Letters to the Editor
'The Establishment' Sir Robert Boothby, MP, Colm Brogan, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Harold Sorel; Mary M. Devitt, Hon. David Astor, Henry Newnham, Hugh Trevor-Roper, P. H. Sutton, William Douglas Home Baldwin and Rearmament J. C. Maxwell
'THE ESTABLISHMENT'
SIR,-1 would like to make it plain that I was not attacking Lady Violet Bonham Carter in my letter last week. Her loyalty to her father's old friend and, supporter, the late >Sir Donald Maclean, seems to me to have been characteris- tic and admirable—even if events have since proved that it was misplaced when applied to Melinda.
My dart was aimed at the pre-war 'Establish- ment."Who were its members?' I have since been asked. 'Which of them gathered at All Souls? We, the outsiders, would like to know.'
A volume is required to answer these ques- tions adequately, and I am therefore delighted to learn that, somewhere and at some time, Mr. Fairlie proposes to develop his argument about 'the Establishment' at length. As one who has bumped into it, on and off, for thirty years—and seldom emerged unscathed—all I can do is to jot down a few notes for his con- sideration.
It was never confined, as is commonly sup- posed, to what used to be known as the 'Upper Ten.' Nor did it embrace all the Cabinet Ministers of the day. It always included the reigning Archbishop of Canterbury, Editor of The Times, Governor of the Bank of England and Secretary to the Cabinet. Indeed, I would say that, in the years between the wars, Dr. Lang, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson and Mr. Montagu Norman were its most powerful members— probably because their tenure of office was more prolonged and assured than that of any- one else.
Take, for example, Mr. Norman himself. He was to be found at Mr. Baldwin's side when he 'negotiated the American debt settlement of 1923, and then forced an agonised Prime Minister (Bonar Law) to accept it; and again at Mr. Snowden's side when 'he persisted in clinging to the gold standard at an untenable parity of exchange, and introduced the disastrous 'Economy Budget' of 1931 — de- scribed by Keynes as 'replete with folly and injustice.' Under his auspices the City of Lon- don financed the economic recovery of Ger- many, by means of lavish loans (subsequently repudiated); and simultaneously he gave his support to a policy of industrial restriction in this country during a period when we were suffering from massive unemployment. One of the most formidable of contemporary statesmen wrote to me in 1932: 'Surely it will become a public necessity to get rid of Mon- tagu Norman. No man has ever been stultified as he has been in his fourteen years' policy.' It was a public necessity. ,But it could not be done because he was a leading member of 'the Establishment.' Here was a classic example of power without responsibility. And this is the gravamen of the charge against 'the Estab- lishment' as such.
Some of them held high office. Others were more than content to influence the course of events from positions of comparative ob- scurity — beyond the public eye. All of them were interested in the exercise of power; but, in the main, they were selfless and rather too consciously high-minded. Of the politicians, some were 'naturals' like Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald who, after many years in the political and social wilderness, leapt into 'the Establishment' with undisguised joy. Churchill, in the years before the war, was its leading opponent, rigidly excluded until, by a strange quirk of fortune, the sudden advent of Armageddon made him the head of it.
That the policy of this country in the decade before the past war was decisively shaped by 'the Establishment' is not to be denied. They took advantage of the heaven-sent illness of Lloyd George and self-imposed ostracism of Churchill to form the sb-called 'National' Government in 1931. And, in so doing, rightly judged the mood of the country, for, in the words of Sir Lewis Namier : 'There was no call for experiment and ad- venture, for bold, imaginative leadership, for greatness. . . . Sated and sophisticated, civi- lised, sensitive and war-weary, the demo- cracies had a conscience and no faith — the most dangerous condition for individuals and nations.
My complaint against the pre-war 'Estab- lishment' is simply that, on balance, they were wrong—above all, in failing to discharge the primary duty of any governing authority by securing the safety of the realm, and in the policy of appeasement. The Fellows of All Souls included Dr. Lang, Lord Halifax, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, Sir John Simon, Mr. Lionel Curtis, Sir Donald Somervell and Mr. R. H. Brand—all recognised members of 'the Estab- lishment.' I cannot say, because I do not know, which side each of them took on the great controversial issues of the day; but it is not difficult to imagine the desperate and losing post-prandial actions that must have been con- ducted by Mr. Amery.
A final word. The members of 'the Estab- lishment' had no need to dine together in order to achieve their ends. They were in telepathic as well as telephonic communication with one another; which leads one to the conclusion that, in the post-war world, political power should be held exclusively by those who are directly responsible to Parliament, and seen to exercise it.—Yours faithfully,
House of Commons
ROBERT BOOTHBY
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