Six Minutes in May

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  At 9.30 a.m. Amery attended a meeting of the Watching Committee in Arlington Street. There was general agreement even among those who at the last minute had voted with the government that Chamberlain must resign, along with Simon, Hoare and Wood, and that either Halifax or Churchill should form a National coalition. A ‘distressed’ Lord Salisbury was deputed to convey the Committee’s resolution to the Foreign Secretary, who remained their favoured candidate.

  Amery then went down to the House to attend the formal adjournment motion for the Whitsun recess. He had hardly arrived when a short man approached in grey felt-topped boots and smoking a cigarette. Hore-Belisha had come that morning from his farm in Wimbledon, leaving his two dogs behind. He needed, he said, to talk with Amery.

  A publicity-conscious politician remembered for his orange traffic beacons when Minister of Transport, Hore-Belisha was as ambitious politically as he was socially. Halifax’s Private Secretary Valentine Lawford had watched him at a party in the Paris Embassy after Hore-Belisha had been promoted to the War Office. ‘What a grotesque person … the laughing stock of all the young women of Paris, as he goes around paying them flowery compliments and giving them expensive presents.33 I think his aim is to marry someone very chic but so far none of the girls will have him.’ Baba Metcalfe had had to warn her sister Irene, one of those courted by him, that Hore-Belisha wanted to marry a baroness (which Irene was), and had asked whether ‘if he married a baroness he would become a baron!’ Hore-Belisha – who modelled himself on Disraeli and kept a bust of Napoleon in his room – carried the same unrealistic notions into his politics.34 Up until 4 January, he had considered himself to be a ‘national hero’ who was ‘in a wonderful position heading straight for the Premiership’.35 His self-belief was expressed in language similar to Amery’s. ‘My position is good, I have my public, and if trouble comes and there is use for me, I shall be there.’36 After being dismissed from his Ministry, following pressure from the War Office and the King, and having refused the offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade, Hore-Belisha groused to Chamberlain: ‘Is there any MP who doesn’t want to be Prime Minister? Is there any waiter who doesn’t want to be a head waiter?’ Four months later and still aggrieved, Hore-Belisha prepared to marshal his forces behind Amery.37

  The former War Minister told Amery that he was the leader they needed. What was more, Max Beaverbrook agreed – the two men had been discussing it at breakfast. They had decided that what was wanted was ‘a clean sweep eliminating the old Conservative gang as far as possible’, and that the best way of emphasising this was that Amery should be Prime Minister ‘as the man who had turned out the Government and also as best qualified all round’.38

  Hore-Belisha proposed to lobby discreetly on Amery’s behalf.

  Amery suspected Hore-Belisha’s motive for fomenting a pro-Amery movement. ‘He no doubt started it in the hope that it might bring him back again as a reward for helping.’39 But Amery was flattered too. His congested reaction mimicked Halifax’s. ‘This was rather sudden and I discouraged the idea, at any rate as long as there was a chance of Winston or Edward accepting.’

  Still, it was impossible not to be tantalised by the thought that his name was being canvassed – and by Lord Beaverbrook, ‘that mercurial, irresponsible and not infrequently evil man’, as David Dilks says of him. Amery had sought out Beaverbrook on 1 May, going to see him in his capacity as a kingmaker. The possibility that the press baron might now throw his weight behind Amery could not be set aside so casually.

  When Amery looked very steadily at himself, he saw a sixty-seven-year-old mountaineer who felt unnecessarily fat, with a touch of rheumatism in the left shoulder, a little grey about the temples, and too weak to pull himself up by the fingertips. Was this the face of a man fit for leadership? Did Amery see flashing across his mind the swimming pond at Harrow, the empty tent in Natal? Had the moment arrived, finally, for him to reassert his primacy over Churchill?

  The first thing Amery had to consider was the attitude of the Labour leaders. He was shrewd enough to recognise that any Prime Minister’s future lay in the hands of Attlee and Greenwood. What was their position? It took no time at all to discover that they, too, as it happened, were in favour of an Amery premiership.

  ‘Curiously enough Clem Davies just a few minutes later told me that he had been talking with some of the Labour Front Bench, who had suggested to him that the Tory whom they would soonest serve under would be myself.’40 One of the two Labour leaders that Davies had spoken to was the exuberant Arthur Greenwood.

  ‘Of course, the idea was not serious enough to be worth considering,’ repeated Amery. Yet he could not stop considering it. ‘At the same time it is interesting to find oneself after ten years of backwater suddenly regarded as at any rate worth talking about as a possible.’

