Leo Amery

The Right Honourable Leo Amery CH
First Lord of the Admiralty
In office 31 October 1922 – 28 January 1924
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Bonar Law Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	The Lord Lee of Fareham
Succeeded by	The Lord Chelmsford
Secretary of State for the Colonies
In office 6 November 1924 – 4 June 1929
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	J. H. Thomas
Succeeded by	The Lord Passfield
Secretary of State for India and Burma
In office 13 May 1940 – 26 July 1945
Monarch	George VI
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	The Lord Zetland
Succeeded by	The Lord Pethick-Lawrence
Personal details
Born	Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery (1873-11-22)22 November 1873 Gorakhpur, North-Western Provinces, British India
Died	16 September 1955(1955-09-16) (aged 81) London, England
Political party	Conservative
Children	Julian, Baron Amery John Amery
Education	Harrow School
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford All Souls College, Oxford
Occupation	Politician and journalist

Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery CH (22 November 1873 – 16 September 1955), also known as L. S. Amery, was a British Conservative Party politician and journalist. During his career, he was known for his interest in military preparedness, British India and the British Empire and for his opposition to appeasement. After his retirement and death, he was perhaps best known for the remarks he made in the House of Commons on 7 May 1940 during the Norway Debate.

In these remarks, Amery attacked the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, for incompetence in the fight against Hitler's Germany. Many of Amery's Parliamentary contemporaries pointed to this speech as one of the key drivers in the division of the House on the following day, 8 May, which led to Chamberlain being forced out of office and his replacement by Winston Churchill.

Early life and education

Amery was born in Gorakhpur, British India, to an English father and a mother of Hungarian Jewish descent. His father was Charles Frederick Amery (1833–1901), of Lustleigh, Devon, an officer in the Indian Forestry Commission. His mother Elisabeth Johanna Saphir (c. 1841–1908), who was the sister of the orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, had come to India from England, where her parents had settled and converted to Protestantism. In 1877 his mother moved back to England from India, and in 1885 she divorced Charles.

In 1887, Amery went to Harrow School, where he was a contemporary of Winston Churchill. Amery represented Harrow at gymnastics and held the top position in examinations for a number of years; he also won prizes and scholarships.

After Harrow he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he performed well. He gained a First in Classical Moderations in 1894; in literae humaniores ("Greats", i.e. classics) in 1896 and was proxime accessit (runner-up) to the Craven scholar in 1894 and Ouseley scholar in Turkish in 1896. He also won a half-blue in cross-country running.

He was elected a fellow of All Souls College. He could speak Hindi at the age of three years; Amery was born in India and would naturally have acquired the language of his ayah (nanny). He could converse in French, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Serbian and Hungarian. Amery was an active freemason.

Journalism

During the Second Boer War Amery was a correspondent for The Times. In 1901, in his articles on the conduct of the war, he attacked the British commander, Sir Redvers Buller, which contributed to Buller's sacking. Amery was the only correspondent to visit Boer forces and was nearly captured with Churchill. Amery later edited and largely wrote The Times History of the South African War (7 vol., 1899–1909).

The Boer War had exposed deficiencies in the British Army and in 1903, Amery wrote The Problem of the Army and advocated its reorganisation. In The Times he penned articles attacking free trade using the pseudonym "Tariff Reformer" and in 1906, he wrote The Fundamental Fallacies of Free Trade. Amery described it as "a theoretical blast of economic heresy" because he argued that the total volume of British trade was less important than the question of whether British trade was making up for the nation's lack of raw materials and food by exporting its surplus manufactured goods, shipping, and financial acumen.

He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers, set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

Early political career

Amery turned down the chance to be editor of The Observer in 1908 and The Times in 1912 to concentrate on politics.

Standing as a Liberal Unionist (a party in an electoral alliance with the Conservatives) Amery narrowly failed to win the 1908 Wolverhampton East by-election, by eight votes. In 1911 Amery stood in the 1911 Birmingham South by-election again as a Liberal Unionist, this time unopposed and became a Member of Parliament (MP). One reason that Amery agreed to stand there under the Liberal Unionist label (that party would fully merge with the Conservative Party the following year) was that he had been a longtime political admirer of Joseph Chamberlain and was an ardent supporter of tariff reform and imperial federation. According to A. J. P. Taylor, Amery was a rare Conservative to promote protectionism "as merely the beginning of a planned economy".

Plaque celebrating Leo Amery in the church of St John the Baptist in Lustleigh, Devon

Amery was a noted sportsman, especially famous as a mountaineer. He continued to climb well into his sixties, especially in the Swiss Alps but also in Bavaria, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy and the Canadian Rockies, where Mount Amery is named after him. He enjoyed skiing as well. He was a member of the Alpine Club (serving as its president, 1943–1945) and of the Athenaeum and Carlton Clubs.

He was a Senior Knight Vice President of the Knights of the Round Table.

On 16 November 1910, Amery married Florence Greenwood (1885–1975), daughter of the Canadian barrister John Hamar Greenwood and younger sister of Hamar Greenwood, 1st Viscount Greenwood. She was normally known by the forename Bryddie. They had two sons.

