The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (204 page)

The prime minister planned to retire, moving into the House of Lords as Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. He wanted to leave the memory of a final accomplishment before departing, but now, learning that their island’s ramparts were insecure, Englishmen were outraged. He was unaccustomed to public hostility and, unlike Churchill, unprepared to face it down. To paraphrase one of sociologist David Riesman’s similes, Winston was guided by a built-in gyroscope which would carry him toward his objective through tumult, while the prime minister relied on a kind of sociological radar—signals from the voters—to determine his course.

Despairing of Parliament, and hoping to form a nucleus of support beyond its walls, Winston had begun turning to tiny organizations which were struggling to waken the nation to its peril. In June 1935, at the request of Lady Bonham Carter, he had addressed one such group, Focus, at a Victoria Hotel luncheon. Clearly Focus was not the germ cell for a mass movement. Indeed, all present agreed that it should have neither rules nor members, and only sixteen people were present anyway. Nevertheless, the meeting was important, for they were all eminent and came from varied backgrounds and political convictions—Conservatives, Liberals, Labourites, aristocrats, and a representative of the working class. Winston became the group’s natural leader. As his stock rose in the aftermath of Baldwin’s mortification, he became increasingly active in the World Anti-Nazi Council, whose chairman was Sir Walter Citrine, general secretary of Britain’s powerful Trade Union Congress. Here, for the first time, Churchill found common cause with socialists. He urged them to spread the word that Englishmen of all classes, from “the humblest workman” to “the most bellicose colonel” must form ranks against the growing danger. To this sympathetic audience Churchill declared that the government must adopt the policy of uniting all countries from the Baltic to the Aegean, including the Soviet Union, in an agreement to “stand by any victim of unprovoked aggression,” with each nation pledging “a quota of armed force.”
¹³⁴

He was speaking daily now and writing for newspapers each evening, knitting into his texts information from new sources, which included Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (the former Lord Robert Cecil), a member of the League of Nations Union. At Chartwell Churchill received Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar, who told him of the Air Ministry’s “unwillingness to take emergency measures” to test his devices—a measure even Inskip had supported, though Baldwin and a majority of the cabinet overruled him. Each of the service ministries shared Winston’s sense of urgency, though in the government, as Martin Gilbert writes, “there was increasing Cabinet resentment at what was considered interference by him and… his constant appeals to Ministers and civil servants for greater vigilance.”
¹³⁵

At its second meeting the Anti-Nazi Council established yet another movement, the Defence of Freedom and Peace. Churchill thought he had a better name for it: Arms and the Covenant, representing a policy of rearmament and collective security under the League of Nations Covenant. Citrine and other Labourites shied away from that. They were embarrassed; the parliamentary socialists, led by Attlee, still backed the league but not rearmament. Nevertheless, they agreed that Churchill should deliver the chief address at the movement’s first great rally at the Albert Hall on December 3, 1936. He wanted broad support, and he was getting it. To Austen Chamberlain he wrote of the “robust spirit” among Labour’s leaders, adding, “I have been surprised to find the resolution and clarity of thought which have prevailed among them, and the profound sense of approaching danger from the growing German power.”
¹³⁶

The great rally exceeded all expectations. Winston later recalled: “We had the feeling that we were on the threshold of not only gaining respect for our views but of making them dominant.” Lady Violet Bonham Carter, arriving, found “huge crowds surging around Albert Hall,” with “groups of communists and fascists distributing leaflets and attempting demonstrations.” In the Green Room, where the speakers assembled, she found Citrine, Sir Archibald Sinclair, and three peers, including Lord Allen of Hurtwood, a conscientious objector in the last war. It was meant to be, and bore every sign of becoming, a massive demonstration demanding action and a moment of personal triumph for Churchill. With similar rallies scheduled throughout the country during the following week, the movement could hardly be ignored by the government. Arms and the Covenant—the press had adopted Winston’s more striking phrase—seemed on the verge of making history. It appeared that the only man who could derail it was the King of England. And that is exactly what happened.
¹³⁷

