Cabinet's Finest Hour Page 7
Churchill called his mood changes his ‘Black Dog’. Sometimes they lasted only for hours, at other times for months. An early reference to ‘Black Dog’ appears in a letter Churchill wrote on 11 July 1911 to his wife, Clementine, about a friend:
Alice interested me a great deal in her talk about her doctor in Germany, who completely cured her depression. I think this man might be useful to me – if my black dog returns. He seems quite away from me now – it is such a relief.45
Churchill talked about past suicidal feelings when young and married. He didn’t like to stand near the edge of a platform when an express train was passing through the station, he claimed, and if possible he preferred to get a pillar between him and the train, for a second’s action could end everything. Churchill’s family, including his wife, believed his mood changes were not as significant as Lord Moran, his personal doctor, and some psychiatrists have suggested. Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer, quotes a letter from John Colville, Churchill’s long-serving private secretary:
I suppose that this hypothetical state of depression into which Lord Moran alleges Sir Winston used to fall will become accepted dogma. I therefore, some time ago, took the trouble to ask Lady Churchill about the theory. She was quite positive that although her husband was occasionally depressed – as indeed most normal people are – he was not abnormally subject to long fits of depression.46
Churchill in his early years had, by any standard, clinical depression, with notable episodes after the failed Dardanelles Campaign in 1915, the loss of his parliamentary seat in 1922 and after his exclusion from the National Government in 1931.
Churchill’s daughter, writing sensitively about his times of depression and deep frustrations, also used the term ‘Black Dog’ and wrote that it had ‘been his companion too often in earlier years for him not to know the power of such feelings’.47
Some later psychiatrists have diagnosed Churchill as having bipolar-I disorder. To make the diagnosis of bipolar-I there is merit in sticking to the criterion dominant when Churchill was alive, that there should be at least one clear manic disturbance sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in occupational functioning or in usual social activities or relationships with others, often sufficient to necessitate hospitalisation to prevent harm to oneself or others. Usually there is also at least one family member with a history of severe depression. In Churchill’s case the family of his father, also named Randolph, had a history of depression, which was apparent in many Dukes of Marlborough. But his father’s bizarre, somewhat manic behaviour, which was thought at one time to be the result of general paralysis of the insane, the terminal stage of syphilis, looks as though it may have been caused by a brain tumour. Some commentators have considered as manic behaviour Churchill dictating to a secretary while in the bath – and certainly he was unselfconscious about being in the nude – but a casual approach to nudity was quite common in his social class.
Churchill, by the time he had become Prime Minister, appeared to have flattened out the violence of the mood swings of his youth. In that sense, his depression was rather like that of another hyperactive politician, Theodore Roosevelt, who was diagnosed in a recent study as having bipolar-I disorder.48 Neither of Churchill’s doctors, Lord Moran nor Lord Brain, in their writings came anywhere near to labelling their patient a manic depressive and nor I believe should doctors decades later.
After a long life in politics Churchill had formidable enemies, but the House of Commons is an extremely intimate place and across party lines, amongst MPs, there is often a fair measure of agreement about an individual’s overall qualities. They desperately wanted Churchill’s inspirational abilities and judged this to be his all-important attribute. The force of his personality was elemental, suited to a wartime leader and head of government.
After the abdication crisis, Rhodes James wrote, “Seldom has there been such a dramatic reversal of political fortunes. Churchill’s reputation fell to its nadir, Baldwin’s rose to its zenith.”49 Boothby’s relations with Churchill were not improved by Boothby’s criticism of Churchill during the debate that followed Eden’s resignation on 22 February 1938. On 12 March, Hitler annexed Austria. At this time Boothby admitted he “fell under the spell” of Halifax for a time. Even his relations with Chamberlain were good. On 19 September Boothby met the Russian International Commisar in Geneva and discovered that the British Government had not even had political talks, let alone staff talks with Russia. But despite that, if the French fulfilled their obligations to the Czechs they would fight.
