It rallied the Prime Minister to know that he had behind him one of Churchill’s best and oldest friends, plus ‘a million Liberals up and down the country’.33 Sinclair’s backing set the seal on Chamberlain’s decision to carry on: it returned him into thinking that he was still ‘the best P.M. in sight’, which was what Cadogan and many in Whitehall and Westminster continued to believe.34 As Colville saw it, and doubtless communicated to Chamberlain: ‘The fundamental difficulty is that no alternative Prime Minister seems to be available.’35 Wallace was another loyalist who regarded Neville Chamberlain as Chamberlain at that moment perceived himself. ‘The people who know anything of the inside working of the Government machine are unanimous in thinking that he is the best man for the job of Prime Minister.’36 The Information Minister had pedalled the same tune. Chamberlain wrote to Hilda: ‘Reith tells me that my prestige with the chfs of staff is “tremendous” & and that they say I am “the one man whose judgement they trust.”’37 Even at this late hour, Chamberlain remained ‘hard to dead’ and powerfully vulnerable to the myth of his indispensability which Sinclair’s message of solidarity had served to reaffirm.
Eager to bring in Labour as well, Sinclair visited Clement Attlee at his room in the Commons to suggest to him ‘that in view of the morning’s events it might, after all, be desirable for Chamberlain to remain Prime Minister for a time’.38 At more or less the same moment, a resurgent Chamberlain appealed to Attlee to ask whether, pending an answer to his two questions, Attlee would ‘send a message saying that the Labour Party supported the Government at this grave crisis of the war’.39
How Attlee responded to Chamberlain’s approach is uncertain. How Chamberlain understood him to have responded dictated the Prime Minister’s actions over the next hours.
Years later, Attlee insisted that he had had no personal communication with Chamberlain before he left for Bournemouth on the 11.34 a.m. train. But this flies in the face of what Chamberlain told Anthony Eden that morning, and which Eden jotted down in his diary: the Prime Minister said ‘that new attack must cause hold-up, only temporary.40 He had communicated with Attlee in this sense, who had accepted. He had asked Attlee to put out notice which would include support of Government pro tem.’
Attlee’s denial that he had been in touch with Chamberlain also contradicts what Chamberlain told John Reith at 11.15 a.m. Chamberlain had asked to see Reith, who was about to attend his first War Cabinet as Information Minister. Reith found the Prime Minister ‘in quite good form’, as though rejuvenated by the backing that he had gained, or imagined that he had gained, first from the Liberal and now from the Labour leaders.41 According to Reith’s diary, Chamberlain had already met with Attlee and Greenwood: ‘he had seen them this morning again after the Low Countries news’, and Reith ‘understood quite clearly that they had agreed to defer the political crisis and support the government in view of the other crisis’.
Did Chamberlain make up this conversation with Attlee? It seems unlikely. Or did Attlee forget when he told Leo Amery in November 1954 that ‘he had no direct communication one way or another with Neville that morning’? Possibly.42 In the mayhem of that day, Horace Wilson recalled how ‘many messages came into No. 10 and many things were happening’.43 Cadogan’s diary alludes to the floundering chaos in which everyone had to operate. ‘Confused news,’ Cadogan wrote.44 ‘It is difficult to know what to believe.’
Possible, too, is that Reith may have misunderstood the nature of Chamberlain’s contact with Attlee, less likely a face-to-face interview at this moment than a telephone call – which is how Leo Amery remembered it. Amery was told at the time by Clement Davies that ‘before the Labour leaders went down to Bournemouth, Neville rang up Attlee and suggested that the German attack had changed the whole situation, presuming that he would continue in office at any rate for the time being.45 Attlee replied “Not at all” and that he had better make way as quickly as possible.’ Again, this response of a bold, decisive Attlee echoes rather too comfortably what Davies may have been craving to hear. An unpublished manuscript written by someone in touch with Davies at this pivotal moment hints at a more plausible, less clear-cut reaction from Attlee, as if he had reverted to his hesitant position of the previous afternoon. ‘After the invasion of Holland and Belgium, Attlee had wavered considerably and had expressed the view that now bullets were flying they should not change horses in midstream.’46 Were Attlee to have shared this view with a more bullish Labour frontbencher like, say, Hugh Dalton, after Chamberlain and Sinclair had got hold of Attlee that morning, then the chances are that Dalton would have talked the Labour leader out of it. This is what may have happened.
