1929-33 flash, then the text of the Enfranchisement Act)
GW: Remember, non-whites were already second-class, if not third-class, citizens, as we know from Mr Gandhi agitating for Indian rights in the first Identification Papers debacle, the NP wanted to effectively make them stateless and subservient to their ghastly ideal – in a word, slaves.
SF: Ah! So that is where the first of the famous Orders-in-Council features! If memory serves, Lord Yaxley forced the “Statute of Whitehall” through Parliament without debate so they could gag any legislation or executive action throughout Africa or the Empire at large, wherever the “Statute of Westminster” had not yet been enacted. I’m sure South Africa saw the imperious finger pointing at them in abject anger.
Still, I personally thought it was most authoritarian, Britain dictating what the dominions, who had effectively been granted self-rule, could and couldn’t legislate on.
<VO: Several instances emerged where this ‘Statute of Whitehall’ was used in the Empire, though, in most cases it was against legislation that actively discriminatory or criminal. In Rhodesia it was used against the “Native Representation Act”; in the Caribbean against the “Forestry Act”; and famously in Madagascar against the “Language Act”. South Africa remained the black sheep, however, a source of constant headaches and two more Boer wars.
It was only under the National Government in 1948 that this Statute was repealed.>
(Pictures of the Apartheid concentration camps and the Boer Wars.)
GW: His Private Office suggested it, Lord Easeby meant for it to be a stop-gap measure. Of course, the Boers changed the game with the declaration of another Republic an inevitable declaration of war.
Peaceful negotiations were out of the question; they’d have been laughed out of Cape Town. Westminster needed to be assertive. And they couldn’t ask the other Dominions to pressure South Africa, considering this was an outright infringement on self-government.
Australia and Canada were going through the same vehement debate about the Indigenous Peoples too, though thankfully, they came to more rational, inclusive, and amicable answers. I believe the fact that Parliament, or Lord Yaxley with his statute in hand, was willing to block Australian legislation to ensure we moved to more inclusive and representative government everywhere, jollied them to the right answers, if with a lot of grumbling and simmering discontent. New Zealand took on the suggestion quite brilliantly with the “Equality Act” of 1934 – its first step to becoming the Polynesia of today.
SF: (laughs) If our viewers were previously unaware, His Excellency is a scholar of Commonwealth Law and Parliamentary History, from his great-grandfather’s alma mater no less. So you say that the statute was merely to curb the excesses that some persons might engender ill views and use the Union Jack as protection against those excesses?
GW: Very much so, yes.
<VO: This infringement of the right of self-government did not go down well in Rhodesia, South Africa or Egypt, those being the only three with any amount of self-governance in the African continent under British administration. Some Colonial Governors did raise a fuss, but Lord Samuel, Lord Yaxley’s ally in the Colonial Office, put his foot down with that. Those that continued to protest, drew the ire of the Prime Minister even, and were swiftly replaced.>
(Clips of PM Hertzog making fiery speeches in front of the South African Parliament about infringement.
And the King of Egypt threatening to expel the British Resident.
Newsreels of protests.
Newsreels of Governors changing throughout the Empire.)
<VO: To save face, PM Hertzog hoped to negotiate clandestinely to water down the measures in the Act that resulted in this Statute, as far that it would nullify it almost completely, but Lord Yaxley stood resolute in disallowing such evil to take root in our Commonwealth>
(Picture Flash of The Times saying “Yaxley Unmoved! Hertzog’s turn”)
GW: With their magnum opus, the shield that they could rely on to oppress non-whites, thwarted and dead in the water, and the South African government unable to act on it any further, the NP turned to think of other ideas.
SF: Wasn’t this a constitutional crisis?
GW: Well, not really, as the Statute of Whitehall simply empowered the British Government to withhold legislative powers on this matter from the Government of South Africa. They couldn’t sidestep that.
So they decided to increase taxes on the poorest in society, the lions’ share of whom were non-whites, by claiming that the Exchequer demanded a fix to the running deficit and a better servicing of the national debt.
This ironically named “Equal Share Budget” or “Gelyke Deelbegroting” couldn’t get through the Royal Assent bar, causing a true constitutional crisis, as Parliament and Crown had a conflict of interest, until Hertzog backed down again.
Lord Clarendon refused Assent thrice, so, many thought Lord Yaxley instructed the Gov.-Gen. to refuse assent, but the man had done it out of his own volition, seeing no good could actually come of wringing the poor drier than a desert. Also, only the PM, by recommending an action to the King, would’ve had the power to ask the Gov.-Gen. to act in a certain manner, and no other member of his Cabinet, so it was moot speculation anyway.
SF: Surely, there’s only so many times that Assent can be denied to an Act of Parliament.
GW: Back then, such measures were still in flux. The duties of a constitutional monarch are to ensure the laws his Parliament debate and pass benefit the lion’s share if not all, not the other way around. Until the Constitution was formalised, Lord Clarendon, as His Majesty’s plenipotentiary vicegerent to South Africa, embodied all his powers and thus could refuse assent at his discretion for as many times as he saw fit.
Sounds absolutist I know, but no monarch had truly refused assent for two centuries before this. Oh, there would be blackmail, and hints of intrigue, but that was the settlement made of parliamentary supremacy. However, the prerogative remained with the monarch to exercise at they will. Until the Constitution formally delimited that, of course.
You might say that is what led to the English Civil War, and you would be right. However, monarchs had rarely refused Assent to anything unless it was gravely against the values of the country, so in a way it acted as a delicate final check on any policies such as the ones the NP was hoping to turn into law.
SF: Now its three times, if memory serves.
GW: Yes, that’s right. Its constitutionally limited to three times, no more. If the monarch refuses Assent a fourth time, which has never happened in our history, the bill would automatically become law if both Houses of Parliament pass it in a joint session.
SF: Couldn’t the NP government petition Westminster to have the Governor-General replaced with someone more amiable to their cause? That would still lie with the remit of their powers as His Majesty’s Government of the Union of South Africa.
GW: True, but the NP simply wanted an excuse to declare an emergency and use the Prime Minister’s discretionary powers to fulfil their desires. To rule by decree is what they wanted. Going by the law would mean it would take far longer to get what they desired, and they could be easily rebuffed. So they had lost patience for going by the book.
SF: Didn’t this infringement, this interference from London, cause the call for independence from under Britain’s thumb to grow louder and more forceful? Especially amongst the generally more republican establishment in South Africa?
GW: Of course, it did, and it culminated in the war.
They were hoping for it, or at least the odious elements that pressured the Prime Minister were, so, they tabled a bill so drastic and frankly shocking, it was bound to be blocked by Westminster. They called it “Aandklokwet”, or the “Curfew Act”. It was meant to grant the constabulary unchecked power to essentially oppress all non-whites.
<VO: There was once more an outcry from the moderate elements of society, and not just in South Africa. Everyone saw this blatant attempt for what it was, and Lord Clarendon even denied the Prime Minister an audience over this. Thoroughly frustrated and pressured by the more radical elements in his party to act, Hertzog took drastic action.
On the 4th of October 1933, using the excuse of the second constitutional impasse, and declaring the government to be in a complete gridlock, Prime Minister Hertzog unilaterally subverted the Governor-General Lord Clarendon and declared a state of national emergency himself.>
(Pictures of protests throughout India, Canada, and Britain flash. Clip plays of Hertzog making a heated speech in Parliament.)
(Pathe Reel plays – “Late on the evening of the 4th of October, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, General J. B. M. Hertzog, declared a state of national emergency, citing discord between his government, the Government of the United Kingdom, and the Governor-General of the Union, Lord Clarendon. He declared that this discord had brought the Parliament of the Union to a grinding halt and unable to exercise its duty of government. In a historic use of his discretionary powers, he declared all civil liberties curtailed and martial law active throughout the Union. With these actions, Crown rule in South Africa is now in question. It is His Majesty’s fervent desire that an amicable solution be found, therefore, the Prime Minister has decided to dispatch a delegation from the Foreign Office to negotiate a return to normality. We hope they succeed in returning peace to the Empire.”)
SF: Is there any truth to the ‘pie-in-the-face’ legend that has become so synonymous with the Yaxley myth in general? I must know. I asked him plenty of times, but he always gave me a wry smile at that changed the topic of conversation.
GW: In a way. To smooth the kerfuffle over this mess, Lord Yaxley was dispatched from Whitehall. Baldwin was clear and concise in his words, Yaxley made this bed, and he would sleep in it. Or so the rumour goes. Churchill gave all Tories a bad reputation, even the sound ones like Baldwin, so we don’t know what actually transpired on the night of October 4th. More like as not, Baldwin worried about chaos in the other Dominions’ reactions, especially India to such blatant interference and hoped that negotiations could bring about a fruitful outcome.
Of course, most people forget that India had already passed the “Statute of Westminster” along with Canada and so any interference from Westminster was impossible, it would come as a mere recommendations or suggestions to them at best.
SF: Hadn’t South Africa done the same? Considering the situation?
GW: The Status of the Union Act came after the Fifth War. And the National party was undergoing substantial turmoil to take advantage of the situation properly. The moderate wing of the party was shorn of all patience with all the antics that had transpired. So, there was considerable infighting there.
SF: So they didn’t manage to do it then.
I don’t understand the numbering of the Wars, there were only two Boer Wars before then.
GW: There were two Boer rebellions in 1919 and 1921 after Gandhi and Smuts’ dance around the Identification papers, most people disregard that. According to the newspapers, they called those rebellions the Third and Fourth Boer Wars.
I do question that, just as much as any sane man, drunken fools with sharpened sticks and guns older than their grandfathers do not rebel armies make, but we digress.
