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Reginald Dorman-Smith

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Rt Hon Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, [GBE]

Colonel Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith, GBE (10 March 1899[1] – 20 March 1977)[2] was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, soldier and politician in the British Empire.

Early life and politics

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Dorman-Smith was educated at Harrow School and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. After serving in the army, he continued his career with a strong interest in agriculture, becoming president of the National Farmers Union (the NFU) at the age of 32, and then later Minister of Agriculture. He was first elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Petersfield in the 1935 general election as one of a handful of MPs sponsored by the NFU and served as the Union's president for the following few years. As a MP, Dorman-Smith was a member of the English Mistery and its successor, English Array.[3] English Misery was a mystical "back-to-the-land" movement that sought to discover the "lost secrets" of the English as way as bringing about some sort of neo-feudal political and social order.[3]

In the late 1930s, the British Government's agricultural policy came in for heavy criticism from the NFU, Parliament and the Press and in January 1939 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took the bold step of appointing Dorman-Smith as Minister of Agriculture. In October 1939, Dorman-Smith instigated the Government's Dig for Victory campaign, aimed at increasing food production from allotments. However, when Chamberlain fell, Dorman-Smith was not included in the government of his successor, Winston Churchill.

Dorman-Smith was referred to in the book "Guilty Men" by Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard (writing under the pseudonym 'Cato'), published in 1940 as an attack on public figures for their failure to re-arm and their appeasement of Nazi Germany.[4]

==Governor of Burma Dorman-Smith was appointed Governor of Burma from 6 May 1941 to 31 August 1946, and was therefore in office at the time of the Japanese invasion - and was expelled from the country by the Japanese. Burma was a highly multicultural and diverse colony. The business and commercial life of Burma was dominated by Indian and Chinese merchants who were extremely unpopular with the Bamar majority who resented the economic success of the Chinese and Indian merchants.[5] When the Japanese invaded Burma in January 1942, the Indian merchants were the victims of attacks by the Bamar who looted their homes and stores while "roughing up" the Indians.[5] A delegation of the most wealthy Indian merchants visited Dorman-Smith to ask for his help in arranging protection for the Indian community, only to be there was little that could be done as the police forces had collapsed.[6] More out of fear of the Bamar than the Japanese, as the British retreated from Burma there was an exodus of the Indian merchants and their families into India.[7] The flight of the Indians took place amid much suffering, and Indian newspapers frequently featured stories about the British placing the evacuation of British families ahead of the Indians, and that the British colonial authorities were generally indifferent to the plight of the Indians.[8]

As Governor, Dorman-Smith was forced to join the retreat out of Burma. Dorman-Smith wrote in the third person when he heard of the fall of Singapore in February 1942 that his "Mistery training stood him in good stead throughout the crisis and gave him the strength to carry on".[3] On 30 April 1942, Dorman-Smith sent a telegram to Churchill asking him "to scrounge up a few more aeroplanes" to fly him and his family out of the jungle in Burma where they were staying to the safety of India.[9] On 1 May 1942, Dorman-Smith received a telegram from the India Secretary, Leo Amery, saying that the News Chronicle had run a story saying the British colonial authorities had prevented Indians from boarding flights out of Burma and refused to allow Indian refugees to cross into India.[7] Amery was due to face hostile questions about the News Chronicle in the House of Commons on 7 May 1942, and he demanded Dorman-Smith either confirm or rebut the story.[9] As Dorman-Smith was in the jungle with no records waiting impatiently to be flown out of Burma, he send Amery a confusing telegram noted for its grammatical errors that did not answer his questions.[9] On 9 May 1942, Amery sent another telegram to Dorman-Smith demanding answers to four "simple questions", namely what arrangements had Dorman-Smith made for the evacuation of the Indians from Burma; how many Indians had been evacuated since January; how were the Indians treated in the refugee camps along the the India-Burma border; and what had happened to the Indian refugees who walked along the Tamu route to India?[9] Dorman-Smith did not answer this telegram, and instead the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow replied on his behalf, to say that 40, 000 Indian refugees had been received since January.[9] In his hideaway in the Burmese jungle, Dorman-Smith was haunted by a sense of guilt over the chaotic and badly managed evacuation of Burma.[10] General Harold Alexander, the GOC of the British forces in Burma asked that Dorman-Smith leave Burma at once before he captured by the Japanese as he stated he did not want the governor's capture "to add to my anxieties".[10]

