Speech on the Round Table Conference, House of Commons

[…] Churchill praises the Conservative delegates and says he speaks only for himself.

I hold that the handling of Indian affairs during the last 18 months has been most unfortunate and has led already to results which will be long lamented. I will make the briefest review which is necessary. Lord Birkenhead, with foresight and with wisdom, antedated by two years the setting up of the Commission laid down in the Act of 1920 for the reviewing of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. The Commission was set up by Act of Parliament, all the three parties co-operated in its setting up, and all three were represented on the Commission. The Commission, after immense labours, journeys, and studies, presented a report which was unanimous, and it presented that report to the Houses of Parliament which had called it into being. What has happened to that report of our Commission? Why has it been rushed altogether—though compliments have been paid to it—out of the sequence of events?

[…] Churchill blames the Viceroy's 1929 Dominion status declaration; the Congress refused to attend the Conference.

What happened then? The Government of India thereupon collected a number of notables as representative as possible of all the various phases of Indian life but with no delegated authority, so far as the forces with which we have to deal are concerned, no power to conclude an agreement and still less any power to enforce it. These representatives, together with the Indian princes, met in London. This body, thus composed, without any representative authority from the Indian Congress, without advice from the Statutory Commission, without any guidance in the first instance or even without any effective agenda from His Majesty's Government, proceeded rapidly and almost unconsciously to form itself into what I can only call a would-be and wholly unauthorised constituent assembly. Quite true it was not to frame a constitution in every detail, but this document here, which is its work, cannot be considered as anything else but the work of a would-be and unauthorised constituent assembly, and His Majesty's Government, eagerly catching their mood, set to work without more ado to frame a federal constitution for all India, embodying the principle of a responsible Indian Ministry at the summit and centre of Indian affairs, the whole leading up speedily—that is the whole meaning of this Report—to that full Dominion status with all that it entails, including—as one of the members of the Conference, Mr. Sastri, was careful to remind us—as one of its most important features, the right to secede from the British Empire. While all the world wondered, the Sovereign Power, which had created modern India and which was still its sole support and defence, smilingly, blandly and no doubt in most statesmanlike language, engaged in unlimited hypothetical discussion about how to unite all the existing forces of Indian life so as to be able to hand over to them the executive powers of the central Government and the title deeds of British possessions in India. It was even pretended, or at any rate allowed to appear, that Indian disunity was the only or main obstacle to our speedy departure.

[…] Churchill says the Conference raised Indian expectations while unrest and arrests spread in India.

I have completed my recital of the catalogue of errors and disasters which have brought us to our present position. Here I must make it perfectly clear that I accept not only the preamble of the Act of 1919, but also Section 41 of that Act. The preamble shows the ultimate goal to which we declare India may aspire, and Section 41 shows precisely the full right, the uncompromising right of Parliament—at this moment as I hold—to advance or to diverge or, if necessary, to restrict this forward movement in the development of constitutional government. Let us take the two together. I am quite willing fully to accept the implications of them both. Of course, we assign no limits to the future potential development of our Indian fellow subjects. We enlist their co-operation—have we not been doing so continuously—in every branch of Indian administration and of Indian life. It all depends on time and on facts. My submission to the House to-night is that the time for this extension is premature, and that the facts are adverse. In the upshot, let us see what it is that the Indian Nationalists are expecting to receive. I take from the "Times" of two days ago a quotation of a manifesto of the Indian Nationalists members of the Legislative Assembly. This is the conclusion which they have drawn from the proceedings here. They welcome the policy which the Government propose to adopt of giving effect to their views: “in establishing a new constitution which will advance India to full responsibility for her own government and to give her the equal status of a dominion among the British Commonwealth of Nations …. It is also pleasing to note that His Majesty's Government recognise that the reservations which are to be placed upon the full powers of the Legislature are not only to be transitory but are to be so framed and exercised as not to prejudice the advance of India through true responsibility for her own government. In particular, we are emphatically of opinion that the reservations in the matter of financial adjustment must not in the least degree hamper the effective control of Indian Ministers over the finances of India …. While welcoming the declaration of policy, we trust its realisation will be immediate, which alone can really satisfy.” These are the opinions of the more moderate representatives of the Indian Nationalists. Now that Mr. Gandhi is again at large, no doubt he will contribute a further gloss upon the Government's proposals. Anything which falls short in time or in fact of these expectations will be a cause of fierce reproaches. I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) in November, 1929, warning the House and the Government of the dangers in connection with this Round Table Conference, if they were not allowed to discuss Dominion status after what had been said and so forth, and the dangers of the charges of breaches of faith and of perfidy, and he said that nothing could be worse than that in our relations with India. If that were the danger, then, how much more is it a danger now, when you contrast this kind of expectation as regarded by the Indian Nationalist with the immense catalogue of important points referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare), and consider them in the light of the unsolved difficulties enumerated by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs dilated upon the dangers of Dominion status and vague talk about it. Of course, we have always contemplated it as an ultimate goal, but no one has supposed that, except in a purely ceremonious sense, in the way in which representatives of India attended conferences during the War, that that principle and policy for India would be carried into effect in any time which it is reasonable or useful for us to foresee. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs wrote an article a year ago in the "Daily Mail" entitled—the phrase was taken from his own text—"Jerry building for a smash in India."

