Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made
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His decision to give a tour d’horizon of foreign affairs at this point, rather than a speech on domestic matters, was characteristic. As The Times noted, this allowed him to avoid committing himself to the economically interventionist ‘new Conservatism’ associated with figures such as R. A. Butler.6 He was not, in fact, a very dynamic Leader of the Opposition, and left much of the legwork to Eden. In part, this was an understandable reaction to the shock of electoral defeat. But it also reflected his greater comfort in his role as an international visionary than in dealing with the parochial issues that are the stuff of much party politics. Although many Conservatives became frustrated with his hands-off approach, it was not a bad strategy. His slow climb back to power, in fact, owed much to his assiduous cultivation of his image as a world statesman.
I
It was an arduous and uncertain path. The first months of peace were especially difficult for Churchill, as he struggled with the adjustment to life after Downing Street and with fractures within his party. The war with Japan had ended suddenly in August 1945, the surrender pre-empting the British operation to recapture Malaya. One consequence of the cessation of hostilities was that President Truman’s administration cut off Lend-Lease aid to Britain. As no alternative source of help had been put in place, this action seemed to threaten ‘stark ruin’ to the national economy.7 It also revealed divisions within the Conservative ranks. Churchill’s reaction to the American announcement seemed to be one of shock.8 However, Leo Amery (still a figure of some weight although out of Parliament) felt satisfaction. He told his diary: ‘It looks as if all my objections to Bretton Woods, multilateral low tariff schemes etc. and my advocacy of reliance on sterling will now be justified and that sheer necessity will force Attlee and Co onto a policy of Empire trade: “And not through Eastern windows only”!’9 In fact, the government took steps in the opposite direction, despatching Keynes to Washington to negotiate a dollar loan, which the Americans made conditional on trade and currency liberalization and on the ratification of Bretton Woods. The US embassy in London noted that the proposal to link the progressive elimination of imperial preferences with the reduction of American tariffs would be fought by ‘the Amery group of Tory imperialists and the Beaverbrook clique who are fighting for an exclusive sterling area, Empire preference and bilateral bargaining’.10 Although this posed no threat to the British government’s acceptance of the deal, it was a serious headache for Churchill. Amery did his best to exploit ‘the wonderful opportunity offered by the present situation’, and was eager to develop ‘a really effective campaign for educating both the Conservative Party and the public at large’.11 To him, Churchill’s economic views were those of a mid-Victorian Liberal, while Eden, who shared them, was ‘tiresomely internationalist’.12
It was amazing, in fact, that Amery could summon the concentration to engage in politics at this time. His deeply troubled elder son John had spent the war in Europe and – believing that Britain should join with Germany to save civilization from communism – had broadcast on German radio. He argued that Churchill’s government was throwing away ‘the priceless heritage of our fathers, of our Empire-builders’ in the course of a war that served no British interests.13 He also made pathetically ineffective efforts to recruit a British Freikorps to fight the Soviets. He was now awaiting trial for treason. In due course, knowing his case was hopeless, he pleaded guilty, and on 19 December he was hanged at Wandsworth prison. Leo Amery had naturally been mortified at John’s actions and, at the time of his initial broadcast in 1942, had offered to resign. Churchill had assured him that he could not be held responsible for his adult son’s behaviour.14
During this appalling personal crisis, Amery Senior may have found some mental release in compulsive political activity. His misgivings about the US loan were not eccentric, being widely shared amongst Tory MPs and peers. Churchill ‘was instinctively for taking the American money’, as were Eden and other key figures, but backbench discontent was rife.15 Hugh Dalton, now Chancellor, believed that Tory frontbenchers had had ‘great rows behind the scenes with Winston’.16 The unexpected outcome was that the Shadow Cabinet decided to recommend abstention when Parliament voted on the loan. Yet Churchill could not enforce even this rather unheroic line. His appeal to abstain was ‘urged and repeated with almost desperate earnestness’, to little avail.17 When the vote was called, dozens of Tories joined a smaller number of Labour rebels in the ‘No’ lobby; a handful supported the government motion, which passed comfortably. Dalton relished the sight of Churchill and his senior colleagues sitting ‘miserably on their backsides’ while their MPs defied them.18 The Conservative Harry Crookshank noted, ‘Winston is very upset, talks of giving up etc.’19 Amery recorded, ‘In spite of his very urgent appeal 71 Conservatives voted against Winston’s advice – a great shock to his leadership which now, in peace, is unnatural. The 71 may yet save the Conservative Party.’20 The News Chronicle offered the realistic assessment that Churchill was unlikely to resign: ‘Nor is the party likely to press for such a drastic step. All one can say is that when Mr Churchill does decide to step down there is not now likely to be much attempt to dissuade him.’21
Churchill’s authority with his MPs had already been undermined by a recent weak performance against Attlee in the Commons and by his poor attendance record at the House. Urged by the backbench 1922 Committee to promise to show up more often, he had defiantly announced that he intended to go to the USA for several months’ visit.22 He set sail for New York on 9 January 1946. The highlight of his trip was the lecture in March at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. Here he gave his famous warning about the Soviet menace: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended’. In order to counteract the threat, he called for the ‘the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples’. This, he said, meant ‘a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States of America’. More specifically, he pointed out that the USA already had a permanent defence agreement with Canada. (He had consulted Mackenzie King – who was highly supportive – before making the speech.) This, he said, should be extended to all Commonwealth countries ‘with full reciprocity’.23
Churchill’s speech provoked, at first, considerable hostility in the US. He was widely understood to be calling for a formal military alliance, something he denied. The celebrated columnist Walter Lippmann argued that there would be no difficulty for the USA in making a defence agreement covering the British Isles and the Dominions. The problem lay in the idea of extending US protection to the dependent Empire. This was because ‘a united front in that part of the world’ would not be the kind of equal partnership that was possible with Canada or other self-governing countries.24 The Republican Senator Arthur Capper said that Churchill was apparently ‘intent on using the United States as a threat against Russia to stop Russia’s march across Europe and into Asia – and at the same time to arouse the people of the United States to commit this country to the task of preserving the far-flung British Empire’.25 But, as the Canadian ambassador to Washington noted, the most violently anti-British sections of US opinion tended also to be anti-Russian. ‘Therefore, the vehement disapproval such elements would normally show towards Mr Churchill’s proposal for an Anglo-Saxon alliance has been modified in this case by their approval of the strong line he adopted against Russia. In their reaction to Mr Churchill’s speech, these elements find it difficult to combine their favourite pastimes of “Redbaiting” and “Lion tail twisting”.’26
The ‘iron curtain’ speech thus achieved much of the effect that Churchill desired, once the initial fuss had died down. Although he had not mentioned the Anglo-American loan – which had yet to be approved by Congress – opposition to it in Washington now weakened. The Economist noted that if the loan passed, the balance in its favour would have been tilted by the belief that it represented an investment in security against Russian expansion: ‘This may well be the first fruit of Fulton.�
��27 Furthermore, Churchill made concerted efforts to ensure that the loan passed. On 10 March, Lord Halifax (then still British ambassador) hosted a dinner attended by Churchill and nine key Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen. According to the official who kept a record of the conversation, Churchill set the record straight about his own attitude to the loan: ‘There were indeed certain aspects of the Agreement which he did not like but that was a far cry from saying that he did not wish to see the Loan approved as was believed, he thought, in this country.’ He urged Americans to be ‘more understanding’ in their approach to imperial preference – even though, as he said, he was not a believer in it himself. His main emphasis, however, was on the trade war which, he said, would be bound to follow on rejection of the Loan by the United States:
The United States with its economic power would clearly win such a fight but it would indeed be a pyrrhic victory. [. . .] if the Loan were not granted, England would nevertheless come through somehow – belts would have to be tightened still further and austerity endured for much longer but England would come through and with her Empire remain as always one of the great forces in the world for stability, justice and freedom.
The Senators and Congressmen seemed ‘definitely impressed by all that Mr Churchill had to say’.28 It is notable that, with the exception of Arthur Capper, all those present subsequently supported the loan, some of them vociferously. No doubt some would have done so without Churchill’s intervention, but not, perhaps, the influential Republican Arthur Vandenberg, whose surprise announcement of his intention to vote in favour was crucial in shifting the debate.29 The loan eventually passed the Senate in May and the House of Representatives in July. The impact of Churchill’s efforts on this outcome is hard to quantify, but it was undoubtedly meaningful. One Congressman later told him, ‘It was realization that the best of all that is Britain is represented in you which prompted my tearing up and discarding a speech prepared in opposition to the loan, and my vote in favour of it.’30 Some US lawmakers, though, were never to shake off their conviction that Churchill was a ‘cunning foreign propagandist’ who wanted to ‘persuade Americans to underwrite the British Empire’.31 Their suspicions of him might have been confirmed had they heard his off-the-record speech to the University Club in New York during his 1946 visit. According to a British official who was present:
He defended the Empire and its principles with brilliance and vigour, and was warmly applauded for his presentation of its objectives. He deplored Britain’s being ‘talked out’ of her rich estate in India [. . .] but acknowledged the early need to advance India to nationhood. He expressed fears as to India’s future, however, which he considered obscure: her people might have cause to regret any hasty assumption of the responsibilities of nationhood.32
Churchill returned home towards the end of March. Throughout the rest of the year, internal Tory opposition to his economic views faded away. Amery published a book attacking the loan agreement, in which he declared, ‘No more than Mr Churchill am I prepared to acquiesce in the liquidation and break up of the British Empire’.33 The Empire Industries Association, of which he was president, launched an ‘Empire Unity Campaign’ but it made little impact on the Conservative policy. Amery noted in November: ‘[Robert] Boothby [MP] brought rather a depressing account of the Party’s Finance Committee which he said is drifting back hard to multilateralism and all the rest of it.’34 The critics were later able to claim a measure of vindication. One of the conditions of the loan was that sterling should be made convertible into other currencies, including the dollar, in order to help free up trade. But after convertibility was introduced in 1947 it was quickly abandoned after a run on the pound. Churchill (who had expressed his own doubts about this part of the deal during the Commons debate) had more justification for his position, though, because there was no realistic alternative to the loan and the economic agenda that went with it. Although the empire preference gang did not disband completely – Amery remained a fixture at Tory conferences to the end of his life – Churchill from now on kept moderate opinion on his side. He achieved this in part through his continued (albeit limited and conditional) public defence of the very imperial preference system in which he claimed not to believe. In this way, ironically, he put himself fairly close to the Labour government’s position. During post-war trade talks, ministers stubbornly held on to a scaled-down version of imperial preference, not through ideological commitment but because they felt that US tariff concessions were not enough to justify scrapping it.35
II
Churchill’s behind-the-scenes assistance to the Labour government over the loan showed his capacity to act in a non-partisan way on issues of national importance. However, his behaviour in the Commons at times appeared erratic, causing some observers to worry about his mental state. In May 1946 the Liberal Party leader, Clement Davies, wrote a letter to a colleague describing Churchill’s reaction to a government statement on the food situation. ‘Winston began a sort of tirade. His manner of uttering it was worse than the actual words he used. Knowing the terrible state in Europe and in India, the impression I got from Winston was that he was not prepared to make any further sacrifices for either of those two places’. Davies had then spoken, dissenting from Churchill’s point of view; afterwards Churchill ‘walked across to me swearing and abusing all and sundry’. Davies was, he said, ‘deeply concerned about Winston. He is a great man, a great figure and an outstanding personality, but something is going amiss. Sometimes he behaves like an ill-mannered gamin, making faces and putting out his tongue and so on.’36 The day after the episode Davies related, Churchill lost his temper during a debate on the government’s proposal to withdraw troops from Egypt, and stuck his tongue out at Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary.37 (The negotiations with Cairo later broke down, because of Egypt’s insistence that its sovereignty over the Sudan be recognized.)38 This was all probably less the result of mental deterioration than of the frustrations of Opposition. ‘I fear, once the immense responsibility of the Prime Ministership and the war are off Winston’s shoulders he will relapse into the bad judgement and recklessness of pre-war days’, wrote Amery.39 Those frustrations partly resulted from the fact that the Labour government had launched a policy of retreat from Empire of which he strongly disapproved yet could do nothing to arrest. For him, India remained the truly emotive issue. Wavell, in London once more in August 1945 for consultations, met with Churchill, who ‘gave forth the usual jeremiad’ and bade him farewell with the words ‘Keep a bit of India’.40
In private, Churchill could be fatalistic. ‘India must go’, he told one guest at the villa he took in Italy for his holiday that autumn. ‘It is lost. We have been consistently defeatist. We have lost sight of our purpose in India.’41 ‘India breaks my heart’, he told Amery the following year.42 The government’s real problem now was to convince Indian politicians that they were serious about granting independence and to get them to agree amongst themselves about the shape that the future might take. From March to June 1946, Stafford Cripps headed a Cabinet Mission to India aimed at striking a deal. It seemed that the Muslim League could, on conditions, be persuaded to accept a United India, but the bargain was scuppered by Gandhi’s provocative insistence that a Congress Muslim be included in the interim government. After it was announced that such a government was to be formed anyway, protests by the League led to violence in which thousands were killed. Nehru became Prime Minister in September, and the following month Jinnah joined his government, but the coalition did not succeed. In January 1947, with progress on a new constitution deadlocked, Attlee summarily dismissed Wavell and appointed Mountbatten as Viceroy in his stead. In February, hoping to induce the Indians to agree a constitutional plan amongst themselves, the British government announced its intention to withdraw from India by 30 June 1948. Churchill denounced these developments in the Commons. Claiming that communism as well as corruption had grown apace under the interim administration, he declared that it had been
‘a cardinal mistake to entrust the government of India to the caste Hindu, Mr Nehru’. The new time limit did not give Mountbatten a fair chance, moreover. ‘What is the policy and purpose for which he is to be sent out, and how is he to employ these 14 months?’ Churchill demanded. ‘Is he to make a new effort to restore the situation, or is it merely Operation Scuttle on which he and other distinguished officers have been despatched?’ As an alternative to unilateral withdrawal, he suggested entrusting the problem to the United Nations. That, however, was to him a second-best expedient, as his striking peroration made clear:
It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. [. . .] We must face the evils that are coming upon us, and that we are powerless to avert. We must do our best in all these circumstances, and not exclude any expedient that may help to mitigate the ruin and disaster that will follow the disappearance of Britain from the East. But, at least, let us not add – by shameful flight, by a premature, hurried scuttle – at least, let us not add, to the pangs of sorrow so many of us feel, the taint and smear of shame.43