June 21, 2015

Finest Hour 104, Autumn 1999

Page 33

By Kirk Emmert

A Scottish Life: Sir John Martin, Churchill and Empire, by Michael Jackson, ed. by Janet Jackson. New York and London: Radcliffe Press 1999, 280 pages, illus. Reg. price $40, member price $32 + shipping, Churchill Center Book Club, PO Box 385, Contoocook NH 03229.

Michael Jackson has written a political biography of his wife’s uncle, Sir John Martin, who twice served in the Colonial Office (1927-40 and 1945-64), ending up as Deputy Undersecretary of State and, in his last two years, high commissioner to Malta.

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During the war years, 1941-45, Martin was “a key figure in Churchill’s ‘secret circle'” in his position of principal private secretary (PPS) to the Prime Minister. Jackson’s account is based on Sir John’s private correspondence, “papers and documents from his Colonial Office days,” public interviews and writing after he retired, and the author’s own interviews with those who worked with Martin as well as his own long acquaintance with his distinguished family relation.

Three major themes inform his account of Martin’s life of public service: Martin’s work with, and later defense of, Winston Churchill; his approach to public affairs—a form of prudential Christianity; and, much the greater part of his biography, Sir John’s part in the ruling and decolonization of the British Empire, an institution which he viewed as Britain’s “good gift to the world.”

During the War, the primary tasks of PPS Martin were to manage the vast volume of wartime business that came to the Prime Minister’s private office, to travel with Churchill, and to prepare the yearly Honours List. Churchill expected his secretaries to be available at all hours when he needed them, to understand his way of doing things, to be loyal and discreet, to possess and set an example of “robust character,” to have a thinking and discerning intelligence, and to be good humored and “agreeable persons who could relate to him and enjoy the experience of working for him.” The particular quality he required in his PPS was the understanding and judgment to discern which items required his attention and which could be handled by someone else.

Following Sir John’s death, his spare, discreet account of his work with Churchill was published in Downing Street: The War Years (reviewed in Finest Hour 74). Jackson adds to that account by describing more fully, with the aid of the published observations of and interviews with his colleagues, Martin’s skillful conduct of his office and by relating his subsequent part in defending Churchill from critics. Jock Colville’s observation is representative of his colleagues’ high praise for Sir John’s work with Churchill: “Under Martin’s leadership Private Office was both cheerful and effective. It was so well attuned to Churchill’s personal predilections and his unusual methods of work that none of its members succumbed, though they may occasionally have wilted, beneath the stresses and anxieties of war.”

After he retired, Martin like Colville contributed an essay to Action This Day: Working with Churchill, a volume intended to correct what its authors viewed as the misleading opinions and improper revealing of confidences by Lord Moran in his Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival. Through his writing, letters and interviews Martin sought, in his retirement, to correct the “misunderstandings, distortions, and plain errors about Churchill’s decisions and actions.” Commenting on these efforts, Lady Soames observed that “the quietness and authoritative calm of the tone of John’s interviews were of the utmost value.” She remembered Martin among the “answerers for the honour of my father’s name.” For his part, many years earlier, Martin referred to “the agreeable and charming presence” of Churchill’s youngest daughter, Mary, whom he came to know during her wartime travels with her father.

Jackson concludes that Sir John Martin’s “whole life was an expression of Christianity in action.” The depth and though tfulness of Martin’s faith was evidenced in his extensive, unpublished commentaries on the New Testament. Jackson is less clear, however, about how more precisely Martin’s life was guided by Christian principles. He is content to suggest that in a general way the influence of Martin’s Scottish Christianity was seen in his sense of worldly limits, his devotion to public service, and his friendly, gracious, unassuming demeanor. Martin’s Christian principles were mediated by his prudence and good judgment. Our author does not explore whether this prudence was inherent in his Christian sense of worldly limits or was imported from an external source such as his extensive education in the Ancients. He does note, however, that in his view of empire and of “the processes of colonial rule” Martin was in “the Burkean tradition….He was not one to lose sight of principles or fail to be guided by circumstances….” Thus unlike many of the academic theorists and political critics who pressed for immediate decolonization, Martin “was not swayed by grand ideological theories, but looked for reasonable solutions to difficulties….”

We are presented with impressive instances of Martin’s intelligence, prudence, fairness, patience, persistence, courage, and capacity for friendship as he struggles with questions of partition in Palestine and Cyprus; of federation in Malaysia and Nigeria; of independence in Malta, Africa and the Caribbean. Jackson’s picture of Sir John portrays a man of moral and political excellence who aspired to the highest standards for himself and his country. He has presented a not unfamiliar portrait of the British civil servant at his best, reminding us that political leadership is a high human calling requiring great skill and character.

Given the direction and scope of Sir John Martin’s career, this book necessarily focuses on many of the most intractable problems of decolonization confronted by the British Empire in the postwar world. The author provides a concise, informative account of these problems, including Sir John’s actions and views on specific issues. But perhaps the most illuminating part of these accounts is the author’s presentation of Martins broad perspective that precisely because he admired the Empire he should, given postwar circumstances, dedicate his life to its responsible decolonization, an outlook shared by his wartime leader. In a private letter, written in 1932, Martin observed that “it is of critical importance to ourselves and to the world that we should act worthily of and maintain the dominating position to which the efforts of the Victorians brought us. This is not jingoism: it is simply the realization of our responsibilities….If the power of the British Empire were to crumble it would mean taking the keystone from the arch of civilization and the loss of powers for good which are tremendous beyond calculation and which would not be replaced.”

In another letter, written in 1966, he wrote: “It has not been fun to have had to play a part over the last few years in the dismemberment of the old British Empire, though I believe that in its broad lines the process was inevitable and, given the circumstances, right. But I was in the Colonial Office long enough to know that the old Colonial rule was one of the best British gifts to the world.”

Dr. Emmert is a professor of Political Science at Kenyon College and an academic adviser to The Churchill Center. He is the author of Churchill on Empire (1989).