First Lady

by Sonia Purnell

  It was not an attitude likely to endear him to Clementine, and yet Colville was regularly deployed to accompany her on constituency visits to Epping (on top of her many other duties during the war she acted as surrogate MP) and often made to chaperone her at official engagements. For his part, he seethed at what he saw as a gross indignity for a young but senior Downing Street aide. Eventually, ahead of a visit to Scotland in October 1940, he simply refused to carry out her instructions: ‘I object to acting as Mrs C.’s private secretary,’ he railed, choosing instead to delegate responsibility to the considerably more humble Grace Hamblin, the Churchills’ long-term family retainer. In return he was treated to one of Clementine’s notorious explosions, and firmly put in his place. ‘Mrs Churchill was abusive,’ Colville complained in his diary of 22 October 1940. ‘She was furious and said I gave myself airs.’

  Colville was not alone in being slow to recognise the scale and importance of Clementine’s unique role. It would take outsiders – notably Americans – to do that. Part of the problem was that Britain’s largely unwritten constitution has never defined, or even recognised, the role of the Prime Minister’s unelected spouse. Another was that there were so few women in Whitehall outside the secretarial pool, and virtually none with any real clout. For almost all the war, there were just two female ministers in the whole of Whitehall, both of junior rank (whereas in the US the female Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, was one of the most powerful members of President Roosevelt’s Cabinet). Yet here was Clementine giving orders like a man – or worse, like a senior minister – and expecting to be treated as such. It was all rather revolutionary for Britain in 1940, even if nothing was known of it in the country. Pamela, who had no intention of playing the ‘ordinary little wife’ either, noted that Clementine was ‘very strong-willed’ and ‘stern’. She was ‘an abnormal woman . . . [who] was very hard on herself, and she was hard on other people’. She saw how Clementine was, as the coquettish Pamela put it, ‘not very feminine’.39

  Clementine recognised from the beginning that this was to be a war fought by men, but also through the endurance and strength of women. Millions would have to do jobs and act in ways that were ‘not very feminine’. She, like many others, had discovered what she was capable of when called to action in the First World War, only to retreat back into the domestic bubble thereafter. Now, with Britain facing an even greater crisis, women were to be more vital than ever – a point she quickly made clear to Winston.

  Not forgetting his earlier treatment at the hands of the suffragettes, he was initially unenthused at the idea of women serving in auxiliary military roles, but Clementine persevered and he became one of the first to appreciate that the country could not win through the sacrifice of its menfolk alone. Even when still at the Admiralty in January 1940 he had delivered a speech in Manchester aimed at drafting a million women to work in the munition and aircraft factories. What she called ‘Women’s Sense’ would herald a new social order, in which for the first time mothers and wives would hand over their domestic and childcare duties to others to devote themselves to a national emergency. It had been an historic female call-to-arms, delivered by Winston but bearing Clementine’s fingerprints: ‘Come then, let us to the task, to the battle, to the toil. Fill the armies, rule the air, pour out the munitions, strangle the U-boats, sweep the mines, plough the land, build the ships, guard the streets, succour the wounded, uplift the downcast, honour the brave . . . There is not a week nor a day, nor an hour to lose.’40

  Clementine took pains to set an example by taking on from July 1941 the highly hazardous work of a fire watcher, her name being added to a rota of night-time shifts. Perched on a prominent rooftop during air raids, surrounded by the deafening clatter of gunfire and choking on the stench of sulphur and gunpowder, she braved all the attendant dangers of being badly burned, cut by shrapnel, or worse. This followed a forthright note she sent to the Home Secretary – Labour’s Herbert Morrison – in May 1941, in response to complaints that the fire-watching service was woefully undermanned. She urged him to ask all ‘middle-aged women (35-60)’ of ‘independent means’ living in the country to register for a few shifts in badly bombed cities like Manchester or Bristol. ‘I would be glad to have my name associated with the scheme,’ she added, to force home the point that he could not ignore her request.

