The King Who Had to Go

by Adrian Phillips

  NOTES

  1. NA CAB 23/68

  2. Duff Cooper diaries

  3. Dugdale diary

  4. NA CAB 23/68

  5. Duff Cooper diaries

  6. NA CAB 23/68

  7. NA CAB 23/68

  8. Lord Zetland to Lord Linlithgow, 27 November, reproduced in Gilbert, Martin (ed.), The Churchill Documents, Volume 13: The Coming of War 1936–1939

  9. NA CAB 23/68

  10. Nicolson diary

  11. Channon diaries, 28 November

  12. Channon diaries, 30 November

  13. Beaverbrook (ed. A. J. P. Taylor), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, pp 57f

  14. Duff Cooper diaries

  15. Colville diaries, p. 667; Boca, She Might Have Been Queen, pp 90–92

  16. Channon diaries, 3 December

  17. A King’s Story, p. 347; NA CAB 301/101

  18. Channon diaries, 27 November

  19. The Heart Has Its Reasons, p. 271

  20. John Entwistle, http://www.thebaron.info/archives/ultra-british-editor-who-loved-americatook-royal-bribes

  21. The Heart Has Its Reasons, p. 272; A King’s Story, pp 356–7

  22. Bryan & Murphy, The Windsor Story, p. 245

  23. BBK G/6/29, Brownlow memorandum, ‘The Beaverbrook Assignment, Additional Marginal Notes’, n.d.

  24. Channon diaries, 1 December

  25. Channon diaries, 1 December

  26. White, R. & Yorath, J., ‘The Crystal Palace – Demise’. The White Files – Architecture, Retrieved 15 June 2010. (Quotations from Yorath’s original Radio Times article.)

  27. Michael Paterson, Personal Accounts of Sir Winston Churchill, p. 203

  OPEN CRISIS

  CHAPTER 10

  A FIRESIDE CHAT

  * * *

  David had mentioned that if there was only some way by which he could make his position known to the people of Britain and the Dominions, their decent and loyal sentiments would be felt in Downing Street, and the present picture would be quickly reversed. The thought struck me that possibly the only way, and certainly the most effective way … was for him to make a radio broadcast to the nation and to the Empire telling his story and letting them hear his voice. In suggesting this idea, I was not unmindful of the extraordinary impact on public opinion of President Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chats’…

  THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR, THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS

  WHILST BALDWIN WAITED for the Dominions to answer the government’s telegrams asking for their view of the morganatic proposal, he was looking ahead to the moment when the crisis broke publicly. He knew that the dam could not hold for ever, and was taking the necessary steps to ensure that press coverage would help the government’s cause. He was even considering making his first move through the press, although he wanted to wait for the Dominions to give their answers ‘before taking any action, which might begin with a press campaign provided the Berry Press & the provincial papers were prepared to take part in it. We should then see what the real feeling of the country was.’1 Baldwin opened contact with some of the major proprietors beginning with Lord Kemsley, the head of the Berry family. When the crisis burst publicly, it was to be Berry’s papers that worked most closely with the government. Baldwin even asked Beaverbrook to act in line with the other papers – in practice to support the government – via Hoare, but he can have had little hope of success. Beaverbrook grandiosely declared that he had taken the King’s shilling and was a King’s man.2

