‘The Bore War’, September 1939–January 1940

Long before American journalists coined the term ‘Phoney War’, that curious interlude between the official end of peace in September 1939 and the launch of the German offensive in the West in May 1940 had become known as ‘The Bore War’. At sea, the war began at once when the Cunard liner Athenia was sunk by a U-boat on 3 September, with the loss of 120 passengers and crew. Yet on the home front, war came as a curious anticlimax. It was all quiet on the Western Front and the bombers, so long expected to deliver the ‘knockout blow’ from the air, did not materialise. Apart from the sandbags and gas masks seen everywhere, the black-out at night and barrage balloons during the day, the war seemed ‘very unreal’ in the glorious September sunshine. As the Italian Ambassador to Paris told his British counterpart, ‘I have seen several wars waged without being declared; but this is the first I have seen declared without being waged.’1 The absence of mortal peril had a curiously corrosive impact upon national unity and morale which made the task of government far more difficult than if the declaration of war had been followed swiftly by the long anticipated carnage. Although Chamberlain regularly remarked it was ‘better to be bored than bombed’, ministers soon became aware that the ‘daily irritation of the country looms large in proportion to the scarcity of big news in the war’.2 The longer this ‘war twilight’ continued, the more intense became public frustration with the many minor inconveniences and niggling restrictions upon normal life. As ‘Chips’ Channon put it on 10 December: ‘The war is 100 days old, and damned bore it is, though no one seems to talk about it now. It might be somewhere very remote, and I feel that there is a definite danger in such detachment.’ With boredom and grumbling, came the fear that ‘a defeatist spirit is growing

in the country’ which might spread to the Commons.3 Indeed, such was the ministerial concern about morale and public discontents that in November the War Cabinet began to relax many of the controls so recently imposed, while in the following month the Chancellor warned of adverse public reaction to the inevitable fall in the standard of living once the war began in earnest.4 One of the most remarkable features of the ‘Bore War’ was the degree to which it impinged so little upon the daily lives of Chamberlain and his Cabinet colleagues. Every morning he walked around the lake in St James’ Park with his wife, discreetly followed by a single detective, just as he had in peacetime. He then returned to meet Margesson in the Cabinet room at eleven and 30 minutes later the War Cabinet assembled. A week after the declaration of war, Chamberlain thus noted with surprise that despite ‘some dreadful anxieties, especially during one sleepless night, the tension has actually decreased and I have occasionally times, perhaps an hour or even more, when there has been nothing for me to do’. Indeed, such was the relaxation of tension that he almost immediately introduced a system where only three of the War Cabinet’s nine members needed to remain in London on each Sunday, enabling the Chamberlains to retire to the peace of Chequers on two weekends out of every three.5 At this juncture more than ever before, the tranquillity of Chequers proved an ‘immense boon’ and in order to insulate himself further from the outside world, Chamberlain continued to make it clear that he disliked being disturbed by telephone at weekends and he rarely took a private secretary with him. Even on those weekends when he was ‘on duty’ in London, he still found time to read all of Shakespeare’s comedies and visit favourite peacetime haunts like Kew Gardens, London Zoo and Richmond Park, where he enjoyed the autumn colour and the birds, despite being ‘plagued to death’ by waving wellwishers and autograph hunters.6 For a man in his seventieth year, Chamberlain initially bore the physical and mental strain of war remarkably well. In late October, however, he suffered a particularly severe recurrence of the gout that had always afflicted him at moments of greatest stress. To make matters worse, it was accompanied by new symptoms in the form of an intensely irritating rash over his legs, palms and wrists which disturbed his sleep well into December. Such was the overall effect of this indisposition that Chamberlain was confined to bed for a week before arrangements were made to transport him downstairs to the morning meetings of the War Cabinet on a chair. He did not resume his daily walks around St James’ Park until the end of the month. The severity of this attack inevitably raised in some minds the possibility that he was too old and infirm to remain in office and that he would soon retire. Perhaps with this in mind, in late November his first wartime broadcast began with an assurance that he was speaking ‘happily with health and strength unimpaired’.7 Critics certainly hoped ‘the authors of our present misfortunes (Chamberlain above all) will have to go and a genuine National Government will have to be formed’.8 In the event, however, it was another eight months before Chamberlain lost the Premiership and his survival in office can be explained by reference to