It was Munich that changed Boothby’s attitude to the Chamberlainites and he told a friend “this Cabinet must be hurled from power, whatever happens”.50 This guided him in every action that he took from then on until Churchill became Prime Minister. He would go on to abstain with over 30 Conservative MPs at the 8 May vote as well as combine with Amery. The Whips’ Office began to attack the anti-Munich Conservatives who opposed appeasement, and Boothby was put under increasing pressure in East Aberdeenshire; even Churchill had trouble in his own constituency. But all this allowed Boothby to exploit his position and, through Davies, establish relations with Labour and Liberal people in the country and amongst MPs. His ups and downs with Churchill by the spring of 1940 were all forgotten; Churchill was the man for the job and he did not consider any other candidate.
Churchill’s position was strengthened outside of the House of Commons at this time by one other important relationship. Churchill had developed a significant bond with Ernest Bevin surrounding the negotiations and drafting of the first Orders under the Road Haulage Wages Act, which were not ready for enforcement until 1940. Bevin was having to deal with the growing employment of women in roles previously occupied exclusively by men and tasked with negotiating the ‘rate for the job’. The fishing industry, hard hit by the Admiralty requisitioning trawlers for minesweeping and other naval duties, also demanded time and reorganisation. Bevin took the initiative in persuading five different Ministries, one of which was the Admiralty, to come together. Churchill agreed on 19 October 1939 to take the chair and Churchill and Bevin, “brought into co-operation for the first time in their lives, rapidly took the measure of each other. There could hardly have been a greater contrast: the patrician politician, master of the suspect arts of war and diplomacy, and the working-class leader, immersed in the social and industrial problems of trade unionism”.51 As Alan Bullock went on to note “Bevin found in Churchill a politician capable of the prompt and bold action which he could never obtain from other government departments to his satisfaction. Churchill marked in Bevin a breadth of mind and natural authority which he had never before met in a working-class leader.”52
An address to the Institute of Transport by Bevin in January 1940 in which he argued for a single authority for transport, came to Churchill’s notice and he asked for a copy which Bevin sent him at once. This relationship was no secret in Labour Party circles and, indeed, encouraged other Labour figures to talk to Conservatives like Boothby, who was probably thought to have a closer relationship to Churchill at that stage than he really had. During these early months of 1940, a far better relationship was apparent in the House of Commons between Labour and some Conservative MPs, all of whom were dissatisfied with the way the war was being handled. It was the Norwegian Campaign that finally made clear how extensive this mishandling really was. On 1 May 1940 at Stoke-on-Trent, Bevin’s anger was made public: “The time has come when there must be no mincing of words. It is no use disguising the fact that those who, like myself, have been constantly in touch with Government departments, are intensely dissatisfied with the kind of obstruction, lack of drive, absence of imagination and complacency which exists... But the damnable thing is they cannot put in the extra energy to give the soldier what he needs without also having to give bigger profits to the capitalists in control. The British working class want this war won. They know what is at stake. It is their liberty. But they want a Government that is going to please th
e nation before its friend and private interests.”53