First World War

Imperial War Cabinet, 22 Mar 1917 Leo Amery is standing, top row, first on the left

Amery in 1917

During the First World War, Amery's knowledge of Hungarian led to his employment as an Intelligence Officer in the Balkans campaign. Later, as war cabinet secretary in Lloyd George's coalition government, Amery was vested with parliamentary under-secretary like powers, and at the request of Lord Milner, he redrafted the Balfour Declaration.

Amery was greatly concerned with questions of grand strategy, and championed the idea of an "all-red route" to India, calling for Britain to control the sea-lanes to India not only via the Mediterranean-Suez Canal-Red Sea route, but also around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and for Britain to control the main land routes to India in the Middle East as well. In 1917-1918, Amery advocated as war aims the British occupation of Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia and the Caucasus. Amery regarded Britain's alliance with Imperial Russia as only temporary, and expected the traditional Anglo-Russian rivalry to resume after the war. By contrast, Amery regarded Soviet Russia after November 1917 as a main threat to Britain's position in Asia. However, the nation that Amery regarded as the most dangerous to the British Empire was Germany because the Reich had the world's second largest economy and its policy of Weltpolitik ("World Politics") was aimed at having Germany replace Britain as the world's dominant power. Amery argued that German attempts to dominate Europe along with the Middle East was intended to serve as basis to make the Reich the world's number one power. In a memo written in April 1917, Amery traced the roots of German imperialism to Prussian imperialism in the 18th century. Amery argued that the Ottoman Empire had fallen into the German sphere of influence, and German efforts to push the influence of the Reich to the Persian Gulf were a major threat. Amery expressed much concern about Russia under the Provisional Government which taken over after the February Revolution being defeated, writing that German control of Eastern Europe would be a major step towards allowing Germany to achieve "world power status".

Amery argued that no condition should Britain and its allies return any of the German colonies in Africa and in the Pacific that had been captured by the Allies, arguing that the German colonial empire would allow the Reich to establish submarine bases that would threaten British shipping in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. Amery also warned that he foresaw the day when technological advances would allow submarines greater range, which led to argue a "mesh" of land, air, and naval bases would need to be established and led to call for British annexation of German East Africa (modern Tanzania), German Southwest Africa (modern Namibia), the German colonies in the Pacific Ocean along taking Mesopotamia and Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. Amery argued with the Ottoman Empire having fallen into the German sphere of influence "and with Germany installed at the gates of Egypt on one side and in East Africa on the other, the Prussian instinct would never rest till the two were linked together, and the great railroad empire became continuous from Hamburg to Lake Nyasa". In Europe, Amery argued that Britain's chief aim was the liberation of Belgium. Towards Britain's allies, he advocated the French should annex Syria and lesser Armenia from the Ottoman Empire while Russia should annex greater Armenia and Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Amery took it for granted that both Germany and the Ottoman Empire would continue as major powers after the war, and advocated Britain seizing the Middle East in order to provide the best basis for maintaining British power in Asia after the war.

The final draft of the Balfour Declaration issued on 1 November 1917 promising British support for a "Jewish national home" in Palestine was written by Amery. Amery was commissioned by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to write a declaration promising the support of H.M. Government for Zionism while also taking into account the objections of the anti-Zionists in the cabinet such as Lord Curzon and Edwin Montagu. Hence the Balfour Declaration as written by Amery only promised a "Jewish national home", not a Jewish state, and likewise stated "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". He also encouraged Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the formation of the Jewish Legion for the British Army in Palestine.

The Bolshevik coup in Russia in November 1917 along the decision by Vladimir Lenin to sign an armistice with Germany in December 1917 caused profound alarm for Amery who charged that the new regime in Russia threatened to change the course of the war as Germany could now redeploy millions of soldiers from the Eastern Front to the Western Front, and allowed Germany via its proxy of the Ottoman Empire the opportunity to dominate the Middle East. Amery tended to be more concerned about the fate of the Middle East, writing the Western front was a "sideshow" compared to the Near East. Besides for the possibility that the Ottomans under the command of Erich von Falkenhayn might retake Baghdad, which the British had taken in 1917, he argued that Falkenhayn would take advantage of the Russian Revolution to advance Ottoman forces into the Caucasus, Iran and finally into Central Asia. Amery expressed surprise that the Young Turk regime had not done more to achieve its pan-Turkish ambitions of uniting all the Turkic peoples into the Ottoman Empire, which he attributed to the backwardness of the Ottoman Empire. Amery charged that Britain's best hope in the Middle East now that Russia was defeated was the remnants of the Armenians who had survived the Armenian genocide, charging that Britain should fund and arm whatever Armenians might still be alive along with Armenians who served in the Imperial Russian Army, whom Amery believed would fight on as it was their only hope of survival. Amery charged that Britain had a vested interest in ensuring that former Russian weapons stayed with the Armenians who served in the Russian Army to prevent those weapons "from passing into the hands of Kurds and Tatars and be used either for massacring Armenians, or for arming pro-German gangs of brigands in Persia". Amery also envisioned British officers taking command of the proposed Armenian army. Amery was an "easterner" on questions of grand strategy, believing that the war was to be won in the Middle East and was opposed to "westerners" such as William Robertson and Douglas Haig who believed the war would be won on the Western Front. Amery charged in late 1917-early 1918 the Caucasus should be the prime British concern, arguing that Britain needed to send more forces to Palestine and Mesopotamia to create an offensive line running from Alexandretta to the Caucasus "in order to drive the Turks out of the Arab and Armenian regions and bring about a collapse of their forces and a demand for peace". Besides for the Middle East, Amery was deeply concerned about Russia, writing if the Bolsheviks took control of Odessa and the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, it would allow Germany all of the immense resources of Ukraine, and hence undercut the British blockade of Germany. He wrote that Britain needed to "knock out" the Ottomans before the Bolsheviks took control of South Russia, saying it was critical to "get into touch with South Russia through the Dardanelles" in order to "keep our friends in Russia going" to tie down German forces on the Eastern Front.

