Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945–1955. Barbara Leaming

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СКАЧАТЬ from all parties – and by a whirligig of plots and plotters. He was sitting in his room at the House of Commons when Stuart came in. Stuart began by saying that he had a difficult task to perform and that he hoped Churchill would bear with him without being annoyed. When last they spoke of retirement, Churchill had reacted calmly, and Stuart hoped that might be the case again. He repeated what he had said previously about no other man having done more for his country than Churchill. Then he went on to report the view of their colleagues that the time had come for a change of leadership.

      ‘Oh, you’ve joined those who want to get rid of me, have you?’ Churchill exploded.

      ‘I haven’t in the least,’ Stuart protested, ‘but I suppose there is something to be said for the fact that change will have to take place sometime and you’re not quite as young as you were.’

      Churchill responded by angrily banging the floor with his walking stick. With that emphatic gesture, he put an end to the cabal to unseat him in favour of Eden. The plotters acknowledged that Churchill was too beloved a figure, both within the Tory rank and file and the country at large, for there to be any public perception that party leaders had forced him out. If he went, it had at least to appear to be of his own accord. And he was unlikely to go anywhere at a moment when the premiership seemed achingly and unexpectedly within grasp.

      Churchill was not supposed to have learned of the negotiations between Butler and other Tories, on the one side, and Attlee’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton, on the other, but there had been much open talk of them, including some indiscreet remarks by Butler’s wife. Sydney Butler could not resist broadcasting the news to at least one lunch partner that Churchill was about to have a ‘rude awakening’ when a coalition government was formed with someone other than himself at the top. In the end, however, it was Sydney’s husband who was in for a jolt when Churchill appeared unannounced on 31 July at a meeting of the 1922 Committee, the official Conservative organization for backbenchers. Without referring to Butler or the others by name, he put the plotters on notice that he knew of their machinations. Speaking as if it were a foregone conclusion that were there to be a coalition he would be at the head of it, Churchill warned against any such arrangement with Labour on the grounds that it would deprive the country of an effective alternative government. He made many of his listeners’ mouths water at the prospect of their party’s imminent return to full power if only they proceeded judiciously – under his leadership, of course. Why agree to share power, Churchill suggested, when Conservatives could have it all? Why indeed, many backbenchers concurred.

      Having outmanoeuvred the conspirators in his own party, Churchill went on to leave no doubt in the minds of Britons that he and no other man would lead the Conservatives to victory. At a time when the Government was announcing stringent emergency measures that included longer working hours and extensive further rationing, Churchill publicly declared his intention to fight the next election on the matter of the economic crisis.

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