The King Who Had to Go

by Adrian Phillips

  Monckton’s Two Bills plan was a superficially elegant solution and it was decided that it should be put to the King by the Prime Minister at the audience that had been arranged for that afternoon, ostensibly to discuss Baldwin’s planned message to Parliament on the Monday. It is perhaps an indication of how much Baldwin was operating on his own politically in handling the crisis that he now made what in retrospect was a bad tactical mistake. He had not discussed the Two Bills idea with any of the Cabinet, and its greatest flaws were political. No senior politician had had a hand in designing it and it was essentially a piece of lawyerly cleverness that would have to be subjected to the bruising process of political debate before it would have a chance of working. Perhaps Baldwin’s sense of proprieties dictated that the plan should be agreed with the King before the other politicians. No Prime Minister had negotiated an abdication before and there was no rule book.

  Baldwin and Dugdale set off on the increasingly familiar road to Fort Belvedere at the maddeningly slow speed that the Prime Minister dictated. The agony of the journey was soothed by Baldwin’s obvious concern that the crisis was placing strain on Dugdale’s home life and his delight in learning that Dugdale’s wife had just discovered that she was expecting her first baby.18 Even in the midst of the crisis, Baldwin did not lose the human touch that made him such an effective politician. Once again they missed the unobvious turning into Fort Belvedere and had to reverse course.

  The audience was one of the briefest of the whole affair, but it went on to become the source of much bitterness on the part of the Duke of Windsor. It was artificially prolonged by a small charade in which Monckton spared the two principals in the conversation the ticklish responsibility of introducing the Two Bills.19 To some extent the whole audience was a charade; the main issue had been agreed between the King’s lawyers and the men from Downing Street at Windham’s Club beforehand, but the form of negotiation was maintained. The King told the Prime Minister that he was prepared to sign his abdication to allow the legislation to go through Parliament on the Tuesday ‘…but – There was a but.’20 This was the qualification that the second Bill would dispose of the risk of intervention by expediting Mrs Simpson’s divorce. The King was happy with the solution that it offered, but Baldwin made what turned out to be another error. He failed to warn the King that there was no absolute certainty that the second Bill would pass. According to the Cabinet minutes he told the King that it was a matter he ‘thought could be got through the House of Commons’.21 In the then Duke of Windsor’s later account, he claimed that Baldwin had promised to resign if the Cabinet refused the second Bill.22 It is improbable that Baldwin would have made such a hazardous commitment, and the credibility of this claim is severely if not fatally undermined by the context in which it is placed. In the Duke of Windsor’s account, Baldwin’s supposed promise follows on from Baldwin telling him that he had fixed a meeting of the hardline ministers most likely to oppose the second Bill for the following morning, at which he would overcome their opposition. In fact, this meeting was not arranged until later that night, well after Baldwin had left Fort Belvedere. Wrong though this later account may be, the King was left with little doubt that the Two Bills solution was going to happen and that he could be sure of marrying Mrs Simpson. The spectre of the King’s Proctor was banished. The King authorised Baldwin to tell his mother, Queen Mary, that he would definitely abdicate the following morning.23 As far as the King and the Prime Minister could tell, the affair had been settled.

  NOTES

  1. BBK G/6/23

  2. Sebba, That Woman, pp 150f

  3. NAA M104, Bruce memorandum, 15 November

  4. Somervell journal quoted in Montgomery-Hyde, Baldwin: The Unexpected Prime Minister, p. 567

  5. MacDonald diary, 13 November

  6. NAA M104, Bruce memorandum, 15 November

  7. NA PREM 1/466

  8. Chamberlain diary, 2 December

  9. Stanley Baldwin papers, Simon to Baldwin, 3 December

  10. NA CAB 23/68

  11. NA CAB 23/68

  12. G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin, p. 240

  13. BBK G/6/12, Monckton to Duke of Windsor, 22 August 1949

  14. BBK G/6/24

  15. BBK G/6/24

  16. Dugdale diary

  17. NA PREM 1/466

  18. Dugdale diary

  19. Monckton narrative

  20. NA CAB 23/68

  21. NA CAB 23/68

  22. A King’s Story, p. 390

  23. Chamberlain diary, 5 December

  CHAPTER 15

  SUNDAY MORNING AT HENDON AERODROME

  * * *

  Tom went in to Ulick Alexander.

  ‘You fellows are pretty cool; and what about these aeroplanes at Hendon?’ he said.

  ‘How did you know about them?’ said Alexander, who was evidently surprised.

  ‘Will you go and cancel them now?’

  ‘I can’t do that. They are under the King’s orders,’ said Ulick Alexander.

  ‘Never mind that, it must be done.’ … And it was done.

