Distance and Proximity in Service to the Empire

Ulster and New Zealand between the Wars

Bibliographic Data

ID11943397
AuthorsKeith Jeffery (0000-0003-4053-7825, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume36
Issue3
Pages453-472
Publication date2008-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-6534 • E-ISSN: 1743-9329
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03086530802318540
OpenAlexW2116314394
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

This essay uses the concepts of ‘distance’ and ‘proximity’ to investigate and assess perceptions of community, nation and empire in inter-war New Zealand and Ulster (as well as Ireland and Northern Ireland) within a British imperial context, and explores the extent to which service of the empire (for example in the First World War) promoted both notions of imperial unity and local autonomy. It focuses on how these perceptions were articulated in the inter-war years during visits to Northern Ireland by three New Zealand premiers – Massey, Forbes and Coates – and to New Zealand by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Lord Craigavon. It discusses the significant ways in which distance from their ‘home base’ and proximity to expatriate communities (in Craigavon's case) and Irish unionists and nationalists (in the case of the New Zealand premiers) inflected public statements during their visits. By examining these inter-war visits and investigating the rhetoric used and the cultural demonstrations associated with them, the factors of both distance and proximity can be used to evaluate similarities and difference across two parts of the empire. Thus, we can throw some light on the nature and dynamics of British imperial identity in the early twentieth century. Acknowledgement The first version of this essay was delivered on 29 July 2004 as the third annual Stout Lecture at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, during the ‘Hidden Irish: Ulster/New Zealand Migration and Cultural Transfers’ conference. Versions were subsequently read at Oxford University (26 November 2004) and at the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen (8 November 2005). I am very grateful to Judith Brown, Enda Delany, Brian Graham, Ewan Morris, Vincent O'Sullivan, Brad Patterson, Jock Phillips, Rory Sweetman and other friends and colleagues for their comments and discussion on its subject matter on those, and other, occasions. Notes Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War, 138–41; McGibbon, New Zealand Battlefields, 6–7, 26–32. Taylor, ‘Introduction’, 120; see also Phillips, ‘Histories’. W. F. Massey to James Allen (defence minister and acting prime minister), 2 Jan. 1917, quoted in Bennett, ‘“Massey's Sunday School Picnic Party”’, 23. Ibid., 35, 42. Godley entitled his autobiography, Life of an Irish Soldier. Gibbs, Realities of War, 470. Macleod, ‘British Heroic-Romantic Myth’, 83. Wylly, Neill's ‘Blue Caps’, 42. Belfast Telegraph, 11 Nov. 1922, emphasis added. Ervine, Craigavon, 519. For the 1901 tour, see Bassett, ‘A Thousand Miles of Loyalty’. Amery, My Political Life, II, 402–73. The Times, 19 Nov. 1929. Taranaki Herald, 7 Dec. 1929, clipping in diary of Lady Craigavon (henceforward Craigavon diary), Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, (PRONI) D.1415/C/3. Ibid., 9 Dec. 1929, emphasis added; Craigavon to Charles H. Blackmore, 7 Dec. 1929, PRONI, PM 9/24. Lady Craigavon diary, 8 Dec. 1929, PRONI, D.1415/C/4. ‘I have just come in from a long day's trout fishing—Bag 23 between the two of us, averaging 2 1/2 lbs., other days 3, 11 & 12 & one of mine was a 6 1/4 lbs.’ Craigavon to Blackmore, 17 Dec. 1929, PRONI, PM 9/24. Craigavon diary, 3 Jan. 1930, PRONI, D.1415/C/4. The Times, 4 Jan. 1930. Craigavon diary, 3 Jan. 1930, PRONI, D.1415/C/4. Londonderry Sentinel, 4 Jan. 1930 (I am grateful to Brian Mitchell for this reference). This was not strictly true. The road leading up to the south entrance to the Stormont estate (where the parliament buildings were erected) was called ‘Killeen Road’, before being renamed ‘Massey Avenue’ in 1925. Wellington Evening Post, 4 Jan. 1930, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/4. Grey River Argus, 9 Jan. 1930, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/4. Ibid. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Nov. 1929. Barton, ‘Northern Ireland, 1925–39’, 199. Otago Daily Times, 13 Jan. 1920, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/4. Craigavon diary, 11 Jan. 1930, PRONI, D. 1415/C/5. See Brosnahan, ‘“Battle of the Borough”’. Timaru Herald, 29 Jan. 1930, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/6. Wairarapa Age, 21 Jan. 1930, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/6. Dominion, 5 Feb. 1930, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/6. Evening Post, 5 Feb. 1930, clipping in Craigavon diary, PRONI, D.1415/C/6. Irish News, 3 Jan. 1930. Brosnahan, ‘Parties or Politics’, 74–75. Irish News, 3 Jan.1930. Ibid., 4 Feb. 1930. Ibid., 3 Feb. 1930. C. A. Blackmore to Cecil Litchfield (a senior official in the Ministry of Commerce), 14 Nov. 1923, PRONI, PM10/3. Irish Times, 30 Nov. 1923. The Irish politician Kevin O'Higgins had a different view of the similarities of the two territories. ‘New Zealand’, he wrote to his wife from the 1926 Imperial Conference, ‘must be rather like Northern Ireland – it produces the same type of Jingo reactionary.’ White, Kevin O'Higgins, 222. Quoted in ‘Premier Massey's Ulster Visit’ brochure, produced by the Bank Buildings, Ltd, PRONI, PM 6/13. Irish Times, 30 Nov. 1923. Londonderry Sentinel, 4 Dec. 1923. Irish Times, 3 Dec. 1923. Weekly Northern Whig, 8 Dec. 1923. Irish Times, 3 Dec. 1923. Irish News, 4 Dec. 1923, emphasis in original. ‘Introduction by Viscount Craigavon’ (for a planned biography of Massey by E. A. James), 10 Mar. 1930, PRONI, PM 6/13. ‘Premier Massey's Ulster Visit’, PRONI, PM 6/13, emphasis in original. The estimated 500 students involved constituted about half of the entire student body of 1,077 in 1923–24. A British Pathé newsreel of the occasion (‘Great Maori Demonstration’) can be found at http://www.britishpathe.com (Film ID: 324.16) (accessed 30 March 2008). The score was 28–6. The Times, 6 Nov. 1926. On 2 Dec. 1935 Ulster held the All Blacks to a draw (one try apiece), The Times, 2 Dec. 1935. Similar reports, all evidently drawn from the same Press Association communiqué, appeared in the New Zealand Herald, Dominion and Press, 4 Dec. 1923. Phillips, ‘Musings in Maoriland’, 531. O'Sullivan, Long Journey, 45. Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, 220–24. Weekly Northern Whig, 11 Dec. 1926. Belfast Telegraph, 4 Dec. 1926. Ibid., 11 Dec. 1926. Weekly Northern Whig, 18 Dec. 1926. See ‘Schedule for visit of Mr. J. G. Coates’, PRONI, PM 6/7. For Coates' family background, see Bassett, Coates, 10–14; for Casement, see Dudgeon, Roger Casement. Belfast Telegraph, 13 Dec. 1926. Weekly Northern Whig, 18 Dec. 1926. Another route to integration is suggested by the rumours that Coates had fathered children by Maori women (Basset, Coates, 26). Weekly Northern Whig, 18 Dec. 1926. Irish News, 13 Dec. 1926 Ibid., 19 Nov. 1930. Robertson, J. H. Scullin, 286–87. The Times, 24 Nov. 1930. Irish News, 13, 29 Nov. 1930. Ibid., 28 Nov. 1930. Weekly Northern Whig, 6 Dec. 1930. Typescript extract from Lady Craigavon's diary, 2 Dec. 1930, PRONI, D.1415/B/38, fol. 683. Belfast Telegraph and Irish News, 3 Dec. 1930; Weekly Northern Whig, 6 Dec. 1930. Nicholas Mansergh's phrase; see his discussion of interwar dominion relations in Mansergh, Commonwealth Experience, ch. 8. For the role of the Irish Free State in the progressive definition of dominion autonomy, see Harkness, Restless Dominion, and the sharp critique of his thesis in Martin, ‘The Irish Free State’. This was especially so on economic issues. See Holland, Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance, ch. 7. For the Northern Ireland side of these expectations, see Ollerenshaw, ‘Businessmen in Northern Ireland’. At the 1917 Imperial War Cabinet Massey had been instrumental in securing a United Kingdom commitment to empire settlement schemes; see Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy, 25–26, and, for the subsequent history of empire settlement, chs 2–3. Sir Charles Lucas asserted that it was ‘not Great Britain alone, but the whole – the heart-whole – British Empire’ which declared war against Germany in 1914; see Lucas, The Empire at War, I, 293. For a more nuanced assessment, see Holland, ‘The British Empire and the Great War’. The Times, 12 Nov. 1923, 12 Nov. 1926, 12 Nov. 1930

Ancient history · Archaeology · British Empire · Context (archaeology · Empire · Ethnology · Expatriate · Imperial unit system · Irish · Media studies · Political science · Rhetoric · Sociology · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Scottish History and National Identity

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