Churchill's Hour (12 page)

He didn't want this motion of no confidence in the Government, he stated immediately. The last thing he wanted was to get rid of the Prime Minister; what he wanted was to get rid of the Prime Minister's bad habits. And that wasn't going to happen if Churchill continued to ignore the House of Commons. Growls of support erupted from all sides. He threw scorn at Churchill's arguments, and his statistics. ‘The Prime Minister has said that Germany has seventy million “malignant Germans”.' He shook his head. ‘No. There are eighty million Germans. You do not kill ten million Germans with a word, however potent it may be.' He mocked, and others mocked with him.

‘The war is passing through one of its most difficult and discouraging phases,' he continued in lilting Welsh tones that were drenched in sorrow. ‘We must have an end of the kind of blunders which have discredited and weakened us.' And although his voice was no longer strong, they heard every biting word. ‘We have to cross a very dark chasm. But there is, of course, America.' Ah, America, to which
Churchill looked at every turn. Lloyd George nodded towards the Prime Minister, as though in agreement with him. ‘Now, I am not disparaging America. We have to hold out until America is ready with her equipment…'

‘Tools!' someone shouted.

The aged warrior was still staring directly at Churchill, his blue eyes piercing through the long silver-stranded forelocks that fell across his face. ‘But it is most important not to exaggerate what we are going to get, or how quickly we are going to get it.' He was taking Churchill head-on, using his own words as a lance to prick him. ‘I warn my fellow countrymen not to be impatient, and to see to it that we
ourselves
do the job, until America is ready—and to do it more thoroughly than we are doing it now!'

It was crushing stuff coming from a man who had so much experience, who had earned so much respect, and who had once been so close to Churchill. Yet there was more to come, one specific change that he sought. He thought the Government was too much of a one-man show—Churchill's show. And one man couldn't—and shouldn't—try to do it all himself.

‘The Prime Minister must have a real War Council. He has not got it. Now, the Prime Minister is a man with a very brilliant mind, one of the most remarkable men who have graced this House. There is no
doubt about his brilliant qualities'—he looked around him, smiling wickedly as the claim was greeted with much laughter and cheering from all sides, not all of it meant kindly—‘but for that very reason he wants a few more
ordinary
persons to look after him.'

‘He's got some already!' one wag called out, pointing at Eden and the row of Ministers beside him. A collective shuffle of discomfort spread along the Government front bench. Hurl bombs and bullets, they could withstand them all, but the Welshman's wit was far more piercing.

‘The Prime Minister wants men against whom he can check his ideas,' Lloyd George continued, ‘who are independent, who will stand up to him and tell him exactly what they think.' They all knew what that implied: he was accusing Churchill of bullying, of riding roughshod over others. ‘But it's no use their doing so if they know nothing about it. Now I'm not disparaging the men—at least some of the men—whom the Prime Minister has in his Cabinet'—fingers were being pointed at the Ministers beside Churchill, and the laughter had once more tipped into gentle mockery—‘
but
,' he said, in a tone that implied he was letting them all in on a wicked secret, ‘I have seen one or two of them at work.'

Belatedly, the Ministers themselves began to join in the laughter. If they were to be accused of incompetence, they at least needed to show they had a
sense of humour. Yet it was biting, hurtful stuff. This was a Government of one man and a bunch of coconuts and, in Lloyd George's view, that simply wasn't good enough.

The House had grown agitated, restless like a nervous colt, in danger of bolting in the wrong direction. When Churchill rose to his feet, he knew he had to bring them back under control. His notes lay before him on the Despatch Box; they contained copious squiggles and amendments in the margins. He hadn't come prepared for such a battering, but he was a masterful horseman. He reached for his whip.

First he had to ride to the rescue of his Foreign Secretary, Eden. It was a pity that he needed rescuing, but he was a refined man with a sensitive nature, not well fitted for the bear pit, better suited to taking tea. That's why he was in the Foreign Office. Churchill accused Eden's opponents, baldly and unashamedly, of helping the enemy.

