Chatham House a.k.a. Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) is a semi-secret, London-based sister organization of the US Council on Foreign Relations and was ostensibly established "to encourage and facilitate the study of international questions [with a view to preventing future wars]" (King-Hall, p. 129).
Its true intent and purpose has been to influence government policy and public opinion in line with its creators hidden agenda (Quigley, 1981, p. 182).
Chatham House cannot be properly investigated without some knowledge of the wider network of connections and sources of support of which it is only a part. In particular, Chatham House is inseparable from the group which created it and which for many years has dominated and used it as an instrument for its agenda. This group was the secret organization formed in London on 5 February 1891 by diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes of De Beers for the purpose of "extending British rule throughout the world" (Quigley, 1981, pp. 3, 33-38).
Originally called The Society of the Elect, the group later came to be known by various names at various times, including "the secret society of Cecil Rhodes", "the Round Table Group", "the Milner Group" and, significantly, "the Chatham House crowd" (Quigley, 1981, pp. 3, 4, 39, 311) [* hereinafter in the text the name "Milner Group" is used].
The key planks in the groups drive for world domination were:
(1) cultural and political union of the United Kingdom with the British Empire (the UKs colonies and other territories);
(2) union of the British Empire with America; and
(3) the worldwide organization of states around the proposed Anglo-American Empire.
As the groups stated overarching aim was to extend its rule throughout the world, international and especially Anglo-American relations were high on its agenda. Anglo-American interests close to the Milner Group had already set up various outfits promoting closer links between Britain and America. Among these were the Anglo-American League and the Pilgrims Society.
The Anglo-American League was founded in London and New York in 1898 and revolved on the belief that Britain and America had "strong common interests in many parts of the world".
The Pilgrims Society was founded in London in 1902, with a New York branch being set up in the following year and was based on similar beliefs.
Similarly, to achieve its objective of world organization around the Anglo-American Empire, the group Set up a series of organizations such as the League to Enforce Peace (LEP) and the League of Free Nations Association (LFNA) with corresponding outfits across the Atlantic.
The immediate precursor to the Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs was the Committee of International Relations a.k.a. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which was originally founded in New York in 1918.
The Institute of International Affairs was conceived by the Milner Group during the 1919 Peace Conference of Paris and was organized under the leadership of Lionel Curtis, a prominent member of the Milner Group, in collaboration with members of the Fabian Society. Among these were R. H. Tawney, John Maynard Keynes and Philip Noel-Baker.
Also involved were Fabian collaborators/sympathizers like London School of Economics Professor Arnold J. Toynbee who became Chatham House Director of Studies and Lord Astor (King-Hall, pp. 13-14; Martin, p. 175; Quigley, 1981, p. 183). Astor, a leading Milnerite, was a friend of the Fabian leadership.
The American group mainly consisted of associates of the Morgan Group, the leading element in the "Eastern Establishment" (bankers, businessmen, lawyers and academics revolving around Wall Street interests). It included:
All of them were members of the American branch of the Milner Group (Quigley, 1966, pp. 950-2).
The American branch of the Institute initially failed to take off due to the US Senates opposition to the internationalist schemes of President Woodrow Wilson, the Institutes chief American supporter. But in July 1921, those associated with the Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs merged with (according to Quigley, 1981, p. 191, took over) the New York organization formed earlier by the Morgan Group and called Council on Foreign Relations (King-Hall, p. 14). The new organization retained the name Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and held the first meeting of its directors on 28 September 1921.
The British branch of the Institute was founded in London in 1920 as the British Institute of International Affairs (BIA), becoming the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in 1926. It was later called Chatham House after the building housing its headquarters in Londons St. Jamess Square, which was itself appropriately named after the 1st Earl of Chatham, Secretary of State William Pitt the Elder, who was a leader of the Whig Party (forerunner to the Liberal Party).
Chatham House consisted of a governing body first called Executive Committee and later Council, led by a chairman and two honorary secretaries, and a small number of paid employees and was headed by three presidents. The first honorary secretaries were Lionel Curtis and G. M. Gathorne-Hardy and the Council remained dominated by the Milner Group, which provided about half of the councillors, until 1960. Most of the paid staff were agents of Curtis (Quigley, 1966, p. 952).
