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Post 1945: Great Britain And British Colonies

1945: Great Britain And British Colonies


The story of Great Britain in 1945 is in part the story of a nation at war. The cessation of hostilities, which occurred in Europe in May and in Asia in September, has not meant that the life of the British people is no longer affected by the pattern set by the stern necessities of warfare. The effects of the war, the general election that brought a new administration into office, and the measures taken or announced for dealing with the problems of the peace are the three topics of chief significance to be touched upon in this account; but some attention is directed also to what may be termed the normal occurrences of the national life.

Area and Population.
The Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has an area of 94,269 square miles, of which 5,534 square miles are in Northern Ireland; the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands add 296 square miles to the total. In 1941 the population of Great Britain was given as 46,467,000 and that of Northern Ireland as 1,288,000. The estimated total today is between 48,000,000 and 49,000,000; of this, somewhat less than 2,000,000 persons live in Northern Ireland, while, in Britain somewhat more than 5,000,000 persons live in Scotland, which in 1941 had a population of 5,007,000. The birth rate has risen during the war. Wartime additions to maternity and child welfare services are credited with reducing the number of still births from 36 per 1,000 in 1940, to 28 per 1,000 in 1944, and in lowering maternity mortality from 2.61 per 1,000 in 1940, to 1.94 per 1,000 in 1944.
Resignation of War Cabinet.

At the opening of the year 1945, Great Britain had a coalition Government, in which the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who took office on May 10, 1940, was a Conservative as had been his immediate predecessor, Neville Chamberlain. Members of other political parties were in the Cabinet, but the Conservative Ministers were in a sense the senior partners of the coalition.

The rule of Cabinet unanimity, which means that all members of the Government must agree, at any rate on major issues, with the Prime Minister, was in force for the coalition. Responsibility for the conduct of the war rested with Mr. Churchill; few, if anyone, would deny that as a War Prime Minister his performance was magnificent. After the German surrender, the Prime Minister asked his Liberal and Labor colleagues to continue in the Government until the defeat of Japan. This they were unwilling to do. The 1940 coalition ended on May 23 when Churchill resigned, effecting the resignation of the entire ministry. He resumed office on the same day at the king's request, with a new and wholly Conservative Cabinet. Its members were referred to in the press as the "Caretaker Ministers." Dissolution of Parliament was announced to take place on June 15, to be followed by a general election on July 5.

The parliament, thus terminated, had a life of almost ten years, from November 14, 1935, during which great events transpired. In England, one king died, a second abdicated, a third was crowned; and three Conservative Prime Ministers held office, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill. The greater part of Europe was overrun by the Germans. For a time Great Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace; then the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on the United States turned a European struggle into a global war. When the people of Great Britain went again to the polls in a parliamentary election, victory had come in Europe and was not far off in Asia. The great issues of this 1945 election were not concerned with the prosecution of the war but with postwar reconstruction and the problems of the peace.

July Elections.

The results of the election were not made known for three weeks, until July 26. In three constituencies the candidates were unopposed; for the other 637seats there were almost 1,700 candidates, of whom 88 were women; there were 291 three cornered, 39 four-cornered, and 7 five-cornered contests. After the election, but before the results had been tabulated and made public, the best guess seemed to be that the Conservatives were returned with a small majority. What happened was a Labor landslide. One of the most significant features of the election was the fate of the "Caretaker Ministers": of forty members of the Government, (sixteen Cabinet Ministers, twenty-four without Cabinet rank), thirty-one, including some of the most prominent, lost their parliamentary seats.

New House of Commons.
The July elections resulted in a Labor victory, astonishing in its scope. Of the 640 members of the new House of Commons 393 are Laborites and 189 Conservatives; lesser groups elected 44 members, of whom 20 may be counted as supporters of the Labor Government and 24 as in the Opposition; 14 members are listed as Independents. Of the Labor members, only 119 belong to trade unions; more than 40 are lawyers; 16 are journalists; 10 are physicians; a considerable number are teachers. The total includes some with many years of parliamentary experience, and more than 100 who have been concerned in local government work.

New Cabinet.
The new Prime Minister was Clement Attlee. His Cabinet which has twenty members is in size close to prewar standards; there were twenty-three Cabinet Ministers in 1939, twenty-one in 1929, and twenty in 1924.
Of the members of the new Cabinet several besides Mr. Attlee were Ministers in the coalition Government. Herbert Morrison, now Lord President of the Council, was Secretary for Home Affairs and Minister for Home Security; a Member of Parliament in 1923-1924, 1929-1931, and since 1935, Morrison was Minister of Transportation in his second term. Ernest Bevin, now Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was Minister of Labor and Minister of National Service.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, was President of the Board of Trade; he has had seventeen years' experience in the House of Commons, a distinguished career at Cambridge and the University of London, and a high reputation as university lecturer and author. Mr. Dalton has been succeeded at the Board of Trade by Sir Stafford Cripps, formerly Minister for Aircraft Production, who has been in Parliament since 1931 and has served also as Solicitor General and Ambassador to Russia. A. V. Alexander retains his post as First Lord of the Admiralty, which he has held since 1940. The new Lord Chancellor, Sir William A. Jowitt, raised to the peerage as Lord Jowitt, was Minister without Portfolio; a Member of Parliament from 1920 to 1931 and again since 1939, he was Attorney General from 1929 to 1932.
In addition to members of the preceding Cabinet, several of the new Ministers held lesser administrative positions under the coalition. The Secretary for the Home Department, James Chuter Ede, with wide experience in county and local government, was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education.