Amery was opposed to the Constitution of the League of Nations because he believed that the world was not equal and so the League, which granted all states equal voting rights, was absurd. He instead believed that the world was tending towards larger and larger states that made up a balanced world of inherently stable units. He contrasted that idea with what he called US President Woodrow Wilson's "facile slogan of self-determination".

First Lord of the Admiralty

After the war, Amery was elected to the newly created seat of Birmingham Sparkbrook in the 1918 general election. From 1919 to 1921 he was Lord Milner's personal secretary at the Colonial Office. He was First Lord of the Admiralty (1922–1924) under Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin. The Washington Naval Conference of 1921 to 1922 resulted in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which reduced the strength of the Royal Navy and the naval estimates from over £83,000,000 to £58,000,000. Amery defended the financing of the Singapore Naval Base against both Liberal and Labour attacks. The plans for a Singapore Strategy caused opposition from Australian prime minister, Stanley Bruce, who in a series of letters with Amery in 1923 made it clear that he much preferred that the main British naval base in the Asia-Pacific region be located in Sydney rather than Singapore. Amery in his replies to Bruce stressed that Hong Kong would serve as an "advance base" for the Royal Navy battle fleet in the event of a war with Japan and it was highly unlikely that the Japanese would attack Singapore on the account of the distance between Japan and Southeast Asia. Amery argued that Sydney would serve as a secondary base, but could not serve as the main base as it was too far away from Southeast Asia. Amery convinced Bruce that the Singapore Strategy would serve to protect Australia and he dropped the demand for a naval base at Sydney. The construction of the Singapore base, which was misleadingly presented to the public as a fortress, proceeded slowly throughout the 1920s, being cancelled by the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald in 1924, but revived by the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin after he won the 1924 election; the Baldwin government however proceeded so slowly that the base was far from finished when Baldwin lost the 1929 election.

Colonial Secretary

Amery was Colonial Secretary in Baldwin's government from 1924 to 1929. Amery expanded the role of the Commercial Adviser into the Economic and Financial Advisership under Sir George Schuster. He also created the post of Chief Medical Adviser, under Sir Thomas Stanton, and a range of advisers on education (Sir Hanns Visscher for Tropical Africa), agriculture (Sir Frank Stockdale), a Veterinary Adviser, and a Fisheries Adviser. He also set up the Empire Marketing Board.

A favourite scheme was to develop one or more colonies into white-ruled dominions, with special attention to Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, and Palestine. In Africa, he sought to create an East African Dominion composed of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. The strong opposition by the overwhelming nonwhite populations in Africa, and by the Arabs in Palestine, destroyed his plans for Dominion status in those territories. The Permanent Mandates Commission, which oversaw Tanganyika (a mandated territory), opposed Amery's plan. Amery argued his guiding principle in East Africa was the same "dual policy" applied in Kenya, namely the "protection" of the black population while also being responsible for "for the fullest development of those territories" and "those in particular of our race who had undertaken the task of that development". In effect, Amery was saying that the East African Dominion would be run in the interests of the British settlers in East Africa, especially in Kenya which had attracted a considerable number of British settlers. The model for the proposed East African Dominion was South Africa, a Dominion dominated politically by its white population. Tanganyika when it was the colony of German East Africa had attracted a number of German settlers, and Amery wanted to join link Tanganyika to Kenya to give the proposed Dominion a larger white population. In addition, Amery wanted to join Tanganyika to Kenya for economic reasons. Uganda had not attracted many white settlers, but it's rich soil made highly productive from an apicultural viewpoint, and Amery wanted to include Uganda in the proposed Dominion for economic reasons.

Amery's East African federation plans ran into opposition on the account of the fact that Britain technically did not own Tanganyika, but rather administered it as a mandate for the League of Nations, which held the ultimate sovereignty. Amery insisted that the mandate only imposed certain standards on Britain, which he argued did own Tanganyika, and could with it as it pleased. In a speech given on 11 June 1926, Amery stated: "Our mandate in Tanganyika was in no sense a temporary tenure or lease from the League of Nations. It was rather what might be called in lawyer's language a "servitude", that is to say an obligation to observe certain rules of conduct with administration in that territory...We held Tanganyika under our obligations to the League of Nations, but we held in our right under the Treaty of Versailles. The foundations of the East Africa of the future were as sure and permanent in Tanganyika as they were in any other East African territory".

