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After the observers had gone, the Bamangwato Women's Association in Serowe asked the Government for the return of Ruth and her daughter, if only for a short visit. ‘We, on behalf of the women of the Bamangwato Tribe,' they wrote to Germond,

respectfully request that you make representations to His Majesty's Government to allow our mother Ruth Khama and her baby to visit us at Serowe for two or three months.

We had grown to love and cherish them when they were snatched away from us. We have grieved and suffered through their absence and the absence of our Chief Seretse. We still grieve that our mother is being kept away from us and we are puzzled at the reason for their banishment.

We humbly request therefore that they soon be allowed to return to their home and take their rightful place among us and so bring peace and happiness to the unhappy and heartbroken people.
⁴²

The Observers' reports were ready in September but they were not published, because a general election had been set for 25 October 1951: the Cabinet was worried that publication might weaken Labour's standing with the electorate. But, as it turned out, Labour lost in any case – the Conservative Party was voted into power, with an overall majority of seventeen seats. Winston Churchill was now Prime Minister. For Seretse and Ruth, who had now been living in exile for over a year, there seemed real grounds to hope for a reversal of Government policy. For one thing, Churchill had told the House of Commons in March 1950 that Seretse's banishment was a ‘very disreputable transaction'. For another, Gordon Walker had been replaced as the Commonwealth Secretary, so was no longer in a position to exert power over the Bangwato. Nor was Sir Evelyn Baring, whose appointment as British High Commissioner in South Africa had ended in September 1951.

G. M. Kgosi immediately wrote from Kimberley, South Africa, to congratulate the new Prime Minister:

Sir, re: Recent British General Elections: Churchill's victory: Bamangwato welcomed British
New Government: Pula Pula Pula!!!

Please convey to the British Parliament and People, the warmest
congratulations
of the Bamangwato, a
Chiefless tribe
.

He had no doubts, he said, that the new Government would send Seretse home.
⁴³

The new Government
was
planning to change the policy: not to reverse it, however, but to make it even more brutal. Although there had been outward changes in the Government, two key players in the Seretse crisis at the CRO were still firmly in post: Sir Percivale Liesching and W. A. W. Clark, who carefully briefed their new Minister, Lord Ismay. They produced a brief document on Bangwato affairs, which drew heavily on discussions with Sir Evelyn Baring and advocated a new scheme: to keep Seretse and Ruth out of Bechuanaland on a permanent basis, creating a vacuum in the chieftaincy that should be filled by Rasebolai Kgamane, who was Tshekedi's leading supporter and third in the line of succession. Tshekedi himself should be allowed back into the Bangwato Reserve, if at all possible.
¹

During the last months of his appointment as British High Commissioner in South Africa, Baring had worked tirelessly to convince influential people – including Sir John Le Rougetel, his successor – of the need to make Seretse's exile permanent.
²

In June 1951, Baring had reported to the CRO on discussions with J. G. N. Strauss, who had succeeded Smuts as the leader of the South Africa United Party. Strauss had argued, he said, that if the British Government did not take a very firm position on Seretse, anti-British feelings in South Africa would be even fiercer than in 1949. This was largely because of recent developments in the Gold Coast, which in February 1951 had become the first British colony in Africa to achieve self-government. Nkrumah's party had swept to victory in the elections, forcing the British Government to release him from prison. ‘In a sweltering town on the Gold Coast [Accra]', wrote Learie Constantine,

the doors of Fort James prison swung open, and the figure of a released African prisoner stood there, wearing a white shirt and green trousers and blinking in the sunlight. A roar of voices greeted him: ‘Nkruma! Saviour! Nkruma!' The crowd swept the police aside and tossed the prisoner shoulder-high, riding him in triumph through the cheering streets.

