Diplomacy, Roger Makins and the Anglo-American Relationship

Richard Wevill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472446497
• eBook ISBN: 9781317150480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The history of Britain after the Second World War is essentially the story of her loss of great power status. Writers discussing this decline often focus on those sources of power which are tangible and capable of measurement: the size of a country's armed forces, her Gross Domestic Product, or her energy reserves. But there are other real sources of power which are not so easily measured. The morale of a nation, the quality, integrity and stability of a country's political system and a nation's sense of unity are all intangible elements. So is diplomatic skill, which is central to the ability of one country to influence another. Roger Makins, the British Ambassador to Washington 1953-1956, was one of the most prominent and powerful diplomats of his time. His career was unusual for a Foreign Office official, in that such a large part of it took place in Washington and London, and was centred on Anglo-American relationships. This book describes his life, times and the important players he dealt with on both sides of the Atlantic. It is history seen through the perspective of the officials trying to serve their countries' interests, and as such it sheds a new light on how the 'special relationship' between Britain and America developed. It also shows the impact on policy a civil servant, who worked and negotiated with almost every important American and British politician and official of his time, can have.

Chapter 1
Formative Years

The driving force for policy formation within the Foreign Office during the post-war period came not so much from the Permanent Under Secretaries, men such as Orme Sargent, William Strang and Ivone Kirkpatrick, but rather from the men who occupied positions at the next level down, the Deputy and Assistant Under Secretaries.¹ These men, and they invariably were men, included people such as Harold Caccia, Piers Dixon, Gladwyn Jebb, Frank Roberts and Evelyn Shuckburgh. They shared a common background. They were too young to fight in the First World War, but had been educated in its aftermath. They attended private schools and university, which in practice meant Oxford or Cambridge, and they usually achieved Firsts, often winning academic prizes. Equally, they excelled in the Foreign Office entrance exams, often coming top. Makins was a part of this elite group, and his background and education, which is discussed below, would not have been untypical of those diplomats who were so influential in foreign policy in the period after the Second World War.

In addition to a consideration of Makins’ education, this chapter also sets out his early career, including his first posting to the British Embassy in Washington. It is not difficult to see why Makins, at an early stage, developed an attraction to and indeed understanding of the American approach. It was fortuitous for Makins, in terms of his career and prospects, that he made these early connections with the American establishment. Connections which were to become so much more valuable as America emerged from her isolationist shell and became the most powerful nation the world had ever seen.

On the morning of 27 January 1904, his father, Ernest Makins then a major in The Royal Dragoons, boarded a troop ship bound for Bombay. As he sailed down the English Channel, his thoughts would have been with Florence, the woman he had married almost exactly a year earlier. It took several days to cross the Bay of Biscay, progress being slowed by south-westerly gales. On 3 February, having rounded the Straits of Gibraltar, the ship was off the coast of Algeria. Ernest noted in his diary, ‘a mountainous coast much greener than expected’.² What he did not know at the time was that his first child, Roger, had been born on that day. It is a curiosity of both time and place that Ernest Makins was, at the time of his son’s birth, gazing at a country which would, albeit indirectly, play such a big part in the shaping of that child’s career.

Roger Makins was born into privilege. His family was neither noble nor gentry, but they were wealthy and well connected. The family originally came from Yorkshire, where they were bankers. Makins’ paternal grandfather, Henry, moved to London in the 1860s. ‘Mr H F Makins … was one of those, intelligent, cultivated, but rather retiring Englishmen, who, though they lived in the nineteenth century, were not in the least Victorian.’³ Henry had an eye for promising artists and built an art collection which included paintings by Millais and other pre-Raphaelites, and he commissioned family portraits by Romako. He was a shrewd businessman and he made a substantial fortune through judicious investments. In 1866 he married Keziah Hunt, ‘a small, very pretty, rather shy woman noted for her unpunctuality’,⁴ and together they had seven children including Roger Makins’ father Ernest. The family settled at 180 Queens Gate, a ‘remarkable house’ designed by Norman Shaw and built for Henry in the 1880s, with William Morris wallpapers, curtains and furniture. Queens Gate remained the family residence, until Roger Makins sold it in 1960, not long after his father’s death, to Imperial College, which owned all the surrounding property.

Ernest Makins was born in 1869. He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, although he left after only one year to join the Army. Serving in the Royal Dragoons, he fought with distinction during the Boer War and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1902. He fought again in the First World War, where both of his brothers were killed, and was again mentioned in despatches. He fell ill, however, and needed to be invalided home in 1915 for a period of convalescence. He returned to France in 1917 and ended the war in command of the 6th Cavalry Brigade. In 1922 he successfully stood for Parliament as the Conservative candidate in Knutsford, Cheshire, holding the seat until he retired from politics in 1945. Florence Mellor, Makins’ mother, was born in 1877. She came from a family of lawyers; her father, James R. Mellor, was the Master of the Crown Office and King’s Remembrancer and was knighted for his services, as was her brother, Gilbert Mellor, who became Deputy Judge Advocate General during the First World War. The Mellor family came from Liverpool, but was of Scottish origin. Florence was the third daughter and one of six children. She was an accomplished violinist who, according to Makins, could have become professional.⁵ She married Ernest Makins on 31 January 1903 at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate. It was a successful marriage which survived until Ernest’s death some 60 years later.

Makins was born into a family in which the ideal of service played an important part – service, that is, to the British Empire. He was born only three years after the death of Queen Victoria, at a time when the Empire was near its zenith; it covered a quarter of the globe and contained 400 million people. The Empire needed soldiers and bureaucrats to run it and the Makins and Mellor families helped to provide them. Roger Makins was destined to follow the tradition of public service, although he would spend his time wrestling with the decline of the Empire rather than running it.

