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David Dutton Review of Richard S. Grayson, TCBH 17.4 H-Diplo Article Review: Dutton on Grayson, TCBH 17.4 (2006) Article REVIEW Richard S. Grayson. “Leo Amery’s Imperialist Alternative to Appeasement in the 1930s,” Twentieth Century British History 17.4 (2006): 489-515. Reviewed by David Dutton, Liverpool University Published by H-Diplo on 24May 2007 n the early days of the historiography of the 1930s, when a comforting exactitude and simplicity attached to the respective positions of `appeasers` and `anti-appeasers`, Leopold Amery occupied a Iclear, if largely unexplored, place among the ranks of the virtuous. He certainly did the right things at the key moments. Abstaining on the vote at the end of the Commons debate on the Munich Settlement of September 1938, he was in the company of men such as Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. Then, at the outbreak of war a year later, with Churchill and Eden hamstrung in their potential criticism by membership of Chamberlain’s wartime government, Amery assumed the leadership of the so-called Eden Group – the `Glamour Boys` as the whips dubbed them – a collection of around two dozen largely younger Tory MPs who viewed Chamberlain’s continuing premiership with wary suspicion. Indeed, he gave that group a backbone and a purpose which the more cautious Eden would have been unlikely to provide. Under Amery the revamped Eden group came to the conclusion, which it had not done before September 1939, that Chamberlain would have to be removed and that Churchill was the man to take his place. Finally, in the famous Norwegian debate of 7-8 May 1940, it was Amery who delivered the coup de grace, precipitating the fall of Chamberlain and his replacement by Churchill. Beginning his speech in an almost empty chamber, Amery gradually sensed that his audience was warming to his message and decided to use the devastating words that Oliver Cromwell had delivered to the Long Parliament three centuries before. `You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!` Then, when Churchill formed his new government, Amery got his just reward and served for the remainder of the war as Secretary of State for India, before suffering the fate that befell so many Conservatives at the General Election of 1945, losing his Sparkbrook seat to Labour. But, as Richard Grayson suggests, just as we now know that `appeasement` is too crude an umbrella term to encompass the subtly differing policies and attitudes of the so-called `Guilty Men`, so too we need a more nuanced approach in trying to define the positions of those traditionally placed in the opposing camp. Indeed, in Amery’s case, any claim to `anti-appeasement` as traditionally understood is difficult to sustain. Amery clearly favoured the appeasement of Japan in the Far East and of Italy in Africa, a view which assumes particular significance when it is appreciated that these countries posed threats to Britain in areas which Amery thought more important than Europe, threats in fact to Britain’s position as an Imperial power. Furthermore, his opposition to the Munich settlement was far from unqualified. What he objected to , he said, was `not the policy itself, but … adopting a very different policy up to the last moment and then abandoning it under panic conditions which are only likely to increase Hitler’s annoyance`. Indeed, Amery admitted that he had been so impressed by the Prime Minister’s defence of the government’s policy in parliament that he (and Eden) had very nearly voted for it. Only a sense of obligation towards a group of younger colleagues with whom he and Eden were concerting a common line finally obliged him to abstain. At the end of the day, as Grayson admits, Amery was on the side of those who believed that Hitler could be dealt with through normal diplomatic 1 | P a g e Stable URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/reviews/PDF/Dutton-Grayson.pdf H-Diplo Article Review: Dutton on Grayson, TCBH 17.4 (2006) means, surely a crucial misunderstanding which puts him firmly on the wrong side of a key dividing line between the appeasers and their opponents. Grayson is therefore wise, in seeking to define Amery’s position, to move outside the conventional vocabulary of `appeaser` and `anti-appeaser` and to suggest that what Amery offered was an `alternative` to appeasement. His starting point was that Britain existed primarily as an imperial rather than a European power. Her aim should therefore be to develop the economic and military unity of the Empire while withdrawing from many aspects of European diplomacy. His sentiments, expressed during the First World War, would be music to the ears of even the most committed of modern Eurosceptics. `We are not a part of Europe`, he insisted, `even if the most important unit of the British community lies off the European coast`. It is the viability of this approach to which Grayson perhaps devotes insufficient attention. Ever since their involuntary commitment to the British war effort in 1914, many dominion statesmen, particularly in Canada and South Africa, had expended much energy in trying to convince imperialists such as Amery that they were not interested in an imperial foreign policy, however arrived at, even though most continued to look to Britain for their defence. In economic terms the dominions had driven a hard bargain at the Ottawa Conference of 1932. The system of imperial preference then instituted fell short of what Britain’s chief negotiator, Neville Chamberlain, would have wanted; still less did it represent the complete fulfilment of the aspirations of his father, Joseph, and the latter’s one-time acolyte, Leo Amery. So if Amery wanted the Empire to develop into a sufficiently strong unit to be able to deter any European aggressor, it is by no means clear that the dominions would have been ready to play along. Amery further hoped that the evolution of the Empire as an economic bloc would set an example to be followed in Europe, where comparable units – without British participation – would promote the stability of the continent. It is by no means clear how such a system would have worked out in practice. Would such blocs have had the necessary muscle, economic or military, to resist German control? Would the logical outcome have been the sort of Mitteleuropa sought by the Kaiser’s Germany in the last war? If so, would this have been a situation with which Amery could have lived? Was it only at the point when a Germany in control of the European landmass appeared ready to threaten Britain with invasion that Amery would have been happy to see his country re-engage with the Continent? As Alistair Parker and others have argued, the key point about policy options put forward in opposition to the line followed by the British government in the 1930s is whether they offered genuine and viable alternatives. It seems at least highly doubtful whether Amery’s `alternative to appeasement` falls into this category, ably though Grayson has set out Amery’s case. Copyright © 2007 by H-Diplo, all rights reserved. H-Diplo and H-Net permit the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, H-Diplo, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the H-Diplo Editors at [email protected]. Commissioned for H-Diplo by Diane Labrosse 2 | P a g e Stable URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/reviews/PDF/Dutton-Grayson.pdf.
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