8 THE OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

Just about the worst thing that could have happened would have been a full - blown Newfoundland Rangers investigation into the deaths of Eric and Erica Williams. The chances of the dominions office's motive for the public enquiry being brought to light were too great to bear thinking about. Fortuitously for the government, Sir John Hope Simpson and the civil service brigade had managed to keep his Newfoundland Rangers within the department of natural resources and away from the department of justice. No full and properly recorded police investigation into the deaths ever took place. Nor was the lack of police action another economy measure,

"The government wasn't anxious for prosecutions and especially for convictions and prison sentences because every time a person was sentenced to jail it cost the government money-sometimes quite a bit."[23]

Instead it was hushed up by Claude Fraser and Thomas Lodge in true English civil service tradition. Along the same sort of lines, the recommendations of Judge Brian Dunfield’s public enquiry were conveniently ignored and marginalised almost into oblivion by the British government as being merely Dunfield’s point of view.
J O Williams went on to secure further loans from the colonial development fund despite the British treasury’s notable reluctance to continue subsidising his activities at taxpayers' expense.
On 13 July 1944 Williams sailed out for the public enquiry. He had stayed in Cardiff most of the time all the troubles had been going on. Understandably so, since he was reputed to be the third largest importer of pit props into the UK and he had to attend to his other business elsewhere. After the public enquiry was finished, Williams wanted Judge Dunfield’s recommendations implemented (which they were by 1948), but the British government and Newfoundland commission of government’s initial response was to ignore them. The treasury voiced its own concern about financing Williams any more and the civil servants at the dominions office, whilst holding on to their long term view about developing the Labrador, had finally woken up to the fact that they had to stop oiling J O Williams’ business because it was clogging up their own works.
After Eric’s death, the Labrador Development Company was well on its way out of the frame. The British government realised they had been in neglect of their duties by not ensuring that one of their own directors was in place on the company’s board from July 1939 – February 1940. They also realized they had been responsible for running the business at a loss after they had taken it over. To say the least, they knew they had been tricked by Williams into releasing development funds for purposes other than for which they were originally intended.
They wanted J O Williams finally removed from the scene as soon as possible to protect them from any claim of compensation being made against them.[24] They were definitely shaken and wanted to make absolutely certain that they could prevent any claim for special compensation from Williams from ever being successful.
Eric Cook, Williams' counsel at the public enquiry submitted that the government should compensate the company for the loss it suffered after it took over. By 1944, the Newfoundland government had been in control of Williams’s Labrador Development Company for four years. The difference between the two sides' statements about how well the company was doing was quite remarkable. The government had no choice other than to submit audited figures showing losses of $211,500 from 1940 to 1943 whilst Williams’ counsel claimed a trading profit of over $120,000 from 1934 to 1940.
Although J O Williams did admit to a shortage of working capital in 1940, the audited accounts presented on his behalf at the public enquiry were unreliable due to the lack of proper minute - taking and full accounting by the company. Williams, as owner, was responsible for the degree of accuracy of all the figures he had sent to Bradney for inspection. Further evidence that casts grave doubt on the accuracy of his figures is that other government figures supplied to the enquiry showed a huge difference from those Williams had supplied. On 25 August 1943, Tait was arguing to Clutterbuck at the dominions office in London that Williams and his company figures were misleading.
Throughout the period from 1934 to 1947, J O Williams presented a consistent message: that his company was very short of cash to pay his employees’ wages in Port Hope Simpson.
Judge Dunfield stated that a large part of the blame should fall on J O Williams himself for the failure to build the 400 houses and for his company’s financial position but that he was not the only party to blame. Williams was most adept at deliberately causing doubt and confusion in other people’s minds. Although Bradney, the auditor general, stressed to the public enquiry the limitations of his conclusions based on the material he had been given there is now not a trace of doubt that Williams had far more money than he revealed. For instance, in a letter to Yonge he wrote,

“Pleased to say I am not at all worried about the government position as at a pinch I can clean the slate but this is in dead confidence. In 1939 we shipped about 27,400 cords from Newfoundland and Labrador for which we cable out $370.000 and last year a further £2,200…I think you know…what information you have received from me that you must keep to yourself.” [25]

When Judge Dunfield’s report on the public enquiry came out it meant the dominion office’s plan to discredit Williams’ character had seriously backfired. The government wanted the report buried after local publication.