The Secretary for the Colonies, George Henry Hall, a Member of Parliament since 1922, was Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Joseph Westwood, now Secretary for Scotland, was Parliamentary Under-secretary for Scotland. George Alfred Isaacs, who has succeeded Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labor and of National Service, was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty. The new Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Tom Williams, was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture; a Member of Parliament since 1922, he was in the Ministry of Labor from 1929 to 1931 and in the Ministry of Agriculture in 1924. The Minister of Education, Miss Ellen Wilkinson, who is the only woman in the Cabinet, was Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Home Security; she was on the Manchester City Council from 1923 to 1926, and Member of Parliament from 1924 to 1931 and since 1935.

New Cabinet Ministers whose administrative experience in government antedates the coalition are the Secretary for War, John James Lawson, who was Financial Secretary for the War Office in 1924, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labor from 1929 to 1931; and the Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell, who was Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Mines in 1924 and in 1930-1931, and Financial Secretary to the War Office in 1929-1930. The two peers (other than Lord Jowitt) in the new Government have both been Cabinet Ministers. The Secretary for Dominion Affairs, Lord Addison, (formerly Dr. Christopher Addison) who was given a peerage in 1937 and is Leader of the Labor Party in the House of Lords, was for a time Minister of Munitions in World War I and in 1921 became the first Minister of Health. The Secretary for Air, Viscount Stansgate, (William Wedgwood Benn), who joined the Labor Party in 1927 after twenty-one years in Parliament as a Liberal, was Secretary for India from 1929 to 1931.

Background of Members of Labor Government.
The Labor Government like the whole group of Labor Members of Parliament, is a cross-section of society, but predominantly middle class. There are two somewhat overlapping groups. About 200 members of the Labor Party in Parliament are or have been engaged in some professional work or occupation; the other big group includes trade union organizers and secretaries, miners, railway men, and so on. To return to the Cabinet, the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, began working as a coal miner when he was thirteen years old; the Secretary for War, Mr. Lawson, and the Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. Hall, both worked in the collieries as lads of twelve. On the other hand, there are Ministers who are university-trained and have made a name for themselves in learned professions. Nobody has jumped from colliery to Cabinet; a vast deal of parliamentary experience, of experience in local government, of dealing with social and economic problems is to be found in the careers of such Ministers as Hall and Lawson and Bevan. It is interesting, too, to note that of the twenty-three women in the House of Commons, only one is a Conservative and one a Liberal; the others belong to the Labor Party. The present House of Commons has an unusually large proportion of new members: 240 Labor M.P.'s were elected for the first time. Among the Labor members, 126 have been in the fighting services during the war. An immediate problem that Mr. Attlee's administration may have to face is the salary of members; a good many M.P.'s, without private means and with no support from trade union treasuries, will find that the salary of £600 a year is altogether too small.

The War.

Civilian Casualties.
During the first months of the year 1945, Great Britain was still subject to enemy attack. In December, 1944, there were 367 civilians killed in Great Britain and 847 injured; that brought the total of civilian casualties from air raids in 1944 to 30,449, of whom 8,465 were killed and 21,985 injured. In January, 1945, there were 585 persons killed and 1,629 injured. After a break of more than eight months, raids by piloted aircraft were resumed by the Germans in March. The great majority of civilian casualties in the last phase of the war came from the V-2 rocket bombs that were aimed at London and did most of their damage in and about the metropolis. The first V-2 bomb was fired on September 8, 1944; the last on March 27, 1945. Between these dates 1,050 V-2 bombs reached England; they killed 2,754 persons and injured 6,523 others; the property damage, which was considerable, included the whole or partial destruction of thirty-five hospitals and forty-five churches. The total number of civilians killed in Great Britain by air raids to V-E Day was 60,585, of whom 26,920 were men, 25,392 were women, 7,736 were children, and 537 were unidentified. There were also 86,175 persons injured in the air raids: 40,736 men, 37,816 women, and 7,623 children. The total number of civilian air raid casualties were thus 146,760. Air raid casualties among the armed forces in Great Britain seem not to have been published; among the civilian casualties, "children" means all persons under sixteen, and "injured" is a term restricted to those who were hospitalized.

