by Richard Toye
In Ireland there were plenty willing to believe ‘that Mr Churchill hates Ireland and would not be sorry to set the clock back with a strong hand’.70 He himself did not help matters when he stated in the Commons in November that Britain’s inability to make use of ‘the South and West Coasts of Ireland to refuel our flotillas and aircraft and thus protect the trade by which Ireland as well as Great Britain lives’ was ‘a most heavy and grievous burden and one which should never have been placed on our shoulders, broad though they be’.71 These remarks found strong support in the House of Commons and the British press, although this was not unanimous: the National Review thought Churchill was now paying the price for his earlier support of Irish self-government.72 Meanwhile, his comments created a storm in Ireland, and undid some of the positive effects that his famous radio broadcasts had achieved there earlier in the year.73 Sir John Maffey, the UK representative in Dublin, explained them away as ‘typically Churchillian’, telling the Irish that the Dominions Office had not been asked for its opinion beforehand.74 In his memoirs, Churchill acknowledged that Britain ultimately survived without the ports – the importance of which declined after America entered the war – but blamed the lack of them for the loss of ‘Many a ship and many a life’.75 A few months later Anglo-Irish relations were further soured by a proposal to extend conscription to Northern Ireland. The plan was dropped, but not before Churchill had told the Irish High Commissioner, as the latter recorded, that ‘he had drawn the sword and was definitely opposed to us’.76
By the end of 1940 Churchill could breathe a little easier. The Battle of Britain had been won. (As it raged, ‘The P.M. expressed delight at the success of our pilots, but said, “It is terrible – terrible – that the British Empire should have been gambled on this.” ’)77 Abandoning the attempt to achieve air superiority prior to invasion, the Luftwaffe shifted its attention to the bombing of cities. One supposedly humorous German magazine cover showed Churchill looking out over a blitzed landscape and saying ‘Our Empire is so vast, what does it matter if a small island burns down!’78 In spite of the horrors of the Blitz, the British now enjoyed their first taste of success. In December Roosevelt promised Lend-Lease aid to avert UK bankruptcy. At the start of 1941 British forces scored brilliant victories over the Italians in Libya. When Robert Menzies arrived in Britain in February, he found Churchill in vigorous form, denouncing De Valera as ‘a murderer & perjurer’ and confident of victory. ‘Winston is completely certain of America’s full help, of her participation in a Japanese war, and of Roosevelt’s passionate determination to stamp out the Nazi menace from the earth.’79
The Australian premier’s own relationship with Churchill was not an easy one. During the summer of 1940 Menzies wobbled briefly, privately urging a compromise peace before finally pledging to support Britain no matter what the cost.80 That autumn, a raid on Dakar by British and Free French forces was botched. Menzies was not told about the operation until later, even though an Australian cruiser had taken part. He sent Churchill a ‘hectoring’ telegram complaining about the lack of consultation and criticizing the ‘half-hearted’ nature of the attack. Churchill was deeply offended, taking it as a personal assault on his war leadership.81 Once he had calmed down, he welcomed, or so he said, the prospect of a visit by Menzies to London for consultations. Menzies travelled to Britain via Singapore and the Middle East, where he received a rapturous reception from Australian troops. ‘Chips’ Channon MP, meeting him in Cairo, recorded that he was ‘jolly, rubicund, witty, only 46 with a rapier-like intelligence and gifts as a raconteur’.82 Menzies was alarmed at the vulnerability of Singapore, and a key purpose of the trip was to seek assurances about the defence of Australia. But that was not his sole motivation. His United Australia Party was reliant for its survival on the support of two independent MPs, and to leave for an extended period might put his position in danger. All the same, the Anglophile Menzies seems to have been sick of domestic manoeuvrings and eager to make a name for himself at the centre of the Empire.