Between May 1942 and Oct 1945, he was in exile at Simla, India. In October 1943, Dorman-Smith made a speech in London before the East Indian Association. His speech lamented the fact that while the British had talked for years about self-government and reform in Asia, they had delivered very little of it which had damaged their credibility. He said:

"Neither our word nor our intentions are trusted in that part of the globe ... We have fed such countries as Burma on political formulae until they are sick at the very sight and sound of a formula, which has come, as far as my experience shows, to be looked upon as a very British means of avoiding a definite course of action."

The speech said that pre-war British policy on these subjects was discredited and a new credible approach was required after the war.

Major-General Sir Hubert Rance, the British military commander, took control of the country for the military after the liberation of Rangoon, but Dorman-Smith returned as governor in 1946. Dorman-Smith considered arresting Aung San for a murder he committed in 1942. In that year, Aung San had stabbed the restrained headman of Thebyugone village to death in front of a large crowd. Dorman-Smith was convinced by his superiors not to carry out the arrest.

While Dorman-Smith was back in the UK for medical reasons he was replaced by Rance, who was supported by Lord Mountbatten of Burma and fully backed a policy of immediate unconditional independence for Burma under the leadership of the AFPFL.

Simla Conference 1944

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As the Governor of Burma, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith met with Anglo-Burmese leaders in Simla in 1944, to discuss the future of the Anglo-Burmese community after the war.

The Anglo-Burmese delegates were:

One result of the conference was an assurance to the Anglo-Burmese community that they would be allowed to preserve their freedom of worship and allowed to teach their own religion, freedom to continue their own customs, and maintain their own language of English.

After leaving Burma, Dorman-Smith continued to take an interest in its affairs. He believed that if London had not intervened, he could have influenced the course of events in Burma so as to prevent the country from leaving the British Commonwealth.

Family

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Dorman-Smith was born to a Protestant Anglo-Irish father and an Irish Catholic mother at Bellamont House, Cootehill, County Cavan, Ireland, and was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. He served briefly in the British Indian Army before being invalided out, then joined a volunteer battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment.

One of Dorman-Smith's two brothers, Eric Dorman-Smith, was a major-general in the British Army in the Second World War. After falling out with the British establishment, he became an Irish republican sympathiser and changed his name to Eric Dorman O'Gowan. His other brother, Victor Dorman-Smith, was a Royal Navy captain who served as a member of Combined Operations HQ during World War One.

His daughter Patricia married the novelist Gwyn Griffin in 1950.[11]

References

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  1. ^ "Smith, Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman- (1899–1977), politician and colonial governor - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58640. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Spuler, Bertold; Allen, Charles Geoffry (14 February 1977). Rulers and Governments of the World. Bowker. ISBN 9780859350563.
  3. ^ a b c Griffiths 1980, p. 318.
  4. ^ Cato (1940). Guilty men. London: V. Gollancz. OCLC 301463537.
  5. ^ a b Leigh 2014, p. 61.
  6. ^ Leigh 2014, p. 61-62.
  7. ^ a b Leigh 2014, p. 62-63.
  8. ^ Leigh 2014, p. 62.
  9. ^ a b c d e Leigh 2014, p. 63.
  10. ^ a b Leigh 2014, p. 173.
  11. ^ "Gwyn Griffin, 42, novelist, is dead". The New York Times. 14 October 1967. p. 27.

Further reading

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  • Griffiths, Richard G (1980). Fellow Travellers of the Right British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9. London: Constable. ISBN 0571271324.
  • Leigh, Michael (2014). The Evacuation of Civilians from Burma Analysing the 1942 Colonial Disaster. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781441163943.
  • Taylor, Robert H. 'Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith'. In Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia from Angkor Wat to  East Timor. Santa Barbara, Ca.: ABC-Clio, 2004.
  • Woods, Philip. Reporting the Retreat: War Correspondents in Burma, 1942. London: Hurst & Co, 2016, esp. chs. 2 & 9.
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Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Petersfield
1935–1941 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Minister of Agriculture
1939–1940 		Succeeded by
Government offices
Preceded by Governor of British Crown Colony of Burma
1941–1946 		Succeeded by
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