  The King, too, was looking ahead to the moment that the press broke its silence, but in a considerably less calm state. With Mrs Simpson ensconced at Fort Belvedere, he could now see constantly and at first hand the stress that she was under. He raged that the ‘damned politicians were making Wallis ill’, oblivious to his own responsibility.3 But he never wavered in his intention; Beaverbrook described him repeating again and again: ‘No marriage, no coronation.’4 He was determined to shield her from further press coverage when the fatal moment arrived in the evening of Tuesday 1 December. Beaverbrook telephoned with the bad news. That morning, Alfred Blunt, the Bishop of Bradford, had spoken about the coronation in his address to a diocesan conference. He later vehemently denied that it had been his intention, but his words could be read as implying that the King was not obviously the most active or committed supporter of the Christian religion. This caught the attention of a local newspaper reporter who was there, and the story went out on the Press Association’s national newswire. Beaverbrook discovered that the Yorkshire Post, one of Britain’s most important regional newspapers, was going to run the story together with an editorial comment that pointed out the Bishop’s hidden or unconscious message to the King. Arthur Mann, the editor of the Yorkshire Post, was a member of the press establishment and he had been fully briefed on what the government thought of the King’s Party by Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times, the week before.5 It was a near certainty that the other newspapers would follow suit, and Beaverbrook wanted the King’s authority to launch a campaign that supported his position vigorously against the government’s. He refused.

  Beaverbrook knew that the end of press silence had changed the game completely; he tried to convince the King that he would now have to fight to keep his throne, and offered his help in the fight. It was the moment for which he had been waiting. He told the King that the initial public reaction would be hostile to him, but that his friends in the press were his only means of turning the tide, that ‘the criticism could not be halted unless the King allowed his friends amongst the publishers to counter strongly and promptly’.6 Beaverbrook relished the idea of an all-out struggle between the King and the government, which he fantasised would end in abject defeat for the Prime Minister. The notion that such a conflict would be bitterly divisive for the country did not occur to him. All that mattered was that the ‘King’s affair’ offered a chance to damage Baldwin.

  Mercifully, the King turned Beaverbrook down. He later gave two substantial reasons for doing so. Firstly, ‘to avoid the responsibility of splitting the nation and jeopardising the Monarchy on the issue of my personal happiness’.7 This was the closest he came to recognising some form of adult responsibility for his actions during the crisis, although his curious phraseology insinuated that the government was actually doing the splitting. Secondly, he wanted to shield Mrs Simpson from ‘the full blast of sensationalism about to overwhelm us’.8 An open conflict would attract a hostile press for Mrs Simpson and that was the factor that counted most for him. He wanted to keep his throne and to marry Mrs Simpson, but the second objective counted for more. She was violently hostile to the thought of any press publicity, and that is precisely what Beaverbrook’s dreamedfor newspaper campaign for the King against the government would have involved. In her eyes, the purpose of Beaverbrook had always been to stop press coverage and not to promote it.

  Beaverbrook was not impressed with the King’s reasoning, and the King sensed that he had failed to rise to his ally’s ‘natural belligerence’ and had left him frustrated.9 Beaverbrook’s complaint that ‘our cock won’t fight’ underscores this and gives a sense of the rough-and-tumble view of politics that drove Beaverbrook.10 The King was a plaything in a game between real men. To Beaverbrook, the crisis was a great missed opportunity for a profitable fight. When the King’s memoirs were being written, Beaverbrook fed the ghost writer with (dubious) newspaper circulation figures that purported to show that those supporting the King had 12,500,000 readers compared to 8,500,000 for those opposing him.11 These were no more than a measure of the power available to each side in a journalistic civil war that was never fought, but which Beaverbrook hoped to trigger. He thought that it was a war that he would have won. The King quoted the figures in his memoir, but bent their meaning to suggest that he and not Baldwin might have better assessed what the majority of people would accept. He also allowed himself another parade of his ‘consideration for my constitutional obligations’, inviting readers to be amazed at his moderation in dec
lining to use so powerful a weapon.12

  The end of the press silence was far worse for the King than the government for a number of reasons. It made a clear solution urgently necessary, which destroyed his chances of spinning things out until he could spring an unheralded marriage on the government. Worse, the actual press coverage that appeared dispelled whatever dreams the King might have had that his personal popularity would dominate journalists’ thinking and swamp any consideration of Mrs Simpson’s suitability. He was particularly hurt by the Birmingham Post, which had followed the lead of the Yorkshire Post. He had been due to visit the Midlands and may have expected a repetition of his success in south Wales.