<VO: Protests erupted in Cape Town when Lord Yaxley, his deputy Sir Austen Chamberlain and Lord Samuel arrived to negotiate with Prime Minister Hertzog to restore parliamentary government in South Africa. Though insulted to be snubbed by Baldwin, Hertzog agreed to meet with the delegation to come to some settlement while saving face and keeping his seat of power.>
(Pictures of the delegation arriving in Cape Town and the protests in Cape Town by Boer farmers flash.)
(Pathe Reel plays – “A delegation from His Majesty’s Government has left for South Africa to negotiate an end to the political turmoil and impasse there and restore full constitutional sovereignty in Cape Town. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Yaxley, who heads this delegation, has been tasked by the Prime Minister to make Mr. Hertzog come to reason. His Majesty has wished him every success in this endeavour. With him are Sir Austen Chamberlain, his deputy and Lord Samuel, his Colonial Office peer. Negotiations will take place in Cape Town to restart the full function of government. We wave goodbye to them in hopes that a settlement is reached in this matter.”)
GW: A greater share of the protestors were Boer farmers, of Transvaal extraction, one of which thought it would be a right lark in the newspapers if the head of the British delegation was pie’d in the face. Naturally, Lord Yaxley gave as good as he got, and the chaos descended.
<VO: Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Yaxley were enemies over a myriad subjects and views, however, such a grave affront to one of His Majesty’s Great Officers of State could not go unanswered, even for him. >
(Clip of Churchill making a fiery speech in Parliament plays.)
(Pathe Reel plays – “The delegation from His Majesty’s Government in South Africa has been assaulted by agitators on the streets of Cape Town. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have warned this insult cannot go unpunished. The President of the Board of Trade has announced a full sanction on several goods through South Africa. Parliament is shocked and appalled by South Africa’s actions and urges of calm and caution have come from across the Empire. Time will tell if it is to be another Boer Rising to face the sons of the Empire.”)
GW: We have to remember that Hertzog wasn’t truly hoping for things to spiral so far out of his control. Much as most of the settler dominions, he was hoping this agitation, and willingness to abandon common sense in this case, would simply exasperate Westminster enough to wash its hands from interfering. It was the likes of Verwoerd, making trouble from the backbenches, getting increasingly vociferous, inching for war and “freedom”.
The NP finally fractured under all this, of course.
SF: When Hofmeyr and his moderates did the ‘ten-metre walk’?
<VO: Jan Hendryk Hofmeyr, the leader of the liberal and moderate wings of the National Party, increasingly frustrated with the direction that the government was taking in antagonising Westminster and Whitehall, finally decided enough was enough. During a heated debate in the South African Parliament between the Prime Minister Hertzog and the Leader of the Opposition, Field Marshal Smuts, Hofmeyr and all his moderate colleagues walked across the chamber to the Opposition benches, to the shock of everyone, to assume seats there, causing a parliamentary crisis and the fall of Hertzog’s government.>
(Pictures flash of several celebrities from across the Commonwealth doing the ten-metre-walk, a symbol of protest against any form of oppression.)
GW: Precisely! The implosion of the National Party was a shock to most people, including Smuts who could overnight re-assume premiership under the aegis of a revived United Party. Hertzog retired, having tired himself out with this mess, but like Kruger, the Boers used him as a martyr to declare another South African Republic, a spiteful slight spat in the Empire’s face.
SF: A slight no self-respecting power could let pass unanswered. Especially in an era where haughty politicians looked for an excuse to take umbrage at something.
GW: Exactly, once a river becomes a torrent, a man in no match to stay its course.
<VO:The wars have been made into ample feature length documentaries by the likes of Dan Snow, Tony Robinson and Mary Beard, and so we shall avoid stepping on their toes. It can be said however, that the Empire descended on the nascent rebellion in full force and patriotic vigour, and the Fifth War ended in the Armistice of Kimberly. >
(Picture flashes of the signing of the Armistice of Kimberly)
Location change to the War Archives Building, London.
SF: This 2nd Republic of Zuid-Afrika warred with the rest of the Empire for all of two months, before running out of food and ammunition, as they had not expected so swift, sure and furibund a response from the Empire. Their government in Pietermaritzburg reluctantly agreed to come to negotiations, when it was clear that their preparations were sorely lacking. That was, however, only a halt to the fighting, a ceasefire.
The government of the Dominion, under the Field Marshal Smuts, with a flurry of uproarious activity, passed what are known as the “War Measures”- full proportional representation and a universal franchise being among them. The most eventful legislation was, naturally, the Status of the Union Act of 1934, which akin to the Statute of Westminster, that all other Dominions had also passed by then, restricted Westminster’s right to interfere in Dominion Affairs without their express consent. The Dominion government also received a sum total of £763,000 worth of Royal Army equipment for their soldiers from Britain and the Empire at large.
Both sides were underprepared but naturally the Dominion prevailed with greater resources at its disposal, causing the Armistice.
Why an Armistice though, not a peace?
Hamish deWitt-Totts, 12th Baron Llanberis (Lord Chief Archivist of the United Kingdom): Well by the time they agreed to come to talks, one of von Ribbentrop’s agents, a ‘Mr Frobisher’ and one of Nungesser’s agents, a’ M. Georges’, had manged to covertly pass messages of support and arriving aid to them and through Portuguese Mozambique, Action Francaise and Hitler’s Germany agreed to supply them against the Crown while Smuts was dealing with the chaos of resettling proper democratic government in Cape Town. Mind you, this betrayal would come the bite the Portuguese in the backside in a fitting fashion.
And the talks were to be for their return into the fold and their surrender, which they felt was an insult upon their honour. With flowing arms and a betrayal by both the Portuguese and the French, if only some of the latter, it was no wonder that the negotiations for peace broke down and the Sixth War started. The Portuguese is understandable, they were still smarting from the Salisbury Ultimatum that prevented them for making their Pink Map a reality, and the French was actually expected, but the PM forbade Lord Yaxley from acting against either, we couldn’t afford that then.
SF: We can’t even call the “Sixth War” a proper war, can we?
BL: The tabloids do, we in the Archives refer to all of them as uprisings. It has, either way, entered common parlance. And we can’t say it wasn’t a war, it certainly lasted longer than the Fifth and was far, far more destructive.
<VO: The Sixth War lasted for far longer and was more brutal, with the employment of work camps for PoWs on both sides. The final Treaty of Oudtshoorn that brought an end to the hostilities was perhaps the harshest it could have been. South Africa, however, was burned and tired.
While Lord Yaxley earned a hero’s triumph in Parliament, South Africa was silently left to pick up the pieces of the most devastating war on its soil in thirty years.>
(Pictures and clips flash of the devastation brought about by the Sixth Boer War.)
(Pathe clip plays – “After months of ceaseless endeavour and gruesome fighting, our boys in brown have returned home with victory in their hands. The Boer Rebellions in South Africa have now been thoroughly quashed, and His Majesty is pleased to announce the restoration of peace and order to our Cape Dominion. Lord Yaxley has been praised throughout Parliament for taking a tough stance on the evil of xenophobia within our Dominions and Colonies. As the Empire gears back to peace once more, South Africa must repair the damage and destruction wrought in its shires, bringing the Empire’s fruit garden back to life. The Treaty of Oudtshoorn while considered harsh, is a fairer peace than Versailles, and the Foreign Office hopes that this generous settlement, along with the promised £15 million in aid to repair damages will assist in rewarming relations between the old lion and his cubs.”)
Chp7 Part II
TLocation change to the American Embassy, London.
<VO: We shall return to South Africa in the final episode of this series. For now, before moving on to the French Civil War or July Revolution, if you prefer, of 1935, we shall briefly make a mention of the Philadelphia Memorandum of 1934. A very important step in the development of the “Special Relationship”.>
(Newspaper clippings of the New York Times – “Lord Yaxley in the States!”; “Negotiations Leaked!”; and “The Philadelphia Memorandum!”)
SF: And to help unravel that, we have with us the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Court of St. James, and an expert in Interwar Anglo-American history, Mr. Anderson Cooper-Vanderbilt.
Anderson Cooper-Vanderbilt (US ambassador to the UK): Well, it was a landmark deal, absolutely unprecedented, and an uncharacteristically foresighted change in Anglo-American relations. It was also a way of Britain acknowledging the parity of the United States on the world stage. Something, that was perhaps understood in Westminster for a while, if not readily accepted. America signed it because Lord Yaxley offered us good incentives.
SF: With the Wooster Amendment to the “Two Powers Act” that was passed in Parliament in 1934 to sweeten the pot, you mean?
ACV: Oh yes, naturally. Not to mention the inroads the US could now make into the British Market and the Empire at large, where it was previously hamstrung by the Imperial Preference System.
SF: As I remember, it wasn’t tariff or regulation free access to the Imperial Market, no?
ACV: Quite close to that, though. We went from a full 50% tariff in some cases to the low 30s, that was an achievement. It was an overall cut of 6.1% tariff, but that was just an average.
In return for debt forgiveness, I believe the Government would have gone even further, even if Lord Yaxley remained unwilling to.
<VO: The essential salient points of the agreed memorandum, of course, were that –
SF: A worthy list, don’t you think?
ACV: Hah! (Laughs) It’s the basis that drives the close relationship we have now, all ambassadors to the UK are given the file, and I studied this time period at college, so I can agree with you there!
SF: As a word connoisseur I must say I’m happy to see something like ‘lustrum’ feature somewhere! (Smiles)
Is the memorandum still reviewed every 5 years? Or has been reduced to being merely a historical curiosity in Anglo-American relations?
