Burma, Britain, and the commonwealth, 1946-56

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 65-91

  Ashton, S R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035591250     PISSN: 03086534     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03086530108583112     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Hugh Tinker (ed.), Constitutional Relations between Britain and Burma: The Struggle for Independence 1944-1948, 2 vols (London, 1984, hereafter BSI).
2. For a Burmese perspective on the events covered by Tinker's volumes, see U Maung Maung, Burmese Nationalist Movements 1940-1948 (Edinburgh, 1989). In his Foreword the author takes issue with the manner in which the documents for the Burma volumes were selected. They 'hardly give the impression that this was the beginning of a critical change in Burma's political scene', he writes, and they seem to have been 'arbitrarily chosen'. These misconceptions about the two Burma volumes are not uncommon and they are not confined to Burmese critics. Nor are they justified. Tinker was briefed to select documents from the Burma Office Records on Burma's independence and events leading up to it. His concluding date, 4 January 1948, was determined in advance and it was not his purpose to go beyond it by using later records to engage in retrospective interpretation or revelation (on which see notes 27 and 30 below). Tinker was instructed that the Burma documents, together with extracts from the narratives commissioned from former British participants, were to be published in two volumes only. He was not required to record 'a critical change in Burma's political scene', although many would argue that his documents illustrate precisely that. To satisfy his own interpretation. U Maung Maung argues that much more should have been included from the reports of divisional commissioners, the labour and police departments, the chief secretary's office, the chairmen of project boards, and even 'those of every Department of Government'. How this could be achieved within only two volumes is not made clear. Tinker himself, in his own Foreword, explains what he has not included, admits that 'another editor might have proceeded very differently', and invites future researchers to 'delve more deeply into these same tracts of the recent yet largely unexplored past' (II, ix-xii). None the less, the unfortunate impression remains within certain Burmese circles (historical and other) that Tinker's volumes, not only do not tell the whole story but also exclude material on contentious issues, particularly the assassinations ot July 1947.
3. Hugh Tinker, 'Burma: Power Transferred or Exacted? Reflections on the Constitutional Process', in R.B. Smith and A.J. Stockwell (eds.), British Policy and The Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives (London, 1987), 19-29. The FCO, under whose auspices, as in the case of the India series, the Burma series was researched and published, wanted in the case of Burma to use the same series title, namely The Transfer of Power. Nicholas Mansergh, editor of the India series, was against this. The FCO then suggested, for Burma, something less confrontational and came up with The Contest for Independence. This did not suit Tinker who eventually got his way with The Struggle for Independence.
4. Hugh Tinker, 'Burma: Power Transferred or Exacted? Reflections on the Constitutional Process', in R.B. Smith and A.J. Stockwell (eds.), British Policy and The Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives (London, 1987), 19-29. The FCO, under whose auspices, as in the case of the India series, the Burma series was researched and published, wanted in the case of Burma to use the same series title, namely The Transfer of Power. Nicholas Mansergh, editor of the India series, was against this. The FCO then suggested, for Burma, something less confrontational and came up with The Contest for Independence. This did not suit Tinker who eventually got his way with The Struggle for Independence.
5. Hugh Tinker, 'Burma: Power Transferred or Exacted? Reflections on the Constitutional Process', in R.B. Smith and A.J. Stockwell (eds.), British Policy and The Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives (London, 1987), 19-29. The FCO, under whose auspices, as in the case of the India series, the Burma series was researched and published, wanted in the case of Burma to use the same series title, namely The Transfer of Power. Nicholas Mansergh, editor of the India series, was against this. The FCO then suggested, for Burma, something less confrontational and came up with The Contest for Independence. This did not suit Tinker who eventually got his way with The Struggle for Independence.
6. Ronald Hyam (ed.), The Labour Government and the End of Empire 1945-1951 part I (London, 1992), doc. 64, 288.
7. Quoted in Nicholas Tarling, Britain, South-East Asia and the Onset of the Cold War 1945-1950 (Cambridge, 1998), 194.
8. A resolution moving Burma to be a sovereign independent republic was passed unanimously by the constituent assembly in Rangoon on 17 June 1947. For Attlee's version, see C.R. Attlee, As it Happened (London, 1954), 218-19.