  NANCY DUGDALE, DIARY

  SINCE THE WEDNESDAY that the crisis became public property the government had had to cope with a nightly succession of new and unexpected initiatives from the King. The government had dealt with each in turn: blocked, in the case of the broadcast and an instant guarantee of a decree absolute for Mrs Simpson; acceded to, in the case of consulting Churchill or getting serious consideration for the Two Bills. To the King, though, it seemed that the government had refused everything he proposed from the morganatic plan onwards. He was less and less inclined to give the Prime Minister the opportunity to do so again. The way in which he had bounced Baldwin into authorising his conversation with Churchill was a long step in this direction, but he had further to go. There was one more shock that he had in store for the government – and the country.

  When the King had worked on the original idea for a broadcast plan that Mrs Simpson had sold to him, he had added a refinement of his own: leaving the country whilst the public made up its mind as to whether to allow him to have his way. The broadcast remained by far the more important part of the scheme and it was the only one to which the government gave any consideration. In the excitement over the broadcast itself, no one in government had paid any serious attention to the plan for the King to absent himself from the country. It had been introduced in only the vaguest terms and barely discussed, if it had been discussed at all, between the King and the Prime Minister. When the broadcast idea was formally killed off by the Cabinet meeting on the Friday morning, the plan for the King to leave Britain slipped from government attention and no further notice at all was paid to it. Perhaps it was assumed that it had never been anything more than an integral and minor part of the broadcast scheme. Perversely enough, the one man who recognised the danger of the scheme was Churchill, who immediately saw that it would be disastrous. In the King’s mind, however, it had taken on a life of its own. After the stress of the preceding weeks the attraction of a couple of weeks’ undisturbed relaxation in the mountains was a powerful force in itself, probably more powerful than whatever part the King’s absence from Britain was supposed to play in the unique constitutional experiment that Mrs Simpson and he had dreamed up. It would also be a lot easier to implement. In contrast to the broadcast, which would have required the services of the BBC, a major arm of the state which had shown itself fully obedient to the government, the journey to Switzerland required far smaller resources – resources that were already available in the royal household.

  The practical preparations for the broadcast had lain in the hands of Sir John Reith and were never initiated as the government never gave its authorisation, but Fort Belvedere could make the arrrangements for the flight to the Alps undisturbed. Rooms were booked at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich and a letter of credit for £5,000 was obtained from Coutts Bank.1 Very little thought had gone into the preparations, notably in regard to security or privacy. The King did
not even know the Dolder, which had been chosen on no more than the recommendation of Godfrey Thomas. It stood on a hilltop just outside the centre of Zurich served by a public funicular railway and a short tram ride, but its grounds were relatively small. Fort Belvedere’s extensive park shielded the King from the vast press pack camped outside, but the Dolder would have offered no such protection. Moreover, the King would not have been the only guest. A stay there would have been anything but the oasis of tranquillity and seclusion for which he yearned, but the Dolder was the place on which unthinkingly he had set his heart.

  How the King would get to Switzerland presented no major difficulties. One facet of the King’s modernity was his fascination with aviation, then a glamorous and innovative development. In those days, to be ‘airminded’ was a badge of forward-thinking. As Prince of Wales, Edward had learned to fly himself, taking risks with as little fear or reflection as he had when riding his horses. He had bought the first aeroplanes for the royal household, creating the embryo of the royal flight of the RAF, which he used routinely. He flew from Sandringham to London on the day of his accession in January. He had taken on a reserve officer of the RAF, Edward ‘Mouse’ Fielden, as his personal pilot and, in 1933, chief air pilot and extra equerry. By 1936 the King had acquired a de Havilland Dragon Rapide as his personal aeroplane with the registration, G-ADDD. It was jauntily painted in the colours of the King’s beloved Brigade of Guards, but it was a curiously conservative choice of machine. It was a biplane with a fixed undercarriage unlike its main British competitor, the far more modern Airspeed Envoy, which had better performance in every respect and was chosen for royal service the following year. G-ADDD remained in the possession of the then Duke of Windsor.2 It was based at Hendon aerodrome, the principal RAF station for the London area, and could have managed the trip to Zurich comfortably in a day.

  By the weekend the King was looking at the broadcast and Switzerland as unconnnected ideas. Even after Baldwin had killed off the idea of a broadcast the King craved escape from Fort Belvedere and the trap he had created for himself in Britain. Over dinner on the Friday evening he told Churchill that

  he wanted a fortnight to weigh the whole matter. He felt himself a prisoner in the Fort. If he could go to Switzerland with a couple of equerries he would be able to think out his decision without undue pressure … [W]hat would happen if he made this request to Mr. Baldwin when he saw him the next day?3

  Any thought that his absence from the country would allow his subjects to decide his fate had been quietly dropped. The King just needed a holiday. Churchill did not offer a direct prediction of what the Prime Minister’s respsonse might be, but his view is implied in the strong advice against the idea that he gave the King on the grounds that everyone would think that he had simply left the country to be with Mrs Simpson in Cannes. It was advice that Churchill repeated urgently when he wrote to the King the following day. Leaving the country also had the flavour of deserting a battle station. As usual with unwelcome advice, the King made no response and passed on to other matters. His mind was made up.