ACV: It formed the basis of the Treaty of Buckingham, signed in 1964. So technically, it entered a state of abeyance. Anglo-American relations have only grown stronger and deeper since, as we can see today.
SF: Its certainly quite evident, ambassador. How long did it take for Lord Yaxley and President Roosevelt, to come to an agreement so succinct but all-encompassing as this?
ACV: Not as long as you imagine! They both negotiated for a week, and insider sources say it was a whirlwind of a week! They presented a united front at the end of the week when they unveiled this memorandum, more for President Roosevelt’s sake, as Congress would, and did, censure him for ending American Isolation without consulting them.
(Pathe reel plays – “Earlier this week, Lord Yaxley’s tour of the home of the historical Continental Congress came to an end with the signing of the Philadelphia memorandum. A comprehensive agreement between the British Empire and the United States of America, this memorandum undoubtedly sets the foundation for future relations which can only grow closer. On this side of the Atlantic, this has been met with quiet optimism. Even His Majesty the King has expressed great affirmation for this diplomatic coup engineered by Lord Yaxley. The Prime Minister has also expressed support for this deal, saying the boosting of cooperation between two of the greatest powers in the world can only lead to a better future for all their peoples. While initially reluctant, Congress has now ratified the memorandum as the Treaty of Philadelphia and there is a quiet sense of understanding pervading on Capitol Hill. Anglo-American relations are only to get even friendlier from here after the frostiness following Versailles. Both sides of the Atlantic hope that this partnership continues to yield peace, stability, and prosperity for us all.”)
<VO: Both President Roosevelt and Lord Yaxley were quite heavily criticised for giving away too much, FDR was especially disparaged by the bankers with such a massive reduction in the debt, and by Congress for an overreach of power in upending splendid isolation and American Foreign Policy without appropriate consultation with them. Lord Yaxley was decried for surrendering Britain’s naval supremacy and also for breaching the Imperial Preference system, but most of all, he was denounced for acknowledging the United States as enjoying a parity in power to the British Empire, a reality many in the echelons of power in Westminster had refused to accept for the two decades that it had been the truth. However, the thawing of the relations that had been strained, due in no small part to President Wilson, and an easier access to either consumer markets was something neither power could afford to ignore or refuse. After all, one does not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Either side expected the alliance to fizzle out eventually, even while making public affirmations of a new unbreakable bond. Britain had the Empire to look to, however rich America may have been, and America thought Britain to be confined in the past century trying to re-kindle its lost glory.
It didn’t, instead, the relationship deepened, and today the United Kingdom has no closer ally and global partner outwith the Commonwealth than the United States. Perhaps the partnership was strengthened after the 2nd Great War, when both powers were forced to create and stabilise the New World Order, but the bond has only grown stronger since.
Rather shrewdly, or cynically if you prefer, if one might analyse this event, as so many experts have done, one would conclude that this memorandum extended Pax Britannica, ensuring our country continued to maintain its importance in the global chessboard while binding America into sharing the burden and the expense.>
(Newspaper clippings flash – The Times says “Yaxley wins peace?”, The Washington Post says “President cancels debts! Bankers aghast!”, The Times of India reads “Free Trade with America?”
Clips of Prime Ministers and Presidents talking about “The Special Relationship” play.)
<VO: We shall return to Ambassador Cooper-Vanderbilt’s office in future episodes of the series, as we move through the years, to look at and analyse the “Special Relationship”, especially so during the 2nd Great War and Falklands War.>
Location changes to the University of Oxford, Oxford.
SF: For now, we must turn to the July Revolution of 1935 in France, or if you like, the French Civil War.
We’ve come to talk to Sir Simon Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, a Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the German Kaiserreich, and the author of ‘The Never-ending Cycle’, a bestselling account of the Wars in Europe since Napoleon’s crushing defeat by the hands of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo.
Sir Simon Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford): Ah, one of the most tumultuous times in the modern history of France! As I say in my book, the situation in France in the beginning of 1935 was incredibly febrile. Fascists, Marxists, Legitimists, Jacobins, Republicans, Bonapartists, Orleanists, Legionnaires, and all manner of politic subscribers, paralysed the French government completely. You name it and they were there, causing some sort of mischief for an already embattled government.
In the ever-frequent elections for the National Assembly since the Great War, the same faces kept returning to the chambers of Parliament, depending on their mood with different party labels perhaps, and the situation for the public, already frayed and poor since the Wall Street Crash, became bitter, distrustful, and frustrated. The collapse of Edouard Daladier’s Popular Front, that had lasted since December of 1933, a surprise in itself, led to an election so charged with hatred and distrust, that any result would have led to the outcome it did.
SF: So essentially, a civil war was expected?
SSWE: It was believed extremely likely, yes, because the Daladier ministry was already extremely disjointed, and prone to infighting at the smallest provocation, not that the French political spectrum at that time needed any excuse. Its fall meant that any serious cooperation between the hyper-polarised members of the chambers of Parliament, short of a miracle, was absolutely impossible.
Oh sure, there were countless heated negotiations by the backdoor, deals and demands and call of patriotism, but nothing could bring about a stable majority government. Two parties might make a deal, but when the time came to prove confidence in the Assembly, they would collapse into arguments and counter-arguments.
<VO: It was not unknown for governments of the 3rd Republic to shift, move, collapse, and re-form in quite quick succession. It was more the rule, not the exception, as such was the nature of French politics.
However, the charged climate in France in 1935 meant that this could not be. The Republic teetered on a knife’s edge, but pride, vanity, and lack of foresight meant no solution would emerge by peaceable terms. No negotiations, blackmail or threats of a civil war, which were justified, brought about any provable majoritarian government. So naturally, the next course was war, and thankfully, most of the army stayed away from it.
On the 4th July, 1935, the dawn brought war for France, a war with itself.
The July Revolution has spawned several award-winning feature films, documentaries and literary masterpieces, so we shan’t muddy those pristine waters by sticking our oar in. The BBC would find it rather remiss if we directed to somewhere to see for yourself, but I believe the 1989 series of documentaries, titled ‘Guerre’, by Sir Peter Ustinov, is most faithful to the truth. >
(Reels play of the July Revolution of 1935, the first European revolution to be properly newscast)
(Newsreel plays – “Revolution! Our French allies across the Channel have descended into insurrection to be fought several ways. The bastion of democratic values on the Continent is suddenly descended into civil war over what a government should do! We can only hope that a settlement is reached as quickly as possible and with as little destruction as can be. God Save the King and God defend France!”)
SF: Where we come in, in our peacock feathers, is with what Lord Yaxley, along with Lord Samuel and the Prime Minister, authorised the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Field Marshal to pursue - The Baldwin Declaration.
<VO: A simple statement, issued by Stanley Baldwin, called on the factions at war in France to resolve their differences by peaceful dialogue, to think of their prime position on the Continent and to think of the people – their lives and livelihoods that would burn to sate their lust for power.. It also asked governors and intendants of several colonies of France to accede peacefully to the offer of British protection, until a time when France could regain governance of them arrived.
A noble statement, but hidden underneath were the wide channels dug across the dying friendship of the two nations. And the ambitions to right some of the wrongs of the First Great War,>
(Scenes displaying the various warring factions in France and later the Army personnel and Naval vessels leaving from Southampton Docks for the various French colonial holdings.)
SSWE: Yes, the seizure of the French colonies. It’s a decision that has continued to haunt and plague Anglo-French relations to this day, not made better by the fact that the French politicians have always had too much pride and too little sense in their heads, so crowded as they are with vainglorious ego – De Gaulle comes first to mind there (Grins).
(Picture flashes of France’s longest serving PM, Marechal Charles De Gaulle.)
Certainly, the Congress of Vienna after the Second Great War didn’t help. To be fair, the French shot themselves in the foot by demanding another Versailles and then when that fell on deaf ears refusing to recognise the proceedings as legitimate. So, them becoming a pariah at Vienna was understandable, they no longer had the talents of Talleyrand to help them, where the Germans had Otto von Habsburg.
There were many such perceived slights upon their supposed honour, but it was the seizure of the colonies that truly drove the home the scent of death permeating thick in the already fraying relations between Britain and France.
SF: Why were relations unravelling? Wasn’t it just three decades ago the Entente Cordiale was heralded as bringing a true and final end to our centuries old enmity and the birth of a new and glorious era of reconciliation and friendship? And this disagreement over colonies had happened before, in Darfur, on the Gold Coast, in the Pacific, the Caribbean, the list goes on! Surely our relations could not have been so brittle and fragile?
(Picture flashes of the signing of the Entente Cordiale and its famous newspaper cartoon representation.)
SSWE: (Laughs) Fat chance of that! The Entente Cordiale, lauded as it was in both nations, was born out of sheer pragmatism, and absolutely nothing more. Britain and France could only ever be allies of convenience, too much blood, sweat, and tears had been spent liberally on eithers’ account to allow for any more.
(List flashes of the wars fought between England, later Britain, and France.)
<VO: It was simply a veritable testament to the erratic and pointedly antagonising, ‘bellicose’ is the word, behaviour of the Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers, that drove the British and the French to be strange bedfellows they became.
While Britain had always made alliances of pragmatism to prevent hegemonic domination on the Continent and maintain the delicate Concert of Europe by ensuring no Great Power held sway over all others, France had always desired the mantle of the Autokrator of Europe to belong to itself. So, this alliance, after the unpleasantness of the Darfur Crisis, was a testament to the feeling in either nation of German hostility.
The insecurity of relying on Pax Britannica, on the largesse of Britain, may have perhaps rankled the proud Prussians and may have been justified in German eyes, however, in Britain, the perceived deliberate actions to stoke tensions were clearly grossly unwelcome.
(Newspaper cartoons of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s actions flash.)