9. Cabinet memo by Lord Swinton, 'Commonwealth membership', 11 Oct. 1954, circulating a report by an official committee, in David Goldsworthy (ed.), The Conservative Government and the End of Empire 1951-1957, part II (London, 1994), doc. 192, 36.
10. General officer commanding, Burma Command, to War Office, London, 13 Dec. 1946, and report by Chiefs of Staff for Cabinet, 18 Dec. 1946. BSI II, docs. 136 and 141.
11. Cabinet memo by Pethick-Lawrence, S of S Burma, 9 Dec. 1946, and Cabinet discussion of same, 10 Dec. 1946, ibid., docs. 129 and 130.
12. Bevin to Attlee, 23 Jan. 1947. FO 800/462, no. FE/47/3. Public Record Office, London (PRO).
13. For the military assessment, see report by Chiefs of Staff, 17 Jan. 1947, BSI II, doc. 198.
14. Text of statement in ibid., doc. 147.
15. On a point of semantics, the use here (and indeed throughout) of the words 'remain' and 'leave' is deliberate. The commonly accepted formula is that while Britain could grant independence to a dependency it could not, unilaterally, admit a former dependency to the Commonwealth. That had to be decided by the independent members of the Commonwealth. By implication, countries were not members of the Commonwealth until they had been so recognized. But this was not a distinction that was used during the negotiations over Burma. Almost without exception the documents speak of Burma either remaining in, or leaving, of its own accord, the Commonwealth.
16. Record of meeting of UK ministers, 20 Jan. 1947. BSI II, doc. 209.
17. Memo by Pethick-Lawrence, 'Burma and the Commonwealth', Jan. 1947, ibid., doc. 173.
18. Aung San to Attlee, 13 May 1947, ibid., doc. 353.
19. Ranee to Listowel, S of S Burma, 29 May 1947, ibid., doc. 366.
20. Rees-Williams to Pethick-Lawrence, 15 Apr. 1947, ibid., doc. 335.
21. Ranee to Listowel, 28 May 1947, ibid., doc. 364.
22. U Maung Maung, 304, discusses AFPFL suspicions. See also, note 30 below.
23. Ranee to Listowel, 15 June 1947, BSI II, doc. 399.
24. Ranee to Listowel, 19 June 1947, ibid., doc. 405.
25. Record of meeting with Burma Goodwill Mission in London, 23 June 1947, ibid., doc. 412.
26. Ranee to Listowel, 9 June 1947, ibid., doc. 388.
27. MacDonald to Creech Jones, 26 June 1947, ibid., doc. 416.
28. Record of meeting of Cabinet India and Burma Committee, 1 July 1947, ibid., doc. 429.
29. The known facts of the assassinations are straightforward. Aung San's arch political rival, U Saw, the leader (until Feb. 1947) of the Myochit Party (Party of Patriots) who had been wounded in an attempt on his own life in September 1946, was arrested on the same day that Aung San and his colleagues were gunned down. Charged with murder, U Saw was put on trial with his co-conspirators and sentenced to death in December 1947. He was hanged in May 1948. These bare facts conceal a wider intrigue about conspirators and motives which has never been resolved, and perhaps never will be. Investigations revealed that U Saw had a private cache of weapons (hidden in a lake behind his bungalow) and that middle-ranking British army officers had been involved in arms thefts from a depot in Rangoon. One of them, Captain David Vivian, was jailed in July 1947 but he was liberated in 1949 when Karen rebels stormed Insein Central jail where he was being held. Then there is the mysterious figure of John Bingley, the British Council representative in Rangoon, who turned out to be the 'tall friend' with whom U Saw had been corresponding from prison while awaiting trial and who left Burma (never to return) after police questioning in September 1947. The Karens have been linked to the assassination. So too have British commercial interests, on the grounds that they feared nationalization after Burma's decision to leave the Commonwealth. It has also been suggested that rival elements within the AFPFL leadership, especially on the military side, might have been involved. Kin Oung, Who Killed Aung San? (Bangkok, 2nd ed. 1996) discusses these conspiracy theories.
