“MG model M—gift of Morris, don’t you know.”
It only reminded Jennie of the 50,000 pounds the owner of Morris Motors had given Mosley to start his new party in the winter. Money that was evidently gone by the time the palace began using Jennie to fund its by-election campaign. She shivered and Oswald, noticing, put his arm over her shoulders and drew her to his warmth.
Jennie shook her head and moved away. “I’m alright.”
Mosley seemed to understand. He reached behind her. “There’s a blanket in the boot.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Once they were out of London, the roadster moved at speed and the noise in the open car was too great for conversation. Jennie was glad. She didn’t want to make conversation with Mosley and she needed time to think through what she was to say to Lloyd George.
A large and friendly Saint Bernard greeted them at the door when the butler opened it.
“I’m to take you in directly, sir.”
He took their flat caps with the ceremony due to opera hats, hanging them at a coat tree. It was near ten in the evening but the old man was still dressed in a light tweed Norfolk jacket, wearing walking boots, muddy enough to signal that, despite his sixty-five years, Lloyd George was still strong and active. It was widely known that he’d been in hospital for some surgery only the week before. His visitors were to understand he was still vigorous.
The accent had remained unashamedly Welsh. “Well, Mosley, you didn’t say you’d be bringing anyone with you.” He turned to Jennie. “I recognise you, you’re MP for…” He thought a moment. “Glasgow East? No. I err…it’s North Lanark. Miss Lee, isn’t it?”
Jennie couldn’t help beaming. “Yes, indeed sir.”
“Come sit by me, Miss Lee.”
He patted the chesterfield with a grin Jennie recognised as unreservedly lascivious. Lloyd George evidently had no qualms about competing with Mosley for her attentions, as many of them as he could secure. Not for nothing was he called the Old Goat and he was hiding nothing of his reputation. He looked back at Mosley.
“Well, Tom, no beating round the bush. What brings you here?”
Would Mosley cede to Jennie or would he pretend the mission was his, Jennie wondered. He surprised her.
“Actually David, I’m rather the chauffeur for Miss Lee, who has startling information and, I believe, a proposal.”
Now, will the former prime minister listen to a slip of a girl? She cleared her throat and began. “The King has interfered with the constitutional process and convinced MacDonald to do a bunk.”
She stopped to gauge the effect. Lloyd George blinked twice, suggesting it was his eyes he didn’t believe and not his ears. She rose from the chesterfield, looked down into Lloyd George’s quizzical face and went on with heat.
“Tomorrow, he’s going to obtain his cabinet’s resignations, resign himself and then be asked by the King to form a new government with the Tories and any other rats he can induce to desert Labour. King’s organised it with Stanley Baldwin. He’s conspired with Liberals too, like Samuel.”
Herbert Samuel was officially deputy leader of the Liberal Party. He had been an ally of Lloyd George’s before the Great War, but was now on the party’s right wing. As she spoke, her anger rose, making Jennie’s voice quaver.
“I can see why you’d be angry, Miss Lee. But calm down. Please tell me how you know all this. I don’t doubt your word, but your sources will affect how we proceed.”
Jennie relaxed slightly and sat down again. He’s going to take me seriously. She looked towards Mosley, who took her cue.
“Actually David, she had it all from Elizabeth, Duchess of York.”
“Anything in writing?”
Was he suspicious, Jennie wondered? Before she could answer, Mosley spoke again.
“Miss Lee has been a regular conduit between me and the palace. She—”
“I don’t have any of that in writing,” Jennie interrupted.
As much for her own sake, Jennie had to prevent Mosley from saying more about what she’d been doing.
“It all happened today. But I have a file of my own private correspondence with the Duchess that goes back almost fifteen years.”
“So, I’m to believe you then.” He sighed.
“’Fraid so.” She smiled.
“I suppose you’ve come to me with this information because you want me to do something?”
“Don’t you…want to do something?”
Was she really going to have to convince him?
Mosley spoke. “It’s the most blatant violation of the constitution in a hundred years. Someone’s got to put a stop to it.”