‘Across the Gold Coast, nearly 4,000 miles from Cape Town,' added Constantine, ‘falls the malevolent shadow of Dr Malan, Premier of South Africa. He does not approve of self-government for Africans under a Negro Prime Minister.'
³

Baring's case for banishing Seretse permanently also drew on the fact that legislation in South Africa now provided for maximum separation between the races. This meant that the recognition of Seretse as Chief, while married to Ruth, would be even more starkly at variance with South African racial policy than it had been in 1949.
⁴
Furthermore, insisted Baring, hostile reaction in Southern Rhodesia to the possibility of recognizing Seretse, ‘is to my mind certain and would endanger acceptance of new federation proposals'.
⁵
These proposals were the British Government's plan to create a Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which was bitterly opposed by Africans, who suspected – rightly, as it turned out – that it would increase their domination and persecution by whites. A powerful struggle was being played out in Africa at this time. ‘If African nationalism was on the march in Africa in the 1950s,' one historian has acutely observed, ‘so too was white power. Kenya's white settlers cast envious glances towards Rhodesia and South Africa.'
⁶

Lord Ismay, the new Commonwealth Secretary, was easily persuaded that Rasebolai should be groomed as prospective Chief and that Seretse should be permanently excluded from the chieftainship. He was also keen to help Tshekedi, who had flown over to London to see him after the election. With Clark smoothing his way at the CRO, Tshekedi had been granted a meeting with the new Secretary of State and the two men got on well:

Ismay shook hands and sent everyone except Clark out of the room. He ushered Tshekedi to a sofa and sat down beside him. Within ten minutes agreement had been reached. Tshekedi would be given increasing freedom to
look after his cattle in Bamangwato country and, if all went well, would be able to return as a private person.
⁷

The Colonial Office also supported the plan. Baring had prepared the way for this by having a quiet but effective word in August with Alan Lennox-Boyd, who became the new Minister of State for the Colonies after the election.
⁸

This new strategy on the Khamas was endorsed at a meeting of the Cabinet on 22 November 1951 and again on 27 November. But it was decided not to make an announcement for the time being, in case it had an adverse effect on plans for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Opposition to the Federation from Africans in the region was already getting publicity and this would increase if there were also complaints from the Bangwato – that their wishes, too, were being ignored.
⁹

The first stage of the new policy was implemented on 6 December in the House of Commons, when the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Commonwealth Relations, John Foster, made a commitment to Tshekedi's return to the Bangwato Reserve as a private citizen, as soon as possible.
¹⁰
This was heard with astonishment – for the Observers' reports, which had just been published, had stated clearly that the Bangwato did not want Tshekedi back.
¹¹
Foster also made a statement on Seretse: that nothing had changed.
¹²
That day, Seretse issued a statement to the press. He expressed his disappointment that the Government were keeping to the ‘disastrous policy' of the previous administration, which was directly contrary to the wishes of his people. The unrest in the Reserve, he warned, was bound to deteriorate further.
¹³

Less than two weeks after Foster's statement on Tshekedi, on 19 December, the Cabinet decided that the time had now come to act on Seretse – ‘So long as this was left in uncertainty, relations with the Government of South Africa would be made more difficult.'
¹⁴
But they were worried about the effect on British public opinion, so the mandarins at the CRO embarked on a strategy to make the policy seem more palatable, by offering Seretse an appointment under a colonial government outside Africa. They finally agreed on Jamaica –
a choice, explained Clark, that had been reached with the Colonial Office:

Although anxious to be helpful, the Colonial Office were compelled to point out that in East and Central Africa there might be social embarrassments, in West Africa imported Africans are resented by local Africans even more than Europeans (the cry is ‘Nigerian jobs for Nigerians' etc.) and in some of the West Indian Colonies there are colour bars. Remote islands would sound too penal.
¹⁵

Sir Thomas Lloyd at the Colonial Office was given the job of approaching the Governor of Jamaica, Sir Hugh Foot. ‘We fully recognize that at first sight it may seem to you a surprising and perhaps distasteful suggestion,' he wrote apologetically, admitting that ‘there are formidable arguments against it.'
¹⁶
The Governor was altogether taken aback. ‘The suggestion in your letter certainly seems odd to me,' he replied to Lloyd. He was confident, though, that Seretse would be welcome in Jamaica.
¹⁷