  When the King saw Baldwin the following day to discuss the Two Bills plan, he did not ask him about the idea of leaving the country to reflect, but this did not mean that the idea was dead. The King had probably drawn the conclusion from what Churchill had advised him that the Prime Minister would have taken a similar line and would have blocked the idea of the King leaving the country. He would not have been wrong. Rather than risk yet another rebuff by Baldwin, the King simply went ahead with the preparations in secrecy. That afternoon, Fielden was instructed to be ready to leave for Zurich at 9.30 the following morning. An extra aeroplane had also been arranged to transport the luggage of the King and his entourage, which was set to leave at the same time. This meant that the King would leave for Zurich before the government had a chance of even considering the Two Bills scheme and still less of beginning to implement it. The King treated the plan with his established style of noisy and ineffectual secretiveness. The stage was set for a fantastically irresponsible and cavalier act. When Maurice Gwyer, the government lawyer, had analysed the options available he had concluded his review of possibile scenarios with what must have seemed like the unlikeliest of possibilities: that Edward VIII would imitate James II and simply flee the country with nothing settled. He was now planning to do exactly that.

  The King and the country escaped the consequences of this folly because of a combination of Fielden’s sense of discipline and the government’s intelligence operations. Some time on the Saturday, Fielden had sought Air Ministry approval for leaving the country. The only account of what happened in any detail is Wilson’s, who described this move as merely ‘the usual application … to take the aeroplane out of the country’, but the way in which it was handled was anything but routine.4 The request was passed up the hierarchy of the Ministry until it reached the Air Minister himself, Lord Swinton. Presumably the lower echelons of the Ministry had been put on alert to apply special treatment to such a request. There was good reason for the authorities to be on their guard. The government had been alerted to the likelihood that the King would fly to Zurich by cables between journalists, who had got wind of the story, and which had been passed on by Cable & Wireless Ltd., which had already betrayed the Simpsons’ dealings with the Hearst press.5 Equally, Fielden himself must have recognised the implications of the proposed flight and made a point of ensuring that it received appropriate consideration. Fielden had been placed in a very difficult position by the King’s orders and few would blame him for breaching confidence.

  In turn, Swinton alerted Downing Street in the person of Chamberlain, who spotted major trouble brewing and went to No. 10. There he found Wilson busy in conference with the laywers preparing the Two Bills, but the Prime Minister absent at Fort Belvedere. After a brief discussion with Wilson, Chamberlain telephoned Dugdale at the Fort in a state of great agitation to attempt to get the arrangements at Hendon cancelled. The combination of a poor telephone line and Chamberlain’s state of excited stress meant it took some time for him to make himself clear to Dugdale.6 Dugdale was highly amused at Chamberlain’s departure from his usual Brummie phlegm, but fully understood the importance of what he had to do once the situation was clear to him, and he did not hesitate to tackle the problem. Whilst the men at Downing Street waited to hear back from Dugdale, they began to prepare for the worst. Wilson judged that things might move so fast that drastic action might be required. He told the lawyers to get an Instrument of Abdication ready for the King’s signature.7 Had the King persisted with the plan of flying to Zurich this would have meant that he could be confronted by the government at Hendon aerodrome and told that he would have to abdicate before he was allowed on the plane. It is a moot point as to whether Wilson saw this possiblity as a satisfactorily speedy and emphatic conclusion to the crisis or, as it would almost certainly have appeared, a humiliating and shameful combination of royal caprice and government ruthlessness.

  Fortunately for everyone, Dugdale was able to defuse the situation. He recognised that the time for the traditional courtesies had passed and forcefully told Ulick Alexander to stand the machines down, in spite of Alexander’s protestations that he was acting on royal command.8 Alexander had placed himself on the back foot by showing his surprise that the government should have learned about the machines, which was tantamount to an admission that the explanation for the arrangements was not innocent. After his token resistance, Alexander complied with Dugdale’s instructions.

  The moment of greatest danger had passed, but Wilson was not going to let the opportunity slip past to ratchet up the measures that he thought were necessary to keep a check on the King. That morning he had already tried to persuade Chamberlain and Simon that the King’s telephones should be tapped, as he later put it with breathtaking hypocrisy ‘… in the interests of the King as head of the State’.9 The risk that there might be some repetition of the scheme to fly to Zurich offered a perfect pretext for Wil
son to return to the charge, and this time Chamberlain agreed. All that was necessary for Wilson to implement the move was to obtain formal endorsement of the wiretap from Sir John Simon as Home Secretary. In his quasi-judicial capacity, the Home Secretary’s approval was required for all phone taps in Britain. Whilst Chamberlain went out to dinner, Wilson called Simon to Downing Street, where he rubber-stamped the decision that had already been taken.10 The phone lines between the King’s addresses in the UK, Buckingham Palace and Fort Belvedere, and the Villa Lou Viei – the villa where Mrs Simpson was staying – were tapped. With MI5 and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch already on the job, the King was now the target of almost the full range of security organisations that the British state could deploy against him. There is no sign that the Prime Minister was asked or even told about this final piece in the jigsaw of surveillance around the King even though he was at Downing Street, albeit probably sound asleep.