“What do you want of me?” There was annoyance on his face. “Am I to tear the mask of disinterested-monarch-above-politics from the King? Not worth it!”
He shook his head emphatically.
Jennie knew what would move him. Power. Why doesn’t Mosley know?
“No,” she said. “That’s not it, sir. We want you to take back your place on the government front bench. Regain the premiership.”
Lloyd George’s eyebrows rose. “How so?”
“The maths is simple, sir.” Jennie looked back at Mosley. Couldn’t he say anything? “Labour have 280 seats in the house. Tom here has half a dozen in his New Party and still commands a lot of support amongst Labour MPs. You’ve got fifty-nine Liberals. Add them up and it’s a workable majority in the House.” She paused for the effect and then drove the argument home. “It’s more than enough to enact the policy you and Tom have both been advocating in the Commons for almost two years now.”
Lloyd George looked across to Mosley. “Is this girl talking rot, Tom?”
“Don’t think so myself, or I wouldn’t be here. Look, if you’ll throw in with the plan, my people will certainly back it. We’ve nothing to lose.”
Lloyd George was now pulling at his moustache, running his mind over the initial possibilities. “But will Labour stand still for an alliance with me?”
The words brought a surge of relief to Jennie. She’d landed him. Lloyd George was already thinking about things in the first person. She’d baited her hook with power and brought home the big fish.
“They’ve no alternative.” On this matter Jennie felt confident. “Half the cabinet refuse to make any concession to the May Committee and Wall Street. MacDonald will carry no one along with his betrayal, except perhaps Snowden.”
Lloyd George interrupted. “It was probably Snowden’s gambit to begin with.”
Jennie smiled. Right you are! “The ILP are against cuts. The Trades Unions have refused to accept them. Bevin hates MacDonald anyway.”
Lloyd George snorted. “Nye Bevan, that popinjay upstart? He doesn’t carry many people with him.”
Jennie expected the mistake. Many made it.
“No, not Nye Bevan, Ernest Bevin—IN, not AN, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. Went along to cabinet yesterday himself to warn them off cutting the unemployment benefit.”
Mosley brightened. “How do you know, Jennie?”
“Cabinet leak.” Jennie was bluffing, but her political instincts told her it ought to be true.
Lloyd George slapped his two hands on his thighs.
“Very well. We might have a workable majority in the house. But how do we put a stop to MacDonald’s plot?”
Jennie added, “And the King’s.” If her plan was to work, she had to keep focus on the Palace. “Seems to me there’s only one chance. And it’s very much up to you, sir.” She looked at Lloyd George with all the gravity she could muster. “You’ve got to go to the Speaker, sir. And demand he recall parliament.”
The name came to Lloyd George straightaway. “Captain Fitzroy? That old stick.”
Edward Fitzroy had been deputy speaker and then speaker of the House of Commons for a half dozen years. Before that, he’d spent twenty years keeping out of debates on any subject bar agriculture and violence in the Ireland.
“Haven’t talked to
him for years.”
Did she dare tell the former prime minister what to do?
“You must see him and demand parliament be recalled. Tell him that between you, Tom here and Labour, you’ll have a majority in the Commons and the right to try to form a government!”
Lloyd George was thinking. “What if MacDonald asks for a dissolution and the King grants it?”
“That’s why you have to go to the Speaker tomorrow. Tell him about the King’s interference.”
Mosley added, “Appeal to his sense of fair play. We’ve got to be given a chance.”
“It’s not sport, old man,” Lloyd George observed. “But it is an affront to the House. If I know the Speaker, he won’t wear it, even if he is an old Tory!” Egoism now took hold of Lloyd George. “Not if I put it to him that way.”
“You have another threat, sir.” Jennie spoke calmly. “If the King’s interference comes out, the monarchy will be undermined badly.”
Mosley now added, “The Duke of York will be ruined...the way his wife’s been leaking to Jennie here. And with that pathetic Prince of Wales, the King is relying on the Duke. He needs him.” Jennie couldn’t help smiling. You’re shameless, Mosley. It’s you who’ve put the Duke in this position, by taking his money for your schemes.
