Colour Bar (23 page)

The Committee organized a Mass Protest Meeting at Denison House in London on the evening of Sunday 12 March, which was
chaired by Constantine and attended by about 800 people. Seretse attended the meeting although he was not feeling very well; he was fit and athletic, but the blow he had been given in the past week had sapped his strength. On behalf of the Bangwato he thanked the audience for coming: ‘I am sure that the people back home, disappointed as they are at what I consider a rather undemocratic decision, will take heart when they know they are not the only ones in this battle.' ‘I am happy to say', he added warmly, ‘that, even though this action has been taken by the British Government, the British people have not associated themselves with it.'
⁷

At the meeting a resolution of protest was passed and it was agreed to distribute a copy of this to the King, the Prime Minister, Churchill, the United Nations, the world press, embassies in different parts of the world, and the National Council for Civil Liberties – to make them aware of ‘the stand of all the Colonial People'. The Fighting Committee also resolved to send frequent cables to Ruth in Bechuanaland.
⁸

A week later, on 19 March, a large rally was held in Trafalgar Square, at which Seretse and Fenner Brockway both spoke. The Labour Party had been asked to send a speaker, but had said they were unable to supply one. The Reverend Reginald Sorensen, however, although a Labour MP, joined the protest in a private capacity. He said he was attending on behalf of many friends inside and outside the House of Commons.
⁹
Sorensen, a Unitarian minister, took a keen and active interest in movements for colonial liberation.

The exile of Seretse was seen to highlight the evil of the colour bar in Britain and her colonies. It was high time, asserted the African League, that ‘the world knows the root of the troubles in Africa. In their relations with Africans, most Europeans consider themselves “gods” and “goddesses”. They take this fantastic attitude in order to prevent the Africans from attaining equality with them.'
¹⁰
This was the reason, claimed the Fighting Committee, that British newspapers had made such a great play of the story that Ruth was a typist – the idea being that a white woman would only marry a black man if she were a ‘social reject'.
¹¹

The Colonial Office was gloomily predicting increased trouble with nationalist elements in all of the African colonies because of the Seretse affair.
¹²
The Foreign Office, too, said one of the CO officials,
was ‘seriously concerned (like us) as to the disastrous effect of this on world opinion'.
¹³
Certainly the effect on opinion in the Commonwealth was disastrous. Krishna Menon, India's High Commissioner in London, went to see Gordon Walker to register a protest from the Indian Government.
¹⁴
In the Ceylon Parliament, it was announced that the banishment would ‘rouse the opposition of all coloured people against the Commonwealth'.
¹⁵
In Kingston, Jamaica, all the political parties joined together to warn the British Government that it risked losing the support of ‘countless millions of colonial people'.
¹⁶
Citizens of Trinidad pledged to support any move to release ‘the monarch of Bechuanaland'.
¹⁷
From all over the Commonwealth, letters and telegrams of objection and complaint poured in – to the CRO, to the Colonial Office, and to the Prime Minister.

‘Embassy believes British have blundered,' reported the US embassy in South Africa to the office of the American President. ‘Believes British action jeopardizes their reputation for fair dealing with Natives.'
¹⁸
Most of the American press, though, were taking a ‘moderate line'.
¹⁹
This was hardly surprising, given that thirty out of the forty-eight states had legislation prohibiting mixed marriage and enforcing segregation; in the Southern states, a system of laws known as ‘Jim Crow' segregated black people from whites in all areas of society, ranging from schools and buses to theatres and parks. American liberals, however, were generally shocked by the British Government's treatment of Seretse, and the African-American community was outraged.
²⁰
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Council on African Affairs telegraphed Sir Oliver Franks of the British diplomatic corps, as well as Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the UN, to protest against Seretse's exile. There were 65 signatories to the telegram, including many pastors.
²¹
‘The Negro press – which is a highly influential medium – is full of the Seretse debacle,' reported a leading trade union journalist. It was the first time, he added, that ‘the Negro press has ever, to my knowledge, been critical of the British Labor Government. It's lost a good many friends for the Government among our Negroes.' It would be difficult, he added,

to exaggerate the repercussions of the Seretse affair among some quarters here. Some of us like to think that the Labor govt policy is pretty free of the
common stultification of American racial attitudes. Our Negro performers and troops come back from England raving about the British enlightenment etc etc. Then this.
²²