30. Bevin to Attlee, 21 Nov. 1947. FO 800/441.
31. Bowker to Bevin, 23 May 1949, FO 371/75698, no. 7454.
32. And the danger was not confined within Burma's borders. Elements within the British establishment were certainly not well disposed towards the new leaders of Burma. Immediately after independence and before the onset of the Karen rebellion at the beginning of 1949, a clandestine campaign was mounted in London in support of the Karens. The aim was not simply to destabilize the government in Rangoon but to overthrow it. With the support of its editor, Frank Owen, funds from the Daily Mail newspaper were diverted to help the Karens. The campaign had the support of a group in the UK calling itself the Friends of the Burma Hill People. Some prominent public figures were members, including Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, the penultimate governor of Burma, and Sir Colin Gubbins, wartime head of Special Operations Executive. Churchill was said to be sympathetic. Financial support for the Karens was filtered through some disaffected former members of Force 136 who had fought with the Karens during the war. The key figure was Lt. Col. Cromarty Tulloch who discussed his plans openly with Esler Dening, an assistant undersecretary of state at the FO, at the Carlton Bar in London in August 1948. The FO weighed the pros and cons of a move to dislodge the Rangoon government but concluded that the only beneficiaries would be the communists and therefore alerted U Nu's government. One of Tulloch's close associates, Alexander Campbell, the Mail's correspondent in Rangoon, was arrested in September 1948. thus bringing Lord Rothermere. the paper's proprietor, into the picture. Campbell was released in December 1948 but Owen and Ewan Butler, the Mail's foreign editor, were dismissed. Tulloch's activities were monitored by MI5. He was also a known figure to Burmese intelligence. How much of the wider conspiracy in London was known to the Burmese remains a matter for speculation. The story is told in Richard J. Aldrich, 'Legacies of Secret Service: Renegade SOE and the Karen Struggle in Burma, 1948-1950', in Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley, The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945-65 (London, 2000). See also, FO 371/69509-69513.
33. Details in FO 800/441.
34. U Nu to Cripps, Apr. 1949. FO 371/75698, no. 6156 (the letter does not have an exact date).
35. Sao Hkun Hkio (minister for Shan State) to Bevin, 22 April 1949, FO 371/75709, no. 5917.
36. Note of meeting between Alexander and UE Maung, 24 April 1949, FO 371/75710, no. 13109.
37. Price to Lloyd, 21 Sept. 1949, enclosing extract from report of Joint Planning Staff, 17 March 1949, FO 371/75679, no. 14303.
38. Bowker to Bevin, 5 April 1949, FO 371/75708, no. 5423.
39. UK high commissioner, Australia, to FO, 28 Feb. 1949, FO 371/75686, no. 3134.
40. Ibid., no. 3433, extract from Reuters, 'Evatt on Burma and the Commonwealth', 1 March 1949.
41. Ibid., no. 338, Bowker to FO, 4 March 1949.
42. Attlee to Bevin, 23 Feb. 1949, PREM 8/1319/1, PRO (see in furtherance of this note 51 below).
43. Bevin to Attlee, 26 April 1949, FO 800/462, no FE/49/6.
44. Meeting, 26 April 1949, CAB 134/669, SAC 3(49), PRO.
45. Ibid., memo, 27 April 1949, SAC (49)3.
46. Ibid., 'Burma', brief for Colombo conference, 14 Dec. 1949, SAC(49)16; Bowker tel 963 to FO, 22 Oct. 1949, FO 371/75711, no. 15830.
47. U E Maung to Bevin, 6 Jan. 1950, FO 371/83128, no. 3.
48. Ibid., memo by Cripps, 'Burmah Oil Company', 30 March 1949, SAC(49)2.
49. Memo by Cripps, 'Burma financial assistance', 11 Nov. 1949, T 220/333, EPC(49) 132, PRO; and record of meeting of Cabinet Economic Policy Committee, 18 Nov. 1949, CAB 134/220, EPC 11(49)1. The other Commonwealth contributions were: India £1 million, Australia £500.000, Pakistan £500.000 and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) £250.000.
