W AUSTRALIA CLUB DINNER
LONDON. ON MONDAY. MARCH 20. 1961
Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. R. G. Menzies
Sir, My Lords and Gentlemen,
I think I ought to begin by saying how grateful I am
to His Royal Highness the . Duke ( of Gloucester) for having once
more presided over one of these dinners. He and I were recalling
earlier this evening an occasion in this very hotel, in one of
those less civilized days when one wore a stiff shirt and white
tie; and I arrived with a temperature of 1030, which I am told
is a high temperature. I got up and read the speech and
couldn't see the audience at all they were like floating
clouds -and at the end of it I didn't know what I had said, nor,
I imagine, did anybody alse. Because of this very high
temperature I turpied to His Royal Highness, who is a former
Governor-General of Australia and a stout-hearted friend of
Australia, and if I may say so, Sir, always a kind friend of
mine; I turned to him and said, " Sir, I am terribly sorry.
Could you understand what I was saying, because I couldn't."
And his reply deserves to be immortalized, He said,~ " I think,
on the whole, it is the best speech I have ever heai'd you make.'
And then, of course to add to my embarrassment, we
have here Lord Slim, another lPormer Governor-General of
Australia a very remarkable man who, since he c6ased to be
Governor-aeneral has always treated me with thegreatest
affability. All the time I was supposed to be his chief
constitutional advisor you knew, going around saying, " If you
don't mind, Sir, I don't think you should have made that
speech; let me write the next one." To which he would always
reply, " Let it be a little literate for once." AUl this time
I was terrified of him, but since he gave up being Governor-
General-, we have become very good friends. Therefore, I am
permitted to say to you that I think he is a very great man and
that Australia had a great honour in having him. I won't dwell
on the fact that he knows my mind and knows the feelings of the
people of Australia. But then Sir, I look to my left and see this calm,
benign, non-contentious character Lord Hailsham. He was
involved the other day in a slight fracas in the House of
Lords. We don't want -to dwell on it in any way, but somebody
said to me " What do you think about that?" " Well" l, I said,
" You can't understand that unless you understand Hailsham,
because when he found himself, willy-nilly, cast into the House
of Lords, he protested very violently. I don't go as far as to
say that he reflected on his father's choice or anything of that
kind, but he certainly did make do you remember? a little
bit of an uproar: " Why should I go into the House of Lords? I
would sooner ring bells elsewhere." But, having been beaten down
on that subject, and having resigned himself to being a member
of the House of Lords God bless it he then decided that he
would try and approximate the House of Lords to the House of
Commons; or, you might say, to the House of Representatives in
Australia. And so he chose to debate accordingly. You alT
know what I mean, or if you don't, you are not good Australiaihs,
And then there is this wretched creature, the Maste. 1
of the Rolls. Until tonight, I have always admired him
enormously. I have even put myself to the trouble of reading
some of his judgments. I have even persuaded myself occasion.'.* w,
as a former lawyer, that they were right which I think arguefa
high degree of Ch~ istian charity, on my part, This croatuir-.
What does he do? He brings in cricket, It is, of course, an
admirable thing to bring in; we could have done with a bit of
it in the last week. But having brought it in, he makes a
glancing reference to Old Trafford.
Now if somebody wants to he is at perfect liberty to
talk about Old Trafford because, so far as I can remember, there
never has been a test match played at Old Trafford for donkey's
years. Everybody got worked up and everybody got excited the
newspaper critics, you know, these geniuses, those rather underbred
geniuses who write about all these things they had it all
worked out for Old Trafford. But for three consecutive tours,
not a ball was bowled at Old Trafford because it turns out that
at Old Trafford they specialise in rain. Anyhow, he drags in
Old Trafford as if he was a sort of what is the word? an;
archaeologist even an anthropologist, I would think, He drags
that in, and then he says this I think I wrote down the
ipsissima verba, " Winnie ille N1i" you must attend to your
pronunciation: " And then we went to a wool sale."'