‘I did not think the speech of Mr Lloyd George was particularly helpful at a period of what he himself calls'—he checked his notes—‘discouragement and disheartenment.' He looked up directly at his old colleague, seated only a few feet away, and his voice grew sad. ‘It wasn't the sort of speech which one would have expected from the great war leader of former days, who was accustomed to brush aside despondency and alarm and push on irresistibly towards the final goal.'

There was respect and deep affection interwoven with the admonition. They were two old warriors who for so long had ridden together towards the same enemy.

‘I am not one—and I should be the last—unduly to resent unfair criticism,' Churchill told them, ‘or even fair criticism, which is so much more searching. But there is a kind of criticism which is a little
irritating
. It is like that of a bystander who, when he sees a team of horses dragging a heavy wagon painfully up a hill, cuts a switch from the fence and belabours them lustily.' His faithful supporters shouted at Lloyd George across the floor; Churchill held up his hand for them to cease. ‘He may well be animated by a benevolent purpose—and who shall say the horses may not benefit from his efforts, and the wagon get quicker to the top of the hill? Still, I think that it would be a pity if this important and critical debate consisted wholly of critical and condemnatory speeches.'

Yet he had no desire to slash too deeply at Lloyd George; the man was too much of an icon, too much of a friend. The same could not be said of Hore-Belisha.

‘He and some others have spoken of the importance in war of full and accurate intelligence of the movements and intentions of the enemy.' Churchill raised his whip, and brought it thrashing down. ‘That is one of the glimpses of the obvious and of the
obsolete with which his powerful speech abounded.' Churchill's men laughed and jeered. ‘He is so farseeing, now that we have lost his services, this man who told us at the end of November 1939 that we were comfortably winning the war!'

The anger was spilling over, but he needed to draw back just a little, and remind them who the real enemy was.

‘This vast German war machine, which was so improvidently allowed to build itself up during the last eight years'—he looked around, searching for the guilty men who had fallen asleep on their watch—and wasn't Hore-Belisha one of them?—‘has now spread from the Arctic to the Aegean, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. Yet that is no source of strength…' He banged his fist upon the Despatch Box. ‘The German name and the German race have become and are becoming more universally and more intensely hated among all the people in all the lands, than any name or any race of which history bears record.'

From all sides they growled their approval; he had led them away from the swamp and back onto firmer ground of his own choosing.

‘We are no small island gathered in the northern mists, but around us, gathered in proud array, are all the free nations of the British Empire.' He spread his arms wide in imperial pride, and they shouted their support. ‘And from across the Atlantic there is
the mighty Republic of the United States which proclaims itself on our side,'—he glanced at Lloyd George, ‘or at our side, or at any rate, near our side.' And they cheered that, too.

He stood before them, defiant, his hands clasping the Despatch Box, that beloved piece of wood and brass where fifty years earlier his father had stood, and as he gave them facts and figures and mixed insult with idealism, his eyes searched around this place with its ornate wood carvings, its soaring roof, its intimate leather benches with their musty smell of powerful men. It had been twelve months since they had summoned him here to be Prime Minister, and although he had not yet found them victory he had at least enabled them to survive. That was his achievement, more than any other man's, which was why he so resented what they had done in dragging him here to search for loose threads in the tapestry of his war.

‘It is a year almost to the day since, in the crash of the disastrous Battle of France, His Majesty's present Administration was formed. Men of all parties joined hands together to fight this business to the end. That was a dark hour, and little did we know what storms and perils lay before us—and little did Herr Hitler know when, in June 1940, he received the total capitulation of France, and when he expected to be master of Europe in a few weeks and the whole world in a few years, that today he
would be appealing to the much-tried German people to prepare themselves for the war of 1942!'

They were with him now, almost all of them—but for how long?

‘When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves through which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage!' he cried, his voice rising with it. ‘We shall come through!'

They cheered and stretched to clap him on the back. Even Lloyd George smiled and nodded his appreciation. It had not been one of Churchill's finest, but it had been enough.