Chatham House members were recruited from among Britains leading academics, civil servants, members of the armed services, politicians and businessmen (Parmar, pp. 31-34). Chatham Houses elite membership, which rose from about 300 to 2,414 by 1936, was clearly designed to give an impression of expert competence, while having presidents (a largely honorary position) from all three main political parties conveyed a false sense of impartiality. In reality, like its Milnerite creators, Chatham House has always been Liberal, i.e., left of centre.
Chatham House operates by analyzing global, regional and national problems and proposing solutions to decision-makers that are in line with Milnerite thinking.
Its house journal is International Affairs (formerly Journal) in addition to which it issues The World Today as well as 50 similar reports and other publications annually. The Milner Groups organ, The Round Table, was also edited from Chatham House grounds (Quigley, 1966, p. 952).
[*] My note:
It should be noted that the British side has traditionally played a leading role in the alliance between the British ruling class and the US East Coast elite, which Professor Quigley dubbed the "Anglo-American Establishment". This is explained by:
• the British ruling class's centuries-long experience in creating and exploiting subversive ideologies and movements;
• the historical experience of the British Foreign Office;
• the ideological influence of the Fabian Society on the American oligarchy;
• the superiority of the British propaganda machine, which exerted significant influence on the US media;
• the superiority of the British intelligence services, which participated in the creation of the CIA;
It was the British who pioneered most of the international projects subsequently implemented with US resources. These projects include:
• the communist revolution in Russia and the creation of the USSR as a geopolitical adversary of the United States;
• the creation of the UN and the European Union;
• the deindustrialization of developed countries through the use of the climate agenda;
• the decline in the quality of education;
• the degradation of art and culture;
• the creation of a modernized China as a new geopolitical adversary of the United States;
• the creation of an Islamist Iran as a source of tension in the Middle East;
• the use of man-made pandemics to restrict civil liberties and undermine the sovereignty of nation states;
• mass immigration from Third World countries;
• the Islamization of European civilization.
End of my note.
CHATHAM HOUSE AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
It is evident from those involved in the formation and financing of the Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs that it represented certain financial interests from inception. These interests had already been involved in the formation of earlier organizations such as the Anglo-American League and the Pilgrims Society.
The League included Prime Minister and Milner-Fabian godfather Arthur Balfour (later Lord and close Rothschild friend and collaborator, whose family had also founded the Society for Psychical Research in 1882) and the Duke of Sutherland on the London side and various Morgan associates like Daniel S. Lamont and William C. Witney, on the New York side (Pimiot Baker, p. 11; Forrest, pp. 100-1).
The Pilgrims similarly included Britons like Arthur Balfour and the 7" Duke of Newcastle (a member of J. P. Morgans Metropolitan Club of New York) and Americans like John Pierpont Morgan himself and associates (Pimlott Baker, pp. 19, 184; "Clubs and Clubmen", NYT, 26 Apr. 1903).
Unsurprisingly, we find the same interests among those providing funds to the Institute: J. P. Morgan & Co., the Carnegie Trust and J. D. Rockefeller, as well as various institutions with Milner Group members on their board of directors, such as the US car maker Ford Motor Company, the Bank of England, Lazard Brothers & Co. and N.M. Rothschild & Sons (Quigley, 1981, p. 190).
As pointed out by Professor Quigley, the American branch of these money interests revolved around the J. P. Morgan Bank of New York and its associates, such as the Rockefeller-Schiff Group, which were part of Americas Eastern Establishment.
The British branch was based on the private bank Lazard Brothers & Co. which had branches in London, New York and Paris, and its associates, including the Bank of England, Barclays Bank, Lloyds Bank, Westminster Bank, Baring Brothers and N.M. Rothschild, which all had Milner Group members on their board of directors (Quigley, 1981 pp. 190, 228).
This Anglo-American Morgan-Lazard connection stretching from the City of London to Wall Street was the backbone of the Milner Group and its international organization (Quigley, 1966, p. 951).