This, of course, fascinated rme enormously because
tonight I'm wasting my time on you and tomorrow I'm going to
Leeds where I am to open, I'm told though ho I haven't been
told a wool research institute, Anid I'm going to be given
one of my many unearned degrees. I think Lord Slim 1 ' s one$
They thought it rather odd that he should al one have an unedrned
degree so they joined me in, you see glad to have a second
and then I make a speech to the Lord Mayor. It is much harder
to make a speech to a Lord Mayor than to have a speech made by a
Lord Mayor to you. But that is going to happen. And so this
wretched character Evershed, he said, " And so we went to a.
wool sale." ' If I had made a remark so fatuous to him as counsel,
he would have looked at me and said, " W~ ell, Mr. Menzies" or
" Mr. Minges" to people who are well trained " what do you mean
by a wool sale?" It was just like the occasion in my own
humble jurisdiction in Victoria, which Sir Edmund Herring will
remember very well, when I ventured to say to a celebrated
equity judge -and he is one anyway I think so none of the
common lawyer -we won't go into that but I ventured to say to
the celebrated equity judge, " Well, Sir, the difference you are
putting to me is merely thie difference between tweedlo-dum and
tweedle-dee." 1 Well like all politicians I thought this not
highly original but singularly brilliant the difference between
twoedle-dum and dweedle-deo. And the old boy put the tips of
his fingers together and said, " Mr. Menzies, I hope you don't
think you are solving the problum!" I say this, Master, only to
indicate that although we have overcome all social distinctions,
these distinctions between equity and the law are still
prevalent. And, as a common lawyer, I think this is not without
merit. I say no more than that.
But the Master of the Rolls, towards the end of his
speech, made some reference to the Commonwealth. I think it
might be regarded as a little odd if I did not say something
myself about the events of the last week or ten days. Because
there is one odd thing about conferences nowadays: Every morning
you open your ten newspapers and you read ten different versions,
each particularly authoritative, about what went on before.,' I
have never known what happened at this conference until I have
read the newspapers; and I have read some of the most astonishing
things. But what I want to say to you tonight I say as a
man who won't be accused of not being a Commonwealth man. I
have, through the whole of ray public life, been a devoted
servant of the Crown. That doesn't go for eve.-. yb~ ody in the
Commonwealth the old Commonwealth and the new Commonwealth.
I think therefore one should say a little about some of the
events of the last ton days and some of the dangers, as I see
them of the results of the last ten days. Because I believe
that last week we had some of the most dramatic events in
Commonwealth history and if we don't think they are dramatic,
then vie have lost all interest in the Commonwealth and what
happens to it. Because after all what happened last week was
that a foundation member of the British Commonwealth, to wit
South Africa, was in effect told to leave. I use those words.
I will justify them in due course. And that country, South
Africa, has left. Now this is not something to be tossed off
lightly as a morG incident; this is a foundation member of the
Commonwealth, a country which became a member of the Commonwealth
after bitter wars, after bitter disputes,. and after a
superb act of statesmanship by the United Kingdom which created
the Union. Now Sir, we have had in the newspapers, speculation,
propaganda, and if you will allow me to say so, not a little
: Usehood, about the events of the last ten days. Therefore, I
want to say something about the events as I saw them and as, in
an extremely obscure capacity, I have had some part in it.* Sir,
all this argument has arisen about something'which is called
" apartheid", which means, as I understand it, separate
development. Separate development., has been rightly or wrongly
the policy of the Government of South Africa. And : rvdeed I would
like to remind you it has been the policy of South P. 1rica since
it was first erected by J. C. Smuts. I can't cimplain about
Field Marshal Smuts because he was the most distinguished of all
members of the British Commonwealth outside this country. I
delivered the first Smuts lecture last year at Cambridge and in
the course of preparing myself for it I even road Smuts' book on
Holism which very few of you have tried to do, He was a
philosopher, a statesman, a scholar, and he found himself
Confronted by the choice which every Power finds itself
confronted by the choice between having a policy of integration
when you have people of different races, or a policy of separate
development. Nov that, I would have thought, in my innoceihce,
a problem of statesmanship. In the old colonial days it was
putting on one side the Africans apartheid. You had the
European colonising Power doing this and that; running the
country and building people up, all very properly; a process
which has led to the creation of nation after nation in this
world; or you have some other view. nd so South Africa'
decided it would have this policy of separate development. Now
for reasons I am going to give to you I don't agree with this
policy. But the great problem that we have to confront is
whether, because you disagree with the policy of a country a
member of the Commonwealth you push it out ofthe Commonwealth.