  After a further encouraging conversation – with the Liberal leader Archie Sinclair – Amery mulled over why, actually, the idea of an Amery premiership ought to be discouraged. It was not because he lacked confidence in himself, ‘for, like Churchill, “I thought I knew a good deal about it all”’.41 He was well qualified, ‘both by experience and study of war’.42 On the minus side, Amery was not so well known as Churchill, and he worried that he would not be acceptable to the bulk of the party after his attack on Chamberlain.

  All these considerations were swirling through Amery’s mind when at 3 p.m. he chaired a meeting of what The Times called his ‘malcontents’. Once again he resisted the calls of Boothby, Macmillan and Davies to come out for Churchill. ‘I got them to agree we would support any P.M. who would form a truly National Government appointing its men by merit and not on Whips’ lines … The personal issue I carefully kept out of the picture in order to avoid waste of time discussing alternatives.’43

  In his speech in the Norway Debate and in each of the dissident meetings he had chaired, Amery had taken care not to make any recommendation as to who should replace Chamberlain. His continuing refusal to discuss personalities left the door open for a third contender: the Conservative Member for Birmingham Sparkbrook, Leo Maurice Amery. Had Amery decided at that moment to become a candidate, Hore-Belisha wrote to him afterwards, ‘you would have stood out and had my support’.44

  Hore-Belisha attended Amery’s crowded meeting in Committee Room 8, and he came up afterwards to say that in spite of Amery discouraging him he had sounded out Duff Cooper and one or two others ‘who were quite prepared to back his idea’.45 In contrast to Amery, Churchill was generally regarded as a ‘washout’ who was lacking in energy, and in Cabinet ‘not the man he was or is supposed to be’.46

  The time had come for the President of the Alpine Club to decide if he was the Man of Destiny that for thirty years he had chafed to be.

  When in 1929 Leo Amery made the first ascent of Mount Amery, the peak that the Geographical Board of Canada had named after him, atrocious weather prevented him from seeing where he was, ‘and I was worried we weren’t quite on top’.47 Eleven years later, at what turned out to be the summit of his political achievement, Amery once again saw no clear route ahead. When the chance came to stake his claim, he was rigid in maintaining his previous self-denying position. He told Hore-Belisha that he had no doubt ‘that the matter would be dealt with in the Inner Circle and that it lay between Halifax and Winston’.48

  21

  A GREAT TIDE FLOWING

  ‘Who would have believed seven years ago that Winston Churchill had any kind of political future before him?’1

  GEORGE ORWELL, 8 June 1940

  Colonel Bertram Romilly was buried on the afternoon of 9 May in the churchyard of St Thomas à Becket outside the village of Huntington. With Clementine away at the funeral, there was no one to screen visitors to Churchill’s top-floor quarters at Admiralty House. Throughout that Thursday, the First Lord received a stream of callers, including one or two that his wife might have chosen to shield him against had she remained in London.

  The first person to knock on his d
oor was Anthony Eden, whom Churchill telephoned at 9.30 a.m. and asked to come at once to the Admiralty. Valentine Lawford later worked for Eden, and left a description of the then Dominions Secretary who turned up to see Churchill that morning in a light grey suit, vivid tie, and a black felt homburg that was as inseparable a part of Eden’s persona as Chamberlain’s umbrella and Churchill’s ‘seldom-lit’ cigar.2 Known as ‘Draughty Mouth’ by Halifax and Baba Metcalfe, and by Lord Haw-Haw as ‘handsome Anthony’, few Ministers, wrote Lawford, matched Eden’s physical presence. ‘Eden moved always with the fluent ease of a river between its banks, almost with a suggestion of bravura.’ His appearance went far to realise his ambition. ‘Eden’s fine eyes, with their fringes of dark lashes, his regular head, handsome hair and well-knit body, caused many to admire and some to envy him for such unashamed good looks.’ Maisky was less swayed, and suggested that a jellyfish might be in possession of a greater backbone. ‘Eden is not made of iron, but rather of soft clay, which yields easily to the fingers of a skilful artisan.’3 Even so, Chips Channon strongly suspected his designs. ‘Eden is on the fringe and is watching and waiting his chance.’4

  While shaving, Churchill told Eden about his midnight conversation with Chamberlain: how he had advised the Prime Minister to fight on and not seek help from Attlee and Greenwood. Churchill predicted ‘that Neville would not be able to bring in Labour & that a national Government must be formed.’5 In the event that Halifax ruled himself out, Churchill, peering one precautious step ahead, had begun to build a Cabinet in his mind. That was why he had sent for Eden. On that Thursday, Churchill breakfasted, lunched and dined with Eden, and at the end of the day he told Eden that he wished him ‘to take War’.

