Abstract
Sandys made a leading contribution to the management of decolonisation in the early 1960s as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and the Colonies in the Governments of Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home. Harold Wilson’s victory in 1964 was followed by a period of dynamic ‘post-officio’ activism for Sandys, winning him considerable popular support as he mounted a serious Rightist threat to Edward Heath’s leadership. During the late 1960s Sandys drew on a distinctively colonial blend of racial fears, and dreams of ‘Great Power’ status in his campaigns against withdrawal from Aden, majority rule in Rhodesia, race relations legislation and, most effectively, mass immigration from the Commonwealth. Sandys also exploited his contacts with colonial and Commonwealth politicians and British civil servants to lobby Harold Wilson’s Government, with considerable success. His campaigns mirrored those of earlier Tory ‘die hard’ rebels, such as his father-in-law Winston Churchill.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
D. Brinkley ‘Dean Acheson and the ‘Special Relationship’: The West Point Speech of December 1962.’ The Historical Journal 33, 3 (1990), pp. 601.
- 2.
J. Darwin Britain and Decolonisation: The retreat from empire in the post-war world (Basingstoke, 1988); J. Gallagher The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1982); D. Low Eclipse of empire (Cambridge, 1991); Hyam Britain’s Declining Empire.
- 3.
W. R. Louis and R. Robinson ‘The Imperialism of Decolonisation’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, 3 (1994), pp. 462–511; Darwin The Empire Project, p. 654; see also H. Brasted, C. Bridge and J. Kent ‘Cold War , Informal Empire and the Transfer of Power: some “paradoxes” of British Decolonisation Resolved?’ in M. Dockrill (ed.) Europe within the Global System 1938–1960: Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany: From Great Powers to Regional Powers (1995), p. 2.
- 4.
W. R. Louis ‘Public Enemy Number One: the British Empire in the dock at the United Nations , 1957–1971’ in M. Lynn (ed.) The British Empire in 1950s: Retreat or Revival? (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 186–213; W. Kaiser ‘To join or not to join: the “Appeasement” policy of Britain’s first EEC application’, in B. Brivati and H. Jones (eds.) From Reconstruction to integration: Britain and Europe since 1945 (Leicester, 1993), p. 149; Hyam Britain’s Declining Empire, p. xiv.
- 5.
Low Eclipse of Empire, pp. 262–263; F. Heinlein British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963: scrutinising the official mind (London, 2002), p. 238; B. Porter The Lion’s share: a short history of British imperialism, 1850–1995 (London, 1996), p. 342; D. Anderson Histories of the Hanged (London, 2005).
- 6.
Heinlein British Government Policy.
- 7.
P. Murphy Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford, 1995); see also D. Horowitz ‘Attitudes of British Conservatives towards decolonisation in Africa’ African Affairs 69 (1970) for an earlier analysis of Party opinion.
- 8.
P. Murphy Alan Lennox-Boyd : A Biography (London, 1999); R. Shepherd Iain Macleod : A Biography (London, 1994).
- 9.
P. Murphy Monarchy and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government and the Post-War Commonwealth (Oxford, 2013), p. 103.
- 10.
N. Owen ‘The Conservative Party and Indian Independence, 1945–1947’ Historical Journal 46, 2 (2003), pp. 403–436; R. Toye Churchill ’s Empire: the World That Made Him and the World He Made (Basingstoke, 2010); Murphy Party Politics and Decolonization, p. 26; S. Ball ‘Banquo’s Ghost: Lord Salisbury , Harold Macmillan , and the High Politics of Decolonization, 1957–1963’ Twentieth Century British History 16, 1 (2005), pp. 74–102.
- 11.
J. Darwin The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009).
- 12.
R. Hyam Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation 1918–1968 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 404–405.
- 13.
Murphy Party Politics and Decolonization, pp. 23–24; Ball ‘Banquo’s Ghost’, pp. 74–102.
- 14.
D. Goldsworthy Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961 (Oxford, 1971), p. 383; N. Owen The British Left and India : Metropolitan anti-imperialism 1885–1947 (Oxford, 2007); N. Owen ‘Four straws in the Wind: metropolitan anti-imperialism, January – February 1960’ in L. Butler & S. Stockwell (eds.) The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 116–139.
- 15.
S. Howe Anticolonialism in British Politics: the Left and the end of empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 320–322.
- 16.
P. Cain & A. Hopkins British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction 1914–1990 (London, 1993), pp. 297–315; Murphy Party Politics and Decolonization, pp. 117–119; S. Stockwell The business of decolonisation: British business strategies in the Gold Coast (Oxford, 2000), p. 232; and in the same vein Hyam Britain’s Declining Empire, pp. 404–405.