L
ady Violet’s “expectancy,” she wrote, “was pierced by a sharp ‘needle’ of apprehension. I knew Winston could never think of two things at once. Would his eye be ‘off the ball’ tonight?” As he entered the Green Room, she later wrote, she “knew at a glance that my anxiety was justified. His face was sombre and overcast. He went straight up to Citrine and said that he felt that at this critical juncture in our affairs he must make some statement.” According to Citrine, Winston said “People will expect some statement from me.”
¹³⁸

Thus the curtain rose for the final act in one of the sorriest episodes in Churchill’s career: the abdication crisis of 1936. Everyone within earshot knew what he meant; they had all read the lead editorial in that morning’s
Times
. What they did not know was that just as he was leaving Morpeth Mansions to come here Churchill had received the text of a broadcast Edward VIII proposed to deliver to the nation. Citrine was appalled that Winston would even mention the issue in public. The audience, he replied, would certainly not expect any such statement; this meeting had nothing to do with the sovereign. “You will certainly be challenged,” Citrine said, “and if no one else does I will.” Winston, taken aback, said, “I must consider my position.” In Violet’s version Citrine went even further, declaring “quite firmly that if this was Mr. Churchill’s intention, he [Citrine] could not take the chair. This cinched the matter…. But though Winston was obliged to bow to Citrine’s ultimatum, I could see how much he minded being overridden.”
¹³⁹

The press agreed that all the speakers received “a tumultuous reception.” Churchill heard “prolonged cheering”; Violet felt “throughout my own speech that I had never spoken to a more responsive and inspiring audience.” Churchill spoke last. Violet wrote: “He got a tremendous reception, and of course he made a good speech. (He could not make a bad one.) But many of us felt that he was not at the zenith of his form, and of course we knew why. His heart and mind were engaged elsewhere.”
¹⁴⁰

Mystery enshrouds what happened next. Churchill later wrote that he heard a man cry, “God Save the King,” and, “on the spur of the moment,” told the hall: “There is another grave matter which overshadows our minds tonight. In a few minutes we are going to sing ‘God Save the King.’ I shall sing it with more heartfelt fervour than I have ever sung it in my life.” Then, according to his version, he described Edward VIII as “a cherished and unique personality” and said he expected Parliament “to discharge its functions in these high constitutional questions.” He trusted, he said, that “the British nation and the British Empire and… the British people” would not “be found wanting in generous consideration for the occupant of the Throne.”
¹⁴¹

This account has entered history virtually unchallenged. So reliable a source as Macmillan believed the fall of Winston’s rising star, and Baldwin’s remarkable comeback, began that night “in the Albert Hall, [when] Churchill said a few words of sympathy for the King.” Lord Strauss, then an MP and later a member of Winston’s wartime cabinet, recalled that “Churchill made a dramatic speech in support of the King at an Albert Hall meeting. It just killed the meeting.”
¹⁴²

Yet no one who was on or near the platform that evening recalled him saying a word about the sovereign, and therefore, by implication, about what had become delicately known as “the royal marriage crisis.” Citrine—who had vowed to challenge Winston if he spoke up for Edward—did not hear him do so. Nobody was standing closer to Winston, or watching him with a keener eye, than Violet. It was her recollection that “at the end of the meeting he commented to Mr. Eugen Spier on the enthusiasm with which the audience had sung the National Anthem, which he had interpreted as an endorsement of his attitude on the royal marriage issue.” One can only assume that the sentiment was in Churchill’s heart at the time, and that later he believed he had given voice to it. He was wrong. He was also wrong in his assumption that the lusty singing of the anthem signified support for the King. Any gathering of Britons would have done the same at the end of a patriotic rally.
¹⁴³

