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  As a Privy Councillor Amery had a certain customary right to be called. But the choice of when lay with the Speaker, who was sympathetic to Chamberlain. Amery realised that the Speaker meant to postpone calling him until the dinner hour in the knowledge that Amery was out to create difficulties for the Government. Amery needed a packed House. Members had however steadily slipped away from the Chamber with a dozen or so remaining. Amery nearly decided to speak for a few minutes at most. But Clement Davies came in and while he was speaking said that he would go off to bring in MPs from the Smoking Room and Library. Gradually the Chamber began to fill up and Amery felt sufficiently confident to make a direct attack on Chamberlain.

  The Prime Minister gave us a reasoned, argumentative case for our failure. It is always possible to do that after every failure. Making a case and winning a war are not the same thing. Wars are won, not by explanation after the event, but by foresight, by clear decision and by swift action. I confess that I did not feel there was one sentence in the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon which suggested that the Government either foresaw what Germany meant to do, or came to a clear decision when it knew what Germany had done, or acted swiftly or consistently throughout the whole of this lamentable affair.74

  After a while Amery turned to military questions.

  The Prime Minister, both the other day and today, expressed himself as satisfied that the balance of advantage lay on our side. He laid great stress on the heaviness of the German losses and the lightness of ours. What did the Germans lose? A few thousand men, nothing to them, a score of transports, and part of a Navy which anyhow cannot match ours. What did they gain? They gained Norway, with the strategical advantages which, in their opinion at least, outweigh the whole of their naval losses. They have gained the whole of Scandinavia. What have we lost? To begin with, we have lost most of the Norwegian Army, not only such as it was but such as it might have become, if only we had been given time to rally and re-equip it … What we have lost, above all, is one of those opportunities which do not recur in war. If we could have captured and held Trondheim, and if we would have rallied the Norwegian forces, then we might well have imposed a strain on Germany which might have made Norway to Hitler what Spain once was to Napoleon.75

  Now the House was listening to his arguments and he could hear murmurs of approval from his own Conservative benches:

  We cannot go on as we are. There must be a change. First and foremost, it must be a change in the system and structure of our governmental machine. This is war, not peace … In war the first essential is planning ahead. The next essential is swift, decisive action.

  We can wage war only on military principles. One of the first of these principles is the clear definition of individual responsibilities – not party responsibilities or Cabinet responsibilities – and, with it, a proper delegation of authority ... What is our present Cabinet system? There are some 25 Ministers, heads of Departments, who have no direct chief above them except the Prime Minister. How often do they see him? How often can they get from him direct advice, direct impulse, direct drive? Who is to settle disputes between them?76

  Amery advocated, as he had been doing for months, a real War Cabinet, such as Lloyd George had created in the First World War and which the Committee of Imperial Defence had laid down as axiomatic:

  We must have, first of all, a right organisation of Government. What is no less important today is that the Government shall be able to draw upon the whole abilities of the nation. It must represent all the elements of real political power in this country, whether in this House or not. The time has come when hon. and right hon. Members opposite must definitely take their share of the responsibility. The time has come when the organisation, the power and influence of the Trades Union Congress cannot be left outside. It must, through one of its recognised leaders, reinforce the strength of the national effort from inside. The time has come, in other words, for a real National Government. I may be asked what is my alternative Government. That is not my concern: it is not the concern of this House. The duty of this House, and the duty that it ought to exercise, is to show unmistakably what kind of Government it wants in order to win the war. It must always be left to some individual leader, working perhaps with a few others, to express that will by selecting his colleagues so as to form a Government which will correspond to the will of the House and enjoy its confidence. So I refuse, and I hope the House will refuse, to be drawn into a discussion on personalities.77

  By now the atmosphere was becoming tense. Amery came to his conclusion:

  Somehow or other we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory. Some 300 years ago, when this House found that its troops were being beaten again and again by the dash and daring of the Cavaliers, by Prince Rupert’s Cavalry, Oliver Cromwell spoke to John Hampden. In one of his speeches he recounted what he said. It was this: “I said to him, ‘Your troops are most of them old, decayed serving men and tapsters and such kind of fellows’ … You must get men of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they will go, or you will be beaten still.” It may not be easy to find these men. They can be found only by trial and by ruthlessly discarding all who fail and have their failings discovered. We are fighting today for our life, for our liberty, for our all; we cannot go on being led as we are.78

  Amery admitted later that he then hesitated for a moment as to whether to quote the words of Cromwell when he dismissed the Rump of the Long Parliament. He knew that to go “beyond the sense of the House, above all beyond the feeling of my own friends, would be not only an anti-climax, but a fatal error of judgement. I was not out for a dramatic finish, but for a practical purpose; to bring down the Government if I could.”79 He described feeling himself swept forward by the surge of feeling which his speech had worked up on the benches around him. Across the floor of the House, he caught the “the look of admiring appreciation on the face of that old parliamentary virtuoso, Lloyd George”.80 So he ventured:

  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.”81

  When he sat down he knew he had done what he meant to do. He could see on the faces of the ministers who had come in to crowd the front bench, that they knew it too. In his conviction that the Chamberlain Government must go he had carried with him far more Conservatives than he had been able to in recent months. Lloyd George told him afterwards that in 50 years he had heard few speeches to match it in sustained power and none with so dramatic a climax. This much was also clear to the Opposition, Greenwood pointed out later in the evening:

  Members of this House know perfectly well, and it is no good pretending to hide it, that there is a feeling in this country against the Government. [Hon. Members: “Nonsense.”] I hope I have never talked any nonsense in this war. I have spoken what I believe to be true …

  It is perfectly clear that there must be an active, vigorous, imaginative direction of the war. Up to now, our record in this war, despite magnificent exploits which will remain in the annals of our history as long as there is a Britain, does not redound to the credit of the Government. I turn again to the words which I quoted at the beginning of my speech: “Should there be confused councils, inefficiency and wavering, then other men must be called to take their place.” That is what we ask. The responsibility for any change lies, not with the minority; it lies with the majority whose responsibilities are, far and away, greater than ours.82

  Roy Jenkins, in his biography of Attlee, quotes him as saying that the debate on the adjournment on 7 May “revealed th
at discontent had gone far deeper than we thought and I was assured that if a division were called we should get a lot of support from the Conservatives, especially from the serving soldiers, sailors and airmen”.83

  Herbert Morrison’s biographers quote the Labour MP, Jim Griffiths, as saying that Morrison “... saw the chance to destroy the Government. He saw that they could take a division at the end of an adjournment debate...”84 They also quote Clement Attlee remembering that “I presided at the party meeting and I, not Morrison, proposed that we should call a vote against the Government”.85 It seems that Herbert Morrison pressed for a division at a meeting of Labour’s Parliamentary Executive Committee, while Attlee proposed a division at a full meeting of the Parliamentary Party. It turned out to be a tactical triumph and an example of how parliamentary procedure has to be mastered if its full potential is to be harnessed.

  On the next day, 8 May, Herbert Morrison opened the debate for the Labour Party. At the very end, he asked for a vote which should “represent the spirit of the country”.86 Chamberlain rose to say that, at a time when national unity was essential in the face of a relentless enemy, this challenge had made a grave situation graver. He continued:

  I do not seek to evade criticism, but I say this to my friends in the House – and I have friends in the House. No Government can prosecute a war efficiently unless it has public and parliamentary support. I accept the challenge. I welcome it indeed. At least we shall see who is with us and who is against us, and I call on my friends to support us in the lobby tonight.87

