The Leader

by Guy Walters

  But much had changed, in Germany and in England too. One incident Armstrong would use to highlight the dangers took place in his own constituency in the West Country. It was an everyday event, he said, an event that was becoming all too common. The victims were a Mrs Jones and her seventeen-year-old son Richard, who were out shopping together one Thursday morning.

  ‘Rick and me was walking down Princes Street,’ she told Armstrong one Saturday in March, ‘when we hears this tremendous crashing and banging. Pipes and drums and all that. I ain’t really heard anything like it before, Captain Armstrong. Anyway, around the corner comes this large group of Blackshirts, waving their flags and singing something about hanging the Yids. There must have been two – no, three hundred of ’em, and they were marching down the street sending everyone scattering for cover.

  ‘Well, you may not know this, Captain Armstrong, but my son Rick – well, he’s a little slow, you see? Not the brightest of buttons. Gets into trouble a bit, but he’s a good sort really, never means no harm to no one. Anyway, so there we were, all these Blackshirts walking past, and one of them turns to us and says, “Why aren’t you saluting?”’

  ‘Saluting?’ Armstrong asked.

  ‘That’s right, saluting. “Why aren’t you saluting?” And he’s got this expression – well, I don’t know how to describe it – fierce, real fierce, nasty. So I just stares back at him, ’cos to be honest I don’t really twig at first. And then he asks me again, “Why aren’t you saluting?” By this time the march has stopped and I can feel all these eyes on me . . .’

  Mrs Jones started to sob. Armstrong got up from behind his desk and walked round to hand her his handkerchief. Perching on the front of the desk, he assured her that everything was all right now, and that she should continue her story.

  ‘Well, Captain Armstrong, I’m not so sure that it is all right, because . . .’

  And she started sobbing again, Armstrong would say later, but this time at such a volume and at such length that he was minded to call a doctor.

  ‘No, that’s kind of you, sir, but it’s my son who needs doctors, not me.’

  ‘Mrs Jones – please – you must tell me what happened.’

  Interrupted by frequent tears, Mrs Jones continued her story.

  ‘“Why aren’t you saluting?” this man says, and then I realise that he wants me to give one of them fascist salutes, you know, with your right arm in the air. Well, I was scared you see, and so, well, I had no choice, did I? My husband Peter always said them Blackshirts were no good and that me and Rick was never to pay them any attention, and that it was good men like you, Captain Armstrong, who would get this country out of the crisis.’

  ‘Where is your husband now?’

  ‘He’s in the navy, sir. Most of the time it’s just me and Rick, just the two of us.’

  ‘Do carry on, Mrs Jones.’

  ‘So I salute, don’t I? I’m not proud of that, not proud at all, but you have to, don’t you, when you’ve got hundreds of ’em threatening you like that.’

  ‘And what about Rick?’

  ‘Well, I told you that Rick was a good sort really, and that he has good manners most of the time, but Rick goes and spits, spits at this Blackshirt who was making us salute. Now I can’t abide spitting, Captain Armstrong, but Rick just goes and spits and tells them that they’re a bunch of so-and-sos.’

  More tears followed, many more tears.

  ‘Well, you can imagine what happens next,’ said Mrs Jones after she had calmed down a little. ‘They give ’im a beating, don’t they? Some of ’em grab me and hold me against a door, while I have to watch my poor little boy being kicked and punched and all the time he’s screaming for me. “Help me, Mum!” he’s crying, but I can’t and I see that he’s getting hurt real bad. It goes on for ages until Rick stops crying. Then they stop, you see, and have a laugh, a laugh at poor Rick all bleeding on the ground. And then one of the Blackshirts comes up to me, and tells me that the next time they’ll do me in as well and Rick is lucky to get away with such a light beating. But do you know what the worst thing was, Captain Armstrong?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Blackshirt, the one who told me that Rick was lucky, he was one of Rick’s friends from school, boy called Norman Lovell, used to come round for tea. He was always so . . . so nice, please and thank you, wiped his feet. I don’t understand it, Captain Armstrong, what’s . . . what’s going on.’