Actually, the sovereign’s subjects were furious with him. When they learned over the next few days that Winston had decided to be his chief defender—and (inaccurately) that he had advised the King to “Raise the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, and tell them to come and get us!”—they transferred their rage to Churchill, with shattering results for the great cause he led. The elaborate schedule of rallies meant to follow the first one in Albert Hall was canceled. Chamberlain assured a relaxed cabinet that Arms and the Covenant was dead. The government would deal with Hitler, he said, not by matching him bomb for bomb, Short Lee-Enfield for Mauser, Spitfire for Messerschmitt, but by extending the hand of friendship and appeasement. Surely Hitler realized that his demands had to stop at some point. Churchill talked as though the Germans wanted all Europe. It was absurd. If they had it, whatever would they do with it? And, obviously, the wild stories of storm troopers leading anti-Semitic pogroms were rubbish. If the persecutions were as widespread as Winston claimed, Hitler would get wind of them and jail those responsible. But to hear Churchill you would think that the Führer wanted to kill every Jew in Europe!
¹⁴⁴

Ich dien
—I serve—is the motto of the princes of Wales, who mostly serve by standing and waiting for their reigning parent to die, at which instant they mount the throne, with the formal coronation following a year or so later. In the nine centuries since the Norman Conquest of 1066, thirty-five men and six women (if you include William and Mary’s Mary) have reigned over England and her possessions. In Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, or any of the other royal estates, an English sovereign is an awesome personage, possessing so much wealth that no one can fix an exact sum. It fluctuates, like the stock market—or like the devotion of the Crown’s subjects toward their sovereign.

In the dim, distant, blurry centuries of absolute monarchies, a king’s power was exactly that: he had the absolute right to make war without consulting anyone, taxing as he pleased, raping, murdering, pillaging, and committing arson with license. This despotic rule was tempered only by his conscience, provided he had one, and the knowledge that if he alienated too many resourceful vassals, he might be overthrown. Beginning with the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, the King’s authority was limited by this agreement or that, with an occasional spurt of restrictions followed by generations with none. In 1837, when Victoria’s delightful silvery voice was first heard at Kensington Palace, a member of Parliament could not become prime minister without “the confidence of the Crown.” When Walter Bagehot’s
The English Constitution
was published thirty years later, the sovereign was left with three great rights: to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. These were deliberately vague; a great monarch like Victoria could dominate—even alter policy—by spotting opportunities with her celebrated “drill eye,” by insisting on daily consultations, and by skillfully encouraging and admonishing prime ministers and their cabinets. Strong-minded as she was, however, Victoria saw the steady erosion of her power as suffrage broadened. There was little left by 1894, the fifty-eighth year of her reign, when her son’s eldest son’s eldest son was born and christened Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David. The House of Commons congratulated Queen Victoria on the infant’s birth, but Keir Hardie, Labour’s first member of Parliament, delivered a remarkable prophecy: “From childhood onward this [boy] will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation…. He will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumours of a morganatic marriage will follow and the end of it all will be that the country will be called upon to foot the bill.”
¹⁴⁵

By 1911, when the youth was invested as Prince of Wales, the occupant of the throne had become a puppet. His father, George V, could not utter a public word without the prime minister’s approval; when he addressed Parliament, he was handed a manuscript written by others and was warned not to stress this word or that.

Nevertheless, George V learned to enjoy his job, and like most men of his generation he had been raised to follow the path of Duty. The Prince was another matter. Edward reached maturity when the sheath of discipline, among royalty as well as commoners, was yielding to self-indulgence and the pursuit of pleasure. During Stanley Baldwin’s first premiership, in the 1920s, he and the Prince exchanged sharp words on several occasions. Everything about His Royal Highness—his dress, his contempt for convention, the company he kept, his enthusiastic performances on dance floors—strengthened the doubts of those who thought him an unsuitable heir to the crown. He agreed with them. Anita Leslie, Winston’s cousin, witnessed an appalling scene between the Prince and his father. The Prince screamed that he didn’t want the throne, and, when his father grew angry, staged a royal temper tantrum. Deeply distressed, the monarch strode out the door. Shortly thereafter, the King died.
¹⁴⁶