‘Dear Mr President…We are now, with a small population in the only white man’s territory south of the equator, beset grievously…we now lack adequacy for the forces of our homeland in the defence of our own soil’
—Prime Minister John Curtin to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, early 1942
John Curtin became Australian prime minister in October 1941. He travelled a long, hard road to this perilous height, as leader of a free nation at war with Germany and under the perceived threat of invasion by Japan.
A brief biographical sketch shows an idealistic young man of pedigreed working-class origins, who abandoned the Catholicism of his birth for a humanists’ paradise, ‘a paradise created in this world by the will of men and women sufficiently courageous to fight for it’.1 This wistful dream underscored his life’s work and prophesied his own political destiny.
Curtin looked a quiet, bookish man. With his elliptical black-rimmed spectacles and intense concentration, he seemed to resemble a Left Bank literary don, a Joycean doppelganger, rather than a shrewd political operator and formidable thinker.
It was not always so. In his younger days as a fiery unionist and determined alcoholic, he rose through the Labor Party at times ‘elevating and inspiring’,2 at others, a comatose wreck. He could be found darkly ‘boozing in quiet corners’ before making a campaign speech ‘in an alcoholic daze’.3 An avowed anti-war campaigner at the outbreak of World War I, there is a story that he presented himself drunk to the recruiting officers. He beat his addiction, and abandoned the extreme socialist dogma of his youth. A profoundly tortured soul, a genuine man of the people, he later shocked his left-wing colleagues by supporting a limited form of conscription. In time, he re-acquired a Christian, if not Catholic, understanding of the world.
As the Japanese threat intensified, Curtin appeared to undergo a transformation. The exigencies of the hour seemed to envelop him, and he responded with extraordinary gusto and determination, despite his own frail health. His humility and quiet compassion never left him. No doubt he was prone to indecisiveness and forgiveable naivety—and later fell too far under the American wing. But accusations that he handed control of the defence of Australia to MacArthur need strong qualification. The circumstances were forced upon him: he inherited a near-defenceless country, and in the absence of a British saviour, America was Australia’s only hope. Inevitably, the price of freedom was US control of the war effort.
Curtin’s great wartime achievement was to articulate—through his actions, by securing the return to Australia of Australian troops, and in his inspiring oratory—an independent destiny for a nation that had scarcely loosened its grip on the coat-tails of the mother country. He did this despite ferocious criticism from elements of the Australian press, and opposition from some of his own diplomats, who seemed bewitched by Churchill’s charm.
In sum, Curtin overcame deep personal failings to lead a nation at war with decency and humility. He deployed a shrewd intellect and an appealing pragmatism. And he could be very tough, demonstrated repeatedly in the manner in which he dealt with the unions. Some union leaders tried to buy Curtin off—demanding the promise of a post-war blueprint for social change in return for their cooperation. They mistook his decency for weakness. He scorned their demands, telling the wharf labourers in his own electorate of Fremantle, on 28 January 1941, ‘We have to concentrate on one supreme task which the enemy has imposed on us. We have to defeat him or die. It is no use preaching…the precepts of the Apostles to the enemy. The whine of bullets is the only epistle he will understand.’4
He dealt with strikers by threatening to withdraw their exemption from military service if they refused to work in their protected industries. When wharf workers refused to unload ships, Curtin sent in the navy to do it, then shamed the strikers into resuming their jobs: ‘The men who are not in the fighting forces and who…will not work are as much the enemies of this country as the…legions of the enemy.’5 Strong stuff; it shamed many workers into rejoining the war effort in defiance of their union bosses. Indeed, by 1942, Curtin took the podium of a nation at war with the unquestionable moral authority of a man for whom many Australians felt something akin to love.
It was a painful rite of passage for the Australian people. The milestones are worth charting in order to understand how, in a very tangible way, Curtin may be seen as the politician who saved Australia. His policy decisions—made under extreme pressure, in the teeth of great resistance from Churchill and Roosevelt—delivered the manpower and weaponry necessary to banish the Japanese aggressor from Papua and New Guinea. And there is no doubt that the reinforcements he secured from the Middle East saved the militia, stranded in the Owen Stanleys.
On assuming office, Curtin read the mood, noted the disastrous state of Australia’s armed forces, observed the Japanese peril, and powerfully formulated the national response. The war with Japan was a ‘new war’, not ‘merely another incident in the present war’, he declared.* Curtin resolved upon a ‘revolutionary’ course for Australia. No longer would young men be sent to die at the beck and call of the British. No more, the humiliation of Australia’s diplomatic supplicants, prostrate on the stairs of Whitehall. The men would come home and the domestic arms industry would be revived.
On 8 December 1941, close to 200 Japanese Mitsubishis took off from aircraft carriers anchored beneath the Pacific horizon. They burst out of the dawning sun and dive-bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Within a morning, America lost the pride of her navy. Churchill said he was ‘well content’ with the news; America at last would be forced to enter the war. Curtin responded with simple, noble melancholy: ‘Well, it has come.’6 Japanese Premier Tojo Hideki was free to pursue Japan’s Greater Asian war unchecked by the guns of US warships.
Curtin declared war the next day: ‘We are at war with Japan. That has happened because, in the first instance, Japanese naval and air forces launched an unprovoked attack on British and United States territory.’7 He did so without getting the green light from London, as was normal procedure for the dominions. It was a sign of his impatience with Britain, and growing confidence in the Americans. In rapid succession, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines fell to the Japanese war machine. As the threat to the nation rose, Curtin urged an ‘all-in’ war effort ‘to resist those who would destroy our title to Australia’.8 Workers would sacrifice their holidays; employers would curtail their golfing parties; Christmas would be a Spartan affair.
Curtin’s near-exhausted arsenals meant that only American or British help could save Australia. In Opposition he’d argued for years for local over imperial defence. As prime minister, he now firmly set Australia’s course in a powerful letter to Roosevelt and Churchill, on 23 December 1941:
Our men have fought and will fight valiantly. But they must be adequately supported. We have three divisions in the Middle East. Our airmen are fighting in Britain, Middle East and training in Canada. We have sent great quantities of supplies to Britain, to the Middle East and to India. Our resources here are very limited.
It is in your power to meet the situation. Should the government of the United States desire, we would gladly accept an American Commander in the Pacific Area…9
The offer drew a line in the sand with Britain, and pointed Australia towards a new military and political alliance with America.
The public statement of this intention flashed out of a hot summer’s day, 27 December 1941, when Curtin played his American hand to the Australian people. The paddock, the beach and the backyard were unprepared for the impact of the Labor leader’s New Year’s message, which was said to ‘reverberate around the world’ (insofar as Australian political messages were capable of global reverberation). It was a mere newspaper article (in the Melbourne Herald), but its historic significance lay in his defiant appeal for American military help.
Declaring that Australia should jettison its historic military dependence on Britain, Curtin struck at the heart of Australia’s ‘Britishness’. To the disgust of Churchill, who found the remark insulting, Curtin unapologetically bound Australia’s destiny with America’s: ‘Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.’10
Curtin’s article was a ‘clarion call to Australian nationhood’.11 His appeal to America transcended crude party politics. It was a statement of Australia’s new place in the world and, ultimately, a plea for help. He envisaged the creation of an Australian–American military alliance powerful enough to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific. In this sense, his New Year’s message was also a call to arms, an exhortation aimed at ‘revolutionising…the Australian way of life’ in which ‘every citizen’ was expected to ‘place himself, his private and business affairs, his entire mode of living on a war footing’.12
There was a bit of genius in this unashamed appeal to Australian patriotism in alliance with America, the citadel of capitalism, from a man of the Left. Few Liberals possessed such breadth of vision, while Labor’s communist sympathisers—Stalin’s ‘useful idiots’ in the West—were aghast. Neither fussy conservative Anglophiles nor militant left-wing ideologues had a place in the national emergency to come.
Curtin revealed the gravity of the situation in a letter to his wife, Elsie, on 5 January 1942:
The war goes very badly and I have a cable fight with Churchill almost daily. He had been in Africa and India, and they count before Australia and New Zealand. The truth is that Britain never thought Japan would fight and made no preparation to meet that eventuality. [Britain] never believed airpower could outfight seapower and now they will not risk ships uncovered by air support and there is no probability of air support. In Australia we have to produce our own aircraft. Notwithstanding two years of Menzies we have to really start production. But enough, I love you, and that is all there is to say.13
No statement better captured the isolation of Australia, and the transcendent humanity of its leader. Curtin had no doubt where the blame for the lack of aircraft lay. On 11 December, after the Japanese sank the British warships Repulse and Prince of Wales, he reminded the nation that for years he’d insisted the navy and army—however strong—relied on maximum air defence. ‘Now we are faced with the reality.’14 Indeed, Australia had no aircraft remotely capable of meeting the Japanese threat. An ‘absolute concentration’ on the war effort was decreed.
The rate of arms and aircraft production was cranked up to an unprecedented level under the robust guidance of Essington Lewis. Aircraft were ‘the first degree of priority’; the goal, to produce 60 squadrons. Thanks to Lewis’ energy and Curtin’s unstinting support, Beauforts, Tiger Moths and Wirraways were coming off the assembly lines at a rate that would meet the required quota within six months.15
But the southerly advance of the Japanese demanded a swifter response. Australia would soon turn in despair to America. The Americans had already discussed the country’s value as an offensive base. But assistance would not be forthcoming yet, because of ‘inadequate naval strength’ in the region,16 noted the Australian War Cabinet on 20 January.
Nor was Japan Roosevelt’s first priority—despite Pearl Harbor. Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed to defeat ‘Germany First’, as enshrined in a secret pact code-named WWI. It didn’t take a forensic expert to glean the essence of the deal. For months, media and political circles understood ‘Germany First’ as the guiding theme of the war. Churchill had suggested as much to Curtin in an earlier Christmas correspondence.
Yet Australia’s blinkered diplomats in London and Washington failed to see the wood for the trees—until they were standing inches from the bark. Indeed, Page, Bruce, Casey and Evatt* were incapable of drawing Whitehall’s and Washington’s attention to the extreme vulnerability of Australia. These men seemed to misapprehend the brutal truth that their country was, in fact, expendable. And they were excessively prone to Churchill’s charms. In one case of clear disloyalty, Page took the British line against Curtin’s instructions.
Curtin was ill at ease with the aristocratic flamboyance and condescending humour of his British counterpart. For example, Churchill on 10 January presumed to tell the Australian leader, ‘the defence of Australian soil…rests primarily with you…It is quite true that you may have air attacks but we have had a good dose already in England without mortally harmful results.’17 Yet mutual respect—and an odd, mutual curiosity—nonetheless bound the two men, and they got on well despite the growing friction.
On 23 January 1942, 5000 Japanese troops captured Rabaul, the capital of New Britain, causing widespread panic in Australia. The RAAF commander at Rabaul pleaded for bombers and fighters. GHQ, then based in Melbourne, replied, ‘If we had them you would get them.’18 No event more gravely underscored Australia’s helplessness in the skies. The Japanese Zero, if it chose, virtually controlled the air space as far south as Townsville. New Britain would soon become Tojo’s South Sea base, hosting one of the largest concentrations of Japanese troops outside Japan. The threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia was seen as real, and imminent. Quoting Byron’s ‘Night Before Waterloo’—‘Nearer, clearer, deadlier than before/The cannon’s opening roar’—Curtin warned the nation, ‘Anybody who fails to perceive the immediate menace which this attack constitutes for Australia must be lost to all reality.’19
He immediately agreed to US leadership of what would be called the South-West Pacific Area. As negotiations progressed, the defence chiefs quietly decided which parts of the country must be defended from invasion. Lieutenant-General Sir Iven Mackay, commander of the Home Forces, in a memo sent on 4 February to the Minister for the Army, identified the coal-rich arc of Port Kembla–Newcastle–Lithgow; the cities of Sydney and Melbourne; and the burgeoning US military base at Brisbane. Three divisions of militia were available to defend this vast region, extending a thousand miles from Brisbane to Melbourne. In purely military terms, it made sense to concentrate the small number of available troops behind the so-called Brisbane Line, yet the Government did not officially adopt Mackay’s recommendation. All the same, the retention of AIF troops for months in Queensland, the fortifications north of Brisbane, the concentration of defence facilities in Newcastle–Sydney–Port Kembla, and the failure adequately to reinforce Western Australia gave the infamous legend a great deal of plausibility.*
Australia’s darkest hour came sooner than Curtin feared. On 15 February 1942, the Australian people awoke from their pleasant dream to an awful reality. Singapore had surrendered. A few thousand Japanese troops landed, captured the island’s water supply, and forced the most ignominious capitulation in British military history—precipitating General Arthur Percival’s sad walk towards the Japanese lines bearing a white flag.*
The fall of Singapore was ‘Australia’s Dunkirk’,20 Curtin declared; ‘the Battle for Australia’ would commence.21 Japan was now at liberty to invade Australia ‘should she so desire’, noted the Australian Chiefs of Staff, masterfully perfunctory as always. Of three possible invasion plans, Japan was most likely to attack Port Moresby, ‘thence the mainland of Australia’, they concluded.22
In four days their fears were realised. On 19 February 1942, as Curtin lay sick in bed with gastritis, scores of high-altitude Japanese bombers flown by Pearl Harbor veterans bombed Darwin, killing 250 people and destroying Darwin’s port, nine ships and twenty aircraft.23
A month earlier Churchill appeared to have acceded to Australian demands for the return of two divisions of the Second Australian Imperial Force. ‘I am sure we all sympathise with our kith and kin in Australia,’ he told the House of Commons on 27 January, ‘now that the shield of British and American sea power has…been withdrawn from them so unexpectedly and so tragically and now that hostile bombers may soon be within range of Australian shores…We shall not put any obstacles to the return of the splendid Australian troops, who volunteered for Imperial service, to defend their own homeland…’24
Churchill did not mean they should go home; he meant they should go to India or Java or the Malayan barrier—defending British as well as Australian interests—as he deftly hinted: ‘the Japanese are more likely to [secure] their rich prizes in the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and the Malayan Archipelago…than to undertake a serious mass invasion of Australia…’ This was consistent with his proposal in December 1941 to return 40,000 Australian troops to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), but emphatically not to Australia.
These islands fell successively to the Japanese in January–February. So Churchill insisted that the fleet then in the Indian Ocean, and carrying 20,000 Australian troops, should be diverted to Rangoon, to defend the Burma Road.
Roosevelt, the Australian Chiefs of Staff, most of the Australian press, Menzies, (Sir Keith) Murdoch, even Curtin’s own diplomatic representatives in London, all agreed with Churchill. Page was the most vocal of a posse of Australian diplomats and generals who supported the diversion of Australian soldiers to Burma.25 They argued, in essence, that it was vital to keep the Burma Road open, in order to supply China; China, they claimed, was the linchpin of the Pacific War.
Curtin, virtually alone, disagreed. He demanded that the troops be returned home. He found himself in the extraordinary position of having to defend the most basic duty of a prime minister: to procure an army and protect his country from possible invasion.*
His desperation and bristling indignation can be painfully felt in the exhaustive cable sent on 19 February to the British General Wavell (who had recommended to the Pacific War Council that Australian troops be diverted to Burma):
In no respect whatever, have calls upon AUSTRALIA for assistance elsewhere remained unanswered. When state of land and air defences in MALAYA was revealed by the first SINGAPORE conference we did NOT hesitate to send the bulk of an AIF division and three squadrons from the RAAF. The AIF formation and additional reinforcements despatched have now been lost…We have sent AUSTRALIAN land and air forces to AMBON, KOEPANG, PORTUGESE TIMOR, NEW CALEDONIA and SOLOMON islands. There are 6250 empire air scheme personnel abroad. Our resources are NOT only strained but are desperately small. Equipment which we could NOT reasonably spare was made available at the request of the British Government…we would be completely failing in our duty to the people of AUSTRALIA if we agreed to diversion of any division of AIF…[Our] object [is] to stop JAPAN’s thrust south. That object can now be achieved only by allocating AIF to Australia…it should come to AUSTRALIA with greatest possible expedition.26
Churchill would not abide this truculent dominion. He tried to intimidate Curtin, with a meanly phrased wire the next day, 20 February:
I suppose you realise that your leading division, the head of which is sailing south of Colombo…at this moment…is the only force that can reach Rangoon in time to prevent its loss and the severance of communication with China? I am quite sure that if you refuse to allow your troops to stop this gap…a very grave effect will be produced upon the President and the Washington circle upon whom you are so largely dependent…We must have an answer immediately as the leading ships of the convoy will soon be steaming in the opposite direction from Rangoon [to Australia] and every day is a day lost.27
Churchill had indeed carefully harnessed the support of Roosevelt, the aristocratic, liberal US President, who weighed into the transcontinental debate with a cable to Curtin of persuasive dignity, on 21 February. It is worth quoting at length:
I fully appreciate how grave are your responsibilities in reaching a decision in the present serious circumstances as to the disposition of the first Australian division returning from the Middle East.
I assume that you know now of our determination to send, in addition to all troops and forces now en route, another force of over 27,000 men to Australia. This force will be fully equipped in every respect.
We must fight to the limit of our two flanks—one based on Australia and the other on Burma, India and China. Because of our geographical position we Americans can better handle the reinforcement of Australia and the right flank…
…you may have every confidence that we are going to reinforce your position with all possible speed. On the other hand the left flank simply must be held. If Burma goes it seems to me our whole position, including that of Australia will be extremely strained. Your Australian Division is the only force that is available for immediate reinforcement. It could get into the fight at once and…save what now seems a very dangerous situation.
While I realize the Japanese are moving rapidly I cannot believe that…your vital centers are in immediate danger.
While I realize that your men have been fighting all over the world, and are still, and while I know full well of great sacrifices which Australia has made, I nevertheless want to ask you in the interest of our whole war effort in the Far East if you will reconsider your decision and order the division now en route to Australia to move with all speed to support the British forces fighting in Burma.
You may be sure we will fight by your side with all our force until victory. Roosevelt.28
It is worth reminding ourselves that these exchanges of words between the most powerful men in London, Washington and Canberra were dealing with the fate of some 20,000 men—the 7th Australian Division—then at sea, in enemy waters, for whose repatriation Curtin fought down to the wire in order to reinforce Australia.
Curtin stood firm: the troops would come directly to Australia, and not go to Burma. In the manner of his stand lay the mark of political greatness. Was not his first duty to the Australian people, to use Churchill’s own words?
His was not an emotional plea; Curtin wrapped his case in trenchant argument: China was not the linchpin in the war; Australia was extremely vulnerable; American troops, who did not share the digger’s patriotism, could not adequately defend the nation, he argued. Indeed, the Australian soldiers abroad and at sea were clamouring to get home to fight.
Curtin saw that Japan controlled Burmese air space and waters. It was the decisive factor in the loss of Burma.29 Any troops landing there were certainly doomed, as Curtin reminded Churchill: ‘In view of superior Japanese sea power and air power, it would appear to be a matter of some doubt as to whether [the Australian troops] can be landed at Burma…
‘The movement of our forces [to Burma]…is not considered a reasonable hazard of war…its adverse results would have the gravest consequences on the morale of the Australian people. The Government therefore must adhere to its decision…’30
His bargaining chip was his very country, the only free nation in East Asia that offered a suitable base for an American-led counteroffensive. America knew this. Curtin’s mind was made up. He wrote gratefully but firmly to Roosevelt the next day, 22 February:
Dear Mr President…We are now, with a small population in the only white man’s territory south of the equator, beset grievously…we now lack adequacy for the forces of our homeland in the defence of our own soil.
You have indicated an appreciation of the gravity of our responsibilities in reaching a decision on the matter referred to in your message. It has affected us profoundly…our vital centres are in immediate danger.
Roosevelt accepted Curtin’s decision as that of a sovereign country entitled to direct its troops to where it saw fit: ‘Well, if they have made their minds up, that is the way it is.’31 (He graciously added that it would not affect the movement of US troops to Australia.)
Churchill did not. The British leader ignored the Australian Government’s wishes. On 20 February 1942 Churchill, of his own volition, without informing Australia, re-directed the convoy to Burma—with ‘callous disregard’32 for Australia’s defence needs. Privately Churchill never forgave Australia for the loss of thousands of British troops at Singapore. This weighed on his mind and spurred his action virtually to commandeer Australian defence policy, and order a division of Australian troops to what he knew would be their likely doom.
He defended his incredible action to a furious Curtin, on 22 February, on the grounds that ‘we could not contemplate that you would refuse our request’. ‘We knew,’ Churchill explained, ‘that if our ships proceeded on their course to Australia while we were waiting for your formal approval they would either arrive too late at Rangoon or…be without enough fuel to go there at all. We therefore decided that the convoy should be…diverted northward…’33
It was a jaw-dropping moment. Even dear old Stanley Bruce, then in London, was ‘appalled’.34 Curtin took a brief walk. He then replied, with tightly controlled fury: ‘you have diverted the convoy towards Rangoon and…treated our approval to this…as merely a matter of form. By doing so you have established a physical situation which adds to the dangers of the convoy and the responsibility of the consequences of such diversion rests upon you…’35
Churchill relented. The convoy refuelled at Colombo and steamed for Australia with the 7th Division on board. The bewilderment of the troops—pawns in the great game of political power—can be imagined. Had the convoy landed in Rangoon 20,000 men would surely have been captured, many killed, and the Japanese given a free run at Port Moresby. Curtin had surely saved their lives, and his defiance of Churchill fulfilled his obligation ‘to save Australia’ for itself and as a base for ‘the development of the war against Japan’. It was surely his finest hour.36
The convoy came home over the shimmering vastness of the Indian Ocean. Their voyage was a dark journey of the soul for Curtin. For a man who strongly empathised with the pain and suffering of others, the thought of thousands of young lives strung out across enemy seas was intolerable. Curtin’s mind sometimes ‘writhed in tortuous struggles with its own honesty and power of reasoning’, observed Sir Paul Hasluck.37 In his extremity, the Prime Minister saw through the logic of his decisions with terrifying clarity:Who, he surely asked himself, would be answerable to the boys’ parents were the convoy sunk?
His racked, exhausted face, the sleepless nights and silent vigils made colleagues fear he was close to breakdown. Under the immense stress, Curtin’s health severely deteriorated. A ‘peculiar and devouring strain…used to burn up his nervous and emotional reserves’, recalled one friend.38 He felt personally responsible for every soldier at sea, so great was his fear of Japanese submarines—indeed, empty Australian vessels were sent into the Indian Ocean to rescue any survivors of a possible attack.
Borne down under the weight of such private contemplation, Curtin’s war, necessarily shrouded in secrecy from the Australian public, would soon kill him.*
Some 20,000 Australian troops safely disembarked at Perth and Adelaide over several weeks, starting on 9 March 1942. Curtin ‘was a man released from great darkness and unhappiness’, recalled one MP.39 Their R&R was cut short in the national emergency. A ‘Special Order of the Day’ from Lieutenant-General Sir John Lavarack denied the soldiers immediate leave: ‘We disembark in Australia today under conditions which demand that we be ready and available to fight at short notice. All our training and experience abroad is now disposable for the defence of our native land, which is menaced by the advance of an exultant enemy. In these circumstances I know you will realise that the safety of Australia precludes your immediate dispersal to your homes on leave.’40
Not all took the news well—these men had been away for two years. Some 350 troops of the 2/16th Battalion went AWOL upon their arrival in Fremantle. Military discipline had its limits.
They were soon railed to Queensland, ostensibly for jungle training. In fact, most were dubiously employed fortifying the coastline, and weren’t shipped to Port Moresby until 8 August 1942—the week the militia withdrew to Isurava high in the Owen Stanleys.
Australia did not get all its troops back. Most of the 6th Division garrisoned Ceylon (Sri Lanka) until returning to Australia in September 1942, and Curtin acceded to Britain’s request—under shameful pressure from his own diplomats—to delay the return of the 9th Division and other personnel, some 38,000 Australians, from the Middle East. A further 8000 Australian pilots and air force personnel and 2700 sailors remained in Europe. These did not appease British demands for Australian cannon fodder, and Churchill and his generals privately expressed their bitter resentment of Curtin’s government and the Australian people, who were ‘the most egotistical, conceited people imaginable’.
One measure of a man is the depths to which he will sink to scorn those who defy him. These grubby accusations redounded to the extreme discredit of Churchill and his government. Were not the Australians simply exercising their right to defend themselves—as Britain had so ruthlessly exercised its own? It is interesting to speculate how Britain may have behaved had the roles been reversed—that is, had Curtin ordered two British divisions to stay in the Pacific and on Australian soil in defiance of the wishes of Churchill and the British people.