Once again a firmly held misunderstanding on one side of what the other was up to fuelled the conflict.
Unbeknownst to the government the King had been very close to accepting that abdication was inevitable. He had bowed to Monckton’s advice and begun to back away from the King’s Party and acrimony with the government. He had allowed Monckton to break off contact with Beaverbrook as a first step in negotiating terms for his departure.
Along with Hardinge’s letter, Baldwin’s House of Commons statement on the Friday afternoon was probably one of the key turning points in the crisis. Wilson was at pains to use his notes to mask the true sequence of events and considerations that led to both, above all to mask the way in which the hardliners had hijacked the government’s handling of the affair to put pressure on the King. The Friday statement presented a different problem, because everything to do with the Hardinge letter episode was still shrouded in the deepest secrecy, whereas nothing could be more public than what Baldwin and Churchill had said in the House of Commons. Rather than merely hiding something entirely, Wilson had to fend off Churchill’s implicit allegation that pressure had been put on the King. As the hardliners – Wilson included – had been scheming and clamouring for precisely this to be done and had largely succeeded at the Friday Cabinet meeting, he faced something of a challenge developing an alternative narrative that reduced the events to an innocuous story of dignified discussion.
Wilson’s key strategy was to paint a picture in which the Commons statement was simply aimed at silencing a newspaper campaign mounted by the King’s Party in favour of the morganatic marriage, rather than a lightly disguised ultimatum to the King himself:
A section of the press supported the ‘compromise’ which we had come to regard as the Churchill–Harmsworth proposal i.e. that the King might marry Mrs. Simpson but that she should not become Queen. It was necessary to remove any misunderstanding on this point…37
The Beaverbrook and Harmsworth newspapers were an easy target. They could be dismissed as the mere ‘“froth of Fleet Street” which was running counter to solid English opinion.’38 From this Wilson moved onto a denunciation of Churchill who ‘sought to convey the impression that the Government were trying to bring pressure upon the King to accelerate his decision’. To some extent the Wilson version of the story was honestly intended. Downing Street could not see beyond Beaverbrook’s fiction that the morganatic proposal was Churchill’s own idea – which was reaching them through Hoare’s conversations with its author and was topped up by MI5 reports – to the far more nuanced reality of the limitations under which the King’s allies were operating in their attempt to keep the King on the throne and that they, like the government, would much have preferred to see the back of Mrs Simpson for good.
In order to sustain his account, Wilson made one major and glaring omission. Everything to do with how the morganatic proposal had been handled between the King asking Baldwin for it to be considered and the Friday afternoon, was excluded from his notes. Only someone with access to the minutes of the Cabinet meetings on the Wednesday and the Friday could have seen that part of the story. A reader who relied on the notes alone was left with the impression that the morganatic proposal was still live on the Friday afternoon and would have had no reason to see that the King had been told it was not practical and, at least on the Wednesday evening, had accepted this without protest. This is mildly charitable towards the King by masking his apparent bad faith in returning to the morganatic proposal in his draft broadcast, but it is far outweighed by the damning implication that the morganatic proposal was a concerted effort by the King, Churchill and his press allies. By presenting the morganatic marriage as little more than a press ramp, Wilson’s notes also leave hanging the question of what might have been said directly to the King about the proposal. This is their most glaring flaw as a coherent narrative.
