70 years ago today: The end of Chamberlain, the coming of Churchill

May 10 1940 was a major day in the Second World War. It was the day when Germany began the western offensive, invading the low countries. But it was also a major day in the United Kingdom. It was on this day that Neville Chamberlain resigned, to be succeeded by Winston Churchill.

After the rebellion in the Norway Debate two days earlier, Neville Chamberlain had sought to respond to demands to widen his government to regain support. He had offered the Labour Party leaders, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, posts in the government but they felt unable to make an acceptance on their own. Instead they went to their party conference which happened to meeting in Bournemouth at the time, and put two questions to it:

1. Would the Labour Party serve in a government under Neville Chamberlain?
2. Would they serve in a government under someone else?

Contrary to popular myth "someone else" was not explicitly named. At the meeting on May 9 Chamberlain was flanked by Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Lord Halifax (Foreign Secretary), giving a strong idea where "someone else" would be found, but they were not given the name. At an earlier private meeting of Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill and the Chief Whip, David Margesson, Halifax had declined to press his chances and it was agreed that if Chamberlain was unacceptable to Labour then Churchill would try to form a government.

The Labour National Executive Committee met on May 10 and considered the two questions. They decided "No" to the first and "Yes" to the second. The message was phoned through to London from a public telephone box - how subtle and unpretentious, much like Attlee himself. When Attlee and Greenwood returned to London they learned that Churchill had been appointed Prime Minister and he offered them seats in the War Cabinet.

Not entirely coincidentally, the Wikipedia article on Neville Chamberlain is today's "featured article". A few years ago I contributed quite a bit to it, providing the basic structure though it has since been expanded and enhanced greatly thanks to three recent biographies.

The Norway Debate

(This post was written in advance because of everything else that's currently going on.)

Seventy years ago today began what is undoubtedly the most famous parliamentary debate of the twentieth century - the so-called Norway Debate. (Technically the debate was on the motion "That this House do now adjourn" and the title in Hansard is "Conduct of the War" but "the Norway Debate" is the title everyone remembers.)

Over two days the House of Commons engaged in a debate that began on the details of the recent failures of the Norway campaign but soon became a more general forum for discussing and attacking the way the way the war was being fought. Many a famous quote comes from that time, but the most famous of all was that of Leo Amery (right). Amery had a reputation as an incredibly boring speaker, perhaps on a par with Geoffrey Howe, so many MPs were undoubtedly relieved when his speech clashed with dinner. But like Howe fifty years later, Amery rose to the occasion, climaxing with these words:

I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words which, I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

(The full speech in Hansard.)

There were many other dramatic moments that day, ranging from Portsmouth North MP Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes making a speech in full uniform, with six rows of medals, to David Lloyd George making his final great speech in the House where he said to Churchill:

The right hon. Gentleman must not allow himself to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues.

(The full speech in Hansard.)

What is little known is that Lloyd George was seemingly inspired by a cartoon printed that day in the Daily Express likening the debate to that very scenario.

At the end of the debate a division was forced and no less than thirty-nine MPs voted against their own government. After a series of political manoeuvrings over the next two days Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister, to be succeeded by Winston Churchill.

Something I've not seen in easy circulation is the full list of government rebels so here it is:

Conservatives – 33

• Leo Amery – Birmingham, Sparkbrook
• William Anstruther-Gray – Lanarkshire, Northern
• Nancy Astor – Plymouth, Sutton
• Robert Boothby – Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire, Eastern
• Robert Bower – Yorkshire (North Riding), Cleveland
• Henry Burton – Suffolk (West), Sudbury
• Duff Cooper – Westminster, St George's
• Somerset de Chair – Norfolk, South-Western
• Herbert Duggan – Middlesex, Acton
• Paul Emrys-Evans – Derbyshire, Southern
• Ralph Glyn – Berkshire, Abingdon
• Derrick Gunston – Gloucestershire, Thornbury
• Samuel Hammersley – Willesden, East
• Quintin Hogg – Oxford
• Edward Herbert Keeling – Middlesex, Twickenham
• Hamilton William Kerr – Oldham
• Roger Keyes – Portsmouth, North
• Richard Law – Kingston-upon-Hull, South-West
• Harold Macmillan – Stockton-on-Tees
• John Macnamara – Essex, Chelmsford
• Hugh Molson – Derbyshire, High Peak
• Godfrey Nicholson – Surrey, Farnham
• Colin Patrick – Devon, Tavistock
• John Profumo – Northamptonshire, Kettering
• Stuart Russell – Lancashire, Darwen
• Edward Louis Spears – Carlisle
• Mavis Tate – Somerset, Frome
• Charles Taylor – Sussex (East), Eastbourne
• Ronald Tree – Leicestershire, Harborough
• Earl Winterton – Sussex (West), Horsham and Worthing
• Roy Wise – Smethwick
• Viscount Wolmer – Hampshire, Aldershot
• John Allan Cecil Wright – Birmingham, Erdington