- 17.
M. Collins ‘Decolonisation and the “Federal Moment”‘ Diplomacy and Statecraft 24, 1 (2013), pp. 21–40; of Cooper’s various interventions see particularly ‘Alternatives to Nationalism in French Africa, 1945–1960’, in J. Dülffer and M. Frey (eds.) Elites and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 110–137; M. Shipway ‘The Wind of Change and the Tides of History: de Gaulle, Macmillan and the Beginnings of the French Decolonizing Endgame’ in L. Butler and S. Stockwell (eds.) The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke 2013), pp. 180–194; see also L. Butler and S. Stockwell (eds.) ‘Introduction’ in The Wind of Change, pp. 10–12.
- 18.
For example, R. Maxon Kenya ’s Independence Constitution: constitution-making and the end of empire (Madison, 2011)
- 19.
A. Kirk-Greene On Crown Service: a history of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services 1837–1997 (London, 1999) and Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858–1966 (Basingstoke, 2000); R. Robinson ‘Andrew Cohen and the Transfer of Power in Tropical Africa, 1940–1951’ in W. H. Morris-Jones and G. Fischer (eds.) Decolonization and After (London, 1980), pp. 50–72; R. Robinson ‘Sir Andrew Cohen: Proconsul of African nationalism’ in L. H. Gann and P. Duignan (eds.) African Proconsuls: European Governors in Africa, pp. 353–364 (London, 1978); J. Darwin ‘The Central African Emergency, 1959’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21 (1993), pp. 217–234; see also C. Sanger Malcolm MacDonald (Montreal, 1995) and Goldsworthy Colonial Issues in British Politics, pp. 52–53.
- 20.
Heinlein British Government Policy.
- 21.
A. Sampson Anatomy of Britain (London, 1962); P. Hennessy Whitehall (London, 2001); K. Theakston The Labour Party and Whitehall (London, 1992), pp. 15–19, 32–45.
- 22.
Hyam Britain’s Declining Empire, p. 407.
- 23.
J. Garner The Commonwealth Office (London, 1978); W. Kirkman Unscrambling an Empire: a critique of British colonial policy, 1956–1966 (London, 1966).
- 24.
The value of such ‘subaltern’ official studies is exemplified by P. Hinchcliffe, J. Ducker and M. Holt Without Glory in Arabia: British retreat from Aden (London, 2006).
- 25.
S. Stockwell ‘Exporting Britishness: Decolonisation in Africa, the British State and its Clients’ in M. Jeronimo and A. Costa Pinto (eds.) Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons (Basingstoke, 2015), pp. 148–177; D. Branch Kenya : Between Hope and Despair, 1963–2011 (Yale, 2011).
- 26.
Branch Kenya : Between Hope and Despair; C. Hornsby Kenya: A History Since Independence (London, 2012).
- 27.
A. Whipple ‘Revisiting the “Rivers of Blood ” Controversy: Letters to Enoch Powell ’ Journal of British Studies 48, 3 (2009), pp. 717–737 and my own work on ‘India , Post-Imperialism and the Origins of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech’, pp. 669–687 provide (different) samples of approximately 2.5% of the collection.
- 28.
R. Hyam & W. R. Louis (eds.) The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1957–1964 (British Documents on the End of Empire) A:4 (London, 2000); P. Murphy (ed.) Central Africa (British Documents on the End of Empire) B:9 (London, 2005); S. Ashton & W. R. Louis (eds.) East of Suez and the Commonwealth 1964-1971 (British Documents on the End of Empire) A:5 (London, 2004).
- 29.
R. Drayton ‘The Archives of Britain’s Colonial Rulers’ letter to The Times 19/4/2012; this conclusion was also reached by an Institute of Commonwealth Studies/ King’s College London conference on the ‘Hidden Histories of Decolonization’ held on 20/2/15.
- 30.
Leader’s Consultative Committee Minutes (LCC 1/2/1–4), Conservative Party Archive (CPA), Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
- 31.
See author’s forthcoming article on Kenyan motives for the ‘Kenyanisation’ policy, 1963–1968. Branch Kenya : Between Hope and Despair notes the problems of archival research in Nairobi, p. 20.
- 32.
Notably lacking in the two most significant recent works on postcolonial Kenya : Branch Kenya: Between Hope and Despair and Hornsby Kenya: A History.
- 33.
S. Potter Broadcasting Empire: The BBC and the British World, 1922–1970 (Oxford, 2012).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brooke, P. (2018). Introduction. In: Duncan Sandys and the Informal Politics of Britain’s Late Decolonisation. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65160-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65160-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65159-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65160-6
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)