NOTES
1. Chamberlain diary, 2 and 3 December
2. Chamberlain diary, 2 December
3. NA PREM 1/446, Constitutional Crisis: Attitude of the British Press
4. Lascelles, King’s Counsellor, p. 431
5. BBK G/6/19
6. BBK G/6/19
7. NA PREM 1/446, Constitutional Crisis: Attitude of the British Press; Bruce Lockhart diaries, 4 December, pp 359–60
8. BBK G/6/19
9. Brooks journal, 5 December
10. Beaverbrook (ed. A. J. P. Taylor), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, p. 68
11. NA PREM 1/446, Constitutional Crisis: Attitude of the British Press
12. NA PREM 1/466
13. NA CAB 23/68
14. Duff Cooper diaries
15. Chamberlain diary, 4 December
16. NA PREM 1/451, Davies to Wilson, 4 December
17. NA PREM 1/466
18. NA CAB 23/68
19. Duff Cooper diaries
20. CAB 23/68
21. Channon diaries, 4 December, p. 92
22. NA CAB 23/68
23. Chamberlain diary, 4 December
24. Beaverbrook (ed. A. J. P. Taylor), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, pp 75–6
25. Beaverbrook (ed. A. J. P. Taylor), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, pp 75–6
26. Lascelles, King’s Counsellor, p. 431
27. Duff Cooper diaries
28. NAA CP4/10,3, Baldwin to Lyons, 4 December
29. A King’s Story, p. 376
30. Hansard, 4 December
31. Amery diaries, 4 December
32. Channon diaries, 4 December
33. Chamberlain diary, 4 December
34. Chamberlain diary, 4 December
35. A King’s Story, p. 376
36. A King’s Story, p. 377
37. NA PREM 1/466
38. NA PREM 1/466
CHAPTER 13
MY FIRST BLUNDER
* * *
Realising, on reflection, and learning more of the apparent activities of Mr. Churchill and of the leaders of the Harmsworth and Beaverbrook press, that the King’s interview with Mr. Churchill might be used harmfully, the Prime Minister felt that perhaps he ought to have objected to the King’s proposal. ‘I have made my first blunder’, he said next day. I ventured to differ if the Prime Minister had in fact objected to the interview the King might have felt that an attempt was being made to isolate him.*
SIR HORACE WILSON, DRAFT ABDICATION NOTES1
WHEN BALDWIN CAME to Fort Belvedere on the afternoon of Friday 4 December to tell him formally that the Cabinet had ruled out the broadcast, the King had calmed somewhat from the high agitation of the previous audience, but he was still in a nervous mood. He took the news that he would not be allowed to make a broadcast with the same superficial equanimity as he had taken the news that the morganatic proposal was to be blocked. All he asked on the topic was that the Prime Minister himself make a statement to Parliament on the Monday explaining the situation. Over the weekend much thought and deliberation was to be expended on what the Prime Minister might say, but this proved to be one of the blind alleys of the crisis. Every possible variant of the statement concealed pitfalls when it was examined in detail and the idea was overtaken by events. Moreover, the King seems to have come up with the idea without great reflection. It is far from clear what he hoped a statement from the Prime Minister would do for him and cannot have attached great importance to the idea as there is no record that he mentioned it to his allies and he himself did not refer to it again. Astonishingly, he still seemed to be fantasising that he would be able to make Mrs Simpson his Queen as it would be ‘fun for her’.2
Baldwin failed to notice that the King was nursing a deep grievance at the statement that he had made in Parliament that afternoon, which they do not seem to have discussed at all. He was more concerned to make plain to the King that he had to make a decision soon even though there was no set deadline. As a result neither he nor anyone else subsequently recognised that the surprise the King chose to spring on the Prime Minister that evening was his way of
fighting back against what seemed to him to be the injustice of the Friday afternoon statement to Parliament. The government had won every round so far. First the morganatic proposal had been blocked and then his briefly cherished project of a broadcast. It was just not fair; the King was deep in a wallow of resentful self-pity. The Prime Minister had at his beck and call every manner of adviser and worthy to help him develop and sustain his arguments, but he, the King, had no one.3 Even before Baldwin arrived, the King had decided to do something to remedy the situation, and this time he had acted without asking the Prime Minister. He was not risking a third snub on the grounds that the constitution left the monarch virtually powerless. He simply told Baldwin what he had done and left it to the Prime Minister to challenge the fait accompli if he dared.
