Winston's War

by Michael Dobbs

  “Then someone else, perhaps,” Chamberlain had offered mournfully.

  It was gone seven before Churchill and Chamberlain found themselves alone. How rarely, Churchill thought, that they had ever been alone, man to man. “Neville, we must speak. This nonsense about the rifles,” he began, but Chamberlain's hand waved him into silence—no need to explain, no desire for an explanation, either.

  The Prime Minister expressed his sorrow for the confusion: “You must see how this might be made to look, Winston. But I for my part have never had cause to doubt where your loyalties lie.”

  “Neville, something I must ask. All this has been a rude shock. Such an unexpected blow. But still…If events were to conspire to propel my name to the fore once more as your successor, would you stand in my way—refuse to recommend my name to His Majesty?”

  “Why, of course not,” Chamberlain lied. “But I'm afraid the control of events is now out of my hands. The general view is that the Labour Party must be brought in around the Cabinet table and they have already made it clear they will not tolerate me. I fear they will say much the same about you. You gave them such a terrible pasting in the House last night, your mockery is still ringing in their ears.”

  “All that I did, I did in your name, Neville.”

  “And for that you have my undying gratitude. But tonight, Winston, it seems that we shall both be sitting alongside our fathers. Men of broken dreams.”

  In every corner, in every crevice of political life that night, there was conspiracy. At the Carlton Club, at the Beefsteak and Travelers, in both Houses of Parliament, in all the salons and saloons of Westminster, they plotted and argued until it became clear that Chamberlain was already as good as gone. Yet who was to replace him?

  The name of Lloyd George was mentioned in some quarters, but only to be quickly dismissed as too absurdly romantic. In any event he was too old. Some talked, too, of Leo Amery, but only his friends. The clear popular choice was Churchill, the man of the people whose pugnacity had persuaded a nation to fight the war and whose words had given them the will to win it. Yes, Churchill was undoubtedly the people's choice, but it was not the people who would decide. At the end of the matter it would be the voices of no more than a hundred men that would be decisive, men of authority and power—and all of whom, it seemed, had at one time or another been crossed by Winston Churchill.

  The Conservative Party were traditionalists, men who put form before substance. They would not forget that as a young man Churchill had deserted them and joined Lloyd George and his Liberals, and even in his old age he still hadn't lost his passion for showering them in mud.

  Many in the Labour Party, too, remembered the long and tortuous route of Churchill's career. The Home Secretary who had sent in troops to break the General Strike. The Chancellor of the Exchequer who had returned the country to the gold standard and so helped bring hunger to the doorstep of millions. The imperialist, the instinctive parliamentary pugilist. The man who couldn't meet a Socialist without raising his kneecap in welcome. The man they feared. There were those in the Labour Party who loathed the thought of an hereditary aristocrat like Halifax taking the reins, yet on reflection—not all of it sober—many of them concluded it would perhaps be excellent if the Tories had a Prime Minister locked up in the Lords. Yes, let the Tories leap back a hundred years, and leave the future to Socialism.

  Joe Kennedy, too, was part of the piece. He could be seen in his chauffeur-driven car circling Fleet Street with a bottle of iced champagne under his arm, muttering the name of Halifax in every editorial ear. Don't risk Winston, he warned, and don't expect America to pull your fingers out of the fire…

  All these voices were raised for only one purpose—to recommend to His Majesty, King George, someone whom at his pleasure he might ask to become Prime Minister. But, when it came to it, George wasn't very interested in their recommendation. He'd already made up his mind. If his good friend Chamberlain had to lay down the seals of office, then he knew who he wanted to pick them up. His still greater friend, Edward Halifax.

  The King and noble courtier met, by arrangement, that evening in the gardens of Buckingham Palace as Halifax walked on his way back home. No one else to see, entirely private. One friend to another.

  “Edward, I think the time has come.”

  “In all honesty, sir, I seem to be less certain about the matter than almost anyone I speak to.”

