The Norway Debate

On 7 May 1940 the House of Commons opened a debate on the conduct of the war that had been announced a week earlier. In the parliamentary record (Hansard) it bears the modest title “Conduct of the War”, but it has gone down in history as the Norway Debate. For two days members called Neville Chamberlain’s government to account for the defeat in central Norway, and then for the whole eight months of the war. Late on the evening of 8 May the Labour Party forced a vote that became, in practice, a vote of confidence. The government won by 281 votes to 200, but its majority shrank from more than two hundred to 81. Several dozen members from the government benches voted with the opposition, and as many again abstained. Two days later Chamberlain was no longer Prime Minister.

It is commonly written that on 8 May Chamberlain “narrowly survived a vote of confidence”. This needs qualifying. Formally it was neither a vote of confidence nor a motion of no confidence. The House voted on a routine adjournment motion (“that this House do now adjourn”), which allowed a wide-ranging debate and was not normally put to a vote. Only Labour’s decision to demand a division gave it the character of a vote of no confidence. Churchill himself, in his closing speech, called it a motion of censure. The government won the vote, and won it clearly. Politically, however, it lost.

Before the debate

At the beginning of May 1940 the government’s position still looked secure. The Cabinet enjoyed a huge majority in the Commons, inherited from the 1935 general election: the so-called National Government, made up of the Conservatives and the small National Liberal and National Labour groups, could in theory count on a majority of more than two hundred. Since September 1939 the opposition Labour and Liberal parties had refused to join the War Cabinet, distrusting the Prime Minister after years of appeasement. Among the Conservatives themselves, however, a growing group of critics believed the war was being waged half-heartedly. Its core consisted of men previously associated with Churchill and Anthony Eden, and of members gathered around the former minister Leo Amery. Alongside them was an all-party group of members chaired by the Liberal Clement Davies.

Norway was the spark. On 4 April Chamberlain declared that Hitler had “missed the bus”. Five days later Germany attacked Denmark and Norway. The Royal Navy won a success at Narvik, but the troops landed at Namsos and Åndalsnes failed to retake Trondheim and were evacuated at the turn of April and May. The press, previously fed optimistic communiqués, greeted the retreat with shock. The role of Winston Churchill was especially awkward: as First Lord of the Admiralty and, from April, chairman of the Military Coordination Committee, he bore much of the responsibility for the operation, yet he was also the most popular member of the government and the only one untainted by Munich.

On 2 May Chamberlain informed the House of the withdrawal from Åndalsnes and asked for the discussion to be put off until the following week. The Leader of the Opposition, Clement Attlee, agreed, and the Liberal leader Archibald Sinclair demanded that the debate should last longer than a single day. In the Prime Minister’s circle it was assumed that the government would come through it without much damage.

The first day: “In the name of God, go!”

The sitting on Tuesday 7 May began at 2.45 p.m. with questions to ministers. At around 3.48 p.m. the Chief Whip, David Margesson, moved the adjournment and Chamberlain rose to review the situation. He said that the evacuation from Namsos had completed the withdrawal from southern and central Norway, that British soldiers had been “man for man” superior to the enemy but had fought against superior and better-equipped forces, and that the balance of advantage lay with the Allies. Cries of “Missed the bus!” kept coming from the opposition benches, and the Prime Minister, visibly irritated, tried to explain his April remark. Churchill’s biographer Roy Jenkins called the speech tired and defensive.

Attlee replied that Norway was the latest link in a chain that ran through Czechoslovakia and Poland, and that everywhere the story was the same: “too late”. The Prime Minister had talked about missing buses. “What about all the buses which he and his associates have missed since 1931? They missed all the peace buses but caught the war bus.” He concluded that the country believed in victory but felt that, to win it, there must be different people at the helm from those who had led it into war. Sinclair listed the shortcomings in equipment and organisation that soldiers returning from Norway had described to him.