Among blacks in Africa, there was bitter condemnation. Walter Sisulu, the general secretary of the ANC, sent a telegram to the Resident Commissioner in Mafikeng, deploring the decision. He feared that it had ‘destroyed perhaps forever what confidence Africans had in the integrity and honour of the British Government'.
²³
The Kroonstad African Community sent a similar telegram to Attlee, as did the South African Indian Congress.
²⁴

But white South Africa, with few exceptions, approved.
²⁵
The Anglican Bishop of Bloemfontein asserted:

We who know South Africa well and its native life know the aversion which most natives have to mixed marriages… It is no question of morality – presumably an Englishman can morally marry an Eskimo or a Hottentot – but it is very decidedly a question of wisdom. All I have seen of ‘coloured' people in South Africa makes me perfectly aware that it is a terrible mistake. The coloured hate their strain of black blood, and the natives despise them. That is just sheer fact, and has to be faced.
²⁶

‘The natives have got more insolent since Seretse and his wife came here,' complained a white in Cape Town to Attlee:

Riots in Durban and Jo-burg, sly pushes as they pass the whites, cheeky in the shops, and innumerable pin pricks which will certainly grow if they aren't checked. I suppose by now they think they are as entitled to a white woman as Seretse.
²⁷

The opinion of South African newspapers followed predictable lines. Of the ‘white' papers supporting the United Party, there was approval of the banishment from the
Argus
in Cape Town and the Afrikaans
Suiderstem
and
Volkgtem
. On the other hand, the more liberal
Rand Daily Mail
, the Johannesburg
Star
, and Durban's
Natal Mercury
were critical. The
Cape Times
took a position between the two: that the decision might have been justified, but no single argument had been put forward. Among the Nationalist papers,
Die Burger
in Cape Town and
Volksblad
in Bloemfontein praised the courage of
the UK Government; the same line was taken by
Vaderland
, the Afrikaner Party paper. The
Transvaler
, an extremist paper, rebuked the British Government for slowness in reaching its decision.

All the leading vernacular papers in southern Africa were published by ‘Associated Bantu Newspapers', an umbrella group that was heavily controlled by the editorial director, B. G. Paver, and based in Johannesburg. This press group published, among many other newspapers,
Naledi ya Batswana
, which was aimed at Bechuanaland, and
Bantu World
, the main newspaper read by black South Africans.
²⁸
The leader columns of most of his newspapers, Paver assured Baring, supported the British Government's policy, although
Umthunywa
did not toe the line. ‘Our associated paper
Umthunywa
published a leader attacking the British Government,' explained Paver in a report to Baring, ‘but I consider that this is of no special significance, for
Umthunywa
is run by a private printer who is inclined to leave his leaders to a rather wild and woolly African editor.' He added, reassuringly, ‘When we have the capital, we shall take over this paper.'
²⁹

In Britain, public opinion was growing increasingly hostile. ‘If the Bamangwato do not object to a white consort and the prospect of a half-breed succession,' argued
The Times
, ‘it would not seem to be for the imperial Government, pledged before the nations to respect the equal rights of all races, to overrule them in their own domestic concerns.'
³⁰
Many letters to newspapers were describing the affair as another Munich, except that this time it was South Africa that had been appeased.
³¹
A letter of protest, signed by over 100 students, was sent to
The Times
from Balliol, Seretse's college at Oxford.
³²

‘From all this,' wrote Gordon Walker wearily in his diary, ‘I have learned to stand up to much abuse and publicity.' But he was also enjoying his high profile. ‘Though it has not been a pleasant experience,' he observed, ‘I have not altogether disliked it. There is something to be said for having oneself talked about, whatever the cause.'
³³
He was helped by the South African High Commissioner in London, Leif Egeland, who had long discussions with influential people in the media, warning them against any agitation that would play into the hands of ‘Communist exploitation' of the colour issue. But he had done this discreetly. ‘Nothing will play more surely into the hands of our enemies and enemies of the present United Kingdom Government,'
he told Malan, ‘than any overt sign of intervention on our part.'
³⁴

