The Peoples King (22 page)

Perhaps it is not surprising, in the light of Britain's history of
electoral reform, that the Prime Minister should have overlooked
whole sections of the population in his appraisal of the views of 'the
people'. It had been less than two decades before - in 1918 - that the
vote and the right to stand in parliamentary elections were extended
to all men over twenty-one. Before then, these rights had been based
on property and were limited to male householders, thus excluding
large numbers of men. All women were excluded from the franchise
until 1919, when women over the age of thirty were finally given the
vote; the age limit was not lowered to twenty-one, the same as for
men, until 1928. Universal suffrage, therefore, and the idea that every
citizen was entitled to a political voice, was still a novel phenomenon
in 1936.

It is always possible, in any case, that Baldwin's emphasis on public
opinion was not motivated by a simple concern for the feelings of the
general public. It may also have been influenced by the Memorandum
by Parliamentary Counsel sent by Fisher to Chamberlain on 7 Nov­ember, which Baldwin most probably saw. in all matters of this kind,
where there are no precedents to guide,' observed the author of the
Memorandum, referring to the King's wish to marry Mrs Simpson,

Ministers have to act as interpreters of public opinion; and if they are satisfied
that public opinion generally is strongly behind the advice which they think
that they ought to give, I cannot doubt that constitutional principle not only
empowers, but requires, them to tender it.
³⁴

In other words, Baldwin - in an age of universal suffrage - would be
backed by Constitutional principle if he was able to claim that he was
speaking for public opinion.

At their meeting on 16 November, the King did not argue with
Baldwin. Instead, he simply announced that he was going to marry
Mrs Simpson. If the Government opposed the marriage, he said, then
he was 'prepared to go'.
⁵⁵
This was a dramatic step: Edward was
declaring his intention to abdicate. Baldwin's reaction, recorded
Ramsay MacDonald in his diary, was 'ebullient'. He ran into the
Prime Minister shortly after the meeting with the King, which had
started at 6.30 p.m.:

7.30 met PM ebullient. Put his arm in mine 8C to my enquiry if he had seen
HM he said he had but that he must think over things & would tell me
everything to-morrow. Meanwhile the King was determined to marry Mrs S
and was prepared to abdicate. Nice kettle of fish!!
⁵⁶

Hardinge heard the news, possibly from Baldwin himself, and
rushed home to tell his wife, Helen.
⁵⁷
Helen's mother, Lady Milner,
discovered what had happened from her friend, Geoffrey Dawson,
who 'came to see me in the morning. Couldn't sit down. We neither
of us sat down during a long talk.' Writing in French to discourage
the prying eyes of servants, she observed in her diary that the Prime
Minister had seen the king - that he was a complete idiot -
'
Le roi est
archifou\
⁵ⁱ
Word spread rapidly through the Court. In his diary for
18 November, Cecil Headlam commented that Frank Mitchell, an
Assistant Private Secretary to the King, had 'darkly hinted that a
climax to the Simpson business was inevitable within a short space of
time, and he seemed certain that HM would rather abdicate than give
her up.'
⁵⁹

Baldwin's wife, Lucy, was extremely distressed at the turn of events,
summing them up in her diary entry for 16 November as 'Very grave
news.'
⁶⁰
She blamed Wallis for sabotaging Edward's reign. Writing to
Edith, Lady Londonderry, she exclaimed, it makes one sigh for the
so called good old days when one could clap women as well as men
in the Tower!!'
⁶
' But there were some who actually welcomed the idea
of getting rid of the King - and who regarded his impossible wish to
marry Wallis as a godsend. 'I had a talk to both SB and the Arch­bishop', wrote Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India, in a secret letter
sent to Dawson from New Delhi on 17 November. At this talk, which
had taken place in London before he had sailed for India, he had
told them

that I was sure that one thing alone could steady [Edward], the knowledge
that his popularity with the general public was at stake ... I said to both that
I hoped the thing might be kept fairly quiet till after the coronation, but that
when once the excitement of that ceremony had subsided,
I felt sure the public
would turn on him
...
I gave it as my opinion that the public interest will best
be served by bringing matters to a head as soon as possible. I think you should
see SB and push him into calling into counsel: Neville; Halifax; Hailsham;
Simon; Sam Hoare; and I suppose that old ass Ramsay Mac, by way of
providing SB with support... I think, too, that the 'Times' should weigh in
with a leader of unmistakable point.
⁶²