The most likely scenario is that Chamberlain – or Horace Wilson – did speak to a vacillating Attlee by telephone, and believed that he had extracted a promise of sorts from him, exactly as Chamberlain reported to Reith. When challenged by Amery in 1954, Reith admitted that his diary was ‘possibly dictated two or three days later’, but he reiterated that ‘Chamberlain told me he had understood “quite clearly” that Attlee and Greenwood had “agreed” to defer the political crisis.’47
In the quiet of the Cabinet Room, fortified by this knowledge, Chamberlain went on to summarise to Reith his position, as he saw it, since the Norway Debate. ‘He could put out of his mind what had happened in the last two or three days.48 Sinclair, he said, had apologised; he had no feelings against Attlee; Lloyd George and he would never be friendly. He did not refer to Amery or any of the other Conservatives who had attacked him … he was ready for action if encouraged and authorised to act.’ A measure of Chamberlain’s renewed confidence was his instruction to Reith that he had made up his mind for Reith to attend all Cabinet meetings ‘beginning with the one about to assemble’. This was not the action of a leader who had decided to surrender his seals.
Chamberlain had already begun spreading the news through the Whips’ Office that he considered it his duty to remain in office, and there would be no change for the moment. Horace Wilson felt secure enough to make the unambiguous claim that Labour was prepared now to serve under Chamberlain, giving the following alert to Euan Wallace and other Junior Ministers: ‘An announcement would shortly be made both by Labour and Opposition Liberals that in view of the very critical situation they intended to support whatever measure the Government thought necessary to deal with it.’49
Yet Labour’s support when eventually it came was the thinnest of gruels.
The boundlessly energetic Hugh Dalton, one of the party’s ‘tough guys’ as Attlee called him, was charged with framing a reply to Chamberlain’s request for Labour’s support.50 Dalton accordingly drafted and issued a message to which Attlee and Greenwood put their names. The statement arrived on a piece of ticker-tape in the middle of the second War Cabinet, which had begun at 11.30 a.m.
The tape was handed to Horace Wilson – who, Eden observed, ‘was specially indignant’ – and then passed over the table to Reith, who recalled that ‘both Chamberlain and Wilson were surprised by what the tape message said’.51, 52, 53 It was not the strong reinforcement that they had hoped for. The Prime Minister and his closest adviser read: ‘The Labour Party, in view of the latest series of abominable aggressions by Hitler while firmly convinced that a drastic reconstruction of the Government is vital and urgent in order to win the war, reaffirms its determination to do its utmost to achieve victory. It calls on all its members to devote all their energies to this end.’ This vague bromide, wrote Reith, seemed ‘to leave things just as they were before the war blew up’.54
Outside, the sun was nearing its zenith. The second meeting of the War Cabinet lasted barely thirty minutes. It exposed the switching fortunes of Chamberlain and his First Lord, who, whatever he may have said to Randolph Churchill earlier, was already sizing up the Prime Minister’s armchair.
An hour before, Churchill had summoned Admiral Keyes to his office. Keyes wore his uniform and carried a small suitcase. Churchill had, at last, an important task for the H
ero of Zeebrugge. Aware that Keyes was a personal friend of the Belgian Royal Family, he was sending him to Brussels to act as a liaison officer between King Leopold and London.
The Keyes mission was not the only indication that Churchill was flexing muscles in areas where he was not yet strictly entitled to wander. A huffy John Simon had learned in the course of the morning that ‘despite the attacks in Flanders, Churchill was pressing for early changes in the Government’.55 When Simon complained of this to Maurice Hankey shortly before the 11.30 a.m. War Cabinet, Hankey revealed the extent to which Chamberlain’s grip on his government, tight for so long, was loosening. He remarked in a quiet, firm voice: ‘Personally, I think that if there are to be changes, the sooner they are made the better.’56
Even before the War Cabinet got under way, a noticeably exuberant Churchill was observed setting the agenda. He had asked his pet scientist Frederick Lindemann to set up a rocket-shaped contrivance on a table in the window of the Cabinet Room nearest to the secretaries’ office. Churchill was eager for ‘the Prof’ to demonstrate his latest invention, an anti-aircraft homing fuse. Ironside stood in silent fury as Churchill promised that ‘it wouldn’t take a minute.57 And then we had a description of what it was.’ Ironside turned to Reith, bristling. ‘Do they think this is the time for showing off toys?’