And those are two questions that ought to be kept completely
distinct one from the other. The whole problem is not one of
moralizing, or being superior, or passionate; the whole problem
is one of statesmanship. Now I have said to you that I don't myself agree with
this. I am talking to you tonight and I say this particularly
to my Australian fellow-countrymen I am the only Prime
Minister who, until this conference, has never publicly offered
an opinion on South African policy. And I stand by that. I
think that was right, because I am a believer in the Commonwealth,
I ami a believer in the members of the Commonwealth
meeting together, not arguing with each other not lecturing
each other, not sitting in Judgment on each other, but scekinj
to discover between themselves what points of agreement they
have, how far they may assemble their moral force in the woriK
And, therefore, in my Parliarient, and I daresay not much iDmy
advantage, I said " No. South Africa runs its own affairs; we
run our own affairs; Canada runs its own affairs. W4ho are we
to be sitting here in judgment one on the other? I don't have
any observations to make on what the other man does." But a].
this is ' old hat' now because everybody has a go at it.
I would not be saying anything about it tonight if it
wore not for the fact that in this conference Dr. Verwoera, thle
Prime Minister of South Africa, himself acce'. cx t o the idea that
we ought to have a chance between us all to thrash this matter
out. So I pause here, and say this about Dr. Verwoerd: he has
been accused sometimes by people who speak, I understand, in
the name of dhrsistianity I am a simple Presbyterian myself.-
he has been accused of something that almost approximates to the
bitterness of murder. I want to tell you that I, in fact,
formed the impression never having met him before that h
was a man of iUmmense integrity and of great courtesy. He came
out of this conference, personally, whatever you might think of
his policy, with the very high respect of the people who sat
with him. La I say that at the very beginning because I don't
want to have it thought that I am one of those people who want
to lecture him as if he were a wicked man with no moral sense.
I believe he is a man of utter integrity. I don't agree with
his policy. But I am not bound to your policy. If I diwoe
with your policy I don't mean to tell yet', you arc a man of no
character. And I hope you won't be calleu upon to tell me ' that
. I am a man of no character because you don't agree with my;
poli cy. The whole genius of the British Commonwea*;' and by
Jove,_ I believe in the British Commonwealth with a L~ ith in my
guts -the whole genius of it has been that we are tolerant, we
agree to disagree, we seek to understand we look for points of
agreement, but we don't stand up and lecture each other in the
face of the world; and never until this year, have we sat in
Judgment on each other. Those are things wart h remembering.