Lloyd George suddenly looked doubtful. “What are you talking about, Mosley?”
“Tell him the rest, Jennie.”
“Very well.” She sighed. Then for three minutes she detailed what the Duchess had told her about the King’s oldest and youngest sons.
Lloyd George evidently knew nothing of this palace gossip. “You can’t expect me to retail all this tittle-tattle to the speaker?”
Mosley spoke. “Not unless you need to. It should be enough for him to know the King is letting someone else look at the boxes. That’s breach of trust enough. Just asking Wigram if it’s true will get right back to the King.”
Jennie was perplexed. “Wigram?”
Lloyd George responded. “King’s private secretary. Old school. Would be mortified if it came out about the boxes, dereliction of his duty.” He thought for a moment. “Wigram’s an old friend of the Speaker...in the Guards together before the Great War. Would make it easier to get the King to climb down if the Speaker can get Wigram on side.”
Jennie whispered to herself, Old boys’ club.
Aloud she said, “Will you approach the Speaker, sir?”
“I bloody well will.” Lloyd George rose. “Mine will be the first voice he hears tomorrow morning, bright and early. Hold yourselves in readiness.”
It was their signal to leave.
* * *
Captain the Right Honourable Edward Algernon FitzRoy was as old a man as Lloyd George. Thirty years now he’d been a member of the House of Commons, never a minister, almost invisible on the Conservative back benches, absent for years at the front during the Great War. For the last half dozen years, he’d been neutered, first as deputy speaker and now as speaker of the House. FitzRoy preferred to think of himself as permanently aloof from party politics. Others thought that ‘aloof’ did not describe the man as well as dour, unbending, humourless. All agreed, he was perfect for the Speakership!
Lloyd George was not looking forward to his interview with FitzRoy. There would be no small talk, nothing to warm the chill bounds of formality that had fated FitzRoy to the role of a sterile fixture in Westminster. One could only trade on his loyalty to the House of Commons and the unwritten constitution of the realm.
It had taken Lloyd George but little effort to track the Speaker down that morning. He was in London. Why, Lloyd George wondered, was he there three weeks after the House had risen for the summer? Had he been recalled from his estate in Northamptonshire? A meeting in the Speaker’s office in the House was out of the question. Despite the need for discretion, to which the former prime minister had alluded, FitzRoy evidently wouldn’t receive him at home. Not a good omen. Instead he suggested Whites in St. James’s. When he suggested they meet there, did FitzRoy recall voting against Lloyd George’s membership in the club twenty-five years before? The black ball still rankled the former PM.
Lloyd George agreed and motored up to town straight away. It was just before noon when he arrived, but London streets were still somnolent in the summer Monday morning. As the car came round Pall Mall into St James Street, he leaned forward.
“Benson, don’t hang about. Come back in an hour.”
“Very good, sir.”
The car came to a halt, and before the club’s footman could come to the kerb, Lloyd George was out and striding into the hall. He looked at the Commissionaire.
“FitzRoy here?”
“Yes sir. He asked I take you in directly. It’s just in the back, sir. Very private.”
He led his charge through a brace of narrow corridors. This room was very much off the clubman’s beaten path. Just so, won’t do for anyone to take notice of this meeting. Or does he not want to be seen with me? Lloyd George smiled to himself.
The servant knocked twice and withdrew.
At the command, “Come,” Lloyd George entered. At the far side of the small room, overlooking a back garden visible through the mullioned window, sat FitzRoy, dressed formally, folding a copy of The Times. Looking at the attire, Lloyd George thought, I’m one down already. He was dressed in summer weight country tweeds.
They’d known each other slightly for thirty years. For most of those years, Lloyd George had gleamed with a stellar magnitude, while Fitzroy had been burned into a lump of cold charcoal. In the war, FitzRoy had briefly joined a right-wing splinter party in revolt against Lloyd George’s coalition. All sides had later pretended it hadn’t happened, but probably both of them remembered well enough.
