53 - Sir John Simon (1873–1959) and ‘This Manchurian Briar Patch’

Summary

INTRODUCTION

OF ALL OF the Foreign Secretaries who have served in modern times, Sir John Simon is the only one whose political reputation has been strongly tarnished by his association with Japan. This is largely due to the unfortunate fact that his tenure at the Foreign Office coincided with one of the most difficult conundrums that ever dogged a British government in regard to East Asian politics – the Manchurian crisis of 1931–1933. For left-wing contemporaries and post-war critics of appeasement, the failure of the British government to stand up to Japanese aggression in Manchuria in these years and Simon's refusal to contemplate the use of sanctions against Japan marked a fateful initial step on the road that led to Munich. Furthermore, his central place in this indictment is under-scored by the fact that the American Secretary of State at the time of the crisis, Henry Stimson, later claimed to have wanted to take multilateral coercive action against Japan but that Simon had turned down all his requests for joint action. Simon, though, also has his defenders. They have emphasized that the strategic circumstances that existed in the early 1930s made it impossible to apply pressure on the Japanese. Accordingly, the Foreign Secretary was faced with the well-nigh impossible task of navigating the crisis without alienating Japan or undermining the League of Nations and that, given these circumstances, Simon succeeded in defending British interests to the best of his abilities.

CAREER AND PERSONALITY

Sir John Simon was one of the most senior Liberal figures of his generation. A lawyer by training, he served in the Asquith government as first Solicitor-General, then Attorney-General and finally Home Secretary before resigning in 1916 over the introduction of compulsory conscription. Between 1927 and 1931 he chaired the Simon Commission on Indian constitutional reform, which paved the way for the India Act of 1935. His prominence might have ended there, but for the economic and political storm that hit Britain in the summer of 1931 and led to the collapse of the second Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. In this turbulent period Simon emerged as the head of a group of Liberals who were prepared to accept a move towards protectionism in order to uphold the British economy.