  The reference to ‘my friends’ was judged by most MPs as a very unwise choice of words, making it a party, or even a personal, issue. Amery wrote later that “The Conservative benches shivered at so crude an error of judgement. There was, no doubt, real anxiety behind the appeal. The Whips had discovered that the discontent in the Conservative ranks was far more widespread than they had imagined, and were frantically busy trying to stem it.”88

  In his memoir, Boothby records that “Clement Davies immediately sent for me … asked me to arrange a meeting of dissident Conservative members … I had no difficulty in persuading Amery to take the chair at the meeting, several being in uniform, which extended beyond the various ‘groups’. At this meeting the fateful decision was taken to vote against the Government”.89 Amery mentions a “… meeting of our lot”90 on 8 May, which in his memoir he refers to as “… an emergency meeting”.91 Clement Davies’s biographer wrote that before the division, the Vigilantes, joined by other dissenters, meant that the Commons committee room swelled to over 100, and they made their final decision to vote against the Government”.92

  Now all the work in the groups bore fruit and some thirty or forty MPs had announced their intention of voting against the Government. Lord Dunglass (Alec Douglas-Home), the Prime Minister’s parliamentary private secretary, managed to persuade some of them to hold off, promising that Chamberlain would meet with them the next day to tell them of his plans for a drastic reconstruction of the Government.

  Lloyd George had been busy making notes at the beginning of the debate as if he was intending to speak, but had disappeared. Noting his absence, Davies had found him and brought him back to the House in time to hear a good part of Hoare’s speech. Lloyd George then began with a general indictment of the Government’s unreadiness on every critical occasion in recent years and then went on to Norway. A suggestion that the First Lord was not entirely to blame for all that happened there at once brought Churchill to his feet to claim his full share of responsibility. But Lloyd George replied:

  The right hon. Gentleman must not allow himself to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues.93

  In this way Lloyd George not only highlighted the feeling which ran through the debate, that whether Churchill had, or had not, made mistakes over Norway he was not responsible for the underlying incompetence which was the real issue. His speech was powerful, but Amery thought his closing appeal to Chamberlain to set an example of sacrifice by sacrificing the seals of office, struck a false note, and was not helpful from the point of view that mattered most, namely securing his fellow Conservative MPs votes. By contrast, Duff Cooper a Conservative, was far more persuasive and declared that “this is not a time when any man has the right to wash his hands like Pontius Pilate”, stating bluntly that he would show his lack of confidence in the Government by his vote. Duff Cooper continued:

  Tonight we shall no doubt listen to an eloquent and powerful speech by the First Lord of the Admiralty. I almost wish it was going to be delivered from the now empty seat which he used to occupy below the Gangway here. He will be defending with his eloquence those who have so long refused to listen to his counsel, who treated his warnings with contempt and who refused to take him into their own confidence. He will no doubt be as successful as he always has been, and those who so often trembled before his sword will be only too glad to shrink behind his buckler.94

  Churchill, in winding up the debate and speaking for forty-five minutes, made the point that the enemy air supremacy prevented Britain from dealing with the German advance on land or, except by submarine, with the transport of her troops by sea. Everyone knew well enough that he, at least, was not to blame for that. Narvik was the place which had interested Churchill and which might still lead to some decisive achievement. Then for three minutes Churchill turned to the vote of confidence.

  The first part of the debate was concerned with Norway, but about five o’clock this afternoon we were told there was to be a Vote of Censure taken in the form of a vote on the Motion for the Adjournment. It seems to me that the House will be absolutely wrong to take such a grave decision in such a precipitate manner, and after such little notice. The question of the dismissal of a Government has always been open to the House of Commons, and no Minister would condescend to hold office unless he had the confidence and support of the House. But if the Government are to be dismissed from office, and that is the claim which has been made without scruple, then I think that in time of war at least there should be a solemn Resolution put down on the Paper and full notice given of the debate. Exception has been taken because the Prime Minister said he appealed to his friends. He thought he had some friends, and I hope he has some friends. He certainly had a good many when things were going well. I think it would be most ungenerous and unworthy of the British character, and the Conservative Party, to turn in a moment of difficulty without all the processes of grave debate which should be taken.95