What the King had done was to decide to ask Churchill to dinner that very evening. Immediately after the House of Commons statement, Monckton had checked whether Churchill was available.4 In the charged atmosphere of the final stage of the crisis, it was an act of provocation and possibly outright defiance. The Prime Minister chose not to pick up the gauntlet and did not demur, silently granting the King permission to talk to Churchill.5 The King had in fact been braced for a refusal, as a formal invitation was only issued to Churchill afterwards.6 With hindsight we can see how small a risk Baldwin was taking. He did not fear Churchill’s skills as a political intriguer. There is no sign that he ever shared the fears of the King’s Party’s conspiracy that were haunting the hardliners of Downing Street and the fringes of the Cabinet. But it was still a brave decision to make without preparation. At the very least he knew that it would be challenged from within his own ranks. The dinner had no material effect on the outcome of the crisis, but it was the one episode that can be said to have affected the broader course of history because of the damage it did to Churchill’s standing just at the moment when Britain needed a strong voice warning of the dangers of Nazi Germany. The eclipse of the Albert Hall meeting was a tactical upset, but Churchill’s private and public support for the King ensured that he would remain a marginal figure in politics for years to come. The episode shows the extremes of Churchill’s character – at his best in his passionate loyalty to the King and his sense that the King was being treated unfairly, and at his worst in his bad judgement and opportunism. It also shows the King at his very worst: duplicitous, unreflecting, selfish and entirely irresponsible. The whole idea for his conversation with Churchill was little more than a piece of petulant self-assertion.
As was his habit, Churchill spent the first part of the dinner listening. The King concealed from him how close he was to making his choice between marrying Mrs Simpson and keeping the throne. Instead he gave the impression that he was determined not to abdicate. He began by treating Churchill to how he would have complained to Baldwin about the disparity in their power had he been free to do so:
You can see anyone you like. You can send for anyone you like. You can consult with any number of people. You can arrange with the newspapers and with the Church; you can bring the Dominions High Commissioners together; you can set the Whips to work upon the M.P.’s. But I cannot see anyone except those you send me, like the Archbishop of Canterbury or Mr. Geoffrey Dawson of the ‘Times’. I want to see someone who is independent of all that. I want to see Mr. Churchill.7
Quite how the King persuaded himself that Baldwin had inflicted Lang or Dawson on him is a mystery, as he had no contact with either of them during the crisis. What he said next crossed the threshold into deliberate dishonesty: ‘I have not abdicated. I never used the word abdication in my conversation with the Prime Minister. I had Monckton in the room with his permission all the time and he will bear me out.’8 It is possible that this was literally true, but as the King had often told the Prime Minister that he was willing to ‘go’ it is no more than a quibble. The King was clearly asking for Churchill’s help in fighting the government against forcing an abdication. There is no sign that the King asked for Churchill’s advice as to how to cope with his predicament. The only advice he might have wanted was how to fight. Above all he wanted Churchill as an ally and, in his account at least, Churchill was prepared for the sacrifice and risk this entailed: ‘he proposed to join his fortunes with mine under circumstances that were bound to damage his standing with his own party’.9 He told Churchill about the fate of the broadcast proposal and rounded things off by telling him he wanted a fortnight to think things over, ideally in Switzerland with a ‘couple of equerries’.10
Churchill had decided before the conversation to emphasise what he saw as the strong point in the King’s position. He had time on his side. The government could not force the pace. Churchill was unsparing towards the government: ‘The Cabinet, Winston argued, … had taken advantage of my agitation and the confused state of public opinion to push me off the Throne.’11 According to one draft of his memoirs, Churchill advised the King to dare the government to make the first move: ‘Retire to Windsor Castle. Close the gates. Pull up the drawbridge. Challenge Mr. Baldwin to throw you out if he dares.’12 If there had to be an open constitutional fight, it was the King who should win it: ‘A popular King with a first-hand knowledge of the Empire and the world, he insisted, was immeasurably more important than a politician of expediency and procrastination. If any stepping down was to be done, let Baldwin do it.’13 The weakness of Churchill’s advice lay in its insistence on a legalistic point that entirely ignored the political reality of the crisis that had developed. Churchill argued that until Mrs Simpson’s divorce became final, there was no issue on which the government could advise him. All the King needed to do was to insist to Baldwin that he should be given time. It was a variant of the strategy that Duff Cooper had urged on the King two weeks before, and he showed no more indication to accept the advice from Churchill than he had from Duff Cooper.