After the War, the relentless and dogged French need to satisfy their vain honour, and humiliate Germany as thoroughly as possible to sate its own wounded pride and allay the deep-seated insecurity, by beating a dying horse, exasperated even their most ardent sympathisers, alienating many of its allies, even some birthed from the Peace of Versailles by French ‘generosity’ and American ‘idealism’.>
(Newspaper cartoon flashes of France as a pig trying to stand on top of Germany as an eagle and all other nations as their respective animal representations staring in horror and disgust.)
SSWE: (Laughs) When even plucky little Belgium, still reeling from the shock of German actions in the War, expels your entire embassy for trying to intimidate them into bullying Germany further, you truly have lost the plot! They drove the wedge themselves, with their imbecilic desire for a revenge, never seemingly satisfied, the ‘colonial restructuring’ only hit the final nail in the coffin of any Entente.
SF: Surely it can’t have been so bad, we were united against the Nazis only three years later! A valiant band of brothers fighting the plague of Nazism, the bulwark of democracy, and all that! There must have been some form of détente, no?
SSWE: Then, just after the Revolution, the regime was newly established, fractiously unstable, and deeply afraid. They needed solid British backing to settle into government and continue to rule, lest the landing of a feather, tipped the scales against them.
When a new government establishes itself by revolution, it lacks any legitimacy and connection to the past, which is most cases is their aim anyway. Naturally, this breeds the fear that another revolution would unseat their rule as they did the one before them, through any manner of means. The legitimacy may come from popular acceptance, which after a destructive revolution like they had is supremely difficult, or from outside recognition.
The people of France were impoverished, starving, and frankly, tired of the incompetence of their politicians and their antics, and Lord Yaxley was afraid of another civil war breaking out. The communists, forever the sore losers they’ve been, were garnering dangerously high levels of support. Ergo, the ‘détente und entente’.
<VO: With the rising belligerence of the Nazi Reich, and poor old Russia in embroiled in a brutal civil war once more, France was the only significant power, if greatly spent and thoroughly diminished from its peak, remaining on the Continent that Britain could ally and assist to end the Nazi menace. As it looked to be more like than not, at least to those other than Prime Minister Chamberlain, that Herr Hitler would never be truly satisfied by mere appeasement and demand only German supremacy over aught else as his weregild, achieved through the crucible of a devastating war. And so, much of the Post-Abdication Foreign Policy in the United Kingdom rallied around gathering allies and ensuring that as many obstacles as could be made were put up against the Nazi goal of the ‘Neue Ordung’.
The alliance of convenience with France against the Germans was, therefore, quite mutual, and extremely vital. The United Kingdom needed its French brethren across the Channel as a landing and stationing ground for the British Expeditionary Force, and the French state needed the threat of the British Empire “betraying them once more” and the Nazis attacking them for Elass or any other of the many slights that the French had heaped aplenty on the German nation, to prop themselves up and give the people something to keep them from succumbing to the sweet poison the French Communists, or Syndicalists as they called themselves, poured into their ears plentifully.
Marechal De Gaulle might turn in his grave to admit it, but the British saved the French state as it was from dying a frankly painful and slow demise, with the vultures feasting on the fat carcass, and all due to its haughty sense of moral superiority and its abject failure to realise and adapt to the changing geopolitics of Europe.
The fact they no longer had so many colonies to occupy their expenditure meant they could actually focus on Metropolitan France, which had been neglected for a while. It also meant their forces were less occupied policing disgruntled natives who didn’t want them there and could better train and avail themselves in the defence of France proper. Their incomes were also lessened considerably, but that was a moot point either way.>
(Reels play of Nazi troops in military parades in several German cities and saluting Hitler – then a display of Nazi firepower by a display of weapons and airshows, followed by protests and marches by the Syndicalist bloc in France. This is followed by a newspaper cartoon from The Herald showing Britannia fighting off vultures with different country names from hurting France who is hiding behind her. Finally, we see rebuilding going on in France and graphs of French income and expenditures from 1931-1936)
SSWE: (Shrugs) Their pride was deeply, painfully deeply, hurt, and they were, in no uncertain terms, extremely and thoroughly humbled. Served them right for their unchecked vanity, in my opinion - “Natural Hegemon of Europe” my left foot! This was their hubris at Versailles coming to pay them back, plentifold. Had they tempered themselves even slightly, accorded the Germans the same courtesy given to them after Napoleon’s blind ambitions wrought his wanton destruction across Europe for two decades, they might not have brought out such deep loathing and hatred for themselves from most of Europe. Europe has seen many eras and its people are stoic, but what goes around, must come around.
Also, there were bigger fish to fry than the soothing of fragile egos, even if they were inflated to the size of the moon.
SF: Ah, I see. So, this is where the 2nd of the Orders-in-Council comes to the fore? The “Statute of Piccadilly”?
SSWE: Exactly! It empowered the government to seize colonial holdings from unstable colonial masters and govern them until the instability had passed.
So, it was all forces on high alert, going round, asking the governors of French colonies rather nicely and very politely to surrender to British protection until a time when France could reclaim her patrimony, or so Churchill claimed in the House when questioned, interrogated would be more appropriate, by several MPs.
Mind you, there was little sympathy for France after their stunts through the 1920s and at Versailles, this was mostly still the same generation of members, but they had British honour to protect.
SF: Of course, it would have to be Churchill to announce this to the House because Lord Yaxley would already have his hands full with the Bandung Conference ending and Lord Samuel was forced to go to Egypt to deal with the fallout from the Statute of Whitehall business there, so he would be the seniormost member of government who wasn’t the Prime Minister. Churchill must’ve been positively giddy at this, I imagine!
SSWE: Oh yes, he was, I’m sure of that!
To turn to the seizure though, the Empire seized everything save Algiers, Tunis, and some of the Desert colonies of the Sahara. Algiers because it had declared neutrality and was in a good position to rule, police, and defend itself, Tunis, and Maroc. And well, the desert colonies were little more than prestige projects, practically pointless to hold.
The Belgians, on British encouragement seized the other half of the Congo Basin, so that would be French Congo and Soudan. The Italians decided to land themselves on Corsica, upon invitation by the self-declared Regency, mind you, and the Moroccans tried their hand at freeing the shackles, though that truly didn’t happen until 1960, this uprising was brutally put down by De Gaulle, safely ensconced in North Africa as Governor of Algiers.
(Newsreel plays from the IBC [Indian Broadcasting Corporation] – “All over the world today, at the final stroke of the noon chime, on the 31st of July 1935, the British Union Jack replaces the French Tricolour where it had flown. Having succumbed to a ravenous revolution engineered and begum by Fascist forces, several French colonies, and fleets across the seven seas have agreed, albeit reluctantly, to submit to British protection, until a true government of France emerges to pledge allegiance to.
India has recovered Pondichery, Chandernagore, Yanaon, Mahe, and Caricalle among other smaller French outposts from the ‘French’ for a sum of 300,000 rupees, kept in the vaults of the Royal Mint in Calcutta accruing interest until a decisively victorious and friendly regime emerges in France to finalise and approve the transfer. Our peacekeepers have been dispatched everywhere, from far flung Syria to the closer to home Indochina, to keep the peace as custodians. While the Government of India expresses sympathy with the 3rd Republic, which has asked for aid, no relief beyond support of a purely humanitarian bent will leave Indian shores, according to Prime Minister Nehru.
This recovery of colonially held land on the Subcontinent will undoubtedly be a boost to the Prime Minister’s popularity as India gears to its first general election. Many have decried the aiding of a colonial power in oppressing a native population, and justifiably so, as India was in such an unenviable position but a few years ago. The Prime Minister, however, believes in pragmatism, knowing India to be still rebuilding from the depredations of Empire, and therefore unable to make powerful enemies. Also, the Prime Minister’s words only promise a keeping of regional peace, no more. Many native leaders have read into this as a transition to self-rule under Indian and British aegis. That remains to be seen. Our best wishes are with the French people, and we hope that they come out unscathed and stronger. God Save the King, God Help France, and Jai Hind!).
SF: I remember studying that Lord Yaxley was thoroughly censured for this by several members of the House on both sides and even some in the Lords. I read quite a bit of this period’s history in my university degree.
SSWE: Oh yes, two full sessions were spent in the Commons just making speeches and tabling motions of censure or expulsion for “the wanton duplicity in a dishonourable dismemberment of a close ally and partner”. To read some of the speeches! All of the bleating like sheep instead of doing actual work! Self-important windbags, most of them, I tell you!
(The Times headline reads – “Yaxley criticised, Motion of Censure tabled!”)
SF: I’m sure not all the colonies and territories played as nice and sweet as the Caribbean. (Laughs) One is reminded of Indochina, as the serial troublemaker.
SSWE: (Laughs) Why do you think, when we kept back so much, Indochina was returned immediately? We already had one hornet’s nest with Rhodesia, now that South Africa had been calmed down by dealing with their Boer problem, and we certainly didn’t need or desire another. That they were forced to grant Indochina a status akin to a Dominion in the British Empire, thanks to all the clandestine manoeuvring by India when they held the territory was entirely serendipitous (Smiles wryly).
The Caribbean was not as quaint and idyllic as you think though, Guiana was most riotous, and it was only later, with the formation of the Caribbean Federation that they saw themselves amply represented. And the Wooster Declaration, though outwith his power to grant, dimmed the tides of rebellion somewhat.
<VO: We will learn of the Wooster Declaration in later in this episode in detail.>
(Pictures of protests in Cayenne in French Guiana and Port Bartholomew in Madagascar)
SF: Madagascar joins the pot for the award of the black sheep too, I believe, with the officers there, the prize relic of a French administration, doing everything in their power, and dragging their feet, on any changes the Colonial Office wanted made.