Egeland reported to Dr Malan that Gordon Walker did not think the Conservatives would want to bring down the government on the Seretse issue – ‘a
damnosa hereditas
to which they would not wish to succeed'. But Egeland was worried about Winston Churchill. ‘Churchill has got out of step with his Party,' he told Malan, ‘most of whom would like to see [the] issue played down.'
³⁵
Churchill was deeply troubled by the Seretse affair. According to his friend Violet Bonham Carter, he had told her: ‘I believe firmly in 2 principles: (1) Christian marriage, & (2) the bond of strong animal passion between husband & wife. Both exist in this case.'
³⁶
On 15 March, two days after the failure of Baring's Kgotla, Churchill sent an urgent telegram to Smuts in South Africa: ‘Should be grateful for full information about your views Seretse by swiftest airmail. Feeling here very strong against Government muddle. Winston.'
³⁷

Smuts replied immediately with a telegram, promising to send an air-letter by the next day's mail, ‘which advises caution from Commonwealth viewpoint'.
³⁸
The letter set out this caution in detail. There was much to be said, acknowledged Smuts, for Churchill's view that Seretse had been tricked into the London visit. But he did not see how the Government could change their decision without ‘very grave damage' from the South African point of view. ‘A form of passive resistence [
sic
], or boycott,' he pointed out, ‘has already been started by the tribe against the Government, and any change now by the Government will be looked upon as a capitulation… and it would be an inducement to Natives in the Union to do likewise,' with farreaching consequences. ‘Natives traditionally believe in authority,' he argued, ‘and our whole Native system will collapse if weakness is shown in this regard.'

If the British Government were to ignore South African hostility to Seretse's marriage, warned Smuts, public opinion would harden behind Malan's claim for the annexation of the High Commission Territories. And if this claim were refused, the ‘extreme course' of declaring South Africa a republic would at once become an issue. This would undermine the Commonwealth. But such a calamity would be prevented if the situation were managed properly.

I believe the feud between Tshekedi and the Seretse factions is [a] plausible excuse which the British Government may have for banishing both from the Territory. Whether they will make use of this I cannot at present say.

‘But from all this,' he concluded, ‘you will see that the Seretse case in its full implications is full of dynamite.'
³⁹
Churchill was persuaded. From now on, he ceased to confront the Labour front bench on the issue of Seretse.

But as Gordon Walker had feared, Labour backbenchers started to press their opposition. At a long meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, many of them accused Attlee and Gordon Walker of instigating a colour bar.
⁴⁰
Then there was a new challenge: the Liberal Party – which viewed ‘with deep misgivings' the treatment of Seretse – tabled a motion for debate in the Commons.
⁴¹

Gordon Walker needed to find some way of taking the initiative. He seized on the idea of a White Paper, as an alternative to the Harragin Report, that would satisfy the repeated requests to the government for a clear statement of its case. One of the people making this request was Isobel Cripps, the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps. ‘I am finding, even amongst people who try to take an unbiased view,' wrote Lady Cripps to Gordon Walker, ‘that there are certain suspicions which are aroused, and if I were not as close to the picture as I am, I myself would probably be tainted by these suspicions.' She understood, she said, that the chief point was ‘the very real danger which I gather exists of civil war being caused intertribally if Seretse went back'.
⁴²
This was not, of course, the chief point at all – rather, it was the ‘plausible excuse' advocated by Smuts. Lady Cripps was deluding herself in the belief that she was ‘close to the picture'. But since it was the very point that Gordon Walker had been trying to make, he replied gratefully. ‘This has been a hideously difficult matter,' he confided to her. ‘I am sure it has been right to take the immediate unpopular line, but it hasn't been exactly fun.'
⁴³