Halifax appeared, after taking a walk around St James’s Park with his wife and dachshund.58 Then the Prime Minister walked in, and the War Cabinet began. Halifax recalled that ‘the information was rather confused, but the Dutch seemed to be acting with vigour and dealing with German parachutists’.59
Chamberlain was telling Ministers what had happened on the Home Front when Attlee’s ticker-tape message arrived.
Labour’s tepid expression of support was the cue for Chamberlain to make a statement about his intention not to resign. Halifax wrote in his diary: ‘The P.M. told the Cabinet … that he thought it would all have to wait over till the war situation was calmer.’ For a moment no one reacted.
A surprised Eden glanced at the faces of the other Ministers. They were equally nonplussed, he could tell, by Chamberlain’s announcement. ‘This impressed many present with difficulty of prolonged delay, specially as conditions for change might become more rather than less difficult.60 For P.M. personally there was also risk to personal position if appearance of clinging on were given.’ Yet if this was the critical opinion of a majority around the table, ‘no one expressed it’. The only person to speak up, and in favour of Chamberlain, was Samuel Hoare, who confided to his diary that Halifax was ‘quite heartless’ by not publicly siding with the Prime Minister.61
But not so heartless as Kingsley Wood.
Few in the room were aware that Chamberlain’s former protégé had gone over to Churchill’s side the day before. Nor that Wood had been to see Chamberlain earlier that morning, and begged him to stand down. The Lord Privy Seal was reacting to a rumour that Chamberlain had decided to stay on. When Chamberlain confirmed this to be true, Wood said to him, in a remark which Horace Wilson considered treacherous, that ‘on the contrary, the new crisis made it all the more necessary to have a National Government which alone could confront it’.62 To have a Minister tell him this who had slavishly danced to his tunes for sixteen years would have been a disappointment – one commentator quipped that it ‘must have felt like being bitten by a gramophone!’ Chamberlain was constructed of tough fibre, however.63 He told Wood that he accepted his view, but appears not to have listened to him.
Frustrated and resentful, Wood made a bee-line for the Admiralty to blurt out – for the second time in twenty-four hours – the gist of their private conversation to Churchill, revealing how the Prime Minister ‘was inclined to feel that the great battle which had broken upon us made it necessary for him to remain at his post’, and how Wood had told Chamberlain that he could not go on.64
How long did Chamberlain intend to continue in situ? Halifax confessed to having no idea. Chamberlain had assured Eden that the hold-up was only temporary. Then Eden heard a report ‘that all changes postponed; it seemed for some time’.65 History was galloping by at a pace so frenetic that no one could be certain.
After wiring Labour’s non-committal message to Downing Street, Attlee decided to press on to the Labour conference in Bournemouth. If he remained in London, he risked being snatched like Sinclair into Chamberlain’s agenda. Attlee shared a taxi with Dalton to Waterloo station. During the short journey, Attlee ‘with rather an engaging smile’ commended Dalton for the toughness with which he had deflected Chamberlain’s appeal.66
Herbert Morrison saw them off. Morrison’s responsibilities as head both of the London County Council and Anti-Aircraft Defence obliged him to stay in London in the event of a German air raid. It would look bad if he was down at Bournemouth when the first bombs fell, he said.
The Labour frontbencher A. V. Alexander had earlier telephoned from Manchester to suggest that Parliament ought to cancel the Whitsun recess and meet. Dalton opposed the idea. It would present Chamberlain’s cheerleaders with the opportunity to keep the Old Man in power.
Even as Attlee, Dalton and Greenwood travelled by rail to Bournemouth, the news was ebbing out that there was to be no reconstruction of the government. Paul Emrys-Evans was walking down St James’s Street after a noon meeting of the Watching Committee when he saw Brendan Bracken stepping into a taxi, and jumped in after him. ‘He said things were not going well and it all depended on Labour as Neville was making a great effort to stay.’67 A seething Bracken had already telephoned Harold Macmillan at his publishing firm, telling him: ‘It’s like trying to get a limpet off a corpse.’68
The taxi dropped off Emrys-Evans at the Travellers Club where he had arranged to meet Harold Nicolson and Richard Law for a pre-prandial drink. ‘Saw Alec Dunglass there.69 He said that Winston, Halifax and Neville were working closely together, and that the formation of a new Government might be postponed.’ Nicolson recorded the loyal Dunglass’s conviction that this triumvirate was needed ‘to carry us over these first anxious hours’ and that ‘the actual danger of the moment really makes it impossible for the Government to fall’.70
In a depressed mood, Nicolson and his friends dispersed for lunch.
