Churchill becomes Prime Minister

On the evening of 10 May 1940 King George VI accepted at Buckingham Palace the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, the 65-year-old Winston Churchill, to form a government. It happened some fifteen hours after German troops had entered the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, opening the great offensive in the West. The change of government at the very moment when the decisive battle was beginning on the Continent was the outcome of a political crisis that had been building since the defeat in Norway and had broken out during the Norway Debate of 7–8 May. From the first hours the new Prime Minister set about building a coalition of all the main parties, with Clement Attlee’s Labour Party and Archibald Sinclair’s Liberals, and he gave himself the new office of Minister of Defence.

After the Norway Debate

The government had formally won the vote on the evening of 8 May, but its majority had fallen from more than two hundred to 81, because several dozen coalition members had voted with the opposition and many others had abstained. For Chamberlain it was a blow after which he could no longer govern as before. Critics within his own party were demanding a national government that included the opposition, while the Labour Party had consistently refused since September 1939 to join Chamberlain’s Cabinet. Labour distrusted him after years of appeasement and after the Munich Agreement, and he himself, as Attlee recalled, had always treated them with condescension.

On the morning of 9 May Chamberlain was still trying to save his position. He considered bringing several Conservative rebels into the government and sacrificing the most heavily criticised ministers, including Sir Samuel Hoare and Sir John Simon, but the rebels replied that what was needed was not a reshuffle but a new Prime Minister and a government of all parties. Such a government was impossible without Labour, and whether Chamberlain stayed depended on their decision.

Halifax or Churchill

The natural successor to Chamberlain seemed to be the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. He was the Prime Minister’s closest colleague and enjoyed the confidence of most Conservatives, of the King and the court, and of part of the opposition too: according to the diary of Hugh Dalton, as late as 9 May Attlee told him that he preferred Halifax to Churchill, although either would be acceptable. In the eyes of many Conservatives Churchill was an unpredictable politician, the man of Gallipoli, a two-time party renegade and a recent critic of his own government; moreover, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he bore a considerable share of the responsibility for the failure in Norway.

On 9 May Halifax spoke with Chamberlain twice. In the morning, when the Prime Minister let him understand that he saw him as his successor, Halifax noted that the very thought of it had given him a stomach ache. In the afternoon, in Downing Street, the Prime Minister met Halifax and Churchill in the presence of the Chief Whip (the official responsible for party discipline), David Margesson. There Halifax set out his reservations: as a member of the House of Lords he could not sit in the House of Commons, where the fate of governments was decided, and since Churchill would in practice be running the war anyway, he himself would soon become, as he wrote, a “more or less honorary” Prime Minister. He said that Churchill would be the better choice, and Churchill did not demur. Margesson confirmed that feeling in the Commons was swinging in Churchill’s favour.

The best-known account of this meeting was left by Churchill himself. In his memoirs he described a long silence, lasting more than two minutes, which fell when Chamberlain asked whom he should recommend to the King, and which was broken only when Halifax ruled himself out. Churchill had resolved, on the advice of, among others, his associate Brendan Bracken, not to be the first to speak. His account is, however, inaccurate: he placed the conversation on the morning of 10 May instead of the afternoon of 9 May and left out Margesson’s presence, and the dramatic pause does not appear in Halifax’s notes. Historians accept that the outcome was decided above all by the reluctance of Halifax himself, who did not want to be Prime Minister in a war run by someone else.

That same afternoon Chamberlain received the Labour leader, Attlee, and his deputy, Arthur Greenwood. He asked whether the Labour Party would join a government under his leadership and, if not, whether it would agree to serve under someone else. Attlee replied that in his view the party would not accept the first, but would probably accept the second, and that he had to consult the National Executive Committee. The committee was then meeting in Bournemouth on the English Channel, where the party’s annual conference was to open on Whit Monday, 13 May. Attlee promised to give his answer the following day.

10 May

At dawn on 10 May Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Chamberlain at first concluded that a change of government at such a moment would be harmful and let it be known that he wished to stay in office until the situation at the front became clearer. That day ministers met at a succession of War Cabinet meetings devoted to aid for the Netherlands and Belgium. At this point, however, the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Kingsley Wood, until then one of the Prime Minister’s most loyal men, objected. According to accounts, Wood told him that the German offensive made the formation of a national government more urgent than ever. The press and members of various parties were also demanding that the crisis be ended at once.

The decision came from Bournemouth. In the afternoon the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee adopted a resolution declaring that the party was ready to take its share of responsibility as a full partner in a new government, under a new Prime Minister who would command the confidence of the nation. Attlee telephoned the decision through to Downing Street in the late afternoon. For Chamberlain it meant only one thing: he could not form a government of national unity. He informed the War Cabinet of his intention to resign and at about 6 p.m. drove to Buckingham Palace.

George VI accepted the resignation with regret. He noted in his diary that in his view Chamberlain had been grossly unfairly treated. He asked him for advice. Chamberlain explained why Halifax, whom the King regarded as the obvious candidate, did not want to become Prime Minister. The King wrote that he was disappointed, but understood that there was only one person left whom he could send for who had the confidence of the country: Winston Churchill. Churchill arrived at the palace shortly afterwards. According to his memoirs, the King asked him jokingly whether he knew why he had been sent for, and when Churchill replied in the same vein that he simply could not imagine why, the King asked him to form a government. Churchill wrote that he had not been required to form a coalition government, but that he himself had assumed from the outset that all parties would join it.