I believe India was most happy though, having got French India out of the chaos by voluntary annexation, would you agree?
SSWE: Oh certainly, when opportunity presents itself, why deny it? They did pay the French though, buying them off completely.
It also put a lot of pressure on Portuguese India, because that was the only foreign colonial holding remaining on the Subcontinent. I believe it nicely sidles into the Bose Ultimatum of 1937, when Portugal was forced to give it up when Bose led troops to the Estado de Goa border. He was court-martialled by the Governor-General herself for it, but he got Portuguese thrown out of India.
SF: Wouldn’t that technically be a violation of the Treaty of Windsor?
SSWE: Yes, but the Portuguese betrayed Britain by aiding the Boers in South Africa first, so it was considered cricket. And the Portuguese were stretched as is, with so many ultimata issued to them throughout the world.
(IBC reel plays “General Subash Chandra Bose, in direct contravention of his orders led troops to the borders of Portuguese India, and issued an ultimatum for Portugal to withdraw and return these colonies to the legitimate and free government of India. While initially reluctant, with no allies for support to turn to save for Francoist Spain, Portugal has today ceded these territories peacefully to the true ownership of India and her people, in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants there, in return for a flat payment of a sum of 400,000 rupees. While the recovery of the last vestige of imperial rule in India is admirable, voices from across the political spectrum have condemned the crude “European” big-gun diplomacy used by General Bose. Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck has asked for the Prime Minister to launch a full investigation into these events by a cross-bench commission from the Chamber of States. Grim prospects await the general should the Prime Minister agree, and it is reported that while he rejoices at the final expulsion of colonial powers he strongly disagrees with the methods employed, and therefore, may acquiesce to the request for an inquiry. The Governor-General has expressed her welcome to the territories newly joining the Union. This sentiment is concurred across the Commonwealth, who welcome the return of India’s patrimony. The official reaction of the Government remains to be seen. This is IBC News. God Save the King and Jai Hind!”)
SSWE: We digress though. After the seizure, there was a flurry of activity in re-organisation, the Civil Service was not terribly amused at that. It also meant that while Churchill was happy that more of the map was painted pink, he was pulling out what was left of his hair at the additional expenditures this brought.
<VO: Lord Yaxley, acutely aware of Britain’s inability to financially maintain an even greater imperial presence, especially when the people don’t want you there, and especially so when you label yourself the harbinger of democratic rule, issued what has come to be known as the “Wooster Declaration”
(Archived Text of the Wooster Declaration slowly plays across the screen, with the backdrop of the uproar in Parliament because of this announcement).
It stated that the British Empire would continue, as and when it were able, to thoroughly evaluate and grant limited or complete self-rule, depending on the circumstances, to all peoples subject to the Crown and sceptre in the form of a colonial administration and move toward a collective of sovereign nations, a Commonwealth, under His Majesty the King’s aegis. It also stated that it was His Majesty’s most ardent wish that this process be accelerated and achieved as soon as the people and the conditions were deemed sufficiently ready.
His Majesty never said any of that, to be fair to him, more than likely because he was never consulted before the declaration was issued. But the object of this declaration was clear as crystal, the Treasury was stretched thin, and Britain was finally learning the true cost of its Empire without the plunder from India to sustain its expenses. It, therefore, wanted to pass off all responsibility to native people, of governing and managing themselves without Britain bearing the financial cost, while still keeping links with the Crown, as quickly as it could,
It would form the basis of his second term in the Foreign Office, and earn him even more enemies. However, it did drastically improve the perception and standing of Britain, throughout the world, along with aiding the purse-strings, something the Treasury found most gratifying.>
(Digital map of the growing British Empire flashes as new pink slowly fades over each section in the map).
<VO: Dahomey, Benin, Togoland, Senegal, most of the Sahel and the Ivory Coast joined British West Africa; St. Pierre and Miquelon, joined the Dominion of Newfoundland; Djibouti and Madagascar joined British East Africa; Syria and Lebanon joined the other Emirates in the Levant; British Central Africa swelled it’s size with the Baring Ultimatum to Portugal, in conjunction with the Bose Ultimatum in India and the Huang Ultimatum in China and the sale of Kivu-Katanga by the Belgians from the Congo Belge to Rhodesia, the former of which expanded the borders of Rhodesia considerably, while the latter, only brought about in 1937, endowed it with many resource rich regions; The islands throughout the world flew the Union Jack over the tricolour, along with French Guiana joining British Guiana; Chinese concessions surrendered to British protection; India received Pondichery and its attendant territories and Britian assumed custody of Indochina.
(Map showing the expansion of the Belgian Empire and the Italian annexation of Corsica).
The Belgians seized the other half of the Congo, and quite a bit of Central Africa, and the Italians, showing restraint for once and understanding their inability to adequately absorb their full ambitions only agreed to the annexation of the self-proclaimed Corsican Regency, forgoing their desire for Tunis.>
SF: We can forget Savoie asked for and earned Swiss protection and the Grimaldis in Monaco wanted a British Resident as opposed to a French one.
SSWE: True, but those are mere footnotes. The Swiss had, immediately on the Orleanists settling themselves in the Elysee, agreed to the French proposal to purchase those territories back for 2 million francs, which cost the French exchequer far more than the territories were worth, and well, while insulting, the Monegasque were too insignificant in the grand scheme of things. What they despised was the loss of their globe-spanning empire, reduced only to Africa, and not even the rich bits of it.
SF: Why did Savoie return to Swiss rule in 2013 then?
SSWE: Because the government in Paris deliberately neglected the region, citing the payment made to Swiss as enough loss made due to them. With enough protest action, the referendum that happened was bound to succeed.
SF: So, the 1936 Treaty of Rouen was essentially just affirming British rights to most of the seized colonies while returning Indochina, Senegal and the Sahel, and the Chinese concessions for a total sum of £6.5 million, or 12.5 million francs if you prefer, in government bonds and a military alliance against the Nazis should war return to Europe?
SSWE: As a generalisation, yes. The British Parliament did promise over £35 million over the next three decades to aid in the reconstruction, which would be interest-free debt for the government of France. And private investment from British companies even just before the Second Great War grew to substantial numbers.
And Indochina was too cost-prohibitive to police, so it becoming the Indochinese Federation was natural, if another blow to French pride.
<VO: The Treaty of Bordeaux, while not completely ending the hostile bent taken in Anglo-French relations, did sound the final death knell to French, or more appropriately De Gaullite, calls and ambitions for a return of large parts of their empire from what some unsavoury characters, including the future Prime Minister of France, Charles De Gaulle, called “the grubby little hands of the sheep-shaggers”.
The extremely generous settlement offered for the reconstruction of railways and roads among other infrastructure projects and a free flow of private capital investment sweetened the deal enough for the French to swallow their pride and accept an alliance against the Nazi regime with much protestation.
(Pictures flash of the signing of the Treaty of Rouen, zooming in on some of the terms of the treaty).
France was, however, spent and British efforts at rebuilding the armed forces met stiff challenges, not least from the brass of the forces. That however is not the focus of this series.
(Pictures of British machines and material used in the rebuilding of the French railways)
We must move on to the 3rd great Order-in-Council, delightfully called the “Statute of Wellington”.>
<VO: We shall return to South Africa in the final episode of this series. For now, before moving on to the French Civil War or July Revolution, if you prefer, of 1935, we shall briefly make a mention of the Philadelphia Memorandum of 1934. A very important step in the development of the “Special Relationship”.>
(Newspaper clippings of the New York Times – “Lord Yaxley in the States!”; “Negotiations Leaked!”; and “The Philadelphia Memorandum!”)
SF: And to help unravel that, we have with us the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Court of St. James, and an expert in Interwar Anglo-American history, Mr. Anderson Cooper-Vanderbilt.
Anderson Cooper-Vanderbilt (US ambassador to the UK): Well, it was a landmark deal, absolutely unprecedented, and an uncharacteristically foresighted change in Anglo-American relations. It was also a way of Britain acknowledging the parity of the United States on the world stage. Something, that was perhaps understood in Westminster for a while, if not readily accepted. America signed it because Lord Yaxley offered us good incentives.
SF: With the Wooster Amendment to the “Two Powers Act” that was passed in Parliament in 1934 to sweeten the pot, you mean?
ACV: Oh yes, naturally. Not to mention the inroads the US could now make into the British Market and the Empire at large, where it was previously hamstrung by the Imperial Preference System.
SF: As I remember, it wasn’t tariff or regulation free access to the Imperial Market, no?
ACV: Quite close to that, though. We went from a full 50% tariff in some cases to the low 30s, that was an achievement. It was an overall cut of 6.1% tariff, but that was just an average.
In return for debt forgiveness, I believe the Government would have gone even further, even if Lord Yaxley remained unwilling to.