  ‘You’re a very brave woman, Mrs Jones,’ said Armstrong. ‘Please tell me about Rick, how is he?’

  ‘Not so good, Captain Armstrong. The doc says nothing’s broken, but last night he started to cough up blood and so I went round to the Black Horse and called for an ambulance. He’s in a bad way, they say that his insides might be damaged. Oh God! My poor Rick!’

  ‘And the police, Mrs Jones, what have they said?’

  ‘They told me that they would “look into it”.’

  ‘Is that all? Just “look into it”?’

  Mrs Jones nodded.

  ‘And have they?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I don’t think they want to, though. They don’t . . . don’t seem to care, Captain Armstrong.’

  When Armstrong told people Mrs Jones’s story, he would finish it by relating how, when he had contacted the police, they had fobbed him off with the same vague promise of action. And as there was no local newspaper any more, nobody heard about poor Rick except by word of mouth. By the time he visited the town the following Saturday, Armstrong noticed that the atmosphere had changed; people were sullen, quiet, even though the weather was fine. His Saturday morning meeting with constituents was packed, crammed with those who had suffered either physically or financially at the hands of the Blackshirts. He felt powerless, unable to help them. There was no point making representations to the new Government, because it was the Government itself which was waging war on its own people.

  However, Mrs Jones’s story touched a nerve in Armstrong that he would only admit to in private. He could have told his constituent that he had a son of his own, a six-year-old boy called Philip, but he wanted Mrs Jones and others like her to be able to talk to him about themselves, and simply to regard him as someone who could help. Armstrong knew that might be construed as being somewhat worthy, but that was the way he preferred it. Philip was a part of his life that was outside – and indeed far beyond – Westminster and his constituency.

  When Armstrong returned to the flat after Fallowell’s dinner party, he crept past his housekeeper’s room and into the nursery. He sat on the edge of Philip’s bed, something he did every night, no matter how late it was. Although the light from the corridor did not wake Philip, it allowed Armstrong to study the boy’s face, and to watch the blankets gently rise and fall with each little breath. As usual, Philip was clutching his favourite bear, a bear that had been given to him by his grandmother a few days after his birth.

  Armstrong leaned further over the bed and stroked his son’s dark hair. Philip shifted slightly, mouthed something incomprehensible, and then fell silent. So peaceful, Armstrong thought, so fragile in his innocence. Armstrong felt his eyes tightening, readying themselves to stifle a small tear, a tear brought on by the knowledge that Philip would have to leave. There was no way his son could stay here – it would be too dangerous for him. Armstrong was ready to risk his own life, but not Philip’s. There was no cause that was greater than Philip, no matter how irrational that felt. The days were darkening, and Armstrong knew that they would get blacker still. He couldn’t let Philip become a victim of his father’s forthcoming actions, no matter how right he knew them to be.

  * * *

  The clouds had started to gather the previous year, when Edward VIII had declared that he would give up neither his throne nor Mrs Simpson. He was entitled to both, and nobody could tell him otherwise. I am my own man, and I will not be pushed around. There were many who thought that rich. He followed Mrs Simpson around like a child who refused to be parted fro
m his mother, lighting cigarettes for her, fetching her drinks, fawning over her.

  By the end of November, the situation had become intolerable. The prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, had secured promises from the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties, Clement Attlee and Archibald Sinclair, that they would support Baldwin’s National Government in the event of the King insisting on marrying Mrs Simpson. If such a marriage took place, Baldwin said, he would resign, and Attlee and Sinclair assured him they would not attempt to form administrations if he did so. It was the perfect threat to hold up against the King – marry, sir, and your country, with no one willing to form a government, shall go to the dogs.

  For the next ten days, it looked as though the King would go. The press, inspired by a sermon by the Bishop of Bradford, in which the cleric denounced the monarch’s lack of interest in Christianity, went on the attack. Some newspapers supported the King, but maintained that it was clearly time for Mrs Simpson to leave the country. On the evening of Thursday 3 December, she sailed for France. The King missed his mistress dreadfully – some said that her absence had made him feel ill. One visitor noted that he was chain-smoking and constantly held a handkerchief to his head ‘as if to ease some hidden pressure or pain’.