Liberal Nationals – 4

• Herbert Walter Butcher – Lincolnshire and Rutlandshire, Holland-with-Boston
• James Henderson Stewart – Fife, Eastern
• Leslie Hore-Belisha – Plymouth, Devonport
• Frank Medlicott – Norfolk, Eastern

National Labour – 2

• Stephen King-Hall – Lancashire, Ormskirk
• Harold Nicolson – Leicester, West

(The numbers of rebels varies accross sources, mainly because many writers have repeated contemporary errors. But this is the full list of rebels.)

For those who want to read the whole debate this is now possible thanks to Hansard 1803-2005:

• Day One: May 7 1940
• Day Two: May 8 1940

There was also a shorter, and far less well-known, debate in the House of Lords on the same subject on May 8 1940.

"A peace process too far"?

Thanks to Iain Dale's Diary: The Daley Dozen: Wednesday for pointing me too Slugger O'Toole: Fianna Fail's European dilemma..., which in turn points to Irish Examiner: FF's Euro wing is trying to wriggle between a rock and a hard place.

Can anyone tell me which party produced the Irish Taoiseach who wrote the following? And which party produced the UK Prime Minister he was writing to?

I would like to testify that you did more than any former British Statesman to make a true friendship between the peoples of our two countries possible, and, if the task has not been completed, that it has not been for want of goodwill on your part.

The answers are, surprisingly, Fianna Fáil and the Conservatives. (The men in question were Éamon de Valera and Neville Chamberlain.)

As I've noted before, the Conservatives are not the only party who have had problems relating to alliances in the European Parliament. The Irish party Fianna Fáil have had similar. Even the recent announcement that they are going to join the European Liberals has provoked criticism and internal rows. But Fianna Fáil can't stay where they are forever as the Union for a Europe of Nations is in danger of dropping below the rules for being a recognised group in the parliament, not least because the Conservatives are seeking recruits for their new group from it.

The Examiner makes an interesting hint:

The Tories and FF might have more in common than they both realise. Both consider themselves natural parties of government and both are instinctively suspicious of ideology.

Indeed there is so much in common that there are many Conservatives who admit they would strongly consider voting for them if they were voting in Ireland. Might a linkup in the European Parliament be a solution to both parties' problems here?

Unfortunately there are some rather major stumbling blocks on this possibility:

Trouble is the Tories want to be with Europe but are not of it, to use Churchill's phrase.

And then there's the issue of the North. Everyone's for the Agreement these days but there's about a century's worth of bad blood between the two parties. It would be a brave Fianna Fáiler who made the case for a Tory link-up. It's probably a peace process too far.

There's also the not insignificant problem of Fianna Fáil's support for the Lisbon Treaty in spite of the Irish "No" vote last year, which would be the major stumbling block at the Conservative end - would the grassroots be happy.

But the latter problem is a temporary one that will fade with time - who now even remembers which parties were for and against Maastricht? The former - well other past bad blood has certainly been overcome, but this isn't exactly an insignificant one, even for a notoriously pragmatic party like Fianna Fáil. There have been times when the two parties' leaders have been close, as shown above, but it would take so much more.

And yet... the European Parliament has certainly thrown up other strange alliances. How many years will pass before this one doesn't seem so unthinkable?

Flashback: The rise of William Hague

I have just received the latest edition of the Conservative History Journal from the Conservative History Group. There are quite a few articles which caught my eye, including one on the historical reputation of Neville Chamberlain (who, I am glad to see, is starting to at least slowly rise in the estimation of historians as shown by the most recent poll) and another brief peace on one of the traditions of Conservative foreign policy, a tradition of non-intervention, of scepticism of the benefits of playing the world policeman and a reluctance to pay huge taxes for ideological crusades. This strand is not dead by any means and can be found most recently amongst Conservative opponents of the Iraq War.