Amery's speech led to a vigorous rebuttal from Heinrich Schnee, the last governor of German East Africa, who in an article in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper on 19 June 1926 pointed that under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles Germany had transferred its claim of sovereignty over German East Africa to the League of Nations, which in turn had assigned Britain as the administering power over what was now called Tanganyika. As such, Schnee argued that it was the League Council (the executive arm of the League of Nations), which had the ultimate say over the future of Tanganyika and that Britain could not violate the Treaty of Versailles by changing the status of Tanganyika without first obtaining the approval of the League Council. From the German viewpoint, maintaining the Tanganyika mandate was crucial since it was always possible that the League Council (which Germany joined as a permanent veto-holding member in 1926) could give Tanganyika back to Germany. Amery's plans for an East African Dominion met with much opposition from the Indian merchants who dominated the business life in East Africa and from the black African populations who saw the plans for a federation as a way to permanently disfranchise them. In a White Paper that reflected Amery's views stated the claims of the white settlers in East Africa "to share progressively in the responsibilities of government could no longer be ignored" and "if clashes between these interests and those of the vast native populations are to be avoided, their [the white settlers] share in the trusteeship for the progress and welfare of the natives must be developed". The White Paper fueled opposition from both the Indian and African communities as the White Paper was taken as confirming their fears that the proposed "Closer Union" in East Africa was only for the benefit of the white settlers at their expense. The Conservative Party, the British settlers in Kenya, and Sir Edward Grigg, the governor of Kenya, all supported Amery's plans for a "Closer Union" in East Africa. Opposed to Amery's plans in Britain were the Labour Party; Amery's own under-secretary at the Colonial Office, William Ormsby-Gore along most of the civil servants of the Colonial Office; Sir Donald Cameron, the governor of Tanganyika; and various humanitarian groups who charged the federation would be run in the interests of the white settlers. A number of former and current Colonial Office officials such as Frederick Lugard and Ormsby-Gore favored "indirect rule" by which Britain was to rule its African colonies via traditional African elites as a cost-saving measure, and were opposed to the proposed Dominion for that reason. Despite what Amery claimed, the Treaty of Versailles had assigned sovereignty over Tanganyika to the League of Nations and to change the status of Tanganyika required the approval of the League Council. The German Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann, was very committed to regaining Germany's lost empire in Africa and made it clear to the British ambassador in Berlin that he would use the German veto at the League Council if Britain made an application to change the status of Tanganyika.

In 1927, Amery made a tour of Africa and concluded that Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) would only join South Africa on its own terms to preserve its "British character" as the majority of the white settlers in Southern Rhodesia were British while the majority of the South African whites were Afrikaners. The idea of having Southern Rhodesia join South Africa as a "fifth province" was frequently mooted in the 1920s, but the unwillingness of the British settlers in Rhodesia to join a state dominated by the Afrikaners ensured that nothing came of these plans. Amery envisioned a future where the British settlers in Southern Rhodesia would build "an independent Central South African Dominion to check and counterbalance the parochial South African Union". In India, the strong resistance of the Congress movement defeated his hopes for greater integration into the Commonwealth. In Palestine, Amery carried out a policy of "constructive Zionism" of building infrastructure such as paved roads, public sanitation, an hydroelectric grid, and so fourth intended to encourage Jewish immigration to the Palestine Mandate. In the 1920s, Palestine was not the first choice of most European Jews to immigrate to, being seen as a backward, impoverished area, and the policy of public works promoted by Amery was intended to make Palestine into a more attractive place for Jews to go to.

In Malta his name became associated with the royal commission which recommended self-government for the Maltese following the 1919 riots in which four locals and one servicemen were killed. One of the most prominent streets in the resort town of Sliema was named after him.

Out of office

Amery was not invited to join the National Government formed in 1931. He remained in Parliament but joined the boards of several prominent corporations. That was necessary as he had no independent means and had depleted his savings during the First World War and when he was a cabinet minister during the 1920s. Among his directorships were the boards of several German metal fabrication companies (representing British capital invested in the companies), the British Southern Railway, the Gloucester Wagon Company, Marks and Spencer, the famous shipbuilding firm Cammell Laird and the Trust and Loan of Canada. He was also chairman of the Iraq Currency Board.

In the course of his duties as a director of German metal fabrication companies, Amery gained a good understanding of German military potential. Adolf Hitler became alarmed at the situation and ordered a halt to non-German directors. Amery had spent a lot of time in Germany during the 1930s in connection with his work. He was not allowed to send his director's fees out of the country so he took his family on holiday in the Bavarian Alps. He had a lengthy meeting with Hitler on at least one occasion, and he met at length with Czech leader Edvard Beneš, Austrian leaders Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt von Schuschnigg and Italian leader Benito Mussolini.

Opposition to appeasement of Germany

In the debates on the need for an increased effort to rearm British forces, Amery tended to focus on army affairs, with Churchill speaking more about air defence and Roger Keyes talking about naval affairs. Austen Chamberlain was, until his death, a member of the group as well. While there was no question that Churchill was the most prominent and effective, Amery's work was still significant. He was a driving force behind the creation of the Army League, a pressure group designed to keep the needs of the British Army before the public.

