The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World they Made. Simon Ball

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СКАЧАТЬ and says she does not want to marry just yet.’ Her father was glad to see that ‘She seemed in excellent spirits. After dinner they went skating.’⁶⁶ Macmillan broke her down over Christmas. On Boxing Day 1919 ‘Dorothy and Harold settled to call themselves engaged’.⁶⁷ ‘I do hope it is alright,’ noted her father worriedly.⁶⁸ There was certainly something in the air that Canadian New Year which inclined the young to romance: two more of Harold’s fellow ADCs also became engaged.

      When Harold Macmillan married Dorothy Cavendish in April 1920 at St Margaret’s, Westminster – the same church Oliver and Moira Lyttelton had used a few weeks previously – he committed himself to making money from publishing. At the same time he gained an entree into high politics. Devonshire was very fond of his new son-in-law. Indeed, he saw something of his young self in him. He himself had been an enthusiastic professional politician, a ‘painstaking’ financial secretary to the Treasury. In many ways his elevation to a great dukedom – which he inherited from his uncle – had deprived him of a career.⁶⁹

      Devonshire gladly re-entered politics in October 1922 when the coalition disintegrated over Chanak. Victor Devonshire replaced Winston Churchill in the Cabinet as colonial secretary. While in Canada, Devonshire ‘found’, as Macmillan recalled, ‘that I was interested in political problems, he would discuss them freely with me’.⁷⁰ In London this habit continued – but now with much more interesting issues to mull over.⁷¹ Macmillan remembered calling on the duke during the course of the formation of Bonar Law’s government. ‘I found Lord Derby in conference with him. The Duke…pointed out the extreme weakness of the front bench in the House of Commons…“Ah,” said Lord Derby, “you are too pessimistic. They have found a wonderful little man. One of those attorney fellows, you know. He will do all the work.” “What’s his name?” said the Duke. “Pig,” said Lord Derby. Turning to me, the Duke replied, “Do you know Pig?”…It turned out to be Sir Douglas Hogg!’⁷²

      The most pressing policy issue that Victor Devonshire had to face at the Colonial Office was the need for some kind of new relationship with two British colonies in Africa: Rhodesia and Kenya. Both were examples of entrepreneurial colonies – initially exploited by chartered companies. Each had a group of European settlers keen to lay their hands on as much political power as possible. Yet in Kenya and Rhodesia the white settlers were only a small proportion of the total population, the majority being made up of indigenous Africans. The dream of Commonwealth came directly into collision with the duties of trusteeship. The Colonial Office’s official view was that ‘whether therefore we look to natives for whom we hold a trusteeship or [a] white community which is insufficiently strong politically and financially – the obstacles to early responsible government…appear prohibitive’. In each case the solution in the eyes of civil servants in London was to incorporate these small but troublesome outposts of empire into some wider whole. In the case of Rhodesia, union with South Africa seemed to beckon; in the case of Kenya, closer association across the Indian Ocean with India. Whitehall had, however, underestimated the contrary spirit of the settlers. In both countries the settlers spawned rebarbative political leaders quite willing to defy the mother country.

      In Southern Rhodesia the opposition was led by Sir Charles Coghlan, an Irish Roman Catholic lawyer from Bulawayo. In London Smuts might be hailed as the great imperial statesman-visionary. In Salisbury he was seen as little more than the frontman for Boer imperialism. When he declared that ‘the Union is going to be for the African continent what the United States has become for the American continent; Rhodesia is but another day’s march on the high road of destiny’, Rhodesian unionists took it as a signal that a republican South Africa might secede from the Empire. In November 1922 the settlers voted by 59.43 per cent to 40.57 per cent against union with South Africa.⁷³ Effectively they forced the British government to buy out the chartered South Africa Company and grant self-government. The negotiations created much ill-will. In July 1923 the Colonial Office gave the company two weeks to accept appropriation. Devonshire’s under-secretary, Cranborne’s brother-in-law and friend, Billy Ormsby-Gore, struck a deal that gave the company three and three-quarter million pounds and half the proceeds on government land sales until 1965.⁷⁴ The deal left a settler community confident in its own power to manipulate Britain and a disgruntled company that, all admitted, still dominated the economic life of its former domain.

      Devonshire had even more problems with Kenya. ‘Afraid we shall have a very difficult matter with Kenya. The white settlers really make everything very difficult,’ he lamented.⁷⁵ The Kenyan settlers were led by the largest landowner and larger-than-life figure, Lord Delamere. In the summer of 1922 the Colonial Office and the India Office agreed that Indians should be able to settle freely in Kenya and should enjoy equal political rights to the European settlers. In January 1923 Devonshire ordered preparations to be made for a common voting role. The settlers’ leaders formed a so-called ‘Vigilance Committee’ to organize political and military opposition – an armed militia was embodied and plans drawn up to seize key points and kidnap the governor if need be. The settlers’ military organization was, in the context of East Africa, formidable and they were quite capable of carrying through a coup.⁷⁶ Faced with such extreme action, Devonshire invited both Delamere’s faction and Indian representatives to London for a conference. Delamere acted in considerable style: he took a house in Grosvenor Place that acted as a hub for an intensive lobbying effort. Out of it spewed articles and communiqués; in came journalists and people of influence for lunches, dinners and interviews. When Devonshire met Delamere in April 1923, the race issue was presented to him in unvarnished fashion: ‘If the Duke of Devonshire could see a typical row of Indian dukas in a Kenya township he would understand their feelings better,’ the settlers told Macmillan’s father-in-law. ‘Dirt, smells, flies, disregard of sanitation.’ Once more the key figure in the negotiations was Billy Ormsby-Gore. Gore was one of the champions of trusteeship who saw the settlers as an alien force getting in the way of what he believed would be a friendly and enduring paternal relationship between Britain and its native subjects. To the horror of many Kenyan settlers, the White Paper they received on 25 July 1923 – the same day as the Rhodesian settlement – met many of their political demands but firmly declared, ‘Primarily, Kenya is an African territory…[the] interests of the African natives must be paramount…His Majesty’s Government regard themselves as exercising a trust on behalf of the African population.’ Threats of armed revolt were made. To stave off trouble Devonshire agreed at the eleventh hour to instruct the governor of Kenya to prevent Indian immigration.⁷⁷

      Macmillan had therefore seen at close quarters the reality of Britain’s position in Africa. It left him with a healthy distrust of all the parties involved. To his mind the South Africans had demonstrated themselves to be tinpot imperialists. The chartered company was exposed as a rapacious exploiter. Worst of all, the white settlers were revealed as turbulent bigots and potential traitors. All three posed a threat to the good governance of the Empire. Unlike his friend Crookshank, operating on the fringes of British power, Macmillan, sitting at the centre, took Smuts’s heady rhetoric with a large pinch of salt. Nevertheless his interest in politics was piqued quite as much. Billy Gore, a man only a few years older than himself, was very much the figure of the moment.

      It was by now quite clear to Macmillan that if he wished to enter politics he would have do so under his own steam. Although Devonshire may have given him an outstanding insight into the workings of high policy, the duke was naturally much more concerned to bring forward his own son, Eddie Hartington, a СКАЧАТЬ