In the end, only three Members voted against the Government. It was an overwhelming victory, on paper.

Yet it was the last victory Churchill was ever to have in this chamber. He didn't know it, but as they applauded him out, it was to be the last time he would ever set foot inside this hallowed place, or stand at his beloved Despatch Box, or hear his voice ringing back from these rafters.

‘Gimme a cigar,' Churchill snapped, striding into the room and slamming the door behind him as a warning to all those who hovered outside.

‘How was the debate, zur?' Sawyers asked, holding out a box of small brown torpedoes.

The Prime Minster threw his formal black jacket at his valet and slumped into a chair by the fire. Soon he was stabbing at the end of a cigar with a toothpick. ‘I never thought—never thought it possible—to hear an Englishman utter such words as I have heard used against me in the House today.'

‘Mr Lloyd George is Welsh,' Sawyers corrected, ‘and though I've never met him I strongly suspect Mr McGovern of belonging to some sort of Scottish sect. As for Mr Hore-Belisha…'

‘Don't mention that bloody Hebrew's name to me! I had him here for lunch.'

‘Served him meself.'

‘Explained everything to him.'

‘Seem to remember yer even hinted he might get a job, like, back in Government.'

‘And he turns on me like a gypsy!' Churchill said bitterly, stabbing through the end of the cigar as though it were his opponent's heart. Sawyers held out a lighted candle. ‘I should have the bastard conscripted into the RAF and dropped somewhere over Germany.'

Churchill's tirade was brought to a halt as he struggled to persuade his cigar to ignite, but the respite was only temporary.

‘To listen to the man you'd think that the German military machine was all but invincible—doesn't he
realize that if Hitler wins the bloody war it will be my head on the block first, then Hore-Belisha's and all his kind?'

‘Well, yer won vote.'

‘Won't stop the rats scurrying around in the bilges gnawing at everything in their path.'

‘Suppose we all have our days as rats,' Sawyers said, blowing out the candle.

Churchill looked at Sawyers warily. Was the man trying to mock? Churchill was, in his own words, the arch ratter and re-ratter, a man who had jumped ship from one party to another, then swum back again. Was his insolent bloody valet trying to make a comparison?

‘Nowt wrong wi' a bit o' debate. A triumph, really,' Sawyers continued.

‘What the hell are you talking about?' Churchill enquired, drawing impatiently on the cigar. It was not cooperating.

‘I were jest wondering, like, if any other place in the whole o' Europe would let 'em get away wi' that sort o' criticism.'

‘Meaning?'

‘You'd not get that sort o' nonsense in Germany, now, would you? Not in France, not Spain or Italy, Russia, not—anywheres, really. ‘Cept right here, in Britain. Thought that's what we was fighting fer. To kepp our Parliament, like, so as grown men can stand up and make fools of the'selves.'

‘Lloyd George made a fool of himself,' Churchill muttered, still struggling with the cigar. ‘He said I was a bully. But I'm not a bloody bully, am I, Sawyers?'

‘You need a fresh light, zur.'

‘Who can I trust, Sawyers? Not anyone.' He suddenly sounded tired, the zest and energy gone, all given up in the House. ‘I am surrounded by generals whose only expertise lies in the art of evacuation, and politicians who have no higher ambition than to hurl abuse at me.'

‘In his own way, mebbe Mr Lloyd George were right. You can't go doing it all by yerself.'

‘But I have to,' Churchill said, sounding petulant. ‘I can rely on no one.' He was falling into the pit of corrosive self-pity that was one of his least endearing qualities. Then he glanced at his cigar. It was as cold and dead as could be.

‘Bugger!' he exclaimed, hurling it into the hearth. ‘For God's sake, Sawyers, why do you bring me such rubbish? Can't I be allowed a decent smoke once in a while?'

Sawyers said nothing. The reason the old man didn't always get the cigars he wanted was because he never paid for them, relying almost entirely on supplies sent to him by well-wishers and supplicants.