In the 1930s Amery, along with Churchill, was a bitter critic of the appeasement of Germany; they often openly attacked their own party. Being a former Colonial and Dominions Secretary, he was very aware of the views of the dominions and strongly opposed returning Germany's colonies, a proposal seriously considered by Neville Chamberlain. Amery's opposition to appeasement was initially based primarily on opposition to the repeated German that the former German colonies in Africa "go home to the Reich". At the time, it was generally believed that having African colonies to exploit was essential to the workings of European economics, and much of the Nazi claim to the former German African colonies was based on economic grounds. The American Smoot-Hawley act of 1930 had set off a global trade war with the world broken up into various economic zones as nations imposed record high tariffs, which in particular was used as an argument for why Germany needed it's former colonial empire. On 5 February 1936, Amery was involved in a heated debate on the floor of the House of Commons with the former prime minister David Lloyd George who suggested that Britain and the Dominions return the former German colonies, saying it was crucial for the peace of the world. Amery attacked Lloyd George, saying that the Reich lost its colonies as a result of a war that it had caused in 1914, and if Germany needed an "economic zone" to dominate, it should look to the "great markets of Central Europe", not Africa. Amery by his statements indicated that he was open to Germany having Eastern Europe in its economic zone of influence, and was primarily opposed to Germany having an empire in Africa again.

At a meeting of the Central Office of the Conservative and Unionist Party's local associations in June 1936, Amery spoke very strongly against returning any of the German colonies currently held as League of Nations mandates by Great Britain or the Dominions. Referring to pre-1914 colonial deals, Amery stated it had been a mistake to import the "German menace" into Africa and it would be a mistake to do so again, adding that Britain must not "sell white men or black men into Nazi slavery". In a review of the book Germany's Claims to Colonies by Ferdinand Joelson, Amery wrote "For the moment, there can be no other attitude to the German demand than a purely negative one. The issue should not be treated as open to discussion". However, Amery tempered his opposition to returning the former German colonies by writing if the German government was headed by somebody other than Adolf Hitler, then perhaps "some positive solution to what underlies this demand may be found when the present ferment has worked itself out, and when a more normal outlook has regained ascendency over the great German nation". Amery conceded that the present was an age of "economic nationalism" with nations imposing high tariffs on each other, and that Hitler's claim that the global trade war was hurting the German economy was correct. Amery ended by writing that the system of Imperial preference tariffs, which had turned the British empire into one economic unit, was what allowed Britain to be a great power, and it was up to Hitler to negotiate a similar system to the Imperial preference tariffs with the states of Eastern Europe.

On the rearmament question, Amery was consistent. He advocated a higher level of expenditure, but also a reappraisal of priorities through the creation of a top-level cabinet position to develop overall defence strategy so that the increased expenditures could be spent wisely. He thought that either he or Churchill should be given the post. When the post of Minister for Co-ordination of Defence was finally created and given to a political lightweight, Sir Thomas Inskip, he regarded it as a joke.

Amery differed from Churchill in hoping throughout the 1930s to foster an alliance with fascist Italy to counter the rising strength of Nazi Germany. A united front of Britain, France, and Italy would, he felt, have prevented a German occupation of Austria, especially with Czechoslovakia's support. He thus was for appeasing Italy by tacitly conceding its claims to Ethiopia. A start was made in the so-called Stresa Front of 1935, but he felt that Britain's decision to impose economic sanctions on Italy, for invading Ethiopia in 1936, drove Italy into the arms of Germany.

When Chamberlain announced his flight to Munich to the cheers of the House, Amery was one of only four members who remained seated (the others were Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Nicolson). In 1939, Amery joined Churchill, Lloyd George, Harold Macmillan, Brendan Bracken, Victor Cazalet and most of the Labour Party in voting against the White Paper introduced by the Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald that sharply limited Jewish immigration to the Palestine Mandate. When war came Amery opposed cooperation with the Soviet Union against Germany. He was a lifelong anticommunist.

Second World War

Amery is famous for two moments of high drama in the House of Commons early in the Second World War. On 2 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain spoke in a Commons debate and strongly implied that he was not declaring war on Germany immediately even if it had invaded Poland. Amery was greatly angered, and Chamberlain was felt by many present to be out of touch with the temper of the British people. As Labour Party leader Clement Attlee was absent, Arthur Greenwood stood up in his place and announced that he was speaking for Labour. Amery shouted, "Speak for England, Arthur!" That strongly implied that Chamberlain was not doing so.

The second incident occurred during the Norway Debate in 1940. After the failure of the expedition to Norway, Amery told the House ofCommons: "If we had held Trondheim, the isolated German force at Narvik would have been bound to surrender". After a string of military and naval disasters had been announced, Amery famously attacked Chamberlain's government in a devastating speech, finishing by quoting Oliver Cromwell: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" Lloyd George afterwards told Amery that in 50 years, he had heard few speeches that matched his in sustained power and none with so dramatic a climax. The debate led to 42 Conservative Members of Parliament voting against Chamberlain and 36 abstaining, leading to the downfall of the Conservative government and the formation of a national government under Churchill's premiership. Amery himself noted in his diary that he believed that his speech was one of his best received in the House and that he had made a difference to the outcome of the debate.

Secretary of State for India and Burma

During the Churchill war ministry Amery was Secretary of State for India despite the fact that Churchill and Amery had long disagreed on the fate of India. Amery was disappointed not to be made a member of the small War Cabinet, but he was determined to do all he could in the position he was offered. He was continually frustrated by Churchill's intransigence, and in his memoirs, he recorded that Churchill knew "as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies".

