Great Imperial Mission: The View from the Train, February–April 1947

The Royal Visit of King George Vl, Queen Elizabeth, and their daughters Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret to Southern Africa in 1947 is invariably depicted as a ‘failure’ because, rather than serving as a boost to Prime Minister Jan Smuts’ pro-Empire United Party, it had no discernible effect on the polls in the following year when the Afrikaner Nationalist Party came to power in South Africa on an electoral programme of ‘Apartheid’ and republicanism. This chapter, by contrast, concentrates on the tour’s other great agendas. A key concern was to demonstrate the monarchy’s vision of an Empire-Commonwealth in tune with the democratic spirit of the day and show its commitment to addressing the issue of ‘race relations’ which was predicted to loom large in countries owing allegiance to the crown the post-war world. It was also invested with particular significance by George Vl; denied a durbar coronation in 1937 due to Indian nationalist objections, and the chance to meet his ‘forgotten army’ in Burma in 1944, the Royal Visit presented the first opportunity after the war to personally thank his subjects in the colonies and dominions for their military sacrifices in the Second World War and to build on the goodwill and appreciation shown him by African soldiers with whom he met on his visits to the warfronts in North Africa. For the governments of Southern Africa, the visit presented an ideal opportunity to deploy the charisma of majesty, to calm dissent and present an antidote to the radical and insurgent currents unleashed during the war and post war years. For the Smuts government, smarting from international condemnation over its policies of racial discrimination, the publicity of a successful royal visit might counter the critics both in and beyond Africa who drew unwelcome attention to the poverty and oppression experienced by the majority population of the Union. This chapter focuses on the ‘view from the train’ in a tour freighted with highly charged political ambitions. It examines the perspectives, expectations, and appraisals of members of the royal entourage, government ministers, governors, ‘native officials’, and the press, television, and film representatives who experienced the royal visit and the peoples’ responses from within the luxurious ‘white train’. It provides an overview of a three-month tour that contradicted the avowed intentions of royal tours, of promoting solidarity and unity. Rather, like all tours to the region, it mirrored the racial order at a moment when the politics of race in Southern Africa was becoming a global cause célèbre: state banquets, balls and garden parties for whites, separate gatherings in city squares, aerodrome fields, ‘native reserves’, and open fields for Africans.