But the article that caught my eye the most is "No More than another Major?: How William Hague became Leader of the Conservative Party" by Timothy Heppell. It takes me, and no doubt many others, back to the gloomy days of the summer of 1997 when the party first sought to find the way forward after the general election. Heppell's account ignores some of the wider issues, such as the demands by the party membership for the franchise to be widened, and instead focuses upon the way in which the contest kept altering from expectations, with the original expected final match between Michaels Heseltine and Portillo being prevented by health and election defeat. Then the Michael Howard-Kenneth Clarke showdown was derailed by both William Hague backing out of an agreed ticket with Howard and Ann Widdecombe relighting old controversies. Amidst all this the right of the party saw its first ballot vote shredded across Howard, Peter Lilley and John Redwood, with none being able to unify it. Consequently William Hague emerged as the "Anyone But Clarke" candidate, and was elected albeit reluctantly by a parliamentary party that rejected the candidate with the most experience, the candidate most popular with the wider party, the candidate most popular with the voters and the candidate whom Labour feared the most. Margaret Thatcher endorsed him in the final stages, but with many doubts, and Hague lacked a strong position from the start.

In recent years it has become fashionable amongst some younger Conservatives to praise the Hague era as a time when the party was at least internally doing well and only suffering continued electoral unpopularity because of a hangover effect from the last Conservative government. In my experience most of these Conservatives either were not members at the time or tend to be at the non-realistic end of things. Hague himself was a reluctant leader who stood only after his first choice (Portillo) was unavailable and his second choice (Howard) appeared unwinnable. In his biography of William Pitt the Younger, Hague speculates that a major reason for Pitt's accepting the premiership at the age of just twenty-four and in the extremely unpromising circumstances of December 1783 was because it was an offer that was unlikely to come again for many years and even if he proved to be brief in office, he would have enhanced prestige in the long run and a potential return would be easier. It is not too hard to see a similar argument for Hague's own move in 1997.

And supposing for a moment that Hague had stuck to his original agreement to support Howard's leadership bid, with the deputy leadership and party chairmanship to come? The party chairmanship has at times proved to be a poisoned chalice, but a Howard-Hague ticket would have been in a much stronger position to first defeat Lilley and Redwood in the battle on the right in the first ballot, (then accumulate enough support to knock out Stephen Dorrell on the second ballot if his candidacy had continued) and finally face off Clarke in the showdown. Of all the ABC candidates, Howard came closest to matching Clarke in terms of experience and making Labour scared. The intervention by Ann Widdecombe could well have been seen off by a stronger campaign team. But would Howard have been able to beat Clarke on a final ballot? Heppell isn't sure, pointing to the weakening effects of poor polling and ambivalent support from key backers who were would-be Portillo supporters. I am more inclined to think it would have happened. Most of the weaknesses suffered by Howard also applied to Hague and they did not stop him. Howard would also have brought a sense of gravitas to the leadership.

But in reality the result was that the party spent over six years limping around, with internal feuds that no-one can really remember the supposed policy reasons for now (just what was the dissent between Widdecombe and Portillo's followers about?), with little sense of direction and with leaders who, for all their strong characteristics (and Iain Duncan Smith's championing of social reform remains to this day one of the most radical moves by a Conservative leader in recent times) were unable to take the party anywhere. And then in 2003 the parliamentary party went and elected Michael Howard as leader. He served largely as a caretaker whilst rebuilding the party and finally taking it forward at his only general election. One can only help but wonder what might have happened if he'd had four years instead of eighteen months and got the party to that position in 2001...

The Munich Agreement - 70 years on

Whenever I attempt to explain to people what my thesis is about, I invariably make reference to Neville Chamberlain, not least because it makes it easy for non-historians to identify the period. And Chamberlain is, unfortunately in my opinion, best remembered for one single event in his entire political career - the signing of the Munich Agreement seventy years ago tonight.

(Strictly speaking the Agreement was signed in the early hours of the 30th September 1938, but was dated to the previous day.)

Now this is not the place to delve into the rest of Chamberlain's career; suffice it to say that an overall assessment cannot but come to a very different conclusion from the populist image of Chamberlain as just a weak man who did nothing but fly to Munich during his three years in Downing Street.