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE indicated dissent.

Mr. CHURCHILL: It is no good the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head, for I have already armed myself with it for greater accuracy. When I heard the concluding portion of the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley, I could not help feeling how very apt was the title of his leader and colleague for his article in the "Daily Mail." The right hon. Gentleman a year ago poured his scorn upon my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition because he alleged that the right hon. Gentleman had gone too far in lending countenance to the idea of Dominion status, which in a particular sense has always been commonly agreed to be the final goal of Indian relationships. A year has passed. I have always cherished the hope that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs would on this Indian matter come to the rescue of the country as he did in war-time days, but politics exercise a bewitching fascination upon the right hon. Gentleman, and, when politics come in at the door, his zeal for the retention of India flies out of the window. The right hon. Gentleman is actually supporting Lord Reading's proposals, which go further than those to which the Conservative delegation—[Interruption.] Certainly, they go further in several respects than the Conservative delegation or my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is prepared to go.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: In what respect?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I do not propose to trespass too long upon the House, but there is not the slightest difficulty in the right hon. Gentleman being furnished with that information. My Noble Friend the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) will perhaps be so kind as to meet him when he speaks. What is the reason which is assigned for the sudden downward lurch in British opinion? It is, as we all know, the action of the Indian Princes at the Conference. Of course, I must not seek unduly to impute or assign motives, but is that a reassuring action? Is it a sign that our position is better in India, and that our dangers in that country are less? It strikes me as being the most disquieting feature of all. The action of the Princes may well be due to the belief, now spreading so widely throughout the masses of India, that the British raj will shortly cease to function, and that he will be succeeded by the Congress raj or the Gandhi raj or some other form, and that Great Britain under the Socialists—they do not know in India how mild are the Socialists here—Great Britain under the Socialists and under universal suffrage, if pressed enough, if squeezed enough, if kicked enough, if worried enough will acquiesce in such revolution. In face of this, having to provide for themselves and for their States under the new regime, they have expressed their willingness to enter a federal parliament, and this is paraded as a justification for a new and sudden departure. No greater proof, in my judgment, could be shown of the increasing degeneration of our affairs. So far from justifying a greater confidence, it ought to reveal to us how very near the precipice we have already come.

[…] Churchill predicts a divided Indian answer, speaks for the masses, and doubts that safeguards will last.

Undoubtedly this scheme is no solution, and it affords the prospect of no solution, it is no resting place, it is no settlement. The clash and agitation in India will continue, but they will no longer be confined to rioting in the streets or demonstrations in the Legislature. They will invade the heart and the brains of the Government of India. There, at the summit of this wonderful creation, an instrument which, with all it shortcomings, has given peace and progress to nations more varied than the nations of Europe and populations in the aggregate almost as large as China—there, at the summit, by constitutional and Parliamentary weapons now, the process of gnawing and cutting down the safeguards will proceed, stimulated, perhaps, from outside by a continuance of lawlessness and rioting and of worse crimes, for the prevention of which you will no longer have the primary responsibility. What, may I ask, will be your line of moral and logical resistance then? You have declared that the safeguards are only transitory, suited to a transition period, they are temporary transitory expedients, apologetically adopted pending what anyone who reads this, and the emphasis assigned to this passage, can only understand means the rapid and speedy realisation of full Dominion status. The struggle will go on, it will only be aggravated, it will proceed under conditions in which British rule will be shorn of all its argument and of half its apparatus. It will proceed steadily towards the goal which those who are driving this policy forward, both here in this country and in India, no longer hesitate to avow, namely, the goal of complete severance between Great Britain and India of every tie except tradition, which in India is adverse, and sentiment, which in India is hostile. Sir, I say that is a frightful prospect to have opened up so wantonly, so recklessly, so incontinently and in so short a time.

How will the British nation feel about all this? I am told that they do not care. [Interruption.] I am told that from one quarter or another. They are all worried by unemployment or taxation or absorbed in sport and crime. The great liner is sinking in a calm sea. One bulkhead after another gives way; one compartment after another is bilged; the list increases; she is sinking; but the captain and the officers and the crew are all in the saloon dancing to the jazz band. But wait till the passengers find out what is their position! For 30 years I have watched from a central position the manifestations of the will power of Great Britain, and I do not believe the people will consent to be edged, pushed, talked and cozened out of India. No nation of which I am aware, great or small, has ever voluntarily or tamely suffered such an overwhelming injury to its interests or such a harsh abrogation of its rights. After all, there are British rights and interests in India. Two centuries of effort and achievement, lives given on a hundred fields, far more lives given and consumed in faithful and devoted service to the Indian people themselves. All this has earned us rights of our own in India. When the nation finds that our whole position is in jeopardy, that her whole work and duty in India is being brought to a standstill, when the nation sees the individuals among our fellow-countrymen scattered about, with their women and children, throughout this enormous land, in hourly peril amidst the enormous Indian multitude. [Interruption.] When, at any moment, this may produce shocking scenes, then I think there will be a sharp awakening, then, I am sure, that a reaction of the most vehement character will sweep this country and its unmeasured strength will once more be used. That, Sir, is an ending which I trust and pray we may avoid, but it is an ending to which, step by step and day by day, we are being remorselessly and fatuously conducted.