  The process of formulating telegrams to the Dominion governments and letting them consider their answers inevitably took some days. Because of the difference in time zones, those to Australia and New Zealand arrived late on their Friday afternoon. According to one story, there was a further delay because the New Zealand government also had to learn who Mrs Simpson was and why she was responsible for all this fuss.13

  As Beaverbrook had feared, the King’s willingness to refer the morganatic proposal to the Dominions hurt his cause severely. The damage went well beyond simply delivering a negative answer on the narrow question of the form of marriage. In practice, the Dominion governments had been given a forum for their comment on the larger aspects of the affair, and their replies were far from encouraging. As their telegrams came in over the next few days, they showed minimal inclination to take a different line to the British government; if anything, they were more hostile to the King. None approved the idea of a morganatic marriage; none even suggested that it was urgently necessary to find an alternative to abdication.14 The reply from Australia was the worst for the King. Its High Commissioner in London, Stanley Bruce, was already firmly in the camp of the hardliners and a powerful voice in Baldwin’s ear, and Joseph Lyons, the Prime Minister of Australia, was a Roman Catholic and hostile to divorce anyway. His message implied that the King had already forfeited his right to the throne by his behaviour and that abdication was the only solution: ‘…his strong view [was] that situation now passed possibility of compromise, i.e. that even should H.M. now drop proposal of marriage nevertheless abdication should take place since in Mr. Lyons’ view public confidence in Australia is so shaken that no other course is possible.’15 Only Ireland’s Prime Minister tried to wriggle out of the responsibility for taking a view, with the feeble and ingenious claim that as the matter involved divorce, which was not an institution recognised in his entirely Catholic country, he was not qualified to give an opinion.16 The Cabinet Secretary, Maurice Hankey, brought him back to earth with the reductio ad absurdum of this analysis: that the rest of the Empire would accept abdication, leaving Edward VIII as the King of Ireland only.

  The Dominion telegrams, especially the one from Australia, hardened Baldwin’s belief that abdication was the most likely outcome, but he still stuck firmly to his strategy of not trying to force the issue; he was determined to keep open the possibility for the King to change his mind.17 He did take care to keep Neville Chamberlain abreast of his growing pessimism, but all that he asked of the Cabinet when it met on Wednesday 2 December was authority to tell the King that there was no realistic prospect of a morganatic marriage. He did not seek to debate any other options.

  Word of the decision was taken to the King immediately after the Cabinet meeting by Walter Monckton. The refusal to pursue the morganatic proposal was a disappointment for the King, but not because it had ever been his preferred solution. It had just offered the mirage of an easy way out for him. Now that it had vanished, he was faced by the brutal fact that none of his governments would accept Mrs Simpson as Queen. He was not yet ready to face reality squarely, but the disappearance of the morganatic option ended any hope the King had had that he would be allowed to have his cake and eat it. When Baldwin brought him the news formally at Fort Belvedere, he talked the King through his options: the King ruled out giving up Mrs Simpson; the Prime Minister ruled out either a morganatic marriage or for her to become Queen; neither ruled out abdication, but they did not discuss it either. This was not the end of the King’s difficulties. He now had to face up to the consequences of two major tactical errors that had fatally undermined his position: his headstrong determination to marry before his coronation and having admitted to Baldwin that he definitely wanted to marry Mrs Simpson. These missteps stopped him from using the one strategy that might have saved him the throne: stonewalling and leaving the government to decide whether it could take the risk of breaching convention and intervening in his private life. Worse, he was now forced to make choices before Mrs Simpson was actually free to marry him at all. Her divorce could not be finalised for about five months, and until then it could still be blocked by intervention by the King’s Proctor. The King had entirely failed to take this risk into account before then and it was now far too late to rebuild his plans to allow for it. It was a point that Walter Monckton had known that the King should have considered, to avoid the risk of falling between two stools: abdicating in order to marry Mrs Simpson, but finding that she was trapped in her marriage to Ernest and unable to marry him.18 Monckton’s warnings had finally registered and, once again, he had left himself few options. All he could do was to ask Baldwin for a guarantee that her decree nisi would be made absolute, implicitly before he abdicated, but the Prime Minister told him outright that this was impossible.19 It would require political interference in the judicial process, which, then as now, was sacrosanct.