  The speech, for all its skill, made little impression. Amery thought that “what really mattered was that it strengthened Churchill’s position with the defenders of the Government without weakening it in the eyes of those of us who saw in him the obvious successor to Chamberlain”.96

  Amery then describes the most dramatic division in which he had ever taken part. “So unexpectedly large was the number of Conservatives voting against the Government – we were forty-four in all – and so many remained ostentatiously in their seats determined to abstain, rather than vote, that, for a moment, some half thought they might have an actual majority.”97 Yet as the Whips marched up to the table, bowing their heads three times, the Government Whips, as expected, were on the right meaning the Government had won. David Margesson read out the figures: 281 to 200 instead of the normal majority of over 200. Gasps, and shouts of “resign, resign” were then heard from MPs. Confidence was obviously no longer held in Chamberlain’s Government. It was a devastating blow demonstrating that winning in the division lobby is not always the real test.

  The House of Commons is a place of moods, mostly rather drowsy and slow moving, but when roused its power collectively applied is formidable. Even Chamberlain now began to recognise that either Halifax or Churchill must form a real War Cabinet on an all-party basis. The Government benches tried to raise a cheer while the Socialists shouted, “Go, in God’s name go!”

  The House met next day on 9 May. Davies, having presided earlier over
an all-party meeting of MPs, had found an overwhelming majority would not support the existing government and would only support a National Government comprising all parties. This conclusion was at once communicated to the Prime Minister.

  Also meeting on 9 May was Lord Salisbury’s Watching Committee, including the Conservative MP Harold Macmillan and the National Labour MP Harold Nicolson, and amongst them peers, with Paul Emrys-Evans as secretary and Amery as chairman of its sub-committee on military matters. It was agreed that, irrespective of how people had voted the night before, it was now essential that Chamberlain resign. Davies moved that the House of Commons should reassemble on 14 May, instead of 21 May. But the Speaker limited discussion so narrowly to the question of date that neither Davies nor other speakers could really raise the main issues with which they were concerned. In his diary entry for 9 May 1940 Leo Amery records that there was an “early meeting of Salisbury’s Watching Committee at which the general feeling was, including those who had voted with the Government, that Neville should now resign and either Halifax or Winston form a real War Cabinet on National Lines”.98

  Chamberlain, who had seemed the night before to be reconciled to the necessity of an all-party government to restore confidence, was influenced by Churchill, to whom he had spoken immediately after the division in the House of Commons, and who expressed a doubt as to whether resignation was necessary. He offered Amery the choice of Chancellor of the Exchequer or Foreign Secretary the next morning, but he refused. Halifax that morning was quite definite with Chamberlain that a coalition government had become inevitable. Chamberlain then arranged for Churchill and Halifax to come and discuss the situation at four-thirty that afternoon in Downing Street.

  There are many different accounts of what happened in Downing Street in the aftermath of 9 May. All the participants had different perceptions and conflicting stories emerged in varying diary entries and books. One can, however, piece together a narrative based on probability. When Attlee and Greenwood eventually arrived at Downing Street after a long lunch at the Reform Club with Clement Davies, they went to the Cabinet Room where Chamberlain was flanked by Halifax and Churchill. Chamberlain began by saying that he thought the time had come for him to renew his invitation of the previous autumn to join his government. Attlee left it to Greenwood to firmly explain that the Prime Minister completely misunderstood the situation, insisting “there was not the slightest prospect of the Opposition joining a government under him; they not only disliked him but regarded him as something evil”.99 Whether the term “evil” was actually uttered is not clear, but one can be certain that Greenwood and other Labour MPs felt resentful about the way that Chamberlain had treated them and blamed him for the mess the country was in. Many years later, Attlee would allude to these feelings in an interview for Granada: