Baldwin (23 page)

That evening, in his small black police car, Baldwin trundled again down the new arterial road through the western suburbs for another uneasy interview at Fort Belvedere. Baldwin agreed that the request for a special bill was reasonable and said that he would commend it to his colleagues. Next day in
Downing Street he ran into solid opposition. The arguments against putting through Parliament a blatant twisting of the general law, which would smell only too strongly of a corrupt bargain, were overwhelming. Probably Baldwin saw their force himself. Certainly he did not fight very hard. But his authority within the Government slipped momentarily, and worse still, there was a danger that the whole Abdication timetable might be upset. Monckton, when brought into the meeting of ministers (it was not a full Cabinet) to be told of the adverse decision, said that it might delay matters by weeks. Fortunately for Baldwin, Monckton misjudged his client. The King had settled himself into such a groove of petulant determination that there was no question of the rejection of the bargain deflecting him for even a few days. He was equally uninfluenced by a curious offer of withdrawal which Mrs Simpson made from Cannes on the Monday.

Tuesday was the last day of uncertainty. In one sense Baldwin felt much more confident. Monday afternoon in the House of Commons had been as great a triumph for him (although he had said practically nothing) as it had been a disaster for Churchill. ‘The stationmasters’ had clearly done their work. Henceforward he could be assured that a King’s Party would get nowhere in Parliament. But he was worried about the King’s mental state, and to what this might lead. He decided to deal with the problem in a way which imported a substantial element of farce into the overcharged atmosphere, although his object was not to provide light relief. The King, he decided, ‘must wrestle with himself in a way he has never done before, and if he will let me, I will help him. We may even have to see the night through together.’
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Accordingly Baldwin packed his suitcase, instructed his parliamentary private secretary to do the same, and set off yet once more in the small black car. When the King saw the luggage being unloaded he was horrified. It was tactfully conveyed to Baldwin that he would be welcome to stay for dinner but not afterwards. His attempt at a soul-searching vigil had been frustrated. It was in
any event unnecessary. The King seemed decided, friendly and even buoyant. There was no bitterness between them at this stage. If that came, it came later, when the King had time to go over events and perhaps have his grievances kindled. When, late that night, they parted for the last time, Baldwin’s words were a little rehearsed,
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but there nonetheless appears to have been genuine emotion on both sides.

Yet the question remains as to what Baldwin thought he might have attempted in a long night of ‘reasoning together’. G. M. Young is explicit. He tells us that Baldwin later told a friend: ‘Only time I was frightened. I thought he might change his mind.’
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Unfortunately the friend is anonymous, and Young, that strangely and personally chosen official biographer, cannot always be regarded as a witness either of truth or charity. But on this occasion the weight of reason is decisively on his side. Surely Baldwin, whatever his desire earlier in the imbroglio, cannot at this stage have wished to go back to the Cabinet on the following morning and announce that a wayward King, who had already compromised his position with most opinion both at home and in the Dominions, had suddenly changed his mind, at least temporarily, and, having attracted the maximum publicity to his preference for Mrs Simpson over the Throne, was now prepared to ditch her and try to pick up again the pieces of kingship. This for Baldwin would surely have been the worst of both worlds. Yet it was precisely what the Cabinet went through the motions of trying to achieve at its meeting that next (Wednesday) morning. It sent through Baldwin a submission to the King of which the key paragraph read:

Ministers are reluctant to believe that Your Majesty’s resolve is irrevocable and still venture to hope that
before Your Majesty pronounces any formal decision Your Majesty may be pleased to reconsider an intention which must so deeply and so vitally affect all Your Majesty’s subjects.
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Within a few minutes of receiving this the King had written back regretting that he was unable to alter his decision. It is difficult to believe that the submission, valuable for the record and indeed used by Baldwin in his House of Commons speech the following afternoon, would have been sent had Baldwin not satisfied himself the night before what the answer would be. This was, indeed, little more than common prudence.

On the Thursday (10 December) Baldwin presented the King’s message of renunciation to the House of Commons, and followed it by his own account and justification of events. It was a remarkable speech on at least three counts. First, major constitutional and political pronouncement though it was, certain to be studied and analysed for years to come, he delivered it with hardly a note. He had made some, but he first left them behind in Downing Street, and then, when they had been retrieved, allowed them to rest, unreferred to, on the despatch box. What he gave was a chronological narrative, apparently searching his memory as he went along. At one stage he turned to the Home Secretary, sitting beside him, and said: ‘It was that day, was it not?’ Art and nature were most skilfully intertwined.