  Later, she would encourage Mary’s decision to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in one of its new ‘mixed’ anti-aircraft batteries. To her credit, Mary, like many women, proved particularly adept at handling the intricate mechanisms of the guns and her prowess saw her rise rapidly to the equivalent rank to captain, whereby it was she, not a man, who issued the command to ‘Fire!’ During Mary’s visits home Clementine revelled in her camaraderie with her ‘soldiering’ daughter. They would breakfast in bed together – side by side, trays on their laps, hair in curlers, often giggling like two schoolgirls.

  Winston was soon to get his million women civilian workers – and then another million on top. A further half a million signed up for the three services – the WRNS, the WAAF and the ATS. The new American ambassador, Gil Winant, was deeply impressed by the contribution made by so many women. It was a phenomenon he had not expected when he arrived in March 1941 but one that helped convince him that against all the odds, Britain really might survive.

  Clementine was now intimately involved in the direction of the war. She frequently accompanied Winston on visits to garrisons, seaside town defences and, during the Battle of Britain, the RAF fighter command centre at Uxbridge. On the cloudless day of 15 September 1940, she descended fifty feet underground with him, where, in the dark of the Operations Room, she watched the direction of what would prove to be the decisive confrontation in British skies. She, like Winston, was gripped by the huge map table before her on which twenty young officers were frantically tracking German bombers, and their fighter plane escorts, as they stormed over the coastline in massive herringbone formations. On the wall on the other side, red bulbs lit up one by one on a vast blackboard to indicate each RAF squadron as it took to the air for battle. The double-height room, which Winston compared to a theatre, was rigid with tension, the ‘raid-plotters’ almost overwhelmed by the reports flooding in of wave after wave of enemy aircraft. The Churchills glanced nervously at the red lights glowing on the other side of the room until Winston asked: ‘How many more planes have you?’ Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, the straight-talking New Zealander in command, quietly replied: ‘I am putting in my last.’ The stakes could not have been higher. As the Spitfires and Hurricanes swooped into action above them, Britain’s fate was truly in the hands of the famous ‘Few’.

  Finally, word came in that after ferocious fighting the depleted and scattered German planes were at last turning for home. Relieved, but as yet unsure of the outcome the Churchills climbed the stairs back up to the surface, blinking as they emerged into the sunlight just as the All Clear was sounded. The tension had been such that on their arrival back at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country seat, Winston went straight to his room and slept for four hours. Only that evening were they informed that the RAF had won a critical victory.

  The part of supportive companion was Clementine’s most visible role, and its importance to Winston and his ability to conduct the war ought not to be underestimated. But when he had no need of her she used her time to exert an influence elsewhere; and like his, her involvement was no longer limited to one government department. She took on causes and problems relating to almost the entire war effort. Winston was so absorbed with the military aspects of the conflict he had little time for the detail of the domestic front. It was a gap that Clementine did her best to fill. Her privileged knowledge of the conflict, combined with her memories of the government’s failings during the First World War, often helped her identify a need before the ‘professionals’. In June 1940, with air raids starting sporadically outside London, she had dispatched a minute to Winston’s principal private secretary requestin
g details on shelters for people whose homes had been bombed, welfare payments, hospital visits, compensation for injuries and activities to boost morale in hard-hit areas.41 The minute showed remarkable foresight and practicality, as well as the compassion for ‘ordinary’ citizens so lacking in 1914–18. Many of her concerns, including those about boosting morale, were acted upon.