two factors. The first was the apparent absence of a credible successor. Despite regular comparisons with Asquith’s lack-lustre leadership during the Great War, the critical ingredient was missing. As one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries put it, ‘I can see no Lloyd George on the horizon at present: Winston is a national figure, but is rather too old and the younger politicians do not seem to include any outstanding personality. Halifax would be respected, but he has not the drive necessary to keep the country united and enthusiastic.’9 The second factor prolonging the Chamberlain regime was his absolute refusal to retire gracefully at a time when his entire career remained stained indelibly with humiliating defeat and failure. As he regularly acknowledged privately, he would hand over to someone else if a fighting war began in the West, but while this ‘war twilight’ continued he was able to bear the strain and he had much to offer.10 Furthermore, Chamberlain was characteristically determined to govern in his own fashion, without pandering to the rising clamour for new and more dramatic responses to the challenge of war. This obstinate refusal to appease the expectations of informed opinion inflicted an ultimately disastrous blow upon his reputation and credibility as a war Prime Minister. The War Cabinet announced on 3 September was widely interpreted as a damaging reflection of this uncompromising reluctance to adapt to new circumstances. At the outbreak of war, Chamberlain issued formal invitations to join the government to Labour and the Liberals. Both parties refused. Painful memories of the compromising position created by Arthur Henderson’s membership of the Asquith and Lloyd George coalitions during the Great War persuaded Labour that no one should join a ‘mixed bag government’ without authorisation; a decision reinforced by the fear that Chamberlain might attempt to recruit Labour leaders on a selective basis. As Dalton explained, if the Labour Party were given ‘one seat in the Inner Cabinet, plus the Postmaster-General and the Secretaryship of State for Latrines, we should not only be uninfluential within, but we should lose most of our power to exercise influence from without … [and] much of our credit amongst our own people, who would be filled with suspicions of our official participation’. There was much validity in these tactical fears, but rejection also undoubtedly reflected the almost visceral loathing and mistrust that Chamberlain evoked within the entire Labour movement.11 Eight months later this very personal animosity would destroy Chamberlain’s Premiership. In the short-term, Chamberlain’s sincerity in extending this invitation to Labour must be open to question. His contempt for the Labour leadership was legendary, but it is possible that he genuinely wanted Greenwood for whom he had far more respect than Attlee. Indeed, his ‘very friendly & confidential talks’ with Greenwood during the last months of peace might possibly have taken place unknown to the rest of the Labour leadership, while Greenwood’s nervous reaction towards the veto on individuals accepting office without collective approval might indicate that he was open to such an idea.12 But in practice, it is unlikely that Chamberlain wanted any formal Labour participation in the government. On the contrary, given his consistent expectation that the war

would soon peter out leaving the way clear for an election, he had absolutely no incentive to share any of the credit for the resumption of peace with his Labour opponents. It is absolutely certain that Chamberlain was merely going through the motions in making a similar offer to Sir Archibald Sinclair and his Liberal following. Despite pleas from Hoare and Churchill that this would have ‘the great advantage of eliminating one of the oppositions and getting their very influential press on our side’, Chamberlain’s inability to conceal his personal contempt for the Liberal leader resulted in regular irritable exchanges.13 In these circumstances, it was scarcely surprising that Sinclair declined Chamberlain’s modest offer of office in September 1939 on the grounds that the Liberals could ‘not accept responsibility for the policy and actions of the Government without being received into its innermost councils and having full opportunities of influencing the big decisions of policy’.14 Without the support of the two Opposition parties, Chamberlain was obliged to construct a War Cabinet from the ‘National’ support he had at his disposal. On 3 September, it was announced that the nine-man War Cabinet consisted of Chamberlain, Halifax, Simon, Hoare, the four service ministers – Kingsley Wood, Chatfield, Hore-Belisha and Churchill – with Lord Hankey as Minister without Portfolio combining a lifetime of experience with the first War Cabinet and the Committee of Imperial Defence with his other role to ‘keep an eye on Winston’.15 In addition, Eden reluctantly recognised that he had been superseded by Churchill when he accepted the Dominion Office outside the Cabinet on the ‘humiliating’ understanding that he would be ‘a constant attender at meetings’; a concession which effectively left him a passive ‘spectator’ in all discussions outside his departmental remit.16 There was no place for past opponents like Duff Cooper, nor for Amery who protested that it was ‘absurd’ that he should not be employed given his experience, but when Eden mentioned Amery’s name Chamberlain gave ‘a flash of his old vindictiveness’ before dismissing the idea with an ‘irritated snort’.17 Despite the offer ‘to serve anywhere, at any time, in any capacity’, even former stalwarts like Swinton were not recalled in the nation’s hour of crisis.18 Beyond the minimum of prudent concessions to his Conservative critics, therefore, the supposedly ‘new’ War Cabinet really consisted of the ‘old gang’ in their old positions; a source of considerable disquiet for those who were concerned by ‘the shadow of “appeasement” which still besets the Prime Minister’.19 Undoubtedly the most crucial outcome of Labour’s refusal to serve under Chamberlain was that it compelled him to guard his own flank by restoring Churchill to office. This was a prospect which Chamberlain had actively striven to avoid since 1931, because as he told Joseph Kennedy in July 1939, Churchill ‘has developed into a fine two-handed drinker … his judgement has never been proven to be good’ and if he had been in the Cabinet ‘England would have been at war before this.’20 Equally important, Chamberlain’s doubts about Churchill’s policy and character were spiced with increasing animosity towards the latter’s wholly deserved reputation as a self-seeking, duplicitous