Here is a problem of statbsmanship. Now I, never having before
offered a public word about SDuth African policy, am now called
on to do so and not by my wish. I am old-fashioned enough to
believe in tolerance, and in living and letting live, and in the
virtues of Christian faith, hope and charity. I believe in
these things but if thcis is out of date and I am to be
misunderstool about those matters. thsn I simply say this to you:
here is a time of passion and rhetoric; of broad, sweeping
statements, the kind of things you expect to have in the United
Nations Assembly but not in the Bi~ itish Cotmionwealth. The-se
are the times, -and therefore I say to myself: " Must I say
something?" I believe I must, and I say it. I don't moralize
about South African policy because I tftink moralizing is a
pretty cheap thing. All I say is that I ' Ion't think it will work,
You see this is the pragmatic British approach and I
am happy to say that I am completely British. I don't want to
be offensive to the Master of the Rolls, but I believe I am in
the tradition of the British common law and this involves
pragmatic JudL,; ents will it work? & nA it won't work. Nothing
was more impressive to all of us at this conference than the way
in which Dr. Verwoerd, with obvious honesty, with great courtesy,
with great lucidity, explained his policy. He told us what his
Government was doing for the Bantu: for the Bantu in their
territories, for the Bantu in the ordinary provinces. He told
us of the amount of money they were ! p ending on education and
health which I may say is quite an example to all the other
countries in Africa. And he believes that all this will work
out vory nicely. Well, and I speak with great reluctance, I
don't think it will, because I believe in this day and
generation that the more his policy succeeds, the more he br.. L
the Bantu up in terms of health and living standards and
education, the more intolerable will they find it to be secor.-
class citizens. N-ow this is purely, I say purely, a pragmatiapproach.
It is not sentimental, it is practical. And I sa..
to him time after time in private " I know you believe this is
right, but I believe that the more it succeeds in the first
0
instance, the more it will fail in the long run. Because the
more you succeed in building up the Bantus, the more you succeed
in giving them proper standards educational standards and
universities the more you will develop that proper pride in
people which will make them say, ' I am not to be pushed to one
side', And if it goes on that way then you may find that the
ultimate conflict will be bloody and devastating." Now that
sii. ly is my own view, and I offer it for what it is worth, and
he is familiar with my views on this matter. But if he goes
back to his own country and says " I am unmoved by that; this is
our policy", then I want to tell you I stand for the right of
any Commonwealth country to run its affairs in its own way.
May I remind you Sir I don't want to be too long
but may I remind you that In May of last year, which is less
than a year ago, we had a Prime Minist( ursl conference on this
matter; well not on this matter, but on a number of matters,
but this was the first matter to come up. And after we had had
a discussion we issued a communique. In this great organisation
of ours we do not produce a communique unless it is unanimous.
And this communique said: " The Commonwealth is an association of
independent, sovereign States, each responsible for its own
policy." Now these are, I venture to say Sir fine wiords and
true words. And I emphasise that because, wlthou. bo.&, t
ing, if somebody in a Prime Ministers' conference Li to t: l1
me what the policies of Australia ought to be, I would tell them
to go and jump in the Serpentine. I know mine is an unfashionable
idea, but there is much to be learned from the history of
the past. The Charter of the United Nations and that is a body
with which I don't invariably agree the Charter of the United
Nations concedes-the point. It says: " Nothing contained in the
present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene
in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction
of any State". And Sir if I may add to that last year,
after this conference in which these matters had been informally
discussed, I went off, dreadfully daring, to Cambridge to give
the first Smuts Memorial Lecture. It was a piece of irony you
know, as I look back on it, because it was Smuts who devisod the
policy of apartheid. He wouldn't have done it in the same way
no, of course not. But he was a great man, a great figure in
the history of the Commonwealth. Would you mind if I quoted from
this Smuts lecture? You could of course buy it for a few
shillings from the Cambridge University Press, but I know how
impoverished you are and I won't dwell on that. But I really
think this is something I oug.-ht to put to you:
" During the recent tragic episodes in South Africabecause
remember that this declaration I have just been quoting
to you was made after ' Sharpeville, afe Langa, afe those
events which are now celebrated by gentlemen with sashes across
their cLests " During the recent tra!, ic episodes in South 1frica
there were not wanting suggestions that South Africa
should be expelled presumably by majority vote from
the Commonwealth. Any such suggestion, in my opinion
misconceived the nature of our association. We do not dc,..
with the domestic political policies of any one of us, i:
we know that political policies come or go with governinG>.
and that we are not concerned with , overnmients and their
policies so much as wo are with nations and their people!--
If we ever thought of expelling a member nation of the
Commonwealth it would, I hope, be because we believed th" 7
in the general interests of the Commonwealth that nation
a nation was not fit to be our associate.
