Finest Years (76 page)

Labour leader Clement Attlee at first favoured sustaining the coalition government and delaying a general election until the defeat of Japan. His party, however, was minded otherwise. On 23 May the coalition was dissolved, after five years and thirteen days of office. There was an emotional farewell gathering of ministers at Downing Street. Then Churchill set about forming a new ministry, without Labour and Liberal members. An election was called for 6 July, which almost every pundit anticipated that the Tories would win. The nation's gratitude to Winston Churchill, it was assumed, outweighed its alienation from the Conservative Party and its prewar failure.

Yet for those who sought straws in the wind about the mood of the British people, there were many to be found.
On 3 July 1940, American General
Raymond Lee had lunched in London with an unnamed Tory MP who asserted his conviction that even if Britain won the war, Labour would govern afterwards. By 1945, roosting
time had come for many old chickens. Anthony Eden, widely perceived as the brightest star of his Tory generation, disliked his own party even more than did Churchill. He wrote during a visit to Greece about his sense of remoteness from British soldiers he met, and his doubts about how to reach them on the hustings: ‘
It would be the highest honour
to serve and lead such men. But how is one to do it through party politics? Most of these men have none, as I believe that I have none. And how is this General Election to express any of this, for they could not be farther from the men of Munich in their most extreme form, for whom I have to ask the electors to vote. It is hell. Curiously enough W[inston] doesn't seem to feel any of this and is full of the lust for electoral battle, and apparently content to work with men afterwards, with many, probably most, of whom he doesn't agree. No doubt he is confident that he can dominate them, but I feel a responsibility to ask the electorate to vote for them.'

British soldier Edward Stebbing had written back in November 1940: ‘
There are…many who think
that this war will only be worth fighting if there is a new order of things to follow.' Everything that had happened since strengthened this belief in the minds of many British people. In December 1944 the
Wall Street Journal
displayed notable prescience, identifying popular anger in Britain towards Churchill's Greek policy with a deeper rejection of old Tory imperialism: ‘
It is clear that
the Churchill government will last out the war in Europe, but the chances of its return to office when the election after victory is held are more doubtful. It is not very likely that Mr Lloyd George's [1919] “khaki election” [victory] will be repeated.'

The Mayhews were an upper-middle-class Norfolk family, of whom in 1945 one younger scion, Christopher, was standing as a Labour candidate in the county against a Tory who was a former member of the notorious right-wing movement The Link. Mayhew's uncle, Bertram Howarth, secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote in a family newsletter: ‘
[I am] in the throes
of a mental political upheaval. I believe I have voted Conservative all my life, but unless something epoch-making happens
between now and the General Election, I can't do it again.' His wife Ellie, district commandant of the local Women's Voluntary Service, felt likewise: ‘Personally I cannot vote for our sitting [Tory] member; he is stupid, elderly and reactionary…He was the sole MP to vote against the Beveridge Report. So I shall have to be a Liberal.' When Churchill spoke optimistically about his election prospects to General Bill Slim, home on leave from Burma, Slim responded with characteristic bluntness: ‘
Well, Prime Minister
, I know one thing. My Army won't be voting for you.'

A tide of sentiment was sweeping British people of all classes, driven by preoccupation with building a new future rather than cherishing pride in the past. Churchill himself said back in 1941, of the state-school boys who occupied most of the RAF's cockpits: ‘
They have saved this country
; they have the right to rule it.' Labour's Aneurin Bevan told one of his many election audiences: ‘
We have been the dreamers
, we have been the sufferers, now we are the builders.' Churchill was applauded everywhere he went during his June 1945 election tours, and public admiration for him was very real. But with the wisdom sometimes displayed by democracies, few people allowed this to influence their votes. Churchill's election broadcasts were harshly combative. He deployed against the threat of socialism all the impassioned verbiage which he had mobilised for so long against the nation's enemies. But even many supporters thought these tirades ill-judged, and there were moments when he himself seemed to recognise this.

Clementine wrote to her daughter Mary on 20 June: ‘Papa broadcasts tonight. He is very low, poor Darling. He thinks he has lost his “touch” and he grieves about it.' Londoner Jennifer McIntosh wrote to her sister in California on 4 July: ‘
One of the most extraordinary
things has been the terrific slump in the Churchill prestige…I wish you could have heard his election broadcasts—they were deplorable, the last one pitifully cheap.' Likewise, more surprisingly, Oliver Harvey at the Foreign Office perceived Churchill as conducting ‘
a jingo election
which is terrifying in its inappropriateness'. Churchill was much more a social conservative than he was a political Conservative.
He lacked real sympathy for or interest in the party which he nominally led at the hustings. He anticipated that the election outcome would represent a vote of confidence in his own war leadership, rather than a verdict on the Tories' fitness to rule. But the war was almost ended.

While the rival candidates campaigned, most of the complexities of occupying Germany and sustaining the struggle against Japan were addressed without interventions from the prime minister. Addicted to tidings from battlefields, he often stumped into the secretaries' room at Downing Street to demand: ‘Any news come in?' Told, perhaps for the sixth time in a day, that there was none, he said irritably: ‘
I won't have it
…I must have more regular reports. It's your business to keep me informed.' Yet opportunities were now few to order the movements of armies, fleets or air forces. He directed Alexander to act vigorously to expel Tito's partisans from Trieste and north-east Italy, to which they laid claim. When the C-in-C warned that British troops were much less enthusiastic about fighting Yugoslavs than Germans, Churchill dismissed his fears—and ordered a display of force. Faced with this, the Yugoslavs withdrew behind the Izonzo river. The prime minister again used British troops to force the French to withdraw from Syria, which was handed over to an indigenous Arab government. France occupied an area of northwest Italy to which it laid claim. Here too Churchill acted ruthlessly and successfully, insisting upon removal of De Gaulle's forces.

In South-East Asia, Slim's Fourteenth Army was mopping up the last of the Japanese in Burma, and preparing for an amphibious assault on Malaya, scheduled for September. Captain Pim diligently moved the relevant pins and arrows on the walls of the Map Room at Downing Street, but the prime minister's heart was never deeply engaged. He remained preoccupied with the fate of Europe, and with urging upon the new US president the need to adopt firm policies towards the Russians.

On 18 May the Churchills entertained to lunch at Downing Street the Russian ambassador, Feodor Gusev. When Clementine and other guests left the table, the prime minister unburdened himself to the
Soviet emissary. It seems worth rehearsing at length Gusev's account of the meeting, both as evidence of Churchill's sentiments, and of the manner in which these were reported to Moscow. The prime minister began by describing the importance he attached to a new summit meeting at which ‘either we shall achieve an agreement on future cooperation between our three nations, or the Anglo-American community will become united in opposition to the Soviet Union. It is difficult to anticipate the possible consequences of this second scenario.' Gusev wrote:

Here Churchill raised his voice, saying ‘We are full of grievances.' I asked him what he had in mind. Irritably and in heightened tones, he began to catalogue the issues: 1) Trieste. Tito has ‘sneaked up to Trieste and wants to seize it.' Churchill laid his hands on the table and showed how Tito was sneaking up to Trieste. We will not allow'—Churchill roared,—‘the resolution of territorial disputes by seizure…We and the Americans are united in our resolution that all territorial issues should be resolved through a peace conference.' I remarked that as far as I knew Tito did not intend to resolve any territorial issues. Churchill ignored me and continued: ‘Armies are confronting each other. Grave trouble can break out at any time unless goodwill is displayed.' 2) Prague. Churchill declared that we did not allow British representatives into Prague. ‘Our accredited ambassador has been prevented from entering Czechoslovakia,' he said. I remarked that only the previous day Czech government representatives had travelled from London to Prague on a British aircraft. Churchill continued: ‘You wish to claim exclusive rights for yourselves in every capital occupied by your troops. The British government cannot understand such a Soviet attitude and cannot justify it to the British people, mindful that we are under mutual obligations to display friendship and cooperation…We, the British, are a proud nation and cannot allow anyone to treat us in this way.'

