The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (48 page)

Brooke—exhausted, his pockets emptied on behalf of Sarawak—came to England again a hero and used his status to raise money for his province. He did that, but also suffered a stroke, in 1858. Malaria and smallpox had taken their toll; the stroke, it seemed to his friends, clouded his mind and judgment. The governance of Sarawak rightly belonged to a younger man who could take the field against pirates, rebels, and barbarous ruffians, who were never in short supply. Brooke toyed with the idea of retiring to an
English cottage, but in the end could not leave his life's work, even if he conducted it from England. He suffered another stroke in 1866 and a third in 1868, which finished him off.

The White Rajahs, however, carried on, Brooke's nephew Charles assuming the title in 1868, followed by his son Charles Vyner Brooke (who governed as rajah from 1917 to 1946). After the Second World War, the British made Sarawak a crown colony—which proved unpopular; the Sarawakians preferred the personal paternalism of the White Rajahs. Brooke's “model for Sarawak was,” says one of his biographers, “one blatantly transplanted from the English shires—small is good, valorization of face-to-face relationships, the local over the metropolitan, tradition and emotion over rationality,” giving Sarawak an “agreeable Torytown façade.” It was certainly agreeable to the Sarawakians, for whom the memory of the White Rajahs is a fond one.

“In receiving your surrender I do not recognize you as an honorable and gallant foe. . . .”

 

H
ad there never been a British Empire, there would never have been an Australia as we know it today, which would have been an incalculable loss, especially for those who like eating at Australian steak houses, watching Aussie Rules football, and drinking Foster's Lager. There would also have been no Sir Thomas Blamey of Australia, the Aussies' only field marshal to date, and one who earned his field marshal's baton for service to the Empire in two world wars.

Blamey was born near picturesque Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. WAG did not stand for “wives and girlfriends” in those days, and Blamey was about as far removed from football celebrity, bikini waxes, and paparazzi as one can imagine. He was the seventh of ten children, his antecedents were Scotch and Cornish, and his upbringing was as a farmer's and drover's son near the banks of Lake Albert.

Australia was a long way from the Sudan, but a year after Blamey was born, Australia made its first overseas military contribution to the British Empire by sending troops, guns, and horses for the “too late” campaign to
save General Gordon. Growing up in a patriotic home, Blamey breathed British imperial air, scented with the aromatic dust of Australia.

He was a small, tough, religious boy, a good student and a reliable horseman, who liked nothing better than setting himself tactical problems with toy soldiers. In school he was in the cadet corps, and tried to enlist, at fifteen, to fight in the Boer War but was sent home by the recruiting sergeant. He did, however, help train fellow cadets as a pupil-teacher, and then as full-time teacher starting in 1903. He did the job remarkably well, with a natural air of command and authority—so much so that in 1906, after passing a rigorous examination (in which he placed third in the country), he became a cadet instructor for the Australian military, an appointment that made him a lieutenant. He trained the teachers of the cadet corps in Victoria, and made sure the cadets were up to snuff.
²

When the Staff College in Quetta, India, set aside a slot for an Australian officer, Blamey determined to win it. He did, placing first in the qualifying examination, and enrolled for the 1912–13 term. He was a captain now, a married man, and a father (of a son who would die at twenty-two in a plane crash while serving in the Royal Australian Air Force). When he finished the course, he was briefly posted to some Indian units, and then sent for staff training in England. The year was 1914. He wouldn't return home for six years; and then he would be a brigadier general.

At the start of the First World War, Blamey was a major in British military intelligence, but with the raising of the Australian Imperial Force he was transferred to become its intelligence chief and sent to Egypt in December 1914. In April 1915 he embarked with his fellow Australians for the Gallipoli Campaign. In the trenches, he spotted a lance corporal with a
mocked-up periscope rifle; impressed by its design, Blamey refined it and had periscope rifles issued to frontline Australians. When the frustration of Gallipoli ended, in December 1915, Blamey was sent to experience the frustration of the Western Front in France, including the Battle of the Somme. Adding to that frustration was that he spent almost all his time as a staff officer—including chief of staff to the commander of the Australian Corps—rather than in a field command. But he was considered an outstanding, hard-driving staff officer, with a gift for precise and detailed battle orders. He took credit for initiating the Battle of Amiens, the August 1918 offensive that spurred the Allied march to victory, so it wasn't time altogether wasted. The commander of the Australian Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, thought highly of Blamey, saying he “possessed a mind cultured far above the average, widely informed, alert and prehensile. He had an infinite capacity for taking pains.”
³
Blamey's service won him a knighthood.

Back home in Australia after the war, he became deputy chief of the General Staff and helped establish the Royal Australian Air Force. In 1922, he returned to London as the Australian representative to the Imperial General Staff. He was expected to become chief of Australia's General Staff in 1923, but jealous senior officers made that politically impossible, so he was instead made “Second” Chief of the General Staff. Everyone recognized his merit, but Blamey was not the sort who sought to ingratiate himself. As General Sir William
Birdwood, the English commander of the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War, had said of Blamey, he was “an exceedingly able little man, though by no means a pleasing personality.”
⁴

His boss, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Chauvel, recommended Blamey for another position entirely—Chief Commissioner of Police for the state of Victoria, which had recently suffered a mutiny of a third of its officers and needed a strong hand to knock the force back into shape and knock emboldened bully boys off the streets. Blamey accepted the job in 1925, and so began his controversial career as a copper.

As a young man, Blamey had been a teetotaler and so successful a lay preacher that he had considered a career as a Methodist minister. But as a police chief, there were accusations that he was no longer a choir boy. In India he had acquired a taste for drink—the norm among British officers—and some said he drank too much. During a police raid on a suspected brothel, a small, stocky man flashed a police badge bearing the number 80,
saying everything was all right because he was an undercover constable. Badge 80 was Blamey's. In a later investigation, the police officers who made the raid testified that the man was not Blamey, Blamey could account for his whereabouts, and his badge was not in his possession at the time of the raid. Though he was conclusively cleared, Blamey's political enemies on the Left made the “Badge 80” affair a bit of baggage he had to carry for the rest of his life; as they did another minor affair where he had misrepresented a constable's wounds in a misguided effort to guard the policeman's reputation (which, as the investigating judge pointed out, was clear in any event). Blamey was a political target for the Labour Party because he was known to have strong right-wing views. He was forced to resign in 1936.