The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire by Peter Clarke

Author:Peter Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Preparations for the San Francisco conference continued throughout March and April regardless of the change of President in Washington. Truman, poorly briefed on the Yalta understandings, had no ambition to take charge of the conference personally and left everything to Stettinius, whose status was thus enhanced (at least temporarily). Indeed Roosevelt’s death actually helped the conference get off the ground since it facilitated a change of stance by the Russians, who now pleaded their respect for the late President in agreeing to send Molotov after all. It was to be a foreign ministers’ conference, then, and Eden was to lead the British delegation. This meant that Attlee had to serve under him, which troubled the self-effacing Deputy Prime Minister less than it did some members of the Labour Party who felt their Leader thereby slighted.

In London, the excuse for not letting the Viceroy come home to discuss the Indian situation had previously been the Yalta conference, because of which he been told that he must wait until March. But by 10 March, with no actual date yet forthcoming, Wavell had smelt a rat, writing in his diary that ‘I don't think the PM wants me at all and will procrastinate as long as possible.’ Five days later Wavell duly discovered that the excuse had changed, when he received a cable from Leo Amery saying ‘that as Attlee would be busy with the San Francisco conference they must postpone my visit till June’. The Viceroy read this as more than a personal snub – ‘Tell India to wait till it’s more convenient.’46 He protested with such indignation that Amery got the India Committee to change its mind and agree to an early visit. That left only one obstacle, albeit the greatest of all: the Prime Minister’s rooted prejudices.

Amery’s own plan, for giving India Dominion status on VE-Day while leaving democratization until later, had already been scuppered. Only Cripps would listen to him, though still preferring his own approach. So the agenda was to be that proposed by Wavell: a variant on the Cripps Offer of democratization as a preliminary to independence. Neither option, it is needless to say, had any attractions for the Prime Minister. When he heard of the India Committee’s wish to allow Wavell to argue his case in person, he reluctantly assented, though speaking to Amery ‘most bitterly and contemptuously of W. as never any real use as a soldier but who he had thought would at least carry on in India and not try and advertise himself by cringing to the Hindus etc.’ Amery, well used to taking such diatribes in his stride, did not bother to argue back, having got the decision he needed. He was simply content to have engaged Churchill’s attention for once: ‘We had a few minutes more on India generally – the first talk on the Indian problem at large in five years!’47

These were not auspicious circumstances for Wavell’s visit to London. He arrived on 23 March and was to stay in a suite in the Dorchester Hotel for the next couple of months.

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