Now, the former prime minister had no very clear idea of exactly how to approach the man. No notion of whether FitzRoy would treat him as a statesman or a blackguard. Lloyd George settled into the chair opposite. Only then, in a moment of reflection, did he decide how to proceed.
“Mister Speaker, I come to you as one privy councillor to another.” He tried to gauge the effect. But the other man’s face remained immobile. “On a matter of constitutional urgency.”
He paused again, hoping for an expression at least of interest. Nothing.
“Today the Prime Minister will ask for his cabinet’s resignations, carry them to the King, and be asked by his majesty to form a new government, mainly of members of the current opposition party.”
This was FitzRoy’s party, of course, and one with a profound distrust of Lloyd George, dating to well before his premiership in the Great War.
“MacDonald will carry no one from his own party with him, except his chancellor of the exchequer.”
“Very well. So, MacDonald is going to change sides. What’s it to do with me?”
“The entire business is the result of gross interference in government by the King, conniving together with the opposition. It’s unconstitutional. And you are the only one who can put a stop to it.” Lloyd George’s voice rose at the crescendo of his little speech.
FitzRoy was not moved. He raised his hand. Then in a voice laced with scepticism he asked, “May one know how this intelligence came to you?”
Lloyd George wouldn’t lie unless he had to, but he had no compunction about misleading. “From a member of the royal family.” The suggestion of direct knowledge was unambiguous.
“Which one, if I may ask? The egregious Prince of Wales retailing titbits to his mistresses?”
“No.” He plunged. “From the Duke of York.”
Lloyd George could see the other man was now beginning to believe him.
“Supposing I believed you for a moment, sir, what would you have me do?”
“Recall parliament.”
“Before the Prime Minister asks me to? Why should I do that?”
“To give the House of Commons an opportunity to repudiate MacDonald’s action and show that Liberals and Labour can form a government.”
“Why should I lift a finger to let the socialists continue to misgovern?”
FitzRoy had finally shown his political colours. It was what he was waiting for.
“Because it won’t be a socialist government. It will be a Lloyd George Oswald Mosley government.”
FitzRoy’s torso rose in his chair. He drew his hands from his knees, placed his elbows on the chair arm and brought his fingers together beneath his chin.
After a moment of silence, he asked, “How will that be arranged?”
“Quite simple really. I have fifty-nine MPs. I won’t fall in with Labour unless they choose Mosley as leader. And if you recall the Labour Party conference last year, Mosley carried all before him till the block voting. He has the confidence of the parliamentary party. Between us, we’ll have a solid majority—340 or so—in the House, even if MacDonald takes a half dozen MPs with him.”
There was sarcasm in FitzRoy’s voice as he replied, “So, I am to be a stalwart of democracy, recalling parliament to frustrate the machinations of the King?” He shook his head. “You can’t expect me to embarrass the monarch.”
“Wrong end of the stick, Mr Speaker.” Lloyd George smiled slightly. “If you act, it needn’t come out that King George interfered.” Was the threat of the public disclosure enough to seal FitzRoy’s agreement? “The King will be grateful to you for protecting the crown.”
Lloyd George rose from his chair with the hope that FitzRoy would see where his interests lay.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Right Honourable Edward Algernon FitzRoy, speaker of the House of Commons, secured his immortality in British political history the next day. The early editions of the London papers had reported the Prime Minister’s interview at Buckingham Palace on the previous evening, the 24th of August. The King had accepted MacDonald’s resignation and that of all his ministers. He had then graciously invited MacDonald to remain as prime minister, forming a National Government of all parties to deal with the economic crisis.
Reading the papers, FitzRoy saw that Lloyd George had been right.
Arriving at the House of Commons, FitzRoy summoned his clerks and ordered the immediate recall of parliament. Then, without further explanation, he left the palace of Westminster and was not to be heard from again for the following seventy-two hours. The next time he was to be seen in public, it was alighting from a train at King’s Cross and hailing a cab to take him to the House for the parliamentary sitting he had ordered.
The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Page 21