♦ IX ♦
Difficulties
arose almost at once when the official reply was received, signed by
the Secretary for Mines and Industries and dated 15 January. It proved
to be a complete reversal of the attitude taken by Government at the
conference. It is only necessary to refer to three points in the letter.
First: 'Restriction of operations: The
Minister directs me to say that as you have already determined upon
restricting operations, and only referred these matters to him as a
matter of courtesy and not for the purpose of obtaining his consent, it
is not necessary that he should reply thereto, beyond saying that he is
astonished to find that any of the producers would depart from the
undertakings given in July last, and set out in my letter of 6 August,
in regard to the carrying on of operations till 30 June next, it being
perfectly clear that those undertakings are still binding, seeing that the figure of-£600,000 calculated in accordance with the sales agreements was exceeded. . . .'
Secondly,
as regards the proposed counter-concession by Government, 'the
Minister directs me to inform you that the Government adheres to the
attitude winch it has adopted from the commencement; that it will not
enter into any agreements whatever, but will act as it thinks best in
the circumstances from time to time'.
Thirdly,
as regards the giving of notice, 'the Minister regrets that he is
unable to accept notice in any other manner than that laid down in the
agreement'.
To
this astonishing and disturbing letter Ernest Oppenheimer replied on 20
January. Apart from a natural protest on the subject of the -£600,000
'replacement' figure and the almost wilful refusal of the Department of
Mines to accept the plain facts of the situation, the letter first
withdrew the memorandum submitted to the Minister as a preliminary to
the Cape Town conference:
...
As it appears from your letter that on this occasion the Government is
not even prepared to indicate to us their intentions with regard to the
proposals contained in our memorandum in the same manner as in the
letter from the Secretary for Mines and Industries to myself of 6
August last, there does not seem to be any good reason for continuing
the negotiations on the basis of that memorandum. In these
circumstances, I desire to state on behalf of the conference producers
that the proposals are withdrawn. . . .
Secondly, it gave formal notice of closing down as from 1 July 1932:
