1925: The Establishment of the Dominions Office and the Locarno Treaties

Abstract

The year 1925 marks a watershed in post-war British history, and most of this book is devoted to the years which followed. The forces making for such a truncation require some brief reflections. We have already seen that a ‘Commonwealth problem’ had crystallised by the mid-1920s. This general development roughly coincided with the return of Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1924, an event which marked the reconstitution of traditional, anti-coalitionist conservatism. Leopold Amery’s influence within the new political arrangements meant that he could succeed in his objective of cutting the Dominions Department out of the Colonial Office structure and setting it up as a separate office; and as there is no more certain method of perpetuating a problem than to establish a body to look after it, the Dominion—Commonwealth was bound in subsequent years to loom large in official thinking. But 1925 was a critical point in international affairs also. The Locarno Treaties were thought to have finally liquidated the war mood in Europe, a mood which had shown a macabre resilience even into the 1920s. But Britain had to pay a price for this achievement. Locarno marks the point at which Britain recognised a responsibility to police West European stability; after this, no easy definition existed as to where ‘British interests’ began and ended. This chapter attempts to examine these developments and their imperial significance.