In the evening the debate changed character. Into the chamber came Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, Conservative member for Portsmouth and hero of the Zeebrugge Raid of 1918, in full uniform with gold braid and several rows of medal ribbons. He asked to speak because, as he put it, the honour of the Navy was at stake. He declared that he had come to the House in uniform for the first time because he wished to speak for the officers and men of the “fighting, sea-going Navy”, who were very unhappy. It was not their fault that the German warships and transports which had forced their way into Norwegian ports by treachery had not been attacked and destroyed there, as they had been at Narvik. Keyes, who had pressed in vain for permission for a naval attack on Trondheim, accused the staffs and the government of timidity – not Churchill, whose abilities he wanted to see put to better use. He sat down at around 7.30 p.m. to thunderous applause. The diarist of those days, the National Labour member Harold Nicolson, noted that from that moment it was no longer a debate about Norway but a criticism of the government’s entire war effort.

A little after eight in the evening the floor went to Amery, for years Chamberlain’s friend and colleague. When he began, the chamber was almost empty, but Clement Davies fetched members from the dining room and the House quickly filled. Amery spoke of the lack of planning and initiative, likening the government to a hunter who had fallen asleep in a sleeping car while waiting for a man-eating lion, only for the lion to come in the night and devour him. He demanded a true national government, including the trade unions and men who would match the enemy “in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory”. Finally he reached for the words addressed by Oliver Cromwell in 1653 to the remnant of the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” He said he did so with great reluctance, because he was speaking of old friends. He delivered the last words almost in a whisper, turned towards the Prime Minister. Chamberlain, who had spent part of the speech at an audience with the King, had, according to most accounts, returned in time for its close. In the view of Harold Macmillan, the speech “effectively destroyed the Chamberlain government”.

The first day was closed by Attlee’s deputy, Arthur Greenwood, with the Secretary of State for War, Oliver Stanley, replying for the government. There was no vote that day, and the opposition had not announced one.

The second day: “I have friends in the House”

On the morning of Wednesday 8 May the Labour parliamentary leadership, impressed by the speeches of Keyes and Amery, concluded that discontent among the Conservatives ran deeper than had been thought, and decided to call for a vote. Some opponents of the move, including Hugh Dalton, feared that the threat of defeat would rally the Tories around the Prime Minister, but they were outvoted. The debate was resumed after four in the afternoon by Herbert Morrison. He attacked above all the three ministers most closely associated with appeasement – Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon and the Secretary of State for Air Sir Samuel Hoare – and ended by announcing that, given the gravity of events, every member ought to declare himself, and the opposition therefore “must divide the House”.

Chamberlain rose at once. He said that as head of the government he accepted the chief responsibility, and that none of his ministers wished to cling to office a moment longer than they retained the confidence of the House. Then came the words that turned against him: “I say this to my friends in the House – and I have friends in the House. […] I accept the challenge. I welcome it indeed. At least we shall see who is with us and who is against us, and I call on my friends to support us in the Lobby tonight.” The Conservative rebel Robert Boothby called out “Not I”. Many members thought it petty to appeal to personal loyalty and party discipline at a moment of national danger.

After an unfortunate speech by Hoare, who became muddled in answering questions about the air force, David Lloyd George took the floor. The 77-year-old Prime Minister of the First World War, long at odds with Chamberlain, delivered his last great speech in the House where he had sat for fifty years. He called the Norwegian expedition “half-prepared, half-baked”, and the country’s strategic position the worst in its history. When he said that he did not consider Churchill solely to blame, Churchill interjected that he took full responsibility for everything the Admiralty had done. Lloyd George retorted that the First Lord must not allow himself to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues. The House roared with laughter. Finally he turned to the Prime Minister: Chamberlain could not appeal on the grounds of friendship, for in peace and in war he had always been worsted by this formidable foe. The nation was prepared for every sacrifice so long as it had leadership. “I say solemnly that the Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in this war than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.”

