Instinctively, Margot turned to him as the only man who could restore peace to the House. As she recalled, “I scrawled a hasty line from our stifling gallery and sent it down to him, ‘They will listen to you—so for God’s sake defend him from the cats and the cads!’ ”8
They did listen to him. After Asquith had given up and sat down, and after Balfour had tried to calm his troops, Grey rebuked the opposition in his understated way. A few of the troublemakers hung their heads. Others quietly sulked.
“Never,” said Grey, “did a leader of a party, with a majority in the House of Commons, have behind him more chivalrous personal loyalty and more united political support than my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has at this moment. . . . Hon. Members opposite may easily imagine whether those feelings are less strong after the scene we have just had. So far as it was personal discourtesy to the right hon. Gentleman, the Prime Minister, every one of us resents it.”
As soon as Grey sat down, F.E. shot up and tried to get a hearing, but he was shouted down, and the House adjourned in disarray. In the corridor Margot rushed to Sir Edward and embraced him like a knight of old who had just slain a dragon. “I met Edward Grey for a moment afterwards alone,” she recalled, “and, when I pressed my lips to his hand, his eyes filled with tears.” The prime minister didn’t need Grey to defend him and may have thought it was politically advantageous to let Linky and F.E. be the faces of Tory dissent. But melodramatic Margot preferred to think that her Henry had been spared further humiliation by the lionhearted Foreign Secretary.9
For his part, Churchill made all the right comments about deploring “the rowdy and unreasonable disorder” of the Conservatives, but he must have secretly enjoyed watching his old Hooligan comrade and his friend F.E. make such a ruckus, especially in a lost cause. Though the Liberals were happy to play up the affront to the dignity of their leader, they knew that the Parliament Bill would pass one way or another. They had the votes, and if they lacked any, the king would have to produce more in the form of new grocer barons of a Liberal bent or even an obliging novelist baron (Thomas Hardy was on Asquith’s list as a possible peer in case they needed to be mass-produced).10
Bowing to the inevitable—though with much rancor and protest—the House of Lords passed the bill by a narrow vote in August, ending the power of the landed aristocracy to block the work of the lower chamber but leaving them the ability to delay legislation for up to two years except in the case of money bills. This was a reasonable way of bringing the Lords into the twentieth century, but by dragging them kicking and screaming every inch of the way, the Liberals had bruised a great many powerful egos, and now many of those wounded opponents would be eagerly looking for chances to avenge their defeat.
* * *
The Liberals could handle the rhetorical bomb-throwing in the House but they were finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the violent unrest among the working classes. The heat of this summer of discontent seemed to unleash a general rebellion. Strikes broke out everywhere, but especially among the dockworkers of London and Merseyside, and among railway workers up and down the country. For about two weeks in August, chaos reigned as workers staged large protests, the transportation system broke down, and food supplies began to dwindle. Wherever possible, strikers tried to halt the movement of goods, sabotaging the rails, attacking wagon convoys, and looting warehouses.
The rioting in Liverpool was so bad that the local authorities warned Churchill that their city was “in a state of siege.” They were running out of medical supplies as well as food. Alarmed, the king wired Churchill that accounts of the violence in Liverpool “show that the situation there more like revolution than a strike.” He urged that if troops were used, “they should be given a free hand & the mob should be made to fear them.” Churchill lost patience with the rioters and sent a full brigade of infantry and two cavalry regiments to Liverpool.11
The city was turned into a battlefield. When a large crowd stormed a prison van in an effort to free five comrades, a mounted policeman fired a revolver in a warning shot as a man tried to pull him from his horse. When the attack persisted, the policeman fired again and wounded the man. A cavalry escort with sabers drawn was needed to clear the street. Rioters took to the rooftops and pelted the troops and the police with pieces of bricks and chimney pots, rocks, bottles, and anything else that came to hand. More warning shots were fired by the soldiers, and as the battle raged between the two sides, tragedy struck. Two local men were killed, both shot by the military.
The next day, August 16, hundreds of soldiers and police formed a wagon convoy to bring food into the city from the docks. “It was the greatest display of force ever seen in Liverpool,” noted a reporter, “and never before seen in any English town as a guard for the safe conduct of market produce.”
The situation was perilous, warned the reporter. “After more than a week of anarchy, the city is in an awful plight. . . . Among the poor the most severe distress is everywhere apparent, and people are desperate. Food must be got, and men are reckless how they get it for their little ones. . . . The city streets are foul, pestilence cannot be far away. And all this is principally because the railways are at a standstill. The story of the city’s last few days are heartrending.”12
Winston had spent seven years trying to be a good Liberal, drawing up wide-ranging social reforms, promoting peace and retrenchment, and turning the other cheek to various enemies. Now the man of arms, facing massive unrest, suddenly resurfaced in full force. His Cabinet colleagues were shocked by the scale of the disturbances, but some of them felt even greater shock as they witnessed Winston’s aggressive response. On August 17, Asquith’s new Colonial Secretary, Lewis Harcourt, son of the old Liberal warhorse Sir William Vernon Harcourt, wrote his wife, “Fifty thousand troops are being moved all over the country tonight to protect life, property & food. . . . Winston is still mad, but a little saner than yesterday.”
Loulou—as the foppish younger Harcourt was known—wasn’t much of a fighting man. But he felt certain that Churchill’s response to the situation was excessive. He told his wife, “Winston is much too fond of acting as Commander in Chief and moving thousands of troops about; he has already sent a warship to the Mersey with orders to land Bluejackets to work the ferries if necessary.” It was indeed the case that Churchill was intent on using every means available to restore order, and to do it quickly. In the case of the warship—the cruiser HMS Antrim—he was responding to the request of the mayors of Liverpool and Birkenhead, who feared that they had lost control of the docks. This time he was prepared to let the military assert itself in a way that would send a strong signal of resolve. Once his old martial instincts were reawakened, he threw himself into the fight with all his energy.13
The deployment of so many troops carried such great risks for the government that Lloyd George was also roused to action, but as a peacemaker—the part he had scrupulously avoided playing in Tonypandy. Anxious to prevent more clashes between Winston’s troops and the strikers, Lloyd George wasted no time putting his considerable skills as a negotiator to work. Much to his credit, he achieved a remarkably speedy resolution of the conflict. On August 19, after meeting all day with representatives from the railway workers and their employers, he put together an arbitration process that was acceptable to all. The railways resumed normal operations, and others on strike soon went back to work. The soldiers began returning to their barracks, goods started moving again, and even the summer heat abated.
Lloyd George was ecstatic. He went to the War Office and announced his triumph with the words “A bottle of champagne! I’ve done it! Don’t ask me how, but I’ve done it! The strike is settled!”14
But the settlement was reached too late for the strikers in the Welsh town of Llanelli, where they halted a train, attacked the driver, and then fought with troops who tried to clear the tracks. Two strikers were shot and killed. Three more died when they attacked the station and set fire to a shed, which exploded.
As it happened, the shed contained dynamite for use by the railways, and the whole town was rocked by the blast, which injured many. Several innocent civilians were severely hurt, including three women. Rioting continued for hours, and one of the local magistrates, a grocer, lost nearly everything when his business was ransacked.15
The newspaper owner George Riddell, who was a close friend and financial backer of Lloyd George, noted in his diaries that during the strikes Churchill was torn between the desire to show restraint and the urge to fight. “I could see that the situation was weighing upon him very seriously and that his position at the Home Office was gradually becoming intolerable to him. It was obvious that he was gradually setting his teeth, and being a soldier he would be likely to act in a thorough and drastic manner in the event of further labour troubles.”
Lloyd George was worried that Churchill was becoming a liability as Home Secretary, and other Liberals felt the same way. Violet Asquith heard some of the grumbling about Winston’s forceful response to the riots and knew exactly why the Liberals were so “critical and uneasy.” As she recalled in old age, “They recognized, no doubt, that his action was both right and necessary, but they could not forgive the apparent gusto with which he performed it. . . . He did nothing by halves. I have seen him fling himself into the tasks of peace with the same zest and concentration.”16
The question for Churchill was whether the conciliatory approach favored by many Liberals did more harm than good in prolonged periods of unrest. Regardless of his antagonist—whether it was a stubborn House of Lords or violent strikers—his inclination was to wage his fight with what Violet rightly described as “gusto.” But such enthusiasm for battle was considered unseemly by so many in the sober Liberal ranks. Only Lloyd George could rival Winston when it came to “gusto,” but he saved it for his speeches and showed more restraint in his actions. Winston tended to strike the same attitude in word and deed.
Accordingly, he didn’t hesitate to make a vigorous defense of his actions when he spoke to the House on August 22. “The policy which we have pursued throughout,” he said, “was wherever soldiers were sent to send plenty, so that there could be no mistake about the obvious ability of the authorities to maintain order. . . . Four or five persons have been killed by the military. The House sees these instances chronicled everywhere today. Their painful effect is fresh in our minds. What is not seen, what cannot be measured, is how many lives were saved and how many tragedies and sufferings were averted.”17
* * *
Churchill was all the more determined to end the strikes because of an episode that clouded the horizon for most of July and August. At the very same time that the government was struggling with Lords and labor at home, the Germans decided to stir up trouble at the Atlantic port of Agadir in Morocco, southwest of Marrakech. On July 1, 1911, the Panther—an unimpressive German gunboat with only two small four-inch guns—steamed into the dusty port on a mission to protect German interests, which turned out to be embodied in the solitary figure of Herr Wilberg, a young Hamburg merchant. He wasn’t sure why he needed protection, but he had been instructed to meet the boat, so he dutifully stood on the beach in a white suit and waved until he caught the notice of his countrymen and they “rescued” him.
The whole thing was a blatant ploy to intimidate France, which regarded Morocco as an unofficial protectorate. The German idea was to use its navy’s presence in Agadir as a bargaining chip for colonial concessions elsewhere. When the German ambassador in London, Count Metternich, informed the Foreign Office of the Panther’s arrival in the obscure port, the few British officials acquainted with the area shook their heads in disbelief, knowing that the Germans had no reason to be there. But what began as a Gilbert and Sullivan farce soon turned into a risky standoff. France didn’t want to be bullied, Germany didn’t want to back down, and Britain wanted to have a say in the dispute.
Nobody cared about Agadir itself, of course, but the British Foreign Secretary was appalled by Germany’s brazen power play. “The Prussians are a tiresome, cynical people,” Sir Edward Grey wrote a friend. “They think the time has come for them to get something, & they will get something, but not as much as they thought.” The Germans made the mistake of starting a dispute they didn’t know how to end. For almost three weeks in July they kept quiet about their intentions, and their silence encouraged the British and the French to imagine the worst. “Was Germany looking for a pretext of war with France,” Churchill wondered, “or was she merely trying by pressure and uncertainty to improve her colonial position?” Rumors in the press suggested that Germany wanted to develop an Atlantic fleet based at Agadir. Was this another threat to British naval superiority?18
For the past few months Winston had been slowly revising his old view that Germany would try to avoid a war with Britain. As Home Secretary he had learned through the Secret Service Bureau that, as he later informed Edward Grey, “We are the subject of a minute and scientific study by the German military and naval authorities, and that no other nation in the world pays us such attention.” He also knew that the German army had made great improvements since he had sat astride his horse at the field exercises of 1906 in Silesia, smiling at the antique tactics. In 1909 he had slipped away from his usual ministerial duties in London to take another look at the Kaiser’s troops on maneuvers, and he had noted “remarkable” advances in their training. There was less pageantry, many more machine guns, and much better use of deadly artillery batteries.
He found it hard to believe that the Germans would start a war over a port that most Europeans had never heard of. But their saber-rattling had stirred his doubts, and his anxiety grew as the standoff continued throughout the hot summer.19
The same doubts had begun to trouble Lloyd George. He was worried not only that the threat of Prussian militarism would drain more money away from social programs, but also that a weak France would buckle under German pressure and encourage the Kaiser’s men to start more trouble. At a breakfast with Churchill and the editor of the Manchester Guardian, Lloyd George confided his belief that France lived in fear of “those terrible legions across the frontier. . . . They could be in Paris in a month and she knew it.” With Winston’s encouragement—and with the approval of the Foreign Secretary—he decided to issue a warning to the Germans.
Speaking on July 21 at a public dinner in London, Lloyd George declared, “I would make great sacrifices to preserve peace. . . . But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. National honour is no party question.”
Not known for drawing lines in the sand on international matters, Lloyd George caught the German government off guard when the remarks appeared in print, and the Kaiser reacted angrily, devoting almost an hour to berating the British ambassador, who would recall, “He abused us like pickpockets.”20
Late on the afternoon of July 25, Churchill and Lloyd George were walking together near Buckingham Palace when a messenger from the Foreign Office caught up with them to deliver an urgent communication. Sir Edward Grey wanted to see them right away. They rushed to his office, where they discovered that the normally unflappable Foreign Secretary was anxiously awaiting their arrival. He had just finished a tense meeting with Count Metternich, he explained, and was so concerned by the harshness of the German ambassador’s response to Lloyd George’s speech that he thought “the Fleet might be attacked at any moment.”21
Such was the feverish mood of this troubled summer that Sir Edward panicked and wildly misjudged Metternich’s comments. The Germans were incensed, but not enough to launch a surprise attack on the superior Royal Navy. A little calm reflection might have led Grey to recon
sider his fears, but events moved too quickly. Reggie McKenna arrived from the Admiralty and agreed to send an alert to His Majesty’s ships at sea. For a couple of days Britain’s leaders waited in suspense, wondering whether the next incoming message from the fleet would signal the start of war.
Fortunately for all concerned, the top admirals—many of whom were on holiday escaping the summer heat—didn’t regard the alert with the urgency that Sir Edward intended. Otherwise, shots fired in panic might have created a real reason for Germany to fight. It is from just such misunderstandings and hasty actions that wars are sometimes started.
But Grey’s false alarm did cause Asquith and others in the Cabinet to begin taking seriously the possibility of having to defend France. High-level meetings were called to discuss strategy, maps were updated, and Churchill began churning out letters and memos full of advice. At this point, with so much uncertainty in the air, the novelist in Winston emerged from hibernation and composed a stunningly prescient work of fiction with the unpromising title of “Military Aspects of the Continental Problem.” In truth, it was only a memo intended for Asquith and the Committee of Imperial Defence, but it read like an outline for a novel about the first weeks of a European war. Drawing on his considerable powers of imagination, he described what he believed would transpire in the first forty days of fighting. As he would correctly point out after the First World War, “these forecasts were almost literally verified three years later by the event.”
Among other things, he predicted that the Germans would begin the war by overwhelming the Belgian army, forcing the French army to regroup to save Paris. “The balance of probability,” wrote Churchill in 1911, “is that by the twentieth day the French armies will have been driven from the line of the Meuse and will be falling back on Paris and the south.” The problem for the Germans, he imagined, was that “by the fortieth day Germany should be extended at full strain both internally and on her war fronts.” Then the French, he believed, would have the chance to stage a counteroffensive “if the French army has not been squandered by precipitate or desperate action.”22
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