However the Munich Agreement itself has long been misrepresented. It is often forgotten just how incredibly popular it was in the UK. This wasn't just "high opinion poll approval", this was one of the moments where much of the nation poured out its gratitude. In my research I've seen, amongst other things, footage of Chamberlain's car journey from the airport to Downing Street after signing the agreement. On a rainy day people lined the streets in droves. Bar the weather the scene is very reminiscent of the last journey of Diana, Princess of Wales. I've also seen many letters of gratitude sent to Chamberlain, reports of football matches pausing to pay tribute to him and so much more. This was an agreement that the British public embraced.

And it was one that in many ways the British public had made inevitable. The harsh fact, often now forgotten, is that in 1938 there weren't many options available. For a long time the British public (and, I believe, the French public as well but let's stick to the British for now) had given numerous indications that they were reluctant to go to war. Especially not for the Treaty of Versailles, a settlement that had been emotionally rejected by numerous people, whether conservative, liberal or socialist. As the Iraq War has shown, it can be terribly difficult to take a country to war when a large proportion of the population is opposed. It is impossible to contemplate a total war in such circumstances. For all the criticism of the "piece of paper" that Chamberlain and Hitler signed, it mean that there was now something for Hitler to violate which would provoke a desire to go to war amongst the wider public in the way that a violation of the Treaty of Versailles did not.

Also often forgotten is that the British Empire was severely overstretched in the late 1930s and divided. Many troops were stationed in the Far East, where the rise of Japan was worrying. Military resources were weak and overstretched. A war on multiple fronts without allies was a war that could not be won. There was the further problem that the Dominions (aka the Commonwealth countries) would not enter the war. As it was in 1939 Ireland stayed neutral and South Africa only joined after serious political turmoil in both government and parliament. A war in 1938 would have seen even more of the Dominions declining to enter, potentially fragmenting the British Empire as a political force at a crucial time.

The French were seeking to escape their military alliance with Czechoslovakia and could not be counted on. Nor could the "Czechoslovakians" as there were very few such people. As the post war history of that country showed the state was a mix of minorities and it took first the expulsion of the German speaking minority and then the Velvet Divorce to create permanently viable states. People often talk of the people of Czechoslovakia who were prepared to defend themselves as "the Czechs". They are probably even more accurate than they may think - would the Slovakians have fought and died to prevent "millions of Germans from being German" any more than the French or British?

(And how many people remember that after the Munich Agreement "Czechoslovakia" was renamed "Czecho-Slovakia"? The latter form both reflected Slovak desires for equality in the name and is a derivation of the name in Slovak, whereas the unhyphenated is a derivation of the name in Czech. The later Hyphen War reflected a long standing issue.)

So what was the alternative? To take a divided country and Empire into a war for the cause of preventing millions of Germans from being German? To go to war for Vietnam-style domino arguments? To take a country to war when it was not prepared either militarily or domestically? A convincing show of force in 1938 was not as easy as the Agreement's detractors made out.

Indeed today there are parallels. After the Iraq War there are many in this country who are opposed to further military engagements, regardless of the level or genuineness of the threat. Military action would be deeply divisive and if public support for the action is essential it is doubtful that such action could take place. It is easy to scream "Appeasement" and "Munich" against any attempt at a peaceful settlement of any problem in the world, but is military action really a viable alternative?

An end to the Oxbridge dominance of Downing Street?

Who was the last Prime Minister to go to a university that wasn't Oxford or Cambridge? I hear many of you rushing to Wikipedia to work this out. The answer (until Wednesday) is Neville Chamberlain (who went to Mason Science College, later the University of Birmingham). In fact he's the last university educated Prime Minister to have not gone to Oxford - the last from Cambridge was Stanley Baldwin. (The other graduate non Oxbridge Prime Ministers were the Earl of Bute who went to the University of Leiden, Lord John Russell who went to the University of Edinburgh and Ramsay MacDonald who went to Birkbeck College). There have of course been Prime Ministers who went to the "university of life" (John Major, James Callaghan, Winston Churchill and others) but the Oxbridge dominance has been there for a long time. But this week the numbers will change - Gordon Brown is an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh.

Now does this matter, many will ask? After all many non-Oxbridge graduates have headed both main parties for decades now. Gordon Brown is not known for walking away from a fight - even if he had been Oxbridge educated I suspect he would still be willing to take on the universities if the situation arises. This could have interesting ramifications for funding.

