Rhodes-Milner Round Table Groups Totally Explained

Everything about The Rhodes-milner Round Table Groups totally explained

The Rhodes-Milner Round Table Groups were founded in September 1909 in a conference at the Estate of Lord Anglesey, Plas Newydd in Wales. The framework of the organisation was devised by Lionel Curtis, but the overall idea was due to Lord Milner.

Purpose

The Groups were designed to promulgate the idea of the formation of a Federal World Government, based on the unification of the British Empire and the United States of America. How successful they were in achieving this can be debated. Certainly they were successful in creating a central bank in the United States which increased British influence on U.S. economic affairs because of the connections between the Bank of England and Wall Street banks. It can be argued that they set the blueprint for future organisations such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations, the Trilateral Commission, and The Bilderberg Group.

Society of the Elect

Some people believe that the Round Table Groups were connected to a secret society called the Society of the Elect, which South African diamond baron Cecil Rhodes is believed to have set up with similar goals. Rhodes, who was connected to the Freemasons, was believed by some to have formed this secret society in his lifetime. Others believe that his project failed to attract converts, and was stillborn at its inception.
Rhodes first formalised his idea with William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, when he and Stead agreed on the structure of the secret society. Like Weishaupt's Illuminati, this proposed secret society had an elaborate hierarchical structure, based on that of the Jesuits, which comprised: at the top, the position of "General of the Society"—a position modelled on the General of the Jesuits—to be occupied by Rhodes, with Stead and Lord Rothschild as his designated successors; an executive committee called the "Junta of Three", comprising Stead, Milner and Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher); then a "Circle of Initiates", consisting of a number of notables including Cardinal Manning, Lord Arthur Balfour, Lord Albert Grey and Sir Harry Johnston; and outside of this was the "Association of Helpers", the broad mass of the Society. One of the puzzles surrounding this meeting is whether the "Society of the Elect" actually came into being. Carroll Quigley claims in The Anglo-American Establishment (1981) that Rhodes's "Society of the Elect" wasn't only "formally established" in 1891, but also that its "outer circle known as the 'Association of Helpers'" was "later organised by Milner as the Round Table".
In several of his wills, Rhodes left money for the continuation of the project. However in his later wills, Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes scholarships, which enabled American, German and English Scholars to study for free at Oxford University.

Organisation

The groups are a collection of small discussion and lobbying groups in every major capital city of the world coordinated by a headquarters in London. In 1910, The Round Table Journal: A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Empire was founded by Lord Milner and members of Milner's Kindergarten (Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr and Geoffrey Dawson) to unify the political thinking of the groups internationally. After World War II the journal was renamed The Round Table Journal:A Quarterly Review of British Commonwealth Affairs to reflect changing postwar realities.
By 1915 Round Table groups existed in seven countries, including England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and a rather loosely organized group in the United States (George Louis Beer, Walter Lippmann, Frank Aydelotte, Whitney Shepardson, Thomas W. Lamont, Erwin D. Canham and others).

Achievements

Members of the Round Table were important in securing the Union of South Africa, which was to be the prototype for the eventual federation of the British Empire. There was much disagreement about how this could best be done, and some historians believe that far from being a force of unification, the groups only served to hasten the breakup of the Empire.
It is worth noting that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was actually drafted by Alfred Milner, and it was a letter to Lord Rothschild, making the Balfour Declaration, and thus British support for Zionism, a product of two people closely connected with the Round Table Groups whose goal was World Government.

Similar organisations

Lionel Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919. A year later its sister organisation, the Council of Foreign Relations, was formed in America. It is perhaps in such organisations that the legacy of the Round Table still lives on.

Current organisation and membership

Although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during the First World War. Today it's largely a Commonwealth ginger group, designed to consider and influence Commonwealth policies. It also continues to run Round Table, a journal, and hold dinners and conferences.
Informally, the Round Table is known as 'The Moot'.
A list of the Round Table membership is below:

Pal Ahluwalia
Amitav Banerji
Terry Barringer
Richard Bourne (Chairman)
Stephen Chan
Stephen Cox
Alexander Evans
Paul Flather
David French
Amelia Hadfield
Meredith Hooper
Derek Ingram
David Jobbins
Alexandra Jones
Peter Lyon
Claire Martin
Sir Humphrey Maud
Alex May
James Mayall
Sir Michael McWilliam
Stuart Mole
Martin Mulligan
Alastair Niven
Mark Robinson
Prunella Scarlett
Victoria Schofield
Tim Shaw
Nicholas Sims
Tim Slack
Kayode Soyinka
Sir Robert Wade-Gery
Jennifer Welsh
Andrew J. Williams

International Advisory Board

Godfrey Baldacchino

Sir Zelman Cowen

Gajaraj Dhanarajan

Sir Henry Forde

Brenda Gourley

Cedric Grant

Wang Gungwu

Norman Hillmer

Sir Kenneth Keith

Wm. Roger Louis

D. A. Low

Don Markwell

Ali A. Mazrui

Richard Nile

M. Ohta

Ato Quayson

Mizanur Rahman Shelley

Gowher Rizvi

L. K. Sharma

K. M. de Silva

Farooq Sobhan

Sir Roger Tomkys

Bernard Wood

Ngaire Woods Further Information

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