Property Damage.
As regards the destruction effected by enemy attacks on Britain, by the autumn of 1944 there had been some 4,500,000 houses damaged or destroyed by enemy action, and one-quarter of these had been bombed after D-Day. There were in London alone 719,000 bomb-damaged houses in January 1945; fifty-one percent of these had been repaired and made "tolerably comfortable." The destruction wrought by the V-2 bombs after the beginning of 1945 was mostly, though not wholly, in London and its environs; this would add considerably to the figure here given.

Military Casualties.
Since the cessation of hostilities figures have been published that give additional details regarding British military operations and their cost. In the great invasion and the campaigns following it, the British casualties in western Europe, including Canadian casualties, numbered 184,512, between D-Day and V-E Day; of these, 39,599 were killed, 18,368 missing, and 126,545 wounded. In the armed forces, and thus excluding civilians, merchant seamen, and members of the Home Guard, casualties for the war reached a total of 750,338; of these, 233,042 were killed, 57,472 missing, 275,975 wounded, and 183,849 were taken prisoner. These are for the British forces alone and they do not include losses suffered by troops from the Dominions, India, or the Colonies; they are figures listed as of May 31, and therefore include no losses incurred in operations against Japan between that date and V-J Day. The casualties incurred in the armed forces from the Dominions, India, and the Colonies numbered 483,458; of these 103,730 were killed, 40,641 were missing, 192,413 were wounded, and 330,523 were prisoners. India led with a total of 177,315 casualties; Canada had 101,008; Australia 92,211; the remainder were almost evenly divided among New Zealand, South Africa, and the Colonies. From the beginning of the war to V-E Day, 730 vessels of the Royal Navy were lost: 5 battleships, 8 aircraft carriers, 26 cruisers, 128 destroyers, 77 submarines, 51 minesweepers, 48 drifters, and 240 trawlers. In addition to these, note may be made of the loss of 23 vessels of the Canadian Navy, and of 13 Australian, 5 Indian, 4 South African, and 1 New Zealand vessel, a total of 46 vessels belonging to the naval forces of other parts of the empire. The British lost also 16,385 aircraft, of which 9,163 were Bomber Command, 3,558 Fighter Command, 70 Army Cooperation Command, 1,479 Coastal Command, and 2,115 of the Second Tactical Air Force.

Total Cost of War.
It is probably true that no measurably accurate estimate can be made of the total cost of any great war, yet £1,200,000,000 has been suggested as the figure for property damage that the British people have suffered on land, and £225,000,000 as the figure for their losses on the seas. Of greater significance than the disastrous effects of warfare on the wealth and resources of a nation is the effect on the people. It would be idle to maintain that the recent long-continued war has had no unfortunate effects on the British people; yet the great fires which enemy air raids set blazing and which damaged or destroyed millions of buildings did not weaken British determination to continue the struggle to its successful conclusion, nor is there reason to believe that the war has undermined or shattered the finer qualities of the British people. Enemy attacks made much more difficult all kinds of war work, but they did not end or seriously decrease it. The Port of London, for instance, was one of the special targets of German air attacks, and it suffered grievously; none the less, between the beginning of June and the end of August, 1944, there were there loaded and dispatched 311,000 personnel of the British Liberation Army, with 123,400 vehicles and 666,000 tons of general stores and ammunition, in 2,000 ships. (The round numbers are in each case less than the exact figure.)

Taxation.
Some indication of the effects of the war on the tax-payer can be found by comparing the numbers of persons in various ranges of income, after income-tax has been paid, immediately before the war with the numbers during the war. In the lower brackets the numbers showed a marked increase, the £150 to £250 group rose from 4,500,000 to 7,000,000, the £250 to £500 group from 1,820,000 to 5,300,000, and the £500 to £1,000 group from 450,000 to 550,000. The higher bracket income groups decreased in size: the £1,000 to £2,000 group from 155,000 to 117,000 and the £2,000 to £4,000 group from 56,000 to 31,700. In the top brackets the reduction was yet sharper: the £4,000 to £6,000 group fell from 12,000 to 1,170; in the year 1938 there were some 7,000 persons with an income of £6,000 or more, but in 1942-1943there were only 80 persons who, after the tax, had so much income. At the rate of $4- to £1 that means that in Great Britain there were then only eighty persons who after paying income tax had an income of $24,000 or more. Steady employment and a marked increase in wages account for the marked increase in the number of persons in the lower income groups, with, of course, the addition of persons whose incomes, after the payment of the greatly increased income taxes of war years, were smaller than in prewar years; the decline in the number of persons with large incomes is presumably attributable to the heavy taxes.

