ABSTRACT
Churchill later recounted that in May 1940 he felt as if he was ‘walking with destiny’ and that his entire ‘past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial’.1 Yet although he now possessed ‘the authority to give directions over the whole scene’, it is significant that his first act after accepting the King’s commission to form a government was to write to Chamberlain confessing ‘how grateful I am to you for promising to stand by me & to aid the country at this extremely grievous and formidable moment … With yr help & counsel & with the support of the great party of wh you are the leader, I trust that I shall succeed … To a vy large extent I am in yr hands – & I feel no fear of that.’2 Chamberlain was evidently touched by this ‘most handsome’ acknowledgement, but he also understood that it was no more than the truth. Although no longer Prime Minister, in both a formal and a very real sense, Chamberlain still remained the leader of a party which was largely appalled by the idea of a Churchillian regime with its unscrupulous hangers-on and disreputable jackals. Indeed, Chamberlain himself noted with evident distaste the ‘very different crowd’ around Churchill, while his methods of Governmentmaking he found ‘disagreeably reminiscent of Lloyd Georgian ways’.3 Such sentiments found even stronger echoes elsewhere within the party.4 Shortly after hearing the news of Chamberlain’s fall, Dunglass, Colville, Butler and Channon met at the Foreign Office. ‘We were all sad and angry and felt cheated and out-witted’, Jock Colville noted as they ‘drank in champagne the health of the “King over the Water” (not King Leopold but Mr Chamberlain)’, while Butler declared ‘the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history’.5 Lord Davidson was no admirer of Chamberlain’s, but he also conceded that the party did not trust Churchill and lamented that he was ‘putting in the
jackals’ while ousting even the successful members of ‘the respectable rump of the Tory Party’ who remained faithful to the Baldwin-Chamberlain tradition. Collin Brooks put the contrast more bluntly some months later: ‘Poor old Neville. He was a good fellow. He simply didn’t know that there are shits in the world … Now, Winston knows that shits exist – and likes ’em.’6 Aware of these pervasive suspicions, Churchill carefully refrained from creating a coalition based on anti-Chamberlainite factionalism. As a result, some two-thirds of those ministers who served under Chamberlain continued to hold portfolios, while Churchill’s loyalists were rewarded in a relatively modest and discreet fashion. Among the few victims of Chamberlain’s fall, only Hoare was expelled from the government altogether, to be consigned to a miserable and isolated war as British Ambassador in Madrid, while Simon was moved to the Woolsack with a Viscountcy. The principal victim of the avenging Churchillians was Sir Horace Wilson, who was returned to his duties as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury with the blunt warning that if he ever visited Downing Street again the new Prime Minister would ‘make him Governor of Greenland!’7 Although Chamberlain claimed privately that he would ‘much rather have gone out altogether’ had it not been his duty ‘to set an example’, this probably needs to be taken with a fairly large pinch of salt.8 Anyway, Churchill always recognised that he needed Chamberlain because his exclusion ‘would create such embitterment among his friends as to make the life of the new Government “brutish and short”’. Confronted by fierce Labour opposition to Churchill’s plans to offer him the Treasury and then the Leadership of the Commons, Chamberlain recognised immediately that the ‘only chance of letting their passions die down is to take a place which does not bring me into conflict with them’. He thus willingly accepted the Lord Presidency with a seat in the fiveman non-departmental War Cabinet.9 Churchill’s assessment of Chamberlain’s pivotal significance to the government was entirely accurate. With Chamberlain and Halifax in the Cabinet, Conservatives hoped they would impose ‘some restraint on our new War Lord’, help ‘give some respectability to the firm’ and enable the leadership ‘to keep the Party together and compact on the back benches’.10 In a touching personal letter of gratitude for past kindnesses, Butler assured Chamberlain that he remained the guarantor of ‘certain virtues and values’ essential to the party and that he should ‘always realise the strength and number of your friends and how much we count on your presence in the Government’.11 As if to emphasise the point, on 13 May, as Chamberlain entered the Commons for the first time since his fall, ‘MPs lost their heads; they shouted; they cheered; they waved their Order Papers; and his reception was a regular ovation’; an enthusiasm which contrasted sharply with the sullen coolness displayed towards his successor in both Houses.12 In these unpropitious circumstances, Churchill prudently urged Chamberlain to retain the Conservative leadership, supposedly on the grounds that ‘as Prime Minister of a National Government, formed on the widest basis, … it would be better for me not to undertake the Leadership of any one political Party’.
