Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [143]
The government of Burma set up a commission to investigate the incident while Dorman-Smith urged London to take a hard line against nationalist leaders whose speeches stirred up popular demonstrations of the sort that ended with the Tantabin firing. Once again he seems to have had Aung San in mind. When news of the incident had broken, Aung San put all the blame on the British government. According to Aung San’s agreement with Mountbatten at Kandy some eight months previously, members of the BNA were to be absorbed into the British Burma Army and more men would be recruited to turn it into a truly national force. But the British had not even begun to honour this pledge. Many former BNA personnel were unemployed and resentful, while village youths were pressing to enlist. Aung San was uncomfortably aware that people of this sort could easily shift allegiance to clandestine communist cadres unless the nationalist elements of the AFPFL moved fast. Besides, he asked, why was drilling by the volunteers illegal in the first place? Who had deemed it so?131
As it turned out, Aung San had already won the game. Attlee had finally begun to take a closer interest in Burma, aware that a flare-up there would do enormous damage if it came at the same time as mass demonstrations in India and Malaya. He had decided that Dorman-Smith was becoming erratic. This was not without reason. In early May, shortly after resuming his demands for the arrest of Aung San, the governor made an apparent volte-face by holding out the possibility of recruiting some new blood into his old-fashioned executive council, perhaps even Aung San himself. He also finally conceded the need to review the White Paper. By 7 May Attlee had concluded that the governor ‘changes his policy from day to day’ and was ‘losing his grip’.132 He would have to be relieved on the grounds of ill health. Attlee’s conclusion was only confirmed by Dorman-Smith’s vacillation and indecision after the Tantabin shootings. Blowing hot and cold, he first called for strong action against those who had fomented the agitation, only to reverse his policy in favour of a general amnesty for these and other political prisoners, a recommendation that infuriated senior police officers and civil servants.
On 14 June Dorman-Smith’s recall was made public and Sir Henry Knight became acting governor pending the arrival of Sir Hubert Rance, who would take over in August. Knight was an impeccable old India hand who had previously been acting governor in both Madras and Bombay. This change in personnel reflected a much deeper policy switch, for Rance had been Mountbatten’s right-hand man. The conservatives in the Burmese civil service were appalled. As Dorman-Smith left, Frederick Pearce, counseller to the governor, sent him a note of commiseration. He had been right all along, Pearce said. He had been unfairly made to carry the can in 1942 because military morale was too fragile to be told the truth. He had tried to defend the Burmese civil administration against the false accusations of the war correspondents. Finally, his policy had been undermined ‘by the wilfully blind conceptions and pre-emptive conclusions of that Heaven-inspired politician Dicky M.’133 For Pearce himself, the bitterest blows were to find himself accused of mismanaging the military administration and having his old boss replaced by Rance. Pearce hinted and Dorman-Smith believed that Mountbatten was covertly responsible for the governor’s sacking. They were probably right. True, Mount-batten had not been Dorman-Smith’s only handicap – a Chamberlain appointee was never likely to reach a meeting of minds with Labour ministers who disliked his politics and personal style, and Attlee quickly lost patience with him – but it does seem likely that Mount-batten played a key role in ejecting Dorman-Smith