On the British side, Lazard Brothers, N.M. Rothschild, the Bank of England, Barclays Bank, Lloyds Bank, Midland Bank, Westminster Bank, Baring Brothers, Hambros Bank, Stem Brothers, as well as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company and Reuters, Ltd., were among the corporate members of Chatham House (King-Hall, pp. 140-1).
With regard to Lord Rothschild, co-founder and member of the Society of the Elects Inner Circle, Quigley makes the implausible claim that he was "largely indifferent" to the Milner project and "held aloof (Quigley, 1981, pp. 40, 45).
The evidence shows that Rothschild was a loyal supporter of Rhodess imperialist plans in the 1890s (Ferguson, 2000, vol. 2., p. 360) and that the Rothschilds continued to take an interest in the Societys (later Milner Group) activities and projects. Nattys French cousin Edmond de Rothschild hosted the US delegation to the Paris Peace Conference which included J. P. Morgan Jr. and Morgan associates Thomas Lamont and US Ambassador to the UK, John William Davis, who were involved in the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations (Mullins, p. 109).
Moreover, Lamont, partner and later head of J. P. Morgan (a Rothschild associate and representative) was the first financial sponsor of the Anglo-American project, advancing 2,000 for the writing of a history of the Paris Peace Conference and N.M. Rothschild itself became a corporate member of Chatham House (King-Hall, pp. 13, 141). The close connections between N.M. Rothschild, Lazard and Morgan interests are shown in Mullins (Chart 1, pp. 92-4) and must be beyond dispute.
The committee which organized the Institute of International Affairs was funded by diamond magnate Sir Abe Bailey, the Milner Groups chief financial supporter, and chaired by Lord Robert Cecil, who had been chairman of the Supreme Economic Council during the Paris Conference.
Cecils financial adviser was Robert (later Lord) Brand. Brand later became a partner and managing director of Lazard Brothers, a director of Lloyds Bank and Milner Group leader (1955-63) (Quigley, 1966, p. 60).
As brother-in-law of Lady (Nancy) Astor, Brand was related by marriage to another prominent Milnerite financier, Lord Astor, the owner of leading newspapers The Times (the "gazette of the British ruling class") and the Observer. Lord Astor became chairman of the Chatham House Council in 1935. The proximity of the Astors to Chatham House was aptly illustrated by their residence just across St. Jamess Square from Chatham House.
Alfred Milner himself, in addition to being a director of the Rothschild-controlled mining company Rio Tinto, was director of several public banks, particularly the London Joint Stock Bank, later Midland Bank - which as already noted became Chatham House corporate member.
Earlier Anglo-American organizations founded by the same interests, claimed to foster closer links between Britain and America. However, their true intention was to harmonize British and American foreign policy in line with the agenda of the financial interests behind these organizations.
The Pilgrims Society, in particular, was working "closer and closer with the British Foreign Office" and its American counterpart, the US State Department (Pimlott Baker, p. 25). This pattern was faithfully followed by the money powers global network of organizations and Chatham House was no exception (see also note, p. 192).
CHATHAM HOUSE AND SOCIALISM
The Milner Group, which operated in Liberal and Conservative circles, derived much of its ideology from Arnold Toynbees (Milners closest friend) Socialist-style theories of social reform. Although he described himself as an "English nationalist", Milner Group leader Alfred Milner was in fact a notorious Socialist (Quigley, Sutton).
In the 1890s (as chairman of the board of Internal Revenue), he introduced the inheritance tax in England, imposed heavy taxes in South Africa to fund "social improvements" and contemplated the nationalization of railways and mines (Quigley, 1981, pp. 6, 130-1).
The Milner Group and the Fabian Society
In addition, although the connection is often missed by researchers, there has always been close collaboration between the Milner Group and the Fabian Society (a Socialist organization). As noted above, several prominent Fabians like R. H. Tawney, John Maynard Keynes and Philip Noel-Baker were involved in the formation of Chatham House. Noel-Baker, who later became a leader of the Fabian International and Colonial Bureaux, the American Walter Lippmann and others were members of both the Fabian Society and the Milner Group (Quigley, 1966, p. 950; Steel, pp. 23 ff.).
