Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [74]
Also included among the promotions was that of the Labour politician Sir Stafford Cripps, who had emerged as a favoured candidate to become Dominions secretary among certain of the high commissioners in London.73 Seen by Churchill as one of his most serious potential threats he instead became Lord Privy Seal and the Leader of the House.74 Attlee, in being confirmed officially as deputy prime minister, a role he had been effectively fulfilling for some time, was named as the new secretary of state for Dominion affairs.75 This decision marked the formal acceptance of everything that had been so passionately argued for by Cranborne and those senior members of the DO who had supported him throughout the previous 16 months. The now former minister, although apparently at one stage considered as the next possible foreign secretary, had once more been struck down by a bout of ill-health, and was instead offered the role of colonial secretary, which he gratefully accepted.76 His considerable achievements at the DO, a department into which he had breathed much needed spirit and confidence, would ensure that Bobbety would be long-remembered after his departure. It would be up to his successor to implement the changes he had sought to implement and help ensure that the Anglo-Dominion relationship prospered in the environment of an expanded global conflict. Unfortunately within the DO his replacement was seen to have neither the knowledge for his new role nor the interest, instead appearing to those who surrounded him as being 'somewhat aloof'.77
Despite the much enhanced role of the new Dominions secretary, the reaction from the high commissioners was much the same and similar to that which had been endured by Attlee's predecessors. He had greater seniority but both Bruce and Massey found him dull and taciturn, talking with him was like 'a conversation with a bronze Buddha except for the monosyllabic ejaculations which he utters occasionally'.78 Waterson was typically scornful: 'Went to the House to hear Attlee on the war situation. He treated [it] to an insulting meagre string of platitudes. The members were impatient and rather badly behaved like schoolboys when the headmaster is away and a weak under-master is temporarily in charge.' One DO civil servant told the South African that he now served under a secretary of state 'who would be ideally suited as an assistant manager of a bank in a small town in the south of England'. Bruce was so disgusted with the paucity of information still being distributed that the first week of March found him claiming to be on the point of resigning.79 To a man the Dominions' representatives were also unimpressed with the expanded War Cabinet which, in their eyes, had changed from being 'a joke' to 'a farce'.80 They were perhaps naive to expect more for, as one London journal pointed out to its readership, the changes in fact offered little that was new.81 This was the result of a 'species of arrogant negligence' for which the British prime minister was directly responsible meaning ultimately Britain would continue to rule the Commonwealth.
Militarily the situation was also showing little sign of improvement. The acrimonious dispute over whether Australian troops should be sent to Rangoon showed that the coalition was not pulling together in the face of the Japanese advance. It was a cause for extreme bitterness within the parliament in Canberra, and raised questions from the British high commissioner about who was in control, Curtin or Evatt.82 At