Expenditures.
In January, 1945, the British Government was spending money at the rate of about £14,500,000 a day, of which £12,500,000 was spent on the fighting forces. Five months later it was stated that the average expenditure "for the last few days" had lessened to about £12,250,000, of which £11,000,000 went to the fighting services. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Anderson, in his interim Budget presented to the House of Commons in April, estimated the expenditures for the fiscal year 1945-46 at £5,565,000,000 and the revenue at £3,265,000,000, leaving an estimated deficit of £2,300,000,000 to be met by borrowing. This allowed £4,500,000,000 for the prosecution of the war and £1,065,000,000 for other purposes. This was less by £372,000,000 than the £5,937,000,000 estimate for the preceding fiscal year; the difference was more than taken up by the decrease in the estimate for war expenditure. The estimated deficient was £534,000,000 less than that of the preceding year and was also a smaller percentage of the total; in other words, a larger proportion of Government spending in 1945-46 would be raised by taxes. Early in June the Commons passed a vote of credit for £1,750,000,000, and four months later another vote of credit, £2,000,000,000, for war expenditures. When the first Labor Budget was presented to Parliament on October 23 the new Chancellor of the Exchequer said that Sir John Anderson's estimate made six months before was about correct.

New Income Taxes.
The Budget introduced by the Labor Government provided for a number of changes in the income tax. Personal allowances were raised from £80 to £110 for single persons and from £140 to £180 for married couples. The exemption limit was raised to £120. On the first £50 of taxable income, three shillings in the pound is to be paid; on the next £75, six shillings in the pound; for the remainder, the standard rate is nine shillings in the pound. Stated in terms of American money: the standard British rate is fifteen per cent on the first $200 of taxable income, thirty per cent on the next $300, and forty-five per cent beyond that. Income tax surtax is now increased on a graduated scale. Beginning with January 1, the excess profits tax is to be reduced from 100 per cent to 60 per cent, and the purchase tax is to be abolished on some household equipment, for example, heating and cooking appliances.

Living Costs.

Food Subsidies.
One means that the British Government has adopted to keep down the cost of living has been the subsidization of foods. In January, the estimated cost of paying these food subsidies was £218,000,000; three months later the estimates had been revised upward to £225,000,000. Among the principal items in the schedule were bread, flour, and oatmeal, £65 million; meat, £24 million; potatoes, £28 million; and eggs, £16 million. A year before, the food subsidies had cost £205,000,000; when bread, flour, and oatmeal were figured at £60 million; meat at £23 million; potatoes at £28 million; and eggs at £11 million.

Exports.
Great Britain, it has been said, must export at least fifty per cent more than in 1938 if it is to pay its debts. This will require a decided increase over the value of exports during the war. The figures, including those for Northern Ireland, are £271,000,000 in 1942; £233,000,000 in 1943; and £258,000,000 in 1944. The exports for 1944, it will be noted, were £25,000,000 over the amount for 1943, but £13,000,000 short of the 1942 figure. The exports for the year 1938 were valued at £471,000,000. These figures do not tell the whole story: the rise in prices has been such that the volume of exports in 1944 was only thirty-one per cent of that for 1938.

Bicycles.
The manner in which British manufacturers are endeavoring to meet the need of increasing their exports may be illustrated by reference to the bicycle industry. Before the war, Great Britain produced 2,000,000 bicycles a year; this output was valued at about £11,500,000 (the 1935 value). In the year 1938, there were 576,000 bicycles exported, valued at £1,700,000. The manufacturers' present program is to produce 1,500,000 bicycles, two thirds of them for export, with a like volume of spare parts. A difficulty that stands in the way is the shortage of labor: the bicycle industry needs 20,000 men. In view of the large number of bicycles used in Great Britain itself, 10,000,000 in 1939, the program seems to call for building up the foreign market even at the cost of the customers at home.

Imports.
Imports in 1944, munitions excluded, were only twenty-one per cent below the 1938 figure; but with a great increase in costs. The average value of imports was ninety-one per cent over that of 1938. Retained imports, still excluding munitions, reached £1,298,836,000 in 1944. The 1943 figure had been £1,226,554,000. In 1938, British retained imports came to £857,984,000. Total imports, including munitions, came to £2,361,000,000 in 1944, an increase of £476,000,000 over the 1943 total of £1,885,000,000; so munitions and re-exports were in 1943 £658,446,000 and in 1944 they were £1,062,164,000.

Balance of Trade.
In the first six months of 1945, exports amounted to £173,000,000 and imports to £598,000,000; the adverse balance of £425,000,000 was slightly reduced by re-exports amounting to £23,000,000. Again, these figures do not include munitions. Of the imports into Great Britain, more than one half come from North America (principally the United States) as compared with just over one-fifth in 1938. British exports to North America in the first six months of 1945 were £20,800,000 in value, not very far below the £22,000,000 for the same period in 1938. In July, exports were £32,500,000 and imports were £97,751,000; in August, exports increased to £36,523,000 and imports to £99,289,000. The August export figure was within £3,000,000 of the monthly average for 1938, but the volume of exports was barely fifty per cent of the prewar volume.