However anyone hoping that Brown will support the campaign to end Oxbridge using "MA" to sell degrees may be disappointed - Edinburgh uses "MA" for the first degree, but it is a substantial qualification, not one purchased with no academic work.

Prime Ministerial legacies

Paul Burgin has a post wondering why Margaret Thatcher has been given a statue in the Commons whilst still alive (Mars Hill: The Statue) and briefly commenting on her and other Prime Ministers' legacies.

Thinking back over the past hundred years, it's quite rare for a former Prime Minister to have had a politically good post premiership. Arthur Balfour had a very successful subsequent ministerial career - indeed so successful it's possible to remember him whilst forgetting he was ever Prime Minister - whilst Alec Douglas-Home proved a benign elder statesmen in Ted Heath's Cabinet. But Ramsay MacDonald's time as Lord President of the Council proved cruel to all involved, including him. And Neville Chamberlain was blighted by his health and a constant campaign to remove him from office that devastated his legacy. Indeed it's only been since I started my PhD that I've come to realise just how narrow a view is held of Chamberlain - even many sympathetic biographies turn him into almost a one policy area Prime Minister.

No other twentieth century Prime Minister subsequently sevred in another office, unless one counts Stanley Baldwin's time as Lord President of the Council between his second and third premiership. But Baldwin was still at the height of his powers and returned to Number 10, to retire on a high. Indeed Baldwin's retirement was expected for months (and his successor was unanimously clear) and he managed to leave Downing Street with a higher standing than any of his successors. Tony Blair must be kicking himself. But Baldwin's reputation came to grief before he died - during the war his reputation was tarnished in the row over the country's preparations for war. It has only been in the last forty years that his reputation has been steadily restored.

Others have been hampered by health (Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Andrew Bonar Law, Harold Wilson) and either died very soon or dropped out of public life almost immediately. Some floated around for so long that when they died it was a surprise it had not happened earlier (Lord Roseberry lived for 34 years until 1929). Others had to watch as their political legacy was dismantled and even their own party turned on their government's legacy (Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major). Some have been respectfully quiet about this, but the actions of Heath and Thatcher in bitterly attacking their successors have brought no credit to them. The legacy of the war preserved Churchill's reputation, even though his peacetime government was an example of a man clinging to office long after he was no longer competent, whilst Clement Attlee died before the backlash against his legacy. Conversely whilst the legacy of Herbert Asquith's government remained in place his own reputation for indecisiveness, the circumstances of his downfall and the subsequent split and destruction of his party meant that he did not die in glory.

What will Tony Blair's legacy be like once he's into the period of lectures and memoirs? Well the observant amongst you will have noticed there are two Prime Ministers I haven't yet mentioned - Anthony Eden and David Lloyd George. Frankly it's hard to think of anything positive to say about Eden's premiership - by the summer of 1956 he was increasingly discredited. And of course it ended in disaster when he launched an attack on an Arab country to domestic and international disapproval. Hardly anyone has managed to justify the Suez Crisis and it increasingly seems that the Iraq War will be remembered equally disastrously.

And then there's the Prime Minister who broke his party, sold honours and ended his days with virtually no-one in politics supporting him. Tony Blair has long said that his political hero is Lloyd George but Blair is hardly the dashing young radical or a country's saviour in time of national crisis. However he has certainly emulated many of the worst features of the Goat (but before anyone suggests anything, I have heard nothing about Blair giving tours of ceilings). With every new revelation about Loans for Lordships, Blair looks more and more tainted, just like his hero.

And what other legacy has Blair got? Most of the changes that have happened under his government can't really be attributed to either him personally or his leadership. He did not received the Nobel Prize for the Northern Ireland Peace Process, whilst Mo Mowlam has always received the credit for the government's contribution. Donald Dewar is remembered as the deliverer of Scottish devolution. And the public services have been shaken up so many times that it seems all that's been achieved is to pour lots of money in and charge the public more. (And in any case with a dominant Chancellor of the Exchequer it's going to be difficult to extract credit for Blair rather than Gordon Brown.) Nor does anyone talk about "Cool Britannia" anymore.

Tony Blair has spent years claiming he is a man of substance not style. But his legacy is a mixture of bad substance or style gone wrong. Which would he prefer to be remembered for?