On 13 March 1952, Ismay produced a paper for Cabinet on Seretse. ‘His recognition as Chief is, in my opinion,' he declared, ‘out of the question. It would outrage white opinion in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.'
¹⁸
Churchill consulted Lord Salisbury for his view. Salisbury's opinion was important, because in less than two weeks he would be taking over the role of Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, when Ismay went to a new appointment at NATO. ‘I am personally in complete agreement with the action which [Ismay] now proposes,' replied Salisbury to his Prime Minister. ‘Indeed, as you may remember,' he added,

it is broadly speaking the course for which I pressed in the interview which he and I had with you before Christmas… I do not believe that the Bamang-wato Tribe will ever settle down until they have been told definitely that Seretse can never come back. Then they will look at other alternatives. That is Sir Evelyn Baring's own view… We are bound to have this row sooner or later and if we leave it for another 3½ years (when the original five years' grace given him by the late Government runs out), we are likely to have to take the same decision on the very eve of a General Election here.

At such a critical time it would be an even greater problem. ‘By all means let us try and get the Jamaicans – or anyone else – to take him,' he added. ‘But if they won't, I am in favour of grasping the nettle now.'
¹⁹

The Cabinet met on 18 March 1952 and approved Ismay's plan. Then things moved swiftly and Seretse and Ruth were summoned to the Commonwealth Relations Office for a meeting on Monday 24 March with Lord Ismay. Lord Salisbury, who would be taking over Ismay's appointment in a couple of days, was there too. They all sat round a conference table, recorded Ismay afterwards, so that the Khamas were able to take notes if they wished – and they did so, ‘copiously'. He started off the discussion with a few friendly observations, saying he had spent more time on the affairs of the Bamangwato than on any other, since taking up office. Then he told the Khamas that the Government had serious misgivings about the idea of Seretse returning to Bechuanaland. He had married the girl of his heart, he said, without taking into account the wishes of the Tribe:

I for one would not think of blaming him for this, and would very likely have done the same thing myself. But Rulers whether they were Kings of great Empires, or Chiefs of Tribes had not the same liberty of choice in their consorts as is enjoyed by their subjects… Quarrels and factions would continue.

He went on to give them some news that took them completely by surprise: that the Government of Jamaica had now offered Seretse ‘a most attractive appointment as an officer in the Jamaican administration'.

Then he announced that Seretse's exclusion from political life was to be made permanent. The Khamas were staggered – and at this point Ruth showed signs of distress. Seretse was given two alternatives: to abdicate, or to compel the Government to make an Order-in-Council excluding him. He was asked for an answer in two days; an announcement would be made in Parliament the following day. ‘I begged him to be very discreet about the advisers he consulted,' recorded Ismay. ‘They must be people on whose discretion he relied, and they must also be people who had Seretse's own interests at heart and were not merely out to make mischief.' In that case, replied
Seretse with a bitter laugh, he had better not consult any Members of Parliament.

The whole meeting had taken just over half an hour. ‘It had been quite friendly and unstrained,' noted Ismay. ‘Neither of them by look or word gave any clue as to what their decision was likely to be. Seretse would make a good poker player.' Once these notes had been typed up, he added by hand, ‘So would his wife.'
²⁰

Seretse and Ruth went home, stunned. By now they had moved out of central London into a rented house in the suburban village of Chipstead, in Surrey. The village was surrounded by open country, which helped to ease Seretse's and Naledi's homesickness for the vast spaces of Bechuanaland. There, for two days, the family discussed Ismay's extraordinary proposal.

On Wednesday 26 March, at 3 p.m., Seretse and Ruth were back at the CRO to give their answer. Ismay had now been succeeded by Salisbury.
²¹
At the first meeting, Ismay had done the talking and Salisbury was quiet; at this one, it was the other way round. Rath-creedan, Seretse's lawyer, and Clark were also present. Seretse began by saying he could never desert his people. Then he said that he knew perfectly well that the reason for his exile was intervention by South Africa. He dealt with the points that Ismay had made in the previous meeting, one by one. He did not, he said, claim any particular ability. But because of his birth and his people's affection for the hereditary succession, he would be able to put an end to all the difficulties in the Reserve if he were allowed to return. He asked for a trial period. The Jamaican post was no solution – if the Government was really sincere, why did it not offer him a similar post in Bechuanaland, preferably in the Bangwato Reserve? He warned that if the Government in the UK appeased the Union on a matter like this, white South Africans would be encouraged in their repressive policies and race relations would deteriorate even more quickly.