On 9 February 1940, President Roosevelt announced that the Under Secretary of State Mr Sumner Welles would shortly visit Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain, solely for the purpose of advising the President and Secretary of State as to conditions in Europe. Welles travelled to Naples on the symbol of fascist achievement – the luxury liner SS Rex leaving New York on 13 February. Europe was still in the phoney war. It was Welles who had persuaded Roosevelt to make Italy not just a last minute handwritten addition to the countries he should visit but the top priority. Mussolini knew that public opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of Italy remaining neutral, though he preferred to label the stance as non-belligerent. Washington increasingly worried that Italy was growing closer to Japan. Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian fascist Foreign Minister and Mussolini’s son-in-law, made a speech in December 1939 seen by the American Ambassador Philips as being deliberately anti-German and this was a big factor in Welles’s thinking. Italy welcomed Welles’s visit, Britain was negative, and France less so. On that first meeting Welles wrote: “Ciano made no effort to conceal his dislike and contempt for Ribbentrop or his antagonism towards Hitler”.54
Welles was told emphatically when meeting with Mussolini that a negotiation with Germany could be successful in bringing about a peace proposal, but not once a ‘real’ war had broken out. The price for his help was also clearly implied; the British would have to curb their aggressive behaviour in the Mediterranean. But later Mussolini was very negative when confiding in Ciano, stating “Between us and the Americans any kind of understanding is impossible”, owing to the US propensity to “judge problems on the surface” in contrast to Italy’s deeper consideration.55 In London after Welles had visited Hitler, Chamberlain told him that he was strongly opposed to offering any territorial incentives to Italy. On 10 March Ribbentrop visited Rome to see Mussolini and Ciano. When Welles returned to Rome via Paris where he met Paul Reynaud, as he had promised he would on 15 March, Mussolini had already been told that Hitler did not feel Welles’s visit had brought any new elements to bear by Ribbentrop. When Welles saw Mussolini he made one remark, “You may wish to remember that while the German-Italian pact exists, I nevertheless retain complete liberty of action.”56 Mussolini had requested authorisation to pass onto Hitler Welles’s impressions following his visits, but when Welles checked by telephone with Roosevelt this was withheld to avoid giving the impression that the US President was participating in any peace initiative.
Mussolini met Hitler on the Brenner Pass on 18 March, on the same day that Welles met Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. Ciano was aware of all that had passed between Welles and Roosevelt as there was a phone tap in operation when Roosevelt told Welles ‘No’ when he reported back. The truth is Ciano was duplicitous and a dissembler. He was aware that on the Brenner Pass Hitler had confirmed he would attack the West and Mussolini had said he would come into the war, though he told Welles on 19 March Italy would not enter the war on the side of Germany as long as he was Foreign Minister.
Welles later reported to the President on Mussolini, “Mussolini is a man of genius, but it must never be forgotten that Mussolini remains at heart and in instinct an Italian peasant. He is vindictive and will never forget an injury or blow to his personal or national prestige. He admires force and power. His own obsession is the recreation of the Roman Empire … I do not believe there is the slightest chance of any successful negotiation at this time.”57 Welles was correct.
The question which has never been fully answered is why, after the Welles visit, did Halifax think in May that Ciano was a credible figure and interpreter of Mussolini’s thoughts and actions? Halifax’s official biography gives little space or attention to Welles’s mission. Did Halifax dismiss it as another Roosevelt attempt to keep the Isolationists happy? But there were important lessons to be learned from it which appeared not to have been picked up by Lothian, our ambassador in Washington, or Philips in Rome from their contacts. Welles certainly believed he was reporting only to the President, but it was the first and most credible attempt to gauge Italian intentions.
