Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945–1955 - Barbara Leaming

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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 the floor of Parliament, and died soon afterwards to be flattering. Nevertheless, Cranborne recognized that part of what made Churchill an especially formidable opponent in any attempt to challenge his leadership was that he really did think he was the one man to save his country.

      Still, at that point there was no rational reason to believe that Churchill could ever be prime minister again. Labour remained overwhelmingly popular, and the wisdom continued to be that the Conservatives could not hope to recapture Number Ten for at least two five-year election cycles. For all that Churchill had accomplished since he left office, the arithmetic continued to be against him.

       VIII Plots and Plotters Hyde Park Gate, 1947

      The downstairs rooms of the house in Hyde Park Gate were dark and unbearably cold. It was Sunday, 16 February 1947, and ordinarily the Churchills would have been at Chartwell, but they had decided to stay in London on account of the heavy snow and freezing temperatures. Since the last week of January, Britain had been suffering the most brutal weather conditions anyone could recall. Government mismanagement of the recently nationalized mines had left the country without a sufficient supply of coal. The power system was at breaking point and heavy restrictions were in effect. Clementine Churchill had secured a doctor’s certificate to allow her husband’s bedroom to be minimally heated. Even so, as the use of electricity was prohibited from 9 a.m. until noon and again from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. on pain of a heavy fine or imprisonment, she had also arranged to have Winston’s bed moved near the window so he could work by natural light.

      Churchill liked his comforts, and one might have expected to find him in a petulant mood. On the contrary, the former prime minister, propped up against a mountain of pillows, his elbows resting on sponge pads on either side of his bed table, was sunshine itself. It is unattractive to gloat over other people’s misfortunes, especially when one is poised to profit from them; but under the circumstances, who could blame him? After the Labour landslide he had argued that, like it or not, the Opposition would have to wait upon events. Those events had come in force. The Government was blaming its troubles on an act of God. For Churchill, the arctic weather was a godsend. Suddenly, it seemed as if Labour might indeed be vulnerable at the next general election.

      The revelation of official ineptitude in miscalculating both the amount of coal needed to sustain Britain that winter and the productive capabilities of the mines shattered public confidence in the socialists. Popular disappointment was so enormous because the expectations of a better material life after the war had been un -realistically high. The continuous snowfall paralysed the already feeble economy, and, rightly or not, many Britons blamed Number Ten for the stalled train lines, business closings, mass unemployment, food and water shortages, long sluggish queues, and overall discomfort and deprivation. They also blamed the Government for their nation’s abruptly diminished place in the world when, in the midst of the crisis, Britain made it clear that it could no longer afford to keep up its military commitments in Greece and Turkey.

      In March the snow and ice gave way to pounding rains and catastrophic floods. Again the economic consequences were devastating, and again the Government struggled to cope. Churchill asked the House of Commons for a vote of censure. The Conservatives were still vastly outnumbered and, as he knew it must, the vote on 12 March went against him, but this time anti-Government sentiment was more pervasive than before. He had the support of Liberals and some in -dependent MPs, and there was fierce disagreement among the Labour members about how best to respond to the crisis. The day after the vote in Parliament, both Macmillan and Butler confidently suggested to a large and enthusiastic Conservative meeting in London that a new general election could be in the offing sooner than anyone had thought. If the economy continued to deteriorate and the socialists persisted in fighting among themselves, the Government might be brought down even before 1950.

      Conceivably, the coal crisis had gained Churchill five years or more – no small gift to an old man. But the events that had caused him to smell Attlee’s blood also made it seem more urgent than ever to his Tory adversaries to dislodge him lest he still be in place when a new election was called. It had been one thing for him to cling to his job when the party had no realistic chance of being returned to power. But everything had changed, and beginning in late February, there was a flurry of small private meetings of Conservatives, most but not all of them Edenites, anxious to see Churchill go.

      When Churchill absented himself in June for five weeks after a long-postponed hernia operation that had been troubled by complications, his opponents thought they might have caught a whiff of his blood as well. After all, the announcement had lately been made of Churchill’s deal to be paid more than a million dollars for the US book and serial rights to his war memoirs, the first volume of which was scheduled for publication in 1948. Researchers and other staff had been hired, permission to draw on his official wartime papers had with much difficulty been obtained, and work on the text was under way. Given

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