  Frequently seen smiling alongside her husband, Clementine became the human face of Winston’s government, and was looked to as someone who could get things done. Her mailbag ballooned, and through the correspondence she received she developed a keen feel for popular opinion – information that fed directly into Winston’s speech-making, public persona and government policy. The scion of a ducal dynasty relied on the granddaughter of an earl to take the common man’s pulse. She did it so effectively that, as Winston’s doctor Lord Moran put it in his diaries: ‘Since 1940 we do not think of the PM as handicapped by living apart from the people. His countrymen have come to feel that he is saying what they would like to say for themselves if they knew how.’42

  Clementine knew that Winston lived his life in ‘blinkers’, and by temperament and background was oblivious to the mindset of the great majority. She also understood that his authority as a wartime prime minister relied on popular support. So she sought to provide his antennae; she acted as his social conscience, as well as his advocate-in-chief. ‘From her childhood experiences Clementine never forgot what life was like for working people,’ explains Jane Portal (now Lady Williams), a one-time personal assistant to Winston and family friend. ‘She was in no way a snob; that was something very attractive about her. She helped Winston not to be a snob too.’43

  There could be no repeat of the loftiness displayed by Asquith in the last war; Winston’s government had to be seen as a genuine coalition of all the classes. The collective spirit of ‘we can take it’ – which was almost all that Britain had going for it in 1940 – had to be kept alive. So, with the help of Grace Hamblin, Clementine answered as many letters as possible personally and championed countless causes. Many concerned the discomforts and distress caused by the war at home, such as the woeful condition of air-raid shelters in London when the Blitz started in September 1940. German bombers attacked the capital for fifty-seven nights without respite, leaving much of the city in smouldering ruins and forcing tens of thousands, young and old, to live sometimes fourteen hours a day in ‘really horrible conditions of cold, wet, dirt, darkness and stench’ often without proper beds, lavatories, lighting, washing facilities or even escape routes in the event of a direct hit or fire. Impetigo and scabies were quickly spreading, and there were fears that typhus and trench fever would follow. Responsibility for the situation lay with no fewer than five competing government agencies, none of which was prepared to use ‘compulsion where persuasion fails’ to ensure that improvements were made.

  Clementine shared no such qualms, particularly not once people began writing to her of their plight. A typical correspondent was a desperate occupant of a shelter in Bethnal Green, east London, who wrote anonymously in pencil: ‘Madam, I hope you will not be offended by my writing to you as we have all made several complaints to the Council in regards a proper convenient lavatory for ladies and also a heating apparatus (electric) as the shelter where we are is . . . nothing more than an ice box . . . The authorities do not take any notice . . . Madam we shall be very grateful to you if you could do something for us.’ Clementine immediately wrote to the health minister Malcolm MacDonald, son of the former Labour leader Ramsay, enclosing the letter she had received: ‘Do you think something can quickly be done to make the people there more comfortable?’ MacDonald knew, of course, that she enjoyed the full support of the Prime Minister and that this was not a question but an order. Action was quickly taken, so that when he reported back to her she was able to reply: ‘I am so glad that the conditions there are being improved.’44

  It was a scenario she repeated many times. Heaters, full-sized beds, well-lit and clean latrines, disinfected bedding, extra shelters and a host of other improvements were provided as a direct result of her specific interventions. The more she achieved, the more the letters poured in, some meticulously formal, some addressing her as ‘Clementine’ as if she were an old friend. Marjorie K. Hopkins of 191 Commercial Road, east London, wrote on 6 July 1941 that ‘I find it very difficult to thank you adequately for coming to see us at Stepney last Wednesday . . . I cannot tell you how much it cheered us up to be able to tell you myself some of my most urgent problems – the men are giving everything & they only ask that their wives & children shall have some home. Thank you for giving me such a kindly & sympathetic hearing – I feel now at last thanks to you something will be done.’

  Often Clementine would simply write to the relevant minister – in this case Minister of Labour and National Service Ernest Bevin – but on other occasions she would dragoon such an individual into chaperoning her on an unannounced inspection. It was an ‘invitation’ that even members of the Cabinet felt unable to decline, and all knew that she would monitor their response to any problems discovered. She even recruited her long-term adversary Lord Beaverbrook (then Minister of Supply) to deal with the bed crisis, knowing that his prodigious talents were perfectly suited to solving a ‘blockage’. Sure enough, within weeks, two million new beds were being manufactured. And, as Clementine had specifically requested, they were all wide enough for a mother to sleep in alongside her baby.

