Six Minutes in May

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  There was no danger of any Halifax-like infatuation.67 In his mid-sixties, Churchill unconsciously likened his sexual appetites to those of Chamberlain’s sisal-stuffed merlins. When another MP whispered to him that his flies were undone, Churchill replied: ‘It makes no difference.68 The dead bird doesn’t leave the nest.’

  On the other hand, he was strangely bereft during Clementine’s sometimes not-so-brief flights from home. During one of these, she formed an attachment to a London art dealer, Terence Philip, bringing back a dove in a wicker cage, and after the bird died burying it beneath the sundial at Chartwell. When she wanted to go off again, Churchill refused. ‘Mr Pug is very sweet but now he says NO.’69

  In the days leading up to the Norway Debate, he counted on Clementine’s support. But the absence of a military victory threatened to make redundant even her management and advice. In Admiral Godfrey’s stark judgement, ‘Churchill needed a victory.’70

  If Churchill finished dictating by 2 a.m., Uncle Geoffrey recalled, he was wider awake than ever. ‘What about a visit to the War Room?’

  Inside the War Room, Narvik had risen again to the top of the agenda.71 The Chiefs of Staff were receiving daily reports, though there had been no further progress since Admiral Cork’s aborted attempt to put troops ashore on 24 April. Maddened at the stagnation, Labour’s Hugh Dalton complained to the new Air Minister Samuel Hoare: ‘We have nothing at all to show on land.’72 Fidgety and defensive, Hoare blamed the impasse on recurrent blizzards that mantled the town, so that scouts could not distinguish a single enemy target. ‘The trouble at Narvik is that there is a continual snow storm. You can’t see your hand more than a few inches in front of your face.’

  Early in May, the snowstorm abated. By the weekend of 4/5 May, a thaw had set in. As rising temperatures melted the five-foot drifts into slush, Churchill’s attention roved back to the chart of Narvik pinned to his wall. This was the victory he required. There must be no excuses.

  Stung by criticism of its optimistic press releases, the Ministry of Information decided on Saturday not to draw special attention to Narvik ‘until it was clear that our task there was going to be accomplished’.73 The War Office communiqué on Sunday night was deliberately downbeat. ‘There is nothing of importance to report from Narvik.’74

  Behind the scenes, though, despite competing claims from France, Holland and Alexandria, Narvik was Churchill’s priority. In message after message, he urged Admiral Cork to get on and seize the town, emphasising the danger of delay, and reiterating that the government was prepared to accept heavy losses and that a defeat would have serious repercussions. ‘It would show that our will to win and our fighting capacity were less than those of the enemy.’75 Plus it would have a devastating effect on world opinion. In an assessment that proved correct, though not in the way he anticipated, Churchill sent Cork another signal. ‘I must regard the next six or seven days as possibly decisive.’76 As if that was not enough, ‘I shall be glad to share your responsibilities.’77 Once again, he stood on the bridge.

  Adding to Churchill’s frustrations, the news from Narvik continued to be dismal. Early on Saturday, the Polish destroyer Grom was bombed by a Heinkel 111, suffering a direct hit on her torpedo tubes, and sank in two minutes with the loss of sixty-five men. Three battalions of Chasseurs Alpins had arrived, but their mules had disappeared like Cork’s monocle into the snow. After ten days, French troops had advanced less than five miles, and were suffering from frostbite and snow-blindness. An Intelligence report received on 4 May warned that 120 troop-carrying German aircraft were about to leave Denmark, probably to reinforce General Dietl’s garrison. And most troubling: even though weather conditions had improved, no commensurate thaw had occurred between the British army and navy commanders. In a boiling communication to the War Office, General Mackesy wrote that Admiral Cork’s military knowledge was ‘exactly NIL’ and the situation was ‘simple lunacy’.78

  General Ironside was compelled to agree with Churchill that Mackesy had not provided bold enough leadership. With Ironside’s blessing, Churchill decided to send out Lieutenant General Claude Auchinleck to investigate the cause of the failure and take over command on his arrival. But that would not be until 12 May.

  With Mackesy suffering from flu, his acting Brigade commander was ordered to conduct an immediate reconnaissance with the French commander, to identify suitable landing spots on the Narvik peninsula, and to prepare an airfield which could counter the growing number of German bombers flying up from Trondheim now that the Allies had left the area. Their findings would dictate Cork’s next move. Churchill waited to learn the result, in Geoffrey Shakespeare’s phrase, ‘like a caged lion’.79

  Churchill’s appointments book is missing, but not his wife’s. The Chief Whip David Margesson came to dinner with Churchill on Saturday while Clementine and Mary attended a ball in Bryanston Square. On Sunday, Clementine travelled to their three-roomed cottage at Chartwell. Whether or not Churchill accompanied her, and the likelihood is that he did not, he was back at the Admiralty by late afternoon.

  Sunday was another abnormally warm day in London. In the park, the band of the Coldstream Guards played until 7 p.m. Blossom was on the chestnut trees, and the paths were thronged with strollers who had been forced to stay in town because of petrol rationing.

  Churchill still had heard nothing from Admiral Cork when, at 7 p.m., he received Colonel Birger Ljungberg, the Norwegian Defence Minister. Ljungberg had arrived directly from the war area with his Foreign Minister, Halvdan Koht. In a broadcast from London made on that Sunday, in words which Churchill was to paraphrase eight years later in Oslo, Koht stated that the German attack on Norway would go down in history as ‘one of the worst criminal acts ever known’.80

  Both Koht and Ljungberg still smarted at the peremptory and secretive manner in which the Allies had deserted the Norwegian forces at Trondheim – they, like Ruge and Getz, had been informed only after the evacuation had taken place. It smacked of the Allies’ ‘skedaddling habits of the last war’.81 A measure of their anger was the Norwegian government’s refusal to grant permission, three weeks later, for two new motor torpedo boats owned and crewed by the Norwegian navy, but then stationed in a British port on the south coast, to help retrieve troops from Dunkirk.82 Nonetheless, Ljungberg provided Churchill with information on the terrain outside Narvik, and he advised him that the aerodrome at Bardufoss fifty miles from Harstad could be ready by 12 May.

  After Ljungberg departed, Churchill continued to pad up and down, now and then striding over to examine the large map which showed the disposition of every Allied company surrounding Narvik. General Ironside, on the point of leaving for Gourock in north-west Scotland to welcome back the Namsos convoy, worried that he was abandoning Churchill at a vulnerable moment. ‘Winston seems to me to be a little weighed down by the cares of being solely responsible for Narvik.83 He wants it taken and yet doesn’t dare to give any direct order to Cork.’

  Cork’s signal from Narvik finally reached Churchill in the early hours of Monday, bringing further unwelcome news. The reconnaissance had revealed only one small beach, 150 yards long. This was bordered by steep inclines over which it was unlikely that troops could ‘clamber let alone assault’.84 The lack of darkness made a surprise attack impossible – the men would be in sight of the enemy for ninety minutes. Plus, there were only four landing craft. General Mackesy was supported by the unanimous verdict of his senior officers that an opposed landing in these conditions was ‘absolutely unjustified’.85 Cork had with ‘great reluctance’ submitted Mackesy’s report to the War Office.86

  Not satisfied, Churchill pressed Cork to reveal his own opinion about a frontal attack. Cork replied that while he did not think success certain, he strongly believed that there was a good chance of it, and he proposed anchoring HMS Resolution within fifty yards of Narvik pier. ‘Her bulk at that range would scare enemy troops while her guns would blast them to Hades.’87 Cork planned the operation for 8 May, th
e day on which Churchill was due to speak in the Commons. A successful assault on Narvik would supply the tonic that everybody was looking towards Churchill to provide.

  As the snowstorms abated which had reduced visibility to a few feet, and contours began to appear, General Mackesy perceived one thing with increased clarity. Churchill’s keenness to capture Narvik had less to do with the town’s strategic value than with the First Lord’s survival in Westminster. Mackesy explained to his French counterpart, Brigadier General Antoine Béthouart, why he had behaved with such belligerence in standing his ground: he was unwilling ‘to provoke a hecatomb to save the political fortunes of Mr Churchill’.88

  This, then, was Churchill’s position on the eve of the Norway Debate – isolated, defeated, tired; not holding his drink; frustrated by the command structure, yet, on the instances when he had overruled it, unable to brandish a victory; unpopular in Cabinet; and hanging on by the extra rope that Chamberlain had reeled out for him to use, either to save the situation, or, as Chips Channon speculated, to hang himself from.

