Six Minutes in May

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  The Norway Debate recommenced at 4.03 p.m. in the Commons. Spears wrote: ‘The House was packed and as nervous as a cat with kittens.’11 He soon developed cramp from being compressed into an uncomfortable sideways position.

  Members had gathered in a belligerent mood. Many like Macmillan still had Amery’s words ‘ringing in our ears’.12 Violet Bonham Carter took her place in the Speaker’s Gallery – with Baba Metcalfe, Mary Churchill and Anne Chamberlain – and settled down to watch ‘the most dramatic debate I have almost ever heard in my whole parliamentary memory’.13

  Morrison spoke first. His attack was lethal. Quietly delivered, it treated Parliament as the highest court in the land. He gave no hint that he intended to divide the House. He began with Churchill and Narvik. He wished to put some hard questions to Churchill about his inexplicable obsession with Narvik. There was no apparent reason why British warships should have devoted their attention to Narvik alone. ‘I should like to know what were the strategic reasons that led us first to Narvik … was Narvik strategically the right place to aim at first? Would it not have been wiser strategically to start at a more Southern point?’

  Morrison’s questions stayed in the air, unanswered. The effect was heightened by his revelation that Labour had made a request for Churchill to speak earlier, as the First Lord had ‘considerable responsibility’ for the Norway operations. But Churchill was going to speak last, and no one would be able to comment on his evidence. ‘He is the chief witness who refuses to go into the box.’

  Morrison then moved south to Namsos. His vituperation grew as he approached that section of his speech which he had based on Martin Lindsay’s information. One after another he repeated Lindsay’s complaints ‘with all the vigour I could muster and with no holds barred’.14 Was it the case that A.A. guns were sent without predictors, and a week late? Was it the case that other guns were sent without ammunition? Was it the case that machine guns were sent without spare barrels? Was there any proper liaison between the port occupied by ‘Maurice Force’ at Namsos and the port occupied by ‘Sickle Force’ at Åndalsnes? Was it a fact that the military force was not supplied with snowshoes, so that ‘the troops were stuck on the roads and were bombed there’?

  To Henry Morris-Jones on the Liberal bench, it was a ‘very formidable indictment’; to Ivan Maisky up in the Diplomatic Gallery, an ‘astonishingly fierce’ assault.15, 16 What impressed Hugh Dalton on the Labour front bench was Morrison’s impossible-to-deny complaints list. ‘He has lots of detail and is very definite.’17 It was thanks to these details, the diplomat Oliver Harvey learned in Paris two days later, that Morrison’s speech, out of all those heard in the Norway Debate, formed ‘the most effective attack on the Government’.18

  From Namsos, Morrison turned his offensive back to the War Cabinet. Deliberately exempting the Foreign Secretary (Baba Metcalfe reported to Halifax), Morrison focused his criticism on the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the new Secretary of State for Air – the Ministers most closely identified with appeasement. To guffaws of hilarity, Morrison read out Hoare’s recent broadcast from the Listener and his radiant picture of operations in Norway. ‘“Today our wings are spread over the Arctic. They are sheathed in ice. Tomorrow the sun of victory will touch them with its golden light” – Hon. Members understandably laugh, but I am not quoting this for the purpose of arousing amusement, because it really is serious, for it is an indication of the delusions from which the Government are suffering.’ Morrison paused to stare at the stiff triumvirate whose resignation he demanded. His eyes did not release them easily. In appalled fascination, the Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie followed Morrison’s contempt-filled gaze. ‘There they sat on the front bench – the three of them – Chamberlain, Simon and Hoare, the old-fashioned solid, upper middle-class Englishmen, methodical, respectable, immovable men who cannot be hurried or bullied, shrewd in short-term bargaining or political manipulation, but with no understanding of this age – of its despair, its violence and its gropings, blinkered in solid comfort, shut off from poverty and risk.’19 Morrison had left his deadliest move till last. The whole ‘spirit, tempo and temperament’ of these three Ministers had been ‘wrong, inadequate and unsuitable’ – and this, he said, waiting for his pause to take effect, was why ‘we feel we must divide the House at the end of our Debate today’.