" The Prime Ministers' Conference would break up in
disorder and the now Cormmonwealth would disintegrate if we
affected to discuss and decide what we thought to be the
proper measure of democracy in our various couhtries;
whether particular groups should or should not have the
vote; whether oppositions should be respected; whether a
Parliament should control the Executive. On all such
matters ' autonorious' or ' independent' nations must have the
right to manage their own affairs in their own way.
" We are not a court. We are brothers in a special
international family."
Now let ne emphasise this every Government, every
member of the Commonwealth, has achieved self-governmaent, a
right of complete independence. Do I want to go around and to
say to any one of them, " This is how you ought to govern yourself?"
Of course not. That is too stupid for words. You will
have a high degree of authoritarian government in one country.
You will have an advanced stage of parliamentary government in
another. But when you look back on these things and you
remember from first to last, from the Balfour Declaration onwards,
we emphasise that we are autonomous governrent-niaters
of our own fate, masters of our own problems. Don"-
it is a monstrous thing for us to be sitting in jud.: o>
another? I wouldn't have said a word about South African pcLicy,
which I think is doomed to disaster, except that I am the only
man yet among the Prime Ministers who hasn't said something
about it. And it has all been exposed to the public eye and
therefore no one can be misrepresented. But really, basically,
I am a great believer in autonomy meaning autonomy, and selfgovernment
meaning self-government. And if we are to reach a
state of affairs in which, instead of meeting to discover points
of agreement that we might have struggling to understand each
other's problems, every now and then finding out there is some
matter on which we can jointly achieve some results, forward
some good cause we are not to do that but are to adopt the new
rule that when we meet somebody is on trial and we analyse their
differences, then, next time it may be Australia.
How do I know? We have things in our policy which are
our policy and our business but with which somebody may disagree.
I wouldnit tolerate having these things discussed by other
people. I wouldn't tolerate being lectured by other people on
what we ought to do. But alas, when emotional judgment comes in
and there are all sorts of banners being borne in the sky,
people can be misled into misunderstanding what it is all about.
Today it is the fashion to talk about racialism. It is still
the fashion to talk about colonialism so long as you don't
talk about Communist colonialism, which is the greatest and the
most aggressive colonialism in the world. But who talks about
the rule of Parliament? Who talks about the rule of law? Who
talks about an uncontrolled press? Who talksaboutnoimprisonment
without trial? I could very simply, if I am allowed to stay in
office long enough, have a word or two to say about these things.
If the drill is that in the Cormonwealth, which was a communion
of friends who didn't order each other about but met to discuss
and as far as they could, agree; if this is to be changed so
that we are sitting in judgment, so that we are a species of
courts, so that we have accused, and charges, and verdictsi t-
I am bound to tell you with all that inherent courtesy which
characterises me, I will have something to say about that. } I
by tk: time I have said it, and by the time the answers have.
been made there won't be any Commonwealth because we will al.
have expelled each other.
Sir, I think this is really a most unhappy event an-
the last thing I want to say to you is this: don't fall into the
error, which many people are falling into of thinking that the
Commonwealth this our most glorious con~ ribution to civilized
life in the modern world is a sub-division of the United
Nations; don't begin to think of it as if it consisted-of
resolutions and amendments and lobbying and votes,~ I r. x-Isist this.
This has nothing to do with the United Nations. I Q. ni ind if
the representatives of ninety-nine nations in New Vo.. 1 go on
making speeches lasting two and a half hours each, andJ keep going
into committee, and doing all these things to amuse .! eople.
Forget about that. This is highly experimental. It may produce
some good results. But what hurts me is this: thatthis great
Commonwealth is being dragged into this area of thought which has
no relation to it.