  One other factor must be taken into account when trying to visualise Churchill’s daily life at this time. It is contained in a bleak record in Clementine’s appointments book, her last entry for Monday 6 May, the single word, ‘Bertram’.89 Her sister Nellie had telephoned that evening from Huntington Park to say that Giles’s father had died. His funeral was to be held later in the week. Right at the moment when Churchill needed her most, his wife would be in Herefordshire.

  14

  THE REBELS

  ‘Oh! the excitement, the thrills, the atmosphere of ill-concealed nervousness, the self-interest, which comes over the House of Commons when there is a political crisis on.’1

  CHIPS CHANNON MP, 1 May 1940

  In corridors and committee rooms, in bars and clubs, in nearby drawing rooms and restaurants, a political crisis was brewing which tracked the tussle taking place in the Arctic. In the blizzard of rumours and counter-rumours swirling through Westminster, it proved no easier than in Narvik to make out the disposition of the enemy; to establish who was an ally of whom, and what, if anything, might result from the approaching clash on Tuesday 7 May.

  Members had gone away for the weekend and listened to their constituents, and returned with the same question: why after seven months of preparation was the government not in a position to strike back when Hitler invaded Norway? Inflammatory speeches by opposition leaders on Saturday and Sunday revealed how events in Norway had disturbed the political waters. Suspicion was rising that the results of Chamberlain’s economic blockade were not all that they were claimed to be. Britain’s humiliating defeat in the first serious encounter with Nazi Germany was, for many MPs, the final straw.

  Beyond providing a fuller and franker account, the Whitsun Adjournment Debate offered one of the few chances since September for opposition MPs and dissident Conservatives to close in on Chamberlain. Up to now, opposition to the Prime Minister had taken the shape of shifting allegiances that had failed to cohere into a genuine threat. Here was an opportunity for these competing factions to combine forces and pin responsibility for the disaster on a single target; and – though the likelihood of this was remote – bring about a revolt among backbenchers, and create a coalition government drawn from all parties.

  Yet how this coup was to be achieved remained as obscure as the person who might lead it.

  ‘In vain we look for a glimmer of light.2 It is a perfect blackout.’ A secret memorandum by the Welsh Liberal peer Lord Davies reminded an all-party group of rebellious-minded MPs that there was a precedent for the change of leadership they sought: when, in the middle of the First World War, Lloyd George had taken over from Asquith with the assistance of the House of Commons. ‘Many of us are now passing through the same phase of doubt and fear of divided counsel which we experienced during those far off days of 1916.’

  Aged seventy-seven, Lloyd George was still an MP, and on 20 April he had celebrated a milestone: a dinner was held at the Commons in tribute to his fifty years in Parliament. Not only that, but several figures were still around who had helped him into power, like Leo Amery and Max Beaverbrook. Lord Davies, who as David Davies had supported Lloyd George in 1916, was eager to champion him again. Why not summon back ‘Corgi’ as leader?

  Churchill’s star might have sunk to its lowest in eight months, but that of Lloyd George had rocketed over the weekend to astronomical heights. On Saturday, Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary: ‘People are so distressed by the whole thing that they are talking of Lloyd George as a possible P.M.’ Basil Liddell Hart heard ‘on all sides’ a growing volume of support voiced for the recall of the man who had ‘triumphantly ridden the storm’ in the First War.3, 4 A letter to The Times posed the question: ‘What would quicken the momentum, both spiritual and material, of our people most effectually? The answer is, Lloyd George as British Prime Minister … he is the man for the job.’5

  But was he the man for the job – and would he agree? With a mane of white hair thicker than ever, Lloyd George continued to be as devious and divisive in his political machinations as in his private life. In the opinion of his Private Secretary, he was ‘as artful as a cartload of monkeys’.6