renegade whose public smile concealed the conspirator’s poisoned dagger. But while Chamberlain believed he could safely exclude Churchill in peacetime, he always recognised that the outbreak of war would fundamentally transform both of their positions. He thus offered Churchill the Admiralty with a seat in his nine-man War Cabinet on the night of 1 September convinced that ‘he would have been a most troublesome thorn in our flesh if he had been outside’.21 Although Churchill was in his element at the Admiralty, his febrile imagination and restless dynamism made him a ‘difficult’ Cabinet colleague, a worse departmental minister and the worst of subordinates for a man of Chamberlain’s orderly methods. Within days of Churchill’s return, rumours abounded ‘that Winston is already driving the Admiralty to distraction by his interference and energy’.22 He had the same effect on Chamberlain who shared the War Cabinet’s general frustration at Churchill’s tendency to be ‘very rhetorical, very emotional and, most of all, very reminiscent’.23 Contrary to all expectations, however, Chamberlain was also soon gratified to note that the Cabinet was ‘getting along quite well’ and that ‘Winston’s conclusions and mine have been the same though we haven’t always arrived at them by the same road.’ Although Churchill was ‘difficult’, as Hoare told Inskip in late November, ‘the P.M. handles him very well’.24 On the other hand, such consolations could not forgive Churchill’s habit of deluging the Prime Minister with interminable epistles on all manner of subjects well beyond his own departmental responsibilities. This barrage of advice and suggestions began immediately. On the day after Churchill’s appointment he sought to impinge upon the Prime Minister’s prerogative over appointments. ‘Aren’t we a vy old team?’ he asked. ‘I make out that the six you mentioned yesterday aggregate 386 years or an average of over 64! Only one year short of the old age Pension!’ The addition of Sinclair and Eden, he suggested, would reduce the average to just over 57 years while broadening the base of the government to appeal to both the Conservative group around Eden and moderate Liberal opinion. At midnight he despatched a second missive repeating these concerns. These were to be but the first of a torrent of lengthy letters during the early weeks of the war covering everything from the need to avoid taking the initiative in bombing, the equipment deficiencies of the BEF, the supply of the Army and the need for a Ministry of Shipping – all richly elaborated with reference to Churchill’s ministerial experiences during the Great War and with the assurance that they were offered ‘only in my desire to aid you in your responsibilities, and discharge my own’.25 This was more than Chamberlain was prepared to tolerate. He recognised that Churchill was ‘enjoying every moment of the war’ and that his attempted interference was largely the result of a restless imagination. But he thought these detailed missives a waste of his time when they met every day in the War Cabinet and complained that such ideas should have been ‘brought up in Cabinet when matured not flung out from hour to hour without being thought out and often abandoned as soon as written’. Worse still, he rightly suspected ‘these letters are for the purpose of quotation in the Book that he will write

hereafter’. After a letter on 15 September, ‘so obviously recording his foresight and … warnings so plainly for the purposes of future allusion’, Chamberlain resolved to end the practice once and for all. When these efforts failed, the first minor crisis in their relationship boiled to the surface on 2 October when another letter arrived dealing with subjects as diverse as Indian troops, the formation of new RAF squadrons and the adverse effects of lighting restrictions – all of which had been discussed previously in the War Cabinet. After this Chamberlain had a ‘very frank talk’ with his over-zealous subordinate during which Churchill promised to write no more letters. He also ‘swore vehemently that he had no desire or intention of intrigue’ and that ‘his sole desire was to help me to win the war’; protestations which Chamberlain concluded were sincere, but that ‘Winston is in some respects such a child that he neither knows his own motives or sees where his actions are carrying him.’ After this talk, Churchill went off ‘in the highest good humour’ to demonstrate a personal loyalty to Chamberlain which Tory dissidents felt he did not deserve and of which loyal Chamberlainites had previously suspected he was incapable.26