Hankey and Self-Determination

Introduction from Chronology

Writing in his diary, Maurice Hankey (the British cabinet secretary) said that the “primary and original cause of our troubles” throughout the British Empire was “President Wilson and his fourteen points, and his impossible doctrine of self determination” which had “struck at the very roots of the British Empire all over the world from Ireland to Hong Kong” and had “got us into a hideous mess”.

Comment

Jeffrey adds the following rather mild rebuke to Hankey’s diary entry “So it had, although British policy-makers own inability to concede the legitimacy of nationalist aspirations was an additional factor exacerbating the situation”. What Jeffrey ignores is that a substantial number of British “policy makers” were imperialists who believed that they have a right to rule over ‘lesser races’ and that they belonged to a ‘superior race’. To give but one example, this is what Churchill said in March 1937 “I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race … has come in and taken their place”.

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