  However, Baldwin had reckoned without Winston Churchill. There had been much talk of the creation of a ‘King’s Party’. The idea, which was enthusiastically backed by the press magnate Max Beaverbrook, was for Churchill to form a government loyal to the King if Attlee and Sinclair stuck to their agreement with Baldwin. The plan, though, had been dismissed as too fantastical, too divisive. The King, many said, would never allow it to happen.

  Had those doubters been at Fort Belvedere, the King’s retreat in Windsor Great Park, on the night of Sunday 6 December, they would have thought differently, and the country might have been spared fascism. It was not the intention of the conspirators that night to elevate Oswald Mosley to the premiership, but as a result of their actions, they inadvertently did so.

  Sitting at the King’s table were Churchill, Beaverbrook, the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Samuel Hoare, and the Secretary for War Duff Cooper, who had not arrived until around one in the morning. He had been stuck at an ‘interminable’ dinner party at the Eaton Square home of Chips Channon, the Tory MP and socialite. There, he reported, he found the mood very pro-King, and had been told by one of his fellow guests, none other than James Armstrong, the Conservative chief whip, that many members of the Conservative Party might well break away from the National Government in support of the King. However, Armstrong had warned, there were doubtless other dinner parties that night in London at which far more ‘Roundhead’ sentiments were being expressed.

  How many might break away? the King had asked. Cooper told him that Armstrong’s estimate was around forty, but that number could swell massively if the public’s support for the King continued to grow. Beaverbrook had said that he and his newspapers – one of which was the Daily Express – would do their best, but only if he was certain that the people present in the room were really ready to form a new party. It was not the type of occasion at which there was a show of hands – more a collection of nods accompanied by long draws on cigars and brandy balloons.

  So the emboldened King did not abdicate. Chaos ensued as the crisis reached fever pitch in the run-up to Christmas. Share prices, which were low enough already, tumbled. As the economy slumped, many found themselves laid off, and soon the miseries of the dole queue and the soup kitchen were a commonplace fixture on the streets.

  The leading pro-monarchy group was Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, which had recently been renamed the British Union, although to the public they were simply known as the ‘Blackshirts’. Operating from the self-styled ‘Black House’, a former teacher-training college on the King’s Road – ‘On the King’s Road and For the King’s Way’ – Mosley finally saw his chance to make vast political capital. The Blackshirts claimed a membership of around 150,000, people who were beginning to see fascism as the way not only of saving their King, but of rescuing the country from its state of misery, a state that many even outside the party were beginning to blame on the Jews. Hadn’t Hitler done a good job in dealing with them? some asked quite openly. Look at Germany now, they said. Now that the Jewish influence was removed from the banks, the newspapers, the law courts, the country was thriving again. It was time to close the doors on all these damn immigrants, and it was essential to ensure that those who were already here were fully integrated into society, and not allowed to live in their ghettos.

  Although the Blackshirts had no MPs, Mosley told meetings up and down the country, as Christmas approached, that this was the hour for fascism, that the British public should follow the lead of Germany and Italy, and embrace a new doctrine that would result in a greater Britain, and a stronger Empire. No longer should the British people suffer the perils of Bolshevism and international finance – a euphemism for the Jews – but they should embrace the Third Way, a way that led to a synthesis that would guarantee a glorious future.

  To the private delight of the secret King’s Party, Stanley Baldwin resigned on Monday 4 January 1937. The King was obliged to summon both Attlee and Sinclair to Buckingham Palace, but neither would accept the Seals of Office, telling Edward that he would have to abdicate first. That night, the country, without any clear leadership, suffered appalling riots in every town and city centre. It was estimated that nearly seventy people were killed, and the nation feared a descent into anarchy. Shops were looted, many of them, although it was not noted in the press at the time, owned by Jews. Fascists fought street battles with Communists, despite Mosley’s apparent attempt to control his Blackshirt hordes. ‘How can I be held responsible for the excessive zeal of my subordinates?’ Mosley asked, in a statement that was to be echoed by his fellow fascist leader in Germany some years later.