<VO: The essential salient points of the agreed memorandum, of course, were that –
- The United States would join the United Kingdom in the Two Powers Doctrine, where each of their Navies would be twice the size of the next two greatest naval powers combined and equal to each other in consist and tonnage, ensuring a free flow of trade and commerce throughout the world’s oceans;
- The United States would focus and project its naval power in the Pacific, Near and Far Eastern theatres and the British Empire in the Atlantic, Arctic, Antarctic, Middle Eastern and Indian theatres, protecting the interests of either power to the fullness of its ability and ensuring maritime peace;
- Either power would come to the aid, rescue, and defence of the other, when called on or when deemed necessary, including and not limited to its representatives and its vessels in the defined theatres;
- Because of this distinct division of the sphere of oceanic influence, the United States would acquire a full 50% share in the Suez Canal Company at a cost of $77.5 million, paid out over the course of 10 years, and offer a full 50% share to the United Kingdom in the Panama Canal Zone at the cost of £30 million, paid out in Bank of England bonds over the course of 10 years, with either power granted the allowance of building a forward base and the stationing of troops and naval vessels on both canals;
- The United States would be accorded free port, docking, and supply access throughout the British Empire and Commonwealth, to station naval vessels wherever it were deemed necessary for a continuation of global peace and prosperity, in return for a flat 70% remission on all debt owed or accrued by the United Kingdom, its Dominions, Colonies, Territories and Protectorates, with prior notification;
- The United States would enter into a full defensive military alliance with the United Kingdom, subject to Congressional approval [which it got, after much argument and debate in the Senate] and assume a joint role on innovation and research in the military theatre, pooling resources for better outcomes and a larger number of breakthroughs;
- All tariffs with the United States would receive a, on average, 6.1% cut, boosting trade and spurring investment into the British Empire in return for greater ease of market access, and a memorandum of understanding to streamline trade and customs procedures in either market, in return for a flat cut of the debt interest rate of all debt incurred by the Government of the United Kingdom to 3% in perpetuity;
- The United States would be accredited to commission the Royal Mint to create an extraordinary issue of the British Pound Sterling, backed by appropriately valued securities and equitable collateral in bullion deposited in the vaults of the Bank of England, to trade with the Sterling Area and all countries that accepted the British Pound as a currency of commerce, or all countries pegged to the British Pound Sterling, at the value of $2 to £1, to be re-negotiated based on inflation every quinquennial or lustrum;
- The United States and the United Kingdom would guarantee to defend either if attacked and pursue greater cooperation at all levels of government, starting with the formation of Joint Defence Commands for all forces;
- The memorandum signed would be reviewed every lustrum or decade, by agreement of the representatives of either power.>
SF: A worthy list, don’t you think?
ACV: Hah! (Laughs) It’s the basis that drives the close relationship we have now, all ambassadors to the UK are given the file, and I studied this time period at college, so I can agree with you there!
SF: As a word connoisseur I must say I’m happy to see something like ‘lustrum’ feature somewhere! (Smiles)
Is the memorandum still reviewed every 5 years? Or has been reduced to being merely a historical curiosity in Anglo-American relations?
ACV: It formed the basis of the Treaty of Buckingham, signed in 1964. So technically, it entered a state of abeyance. Anglo-American relations have only grown stronger and deeper since, as we can see today.
SF: Its certainly quite evident, ambassador. How long did it take for Lord Yaxley and President Roosevelt, to come to an agreement so succinct but all-encompassing as this?
ACV: Not as long as you imagine! They both negotiated for a week, and insider sources say it was a whirlwind of a week! They presented a united front at the end of the week when they unveiled this memorandum, more for President Roosevelt’s sake, as Congress would, and did, censure him for ending American Isolation without consulting them.
(Pathe reel plays – “Earlier this week, Lord Yaxley’s tour of the home of the historical Continental Congress came to an end with the signing of the Philadelphia memorandum. A comprehensive agreement between the British Empire and the United States of America, this memorandum undoubtedly sets the foundation for future relations which can only grow closer. On this side of the Atlantic, this has been met with quiet optimism. Even His Majesty the King has expressed great affirmation for this diplomatic coup engineered by Lord Yaxley. The Prime Minister has also expressed support for this deal, saying the boosting of cooperation between two of the greatest powers in the world can only lead to a better future for all their peoples. While initially reluctant, Congress has now ratified the memorandum as the Treaty of Philadelphia and there is a quiet sense of understanding pervading on Capitol Hill. Anglo-American relations are only to get even friendlier from here after the frostiness following Versailles. Both sides of the Atlantic hope that this partnership continues to yield peace, stability, and prosperity for us all.”)
<VO: Both President Roosevelt and Lord Yaxley were quite heavily criticised for giving away too much, FDR was especially disparaged by the bankers with such a massive reduction in the debt, and by Congress for an overreach of power in upending splendid isolation and American Foreign Policy without appropriate consultation with them. Lord Yaxley was decried for surrendering Britain’s naval supremacy and also for breaching the Imperial Preference system, but most of all, he was denounced for acknowledging the United States as enjoying a parity in power to the British Empire, a reality many in the echelons of power in Westminster had refused to accept for the two decades that it had been the truth. However, the thawing of the relations that had been strained, due in no small part to President Wilson, and an easier access to either consumer markets was something neither power could afford to ignore or refuse. After all, one does not look a gift horse in the mouth.
Either side expected the alliance to fizzle out eventually, even while making public affirmations of a new unbreakable bond. Britain had the Empire to look to, however rich America may have been, and America thought Britain to be confined in the past century trying to re-kindle its lost glory.
It didn’t, instead, the relationship deepened, and today the United Kingdom has no closer ally and global partner outwith the Commonwealth than the United States. Perhaps the partnership was strengthened after the 2nd Great War, when both powers were forced to create and stabilise the New World Order, but the bond has only grown stronger since.
Rather shrewdly, or cynically if you prefer, if one might analyse this event, as so many experts have done, one would conclude that this memorandum extended Pax Britannica, ensuring our country continued to maintain its importance in the global chessboard while binding America into sharing the burden and the expense.>
(Newspaper clippings flash – The Times says “Yaxley wins peace?”, The Washington Post says “President cancels debts! Bankers aghast!”, The Times of India reads “Free Trade with America?”
Clips of Prime Ministers and Presidents talking about “The Special Relationship” play.)
<VO: We shall return to Ambassador Cooper-Vanderbilt’s office in future episodes of the series, as we move through the years, to look at and analyse the “Special Relationship”, especially so during the 2nd Great War and Falklands War.>
Location changes to the University of Oxford, Oxford.
SF: For now, we must turn to the July Revolution of 1935 in France, or if you like, the French Civil War.
We’ve come to talk to Sir Simon Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, a Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the German Kaiserreich, and the author of ‘The Never-ending Cycle’, a bestselling account of the Wars in Europe since Napoleon’s crushing defeat by the hands of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo.
Sir Simon Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford): Ah, one of the most tumultuous times in the modern history of France! As I say in my book, the situation in France in the beginning of 1935 was incredibly febrile. Fascists, Marxists, Legitimists, Jacobins, Republicans, Bonapartists, Orleanists, Legionnaires, and all manner of politic subscribers, paralysed the French government completely. You name it and they were there, causing some sort of mischief for an already embattled government.
In the ever-frequent elections for the National Assembly since the Great War, the same faces kept returning to the chambers of Parliament, depending on their mood with different party labels perhaps, and the situation for the public, already frayed and poor since the Wall Street Crash, became bitter, distrustful, and frustrated. The collapse of Edouard Daladier’s Popular Front, that had lasted since December of 1933, a surprise in itself, led to an election so charged with hatred and distrust, that any result would have led to the outcome it did.
SF: So essentially, a civil war was expected?
SSWE: It was believed extremely likely, yes, because the Daladier ministry was already extremely disjointed, and prone to infighting at the smallest provocation, not that the French political spectrum at that time needed any excuse. Its fall meant that any serious cooperation between the hyper-polarised members of the chambers of Parliament, short of a miracle, was absolutely impossible.
Oh sure, there were countless heated negotiations by the backdoor, deals and demands and call of patriotism, but nothing could bring about a stable majority government. Two parties might make a deal, but when the time came to prove confidence in the Assembly, they would collapse into arguments and counter-arguments.
<VO: It was not unknown for governments of the 3rd Republic to shift, move, collapse, and re-form in quite quick succession. It was more the rule, not the exception, as such was the nature of French politics.
However, the charged climate in France in 1935 meant that this could not be. The Republic teetered on a knife’s edge, but pride, vanity, and lack of foresight meant no solution would emerge by peaceable terms. No negotiations, blackmail or threats of a civil war, which were justified, brought about any provable majoritarian government. So naturally, the next course was war, and thankfully, most of the army stayed away from it.
On the 4th July, 1935, the dawn brought war for France, a war with itself.
The July Revolution has spawned several award-winning feature films, documentaries and literary masterpieces, so we shan’t muddy those pristine waters by sticking our oar in. The BBC would find it rather remiss if we directed to somewhere to see for yourself, but I believe the 1989 series of documentaries, titled ‘Guerre’, by Sir Peter Ustinov, is most faithful to the truth. >
(Reels play of the July Revolution of 1935, the first European revolution to be properly newscast)
(Newsreel plays – “Revolution! Our French allies across the Channel have descended into insurrection to be fought several ways. The bastion of democratic values on the Continent is suddenly descended into civil war over what a government should do! We can only hope that a settlement is reached as quickly as possible and with as little destruction as can be. God Save the King and God defend France!”)
SF: Where we come in, in our peacock feathers, is with what Lord Yaxley, along with Lord Samuel and the Prime Minister, authorised the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Field Marshal to pursue - The Baldwin Declaration.
<VO: A simple statement, issued by Stanley Baldwin, called on the factions at war in France to resolve their differences by peaceful dialogue, to think of their prime position on the Continent and to think of the people – their lives and livelihoods that would burn to sate their lust for power.. It also asked governors and intendants of several colonies of France to accede peacefully to the offer of British protection, until a time when France could regain governance of them arrived.
A noble statement, but hidden underneath were the wide channels dug across the dying friendship of the two nations. And the ambitions to right some of the wrongs of the First Great War,>
(Scenes displaying the various warring factions in France and later the Army personnel and Naval vessels leaving from Southampton Docks for the various French colonial holdings.)