50. Memo by Cripps, 'Burma financial assistance', 11 Nov. 1949, T 220/333, EPC(49) 132, PRO; and record of meeting of Cabinet Economic Policy Committee, 18 Nov. 1949, CAB 134/220, EPC 11(49)1. The other Commonwealth contributions were: India £1 million, Australia £500.000, Pakistan £500.000 and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) £250.000.
51. Treasury brief on the loan for parliamentary debate, May 1950, T 220/335. A copy of the white paper on the loan agreement (Cmd. 8007, June 1950) is in T 220/336. Consideration of the conditions to be attached delayed the actual offer of the loan until March 1950. It was to extend over two years. Interest would be charged at a nominal rate but the loan was offered in blocked sterling. It was not to be spent on imports. Instead it had to be used by the Burma Currency Board as backing for fresh issues of bank notes to meet internal expenditure. It was not a loan for rehabilitation purposes. It was designed as temporary relief to keep Burma solvent while the government in Rangoon took the necessary steps to create the conditions in which rehabilitation could take place. In accepting the loan, the Burmese expressed disappointment that it would not last for longer than two years and that it was being offered in blocked sterling as this would have an inflationary effect.
52. The loan received a hostile reception from the Conservative Opposition when it was debated in the House of Commons on 9 May 1950. A full transcript of the debate is in PREM 8/1319/2.
53. Draft memo, Bevin to China and South-East Asia Committee, March 1950, FO 371/83128, no. 5.
54. Record of meetings between Bevin and Alexander, 6 July 1949, PREM 8/1319/2. Somewhat contradicting the stand taken by Attlee (see note 40 above) Bevin assured Ne Win that although the UK wanted to see a settlement with the Karens, no conditions would be attached over aid.
55. Together with Saw Ba U Gyi, the military commander of the Karens, Vivian (see note 27 above) was allegedly killed in an ambush in Aug. 1950. The death of Vivian in 1950 has, however, been disputed by Louis Allen in '"The Escape of Captain Vivian": A Footnote to Burmese Independence', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 19, 1 (1991), 65-9.
56. This last point was emphasized by Attlee when he met U Nu in London in May 1950. Attlee to Bevin, 13 May 1950, FO 800/441.
57. The drafts are in FO 371/83128, no 5.
58. Bowker to Bevin, 4 May 1950, FO 371/83129, no. 24.
59. Speaight to Bevin, 24 Jan. 1951, FO 371/92148, no. 6.
60. Ibid., MacDonald to Morrison, 20 April 1951.
61. Speaight to Salisbury, 15 Sept. 1953, FO 371/106679, no. 28; and ibid., no. 17, memo by Scott, 5 Aug. 1953.
62. Gore-Booth to Eden, 21 July 1954, FO 371/111969, no. 5.
63. Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence (London, 1957), 332 and 356; and Robert H. Taylor, The State in Burma (London, 1987), 260-64.
64. Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence (London, 1957), 332 and 356; and Robert H. Taylor, The State in Burma (London, 1987), 260-64.
65. Allen to Gore-Booth, 21 Jan. 1955, FO 371/111969, no. 5.
66. Record by Reading of meeting with Kyaw Nyein, 19 Oct. 1955, FO 371/117041, no. 4.
67. DO 35/5019, no 3, Gore-Booth to Selwyn Lloyd, 7 May 1956, DO 35/5019, no. 3, PRO.
68. Ibid., minute by Laithwaite, 31 Oct. 1955.
69. Bowker to FO, 11 Jan. 1950, FO 371/83135, no. 1. U Nu had in mind liaison between Burma, India, Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for the defence of the Burma frontier against Communist China. He was not apparently thinking in terms of joint planning, only of access to extra arms, Treasury brief for Cripps's meeting with Burma ambassador, 7 Feb. 1950, T 220/334.
70. Speaight to Scott, 21 Dec. 1950, FO 371/83129, no. 40.