  A disappointed majority in the Commons felt that Lloyd George had entered his defeatist dotage after suggesting in October that Britain should seek peace terms with Hitler, whom he once rather embarrassingly had lauded as ‘the greatest German of the age’. Lloyd George was generally perceived as a big beast all on his own, having fractured the Liberal Party into three disunited factions, and been reduced to sitting in a family rump with his son Gwilym and daughter Megan. Yet for a small, passionate group of supporters, he remained the architect of a victory that the country was in supreme need of seeing repeated. Churchill had once written to him saying that he would ‘never forget the fearful days through which you led us to safety’.7 Two decades on, Lloyd George behaved as though he were not too old to head another coalition, though this was unlikely to happen unless Chamberlain, whom Lloyd George abominated for having kept him out of power, was eliminated from the picture. Striding up and down, Lloyd George fulminated to Leo Amery: ‘To think that I who saved the country should be allowed into the Cabinet by the gracious permission of that pinhead.’8

  Lloyd George’s most strident champion was the first female MP, the volatile Nancy Astor, who had spent the weekend at Cliveden talking up his prospects with the editor of the Observer, J. L. Garvin. Like Astor, Garvin believed that Lloyd George should come back as the leader of a coalition. To the argument that Lloyd George was too physically frail to do even a full day’s work in peacetime, Garvin countered that ‘he was quite capable of working for six hours a day, and that six hours would be better worth having than anyone else’s eighteen!’9

  A. J. Sylvester had succeeded Geoffrey Shakespeare as Lloyd George’s Private Secretary, and he kept an alert eye on the ‘Old Goat’, as he preferred to call him. ‘I am always amused as he walks down the corridors.10 He just flies. That is all stage-managed to make people say what remarkable energy he has.’ Only a few weeks earlier, Lloyd George had confided to Sylvester, ‘I have a great part to play in this war yet.’11

  Precisely what part remained unclear. Down on his Surrey farm, Lloyd George kept his ambitions buttoned up beneath his blue waistcoat. When Geoffrey Shakespeare on a visit to Churt asked if he ever hankered after the days of his power, the former Prime Minister stooped to pick a dandelion. ‘Well, there was a time when I conducted a great war-r-r-r-r.12 Now all I can do is pick dandelions for my secretary’s rabbits.’

  But Operation ‘Wilfred’ had begun life as a rabbit, and Lloyd George’s secretary – Frances Stevenson, with whom he lived at Churt – went on to become his second wife. Might the ‘Old Goat’ be persuaded to toss his hat into the political ring a second time?

  No one could have been more unsuitable as Prime Minister in 1940, yet Sylvester observed how Lloyd George’s head was ‘literally turned’ by the
bags of adulatory letters that he received from the public – ‘Every day he is crazy about the letters – not what is in them but “How many are there?”’ Feeding his master’s vanity, Sylvester kept Lloyd George abreast of the Westminster gossip, writing to him on 1 May: ‘I heard men talk about your return who in the past have been most unfriendlily disposed towards you.’13, 14 Sylvester had bumped into an ‘important member’ of the Labour Party – probably Willie Henderson, head of the Labour Press and Publicity department – who confided that there were only two people whom he could see as Prime Minister. ‘One was Lloyd George and the other was Winston, and he said that the Labour Party would never serve under Winston’s Premiership.’ Sylvester’s next titbit was calculated to tantalise. What was required, said Sylvester’s authoritative informant, was drive from the top, ‘and he envisaged you as Prime Minister … You were the one man who could do that … The only man was yourself.’

  Lloyd George was ‘much interested’ to learn this, but he was not yet prepared to commit himself.

  On Tuesday 7 May, a mere three hours before the Norway Debate, a last-minute lunch party was held by Nancy Astor and Garvin to ‘sound’ out Lloyd George to see if he would ‘play’.15 A former civil servant, Tom Jones, who could talk in Welsh with him, was present at the gathering in 4 St James’s Square. ‘Nancy welcomed the Grand Old Man with his flowing white locks and told him in her blunt way that he had been produced for inspection and to be tested for his fitness to return to the helm of ship of state.’16 But even at this late stage, Lloyd George prevaricated, saying that they should not count on him … His forty-year friendship with Churchill made him hesitant to speak out in the debate … It would be very difficult to do so without castigating Churchill for the navy’s part in the withdrawal. Jones wrote: ‘We were left to infer that Lloyd George preferred to wait his country’s summons a little longer.’