• Labour Party chairman (later Lord Privy Seal and Home Minister) John R. Clynes, who operated in Fabian circles (Martin, p. 458), was a member of the Chatham House Council from the Start, as well as president.
• Arthur Creech Jones, member of the Fabian Society executive, was also a member of the Chatham House Council.
• Sir Arthur Salter, a former member of the Fabian Society and later prominent Milnerite, was appointed acting chairman of the Chatham House Council in 1931 and remained a member of the Council (Salter, p. 230).
• Other Fabian members of the Chatham House Council were Lord Snell, of the Fabian Society and Labour Party executives and Denis Healey of the Fabian executive.
Chatham House was in close contact with the Fabian Societys War Aims Committee, the League of Nations Union and associated Milner-Fabian outfits during World War II (Pugh, p. 186). In fact, Milner-Fabian connections go back to the early 1900s, when members of both groups attended typical Liberal-Labour (Lib-Lab) organizations like the Rainbow Circle and the Coefficients Club.
Established in 1902 by the Fabian Society, the Coefficients Club was attended by leading Liberals and "Conservatives", including Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary), Richard Haldane (Privy Counsellor, later Secretary of State for War and Lord Chancellor), Alfred Milner (businessman and banker, later member of Lloyd Georges War Cabinet) and Leo Amery (Secretary of State for India and Burma) (Quigley, 1981, pp. 137-8), many of whom obviously belonged to Milner circles.
The Rainbow Circle was another Lib-Lab operation. Named after the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet Street, London, the Circle was set up in 1893 to promote social, political and industrial reform in collaboration with the Liberals and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation. Its early members included prominent Fabians like Charles Trevelyan, Herbert Samuel, J. A. Hobson, Sydney Olivier and Ramsay MacDonald.
Milner Group, Fabian Society and Russian Revolution
A Rainbow Circle associate of particular interest was the London-based Society of Friends of Russian Freedom (SFRF). One of the SFRFs American leaders was George Kennan (cousin of historian and leading CFR member George F. Kennan) who had close links to Russias Socialist-Revolutionary Party.
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, Jacob Schiff, of the New York private investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co., a Rothschild representative, associate of the Morgan Group and whose Japan Society of New York was later involved in the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations, provided funds to Russian groups and used the Friends of Russian Freedom to promote revolutionary propaganda.
At the same time, Schiff and his European Rothschild associates provided large loans to Russias adversary, Japan (Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 14, p. 961; Smethurst; Ferguson, 2000, vol. 2, p. 396). As a result of these machinations, Russia was plunged into revolution in 1905 and again in 1917.
As already noted, while Schiff and his Rothschild associates were putting pressure on Russia by providing loans to Japan and promoting revolution, prominent Fabian Society member Joseph Fels (who was married to Fannie Rothschilds daughter, Mary Fels) provided a loan of 1,700 [* about $200,000 in 2026], in addition to pocket money in the sum of one gold sovereign [* about $1140 in 2026] per delegate, to Lenin, Trotsky and their Russian Social Democratic Labour Party during their 1907 London conference (Rappaport, pp. 153-4; Martin, pp. 29, 161; Cole, p. 113; see also Joseph and Mary Fels Papers).
In February 1917, the Tsar was overthrown by the revolutionary government of Alexander Kerensky, a leading member of Russias Socialist-Revolutionary Party (which was the Friends of Russias contact). This enabled Lenin to stage his own coup later that year, replacing Kerenskys government with his own "Social Democratic" Party (later Communist Party).
The Russian-born Julius Rappoport a.k.a. Julius West, a member of the Fabian Society Executive Committee, made several trips to Russia in 1917 and was present at the 2nd Russian Congress of Soviets at the Petrograd Smolny Institute on 7-9 November, during which Lenin declared his new Communist government (Pugh, p. 136).
In addition to British Fabian connections, Russias Communist regime also had links to officials of the Russian and English Bank [* Saint Petersburg International Commercial Bank] which was run by Milnerite and friend of the Fabian leadership Arthur Balfour and collaborators (Sutton, 1974, p. 122).
