This distinction, without any reference to Lord Irwin (whose memorandum was not
published until 1941), was also made in the September 1930 issue of
On this basis, for the sake of appeasement of India, the Milner Group was willing to
promise India "Dominion status" in the Indian meaning of the expression and allow the
English who misunderstood to cool off gradually as they saw that the development was
not the one they had feared. Indeed, to the Milner Group, it probably appeared that the
greater the rage in Britain, the greater the appeasement in India.
Accordingly, the first session of the Round Table Conference was called for
November 1930. It marked an innovation not only because of the status of equality and
responsibility which it placed on the Indians, but also because, for the first time, it tried to
settle the problem of the Indian States within the same framework as it settled the
constitutional problem of British India. This was a revolutionary effort, and its degree of
success was very largely due to the preparatory work of Lord Irwin, acting on the advice
of Malcolm Hailey.
The Indian States had remained as backward, feudalistic, and absolutist enclaves,
within the territorial extent of British India and bound to the British Raj by individual
treaties and agreements. As might be expected from the Milner Group, the solution which
they proposed was federation. They hoped that devolution in British India would secure a
degree of provincial autonomy that would make it possible to bind the provinces and the
Indian States within the same federal structure and with similar local autonomy.
However, the Group knew that the Indian States could not easily be federated with
British India until their systems of government were raised to some approximation of the
same level. For this reason, and to win the Princes over to federation, Lord Irwin had a
large number of personal consultations with the Princes in 1927 and 1928. At some of
these he lectured the Princes on the principles of good government in a fashion which
came straight from the basic ideology of the Milner Group. The memorandum which he
presented to them, dated 14 June 1927 and published in Johnson's biography,
of the function of government, its emphasis on the reign of law, its advocacy of
devolution, its homily on the duty of princes, its separation of responsibility in
government from democracy in government, and its treatment of democracy as an
accidental rather than an essential characteristic of good government.
The value of this preparatory work appeared at the first Round Table Conference,
where, contrary to all expectations, the Indian Princes accepted federation. The optimism
resulting from this agreement was, to a considerable degree, dissipated, however, by the
refusal of Gandhi's party to participate in the conference unless India were granted full
and immediate Dominion status. Refusal of these terms resulted in an outburst of political
activity which made it necessary for Irwin to find jails capable of holding sixty thousand
Indian agitators at one time.
The view that the Round Table Conference represented a complete repudiation of the
Simon Commission's approach to the Indian problem was assiduously propagated by the
Milner Group in order to prevent Indian animosity against the latter from being carried
over against the former. But the differences were in detail, since in main outline both
reflected the Group's faith in federation, devolution, responsibility, and minority rights.
The chief recommendations of the Simon Commission were three in number: (1) to
create a federation of British India and the Indian States by using the provinces of the
former as federative units with the latter; (2) to modify the central government by making
the Legislative Assembly a federal organization but otherwise leave the center
unchanged; (3) to end dyarchy in the provinces by making Indians responsible for all
provincial activities. It also advocated separation of Burma from India.
These were also the chief conclusions of the various Round Table Conferences and of
the government's White Papers of December 1931 (Cmd. 3972) and of March 1933
(Cmd. 4268). The former was presented to Parliament and resulted in a debate and vote
of confidence on the government's policy in India as stated in it. The attack was led by
Winston Churchill in the Commons and by Lords Lloyd, Salisbury, Midleton, and
Sumner in the House of Lords. None of these except Churchill openly attacked the
government's policy, the others contenting themselves with advising delay in its
execution. The government was defended by Samuel Hoare, John Simon, and Stanley
Baldwin in the Commons and by Lords Lothian, Irwin, Zetland, Dufferin, and Hailsham,
as well as Archbishop Lang, in the Lords. Lord Lothian, in opening the debate, said that