Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945–1955. Barbara Leaming

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СКАЧАТЬ and loyalty, to be sure, but there was also a tendency that did not go unnoticed in their inbred aristocratic world to treat Eden ‘rather as if he were the head butler at Hatfield House’ (the Cecil family seat).

      Eden, meanwhile, continued to vacillate, and Churchill went off to Switzerland without having made another concrete offer to share power. Churchill drew more world headlines when he spoke at the University of Zurich on 19 September. His remarks were the second instalment of his prescription for confronting the Soviet danger. Having already called for an Anglo-American partnership to counter the massive Soviet presence in the occupied territories of Europe, he now proposed an end to retribution against vanquished Germany. He declared that Germany must be rebuilt and he argued that France must lead the effort. Churchill urged listeners to turn their backs on the horrors of the recent past and to look to the future – in other words, to welcome the Germans into the community of nations. So soon after the war, his recommendations were strong medicine, but, as he admitted privately, he saw a rebuilt Germany as a necessary defence against the Soviet Union. It was Churchill’s hope that the creation of a strong Europe led by a revitalized France and Germany would do much to avert a war with the Soviet Union, and to produce a lasting settlement at the conference table.

      In reaction to Churchill’s call for the rebuilding of Germany and the formation of a ‘United States of Europe’, Moscow radio accused him of seeking to unite the continent in preparation for war. When Churchill went on to ask publicly why the Soviets were maintaining so many troops on a war footing in the occupied territories of Europe, Stalin called him the worst threat to peace in Europe.

      Churchill was already under heavy fire from Moscow when he turned up in Paris to discuss the situation in Europe with US Secretary of State Byrnes, who was there for the peace conference. Frustrated by his inability to extract the information from his own Government, Churchill was eager to be brought up to date on current thinking in Washington. He also wanted to maintain his personal contacts with the Americans. Bevin, for his part, could not see why. Was Churchill’s party not out of power? What business did he have in Paris? To the acute irritation both of the Labour Government and of certain of his Conservative colleagues, Churchill seemed to be running some sort of high-flying, out-of-control, one-man foreign policy shop. Official negotiations with Molotov continued to drag, and the British Foreign Secretary was furious at the prospect of Churchill, who had not been invited to participate, doing or saying anything in the course of his short stay to complicate matters.

      In anticipation of Churchill’s arrival in Paris, there had been much agitated discussion within the British delegation about how best to cope. Bevin worried that allowing Churchill to stay at the embassy would seem to confer Government approval on his private talks with Byrnes and other officials, when in fact Britain had no control over anything he said. Duff Cooper, the British Ambassador, successfully argued for accommodating him there, the better to manage him. Afterwards, the Ambassador wrote of his fellow Conservative’s whirlwind visit with a mixture of amusement and annoyance (clearly more of the former than the latter), ‘Having possibly endangered international relations and having certainly caused immense inconvenience to a large number of people, he seemed thoroughly to enjoy himself, was with difficulty induced to go to bed soon after midnight and left at 10 a.m. the next morning in high spirits.’

      A year after Churchill returned from his Italian holiday, he had reason to be high-spirited. Though out of office, he had handily regained influence. Though Britain had a new Government, he regularly managed to upstage it. Whether or not one sympathized with his arguments in Fulton and Zurich, there could be no denying that he had framed the international debate on such matters as Soviet expansionism and European reconstruction and unification. At the first annual Conservative Party conference since the war, held in Blackpool in October 1946, Churchill avowed that while it would be easy ‘to retire gracefully’, the situation in Europe was so serious and what might be to come so grave that it was his ‘duty’ to carry on. As he approached his seventy-second birthday, he spoke with assurance of turning out the socialists and he remained confident of his ability to secure the peace if only he could get back to the table with Stalin.

      Still, there was growing dissatisfaction in Conservative quarters with a leader who was absent much of the time, travelling, speaking, writing, and collecting awards. A fresh round of defeats in the December by-elections intensified Conservatives’ hunger for a leader willing to devote his energies to remaking the party. It was a measure of how much the tide had begun to turn against Churchill that the Conservative Chief Whip, James Stuart, went to Cranborne to discuss the need for a change of leadership. Though at the end of 1946 Stuart remained distinctly unimpressed by Eden, he had sadly concluded that Churchill’s spotty attendance in the House of Commons was making the conduct of business almost impossible. In conversation with Cranborne, Stuart proposed to speak to Churchill. He wanted him to revive his plan to hand over the Opposition leadership in the Commons to Eden while retaining the broader leadership of the party. At least that way, someone other than Churchill would have real authority to lead in the House. Stuart judged that Churchill might be more amenable to sharing power now that he was so effectively influencing international opinion. Cranborne was a good deal less optimistic about what amounted to a first approach to Churchill by his colleagues, on Eden’s behalf. Nevertheless, he gave the mission his blessing. It was a mission that few would have taken on willingly, but Stuart, a raffish Scot, had a reputation for fearlessness. The very fact that someone unaffiliated with the Eden faction was prepared to make the proposal might signal to Churchill that it was indeed time to think about going.

      To Stuart’s relief, Churchill responded calmly to the suggestion that he had already done so much for his country that he could retire and enjoy the rest of his life without regrets. Still, when Stuart proposed that for the good of the party Churchill consider reviving his plan to share the leadership with Eden, Churchill would not hear of it. Churchill explained that great events were pending, though not immediately, and that he wanted to be in a position to handle them himself. His answer went to the heart of what power meant to Churchill. Through the years, he had often suggested that office and title meant nothing to him; what appealed to him was the opportunity to direct events and to shape the future. And so, he made it clear to Stuart, it was now.

      On a lighter note, Churchill addressed his colleagues’ concerns about whether he was still up to the burdens of the Opposition leadership by informing Stuart that he meant to install a bed in his room at the House of Commons. He assured the vastly amused Chief Whip that this would allow him to take naps there and no one need worry that he would be too tired to attend. Churchill insisted that Eden could wait a little longer to enter his inheritance and that Eden knew he was devoted to him. At the end of the hour, Stuart, veering between laughter and tears of frustration, had got absolutely nowhere. The most he could say was that at least the old lion had not bitten off his head.

      For Cranborne, the news that Stuart had failed was unwelcome but not unexpected. By the end of 1946, he had explored what seemed like every option: he had prodded Eden to approach Churchill on his own; he had volunteered to organize a cabal; he had suggested to Eden that he abandon his role as designated heir and fight for power in the House; he had given the nod to the Chief Whip to act on Eden’s behalf. Nothing had worked.

      Cranborne lamented that Eden was ‘rapidly losing ground’. He reckoned that the only way Eden could re-establish himself was ‘by some resolute step, such as he took when he resigned in 1938. That got him the reputation of a strong man, but he cannot live on this one incident in his career forever.’ It was a disturbing assessment of the man Cranborne still hoped to make the next prime minister of Great Britain. Cranborne insisted that if Eden wanted to be perceived as a leader he had better begin to act like one; until Eden made his move, there was nothing anyone else could do for him. In the interval, Churchill clearly meant to hold on to the party leadership ‘at all costs’. For one thing, Cranborne reflected, Churchill liked power. For another, Churchill was convinced that ‘like Lord Chatham he can save England & no one else can’. Cranborne did not intend the comparison to the aged, ailing eighteenth-century statesman who pushed himself to the limits of his physical endurance, collapsed on СКАЧАТЬ