The Milner Group's and the British government
The Milner Groups influence on the British government itself is beyond dispute. In the period 1919-39 it held between one-fifth and one-third of Cabinet posts. The group dominated Liberal Prime Minister Lloyd Georges 1916-24 government which included Milnerites like Arthur Balfour, Leo Amery, Samuel Hoare, Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Astor (Quigley, 1981, pp. 142-3, 227).
Milner himself became Secretary for War in 1918 and Colonial Secretary in the following year, while his fellow Milnerite, Chatham House co-founder and later member of the Council Philip Kerr (later Lord Lothian) was private secretary to Lloyd George.
The Milner Group supports communist Russia
The Milner-dominated Lloyd George administration engineered the 1921 Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement. This in turn led to diplomatic relations being established in 1924 under Labours Ramsay MacDonald, a notorious admirer of Communist Russia, whose son and intimate associate, Malcolm, became a Milner Group member and, in 1933, was elected Chatham House councillor (Quigley, 1981, p. 185).
Diplomatic relations with Russia were broken off in 1927 under Stanley Baldwins (also Milner-dominated) Conservative government, when it was found that Russia had been profiting more from the arrangement than Britain, while at the same time working against British interests in China and elsewhere (see also the ARCOS affair). But they were resumed in 1929 under Labour Prime Minister and Milner collaborator Ramsay MacDonald.
The establishment of trade relations with Russia helped its Communist regime to survive and impose itself on the Russian people.
The importance of Communist Russia to Chatham House circles is confirmed by the joint visit to that country in 1931 by Lord Astor (later chair of the Chatham House Council) and his Fabian friend Bernard Shaw who believed that Lenin was the "greatest statesman of Europe" (Jones 1925).
As noted by Quigley, the system advocated by the Milner group was an "undemocratic kind of socialism" (Quigley, 1981, p. 130). The whole point of Socialism, of course, was state control over trade, markets and resources and this is where Socialism fitted in with the global designs of monopolistic Capitalism which Milner-Fabian groups clearly represented.
Milner Group associates in the United States
On the other side of the Atlantic, too, we can find international financiers, Milner-Fabian associates and Chatham House sponsors, like David Rockefeller, who were in fact Socialists - as noted earlier, David wrote a sympathetic thesis on Fabian Socialism at Harvard in 1936 (Rockefeller, pp. 75-6).
International financiers like those behind Chatham House and the Milner Group supported Socialism because Socialist administrators who believed in state monopoly of trade, markets and resources promised to run societies and their economies in ways that offered more advantages to the monopolistic Capitalist elites than mainstream liberal democracies could.
Otherwise put, it was an alliance of monopolistic financiers and monopolistic revolutionaries.
For the same reason, the same financiers, like the head of the Milner-associated Morgan Group, Thomas Lamont, supported Fascism in Italy (Sutton, 1974, pp. 172-4).
These groups ultimate objective of monopolizing power is evident from the fact that Fabian leaders like Bernard Shaw, too, supported Fascism, declaring in 1927, "We must get the Socialist movement out of its old democratic grooves" and "We, as Socialists, have nothing to do with liberty" (Cole, pp. 196-7).
[*] My note:
In Grokipedia, considered a more balanced source than Wikipedia, the article on George Bernard Shaw includes a chapter titled "Sympathies for Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini". It describes Shaw's admiration for Mussolini, his sympathy for Stalin and his support for Hitler.
Bernard Shaw was one of the four founders of the Fabian Society, and his ideology - Fabian socialism - became dominant in the European Union.
End of my note.
CHATHAM HOUSE AND WORLD GOVERNMENT
It is beyond dispute that the overarching objective of Chatham Houses Milnerite masters was to establish world government. From the start, it had been their stated intention to "extend British rule throughout the world" (see above) and leading Milnerites like Lionel Curtis openly advocated various forms of world government in publications like Civitas Dei (literally, "The Commonwealth of God") a.k.a. World Order (1934-37).