In the fall of 1941 as war with Japan threatened, the Governor of Burma, Reginald Dorman-Smith, had agreed that the Burmese prime minister, U Saw, should go to London to discuss with Amery and Churchill Dominion status for Burma. Amery was less than enthusiastic about meeting U Saw, and Churchill not at all. Churchill had no interest in Dominion status for Burma and agreed to see U Saw only once with the rest of the talks to be handed by Amery. U Saw duly arrived in London in October 1941 for a series of inconclusive meetings with Amery, where he was told that the issue of Burmese independence was complex. On the morning of 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the British empire with Hong Kong and Malaya being bombed and invaded that day. U Saw who was in Lisbon on his way home to Burma stopped by at the Japanese embassy to offer his support for Burma joining the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As the British had broken the Japanese codes, Amery was well aware of what U Saw had done. Amery sent a message to Dorman-Smith saying that U Saw had just committed a "treacherous act" by offering to work for the Japanese and was to be arrested immediately upon his return to Burma for treason.

On 2 February 1942, Amery told the cabinet that the recent British defeats in Asia had shattered the prestige of the Raj, and that the government would have to change its policy towards India as a result. Amery stated that at a time when Britain needed the support of the Indians the most, most Indians had lost respect for the Raj, leading him to argue to Britain would have to engage with Indian public opinion to win their support for the war. Later in February 1942, the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek and his charismatic English-speaking wife Soong Mei-ling visited India on a well received visit, offering the message that the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was a sham and the Japanese would repeat atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking when they invaded India as Chiang starkly warned that the Imperial Japanese Army would treat Indian people just as badly as it had treated the Chinese people. Chiang urged the British to promise India independence after the war, but also urged Indians to support the British war effort, saying that British rule was preferable to Japanese rule. The favorable reception of Chiang's visit to India seemed to offer a way forward to win the war in Asia.

In March 1942, the cabinet dispatched Stafford Cripps, the leader of the left-wing of the Labour Party, on a mission to India to offer Dominion status for India after the war in exchange for Indian support for the British war effort, but with the additional condition that Britain would concede to the demand of Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League for a separate nation for Indian Muslims to be called Pakistan. Upon hearing of the Cripps mission, the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, asked Amery "Why?" The American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had made it clear to Churchill that he believed that Britain should grant independence to India, and the United Kingdom was in effect being economically subsidised by the United States from 1941 onward, it was difficult for Churchill to reject Roosevelt's advice outright as much as he wanted to. Amery seemed to regard the Cripps mission as only useful for its effect on American public opinion as he wrote to Linlithgow in March 1942 that American public opinion would be impressed by "us sending out someone who has always been an extreme Left-Winger and in close touch with Nehru". Amery believed that the Cripps would fail as the British offer of independence for India was also tied to a partition of India, a condition that both he and Churchill knew would be rejected by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru of the Congress Party who wanted independence without partition. Churchill argued to Roosevelt that Indian Muslims made up the majority of the Indian Army and that India had 100 million Muslims, making it the most populous Muslim community in the world, and Britain could not afford to anger Jinnah of the Muslim League who wanted independence with partition. On 6 April 1942, the Cripps mission entered in failure as Gandhi and Nehru rejected Cripps's offer of independence after the war in exchange for support for the British war effort; as a dejected Cripps prepared to return to London, the Japanese bombed Calcutta for the first time. The Congress Party was deeply distrustful of the British and were angry about Amery having apparently given the Muslim League the right to create Pakistan as part of the deal. For their part, Amery along with other British officials believed with Japan on the verge of invading India in that Gandhi was extremely naïve in thinking that peaceful "soul force" would be all that be needed to stop the Japanese invasion. Despite the loss of Burma, Amery was corresponding with Dorman-Smith in August 1942 about not only how best to restore British rule in Burma after Japan was defeated, but also plans to annex Thailand on the account of Thailand joining the war on the Axis side.

In August 1942, Gandhi and Nehru launched the Quit India Movement protests, launching the largest demonstrations yet against the Raj, demanding that the British grant India independence immediately. Despite the massive demonstrations along with associated sabotage, Churchill insisted that most Indians were still loyal to the Raj as Churchill believed the Muslims, Sikhs and Christian communities of India along with untouchable caste were all loyal and by his estimate 300 million of the 400 million Indians wanted the British to stay. Churchill tended to conflate volunteers for the Indian Army with support for the Raj, and he assumed that because the Indian Army were still meeting its recruiting targets that this reflected widespread public support for the Raj. However, most of the Indians were volunteering for the Indian Army in 1942 were Muslims, and notably the Indian Army had difficulty recruiting Hindus, the most numerous of India's many religious groups. Churchill expressed much anger at the Quit India movement, and Amery complained about Churchill's "Nazi-like" attitude towards Indians, especially Hindus along with a belief that Churchill was wrong in believing that 300 million Indians supported the Raj. As too many Indians were taking part in the Quit India protests, it was impossible to jail all of them, leading the Raj to resort to corporal punishment with Indians being flogged for protesting. In response to newspaper accounts of "dreadfulness" about the floggings, Amery assured the House of Commons that the police were not flogging people with Cat o' nine tails whips, but instead with "light rattan canes" to "deter hooligans". Amery did not mention that being flogged with "light rattan canes" was immensely painful, but he argued that mass floggings were necessary as there were far more "hooligans" taking part in the Quit India protests than were prisons for them.. In December 1942, Linlithgow reported to Amery of a "disastrous deterioration of supplies" and that a famine was imminent in the Bengal province. In January 1943, Amery reported to the cabinet that food shortages were becoming a major problem in India. Before 1942, 15% of the rice consumed in India had come from Burma, and the Japanese conquest of Burma had cut India off from the Burmese rice crop. Adding to the shortages were a series of cyclones that devastated the rice crop in Bengal province in the fall of 1942, and by December 1942 children and old people in Bengal were starving to death as it was reported to London that India was short one million tons of rice that were necessary to feed its people.