Employment.
Unemployment was reduced to a minimum by the war. In mid-January, there were 63,213 men and boys unemployed, 1,056 temporarily laid off or on short time, and 804 casual laborers out of work; the figures for mid-April were 61,208, 348, and 752. There were 32,060 women and girls unemployed in January and 27,761 in April, with 1,539 temporarily laid off in January and 258 in April. There was a relaxation of labor controls at the beginning of June: men over 50, women over 40, girls and boys under 18, and all part-time workers doing less than 30 hours a week were freed from direction.

Labor Disputes.
Only two labor disputes of 1945 call for mention. In August, there was a settlement between the railways and three railway trade unions, providing a 7 shilling weekly increase in minimum adult pay, time and two-thirds for Sunday work, and up to 12 holidays with pay yearly; the demand for a 40-hour week was rejected. A dockers' strike at Liverpool, affecting some 17,000 men, began in October and soon spread to become a national strike. The dockers demanded 25 shillings a day, a 40 hour week, and extra pay for overtime, instead of £4.85 ($17.60) for a 44-hour week. They returned to work on November 5 on a truce during which their claims were to be settled. Resumption of the strike was threatened when in December the Central Strike Committee urged the dockers to reject the arbitration committee's recommendation to increase the pay by only 2 shillings a day.

Rationing.
The end of the war has brought little relief to the British in the way of any relaxation of rationing. In the middle of May, the restoration of the petrol (gasoline) ration was promised — for a long time there was no gas allotted for civilian non-essential use; but the amount promised was small enough, ranging from 4 gallons a month to 7, depending on the car horse-power. So far as food is concerned and clothing, the British people seem likely to find the first years of peace harsher and more austere than were the years of war. Much of this is owing to British willingness to have supplies of which they are in need go to people who are in yet greater need on the continent.

Municipal Elections.
The municipal elections in November showed that the Labor Party was trusted by the people in local as well as in national affairs. In 182 large boroughs, Labor won 2,977 seats, a gain of 1,245, while the Conservatives lost heavily. These Labor gains were mainly in the North, the Midlands, and in London; they gave Labor control in 60 or more principal towns in England and Wales, and 5 more London boroughs; but generally Labor did not win control of the largest cities, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, for example, though in those towns the number of seats held by Labor was increased.

Government Program for Future.
The Government program calls for bringing the Bank of England under national ownership, the repeal of the objectionable Trade Disputes Act, a version of the Beveridge Plan for workmen's compensation, the nationalization of the coal mines, already accepted in principle by owners and miners, and a state medical service. In December, it was further announced that the Government would in time introduce legislation for the nationalization of gas and electric utilities, railways and other inland transport, docks and harbors, and iron and steel works. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of some of these proposals, and it must be remembered that British conditions are so different from those in America that it is questionable whether the average American should express an opinion on British internal policies, there is no doubt that the men who were elected last summer to grapple with the problems of the peace are doing so boldly and courageously.

BRITISH COLONIES


General.
As the year opened, preparations were being made for the United Nations Conference on International Organization called to meet at San Francisco in the spring. Included among the provisions suggested for the proposed Charter were a number dealing with dependent areas. Many students of colonial affairs, particularly in the United States, felt that the proposed Charter afforded an excellent opportunity to create a modified mandate, or trusteeship, system covering the colonies and dependencies of all the Powers, not merely those of the defeated countries. It was clear, however, that the United Nations which possessed colonial empires — Britain, France, Holland and Belgium — were of no mind to accede to any such suggestion.

The Churchill Government had frequently gone on record as being opposed to sharing the responsibility for administering Britain's colonies with any other Power. During the months preceding the San Francisco Conference, Colonel Oliver Stanley, Secretary of State for Colonies, reaffirmed this policy quite categorically. At the Conference itself, the British delegation opposed including in the Charter's section on Trusteeships any general promise of independence for colonial peoples.

The victory of the British Labor Party in the July elections was expected by many observers to result in a change of direction and emphasis in British colonial policy. In the long run this expectation may turn out to have been justified, but there was little evidence of it during the latter part of 1945. Indeed, on August 18 the Foreign Office stated that Hong Kong "is a part of the British Empire and we intend to occupy it just as any other part."

At the same time, it should be pointed out that the British Government was manifesting an ever-increasing sense of responsibility for the economic well-being of its colonial peoples. As Colonel Stanley said in a speech on March 19, "There can be no true self-government without an improved economic standard and a proper social development." These words were far from idle, for on January 31, Colonel Stanley had presented to the House of Commons a bill in which Parliament was asked to appropriate £120,000,000 for development and research in the colonies during the ten years beginning April 1, 1946. With this sum the Colonial Office intended to expand the activities already initiated under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1940. This work had, in fact, become so important that in January the Colonial Office announced that Sir Frank Stockdale had been called to fill the new post of Advisor on Development Planning. He had previously been Comptroller of Development and Welfare in the British West Indies and Co-chairman of the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission created in 1942.
The colonial empire was estimated to have contributed some 450,000 soldiers to the British war effort. Up to the end of May, 6,741 of these had been killed.

