Wartime Tory

During the peril of national emergency, British conservatism muddled through, cooperating with policies it normally would have rejected as dangerously radical. Domestically and externally, the Tory policy was that of the Government, liberal in the extreme, giving birth to advances in British lalior legislation and imcome restriction, and making possible such phenomenal occurrences as the offer of union with France of June 1940.

But with the first Allied success it becomes obvious that Tory imperialism is far from slumbering. In the week following the landings in North Africa, events from London and New Delhi sounded the re-birth of the old order of Empire and short-sighted colonial policies. From a Prime Minister who had signed a Charter granting freedom to all post-war minorities, came the statement "I have not been made the King's First Minister to be present at the liquidation of the British Empire." From the Indian capital, only 500 miles from the Japanese front lines, came the news of the Viceroy's denial of Gandhi's request to interview a Hindu leader who came to him with the offer of a Hindu-Mohammedan agreement.

Essentially both Churchill's speech and Lord Linlithgow's refusal come as a manifestation of the same political frame of mind. The war leader emphatically pronounced that he would not be a party to any move altering the re-war colonial status quo, and the Viceroy's action was aimed at seeing that this policy could be effected without the menace of a united India. The whole chain of events clarifies a hitherto misty picture.

There were those liberals who felt that London would in no way attempt to interfere with the freedom of India and other territories while England herself was desperately engaged in a struggle for her own independence. But bristling forth with the arrogance that was silent during dire emergency, the tweedy elements guarantee the world the Empire of old. They promise no large new concessions to British holding. The fall of Sir Stafford Cripps from a position of influence is more evidence of this.

The outlook is indeed dark for all minorities when the rights granted them in the Atlantic Charter are now being destroyed in a token suppression in vital India. The situation becomes grave when the realization that this selfsame "old order" element at work in London clubs and chambers will yield perhaps the most important single influence at the conferences that will determine the new order.