  At nine o’clock the following morning, Winston Churchill was asked to the Palace, and, assuring the King that he had enough support in Parliament to form a government, accepted those twice-refused Seals. For a few weeks the country attempted to return to a state of normality, but behind closed doors, in committee rooms and in smoking rooms alike, Churchill found it impossible to govern. Despite the best efforts of the Beaverbrook press, the public, as well as many in Parliament, were not convinced by this new ministry. Attempting to seize what little initiative remained, Churchill called for an election, nearly setting the date for 15 March, until his wife Clementine pointed out to him, when he was in the bath, that holding an election on the Ides of March – the date of Julius Caesar’s assassination – was hardly propitious. The date was changed to the eighteenth, a Thursday.

  By the Friday afternoon, it appeared that the result was inconclusive. Churchill’s King’s Party, nominally called the ‘Independent Conservatives’, had won around 100 seats, the Conservatives themselves, under Baldwin, just under 150. Attlee’s Labour Party became the largest single parliamentary party, with 220 seats, but the biggest shock of the poll saw the return of Oswald Mosley to Parliament, accompanied by fifty other British Union MPs. The remainder of the House was filled with Liberals, Ulster Unionists and Labour and Liberal Nationalists.

  That evening, the King sent once more for Attlee, to form a minority Labour administration, but Attlee, a man of high principle, rejected the offer, again telling the King that he had to abdicate. Baldwin let it be known that he had no intention of going anywhere near the Palace. And so once more the King called for Churchill, who said he would do his best.

  There followed the most extraordinary week in British politics, a week that was to see, by its end, Oswald Mosley as prime minister. Churchill was unable to form a new government, as Attlee and Baldwin rejected his advances to join a coalition, both insisting that the King should abdicate, and for the sake of the country, as soon as possible. On the morning of Thursday 25th, Churchill returned to the Palace, and told his King, with tears in his eyes, that he had failed. Perhaps, sir, we have tried
too hard, he told the monarch, perhaps the country is not ready for men like ourselves. But the King knew of a man who could help him, a man whom he and his beloved had always admired, a man whose political views were similar to their own.

  It was well known in court circles that the King admired the European fascist dictators. In a conversation he had in July 1933 when he was still the Prince of Wales, Edward was reported to have been ‘quite pro-Hitler, said it was no business of ours to interfere in Germany’s internal affairs either re the Jews or re anything else, and added that Dictators were very popular these days and we might want one in England before long’.

  In a phone call made from France that Thursday evening to the King, Mrs Simpson was overheard telling her lover, ‘This is our best chance, a chance to be together, and for you to stay where you are. The people will love you for it – you will have saved the country, you must see that, David. He’s our only solution. Don’t forget what you can do. Remember, they made Macdonald prime minister when he only had two more seats than Mosley.’

  Sir Oswald Mosley accepted the Seals of Office at 11.35 on the morning of Friday 26 March. A fascist was now at 10 Downing Street. Everyone, especially Members of Parliament, was taken by surprise. Britain was divided. Some of the more populist newspapers believed that Mosley was the beleaguered country’s only chance, although the heavy-weights, such as The Times and the Manchester Guardian, were appalled.

  For the next fortnight, civil war loomed. People were either with the Blackshirts or against them, and the effect of that polarisation was felt in the savage violence on the streets. The police were hopelessly overstretched, and Mosley called in the army to maintain law and order. Keen to appear accountable, he convened an Extraordinary Session of Parliament on Saturday 10 April. There, he put before the House an Emergency Powers Bill that would enable him to govern temporarily with an emergency cabinet of just five men. The Bill was enacted that afternoon, with substantial numbers of MPs from both Conservative parties supporting the fascists, despite the efforts of whips such as Armstrong. There were many, including Armstrong, who believed that Parliament had just voted itself out of existence.