SSWE: Yes, the seizure of the French colonies. It’s a decision that has continued to haunt and plague Anglo-French relations to this day, not made better by the fact that the French politicians have always had too much pride and too little sense in their heads, so crowded as they are with vainglorious ego – De Gaulle comes first to mind there (Grins).
(Picture flashes of France’s longest serving PM, Marechal Charles De Gaulle.)
Certainly, the Congress of Vienna after the Second Great War didn’t help. To be fair, the French shot themselves in the foot by demanding another Versailles and then when that fell on deaf ears refusing to recognise the proceedings as legitimate. So, them becoming a pariah at Vienna was understandable, they no longer had the talents of Talleyrand to help them, where the Germans had Otto von Habsburg.
There were many such perceived slights upon their supposed honour, but it was the seizure of the colonies that truly drove the home the scent of death permeating thick in the already fraying relations between Britain and France.
SF: Why were relations unravelling? Wasn’t it just three decades ago the Entente Cordiale was heralded as bringing a true and final end to our centuries old enmity and the birth of a new and glorious era of reconciliation and friendship? And this disagreement over colonies had happened before, in Darfur, on the Gold Coast, in the Pacific, the Caribbean, the list goes on! Surely our relations could not have been so brittle and fragile?
(Picture flashes of the signing of the Entente Cordiale and its famous newspaper cartoon representation.)
SSWE: (Laughs) Fat chance of that! The Entente Cordiale, lauded as it was in both nations, was born out of sheer pragmatism, and absolutely nothing more. Britain and France could only ever be allies of convenience, too much blood, sweat, and tears had been spent liberally on eithers’ account to allow for any more.
(List flashes of the wars fought between England, later Britain, and France.)
<VO: It was simply a veritable testament to the erratic and pointedly antagonising, ‘bellicose’ is the word, behaviour of the Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers, that drove the British and the French to be strange bedfellows they became.
While Britain had always made alliances of pragmatism to prevent hegemonic domination on the Continent and maintain the delicate Concert of Europe by ensuring no Great Power held sway over all others, France had always desired the mantle of the Autokrator of Europe to belong to itself. So, this alliance, after the unpleasantness of the Darfur Crisis, was a testament to the feeling in either nation of German hostility.
The insecurity of relying on Pax Britannica, on the largesse of Britain, may have perhaps rankled the proud Prussians and may have been justified in German eyes, however, in Britain, the perceived deliberate actions to stoke tensions were clearly grossly unwelcome.
(Newspaper cartoons of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s actions flash.)
After the War, the relentless and dogged French need to satisfy their vain honour, and humiliate Germany as thoroughly as possible to sate its own wounded pride and allay the deep-seated insecurity, by beating a dying horse, exasperated even their most ardent sympathisers, alienating many of its allies, even some birthed from the Peace of Versailles by French ‘generosity’ and American ‘idealism’.>
(Newspaper cartoon flashes of France as a pig trying to stand on top of Germany as an eagle and all other nations as their respective animal representations staring in horror and disgust.)
SSWE: (Laughs) When even plucky little Belgium, still reeling from the shock of German actions in the War, expels your entire embassy for trying to intimidate them into bullying Germany further, you truly have lost the plot! They drove the wedge themselves, with their imbecilic desire for a revenge, never seemingly satisfied, the ‘colonial restructuring’ only hit the final nail in the coffin of any Entente.
SF: Surely it can’t have been so bad, we were united against the Nazis only three years later! A valiant band of brothers fighting the plague of Nazism, the bulwark of democracy, and all that! There must have been some form of détente, no?
SSWE: Then, just after the Revolution, the regime was newly established, fractiously unstable, and deeply afraid. They needed solid British backing to settle into government and continue to rule, lest the landing of a feather, tipped the scales against them.
When a new government establishes itself by revolution, it lacks any legitimacy and connection to the past, which is most cases is their aim anyway. Naturally, this breeds the fear that another revolution would unseat their rule as they did the one before them, through any manner of means. The legitimacy may come from popular acceptance, which after a destructive revolution like they had is supremely difficult, or from outside recognition.
The people of France were impoverished, starving, and frankly, tired of the incompetence of their politicians and their antics, and Lord Yaxley was afraid of another civil war breaking out. The communists, forever the sore losers they’ve been, were garnering dangerously high levels of support. Ergo, the ‘détente und entente’.
<VO: With the rising belligerence of the Nazi Reich, and poor old Russia in embroiled in a brutal civil war once more, France was the only significant power, if greatly spent and thoroughly diminished from its peak, remaining on the Continent that Britain could ally and assist to end the Nazi menace. As it looked to be more like than not, at least to those other than Prime Minister Chamberlain, that Herr Hitler would never be truly satisfied by mere appeasement and demand only German supremacy over aught else as his weregild, achieved through the crucible of a devastating war. And so, much of the Post-Abdication Foreign Policy in the United Kingdom rallied around gathering allies and ensuring that as many obstacles as could be made were put up against the Nazi goal of the ‘Neue Ordung’.
The alliance of convenience with France against the Germans was, therefore, quite mutual, and extremely vital. The United Kingdom needed its French brethren across the Channel as a landing and stationing ground for the British Expeditionary Force, and the French state needed the threat of the British Empire “betraying them once more” and the Nazis attacking them for Elass or any other of the many slights that the French had heaped aplenty on the German nation, to prop themselves up and give the people something to keep them from succumbing to the sweet poison the French Communists, or Syndicalists as they called themselves, poured into their ears plentifully.
Marechal De Gaulle might turn in his grave to admit it, but the British saved the French state as it was from dying a frankly painful and slow demise, with the vultures feasting on the fat carcass, and all due to its haughty sense of moral superiority and its abject failure to realise and adapt to the changing geopolitics of Europe.
The fact they no longer had so many colonies to occupy their expenditure meant they could actually focus on Metropolitan France, which had been neglected for a while. It also meant their forces were less occupied policing disgruntled natives who didn’t want them there and could better train and avail themselves in the defence of France proper. Their incomes were also lessened considerably, but that was a moot point either way.>
(Reels play of Nazi troops in military parades in several German cities and saluting Hitler – then a display of Nazi firepower by a display of weapons and airshows, followed by protests and marches by the Syndicalist bloc in France. This is followed by a newspaper cartoon from The Herald showing Britannia fighting off vultures with different country names from hurting France who is hiding behind her. Finally, we see rebuilding going on in France and graphs of French income and expenditures from 1931-1936)
SSWE: (Shrugs) Their pride was deeply, painfully deeply, hurt, and they were, in no uncertain terms, extremely and thoroughly humbled. Served them right for their unchecked vanity, in my opinion - “Natural Hegemon of Europe” my left foot! This was their hubris at Versailles coming to pay them back, plentifold. Had they tempered themselves even slightly, accorded the Germans the same courtesy given to them after Napoleon’s blind ambitions wrought his wanton destruction across Europe for two decades, they might not have brought out such deep loathing and hatred for themselves from most of Europe. Europe has seen many eras and its people are stoic, but what goes around, must come around.
Also, there were bigger fish to fry than the soothing of fragile egos, even if they were inflated to the size of the moon.
SF: Ah, I see. So, this is where the 2nd of the Orders-in-Council comes to the fore? The “Statute of Piccadilly”?
SSWE: Exactly! It empowered the government to seize colonial holdings from unstable colonial masters and govern them until the instability had passed.
So, it was all forces on high alert, going round, asking the governors of French colonies rather nicely and very politely to surrender to British protection until a time when France could reclaim her patrimony, or so Churchill claimed in the House when questioned, interrogated would be more appropriate, by several MPs.
Mind you, there was little sympathy for France after their stunts through the 1920s and at Versailles, this was mostly still the same generation of members, but they had British honour to protect.
SF: Of course, it would have to be Churchill to announce this to the House because Lord Yaxley would already have his hands full with the Bandung Conference ending and Lord Samuel was forced to go to Egypt to deal with the fallout from the Statute of Whitehall business there, so he would be the seniormost member of government who wasn’t the Prime Minister. Churchill must’ve been positively giddy at this, I imagine!
SSWE: Oh yes, he was, I’m sure of that!
To turn to the seizure though, the Empire seized everything save Algiers, Tunis, and some of the Desert colonies of the Sahara. Algiers because it had declared neutrality and was in a good position to rule, police, and defend itself, Tunis, and Maroc. And well, the desert colonies were little more than prestige projects, practically pointless to hold.
The Belgians, on British encouragement seized the other half of the Congo Basin, so that would be French Congo and Soudan. The Italians decided to land themselves on Corsica, upon invitation by the self-declared Regency, mind you, and the Moroccans tried their hand at freeing the shackles, though that truly didn’t happen until 1960, this uprising was brutally put down by De Gaulle, safely ensconced in North Africa as Governor of Algiers.
(Newsreel plays from the IBC [Indian Broadcasting Corporation] – “All over the world today, at the final stroke of the noon chime, on the 31st of July 1935, the British Union Jack replaces the French Tricolour where it had flown. Having succumbed to a ravenous revolution engineered and begum by Fascist forces, several French colonies, and fleets across the seven seas have agreed, albeit reluctantly, to submit to British protection, until a true government of France emerges to pledge allegiance to.
India has recovered Pondichery, Chandernagore, Yanaon, Mahe, and Caricalle among other smaller French outposts from the ‘French’ for a sum of 300,000 rupees, kept in the vaults of the Royal Mint in Calcutta accruing interest until a decisively victorious and friendly regime emerges in France to finalise and approve the transfer. Our peacekeepers have been dispatched everywhere, from far flung Syria to the closer to home Indochina, to keep the peace as custodians. While the Government of India expresses sympathy with the 3rd Republic, which has asked for aid, no relief beyond support of a purely humanitarian bent will leave Indian shores, according to Prime Minister Nehru.