As already noted, the Milner Groups aim was to establish a Socialist-style dictatorship led by a self-appointed administrative elite, that is, the Milner Group itself (Quigley, 1981, pp. 130-1). This means that when they talked about "extending British rule throughout the world", they really meant Milner Group rule and not rule by the British people or even by the (democratically-elected) British Government.
Similarly, the Milner Groups international associates aimed to establish a world system of financial control concentrated in private hands, which would enable them to dominate the worlds economy and politics (Quigley, 1966, pp. 324 ff.).
The internationalist motives behind the creation of Chatham House itself are clear from the fact that Curtis had written a book advocating world government, entitled The Commonwealth of Nations (1916) just a few years before he came up with the idea of an institute of foreign relations and was also involved in international projects like the Commonwealth of Nations and the League of Nations, having world organization as their principal objective.
In the early 1950s, Chatham House councillor Denis Healey was instrumental in the creation of organizations aiming to establish world government, such as the Socialist International and the Bilderberg Group. The latter, in Healeys own words, worked for a "united global governance" (Birrell, 2013).
Of course, the international money interests have been careful to conceal the true reason behind their drive for world government. Publicly, their position has been that taken by Healey (who was also on the Fabian executive) in the 1960s, namely that only an "advanced form of world government" could guarantee world peace (Healey, 1963, p. 1; see also below, p. 525).
CHATHAM HOUSE AND THE COMMONWEALTH
Another reason why the Milner Groups patriotic credentials must be open to question is that by the 1920s, i.e., the time when they created Chatham House, they had introduced the concept of a "Commonwealth" as a substitute for the British Empire.
Already in 1907, the Milner Group had suggested the creation of a Dominion Department in the Colonial Office, recognizing the separate existence of self-governing Dominions (Quigley, 1981, p. 152), i.e., Canada, Australia and New Zealand - followed by South Africa in 1910, India in 1947, etc.
In 1908, the Group began to publicize the idea of a "British Commonwealth of Nations" (Quigley, 1981, p. 5) and a Dominion Office was finally created in 1925, with Milnerite Leo Amery as Secretary. The Milner-dominated Imperial Conference of 1926 issued the "Balfour Declaration" which recognized the UK and the Dominions as equal members of the British Commonwealth.
The UK delegation to the Conference was made up of the Lord President of the Council, Lord Balfour; Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain; Colonial Secretary Leo Amery; Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill. Cabinet Secretary Colonel Maurice Hankey, Whitehalls "Man of Secrets", was Secretary-General of the Conference. Balfour, Chamberlain, Amery and Hankey belonged to the Milner Group (Quigley, 1981, p. 158).
Baldwin and Churchill (who had been a Liberal until 1924) were clearly collaborators. This not only shows the extraordinary influence of the Milner Group, it also exposes its anti-British policies.
Self-government for the Colonies was a central plank in the Milnerite agenda. Like Curtis, Philip Kerr, a leading Milnerite and editor of the Milner publication The Round Table, who became private secretary to Lloyd George and later Chatham House councillor, advocated self-government for the Colonies by 1916 (Grant & others, pp. 170-179).
While the Milner Group started off claiming to make Britain the centre of a World Empire, it soon began to work for the dissolution of the Empire and the incorporation of Britain into a world government run by the international financial interests represented by the Group.
Transforming the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations "equal in status" and then placing that Commonwealth within an international organization like the League of Nations was the first step in the dissolution of the Empire and Britains subordination to world government (See also Quigley, 1981, p. 137).
Professor Quigley detected "logical deficiencies" in Milnerite foreign-relations thinking (Quigley, 1981, pp. 165, 281). Indeed, there can be no such thing as an Empire of equal and independent nations. But once the Milner Group had started campaigning for self-government for the Colonies the outcome was entirely predictable.
While some Milnerites may have been pathologically delusional, it is hard to believe that an army of Oxford and Cambridge educated experts were unaware of what they were doing. Deliberate deception becomes much more likely than logical deficiency, particularly in light of the fact that Milner Group policies were essentially identical to those of its chief anti-Empire collaborator, the Fabian Society.