  On every significant point, the initiative was now firmly in the government’s hands. The King’s position was almost hopeless, but he believed that he had now found another high card in his hand and he wanted to play it. When Baldwin came to tell him formally of the Cabinet’s decision early that evening, he talked little about the morganatic proposal itself, but he did return to the unspoken – and on Baldwin’s side, unrecognised – disagreement over the Prime Minister’s right to speak for public opinion. It was the question that had been left hanging after the audience three weeks before, after Hardinge’s letter. In the King’s eyes, Baldwin was merely expressing an opinion on a question that had not been put to the electorate.20 It was a fair question, but one which would have been far more effective had it been opened far earlier in the crisis. By this stage, Baldwin was able to brush it away easily with an elementary lesson in the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy. He explained that Attlee had told him firmly that Labour MPs would not vote for the idea and the Chief Whip’s soundings on the government benches had shown a similar lack of support. The King stopped short of disagreeing outright with the Prime Minister, but he was not convinced. As Baldwin put it to the Cabinet: ‘The King had not appeared much impressed by all this.’21

  The King was determined to back his own judgement of public opinion against that of his Prime Minister. He had already come up with a rival method of applying democracy to the question of his marriage to Mrs Simpson, and now sprang on Baldwin the idea of a radio broadcast in which he could set out his case. The King had done little about a broadcast since Mrs Simpson had made the suggestion on the previous Sunday, but its appeal had been growing. It had the added attraction to the King that it would give him the chance to pre-empt any criticism of Mrs Simpson in a hostile press. At this stage, Baldwin seems to have been caught off-guard by the proposal and did not challenge the King’s right to broadcast, but only pointed out that as not everyone in the country had heard of her, a broadcast would draw attention to her with possibly disastrous consequences. ‘He would have to mention her name. Everyone would want to know who she was and all about her, and the newspapers would be full of gossip.’22

  As well as dealing with the collapse of the morganatic scheme, the King had to cope with the end of the press silence. He had begun the audience by accusing Baldwin of having orchestrated the move, as Beaverbrook had told him. He accepted Baldwin’s emphatic denial, but as the audience neared its end he came
back to the newspaper coverage, which was clearly preying on him. He kept picking up his copy of the Birmingham Post and complaining to Baldwin: ‘They don’t want me.’ The delusion fostered by the rapturous public reception that he was accustomed to receiving was being shattered. He was no longer above criticism, ‘admiration and allegiance are not blind hero-worship’ and a direct statement that the ‘Stuart maxim that “The King can do no wrong” was no longer accepted’.23 The coverage in the provincial papers was only the start, and the King guessed that coverage would become even more hostile the following morning when the national papers took up the story. Above all, he feared the line that The Times would take. He had been told – presumably by Beaverbrook – that it would publish an editorial that was violently hostile to Mrs Simpson. He was reduced to the humiliation of asking the Prime Minister through Monckton to intercede and prevent its publication. Monckton thought that Mrs Simpson imagined that it was in the King’s power to censor the press and that the King was prepared to go along with this. The Prime Minister had no more authority to issue orders to a newspaper than to the divorce courts, but did telephone Dawson to pass on the King’s concerns. In fact, the editorial that The Times had prepared went no further than referring to ‘a marriage incompatible with the Throne’ and making it clear that it would support the government.24 Baldwin got the King to accept that he would be satisfied if he (Baldwin) read the article before it appeared. Dawson consented and sent the proof by messenger to Downing Street, but in one of those farcical moments in which the abdication abounds, everyone had gone to bed by the time it arrived, no one read it and it was entirely forgotten. By this stage, stress and cumulative exhaustion were already blurring judgements.