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By Root 954 0

and what pains there were could best be described as 'growing pains'. In July 1942 Lord Elibank had once again begun another debate on the question of the future unity of the British Empire. Together with Viscounts Bennett and Bledisloe, these grandees of the 'Imperial Idea' detailed what they considered the post-war world might hold. Cranborne was called upon as secretary of state for the colonies to respond for the government and employed a familial relationship to put across his argument. He told the Peers that during a family's early days, 'children are young and inexperienced, and not able to face problems themselves'. This meant that they had to be protected and educated but as they grew up they could 'begin to take their own line—to think for themselves'. Eventually they would become independent entities, independent personalities and, finally, self-supporting. 'They are no longer dependent upon their parents, but they remain members of the family still bound to each other by ties of affection, and still having a responsibility to help and protect each other.' He concluded his passionate account with the assertion that the Empire was 'neither dead nor even going into decline'. Instead, with sensible and sympathetic treatment, it would emerge 'wiser and more united than it has ever been in its long history'.16

His new position left him well placed to focus on what he considered to be the most critical areas of deficiency blighting the relationship. Cranborne had written to the high commissioner in Ottawa in early summer 1942 detailing his thinking on Imperial issues. He believed that relations between Britain and the Dominions needed to be closer and the job being undertaken by MacDonald and his counterparts in the other overseas capitals was 'invaluable'. The danger as he saw it was that there were 'centrifugal tendencies' and these increased the strain on future unity so much so he believed that its structure was on the point of collapse.17 He was also concerned about the way in which the Dominions thought of the Colonial Empire. Commenting on a report on the subject prepared by the DO he noted that it was an aspect of Imperial policy that had been long neglected. As he went on:

So long as the Dominions regard the Colonies as our private property they will take no interest in them—although, as a matter of fact, they are just as much involved as we ourselves. We must manage by hook or by crook to make it clear to them before the end of this war that the British Empire is not a number of very loosely connected units; it is an inter-dependent whole; and that the loss of or even unsatisfactory condition in any portion of it must affect not only the prosperity but the international influence of the whole. The Australians I feel, are particularly bad about this. They want all the advantages of the Imperial connection without any responsibilities. We must by some means manage to make them realise that this is not possible, and that it is not even to their own interests that they should divorce themselves from the affairs of the Empire as a whole.18

There seemed to be a growing view that the Colonial Empire was being overlooked and a wish to break down stereotypical images of what the English were about. A joke repeated in the Empire Review in January 1943 seemed to say as much: 'We all know the story of the six men wrecked on a desert island. Two Scotsmen, two Irishmen, and two Englishmen. The two Scotsmen immediately went over to a cave and formed a Caledonian society. The two Irishmen began to fight and the two Englishmen walked up and down the beach waiting for somebody to introduce them.' The writer's comment on this was that the rather 'snooty' impression was misplaced and it was actually shyness that was the problem. The article's message was that the future lay not with the Old World but with the New, those states that had been colonized by Britons.19 Throughout the 1930s Empire and colonization had been a largely marginalized issue in the British Labour Party; not until the war years would ideas of long-term