At 9 p.m. Chamberlain spoke on BBC radio. He said that in the face of the German attack national unity was needed, which he himself had been unable to secure, and he called on everyone to support the new Prime Minister. He announced that he would join his government. That same evening Churchill wrote him a letter of thanks for the promise of support.

The first night

The new Prime Minister’s first step was to summon Attlee and Greenwood, who had meanwhile returned to London, to the Admiralty building. The talks went on into the early hours of 11 May. It was agreed that the War Cabinet would include three Conservatives and two Labour members, and that the Labour Party would receive just over a third of the posts in the government, including several key departments. The most difficult question was Chamberlain’s position. Churchill was not leader of the Conservative Party, which had a huge majority in the Commons, and he could not govern without the loyalty of its members, many of whom were still devoted to the former Prime Minister. He therefore wanted to give him the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House of Commons. Attlee objected: Labour would not accept that the man they had brought down should run the nation’s finances and the business of Parliament. In the end Chamberlain became Lord President of the Council, with responsibility for domestic affairs, and kept the party leadership.

Years later Churchill described how, when he went to bed at about three in the morning, he was conscious of a profound sense of relief: he felt as if he were walking with destiny, and that all his past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.

A Cabinet of five

On 11 May the Labour Party formally agreed to join the government, and the composition of the new War Cabinet was announced. It had five members, almost half the size of Chamberlain’s nine-member Cabinet:

• Winston Churchill – Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister of Defence and Leader of the House of Commons;
• Neville Chamberlain – Lord President of the Council;
• Clement Attlee – Lord Privy Seal;
• Lord Halifax – Foreign Secretary;
• Arthur Greenwood – Minister without Portfolio.

The ministers of the service departments did not join the Cabinet, a departure from Chamberlain’s arrangement and a return to the model of David Lloyd George in 1916. The Admiralty went to the Labour politician Albert Victor Alexander, the War Office to Anthony Eden, and the Air Ministry to the Liberal leader, Sinclair. In this way the leaders of all three parties were in the government: two in the War Cabinet and the third at the head of one of the service departments. In practice the service ministers, the chiefs of staff and any ministers concerned with the matters under discussion also attended Cabinet meetings.

Further appointments were announced over the following days. Kingsley Wood became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Simon became Lord Chancellor and moved to the House of Lords, and Hoare, one of the symbols of appeasement, found no place in the government at all. The Labour politician Herbert Morrison became Minister of Supply, and the leader of the transport workers’ union, Ernest Bevin, who was not even a member of Parliament, became Minister of Labour, while the new Ministry of Aircraft Production was entrusted to the press baron Lord Beaverbrook. Leo Amery, who in the Norway Debate had flung Cromwell’s words at Chamberlain, also returned to government, this time as Secretary of State for India.

Minister of Defence

The most important change in the direction of the war was the new office of Minister of Defence, which Churchill took on alongside the premiership. He did not create a separate ministry for it. The point was that one man should have the authority to direct the work of the chiefs of staff and to decide on operations – something Churchill had lacked when he chaired the Military Coordination Committee. That committee was abolished and replaced by the Defence Committee of the War Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, on which sat the service ministers, the chiefs of staff and, as required, Attlee and other ministers. General Hastings Ismay became chief of staff to Churchill as Minister of Defence and his link with the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The system lasted until the end of the war and gave Churchill far greater control over the conduct of the war than his predecessors had had, while also burdening him with full responsibility for its failures.

Reception

The new government did not arouse universal enthusiasm at first. Many Conservatives regarded the change as a coup carried out by the opposition and a few dozen rebels, and in the circles around Chamberlain and Halifax the new Prime Minister was spoken of as an adventurer who had surrounded himself with unprincipled men. Churchill would win the full confidence of his own party only in the following weeks. For Labour, on the other hand, entering the government meant its first share of power since 1931 and a great change: leaders who for a decade had criticised the National Government took on responsibility for the country at the most difficult moment in its history.

Place in the war

The change of government in London came at exactly the moment when the campaign began that within six weeks led to the fall of France. As early as 13 May Churchill presented himself to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, and at the end of May, during the evacuation from Dunkirk, the War Cabinet argued for several days over whether to explore the possibility of negotiations through Italy. Halifax was in favour of not ruling such a possibility out, Churchill was against, and the dispute was settled by the support of the Labour members, Attlee and Greenwood, and by Chamberlain’s loyalty. Had Halifax become Prime Minister on 10 May, the outcome of that discussion might have been different.

The coalition formed in May 1940 lasted until May 1945. Chamberlain, gravely ill, left the government in the autumn of 1940 and died in November, and Churchill succeeded him as leader of the Conservative Party. In December 1940 Halifax went to Washington as ambassador, and his place at the Foreign Office was taken by Eden. In 1942 Attlee became the first Deputy Prime Minister in British history, and in July 1945, after Labour’s election victory, he succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister. For the Poles the change was of immediate importance: the government with which President Władysław Raczkiewicz and General Władysław Sikorski worked in exile from June 1940 onwards was Churchill’s government, determined to fight on to victory rather than seek a compromise with Hitler.