320.14/11–2552
The Embassy in the United
Kingdom to the Department of
State
confidential
No. 2466
London, November 25,
1952.
- Subject:
- Mr. Henry
Hopkinson’s1 Reported Views on the UN’s Work on Colonial Questions
There is enclosed a copy of a memorandum of an informal conversation
between Mr. Peter Smithers, M.P. and officers of the Embassy on the subject of Mr.
Henry Hopkinson’s
reported views on the work of the UN on
Colonial Questions. Mr. Smithers is Mr. Hopkinson’s Parliamentary
Private Secretary (unpaid, unofficial personal assistant) and takes a
keen interest in colonial affairs.
Margaret Joy Tibbetts
Second Secretary of Embassy
[Page 1288]
[Enclosure]
Memorandum of Conversation
- Participants:
- Mr. Peter Smithers, M.P.
- Mr. B. M. Hulley
- Miss Margaret Joy Tibbetts
Mr. Smithers said “off the record” that Mr.
Hopkinson had
personally enjoyed his stay in New York at the UN but had been much perturbed at
developments in the Fourth Committee, particularly with the United
States’ attitude on colonial questions. He said that the British
“rather expect” a critical approach on the part of the Latin
American and Asian-Arab nations because of the past history and the
presently ill informed nature of opinion, both official and
unofficial, in those countries. The United States is, however, in a
completely different category, and it was inexplicable to Mr.
Hopkinson how the
United States could expect nations like France and Britain “to put
themselves on the block every year” in these Fourth Committee
discussions. Mr. Hopkinson had, according to Mr.
Smithers, been completely unable to
understand the basis of the United States attitude on the competence
of the UN to discuss Tunisia and had
wondered if the United States had thought through all the
implications of its failure to support France on a major issue of
this nature.
Mr. Smithers continued that Mr. Hopkinson would certainly
not blame France if she walked out of the Fourth Committee and that
it was questionable whether the United Kingdom should continue to
participate in UN colonial matters.
In response to an inquiry as to whether that would not be a far too
drastic step, Mr. Smithers said that there was
no reason why Britain should have to go on “putting up with this
sort of thing” and that “a lot of us” (presumably other Tory M.P.s) feel that the UK should just refuse to have anything
to do with the work of the UN in
colonial affairs. In any case, he concluded, Mr. Hopkinson had found the
attitude of the Guatemalans and the Egyptians, for example, more
consistent and easier to understand than that of the United
States.