  “You are too modest.”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “Then what?”

  “It's simply…I'm not sure I'm up to the task.”

  “What? Of being Prime Minister? A man of your experience?”

  “Oh, being Prime Minister would be a joy, an honor, a task I would embrace with relish, but we are talking of something quite different.”

  “Different?”

  “Being a war leader, sir. I hate war. I don't understand its means and I'm confused by its morality. For all his faults, I believe Winston might be the man.”

  “Because he has no morality whatsoever!”

  “Perhaps. But morally these are the most mean of times. And Winston has a burning desire inside to do the job while I… I burn inside with uncertainty.”

  “Good grief, Edward, you're a man who ruled India as Viceroy. Who's become one of the greatest Foreign Secretaries of all time. Who has my trust and the trust of all decent men. I can think of no one better to lead us through these times.”

  “But even so…”

  “Duty, Edward. We cannot shrug off our duty, no matter how at times we might wish otherwise. Your duty, Edward, is much like mine…” A pause. “Anyway, there are other considerations.”

  “Such as?”

  “How the devil could you tolerate serving under that man?”

  Burgess was beginning to panic. Ever since he had left Mac's chair, he'd spent the hours scurrying around Westminster, lurking in its many corners and listening to the sounds of history being rearranged. Even a deaf man could hear the pieces beginning to fall off the Chamberlain Government, but you needed a keener ear to detect the stirrings of what might replace it. The Whip in Mac's chair had evidently meant it—over his dead body—and everywhere bodies were being piled into the breach to prevent the advance of Winston Churchill. His unsound judgment, his undeniable failures, and above all the fact that he was not “one of us.” Churchill owed most of them nothing. And that's precisely what they feared they would get.

  As the day lengthened and the speculation was reinforced by alcohol and uncertainty, so their insecurities grew more lurid. By early evening, Burgess found himself in the Strangers' Bar listening to a journalist who was proclaiming to all around that Churchill's father hadn't died of syphilis at all but from some inherited condition of madness that had been handed down to his son. It was why all his appetites were indulged to excess—why he drank, why he gambled, why he prowled the Admiralty late at night, dragging the Chiefs of Staff behind him, why his notorious temper was growing ever more corrosive, and why Clemmie had left him. Yes, at this decisive juncture in Churchill's life, even his loyal wife had fled. Where she was, no one seemed to know, and if anyone had heard that her brother-in-law was dying and she had gone to sit by his deathbed, then none cared to say so. They believed such nonsense largely because they wanted to. And because in so much of it there was an acorn of truth. Churchill had never been an easy bedfellow.

  And so Burgess grew ever more alarmed. Events were at the melting point and it seemed that every man's hands were on the bellows other than his own, and he couldn't even get near the action. For the first time in his life he began to envy those friends who'd gone off to fight in the civil war in Spain, even those who'd been buried there. At least they had played their part. But he had been marked out to fight a different war. Not for him the simple fulfillment of picking up a rifle and aiming it at the enemy. His enemies were all around him, right at his elbow, yet all he could do was smile and buy them another bloody drink while they closed in. />
  He didn't know what to do, so with little idea of any purpose had gone in search of Churchill. But Churchill was not to be found—didn't want to be found. The closest Burgess got was to discover Bracken and Boothby on the far reaches of the terrace of the House of Commons where it overlooked the river. The night was chill, lit only by a crescent moon, but they took no notice of the cold. Bracken was even in his shirtsleeves. Both he and Boothby were extraordinarily drunk.

  Bracken was stumbling up and down, shouting at his colleague with a savageness that comes only from alcohol and fear. It was his fault, Bracken was shouting, the most monumental of blunders, the stupidity of Sodom. Boothby didn't demur. He sat at a wooden table with his head bowed, jowls on his waistcoat, moving only to drink. Bracken's arms flailed the night air and at one point it seemed as though he was about to strike the other man, but it was only the prelude to yet another outpouring of Boothby's shortcomings. These were Churchill's men. And they were in despair.