  With a Red Cross representative and more often than not Jock Colville in tow, she could inspect five different establishments in different parts of London within the space of three hours, leaving others gasping in her wake. What made her so effective was not only her practical approach – honed in the canteens of the previous world war – but also how judiciously she used her position. Winston trusted her to bother him only when necessary, so if she did convey an issue to him he almost always took it up. Indeed, he would send word to her when he had. It is unlikely that any other prime ministerial spouse in British history has been so involved in government business, or wielded such personal power – albeit almost entirely behind the scenes. She did not duplicate what Winston was doing, or cross it; she complemented it and he gave her free rein to do so.

  Anxious to anticipate and forestall public discontent when she could, she scoured the newspapers for negative stories on subjects as diverse as Bank Holiday railway services (too crowded) or the supply of coal (inadequate). She would send Winston well-argued minutes on how he might deal with the problems (special passes for urgent travellers on the trains and the use of Army lorries to distribute winter fuel) and their likely political fallout (such as possible questions in the House). Almost three decades of private counsel was being put at the service of the nation’s struggle for survival. Yet Colville, now an unequivocal supporter of Winston, continued to resent her. When they visited a shelter canteen in a Southwark tube station together he scoffed at how she was ‘ridiculously overdressed in a leopard-skin coat’.45

  In fact, she took great care in choosing her wardrobe, conscious of the need to suit either sad or optimistic occasions. She chose strong colours – one favourite was a coral red – and bold styles to denote a defiant confidence. In a tribute to the women munition workers who wore turbans to keep their hair clean and safely away from machinery or chemicals, she almost always wore one herself, albeit in fine silks, chiffons, or cottons printed with extracts from Winston’s speeches; they became her ‘look’. Like the Queen, she believed she should dress up to meet the people, just as they would do for her, and that a touch of glamour was welcome amid the shabbiness of war.

  This time Clementine’s ‘loudly acclaimed’ visit was received with such ‘universal cheerfulness in squalid conditions’ that it impressed even Colville, though he still failed to make the connection with her uplifting choice of clothes. He overlooked the morale-boosting significance of such outward gestures of solidarity. What he should also have noticed was that despite the very real succe
ss of her various works she never sought personal glory, but, as the more observant Pamela commented, only ‘the very best for Winston’ and his desperate battle to win the war. ‘I don’t know that she really wanted anything for herself.’46

  Colville, like her other detractors, was eventually to come round. As Winston never stopped working, his private secretary spent many weekends en famille at Chequers, where Clementine assiduously drew him into the family orbit. She took the trouble to go for walks with him during his breaks and occasionally shared some harmless gossip or confidences about her youth that she thought might amuse or interest him. He could not fail to be charmed (although when Clementine beat him roundly at croquet and backgammon he claimed ungallantly that ‘her skill is slight, but [she] talks so much that she wins by force majeure’47). They even discovered common political ground – namely their joint disapproval of Sir John Anderson, then Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security.48

  By April 1941 Colville was noting in his diary that Clementine ‘looked beautiful’ on one of her inspection visits and that she was ‘followed by an admiring crowd of women and made quite a good speech standing on a chair’.49 (Having caught Winston’s fear of extempore speaking, she too prepared by labouring over numerous drafts.) Later in 1941, Colville realised that the only way he would overcome Winston’s reluctance to let him leave Downing Street to join the RAF was if he won Clementine round first. And sure enough his ‘release’ was granted, largely through ‘Mrs C’s spirited intervention on my behalf’.50 His hostility finally melted into admiration and affection. When he left Winston and Clementine in September 1941 to fulfil his dream of becoming a pilot it was with a lump in his throat.