When Linlithgow decided to retire as Viceroy in 1943, Amery recommended to Churchill that he appoint either the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden or the Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee as the next Viceroy. Churchill refused under the grounds that he needed both Eden and Attlee in the cabinet. On 8 June 1943, Amery nominated himself as the next Viceroy, writing in a memo to the prime minister of: "...the very special difficulties which a new Viceroy will have to handle. The whole situation in India today depends upon the Viceroy's ability from the onset to manage and impose his personality upon a Council composed mainly of Indians, men of individual ability and goodwill, but easily ratted or turned sour by hesitant or clumsy handling. They are like an Indian elephant, who with a good mahout, will face a charging tiger; if the mahout is stupid, or loses his nerve for a second, nothing can stop the beast from stampeding in terror...a stampede that may wreck the whole fabric of government in India". Amery concluded that since the "very best men" such as Eden and Attlee could not be spared to serve as Viceroy, "as a last resort, I have already offered you myself". Churchill instead chose General Archiblad Wavell as the next Viceroy out of the hope that Wavell would pursue a repressive policy towards Indian demands for independence. Contrary to Churchill's hopes, Wavell proved far more willing than Linlithgow to negotiate with the Indians as Wavell sought a political solution instead of the military solution that Churchill had hoped for. Amery tended to support Wavell's efforts to reach a political solution and consistently spoke in defense of Wavell in cabinet meetings. To replace Wavell who been promoted to Viceroy of India, Churchill wanted to appoint Air Chief Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas as the new commander of South-East Asia Command, a choice vetoed by Roosevelt on the account of Douglas's anti-Americanism. Likewise Admiral Andrew Cunningham declined the offer and at Amery's suggestion, Churchill appointed Admiral Louis Mountbatten as the Southeast Asia Commander.

Amery opposed holding an inquiry for the 1943 Bengal famine, fearing that the political consequences could be "disastrous". In 1944, the Famine Inquiry Commission was held against his advice. Unlike Churchill who had a marked dislike of Gandhi and the Congress Party and favored Jinnah and the Muslim League, Amery had a strong dislike of Jinnah, whom he referred as "the future emperor of Pakistan", charging that Jinnah was only championing the idea of partition of India because creating Pakistan was the only way he ever hope to attain power as the Muslim League as suggested by its name represented only Muslims, and thus could not hope to win an Indian general election. Amery wrote that the concept of Pakistan was "essentially a negation" that would cause a bloodbath if the idea of partition of India was actually executed.

Last years

At the 1945 general election, Amery lost his seat to Labour's Percy Shurmer. He was offered but refused a peerage because it might, when he died, have cut short the political career of his son, Julian, in the House of Commons. However, he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. In retirement, Amery published a three-volume autobiography My Political Life (1953–1955).

Legacy

Throughout his political career, Amery was an exponent of Imperial unity, as he saw the British Empire as a force for justice and progress in the world. He strongly supported the evolution of the dominions into independent nations bound to Britain by ties of kinship, trade, defence and a common pride in the Empire. He also supported the gradual evolution of the colonies, particularly India, to the same status, unlike Churchill, a free trader, who was less interested in the Empire as such and more in Britain itself as a great power. Amery felt that Britain itself was too weak to maintain its great power position.

Amery was very active in imperial affairs during the 1920s and 1930s. He was in charge of colonial affairs and relations with the dominions from 1924 to 1929. In the 1930s, he was a member of the Empire Industries Association and a chief organiser of the huge rally celebrating the empire at the Royal Albert Hall in 1936 marking the centenary of Joseph Chamberlain's birth. Amery maintained a very busy speaking schedule, with almost 200 engagements between 1936 and 1938, many of them devoted to imperial topics, especially Imperial Preference. Amery distrusted the administration of US President Franklin Roosevelt. He resented American pressure on Canada to oppose imperial free trade. While that pressure was unsuccessful as long as Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett was in power, after Bennett lost the 1935 election his Liberal successor William Lyon Mackenzie King adopted a more pro-American stance.

Amery wanted to keep the UK and the newly independent British Dominions united by trade behind a common tariff barrier and away from the United States. He viewed American intentions regarding the British Empire with increasingly grave suspicion. He hoped the Labour government elected in 1945 would resist promises of trade liberalisation made by Churchill to the United States during the Second World War. Amery's hopes were partially vindicated when the Attlee government, under intense American pressure, insisted upon the continuation of Imperial/Commonwealth Preference but conceded its more limited scope and promised against further expansion.

Personal life

Amery's elder son, John Amery (1912–1945), became a Nazi sympathizer. During the Second World War he made propaganda broadcasts from Germany, and induced a few British prisoners of war to join the German-controlled British Free Corps. After the war, he was tried for treason, pleaded guilty, and was hanged. His father amended his entry in Who's Who to read "one s[on]", with the editors' permission. The playwright Ronald Harwood, who explored the relationship between Leo and John Amery in his play An English Tragedy (2008), considered it significant to the son's story that the father had apparently concealed his partly-Jewish ancestry.