In 1935, 1, for the first time, attended a moeeting of
Commonwealth Prime Ministers. It wasn't called the Ccm; J-1.; alth
then, it was called the Imporial Conference and the thX.' L iiMe
Minister of Australia, my late friend and leader Mr. Lyons, was
ill. He asked me to attend for him. That was twontys. x: years ago
and, man and boy since then, I have had a lot of exrnrionce of
these things-. Nothing will ever persuade me that u
identify the exquisite intimate personal relations
Commonwealth with the debating society that goes on \ w .1W : c
God bless the debating society in New York. The Isv~
burgeoning out your Royal Highness from the old all~. ance zo
the-Throne, burgeoning out from the old Crown Commonwealth through
these various processes which I don't resist or resent, so that
you have republics, so that you have countries all of whom have
had old associations with us. I look here at my friend Yousuf
from Pakistan. You can't argue about India. They have all. had
the most wonderful relations with the old British Raj. True,
the allegiance to the Throne, both dear to my heart and to the
heart of so many of you, is no longer the sole condition. But at
any rate we have had a special family relationship with the Queen
as the Head of the Commonwealth, the Queen as our Sovereigu Lady.
If anybody wants us to do something which converts the Commonwealth
with all its warmth and its intimacy, its capacity for
hostility within friendship, which is the great thing about any
family relationship into a forum where we are to sit in judgment
on each other, then all I can say is with great devotion to Her
Majesty it is a sorry day for the Commonwealth.
Why can't we disagree with the South African policy
without pushing South Africa out and believe me it was pushed
out. If Verwoerd hadn't gone when he did, I would have been
surprised. Harold Macmillan, the most distinguished Prime
Minister of this country with his colleagues, and with myself,
worked like horses to develop a communique which would expose the
criticisms of other members of the Commonwealth and the answer of
the Prime Minister of South Africa and, having exposed them, would
then make it possible for South Africa to remain within the
Commonwealth as a republic as every other republic has. When
finally Mr. Macmillan came in and said A" Dr. Verwoerd agrees", I
was delighted. I thought, " This is it' in my innocence I
thought " This is it we will now have ihe criticism fairly
stated, the answer fairly stated... and South Africa rem~ ains in"..
I say this as I have read some awful rubbish in the newspapers
not for the first time I've read some awful rubbish to the
effect that Mr. Macmillan pushed them out. This is monstrous
man worked harder than he did. No man worked harder thanDl
Sandys with him, to produce what you might call a formula und..
which the argum~ nt this way was stated, and the argument that
was stated. But I must tell you in view of all this propagai
that goes on that while I was saying to myself in my simple,
colonial fashion, " Well, I think this fixes it," one, two, thi-
4 0 8.
four, five people got up and made it completely clear that they
wouldn't have this, that they didn't want South Africa in, and
that every convenient opportunity, or inconvenient opportunity,
would be taken to attack her.
Well I'm not Dr. Verwoerd and I'm not the apostle of
apartheid though I have my own immigration policy and I'm
bound to say that in hfs plac,, 1 would have loft certainly not
later than he did. So don't lot us have humbug. There is an
awful lot of humbug in the world and, on the whole, I think that
humbug is one of the more serious offences in the world. So don't
let us have it. The faczt is that in all these circumstances South
Africa is out. And what I am saying to you so many of wi-om are
Australians like myself is, " Don't let us Jump on this latest
band-waggon. Let us think of this Commonrealth of ours. What
does it mean in tolerance, in understandinig, in points of
contact, and to us who are Australians, in a superb allegiance to
the Throne?" What does it mean? If we think it means nothing then
it doesn't matter; let it all go to the United Nations. But if
we think it means something, then I beg of all of you to look back
on these events, not with hilarity for I feel no hilarity about
them but to look back on them saying, " Did we go wrong? Has
what has happened strengthened the Commonwealth?" And the
answers to these questions will depend on whether you think our
marvellous association depends upon tolerance, kindness, and
understanding and the long view; or upon the popular passion for
denunciation. I don't need to tell you that I don't feel good
about this. I apologise for having inflicted my views on you.
But since my earliest days in politics I have had a great A sion
of what the Commonwealth should stand for. I hate to think that
it is blurred.