His early years were spent in the care of a series of nurses and governesses while his parents were stationed in India. He was not, however, forgotten. Both his mother and father wrote to him on a regular basis. His father took considerable trouble over his letters to Roger, including drawing pictures of animals, such as the elephant he rode on a tiger shoot, and describing events in India. In 1912 the Royals were transferred from India to South Africa, and Makins was able to be with his parents. His memories of his two years in South Africa were sketchy: he recalls the thunderstorms rolling across the Veldt, catching crayfish in the muddy waters of Potchefstoom in the Orange Free State and being taught to ride by the Regimental Sergeant Major. After two years, however, as was normal at that time, he was sent off to school in England. By the time he went he could read, write and recite the names and dates of the Kings and Queens of England.

Makins attended West Downs Preparatory School from March 1914 until July 1917. The school, situated on a hill outside Winchester, had been founded by Lionel Helbert ‘if not … a genius, then at any rate … a man with a genius for teaching small boys and for managing them and their parents’.⁶ Alumni included Sir Oswald Mosley, Duncan-Sandys and David Astor. Perhaps unusually for the time, the school was a caring place, interested as much in the boys’ happiness as in their academic achievements. Makins, however, must have felt the pain all boys do at being sent away from a loving home. In one letter to his mother he wrote ‘my nick name is either fatty, the fat one or fatty miss Makins.’⁷ Nevertheless, as he recorded some sixty years later: ‘It was a very well managed school, the boys were happy, there was no bullying and the teaching remained good even during the war.’⁸ There was drama in the form of Shakespeare plays, something at which Makins did not excel, and although he had piano lessons he, unlike his mother, had no talent for music. In common with other preparatory schools the curriculum was driven by the common entrance requirements, consequently the school taught no science and concentrated on the classics. Makins thrived at the school; he had good reports, was Head of School and, perhaps more importantly for him at the time, captain of the cricket team.

In September 1917, at the age of 13, the time came to ‘move down the hill’ to Winchester College, where he stayed until July 1922. He was fortunate in that he followed his father into D House (Kennys) which was a friendly, well run house, in contrast to other houses at that time, which could be brutal. Makins tried for, but did not get a scholarship to Winchester. This was curious, since, being the top of school at West Down, a scholarship might have been expected. Makins suggests that his papers were mixed up with someone else’s.⁹ This assertion is consistent with his Winchester record card. It shows that he was put in the lowest class on arrival at Winchester, but there is a note ‘hot up after 1 month’, so he was evidently moved to a higher division after one month, rather than waiting until the end of term.¹⁰ Makins wrote to his mother proclaiming his achievements, something which he was apt to do and indeed never stopped doing, ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!! Rejoice!!! I have been raised a remove into Middle Part III’.¹¹ The record card shows continued rapid progress through the various divisions within the school.¹²

Makins passed the School Certificate at the end of his second year, at which point, having scraped through the mathematics paper, he dropped the subject altogether. He thus ended his ‘school career finding difficulty in adding and subtracting and unable to understand even the logarithmic scale, let alone differential calculus’.¹³ After the School Certificate he chose to study the classics. However, as the time to consider university entrance approached, Makins who could just about write ‘passable Greek and Latin verse’, was told that he would not ‘be up to scholarship standard in classics’ and that his best chance of a scholarship to Oxford was to go for a history one.¹⁴ He told his father that he was more likely to make progress in a subject he enjoyed than in one which he did not. Makins was fortunate: History at that time was taught by Winchester’s Second Master, Alwyn Williams. Williams was a brilliant scholar; he had taken a Triple First at Oxford in Classic Moderations (1908), Greats (1910) and Modern History (1911); he was also an outstanding teacher. Makins recalled that ‘my essays for him were a source of fruitful discussion and criticism …he was highly discriminating in his selection of reading matter for me and he introduced me to American History as well as British and European’.¹⁵

Rather than join the conveyor belt from Winchester to New College, Makins tried for a place at Christ Church (sometimes called ‘the House’), his father’s old college. Whether this was his decision or his father’s is not clear. In 1920, when Makins was just sixteen, Ernest Makins wrote to the Dean of Christ Church. ‘I am very anxious that my son Roger Mellor Makins should go to my old college “the House” … I am advised that it is time to take steps about his entering the University and should be much obliged to you if you could arrange for his arrival.’¹⁶ Two years after this letter was written, Makins travelled up to Oxford in the company of his fellow Wykeamist Kenneth Clark (later Lord Clark, the art historian) to sit their respective scholarship examinations. Clark was successful, Makins was not. However, he did well enough to be offered a place without having to sit the college examination. He reflected in his memoirs, that while Clark may have got a scholarship to Magdalen, he only managed a fourth class degree.

Makins went up to Oxford in August 1922. By then ‘the survivors of the war who had gone up or back to Oxford had gone down again, and there was a gulf in experience and outlook – between them and my generation who had just missed military service’.¹⁷ A.L. Rowse, who went up to Christ Church at the same time as Makins, recalled the post-war atmosphere. ‘The grim experience of the first war had reinforced the strength of idealism. There was a real belief … in bettering the world. “It must not happen again” was our attitude to the war; the sacrifice of the generations before us must not be in vain.’¹⁸ Makins records ‘we we...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Formative Years
• 2 War and Diplomacy
• 3 Washington and Atomic Energy
• 4 The Whitehall Elite
• 5 The Ambassador and the Foreign Office
• 6 The Treasury Years
• 7 Atomic Energy Authority and ‘Retirement’
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index