  “I was looking for Mr. Churchill,” Burgess interrupted, moving closer so they could recognize him.

  “So are the hounds of Hell,” Bracken spat.

  “Better you didn't find him,” Boothby added mournfully. “What's happened?”

  “He's happened,” Bracken stormed, waving a fist at Boothby and turning his back on them both. “I've ruined it. Everything,” Boothby was mumbling into his glass.

  “But how?”

  Two dark eyes rose from the alcohol. “That's the point. Buggered if I know. Only did as I was told. But Winston says I've bollocksed everything up. Ruined it. Never known him in such a rage. So violent. Said he was going to take the bloody Mausers and shove every one of 'em up me. Every single one of them. Can't say any more. Mustn't.” The effort seemed to have been too much for him and Boothby returned his attention to his glass.

  “Mausers? I don't understand,” Burgess began, but Bracken was on him.

  “Oh, so you don't understand. Stop the world while we take that one in. Mr. Burgess doesn't understand. Understand? Who the devil are you to understand? Leaping out of shadows—what the hell are you up to, Burgess?”

  “I want to help.”

  “Oh, forgive me. I mistook you for one of those freeloading shits who spend their time attaching themselves to people of importance and sucking them dry. Well, about the only decent thing to have come out of this mess is the fact that you, Mr. Burgess, have been wasting your damned time. You'll get nothing. No one is going to get anything, not Winston, not me, not Boothby here—and you are last on the list. Right at the very bottom.” Bracken's arm swept out dramatically in front of him, intended as a melodramatic gesture of dismissal, but he succeeded only in connecting with a bottle that stood on the parapet. It flew off into the darkness. Moments later, it splashed dully into the river below.

  “I'm sorry you don't like me, Bracken…” Burgess continued. “Funny. I rather enjoy not liking you.”

  “But I do want to help Mr. Churchill. If I can.”

  “And how do you propose to do that? When Chamberlain wants Halifax. When the Whips want Halifax. When practically every spaniel in the Tory Party wants Halifax. When I suspect the blessed King and the bloody Archbishop of Canterbury want Halifax, and when it's a racing certainty that most of Fleet Street want him, too. Oh, but perhaps that doesn't matter any longer, because Mr. Burgess has come to help.”

  “Stop being a prick, Brendan,” Boothby growled. “Not his fault.”

  “And you know what that gormless idiot Chamberlain has done?” Bracken continued, undeterred. “He can't make up his mind what to do—never could. So he's asked the bloody Socialists to decide for him.”

  “What the hell have they got to do with it?”

  “Everything! That cretin in Downing Street has asked the Labour Party to join a coalition and tell him who they'd prefer as his successor. The day after Winston tore them to shreds in the Chamber! Like asking Stalin who should be bloody Pope.” Bracken searched around for his bottle. Only slowly did he remember that it had gone. He picked up Boothby's and splashed what was left of its contents into his own glass, before sending it after the first. “So unless you're a worker of miracles—or at least know who most of the Labour leadership are shagging on the side—there's not much you can do. So, Mr. Burgess, I'd be obliged if you would do what you appear to do best, and bugger off.”

  Burgess turned away—there was no point in lingering. Bracken was beyond him and Boothby seemed to be losing a private battle with coherence. He left them by the river. What was the point? He couldn't work miracles, and didn't know anything of the nocturnal practices of the Labour leadership. But as he walked away, he remembered somebody who might.

  Driberg was in Bournemouth for the Labour Party conference. Burgess even knew which hotel he was staying at. But when he telephoned, Driberg wasn't there. And probably wouldn't be there until breakfast time. The most expensive hotel in the whole of Bournemouth, and he preferred to spend his nights under the bloody pier.

  Bournemouth wasn't the only location where the night was full of activity. On a front that stretched more than two hundred miles, from the Dutch border near the North Sea to the forest of the Ardennes in the south, the mighty divisions of Hitler's Wehrmacht were on the move.