In May 1940 it was Leo Amery who would prove to be the catalyst for bringing together all the groups working to topple Chamberlain. Anxiety on the Conservative backbenches was growing and about more than just what was happening in Norway. The sheer folly of not bombing German airfields while British troops in Norway were facing German air superiority seemed extraordinary. Yet since the war had started, the design of a heavy tank had not been agreed. The British Expeditionary Force had seventeen light and 100 ‘infantry’ tanks. Lord Salisbury made representations to Chamberlain personally which failed to move him into specific action. Lord Halifax met a deputation from the Salisbury Group which led Salisbury to say bluntly of the Government “we are not satisfied”.58
The April Budget was attacked by Amery for expenditure on war purposes of £2,000,000,000, while Germany was spending £3,200,000,000 – a gap that was bound to widen unless Britain increased its expenditure to something like £3,600,000,000 a year. Amery’s diary entry for 29 April reads:
It is all terrible, and must mean the end of the Government and, perhaps, of Winston as well. But if so, what on earth have we left? My only conclusion is that we cannot do worse than with the present lot, and that if we only change often enough we shall end by finding someone who can lead us to victory.”59
Norway was to provide the political tipping point more than its military equivalent. In François Kersaudy’s Norway 1940, the secretary of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Major-General Hastings Ismay, is quoted receiving “In the very early hours of 9 April… [a] report … brutal in its simplicity. The Germans had seized Copenhagen, Oslo, and all the main ports of Norway.”60 The ensuing Allied expedition in Norway was described by Kersaudy as “ill-founded”61 with some British units suffering an “unmitigated disaster”.62 In his history of the Second World War, Churchill described Norway as “… this ramshackle campaign”.63 According to Boothby “… everything drifted gradually from bad to worse; and the Norwegian campaign, botched by Churchill, brought matters to a climax”;64 a Leo Amery diary entry for 17 April 1940 added that any action was “‘too little and too late’ as usual”.65 In his memoir, he wrote that on the 2 May 1940 “…at a meeting with Clement Davies and his group … we decided to see if we could not make the two days’ Whitsun adjournment debate on 7 May the occasion for a trial of strength”.66 In his diary Amery describes this meeting on 2 May as “... an emergency conclave convened by Clem Davies (more or less his Economic dinner group) ... to discuss the line for next week’s debate. I urged ‘national government and War Cabinet’ which was generally agreed while it was also agreed that we should press for no Whitsun holiday”.67 The account of this day, 2 May, by the biographer of Clement Davies wrote that Davies “met the Labour leadership to encourage them to press for a vote of confidence in the adjournment debate scheduled for 7 May”.68 In his memoir, Amery also writes that “… Davies accordingly tried to persuade Attlee to raise the direct issue of confidence. Attlee hesitated, wisely, as the event proved, for it made it much easier for Conservatives to be influenced by the opening day’s debate”.69 Once again one sees the Labour Party carefully using their power as the official opposition to reinforce Conservative backbench MPs who were not able to put down motions or to influence when and how votes would take place. They all knew each needed the other.
To himself Amery concluded: “this muddle cannot go on any longer”. At all costs and at the earliest possible moment the Chamberlain Government must be forced to go. On 7 May the House of Commons met and Amery was poised to speak.70 Arthur Greenwood, he wrote, truly expressed the mood of the House quoting him as saying:
I have never known the House in graver mood. Its heart is troubled. It is anxious; it is more than anxious, it is apprehensive.
Somewhat surprisingly, Chamberlain, in opening the debate, made what Amery felt was “a skilful statement, but it entire
ly misjudged the temper of the House which was not concerned with the scale of our failure, but with its nature”.71 Attlee posed what Amery felt were some shrewd questions, but it was the Liberal leader, Sinclair, who went to the heart of the matter according to Amery with the assertion that “the Government is giving us a one-shift war while the Germans are working a three-shift war”.72 It is appropriate to give much attention to Amery’s own account of the debate. He sat through it all, and it is rightly judged by history as his debate owing to the drama of his speech. But it could well have been a relatively boring occasion with Amery squeezed out by the Speaker and the Conservative Whips. He describes the waiting period in the middle of the debate that many MPs have to endure:
Then followed for me two hours of that agonised discomfort which only members of the House know, divided between perfunctory listening to unimportant speeches which never seem to end, and vainly trying to remember the all-important points of the all-important speech one hopes to make oneself. This time I knew that what I had to say mattered and, what was more, was desperately anxious that it should have its intended effect. So I followed impatiently the alternation between speakers who declared that all was well with the best of governments which had just won a successful campaign and those who dwelt on the military disaster which was the natural climax of years of incompetence. The only note of colour, for eye as well as for mind, was afforded by Roger Keyes, who had come down in all the splendour of his uniform as Admiral of the Fleet, in order to speak for those “officers and men of the fighting, seagoing Navy” who shared his unhappiness over the failure to take Trondheim.73