The King was equally uninterested in another extempore component that Churchill added to the plan for keeping him on the throne, which he devised when he appreciated the strain under which the King was operating. The King had begun the evening sheltered behind a mask of insouciance: ‘H.M. was most gay and debonair for the first quarter of an hour and no one would have thought this a serious crisis.’14 But as the conversation continued it was ever more obvious to Churchill that the prolonged strain was taking its toll on the King: ‘…it was obvious that the personal strain he had been so long under and which was now at its climax had exhausted him to a most painful degree.’ To Churchill the King was giving signs of impending complete breakdown: ‘He twice in my presence completely lost the thread of what he was saying, and appeared to me to be driven to the last extremity of endurance.’15 The King, Churchill thought, should plead mental exhaustion and get peace and quiet. After all, the Prime Minister had just taken a two month break on medical advice. The King should call in the country’s two most eminent physicians, Lords Dawson and Horder, who could certify his state. If he were to take this break, however, it would have to be in Britain. Churchill was emphatic that the King’s idea of going to Switzerland would be seen practically as an act of desertion and it would be assumed that he had left the country to see Mrs Simpson. The King denied that he planned to see Mrs Simpson, but insisted that he needed a break in the Alps.
Churchill failed to win the King round to his plan to stonewall against the government, but he did restore his spirits. The King took strength from Churchill’s enthusiasm and confidence. He relished Churchill’s rhetorical language and imagery. In particular, he was taken by Churchill’s emphasis on the splendour of the institution of monarchy in a way that contrasted, to the King’s ears at least, with Baldwin’s defensive and formalistic conception. When Churchill had left, the King treated Monckton to an affectionate impersonation of him exhorting in an almost military metaphor, ‘We must have time for the battalions to mass. We may win, we may not. Who can say?’16 The King had sloughed off the panicked hopelessness that had afflicted him since Wednesday, and there was a flicker of an inclination to fi
ght. He telephoned Beaverbrook personally to tell him that Churchill would go to see him at Stornoway House immediately when he got back to London.17 The King’s acquiescence in Monckton’s decision to break off communication with Beaverbrook had not lasted long, and Beaverbrook took it briefly as a sign that the fight was back on.
Fortunately for the country, the King’s surge of pugnacity was short-lived. After a sleepless night of reflection, he decided to face reality. On the Saturday morning, he told Monckton to warn Baldwin that he intended to tell him that he had decided to go at the audience scheduled for the Saturday afternoon. He did not, however, do anything to alert Churchill or Beaverbrook to this decision. This bears the stamp of the King’s ineptitude as an amateur but still cynical politician. The King’s decision to abdicate was subject to one crucial proviso and it is hard to escape the conclusion that the King was happy to keep Churchill and Beaverbrook in play until he was confident that it had been secured.
Churchill was still riding on the crest of optimism and bellicosity that had swelled during his dinner with the King, but when he arrived at Stornoway House at 2 a.m. it did not prove to be the moment that the King’s allies launched an all-out campaign to save him. The conversation was inconclusive. Beaverbrook had become jealous that Churchill seemed to have displaced him in the King’s favour even though he was by then blaming this all directly on Baldwin: ‘So it was a Good Friday for Churchill who was being consulted directly for the first time, and a Bad Friday for me since I was being tossed out of the Council Chamber.’18 All that Beaverbrook could see was that the King was cutting off contact with him at the same time as he was establishing contact with Churchill.
The King Who Had to Go Page 25