Leopold Amery
Milner Group journalist-politician, Colonial and Dominions Secretary (1873-1955)
Also known as: Amery, Leopold Amery, Leo Amery, L. S. Amery
Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery (1873-1955) was a journalist for The Times of London, Conservative MP, and longtime Milner protégé. Quigley names him as 'Milner's political heir' (AAE 53) and lists him in the inner core of the The Milner Group. He served as Colonial Secretary (1924-1929) and Secretary of State for India and Burma (1940-1945), holding both of the imperial portfolios that the Group most cared about.
Life
Born in India in 1873, Amery was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls in 1897 (AAE 45). He was not formally a member of Milner's Kindergarten, having gone to South Africa as The Times's chief war correspondent during the Boer War, where he edited the seven-volume Times History of the South African War. But the connection to Milner was tight: 'Leopold Amery was not a member of the Kindergarten but knew all the members well and was in South Africa, during their period of service, as chief correspondent of The Times for the Boer War' (AAE 57). He entered Parliament as Conservative MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook in 1911 and held the seat for 34 years.
Milner's political heir
Quigley names Amery the most important political legatee of Milner himself. 'Dawson was probably as close to Milner personally as any member of the Kindergarten, although Amery must be regarded as Milner's political heir' (AAE 53). During the First World War he served as Milner's assistant in the Colonial Office (1918-1919) and continued in the Colonial and Dominions portfolios under successive Conservative governments. 'As the war drew to a close in 1918, Milner took the office of Colonial Secretary, with Amery as his assistant, negotiated an agreement providing independence for Egypt, set up a new self-government constitution in Malta, sent Curtis to India...' (T&H 159). Amery is the figure through whom Milner's policy line continued to operate inside government after Milner's death in 1925.
Imperial preference and the Group's economic line
Amery championed imperial preference — the protectionist scheme of Joseph Chamberlain that the The Milner Group had inherited as its preferred trade architecture. As Colonial and Dominions Secretary (1924-1929) he convened the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1929 that produced the Balfour Declaration on Dominion status, later codified as the Statute of Westminster (1931). Quigley notes that the 1926 conference 'is generally recognized as one of the most important of the postwar period. The Cecil Bloc and Milner Group again had three out of five members of the United Kingdom delegation' (AAE 131). Amery used The Times — under Dawson's editorship — and The Round Table to shape the colonial-administration policy line through the 1920s and 1930s.
Munich and the split
Amery was on the appeasement-skeptical side of the The Milner Group's split over Hitler. He attacked the Munich Agreement and, in May 1940, delivered the famous Norway Debate speech that brought down the Chamberlain government, ending with Cromwell's words: 'In the name of God, go.' Quigley notes him 'in the minority' on the appeasement-era India White Paper (AAE 146) — opposing his Group's official line. In 1940, Churchill brought him in as Secretary of State for India and Burma, the office he held to the end of the war. Of his colleagues' opposition to the 1930 White Paper on Palestine, Quigley records: 'Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, and Leopold Amery protested against the document in a letter to The Times on 30 October 1930' (AAE 144).
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 42 Quigley
Milner, Abe Bailey, George Parkin, Lord Selborne, Jan Smuts, A. J. Glazebrook, R. H. Brand (Lord Brand), Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), Lionel Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson, H. A. L. Fisher, Edward Grigg, Leopold Amery, and Lord Astor.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 53 Quigley
Dawson was probably as close to Milner personally as any member of the Kindergarten, although Amery must be regarded as Milner's political heir.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 57 Quigley
Leopold Amery was not a member of the Kindergarten but knew all the members well and was in South Africa, during their period of service, as chief correspondent of The Times for the Boer War and the editor of The Times History of the South African War.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 158 Quigley
he established a Cabinet secretariat in 1916-1917 consisting of two proteges of Esher (Hankey and Swinton) and two of his own (his secretaries, Leopold Amery and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, later Lord Harlech).
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 159 Quigley
Milner took the office of Colonial Secretary, with Amery as his assistant, negotiated an agreement providing independence for Egypt, set up a new self-government constitution in Malta, sent Curtis to India.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 162 Quigley
It dominated the Colonial Office in London, at least for the decade 1919-1929. There Milner was secretary of state in 1919-1921 and Amery in 1924-1929, while the post of parliamentary under-secretary was held by three members of the group for most of the decade.