Contemplating the situation from his office at The Times, Geoffrey Dawson believed on 10 May that Great Britain faced probably the greatest danger which had confronted it since 1066. Yet incredibly on that day no one felt it necessary to work through the lunch hour. Emrys-Evans and Law lunched at Jules, Nicolson at the Beefsteak, Dunglass at the Travellers, Cadogan at home, Churchill at the Admiralty with Beaverbrook (who had replaced Eden as his confidant), and Halifax and Chamberlain at the Dorchester – at a luncheon hosted by Halifax for the Prime Minister to meet Princess Olga of Yugoslavia. Chamberlain, according to Olga, was ‘calm and charming and showed little effects of the battle that has been raging about him’.71
At some point during the meal the Prime Minister drew his Foreign Secretary aside to comment briefly about his earlier statement to the War Cabinet. Halifax had a lucid memory of Chamberlain saying ‘that he had a feeling that Winston did not approve of the delay, and left me guessing as to what he meant to do’.72
All seemed to hang on a telephone call from Bournemouth. Halifax understood that Chamberlain would not take ‘the final decision before he heard the Labour answer’.73
Adverts for the ten-day Whitsun break promised an ample ration of sunshine at Bournemouth ‘and just about everything else for the enjoyment of a well-earned holiday. Make Bournemouth your permanent residence!’
On the terrace in front of the crowded Highcliffe Hotel, Labour delegates sat in the sun, ‘fat gents in black coats all talking very loud’.74 A lot of beer was being drunk. Along the seafront towards the Pavilion gardens a surprising amount of German could be heard, spoken by prosperous-looking refugee families. Outside the Pavilion, where the orchestra played Sibelius’s ‘Valse Triste’, a boy sold the Daily Worker, as Giles Romilly had
done in the East End before he went to Spain. The paper had gone to bed too early to carry the news that the Whitsun holiday had been cancelled for civil servants, and that it was the duty of everyone to stay at work ‘where practicable’.
In the lounge of the Highcliffe Hotel, groups of men and women wearing hats and suits gathered around trays of tea, talking, or listening to the wireless which was switched on at all the news times. People leant forward in their chairs in a tense attitude. Even though the wireless was very loud, some delegates huddled up close to it. One young woman absorbing the scene was the reporter Zita Crossman. ‘People smoke a lot and the great thing seems to be to avoid anybody’s eye … The word “parachutist” was frequently heard.’75 German planes were said to be bombing Canterbury.
Crossman observed the bald, imposing figure of Hugh Dalton walk past, looking strung-up. ‘There was a general feeling of Big Things are being decided as we saw members of the National Executive rushing to the telephones and having tremendous urgent confabs with each other.’76 At one point, Crossman peered through a basement window and saw Labour’s National Executive sitting – ‘about 40 of them it seemed. All very solemn. Someone scowled at us for looking.’
In this stuffy underground hotel room, shortly after 3.30 p.m. – at a moment, Arthur Greenwood wrote in an unpublished memoir, ‘when the grim thunder of guns had come near enough to England to be heard sounding inland across Essex and Kent’ – the fate of Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill, of England too, was determined.77
Ever since the departure of the 11.34 a.m. train for Bournemouth, Clement Davies had been on the telephone in Boothby’s flat in Pall Mall, trying to reach Attlee. Davies was frantic to know what substance there was to Horace Wilson’s story, now being excitedly repeated in the Reform Club opposite, that the Labour leaders had agreed to serve under Chamberlain. After dialling fruitlessly for two hours, Davies, who had not slept for three nights, managed to catch Greenwood at the Highcliffe Hotel soon after his arrival there with Attlee and Dalton. Livid, Greenwood assured Davies that the report contained not a word of truth. Davies at once telephoned the press agencies and Reuters, telling them this.
Six Minutes in May Page 44