Amery's younger son, Julian Amery (1919–1996), served first in the Royal Air Force and then the British Army during World War Two, and later became a Conservative politician. He served in the cabinets of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Minister for Aviation (1962–1964) and also held junior ministerial office under Edward Heath. He married Macmillan's daughter Catherine.

Amery is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in his father's home village of Lustleigh, and an ornate plaque in commemoration of him is inside the church.

References

• Encyclopædia Britannica, online edition
• L. S. Amery, My Political Life. Volume One: England Before the Storm. 1896–1914 (London: Hutchinson, 1953)
• L. S. Amery, My Political Life. Volume Two: War and Peace. 1914–1929 (London: Hutchinson, 1953)
• L. S. Amery, My Political Life. Volume Three: The Unforgiving Years. 1929–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1955)
• L. S. Amery, Days of Fresh Air, Being Reminiscences of Outdoor Life (London: Hutchinson Universal Book Club, 1940)
• Bayly, Christopher Alan (2004). Forgotten Armies The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945. Cambridge: Belknap Press. ISBN 9780674017481.
• Crozier, Andrew (1988). Appeasement And Germany's Last Bid For Colonies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781349192557.
• David Faber, Speaking for England: Leo, Julian and John Amery: The Tragedy of a Political Family, (Free Press, 2005) ISBN 0-7432-5688-3
• Fisher, John (Winter 2003). "British Forward Defense in Asia During World War I". Journal of Asian History. 37 (1): 70–102.
• Fisher, John (1999). Curzon and British Imperialism in the Middle East, 1916-19. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 9780714648750.
• Grey, Jeffery (1990). A Military History of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139468282.
• Deborah Lavin, 'Amery, Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett (1873–1955)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2011, accessed 2 June 2011
• Laqueur, Walter (2009). A History of Zionism From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780307530851.
• Lyman, Robert (2021). A War of Empires Japan, India, Burma & Britain: 1941–45. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472847133.
• Mukerjee, Madhusree (2014). "Bengal Famine of 1943: An Appraisal of the Famine Inquiry Commission". Economic and Political Weekly. 49 (11): 71–75.
• Nigel Nicolson (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of Harold Nicolson. Volume II: The War Years, 1939–1945 (New York: Atheneum, 1967)
• Pedersen, Susan (2015). The Guardians The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199570485.
• Reynolds, David (2004). In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. New York: Random House. ISBN 0679457437.
• William Rubinstein, 'The secret of Leopold Amery', Historical Research, vol. 73, no. 181 (June 2000), pp. 175–196
• Rubinstein, William (Winter 2004). "Winston Churchill and the Jews". Jewish Historical Studies. 39: 167–176.
• Schwarz, William (2011). The White Man's World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191619953.
• Seidman, Michael (2018). Transatlantic Antifascisms From the Spanish Civil War to the End of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108417785.
• Wolpert, Stanley (2009). Shameful Flight The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195393941.

Further reading

• Amery, L. S. "Imperial Defence and National Policy" . The Empire and the century. London: John Murray. pp. 174–198.
• John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds.), The Leo Amery Diaries. 1896–1929 (London: Hutchinson, 1980)
• John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds.), The Empire at Bay. The Leo Amery Diaries. 1929–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1987)
• Stephen Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy (London: Routledge, 1984)
• David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961 (Oxford University Press, 1971)
• Wm Roger Louis, In the name of God, go! Leo Amery and the British empire in the age of Churchill (W. W. Norton & Co., 1992) online free
• W. R. Louis, 'Leo Amery and the post-war world, 1945–55', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 30 (2002), pp. 71–90
• Philip Williamson, National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926–1932 (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Publications

• Leo Amery, The Problem of the Army (1903) Link.
• Leo Amery, Fundamental Fallacies of Free Trade (1906) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1900 (Vol I) (1900) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1900 (Vol II) (1902) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1900 (Vol III) (1905) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol IV) (1906) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol V) (1907) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol VI) (1909) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol VII) (1909) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Great Question: Tariff Reform or Free Trade? (1909) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Union and Strength (1912) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Empire in the New Era (1928) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Empire and Prosperity (1930) short work Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, A Plan of Action (1932) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Stranger of the Ulysses (1934) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Forward View (1935) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Odyssey: Presidential address delivered to the Classical association (1936) short work Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The German Colonial Claim (1939) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Days of Fresh Air (1939) Link.
• Leo Amery, India and Freedom (1942) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Framework for the Future (1944) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Washington Loan Agreements (1945) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, In the Rain and the Sun (1946) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution (1947) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Elizabethan Spirit (1948) short work Link to library source
• Leo Amery, The Awakening: Our Present Crisis and the Way Out (1948) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Thought and Language (1949) short work Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, My Political Life, Volume I, England Before the Storm, 1896–1914 (1953) Link.
• Leo Amery, My Political Life, Volume II, War and Peace, 1914–1929 (1953) Link.
• Leo Amery, My Political Life, Volume III, The Unforgiving Years, 1929–1940 (1955) Link.
• Leo Amery, A Balanced Economy (1954) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Leo Amery diaries 1896–1929 (Vol I) (1980) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Empire at bay: the Leo Amery diaries 1929–1945 (Vol II) (1988) Link to library source.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Leo Amery
• "Archival material relating to Leo Amery". UK National Archives.
• Newspaper clippings about Leo Amery in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW