1944 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference

The conference

The 1944 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was attended by the leaders of all Dominions except Ireland and Newfoundland. Those present included John Curtin of Australia, William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada, Peter Fraser of New Zealand, Jan Smuts of South Africa, and Sir Godfrey Huggins of Southern Rhodesia. India was represented by the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir. Members of the Churchill War Cabinet and the Dominions' High Commissioners also took part. Ireland, still considered a Commonwealth member, did not attend and had been absent from such meetings since 1932. The leaders backed the Moscow Declaration and settled their roles in the Allied war effort. Before the conference, Scottish National Party figures Robert McIntyre and Douglas Young asked several prime ministers to discuss Scottish independence and invite Scotland to future conferences. Curtin saw this as a British internal matter, King was sympathetic, and the others merely acknowledged the requests. Churchill failed to achieve the Commonwealth unity he wanted. Business Week judged the United States the real winner. Churchill left the conference out of his memoirs.