Before his departure, S. M. Bruce, Canberra’s High Commissioner in London, had given him a warning. Power in London was increasingly concentrated in Churchill’s hands, and although the Prime Minister would treat his Australian counterpart with courtesy, attempts ‘to pin him down to definite discussions of fundamental war policy’ would lead to him becoming ‘discursive and elusive’. Menzies, therefore, would have to choose between forcing ‘a considerable show down’ and leaving Britain at the end of his mission ‘with a sense of frustration’.83 The point was soon proved. Mussolini had invaded Greece the previous October and German intervention now looked imminent too. Would Britain respond to the Greek requests for help? A few days after his arrival, Menzies recorded a ‘Momentous discussion’ with Churchill ‘about [the] defence of Greece, largely with Australian & New Zealand troops’ to be taken from the Middle Eastern theatre.84 The next day he attended a Cabinet meeting which discussed the possibility of a Balkan expedition. Menzies was ‘evidently doubtful, but the general sense’ of the meeting ‘was to go ahead with it’, seemingly as much for moral reasons as strategic ones.85 The final decision was not taken until early March, by which time the military prospects had deteriorated. Eden (now Foreign Secretary), who was in the Middle East, nevertheless concluded an agreement with the Greeks to give them aid, essentially pledging Australasian troops without consulting their governments. Menzies was angry but accepted the position of Churchill (who had doubts of his own) that there was no backing out. The Cabinet requested from Eden a ‘precise military appreciation’ of the chances of success; it didn’t get one, but approved the expedition anyway.86 British ministers had been bounced; so had Menzies. The campaign was a disaster. Not only did the British and Dominion troops have to withdraw from Greece after Hitler attacked in April (11,000 men were lost) but the Middle Eastern front was seriously weakened. With the Germans under Erwin Rommel as a new force in North Africa, the British were swept back to Tobruk.87 Menzies had spoken ‘plain words’ but they had had little effect.88
He had equally little luck in his bid to secure air reinforcements for Australia and Singapore and to get specific commitments about the naval defence of the Far East.89 ‘What irresponsible rubbish these Antipodeans talk!’ was the private response of Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office.90 Convinced he could make a contribution to solving the Irish problem, Menzies visited De Valera in Dublin; he liked ‘Dev’, ‘but thought him and all Irishmen crazy’,91 and the impact of his interference was probably only to annoy Churchill. The Australian’s morale-boosting speeches to the British people were a success, though, and he was a hit with the press, which did no damage to his barrage-balloon-sized ego. He was not without admiration for Churchill, Liquidation writing to his own government that the British Prime Minister combined ‘remarkable fighting and driving qualities with an astonishing mastery of the details of both plans and equipment’.92 Yet he also had serious doubts. He told his diary: ‘The Cabinet is deplorable – dumb men most of whom disagree with Winston but none of whom dare to say so. [. . .] Winston is a dictator; he cannot be overruled, and his colleagues fear him.’93 Visiting Lloyd George at his home in Surrey, Menzies discovered that ‘we had many ideas in common’. Menzies may not have shared – at least not fully – the former Prime Minister’s defeatism and desire for a compromise peace. But the two men could agree that Churchill was a poor strategist, a weak organizer, and that he ‘should be at the helm instead of touring the bombed areas’. They also believed that the War Cabinet ‘must contain a Dominions man, for the Dominions type of mind is essential’.94
There was little doubt in Menzies’s mind that this ‘Dominions man’ ought to be one R. Menzies. After his return to Australia in May, he continued to press the idea, telling his Cabinet, ‘Mr Churchill has no conception of the British Dominions as separate entities. Furthermore, the more distant the problem from the heart of the Empire, the less he thinks of it.’95 The idea of a permanen
t Dominion representative found press support in London, but, as Menzies acknowledged, neither Canada nor South Africa was interested, ‘Smuts going so far as to say [. . .] that we Dominion Prime Ministers should mind our own business and leave Churchill to mind his.’96 Peter Fraser thought the proposal ‘absurd’.97 Churchill himself worked hard to frustrate both it and the proposal for a full-scale Imperial War Cabinet that was being floated concurrently. It has been suggested that, having first made his way into the War Cabinet, Menzies aimed to use his position to seize 10 Downing Street for himself.98 The concrete evidence for this is slight, but even if some such idea did cross his mind, he was only ever an irritant to Churchill, not a serious rival. In August, having failed in his efforts to create a National Government in Australia, and facing growing opposition from within his own party, Menzies resigned. Soon afterwards the Labour Party came to power under John Curtin. A few days before Menzies stood down, Mackenzie King, who was in London, recorded a conversation at Chequers: ‘Churchill [. . .] spoke very strongly against Menzies. [. . .] In speaking strongly, he said he loathes his own people. He says you cannot hope to be Prime Minister of a people you don’t like.’99
This was harsh; Menzies came back as Prime Minister in 1949 and stayed in office for sixteen years, hardly possible if he ‘loathed’ the Australians. But his criticisms of Churchill’s war leadership were by no means wholly fair either. True, there was much to complain about, especially Churchill’s habit of keeping the top brass up late at night for long, rambling meetings when they (but not he) had to be up early the next morning. A fair assessment came from Labour Party leader and War Cabinet member Clement Attlee, who in his memoirs challenged Menzies’s view. ‘Winston was sometimes an awful nuisance because he started all sorts of hares, but he always accepted the verdict of the Chiefs of Staff when it came to it, and it was a great advantage for him to be there driving them all the time’, he recalled. ‘Your advisers always tend to say “It can’t be done”, and it’s as well to have someone who’ll tell them it can.’100 Churchill made serious mistakes but he was not, as Menzies alleged, a dictator. The Greek episode actually proved this, as it resulted from the Cabinet collectively accepting bad advice from the men on the spot, not from Churchill as an individual overriding other people’s judgement.