In the evening further members spoke, among them the former minister Duff Cooper, who had resigned from the government in 1938 over Munich. At 10.11 p.m. Churchill rose to wind up the debate for the government. It was a difficult task: he had to defend the Cabinet and an operation for which he himself was largely responsible without losing his own standing. He defended the Admiralty and rejected the charges that politicians had shackled the admirals or that he had been the one holding back bolder plans. He became involved in sharp exchanges with Labour members, and the opposition answered with shouts. He ended with an appeal: “Let pre-war feuds die; let personal quarrels be forgotten, and let us keep our hatreds for the common enemy.” According to Nicolson, he said not a word against the government, and yet gave the impression of having nothing to do with it.

The vote

At 11 p.m. the Speaker called the division. The government motion received 281 votes, with 200 against. The majority, which with full discipline would have exceeded two hundred, fell to 81. Figures for the rebels vary, because they depend on who is counted as a government supporter. The most commonly accepted figure is that 41 members who normally supported the government voted with the opposition, about 33 of them Conservatives; the Hansard Society gives 39, other studies as many as 44. Several dozen more abstained – around 60 by the most common estimates, 30–40 by some. Those who voted against included Amery, Keyes, Macmillan, Boothby, Nancy Astor, the young Quintin Hogg and John Profumo, and the former Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha. A dozen or so of the rebels came to vote in uniform.

When the result was announced the chamber erupted. The Prime Minister’s supporters shouted “Quislings!” and “Rats!” at the rebels, the Labour member Josiah Wedgwood struck up “Rule, Britannia”, and as Chamberlain, pale, left the chamber, there were cries of “Go!”. Formally the government had won, and with an ordinary majority such a result would have allowed it to carry on governing. But at a moment when the country was losing its first campaign and the Prime Minister was expected to unite the nation, the defection of several dozen of his own members was a death sentence.

The next morning

On 9 May the debate formally continued for a few more hours and ended without a vote, but more important things were happening in Downing Street. Chamberlain tried to save his government by bringing Labour and the Liberals into it. In the morning he spoke privately with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, whom most Conservatives, part of the Labour Party and, as is widely believed, King George VI saw as the natural successor. Halifax was already hesitating. As a peer he sat in the House of Lords, and in his notes from those days he admitted that, with Churchill running the war from the Commons, he would be a “more or less honorary” Prime Minister. In the afternoon Chamberlain met Halifax and Churchill, and then Attlee and Greenwood. The Labour leaders said they had to consult their party’s executive, gathered in Bournemouth ahead of the annual conference, but made it clear that they were unlikely to join a government under Chamberlain, though they might under another Conservative. Accounts of these talks differ in detail. In his memoirs Churchill moved them to 10 May and described a long silence that was supposed to have decided the choice. The notes of Halifax and other participants suggest that Halifax stepped back from the premiership more quickly and more willingly than that story implies.

Place in the war

The next day, 10 May 1940, Germany struck at the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. For a few hours Chamberlain believed that he could not step down at such a moment, but in the afternoon Labour confirmed that it would not join a government under his leadership. In the evening he resigned and advised the King to send for Churchill. The new Prime Minister formed a coalition of all the main parties, with a small War Cabinet in which he was joined by Chamberlain, Halifax, Attlee and Greenwood. Chamberlain remained leader of the Conservative Party until October 1940 and loyally supported his successor. The coalition government lasted until victory in Europe in May 1945.

The Norway Debate is regarded as one of the most important moments in the history of British parliamentary government. Lloyd George called it the most momentous in the history of Parliament, and Roy Jenkins judged it the most dramatic and far-reaching debate of the twentieth century. Its paradox was that the prize went to the man who had defended the government and who bore much of the responsibility for the failure in Norway. Yet the members were not passing judgement on a single campaign, but on the whole manner in which the war was being waged and on the men associated with concessions to Hitler. The revolt of several dozen Conservatives, defying party discipline, meant that just as the Wehrmacht was moving against the West, Britain was led by a politician determined to fight to the end. A few weeks later, in the darkest days of the spring of 1940, that change would decide that Britain did not make peace with Germany.