This recovery of colonially held land on the Subcontinent will undoubtedly be a boost to the Prime Minister’s popularity as India gears to its first general election. Many have decried the aiding of a colonial power in oppressing a native population, and justifiably so, as India was in such an unenviable position but a few years ago. The Prime Minister, however, believes in pragmatism, knowing India to be still rebuilding from the depredations of Empire, and therefore unable to make powerful enemies. Also, the Prime Minister’s words only promise a keeping of regional peace, no more. Many native leaders have read into this as a transition to self-rule under Indian and British aegis. That remains to be seen. Our best wishes are with the French people, and we hope that they come out unscathed and stronger. God Save the King, God Help France, and Jai Hind!).
SF: I remember studying that Lord Yaxley was thoroughly censured for this by several members of the House on both sides and even some in the Lords. I read quite a bit of this period’s history in my university degree.
SSWE: Oh yes, two full sessions were spent in the Commons just making speeches and tabling motions of censure or expulsion for “the wanton duplicity in a dishonourable dismemberment of a close ally and partner”. To read some of the speeches! All of the bleating like sheep instead of doing actual work! Self-important windbags, most of them, I tell you!
(The Times headline reads – “Yaxley criticised, Motion of Censure tabled!”)
SF: I’m sure not all the colonies and territories played as nice and sweet as the Caribbean. (Laughs) One is reminded of Indochina, as the serial troublemaker.
SSWE: (Laughs) Why do you think, when we kept back so much, Indochina was returned immediately? We already had one hornet’s nest with Rhodesia, now that South Africa had been calmed down by dealing with their Boer problem, and we certainly didn’t need or desire another. That they were forced to grant Indochina a status akin to a Dominion in the British Empire, thanks to all the clandestine manoeuvring by India when they held the territory was entirely serendipitous (Smiles wryly).
The Caribbean was not as quaint and idyllic as you think though, Guiana was most riotous, and it was only later, with the formation of the Caribbean Federation that they saw themselves amply represented. And the Wooster Declaration, though outwith his power to grant, dimmed the tides of rebellion somewhat.
<VO: We will learn of the Wooster Declaration in later in this episode in detail.>
(Pictures of protests in Cayenne in French Guiana and Port Bartholomew in Madagascar)
SF: Madagascar joins the pot for the award of the black sheep too, I believe, with the officers there, the prize relic of a French administration, doing everything in their power, and dragging their feet, on any changes the Colonial Office wanted made.
I believe India was most happy though, having got French India out of the chaos by voluntary annexation, would you agree?
SSWE: Oh certainly, when opportunity presents itself, why deny it? They did pay the French though, buying them off completely.
It also put a lot of pressure on Portuguese India, because that was the only foreign colonial holding remaining on the Subcontinent. I believe it nicely sidles into the Bose Ultimatum of 1937, when Portugal was forced to give it up when Bose led troops to the Estado de Goa border. He was court-martialled by the Governor-General herself for it, but he got Portuguese thrown out of India.
SF: Wouldn’t that technically be a violation of the Treaty of Windsor?
SSWE: Yes, but the Portuguese betrayed Britain by aiding the Boers in South Africa first, so it was considered cricket. And the Portuguese were stretched as is, with so many ultimata issued to them throughout the world.
(IBC reel plays “General Subash Chandra Bose, in direct contravention of his orders led troops to the borders of Portuguese India, and issued an ultimatum for Portugal to withdraw and return these colonies to the legitimate and free government of India. While initially reluctant, with no allies for support to turn to save for Francoist Spain, Portugal has today ceded these territories peacefully to the true ownership of India and her people, in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants there, in return for a flat payment of a sum of 400,000 rupees. While the recovery of the last vestige of imperial rule in India is admirable, voices from across the political spectrum have condemned the crude “European” big-gun diplomacy used by General Bose. Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck has asked for the Prime Minister to launch a full investigation into these events by a cross-bench commission from the Chamber of States. Grim prospects await the general should the Prime Minister agree, and it is reported that while he rejoices at the final expulsion of colonial powers he strongly disagrees with the methods employed, and therefore, may acquiesce to the request for an inquiry. The Governor-General has expressed her welcome to the territories newly joining the Union. This sentiment is concurred across the Commonwealth, who welcome the return of India’s patrimony. The official reaction of the Government remains to be seen. This is IBC News. God Save the King and Jai Hind!”)
SSWE: We digress though. After the seizure, there was a flurry of activity in re-organisation, the Civil Service was not terribly amused at that. It also meant that while Churchill was happy that more of the map was painted pink, he was pulling out what was left of his hair at the additional expenditures this brought.
<VO: Lord Yaxley, acutely aware of Britain’s inability to financially maintain an even greater imperial presence, especially when the people don’t want you there, and especially so when you label yourself the harbinger of democratic rule, issued what has come to be known as the “Wooster Declaration”
(Archived Text of the Wooster Declaration slowly plays across the screen, with the backdrop of the uproar in Parliament because of this announcement).
It stated that the British Empire would continue, as and when it were able, to thoroughly evaluate and grant limited or complete self-rule, depending on the circumstances, to all peoples subject to the Crown and sceptre in the form of a colonial administration and move toward a collective of sovereign nations, a Commonwealth, under His Majesty the King’s aegis. It also stated that it was His Majesty’s most ardent wish that this process be accelerated and achieved as soon as the people and the conditions were deemed sufficiently ready.
His Majesty never said any of that, to be fair to him, more than likely because he was never consulted before the declaration was issued. But the object of this declaration was clear as crystal, the Treasury was stretched thin, and Britain was finally learning the true cost of its Empire without the plunder from India to sustain its expenses. It, therefore, wanted to pass off all responsibility to native people, of governing and managing themselves without Britain bearing the financial cost, while still keeping links with the Crown, as quickly as it could,
It would form the basis of his second term in the Foreign Office, and earn him even more enemies. However, it did drastically improve the perception and standing of Britain, throughout the world, along with aiding the purse-strings, something the Treasury found most gratifying.>
(Digital map of the growing British Empire flashes as new pink slowly fades over each section in the map).
<VO: Dahomey, Benin, Togoland, Senegal, most of the Sahel and the Ivory Coast joined British West Africa; St. Pierre and Miquelon, joined the Dominion of Newfoundland; Djibouti and Madagascar joined British East Africa; Syria and Lebanon joined the other Emirates in the Levant; British Central Africa swelled it’s size with the Baring Ultimatum to Portugal, in conjunction with the Bose Ultimatum in India and the Huang Ultimatum in China and the sale of Kivu-Katanga by the Belgians from the Congo Belge to Rhodesia, the former of which expanded the borders of Rhodesia considerably, while the latter, only brought about in 1937, endowed it with many resource rich regions; The islands throughout the world flew the Union Jack over the tricolour, along with French Guiana joining British Guiana; Chinese concessions surrendered to British protection; India received Pondichery and its attendant territories and Britian assumed custody of Indochina.
(Map showing the expansion of the Belgian Empire and the Italian annexation of Corsica).
The Belgians seized the other half of the Congo, and quite a bit of Central Africa, and the Italians, showing restraint for once and understanding their inability to adequately absorb their full ambitions only agreed to the annexation of the self-proclaimed Corsican Regency, forgoing their desire for Tunis.>
SF: We can forget Savoie asked for and earned Swiss protection and the Grimaldis in Monaco wanted a British Resident as opposed to a French one.
SSWE: True, but those are mere footnotes. The Swiss had, immediately on the Orleanists settling themselves in the Elysee, agreed to the French proposal to purchase those territories back for 2 million francs, which cost the French exchequer far more than the territories were worth, and well, while insulting, the Monegasque were too insignificant in the grand scheme of things. What they despised was the loss of their globe-spanning empire, reduced only to Africa, and not even the rich bits of it.
SF: Why did Savoie return to Swiss rule in 2013 then?
SSWE: Because the government in Paris deliberately neglected the region, citing the payment made to Swiss as enough loss made due to them. With enough protest action, the referendum that happened was bound to succeed.
SF: So, the 1936 Treaty of Rouen was essentially just affirming British rights to most of the seized colonies while returning Indochina, Senegal and the Sahel, and the Chinese concessions for a total sum of £6.5 million, or 12.5 million francs if you prefer, in government bonds and a military alliance against the Nazis should war return to Europe?
SSWE: As a generalisation, yes. The British Parliament did promise over £35 million over the next three decades to aid in the reconstruction, which would be interest-free debt for the government of France. And private investment from British companies even just before the Second Great War grew to substantial numbers.
And Indochina was too cost-prohibitive to police, so it becoming the Indochinese Federation was natural, if another blow to French pride.
<VO: The Treaty of Bordeaux, while not completely ending the hostile bent taken in Anglo-French relations, did sound the final death knell to French, or more appropriately De Gaullite, calls and ambitions for a return of large parts of their empire from what some unsavoury characters, including the future Prime Minister of France, Charles De Gaulle, called “the grubby little hands of the sheep-shaggers”.
The extremely generous settlement offered for the reconstruction of railways and roads among other infrastructure projects and a free flow of private capital investment sweetened the deal enough for the French to swallow their pride and accept an alliance against the Nazi regime with much protestation.
(Pictures flash of the signing of the Treaty of Rouen, zooming in on some of the terms of the treaty).
France was, however, spent and British efforts at rebuilding the armed forces met stiff challenges, not least from the brass of the forces. That however is not the focus of this series.
(Pictures of British machines and material used in the rebuilding of the French railways)
We must move on to the 3rd great Order-in-Council, delightfully called the “Statute of Wellington”.>