The King joined Queen Mary for dinner
16
November, to tell her
of his decision to abdicate from the throne. Punctually at 8.30 p.m.,
he appeared at Marlborough House in white tie and tailcoat; he found
his sister, Princess Mary, there too. The women were appalled. 'The
word "duty"', wrote Edward later,

fell between us. But there could be no question of my shirking my duty. What
separated us was not a question of duty but a different concept of kingship. I
was, of course, eager to serve my people in all the many ways expected of the
King as the head of the State . . . But I would stand on my right to marry on
my own terms.
⁶³

He asked his mother if he might bring Wallis to meet her, so that
she would get to know the woman he loved so much that he was
willing to renounce the throne for her. He was confident that once his
mother knew her even a little, she would understand his decision. But
she refused. She also made no attempt to dissuade Edward from the
action he contemplated. When they parted, she expressed the hope
that he would make a wise decision for his future, adding that she
feared his imminent visit to South Wales would be a trying one.

After speaking to his mother and sister, Edward set about taking
his brothers Bertie, Harry and George, into his confidence. He saw
them one by one. George, his favourite, was the most moved. Bertie
said little. This was a momentous development for him, since he was
the heir presumptive. Once Edward had given up the throne, then he,
Albert, would be King and his wife, Elizabeth, would be Queen. It
must have been impossible for him to engage with Edward's news
with any kind of equanimity. Instead, after a few days, he wrote a
letter in which he said that he longed for his elder brother to be happy,
adding that he of all people ought to be able to understand his feelings.
He was sure, he added, that whatever Edward decided would be 'in
the best interests of the country and the Empire'.
⁶⁴

Baldwin's meeting with Edward took place the day before the King
departed for South Wales - and the day before a heated debate in the
House of Commons on the renewal of the Special Areas Act. There
was opposition to the Government from its own side. Sir Robert
Home, a Conservative, spoke at length on conditions in South Wales.
He was especially critical of the Government's failure to heed the
recommendations of Malcolm Stewart, the former Commissioner for
the Special Areas who had just resigned in protest. Home was sup­ported in this view by about fifty of the younger Conservatives in the
House, led by Viscount Wolmer, all of whom threatened to vote
for the Opposition unless some better attempt was made to deal with
the problem of long-term unemployment. Neville Chamberlain, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was forced to respond. He promised to
bring forward an amending Act 'which should embody such of Mr
Stewart's recommendations as the Government found acceptable'.
⁶⁵

This was not a favourable time for the forces of Conservatism. In
the American general election on 3 November, Roosevelt had led the
Democrats to victory once more, winning virtually 61 per cent of the
popular vote. He was elected on the strength of the New Deal, set up
to alleviate the worst effects of the Depression, and had concluded
his presidential campaign with a rousing attack at Madison Square
Gardens on the 'organized money' that opposed him.
⁶⁶
Corporate
leaders had denounced him for what they regarded as socialist policies,
but the electorate still wanted to keep him as President. Some Ameri­cans saw a similarity between the hostility to Roosevelt and King

Edward's developing problems in Britain. On 25 November, a New
Yorker (who was president of an organization called 'Association
Better Citizenship, Inc.', which aimed to dispel ignorance, misunder­standing, superstition and prejudice) wrote in a letter to the King that

It is with a feeling of great concern I learn of the mental attitude of the
reactionaries in your Court. You are of the same nature as our great President.
If he were in your position he would do as he damn pleased. We, in America,
are putting the reactionaries back on their heels. They are a necessary adjunct,
to any organization or kingdom, but they have to be kept in their place, or the
progress of the world would be stopped ... A Queen of American descent
sitting upon the Throne (with you) would bind England and America indissolu-
bly. All those that love you, and there are many in America, wish you and
Mrs Simpson all the happiness in the world.
⁶⁷

Not just Conservatism, but Stanley Baldwin in particular, was
beleaguered in the autumn of 1936. On 12 November, during a debate
on rearmament, he admitted to the House of Commons that he had
misled the country three years earlier on this issue. 'I put before
the whole House my own views with an appalling frankness', he
announced, before explaining that because of the strong pacifist feeling
running through the country in 1933, he had sought - and won -
re-election on an anti-war platform. 'My position as the leader of a
great party', he explained, 'was not altogether a comfortable one. I
asked myself what chance was there . . . within the next year or two
of that feeling being so changed that the country would give a mandate
for rearmament?' Supposing that he had gone to the country and
said that Germany was rearming and that Britain must rearm,
he said, 'does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have
rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that
would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more
certain.'
⁶⁸