334
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
He did so the next day, analysing the situation in considerable detail16 and then
went
on to say that I hoped this exposure would once and for all remove the
impression that I was, for financial reasons, biased in favour of the
outside concerns, and, further, that this indirect interest [i.e. the
interest of E. Oppen-heimer and Son] was so small that it must be
apparent to any reasonable person that I did not serve the diamond
trade for financial reasons at all. I told him that I took so keen an
interest in diamonds simply because I had set my heart on preserving a
trade with which my family and intimate connexions had been identified
from the very discovery of diamonds. I concluded by saying that if this
position was accepted by him and the Mines Department, all future
negotiations would go on much more smoothly and everyone would, instead
of being annoyed, derive pleasure out of the diamond trade.
In
reply, he stated that he never made this accusation but he was, anyhow,
honest enough not to state that he had never been under the impression
that, for financial reasons, I had favoured the outside producers to
the detriment of the Union producers.
Nevertheless,
Ernest Oppenheimer could not refrain from what he called a 'parting
shot': 'As a parting shot I told him that although I had no intention
of dealing in diamonds, I would never again sign an agreement
precluding me from doing so. He thought that there was something to be
said for my contention.' The reference, of course, was to clause 42 of
the diamond producers' agreement of 1934, which prohibited members of
the association from independent dealing in diamonds, and expressly
stated that 'for the purpose of this clause the term "member" shall
include all directors of the companies which are parties to this
agreement'. Clause 42 did, in fact, reappear in the 1943 agreement as
clause 37, without reference to directors of the signatory companies.
♦ IX ♦
The
third issue, which was peripheral to the central issue, was the
expansion of the diamond-cutting industry in South Africa: an issue
which was, of course, by no means new.17
16 Summing
up, Anglo American Corporation's diamond interests at that time were
distributed, percentage-wise, as follows: Union producers 91-1 per
cent, non-Union concerns 8-9 per cent, E. Oppenheimer & Son's
interest in Anglo American Corporation at that time 'was not more than
10 per cent and that in short our indirect interest, in the diamond interests, amounted to £125,000, of which £11,125 was in non-Union concerns'.
17 Supra, p. 123 et seq.