Asia.
The surrender of Japan resulted in the liberation of various British territories in Southeast Asia: Malaya, Sarawak, North Borneo, Hong Kong and others. (Burma had already been largely freed before the end of hostilities.) The surrender, coming with unexpected swiftness, caught Admiral Mountbatten's Command unprepared to occupy Malaya and the other Japanese-held areas at once. Eventually, however, they were all taken over and the process of rehabilitation was begun.

Malaya.
In Malaya the rubber plantations were found to be in better shape than had been generally anticipated. Considerable stocks of raw rubber were also discovered. By the end of December, some 16,500 tons had been shipped to England, and more was ready to go. The revival of the tin-mining industry was slower but was under way by the close of the year. Even before the Japanese surrender, the British had begun to formulate plans for a new political set-up in Malaya. Hitherto this area had consisted of three separate parts: the Straits Settlements (a crown colony), four federated Malay States and five unfederated ones.

Many observers felt that this anomalous, though typically British, arrangement should be overhauled in order to insure greater unity in Malaya and thereby help prepare its peoples to assume a larger share of their own government. On October 10, the Labor Secretary of State for Colonies, Mr. George Hall, speaking in the House of Commons, outlined a plan for creating a Malayan Union consisting of the States and the Straits Settlements, with Singapore left as a separate colony. Critics of this scheme pointed out that Britain had treaty relations with the various Malay rulers which had to be respected and that the mixed racial composition of the population — less than half are Malays — would make it extremely difficult to develop a common set of political interests or traditions.

North Borneo.
The liberation of North Borneo reopened the problem of how long that area would continue to be under the control of a chartered company. In August, it was officially announced that the government and the British North Borneo Company were negotiating a transfer of the colony's administration from the latter to the former.

Burma.
A brighter political future was also promised to Burma, where civil government was restored in October. Upon this occasion King George, in a communication to the governor of Burma, stated that "Burma shall at the earliest possible moment attain complete self-government as a member of the British Commonwealth." He declared that later on there would be elections for a House of Representatives with a responsible ministry and a new constitution.

Ceylon.
Ceylon also experienced constitutional growing pains during the year. In January, there arrived a commission, headed by Lord Soulbury, which had been sent out to investigate the possibility of confering more self-government on the island. Its sessions ran from January 22 to March 13, during which time much testimony was taken despite a virtual boycott by the Ceylon State Council. In Ceylon, as in India, the constitutional problem is complicated by the presence of various self-contained religious and racial communities. On the State Council a Sinhalese majority prevailed, and in the spring this body passed a bill providing for Dominion status — which the British Government had already refused to grant.

On October 9, the report of the Soulbury Commission was released. It proposed certain steps for getting the island ready for Dominion status through the practice of wide self-government. However, the minorities attacked it as not insuring them adequate protection. On October 31, the British Government announced that a constitution along the lines of the Soulbury report would be conferred as an interim step. The Ceylon State Council accepted this proposal by a vote of 51 to 3 on November 9.

Singapore.
September 5, at 11:30 A.M., British and Indian troops went ashore. They found the city undamaged except for the docks. (American Indiabased Superforts sank the great King George V dock on February 1.) A British Military Administration was set up, and the Japanese were put to work on the waterfront. It was found that the Japanese had cultivated the Malays, and persecuted the Chinese.

Surrender of Japanese.
A considerable naval force, headed by HMS Nelson, arrived on September 10, and on the 12th Itagaki made formal surrender to Mountbatten of all enemy forces in Southeast Asia. Present as witnesses were Allied representatives, the Sultan of Johore, the Maharajah of Cooch-Behar, the Bishop of Singapore, representatives of the Chinese community and former POW.
Singapore was specifically omitted from a proposal by the Colonial Secretary, October 10, for a Malayan Union and establishment of Malay citizenship. The question of ultimate union of Singapore with the state would be decided later.

Education.
The report of the Asquith Commission, July 19, on higher education in the colonies, stating that a good university was an inescapable corollary of self-government, proposed the creation of a University of Malaya based on the King Edward VII Medical College and Raffles College. Until its degrees acquired reputation, preparation would be for a degree from the University of London.
A sequel to the defeat of 1942 was the inquiry begun in Australia in November into the ethics of the escape of Lt. General H. Gordon Bennett on February 15 and 16, 1942.

West Indies.
Finally, in the fall of 1945, and after its contents could no longer be distorted by Nazi propaganda, the British Government published the report of the Royal Commission which investigated West Indian conditions just before the war. The Commission's recommendations had been made public in February, 1940, and had been instrumental in getting Parliament to vote the Colonial Development and Welfare Act of that same year. The Commission's Report, with its wealth of information on the islands' economic and social problems, was a landmark in British colonial policy.

In order to carry out the terms of the 1940 Act, there had been created the office of Comptroller of the West Indies Development and Welfare Department, occupied by Sir Frank Stockdale. Up to July, 1945, grants of £21,500,000 had been made to various colonies for development and welfare, of which one-third went to the West Indies. This represented 291 out of the 497 schemes approved for the whole empire.

Anglo-American Caribbean Commission.
The size of the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission was altered during the year by adding one more member for each side, thus increasing each delegation from three to four. The new American seat was filled by Mr. Ralph Bunche, a Negro who was currently serving as Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs in the State Department. The British delegation was to be reshuffled so as to include two non-official West Indian members.

Political Federation Proposed.
One of the recommendations of the Royal Commission had been that political federation should be one of the objectives of British policy in the West Indies. Colonel Stanley disclosed in June that he had circulated a dispatch among the governors of Britain's eight Caribbean colonies in which he stated that the Government favored the development of federation only if there were a popular demand for it from within the colonies themselves. He was opposed to any attempt to force it on the West Indian peoples against their will. The ultimate aim of such federation would be, he declared, full self-government within the British Commonwealth. He suggested the possibility that perhaps two federations, one for the eastern and one for the western group, might be preferable, and that the Bahama Islands might choose to remain outside of either one. Indeed, on July 3, the Bahamas House of Assembly unanimously rejected the federation proposed. Elsewhere in the West Indies federation met with greater approval.

Caribbean Labor Conference.
In September, a Caribbean Labor Conference met in Barbados and adopted a draft constitution for a new organization to be called the Caribbean Labor Congress and to include representatives of trade unions, cooperative societies and Socialist political bodies in the colonies. The Conference came out strongly for federation and for a number of economic and social reform measures, including the establishment of a West Indian university. This latter suggestion had the express support of the Secretary of State for Colonies in the Labor Government. It was generally agreed that Jamaica, the most populous of the colonies, should be the seat of such an institution.

Jamaica.
In Jamaica, the new liberalized constitution of 1944 was on trial. As Colonel Stanley remarked in Kingston early in January, it was an experiment which might affect the future of all colonial peoples. In April, the Jamaican Government released a report on economic conditions prepared by a special committee chosen to investigate the problem. While recommending various social security measures, it also emphasized the importance of increasing production through harder and more efficient work. Another committee, reporting late in the summer, made a number of suggestions for improving Jamaican agriculture, including the establishment of an island Land Authority. Some idea of the wretched living conditions of the great mass of Jamaicans was given by census figures showing that nearly half of the island's 322,000 dwellings were classified as bad. For example, only 10 per cent had water closets, 18 per cent were without any toilet facilities at all, and less than one-half of one per cent had inside washing facilities.

Bahamas.
The Duke of Windsor resigned as Governor and Commander-in-Chief in the Bahamas, it was officially stated in a Colonial Office announcement on March 15. Thus came to an end his nearly five-year tenure of office. Later in the same month, he expounded to the Nassau Chamber of Commerce a fourpoint program for the economic and social rehabilitation of the islands.

West Africa.
Some 200,000 men from British West Africa served in Britain's armed forces during the war, many of them in the Burma campaign of 1945. The West African colonies also played a vital part in Allied strategy by providing sites for airfields, new roads, improved railway facilities, and antimalaria drainage projects to protect the health of the Allied forces serving along the trans-African air route to the Middle East and India.

West African Council.
As a means of carrying on the coordination among the four colonies which had been developed during the war, the Secretary of State for Colonies, Mr. George Hall, stated in October that a West African Council was to be set up consisting of the four colonial governors and with its seat in the Gold Coast. Presumably a more rapid and productive economic development of the West African colonies would be one of the objectives of this Council. In Nigeria, it was planned to spend £40,000,000 on general development work during the next ten years, with lesser sums earmarked for the smaller colonies. In an article in the London Times for October 31, Lord Balfour, former Resident Minister in West Africa, drew attention to the imminent danger that Nigeria would lose its market for palm oil and kernels to Malaya, Dutch East Indies and the Belgian Congo, unless its growers improved the quality of their product.

Nigeria.
A White Paper containing proposals for revising and liberalizing the constitution of Nigeria was published on March 5. The unofficial (i.e., native) members of the Nigerian Legislative Council expressed general approval of the proposals in a debate that took place on the 23rd.

Cocoa.
Approximately one-half of the world's supply of cocoa comes from British West Africa, notably the Gold Coast. Early in the year, American cocoa importers protested against the British Government's announced intention to control the prices and marketing of the West African crop. This policy was later scrapped by the Churchill Cabinet. However, considerable anxiety was felt after the Labor victory in July that the new Cabinet would nationalize the cocoa industry. In mid-September, a report from Accra stated that the imperial government was going to buy the 1945-46 crop through the West African Produce Control Board at an increased price. In November, American importers were complaining about the way the British authorities were holding up cocoa shipments from West Africa.