  Churchill’s next visitor was Beaverbrook, nicknamed ‘the Toad’ by Baba Metcalfe and Halifax, a man Clementine despised, once writing to her husband: ‘My darling – Try ridding yourself of this microbe which some people fear is in your blood – Exorcise this bottle Imp & see if the air is not clearer & purer.’6 In an undated note which described a meeting unrecorded in his appointments book, Beaverbrook wrote: ‘I saw Churchill in the morning of May 9th 1940.7 I asked – do you intend to serve under Halifax. He answered – I will serve under any Minister capable of prosecuting the War.’ His answer allegedly disappointed Beaverbrook, but Churchill appeared immoveable in his loyalty. ‘He would not stake his own claim.’8

  Moments after Beaverbrook left the Admiralty – he would be back twice the following day – another of Clementine’s bêtes noires arrived, Brendan Bracken, whom she regarded as an ‘outlandish and potentially malign influence’ on her husband.9 Possibly at this meeting, if not in a previous conversation in the early hours, Bracken made his celebrated recommendation to Churchill not to answer should Chamberlain summon him to No. 10 to ask if he would consent to serve under Halifax. After ‘much argument’, apparently, Churchill promised to remain silent.10 They then discussed a theoretical Churchill Cabinet. On an envelope under the heading ‘Humble suggestions’, Bracken wrote out the names of Chamberlain, Attlee, Wood, Halifax and Lloyd George, but not, interestingly, Eden.11

  Churchill’s recall of these hours was conveniently porous. ‘I do not remember exactly how things happened during the morning of May 9.’12 Yet rather than helplessly letting ‘events unfold’, as he maintained in The Gathering Storm, Churchill played a more active role in exploiting Chamberlain’s vulnerability than he was prepared to admit in his memoirs. At the ‘very summit’ of the crisis, he could be observed in the Commons smoking room, ‘waving a gigantic cigar, sipping his ginger ale, and reducing two Labour back-benchers to delighted paroxysms of laughter’.13 He had cause to be cheerful. By midday, Churchill had detected the same reversal in the currents bearing Halifax to power as had Violet Bonham Carter, who wrote him a note of support. ‘There is a great tide flowing which you can direct.’14 That Churchill was doing so already is suggested by a remark that he is reported to have made to Clement Davies before attending the 11.45 a.m. War Cabinet in Chamberlain’s room at the Commons. Churchill spotted Davies, who was preparing to move an amendment against the adjournment motion, and he crossed the floor of the House and said to him: ‘It can only be a question of hours and I have taken the necessary dispositions.’15

  Meanwhile, events were unfolding across the Channel. The Chiefs of Staff were now apprehensive of ‘a general attack in the near future’, though the head of Intelligence downplayed the overnight rumours, which had since proved false, about German paratroopers having seized Rotterdam: he advanced Hungary as Hitler’s likeliest next target.16 Churchill reassured the War Cabinet that should Germany invade Holland, then the Royal Navy was ready, and he described the naval movements which he had ordered.

  Still the Cabinet’s ‘heavy business’ on 9 May concerned Norway.17 Churchill confirmed that Colonel Gubbins had landed at midnight at Mosjoën with two Commando groups armed with explosives, and with orders to blow up bridges and defiles north of Namsos. And he obtained Cabinet consent to warn local authorities in Britain about ‘the type of danger to be expected’ following the failure of the military expedition.18

  The flattened towns of Åndalsnes, Namsos and Steinkjer were graphic reminders of the fate that awaited English villages and homes if Hitler – ‘that drivelling Corporal’ – was not stopped there and then.19 For Churchill, the key to Hitler’s defeat lay, as it had since September, in Narvik.

  Stiff bombing had again postponed Allied plans to seize the ore-town. Ironside wrote in his diary: ‘Narvik goes none too well.20 Cork has wired that all the military officers have advised against a direct landing.’ Despite the Norwegian Defence Minister’s promise of a functioning runway, Admiral Cork had visited the local air strip and reported that it could not be used for nine days, being under a foot of ice ‘of iron consistency’ that ‘would need a lot of men to shift’.21 Four of the eight A.A. guns which had reached Cork on 6 May would not be ready for three more days ‘on account of bad roads’. Cork was desperate for Hurricanes, ‘as these were the only aircraft capable of dealing with Heinkels’.22 There was no disguising the shambles, which Cork would not be allowed to write about in his memoirs, and so condensed into a single line. ‘I formed the opinion that the position in Norway had never been really understood.’23

  The War Cabinet over, Churchill returned to the Admiralty. In contrast to the frozen gridlock in Narvik, Westminster was in full spate. That the tide might be flowing at last in Churchill’s direction was confirmed by a member of Chamberlain’s innermost court who arrived early for lunch bearing news of the strictest confidentiality from inside No. 10.