  Harold Nicolson in his account for the Montreal Standard revealed how even up to this stage a majority in the Chamber had believed that the opposition would not force a division, ‘but that the Government would be allowed to reconstitute themselves with dignity and ease’. Had this been Chamberlain’s understanding too?

  The Prime Minister was an experienced parliamentarian, and it is unlikely that Morrison’s demand took him by surprise. There was always the risk of a division – rumours had been flying into the Whips’ Office since early afternoon. Most likely, he had crafted a statement in case. Certainly, the Liberal Chief Whip Percy Harris felt that Chamberlain’s response took the form of ‘a carefully prepared impromptu’, which Clement Davies maintained was written for him by John Simon.20 In addition, Chamberlain looked for assistance from beyond the Cabinet, believing that ‘Providence designed my speeches to be timed at the right moment to create the effect I want at that point’.fn1 21

  Not on this occasion, though. Whether he had prepared it or not, whether his fury was real or assumed, Chamberlain’s interruption was, in the opinion of Dingle Foot, ‘perhaps the most ill-judged speech ever delivered in the House of Commons’.22

  Angry and worn out (Channon), showing his teeth like a rat in a corner (Dalton), with a leer of triumph (Nicolson), Chamberlain snatched Morrison’s bait. Violet Bonham Carter watched the disaster unfold with horror and pity. ‘Chamberlain jumped up & with affected surprise (for he must have known beforehand) & real indignation, said that he welcomed [the] challenge – & appealed to his friends – “for I have friends in this House” – to support him.23 This unfortunate phrase, which got him a Party cheer at the time, became the “leit motif” of his ruin. Anyone else might have said it with impunity – but it was so profoundly, fatally characteristic to make this tremendous issue a matter of who were, & who were not, his friends.’24

  ‘Not I,’ Boothby immediately called out – and got a withering glance ‘with the eyes of an arrogant blackbird’.

  As the immediate context of Chamberlain’s observations makes clear, he was not uttering an appeal to his personal friends. Rather, he was pointing out that Morrison had just thrown down a challenge to the government in general. Yet for Labour MP Josiah Wedgwood, Chamberlain’s unwise riposte was ‘the match to the explosion’.25 In the space of a single sentence, the Prime Minister had reminded his many critics of how he had returned politics from a national level after Munich, to a party level – and now to a personal level. Baba Metcalfe reported to Halifax that it was this inflammatory gaffe which ‘turned the tide against him, as every subsequent speaker alluded to him being very unfit to lead the country as he was putting personal considerations ahead of the country’.26

  Seated behind Chamberlain, Chips Channon groaned inwardly. Nothing was so revolting as the House of Commons on an ugly night. ‘We then knew it was to be war.’27

  The next hammer blow was delivered by Lloyd George, who had once said: ‘The House for a Minister is a lion’s den.28 They are always waiting. Some day you will have to fight them for your life. If you win, it’s all right. If not, it is the end of you.’ In John Simon’s opinion, Lloyd George was ‘the worst of all in his denunciation of the Prime Minister’.29

  It was an achievement to persuade Lloyd George to speak. He had been busy making notes during Morrison’s speech ‘with his usual little stump of pencil’ when he disappeared in a huff, annoyed by a backbencher’s remark, and so missed Chamberlain’s appeal to his friends.30 Dingle Foot was sitting beside Megan Lloyd George when Chamberlain resumed his seat. ‘There is the opening – your father must speak now.’31 She did not need telling. She rose and
shot out of the Chamber to find him, though she was not over-confident. Her father had been playing hard to get ever since Nancy Astor inspected him for a return to government. A. J. Sylvester had subsequently learned from Frances Stevenson that Lloyd George did not plan to speak in the debate and was being ‘most difficult’, and anyway had several times made the journey to London intending to talk in the House, and come away without doing so.

  Herbert Morrison, keen to harness the old warhorse to his battle wagon, had already sent messages through Megan asking him to speak or even to attend, and to impress on Lloyd George that this was a vital occasion. But Morrison was unable to extract a definite reply. ‘Sometimes the answer was that he would think about it.32 Sometimes it was that he did not feel like coming to the debate.’ When Morrison spotted Lloyd George on the front bench on the opening day, he had gone over and repeated that there would be great disappointment if he did not make a contribution. ‘They are waiting for you and looking for you.’ Lloyd George gave no sign of what he intended to do.

  Morrison, Megan, Astor, Foot – these were not the only MPs pleading with Lloyd George to do something. Clement Davies and the Liberal Chief Whip Percy Harris followed Megan out to look for him. Meanwhile, Eleanor Rathbone scribbled Lloyd George a note. ‘There is terrific lobbying going on to get Conservatives to vote against the Government.33 They say the Tories are shocked by NC making this into a personal role for or against him.’ A second handwritten appeal arrived from Boothby. ‘It is a direct challenge now.34 The P.M. has appealed to his “friends” – as against the interests of the country …’ And that claim again: ‘I think we may get as many as 40 Conservatives into our lobby.’

  Davies and Harris found Lloyd George sulking in his room upstairs ‘with his feet on the fender saying he had no intention of speaking and was not interested’.35 Davies then read him the riot act in Welsh, saying that he was behaving like a prima donna, and was no better than Chamberlain in caring more for himself than for his country. Davies told him that his speech might turn the scales, and he was throwing away this great opportunity because of a personal slight from some backbencher. ‘Has the great Achilles lost his skill?’ Lloyd George then raised doubts about the wisdom of his intervening, and his fear that he could not make an effective contribution without implicating his old colleague Churchill.36 Harris quelled these immediately. ‘When I explained the character of Neville’s speech, and his personal appeal to “his friends” that seemed to decide him, and he came down to the House.’37

  As Father of the House, Lloyd George encountered none of Amery’s problems in attracting the Speaker’s attention. At 5.37 p.m. Harold Nicolson watched him rise ‘with all the dignity of his white hair, with all the weight of his experience and with all the fire of his fighting days.38 He pawed the ground with his right foot. He whirled his arms. He pointed an accusing finger.’

  Lloyd George began almost inaudibly. Members shouted: ‘Speak up, please!’ He brushed back his long white hair, reminding them that a Welshman generally spoke low at the beginning. His voice had been thin, without punch, when he gave his speech back in April to celebrate his fifty years in Parliament. Yet the fears soon vanished that he had lost his oratorical touch.

  Within minutes, a regular visitor to Churt, Ivan Maisky, felt that Lloyd George was back to his old ‘inimitable self’.39 He stood at the despatch box on the side of the opposition, jerking his left leg (‘he was in the habit of doing so when he spoke in Parliament’), pulling his pince-nez off his bronzed nose and flashing it about ‘as if it were a sword pulled from its sheath’.40

  Geoffrey Shakespeare, seated opposite, was familiar with Lloyd George’s technique, having first seen him in action at the Albert Hall, at a Baptist rally organised by Shakespeare’s father. Lloyd George had confided to him how he copied the skills of the old Welsh narrative preachers. Shakespeare wrote: ‘His custom was to start slowly and cautiously, like a bather entering the sea, uncertain as to the depth of the water or the strength of the current.41 Then, as he gained confidence he would try a fancy stroke, he would flash out a simile or illustration; in a few minutes he had woken his audience to life and was borne along on the flood of their rising enthusiasm.’

  Lloyd George spoke to the hushed, packed House as a senior politician who had been one of the nation’s most successful war leaders, as well as an expert in the removal of wartime premiers from office. Charles Ritchie listened to his gathering attack. ‘His speech made me think of King Lear’s ranting – shot through with gleams of vision.’42 Violet Bonham Carter considered it ‘the best & most deadly speech I have ever heard from him – voice – gesture – everything was brought into play to drive home his indictment’.43

  In his flexible, melodious tenor, Lloyd George talked of how the disaster in Norway, despite all the warnings, had left us in ‘the worst strategic position in which this country has ever been placed’. With a scathing rebuke to the Conservative back bench, he said that Hitler did not hold himself answerable to the Whips or to David Margesson. His blue eyes gleaming with mischief, he separated Churchill from the rest of the War Cabinet in apportioning blame. When Churchill sprang up to take ‘complete responsibility’ for everything that had been done by the Admiralty, Lloyd George suggested to his old friend that his loyalty was misplaced, and he warned that Churchill must not allow himself ‘to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues’. Several speakers had made the same point. None had inspired raucous laughter. Baba Metcalfe watched Churchill ‘like a fat baby swinging his legs on the front bench trying not to laugh … stony faces on each side of him’.44

  Observing Lloyd George savage Chamberlain, Dingle Foot felt that in his whole career he had not seen anything to match this clash between two political enemies. ‘It would be difficult to exaggerate the drama of the occasion.’45 Colville recorded how the opposition shouted themselves hoarse as Lloyd George became more and more vehement and less and less reasonable. ‘Horace Wilson, who sat with me in the official gallery, said that the hatred written on their faces astonished him: it was the pent-up bitterness and personal animosity of years.’46 Not even his faithful bloodhound Chips Channon could bring consolation to Chamberlain. He sat loyally behind the Prime Minister, ‘hoping to surround him with an aura of affection’, but ‘Little Neville seems heart-broken and shrivelled,’ only stirring from time to time to glance up into the Speaker’s Gallery where his wife had been sitting for two days, hardly leaving the House.47 ‘She was in black – black hat – black coat – black gloves, with only a bunch of violets in her coat. She looked infinitely sad as she peered down into the mad arena where the lions were out for her husband’s blood.’

  Lloyd George’s speech packed into twenty-five minutes a quarter-century of contempt. Now at last he had the Prime Minister’s diminutive scalp in his sights. Only two days earlier, A. J. Sylvester had advised Lloyd George on how to trap that insultingly small head – by making Chamberlain lose his temper. Lloyd George had not been present to hear Chamberlain’s unwise remark about friends, but he viciously twisted its intention to provoke the Prime Minister into making a second ill-judged intercession.

  Chamberlain exploded when Lloyd George accused him of making his personality ‘inseparable from the interests of the country’.

  He jumped up and angrily leant over the despatch box. ‘What is the meaning of that observation?’ Indignantly, he denied that he was making the debate a personal issue. ‘I took pains to say that personalities ought to have no place in these matters.’ This time there was no mistaking his rage.

  The two men glared at each other, wrote the Daily Mirror’s correspondent. ‘Chamberlain white to the lips, his fingers twitching.48 Lloyd George passionate, scowling, scornful.’

  ‘Norway’. ‘Unprepared’.49 ‘Margesson’. Another of the words that Lloyd George had earlier scribbled on a sheet of House of Commons paper and underlined with his yellow pencil was ‘Sacrifice’. Lloyd George was aware that
‘sacrifice’ occupied a special niche in Chamberlain’s lexicon. After reluctantly deciding to remove Hore-Belisha from the War Office in January, Chamberlain had written him a sympathetic note that in wartime ‘no one can feel satisfied unless he has made some sacrifice’.50 From Hore-Belisha, Lloyd George had heard an extraordinary story that Chamberlain had told at their meeting, of a French general who saw a soldier about to be shot for cowardice, and said to him: ‘You are making a great sacrifice’ – explaining that ‘in war everybody had to make sacrifices and contribute to the victory of the common cause’.51, 52 With this potent word, Lloyd George ended his withering speech. ‘I say solemnly that the Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in this war than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.’

  The strained silence of the House after Lloyd George sat down gave the impression that a taboo had been violated and all the frustrations of the past eight months released. It was the last great speech of Lloyd George’s life.fn2 53, 54

  Viscount Addison was sitting in the Peers’ Gallery and immediately wrote him a note. ‘I have been listening to you.55 It did my heart good. Nothing truer can be said than your last sentence. Get rid of the P.M. and a real coalition could become possible.’

  Churchill had watched this gladiatorial display with mixed emotions. He muttered to Kingsley Wood: ‘This is all making it damned difficult for me tonight.’56

  Churchill had come from a briefing upstairs with General Paget on the situation in Norway. The military campaign continued to be the First Lord’s priority outside the Chamber. Today – Wednesday 8 May – marked the date when Admiral Cork had planned to occupy Narvik.

  Since the weekend, Churchill had been holed up in the Admiralty, poring over maps of Harstad and Narvik, as he had hidden in a mineshaft after his escape from the Boers, with food and whisky smuggled in by the British mine manager, only on this occasion his manager had had to leave: Clementine had departed on the 1.45 p.m. train to Hereford to attend Bertram Romilly’s funeral.