Con flicts While Britain Fought For Survival

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31115, 19 July 1966, Page 6

Con flicts While Britain Fought For Survival

(By

KENNETH YOUNG)

VVITHIN a few hours of war being declared, Winston Churchill was back in the same room of the Admiralty which he had occupied at the start of the First World War a quarter of a century earlier.

For 10 years he had been excluded from the conduct of the nation’s affairs. His warnings about the Hitler menace, his criticisms about Britain’s political and military weakness had gone unheeded. But now, in the crisis of war, the nation needed his energies and talents. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain—the disillusioned exponent of appeasement —made Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty. Did Churchill spare a thought for his friend Beaverbrook? Probably not, for he was at once immersed in the gearing of the Navy for war. Moreover, they had not met for months.

So, while Churchill toiled, Beaverbrook remained disconsolate at home. He wondered liow his friend was faring in a Government not all of whom were Churchill’s friends and many of whom would never forgive Winston for having been right. But the contacts between Churchill and Beaverbrook during the phoney war period were few.

Beaverbrook's curiosity was sometimes satisfied by talks with his old friend Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Privy Seal. Hoare told him that Churchill in Cabinet was “very rhetorical, very emotional, and, most of all, very reminiscent.” Hoare ' told Beaverbrook something else that must have caused him mixed feelings. He said that Churchill “strikes me as an old man who easily gets tired.” Churchill was indeed 65 and Beaverbrook only five years behind him. Was Churchill then not going to stand up to the job? The phoney-war phase lasted for seven months. It was considered rather patriotic for a shop or firm to proclaim “Business as usual.” There were only minor skirmishes between the armies. No-one seemed to have any notion of how or when the real war was to be fought and won. When Hitler struck, sending his armies first into Denmark and Norway, and then into the Low Countries, the effect was shattering. The nation was appalled at the ease with which the German conquests were made. The British attempt to help Norway ended in chaotic failure. And this was only weeks after Neville Chamberlain had announced that “Hitler had missed the bus.”

Britain’s unpreparedness for total war was exposed for all to see. Ordinary people who had believed that whatever misfortunes befell other countries “it couldn’t happen here” saw their illusions destroyed. It could happen here—perhaps within a matter of weeks or months. Even in the darkest hours of that other war which so many still remembered, there had been no danger so stark, so real. It was at this moment Beaverbrook received a letter which came straight out of the distant past, taking him back to the politics of 1915-16, reminding him (if he had not already thought of it) of a vital part he had then played in circumstances not totally dissimilar, when Asquith had been replaced by Lloyd George. The writer was the Welsh colliery owner Lord Davies, who had been, as David Davies, Lloyd George’s private secretary in the Coali-

tion Government, formed after the political upheavals in 1915-16. Davies wrote:— “Dear Kingmaker, “Why have you given up your job? You did the trick in 1916 and. by getting rid of old Squiff (Asquith) at the right moment, you enabled u» . to win the war, which we should probably have lost if he had remained in office. Now, even more than in 1916, we are up against it, and if the pres ent Prime Minister ’s allowed to drag us from one disaster to another we shall end up in queer street. “The Prime Minister failed to deliver the goods in peace-time. Can he be trusted to win this war? Therefore I humbly sug-

gest that you should plump for Winston. He has drive, energy, determina tion and vision. He can rouse the country. On the other hand, cold fish can only produce cold feet! “Unfortunately there is no Bonar today, but you can throw your weight into the scales. Now is the time to overhaul the ship before the deluge is upon us. Therefore, my dear kingmaker, come forth from your tent and put an end to the drifting, muddle and tomfoolery of the present crowd.”

Beaverbrook knew that the matter was not in his hands since he was out of Government. His reply to Davies recalled the circumstances in which previous Governments had been toppled. He wrote:— “You will note that tn every case the revolt that broke the Government came from within. The same applies this time

Those who try to do it from without are simply wasting their ammunition.” The letter is dated May 7, 1940. On that very day, on an adjourned motion the House of Commons began its attack on the Government and especially upon the Prime Minister. Discontent flooded on to the Government from both sides of the House. Events on the battlefield and on the political front moved to the climax. By May 10 the political conflict was over. Churchill, with the support of Labour, who preferred him to Halifax, succeeded by a hair's breadth to the supreme post, and headed a Coalition Government, in which Chamberlain became Lord President of the Council. Beaverbrook • still waited—but not for much longer. The years just before the war had seen a rift in the friendship between Churchill and Beaverbrook. Their approach to the looming crisis had been completely different. Churchill harping on the danger to peace presented by the Nazis, Beaverbrook clinging to

