Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office 1905 - 1908 Ronald Hyam
(Macmillan 120s)
R.I.P.
IAIN MACLEOD
I cannot imagine why three of the dullest years in the history of the Colonial Office (of blessed memory) hold such attraction for Ronald Hyam. This is his first book and he also wrote his PhD dissertation on much the same sub- ject. The facts are, surely, that the Earl of Elgin was a worthy, silent, second-rate Secre- tary of State and that nothing much happened in those years, which have achieved a post- humous interest because the junior minister was Winston Churchill in his first and only post below Cabinet rank.
Dr Hyam has had full access to official papers and to Lord Elgin's private documents, but not to the Churchill papers. The result is somewhat uneven: really excellent chapters on the work of the Colonial Office jostle with a determined but unsuccessful effort to rescue I,ord Elgin from his well-deserved obscurity, and with some scrappy reflections on Churchill.
The ninth Earl of Elgin was suggested as Viceroy of India in 1893 by Gladstone. Queen Victoria correctly observed that he would not want the post and, for a variety of reasons, 'would not command the respect which is necessary to that office.' He was, nevertheless, duly appointed and in his period as Viceroy from 1894 to 1899 had no difficulty in proving that the venerable monarch knew a thing or two more than her ministers. Virtually all his contemporaries, political opponents and politi- cal friends alike, thought him a dull dog: and so he was. This part of Dr Hyam's apologia is not only unconvincing, it is at times baffling. What does one make of the observation: 'He
disapproved of the Boer War but was too patriotic to denounce it'; accompanied by a footnote: 'This is necessarily a speculation, an argument from silence'? It seems to me a very remarkable deduction, but one that suggests great scope for future historians to prove or disprove anything they choose. It is perhaps particularly inappropriate to the ninth Earl of Elgin who, whenever he possibly could, main- tained silence on each and every subject.
The author manages also to present those years as a watershed between empire and commonwealth. It is not easy to think of three other peacetime years in the first sixty years of Colonial Office history this century which have less claim to such a title. However, when one finally breaks through the crust to the book itself, the chapters on South Africa in the aftermath of the Boer War, on the partition of East and West Africa. and on the 1907 Colonial Conference are superbly done.
As a former Secretary of State for the Colonies, I found Dr Hyam's work on the minutes written by the two ministers fascinat- ing, although I think he is inclined to read too much into them. A minute by the head of a department is usually an order for action; it is not written with the scrutiny of future historians in mind. Churchill may sometimes have written minutes with one eye cocked on history, although it is more probable that it was his sense either of fun or rhetoric which led him into some of his purple passages. In any event, the rest of us are not Churchills. The closer the relationship between ministers, the briefer will be the minutes that pass. Cer- tainly I tended to write very short minutes, if indeed I wrote anything at all. At the Colonial Office my Minister of State was the Earl of Perth. He knew my views on African problems exactly and shared them. It was only on rare occasions that I disagreed. If I did, my minute to David Perth would be perhaps: 'I do not agree. Let us talk if you wish.' I would then expect him to accept my decision on most occasions, but equally expect him to take it up again if he felt deeply on it. Minutes, then, are unreliable guides unless one knows the dialogue that flowed with them. Each office has its store of legendary and real minutes written by its founding fathers and Dr Hyam records some enchanting examples of the young Churchill at work. Perhaps I can record a minute written (I think) by a most distinguished official of the Colonial Office a few years before my time. The subject was the accounts of the Colonial Development Corporation and the minute ran: "Lord Reith," I said, "is hanging out Lord Trefgarne's blanchissage." ' When Asquith took over as Prime Minister he could hardly wait to get rid of Elgin. Ronald Hyam, with what is I fear an engaging innocence, reads much too much into the tributes sent to Elgin on his dismissal. One does not in such a letter observe that he never opened his mouth in Cabinet and took little or no part in defending the government in the House of Lords. One does not comment that he was not master in his own department, difficult though that may have been with a Churchill as one's junior. De mortuis guides your pen and you recall only kindly memories. 'I thought I saw a balance-sheet disclosing • profits large, I looked again and saw it was a Socialist mirage: In fact, very few of his senior colleagues even bothered to write. Elgin returned to his native heath and lived the useful, kindly, humdrum life he should never have left. It is a pity even now to disturb him.
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