"On the whole, I should imagine that the Commission will be content to bury the main bodies of both reports as deeply as their publication locally permits. "Chadwick J C, dominions office, London 29 June 1945

Judge Dunfield found that J O Williams had run out of liquid cash reserves and that liquid cash was essential to scale up the operations. He considered that the government was also responsible for the company and had pressed Williams to cut more timber to provide more work for the people. Dunfield knew that $19400 per annum of capital had to be re-paid to the government ($1.00 per cord on limited production) plus the heavy interest on the government loan and that it was initially planned to cut 50000 cords of timber per annum. Dunfield’s conclusion was that neither J O Williams nor the government fully appreciated how much the Port Hope Simpson project would cost and so the company was under-funded right from the start. It found itself in a vicious circle where it did not have sufficient funds to expand and, without the expansion, its overheads could not be carried. Dunfield clearly implied that he was not exactly confident about the financial health of the company from the outset.
His judgment was that the government went from being a supportive partner to being a strict creditor. Then the Second World War came and stopped the free export of pit props. The people from 1934-39 received according to Dunfield, not less than $800,000 in wages when they might have been on the dole. Dunfield acknowledged Williams’ particular line of skill, but thought that he was not experienced in other fields and that he himself had admitted so.The $250,000 reinvestment Williams made in Labrador from his Newfoundland trade, coupled with the money from his Cardiff company hid the true position according to Dunfield, which was that the Labrador enterprise needed a much greater capital investment and a larger working capital than had been provided. Dunfield laid the blame firmly on Williams and said that the government was also to blame for failing to fulfill its partnership contribution in the circumstances. Dunfield thought the government lacked the right calibre of officials, with the right training to work successfully with Williams the businessperson. Dunfield went so far as to say in his final report that Williams should perhaps be given another chance.
Dunfield was in fact quite sympathetic towards Williams and definite that he was not entirely to blame for what had happened. He knew that the Government had gained more than it had lost on the venture and he would not swallow the vitriolic anti-Williams propaganda. He had found no evidence to justify the bad impression that other people and he had held before the start of the enquiry about Williams. Dunfield might have over-reacted against the very suggestion that he should take part in any sort of rigged public enquiry to attack Williams’ character and discredit him. Instead, he recommended that the Government and Williams should try again.
In 1945 the population of Port Hope Simpson had been 352 which included 119 children. However, one year later from Williams’s point of view, the situation had looked desperate,

“When I restarted at Hope Simpson in 1946 I was faced with a derelict township, everything that could be turned into cash was sold, or stolen, down to the office furniture….I have already spent over $20,000 putting the place right…The argument that we could not get the labour is absurd.”[26]

Back in Britain on the one hand, the British treasury was trying to ensure that the UK taxpayer would not have to bear any loss incurred by the company if it went into liquidation. On the other hand, it also wanted to make absolutely certain the government were not going to be liable for any claim made by Williams for special compensation. Therefore, wanting to appear generous in public, within the modified terms of their final settlement, they offered to waive the interest on their loan from 30 June 1940–20 November 1945. The export of timber from Labrador would be free of all tax from 1946–1955 inclusive and then subject to an export tax of 0.25 cents per cord from 1956–1966. Royalties on cutting were not payable and Williams was offered a fresh timber contract in 1946, which he accepted.
The treasury had been consistent over the years in its unwillingness to allocate J O Williams any more money because of his unreliability. Nevertheless, Williams was still granted a further $100,000 loan on 15 October 1946 that included excellent terms by the British government for his last timber contract - despite the fact that about half of the final contract of wood was left behind.

“…about the Labrador Development Company’s contract with the Ministry of Supply to ship timbers to this country…Eales indicated that he expected production to be nearer the minimum figure of 8,000 fathoms than the maximum of 12,000; but it appears to have fallen much short of that. We seem to have been badly bamboozled.” Chadwick J. 20 January
1947

By the time the contract was completed J O Williams had definitely made up his mind not to continue with business in Newfoundland and Labrador any longer. Despite the very generous terms he was still claiming that the evidence entitled him to a fair settlement and he had been thinking about progressing into the fishing business in the area. He was very confident that the old Labrador crowd were ready to go back to work for him. However, in a press interview on 24 December 1945, he was quoted as saying that 165 men were logging at Port Hope Simpson but that 572 men who had been sent there in November had refused to work and had to be brought back and 20 more had demanded repatriation. Chadwick’s view from the dominions office in the same year about the Labrador Development Company was that,

“Our aim was to end this sordid history one way or the other rather than allow matters to drift on as they have done for the past five years.” Chadwick J 1945

The original correspondence shows Chadwick was very eager to cut his losses from the dominions office’s long-running affair with Williams and in the end Williams did not make a claim for financial compensation against the British government. In a wider political context, Williams’ efforts to keep alive the Labrador Development Company were going on when Newfoundland and Labrador were moving towards joining the Confederation of Canada in 1949. The obvious effect upon Williams was that he chose to close down his operations completely at Port Hope Simpson rather than pay federal taxes on the wood.