IV
Menzies was no lone critic, however. The war was not going well and Churchill had to work constantly to maintain his position in Parliament. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 brought Britain another ally, but the bigger fish, America, had still to be landed. In August, Churchill met Roosevelt at a landmark conference held on board the US cruiser Augusta and the British battle-cruiser Prince of Wales at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Churchill would greatly have welcomed a US declaration of war, but had to be content with the promulgation of the Atlantic Charter, a joint statement of broad principles about the future of the world. FDR was eager to use the conference to promote an anti-imperialist agenda. Although the question of colonial freedom was not discussed explicitly, two points of the Charter were of crucial significance in relation to imperial questions.101
As finally agreed, Point 4 stated that Britain and America would ‘endeavour, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States [. . .] of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity’.102 The original US draft of this was clearly intended as an assault on the imperial preference system, a form of trade discrimination. Churchill’s friend Lord Beaverbrook, now Minister of Supply, who was at the conference, was highly concerned.103 Churchill’s own position, as a former free trader, was more than a little ironic. Although he had not been keen on the Ottawa Agreements, he knew that to tear them up without consulting the Dominions would provoke outrage. He was now, furthermore, leader of the Conservative Party. He told Mackenzie King: ‘When the tariffs were discussed, while he, himself, was not sympathetic to the Conservative position, he nevertheless had felt it his duty to stand up for it.’104 The British successfully pressed for the inclusion of the qualifying words about ‘existing obligations’ and for the removal of a reference to ‘discrimination’.105 This was achieved in spite of the powerful lever the Americans possessed in the form of British dependence on their economic aid. But in spite of Churchill’s efforts to protect the interests of the Dominions, he had not actually consulted them on the text of the Charter before its release. Mackenzie King, often touchy about such matters, observed that there had been enough time to run it past the British Cabinet but that Canada had been ‘ignored’. He complained to Malcolm MacDonald, Britain’s High Commissioner, ‘It was the way the British lost their friends, wanting them in foul weather and ignoring them in fair.’106
Point 3 of the Atlantic Charter was also to prove controversial, although its text was settled easily enough. Under it, the two governments declared that ‘they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’.107 Understandably, some inhabitants of those parts of the Empire that did not have self-government took ‘all peoples’ to include them. Burmese leaders initially gave the Charter a ‘whole-hearted welcome [. . .] on the assumption that it meant full post-war self-government for Burma’.108 (The country did already have some limited self-government.) The response to the Charter within Churchill’s coalition was divided. ‘We shall no doubt pay dearly in the end for all this fluffy flapdoodle’, wrote Amery.109 But when Attlee addressed the West African Students’ Union in London he emphasized that the Charter’s principles would apply ‘to all peoples of the world’. He was rewarded with ‘loud and prolonged applause’, and the student who moved the vote of thanks said, ‘West Africans were proud of the Empire and were pleased to march shoulder to shoulder with the British to fight this war.’110 Churchill acted quickly to squash the raised hopes after he returned to England. He told Amery that he was ‘sure’ that Attlee ‘did not intend to suggest, e.g., that the natives of Nigeria or of East Africa could by a majority vote choose the form of Government under which they live, or the Arabs by such a vote expel the Jews from Palestine. It is evident that prior obligations require to be considered and respected, and that circumstances alter cases.’111
In September, Churchill secured the Cabinet’s agreement that the Charter ‘was not intended to deal with the internal affairs of the British Empire’. (Attlee apparently failed to stand up for his earlier fine words.)112 Churchill then made his position clear publicly in a statement in the Commons. ‘At the Atlantic meeting, we had in mind, primarily, the restoration of the sovereignty, self-government and national life of the States and nations of Europe now under the Nazi yoke, and the principles governing any alterations in the territorial boundaries which may have to be made’, he said. ‘So that is quite a separate problem from the progressive evolution of self-governing institutions in the regions and peoples which owe allegiance to the British Crown.’ He added that in the past the British had made past declarations on constitutional development within the Empire ‘which are complete in themselves, free from ambiguity and related to the conditions and circumstances of the territories and peoples affected’.113 Churchill showed this passage to J. G. Winant, the American ambassador, before he delivered it. Winant thought it ‘would simply intensify charges of Imperialism’ and begged him to omit it, to no avail.114 One of the most striking things about the statement, in fact, was the claim that Britain was already committed to progress towards colonial self-government and that the government had previously made unambiguous pledges to this effect. Yet when civil servants tried to answer questions about the commitments to which Churchill had referred, they found the cupboard was bare. ‘I do not think the P.M. can have realised the true nakedness of the land when he made the statement’, commented junior minister Harold Macmillan. ‘The declarations are not complete in them
selves, nor are they free from ambiguity. They are scrappy, obscure and jejune.’115
Churchill’s Commons statement did not allay nationalist pressures. In October, U Saw, Prime Minister of Burma, arrived in London to demand that the Charter be applied to Burma. Churchill met him and told him that if Britain won the war ‘liberal ideas would then prevail on the lines of the Atlantic Charter’. However, the Charter was a ‘unilateral [sic] declaration which H.M.G. must hold itself free to interpret’.116 Saw told journalists that Churchill ‘was very blunt. I was blunt too.’117 He left for home disappointed, saying ominously, ‘I cannot foresee what the attitude of my people will be when I explain the response of the British Government to my request.’118 Before he got back to Burma he was arrested by the British after allegedly telling Japanese diplomats in Lisbon en route that he was prepared to lead an anti-British revolt. Churchill wanted him tried for treason but calmer counsel prevailed; Saw was detained in Uganda until 1946.119