the hope that the conflict might be avoided and doubting Britain’s capacity for total war. There had been other causes of friction, more personal. Beaverbrook told Sir Samuel Hoare: “Winston is not on good terms with me at present. He is very sulky about a caricature in the “Evening Standard.’ ” Am', in February, 1939, Churchill had been acutely displeased by a report in the “Sunday Express" revealing opposition to Churchill among the Tory executive of his constituency at Epping. The report quoted a member of the executive as saying that many branch associations in the division were in open revolt against their member, and were demanding a candidate who would support and not criticise the party leader. On the day these paragraphs appeared Churchill dispatched this severely cold letter to Beaverbrook:— “My dear Max, “I was surprised to read the paragraphs about Epping in the ‘Sunday Express.’ They are misleading as to the true state of affairs; and certainly most unhelpful to me. I thought that although we differed on public policy, you were not desirous of assailing me personally or locally, 1 am therefore all the more sorry that you should do so.”

The signature was: “Yours vy sinly, Winston S.C.”—a more formal ending than the “yours ever” which had appeared on some previous letters.

But now, in the supreme seat of power, and in the crisis of 1940, all that had parted Churchill from his friend was cauterised in the fiery determination that seized him as he walked into 10 Downing Street. Nothing mattered but victory. Max, he remembered, could get anything done. Max was amusing, cynically exuberant, a good companion, ■ a man with sparkle, laughingly contemptuous of the I pompous "establishment.” 1 On that same evening of; ■ May 10 he offered Beaverbrook the post of Minister of Aircraft Production—a new post created by taking away from the Air Ministry the production and development of airplanes. j He later wrote: — v “The greatest difficulty (in the new Cabinet appointments) was with Lord Beaverbrook. “He seemed at first reluctant to undertake the task and, of course, the Air Ministry did not like having their supply branch separated from them. There werq other resistances to his appointment 1 felt sure, however, that our life depended upon the flow of new aircraft; 1 needed his vital and vibrant energy and I persisted in my view.” On Sunday, May 12, Beaver-

brook wrote non-committally to Churchill: — “My dear Winston. “The list goes well because you carry everything before you now with the public. “1 remember a trainload of btuejackets at Victoria Station cheering you wildly after you were dismissed from the Admiralty in 1915. “Your popularity has reached the same high again. “Maybe you might think j it worth while to show me I your names for other ! offices before you issue i your list. I “1 might have useful I views on the publicity side. “Yours ever. Max.” The letter did not even refer to the offer to become Minister of Aircraft Production. But two days later, on May 14, the announcement was made that Beaverbrook had accepted the job. So began what Beaverbrook afterwards called “21 months of high adventure, the like of which has never been known” —“the most glittering, glorious, glamorous era of niy whole life”—and which Churchill referred to as Beaverbrook’s “hour" when “you played a decisive part in our salvation.”

Beaverbrook rapidly set about the building of a Ministry which had never before existed. And he began ■ to break all the rules to ; provide fighter aircraft, to . stimulate the supply of com- • ponents, to repair damaged : planes and engines, and to i find instruments for lack of which many planes were grounded. His methods were unorthodox, not to say piratical. He formed action squads to enter depots containing spareparts and to remove them, in spite of agonised protests. He commandeered aircraft to fly to France to pick up loads of damaged engines and components for use in repair factories in Britain. Later on he started Saucepans for Spitfires, the Spitfire Fund, and the Atlantic Air Ferry. He himself worked from early morning until late at night. So did his staff. They also worked on Sundays—and he was lismayed to find that other Ministers still went for their weekends in the country. Beaverbrook’s ruthless drive did not please all men. He quickly angered Nuffield, who threatened him with dismissal and went to see Churchill. But Churchill said: “I cannot interfere with the manufacture of aircraft." Beaverbrook won. But already too he had offended the Air Ministry, and more particularly those staff officers whom he bundled together under the title “the air marshals.” A greater enemy yet was in the making: the trade union leader Ernest Bevin, whom Churchill had appointed Minister of Labour. These were two self-made, determined men, too alike in some respects ever to agree —particularly as Beaverbrook sought to commandeer not merely machines but men also, and Bevin was in charge of manpower. Within a fortnight of taking office Beaverbrook had grasped the essentials of what, had he been a less sanguine character, might have struck him as a nearly hopeless task. The figures of production at the end of the month of May were already better, largely because he had eliminated many supply bottlenecks, but when he submitted them to Churchill on May 27—the day the evacuation from Dunkirk began—he had to say he was sorry to give such a depressing account. “But June is sure to be better," he added. At first Beaverbrook sought to appeal to Churchill as little as possible, and only on matters beyond his own control. Air raid warnings, for example, were a matter for home security. But as far as the airreaft industry was concerned, they were a serious impediment. The factories, he told Churchill on June 26, simply stopped work and took shelter at the first intimation, not waiting for the “red" warning of aircraft overhead. Could not the early warnings be discontinued? Gradually some adjustment was made. (To be continued)