  Kingsley Wood was the spruce, plump solicitor son of a Wesleyan minister from Hull. He was short, bespectacled, with a squeaky voice, and a bland, cherubic smile that misled others into underestimating his ambitions. An owl. An elderly choirboy. ‘A chicken-hearted little mutton-head.’24 Not one other Minister saw in Wood the potential to be a national leader – save for Neville Chamberlain.

  Lord Privy Seal since 2 April, the former Air Minister was known to be ‘Chamberlain’s man’, with his colours pinned visibly to the Prime Minister’s mast. For sixteen years, Wood had endlessly jumped up and down whenever he saw his master, whose Parliamentary Private Secretary he had been, performing the same service of obsequious adulation and unquestioning loyalty as Bracken performed for Churchill – it was Wood who had visited Chamberlain on 26 April to warn him of the threat posed by his disaffected First Lord. Wood walked in St James’s Park with Chamberlain most mornings, and there was little on which the Prime Minister did not feel able to consult him. As Churchill saw it: ‘They had long worked together in complete confidence.’25 When judging Wood’s value to the Prime Minister, Chamberlain’s biographer Derek Walker-Smith wrote that Kingsley Wood had ‘the qualities of accessibility and bonhomie to a degree which Mr Chamberlain never possesses’.26 Chamberlain rewarded him with the Air Ministry and, as previously mentioned, told Chips Channon shortly after the outbreak of war
that he intended to make Wood the next Prime Minister; Halifax would only be ‘a stop-gap’.

  Then, in January, Wood’s unswerving loyalty to Chamberlain suffered a jolt when Hore-Belisha was fired. A shocked Wood had dashed after him, saying in his high-pitched voice: ‘What strikes me is if this can happen to you it can happen to me.’27 Hore-Belisha’s reply: ‘Precisely, Kingsley, that is the right philosophy.’

  Although a wizard at memos, ‘colourful Kingsley Wood’, as Evelyn Waugh crushingly called him in Scoop, was soon out of his depth as Air Minister – just as Churchill predicted he would be: he ‘does not know a Lieutenant General from a Whitehead torpedo’.28, 29 A politician whose favourite subjects were insurance and housing, it had been Wood’s idea to bombard Germany with up to twelve million leaflets – which were full of spelling mistakes and printed in an obsolete Gothic type.fn1 30 The failure of these ‘truth raids’, as Wood called them, was piled at his door. So, too, was the ‘awful’ rate of air production. At the end of April an overworked Wood confessed to John Reith that there was a demand for his dismissal on the grounds of ‘general incompetence’.31

  Cadogan met Wood on 2 May, the day that Chamberlain announced the evacuation from Namsos, and observed that ‘he has the air, now, of a dog that has stolen the ham off the sideboard’.32 On the same day, unknown to Cadogan, Wood had a lunch meeting alone with Churchill, having also lunched with him (as Clementine wrote in her appointments book) on 24 and 26 April. According to Violet Bonham Carter, Wood was ‘one of those who before the change of Govt.33 used to come to W. to say he thought things “cldn’t go on like this”’. This may explain Wood’s inclusion on Bracken’s list of Churchill’s future Ministers.

  In the hours after the Norway Debate, Times journalist Colin Coote formed the clear impression that Kingsley Wood was moving away from adulation of his former idol. ‘He was an extremely barometrical politician.’34 In 1925, Coote had written of him: ‘Kingsley could/If he would/But if he shouldn’t/Kingsley wouldn’t.’35 Before the division, Wood was one of those who were convinced that Chamberlain would have to resign unless he had a majority of 100. The government’s slenderer figure of 81 prepared the way for Wood’s next move. On the morning of 9 May, Wood learned, probably from a distraught Sam Hoare, that Chamberlain was busily offering Wood’s head on a crowded platter to Attlee and Greenwood. Recalling Hore-Belisha’s peremptory dismissal, and recognising that power was fast draining away from Chamberlain, Wood decided to jump ship, or, in Leo Amery’s image from the Boer War, change donkeys mid-stream.