  (Evening Standard, Friday, May 10, 1940)

  NAZIS INVADE HOLLAND, BELGIUM,

  LUXEMBOURG: FRENCH TOWNS BOMBED

  BRITISH TROOPS MARCH: R.A.F. BASES

  IN FRANCE ATTACKED

  Total war burst into the greatest conflagration in history today as Hitler smashed his way into Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and bombed many towns in France. Bombs were also dropped on Switzerland.

  A series of simultaneous air raids was made on points in a ring around Paris. Nancy, Lille, Lyons, Colmar, Pontoise, Luxeuil, Maubeuge, Valenciennes, and Villers-Cotterets were also bombed. Sixteen people were killed at Nancy alone.

  Other reports say that Calais and Dunkirk were attacked. The airport at Lyons was raided for two hours.

  Brussels has been “bombed terrifically,” according to a New York message. Antwerp, too, has been bombed.

  Swarms of warplanes bombed all the Belgian airports and many in Holland. Parachute troops landed at many points. R.A.F. bases in France were also attacked…

  They held the first emergency Cabinet meeting at eight. It was intended to discuss the outbreak of war across a massive front. It was also the meeting at which most of his Cabinet colleagues expected Chamberlain to announce his resignation. But he didn't. Not a mention.

  Neither did he touch on the subject when they met again at eleven-thirty. The discussion was all about the future direction of the war, how they would resist the onslaught of the Hun—until someone, no one was later quite sure who, raised the far more sensitive subject of the future direction of the Government.

  But Chamberlain's plans had changed. As Ball had told him earlier that morning when the first reports of the new German onslaught were coming through, every puff of artillery smoke has a silver lining.

  “Government?” Chamberlain responded stiffly. “I would have thought that such a matter would be the last concern in anyone's mind this morning. The situation seems to me to be clear. Whatever might have been the difficulties occasioned by Wednesday's vote, the German advance has rendered them all irrelevant.” He cleared his throat, betraying his nervousness. “Wednesday was Norway. Today we are dealing with a threat of far greater enormity and much closer to home. My responsibility is to get on with the task of meeting that threat. There's a job to be done, and I intend to get on with it. In doing that I feel sure I shall enjoy the overwhelming sentiment both in Parliament and in the country. And, of course, around this table.”

  He stared at them, trying to catch their eyes, but no one was looking at him, except for Winston, who seemed on the verge of tears. They sat stunned. Taceo consentire—in silence, consent. So, they weren't going to change horses after all, not in the middle of a stampede…

  “Therefore
, gentlemen, if we can turn to the matter in hand.”

  Then someone cleared his throat. Broke that silence. Someone wanted to speak. Suddenly all heads were up, staring. It was Kingsley Wood, the Air Secretary.

  “Before we proceed, Prime Minister, may I impose upon our many years of friendship?”

  Chamberlain nodded his assent. Wood was a party man, a loyalist. No harm in him endorsing the sentiment. Make sure we're all rowing in the same direction. But Wood was a man who had changed—or been changed. He didn't want to row in the same direction as his leader any longer, not after he'd learnt that Chamberlain was about to toss him out of the lifeboat to appease the sharks.

  “As a friend, Prime Minister, may I say…“—he was fiddling with his pen, eyes downcast, like Brutus with his knife—”I disagree. Disagree as a colleague, as a member of your Cabinet, but most of all as someone who respects and admires you beyond measure. The events of this morning only emphasize the need to ensure that the changes in Government which are required are implemented all the more swiftly. This war may go on for years. If now is not the time, when will it be?”

  Suddenly Chamberlain found all their eyes were on him; none were flinching. He had to speak, but for a moment couldn't find his voice. The words, when at last they appeared, had an edge like tearing sandpaper. “Does that reflect the view of you all?” he asked slowly.

  No one spoke. Taceo consentire. The gamble had failed.

  He had known it might. That's why he had another plan.