‘Churchill would not listen to my comment on this and continued: 3) Vienna. “You do not allow us to enter Vienna. The war is over,
but our representatives cannot inspect quarters for our soldiers.” ' Gusev launched into an exposition of the Soviet position which the prime minister cut short: ‘Why will you not allow our representatives to enter Vienna? Now the war is over, what possible consideration can justify the refusal of the Soviet government to admit our representatives to Vienna?' There were more brusque exchanges about the Soviet establishment of a puppet regime in Austria, then Churchill turned to the German capital: ‘You do not allow us into Berlin. You want to make Berlin your exclusive zone.'

I declared that Churchill's statement was groundless as we have an agreement on occupation zones and control of greater Berlin. Churchill again repeated that he is willing to allow any number of Soviet representatives to go anywhere. Churchill moved on to Poland and spoke with even greater anger. Things were going from bad to worse where the Polish issue was concerned, he said. He saw no hope of a satisfactory resolution of it: ‘We have endorsed Polish delegates, and you have imprisoned them. Parliament and the public are deeply concerned'…Churchill thinks that forthcoming debates in Parliament will demonstrate the great indignation of the British nation, and he will find himself at a loss about how to satisfy public opinion. Churchill then vaguely hinted that a satisfactory outcome of the Polish issue might lead to a resolution of the issue of the Baltic States.

Churchill did not want to hear my comments and moved on to characterize the gravity of the general situation. ‘Your front stretches from Lubeck to Trieste. You allow no one to enter the capitals which you control. The situation in Trieste is alarming. Polish affairs have reached a dead end. The general climate is at boiling point.' I told Churchill that he was familiar with the Soviet government's position—that it makes no claims on territory or on the European capitals. Our front does not stretch as far as Trieste. Marshal Tito's troops may be there, but we are not responsible for Marshal Tito. He and the Yugoslav people have won themselves a place of honour among the United Nations by their struggle.

Churchill said: ‘I know that you are a great nation. By your struggle you have won an equal status among the great powers. But we, the British, are also a proud nation and we will not allow anyone to abuse us and trample upon our interests. I want you to understand that we are profoundly concerned by the current situation. I have ordered that demobilization of the Royal Air Force should be delayed.' He then abruptly terminated the conversation, apologized for his frankness and departed to discuss with Attlee the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

The Soviet ambassador appended to this dispatch a personal commentary on the meeting:

Churchill was extraordinarily
angry, and seemed to be making an effort to keep himself under control. His remarks were full of threats and blackmail, but it was not just blackmail. Following his radio broadcast of 13 May, the English press has adopted a stronger anti-Soviet line in reporting European events. It seeks to interpret all the emerging problems in terms of the USSR's attitude. Churchill's speech was an instruction to the press. Polish agents are conducting a bold anti-Soviet campaign in parliamentary circles and demand new debates on the Polish issue. Eden had already announced in the House of Commons that a foreign affairs debate will take place after the holidays. We may expect this to develop into a big anti-Soviet demonstration intended to pressure and threaten the USSR. So far we have no precise information on the purpose of Eisenhower's and Montgomery's forthcoming visit to London, but we have reason to think that they have been summoned to discuss and evaluate the Allies' military position. We should recognise that we are dealing with an adventurer who is in his element at war, who feels much more at ease in the circumstances of war than those of peace.

Gusev's account of this meeting is unlikely to have been shown to Stalin, because Churchill's bluntness would have displeased him. In any event, it could have exercised not the smallest influence upon
Moscow's policies. The Russians knew that the Americans shared little of the prime minister's passion about Eastern Europe. For all Churchill's bluster, his mutterings to the chiefs of staff about the possibility of launching ‘Operation
Unthinkable
', neither Western nation was ready to challenge the Russians by force. The old statesman's diatribe merely vented his personal bitterness and frustration. He knew in his heart that the tyranny established by the Red Army could not be undone either through diplomacy or by force of arms.