East Africa.

East African troops distinguished themselves in the Ethiopian, Mediterranean and Burma campaigns. But with the end of hostilities, the problem of how to reintegrate these men into their African communities was causing considerable anxiety in colonial circles. In East Africa, tribal life has been breaking down without there being offered to the natives any satisfactory alternative. In southern and central Africa, the Bantu who have become dissatisfied with tribal life can go into industrial work in the cities or into the mines. There is no such outlet in East Africa and some observers feared that the stress of postwar readjustments might jeopardize the functioning of indirect rule. In a few cases native Africans had been able to utilize their war experience to learn trades and to aspire to becoming artisans and shopkeepers — aspirations which caused much anxiety among the Indian population who had hitherto largely monopolized these occupations.
Kenya.

In Kenya, a scheme for decentralizing the administration was published during the summer, and met with an acceptance "in principle" from the Legislative Council of that colony. However, the Indians opposed it as being inadequate, and both the natives and Arabs expressed disappointment at not being given larger representations. The scheme did not alter fundamentally the set-up under which Kenya has been controlled by its very small European minority.
Uganda.

Early in 1945 there were riots and a general strike in Uganda, which were put down with speed and energy by the British authorities. On September 5, "Prime Minister" Martin Luther Nsibirwa of the Buganda Kingdom was assassinated just outside the Cathedral at Kampala. On October 2, Sir John Hathorn Hall, the Governor of Uganda, swore in three regents who were to serve while the young Kabaka (king) was studying in Cambridge. He took this occasion to say that the assassination of the Prime Minister had cast a slur on all Buganda since it was not just the work of one man but of a number of traitors and self-seekers. Later in the month the Colonial Office announced a new departure by appointing three native Africans to the Protectorate Legislative Council for Uganda.

For a number of years many of the European inhabitants of East Africa have been desirous of political amalgamation — or the "closer union" — of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. They were therefore disappointed when Major-General Sir Philip Mitchell, Governor of Kenya, declared on November 6 that his recent discussions in London had not included this suggestion and that he did not believe it could be considered "practical politics today." He also reported that there were many applications from members of the British armed forces who wished to settle in Kenya, and that the London authorities had recently approved the admission of an additional 500 new farmers to the Kenya highlands.

Central Africa.
Central African Council.

In British Central Africa, progress towards amalgamation was made early in April when the Colonial Office announced the creation of a Standing Central African Council. The chairman of this body was to be the Governor of Southern Rhodesia, with the Governors of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia serving as ex-officio members. In addition, the three latter officials were to appoint three members each to serve two-year terms. The first meeting of this Council took place at Salisbury on April 24. The Chairman, Sir Campbell Tait, asserted that, while the government of Southern Rhodesia favored the amalgamation of the three territories, the authorities in London believed that such a step was not practicable for the moment. The Council, he added, should not be regarded as the halfway house to amalgamation, though it could provide a foundation on which the fullest cooperation between the three territories could later be built.
Southern Rhodesia.

In Southern Rhodesia, the gold mining industry reported that its production was handicapped by high taxes and labor scarcity. In April, Mr. Danziger, the Minister of Finance, announced that the gold premium tax would be lifted in order to help the industry mine lower grade ore. The authorities at Salisbury also expressed concern at the attempt by the United States to persuade Britain to reduce the imperial preference on tobacco, since this product stood second in value among Southern Rhodesia's exports. Otherwise the picture for the colony's agriculture and stock-raising was bright. Earlier in the summer, a commission which had been appointed in April, 1944, to investigate native affairs, reported that it had found a widespread lack of leadership among the natives. It therefore suggested measures for bolstering the authority and prestige of the chiefs and thus curbing "indiscipline."
Northern Rhodesia.

In Northern Rhodesia, the first session of the Legislative Council, with an unofficial majority, met during the summer. On at least one occasion this majority defeated a government proposal concerning war pensions by a vote of 12 to 8. Even so, representatives of the small European population in the colony expressed disappointment at not being accorded greater self-government. One member even urged that Northern Rhodesia have a representative in the House of Commons in London, comparable to the colonial representation in the French Parliament at Paris.
Nyasaland.

In Nyasaland, an African Provincial Council was set up in each of the two provinces composed of chiefs and other responsible African members. Its function was to facilitate consultation by the colonial authorities and to give expression to African opinion. A grant of £345,000 under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act was made in order to provide for a five-year plan of educational expansion in the colony. Other local funds were also set aside for the social and economic development of the native population. The July report of the British Central Africa Company showed that the colony's tobacco, tea, soybean and sisal crops were all becoming increasingly productive.
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