Ties that bind

Famed for saying he was ‘British to the bootstraps’, Robert Menzies was a fierce advocate for the Commonwealth of Nations. This week, the Commonwealth was officially commemorated by more than one billion people. By David Furse-Roberts.

Throughout his life, Menzies made no secret of his pride in both his own British identity and the British heritage of Australia. In the public consciousness, he is famously remembered for his repeated aphorism that he was ‘British to the bootstraps’. As an Anglophile Scot, Menzies idealised what he saw as ‘Englishness’ in a set of cultural traditions dating back to the earliest days of Magna Carta. These traditions included the English language and the English canon of literature featuring the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare, the monarchy, the philosophy of English liberalism represented by Gladstone and Asquith, the Westminster parliamentary system with its practice of responsible government, the rule of law, the English common law, and Test cricket. While steeped in British cultural influences from the time of his birth, Menzies did not visit Britain itself until he had reached his forties. On his voyage to Britain in 1935, he spotted the White Cliffs of Dover and wrote in his diary that ‘my journey to Mecca is ended’. In that same year, Menzies penned an essay for the Australian Quarterly on ‘Australia’s Place in the Empire’ to affirm the kinship between the two countries. According to Menzies, Australia and Britain had to deal with their relationship ‘not on mere terms of friendship’ but as ‘members of the same family’. As Prime Minister from 1939-1941, Menzies responded to Britain’s declaration of war on Nazi Germany on 2 September 1939 by declaring that ‘Australia was also at war’. In so doing, he expressed Australia’s instinctive solidarity with Britain as members of a ‘great family of nations’ involved in a struggle ‘which we must at all costs win’.  

In the post-war period, Menzies’ pride in Britain manifested itself in his foreign policy decisions to support British interests, his devotion to the British Commonwealth of Nations, his public displays of enthusiasm for Royal visits to Australia, his frequent apologia for the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy and his regular appearances at Test cricket matches. Whilst forging deeper defence and security ties with the United States through the ANZUS and SEATO treaties, Menzies and his government was resolved to retain similarly close ties with Britain. Shortly after returning as Prime Minister in 1949, Menzies supported the British-led campaign in the Malaya Emergency by sending Caribou transport aircraft and Lincoln bombers in July 1950, followed by ground troops in 1955. Menzies again supported British forces in the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation when Australia sent a Strategic Reserve battalion to Borneo in rotation with British and Malaysian units. Even with the Suez Crisis of 1956 driving a sharp wedge between Britain and the United States, Menzies supported Britain’s efforts to regain control of the Suez Canal from Egypt.  He justified his stance on the basis that ‘the United Kingdom should retain power, prestige and moral influence’ in the interests of adhering to the UN Charter and maintaining world peace. Menzies’ hope for Britain’s continuing frontline role on the world stage also explained his governments’ decision to allow British nuclear testing on Australian territory in the early 1950s. On the domestic front, meanwhile, Menzies passionately defended the parliamentary and legal institutions Australia had inherited from Britain.

In his last year of office, there were two events that underscored Menzies’ abiding affection for Britain, the first was the visible part he played in the funeral service for Sir Winston Churchill at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral on 30 January 1965, where he participated as a pallbearer and eulogist. The second was Menzies’ appointment to the ceremonial position as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle. Succeeding Churchill in this prestigious British post, he became the first non-Briton to occupy it in 900 years. Menzies used the occasion of his installation to remind the assembled audience of dignitaries of the continuity of British history.

Following his retirement in 1966, his zeal for the British connection continued unabated. Where health permitted, he visited Britain on a regular basis and presided over the inauguration of the Australia-Britain Society on 26 August 1971. In his address to the Society, he remarked that a decade or so earlier, such an association would have been deemed unnecessary considering that the links between Australia and Britain were always assumed as a given. As Britain, however, became more economically integrated with Europe, Menzies perceived a need for Australia to renew and cherish its old ties with Britain even as Australia as an ‘adult nation’ had to pursue its own interests and considerations.

Integral to Menzies’ association with Britain was his intimate engagement with the Commonwealth of Nations and its affairs. Born in 1894, Menzies had grown up in a world where school atlases displayed maps sporting great areas of red to symbolise Britain’s dominion over an empire on which the ‘sun never set’.  Right up until the Second World War, the British Empire had represented an unshakable citadel of the civilised world for Menzies and many of his fellow Australians. During his post-war Prime Ministership, however, Menzies witnessed the transformation of this global body from an empire of colonial dependencies to an association of largely independent states, many of which had become Republics by 1966. Whilst the staunchly monarchist Menzies had regretted this development, he had ‘learned to live with it’, believing that a new Commonwealth of equals still held immense value as an association of countries drawn together by a common British heritage. As in the earlier days of the empire, Commonwealth Prime Ministers could still meet in conferences to discuss views and make pronouncements on shared ideas. In the interests of preserving Commonwealth unanimity, Menzies held strictly to the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of member countries. Thus when the issue of South Africa’s apartheid regime in arose in 1960, Menzies, whilst opposed to apartheid, did not endorse any action by the Commonwealth to censure South Africa over its internal policies for fear of causing a rift within the Commonwealth. For Menzies, the priority of preserving the integrity of the association took precedence over confronting South Africa about its domestic affairs.

Selected Menzies quotes on Britain and the Commonwealth

We are the inheritors of British liberty. And among its greatest defenders in the world!

Robert Menzies, Speech at Orange, 24 October 1960

“Everything we have in this country as we look around has its British origin. Parliament, a free Press, a popularly elected Government, upright Justice, these things – the rule of Law – these are the matters which are essential to Australian self-government and we would be a lot of damnable fools if we forget ‘the pit from which we were hewn’ because you refresh your mind and your spirit when you remember usefully and when you remember consciously about what has happened and how it came about”

Robert Menzies, Speech to Australia-Britain Society, Melbourne, 29 April 1971

“We’ve become an adult nation – we have our own interests, our own economic interests, our own trade considerations; but that doesn’t remove us from the family”

Robert Menzies, Australia-Britain Society Inaugural Dinner, Sydney, 26 August 1971

David Furse-Roberts is the editor of Menzies in his own words: A collection of quotes. You can purchase the book here