Second, he navigated his way through complicated channels and delicate shoals without any jarring note. Nearly everyone-except Mrs Simpson—got a tribute. They all appeared to be appropriately and spontaneously phrased. No foot was put wrong. Third, the effect upon the House was profound. When, towards the end, he said, ‘I am convinced that where I have failed no one could have succeeded,’ this appeared not a boast, but an understatement. When he sat down it was almost impossible to continue even a
pro forma
debate. Attlee wisely suggested a ninety-minute adjournment before attempting to do so. Baldwin was aware—as emerged from a corridor
encounter with Harold Nicolson
during this adjournment
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-of how great had been his triumph. He was probably also aware that it was to be his last on any comparable scale.

The speech lasted exactly forty-five minutes, which, particularly as Baldwin spoke slowly, was not long. The language was not majestic, nor the order wholly logical. But the effect was almost magical. The contrast between Baldwin’s deflation at the end of 1935 and his prestige at the end of 1936 was as sharp as can possibly be imagined. He was again exhausted. Lord Dawson of Penn, that specialist in the industrial diseases of politicians, joined in the general chorus of congratulation but also told him, speaking medically and not politically: ‘You will pay for this.’ But he did not do so immediately. He had a good Christmas. ‘We had a wonderful day yesterday…,’ he wrote to Tom Jones on Boxing Day. ‘The sunrise was as the opening of the gates of heaven itself and the glow it threw on the western hills transfigured the whole landscape for half an hour. The strange unearthly light lasted nearly all day.’
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What precisely was Baldwin’s achievement in the handling of the Abdication? It was perhaps best summed up by Sir Donald Somervell,
the Attorney-General, who was closely yet not responsibly involved throughout, and who was therefore an informed and detached witness:

Baldwin [he wrote] was the man who enabled the crisis to be surmounted with the minimum of discredit. He decided, and finally decided, the following as soon as they appeared for decision:

(1) That Mrs Simpson could never be Queen.

(2) That the King would not give up the chance of marrying Mrs Simpson.

(3) That a morganatic marriage was impracticable.

(4) That the decision must be the King’s own decision. He may have realised earlier than most of us that the King was in the long run unfitted to be King. If so it is all the greater tribute to his qualities that he
never took a step to force the issue or to encourage abdication.
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This is a fair tribute. MacDonald, had he still been Prime Minister, would have lost the issue in verbiage and drowned himself in self-pity. Neville Chamberlain, had he already succeeded, would have alienated the country by treating the King like a negligent Town Clerk of Birmingham. Attlee, had he won the 1935 election, would have taken exactly Baldwin’s line in substance, but at that stage in his career would have done so without assurance or persuasiveness. Churchill, had he by chance been already in power, would simply have been wrong.

This last comparison provokes one further reflection. In the three and a half years between his abdication and the summer of Dunkirk, King Edward, had he remained on the Throne, might have developed differently. He might have shed his Lindbergh-like naiveté and enthusiasm for simple solutions which made him an easy prey to authoritarianism and the meretricious appeal of Nazis and fascists. He might, but equally he might not. And had the latter been the case, Churchill, almost his only substantial political ally of 1936, would in 1940 have been confronted with a very awkward decision as to whether to intern his sovereign. It would, to say the least, have added a further complication to the problems of 1940. Britain was almost alone amongst European states in surviving the convulsions of 1939-45 without a change of regime. Two Americans made substantial contributions to this continuity. The first, obviously, was President Roosevelt. The second, inadvertently, was Mrs Simpson.

In the midst of his Abdication preoccupations Baldwin made one major speech on another subject. This was on 12 November, in the debate on the Address at the opening of the new session. Rearmament was the dominant issue, at least within the Conservative Party. Immediately before the summer recess, and as one of his last acts before his two and a half months of asylum, Baldwin had devoted two days to receiving an
almost unprecedented deputation on the subject. Austen Chamberlain and Salisbury were the nominal leaders, but Churchill was the moving spirit, and delivered a prepared private oration lasting over an hour. There were fifteen or so others present, many of them Privy Councillors, all of considerable party or national weight. Baldwin, supported by Sir Thomas Inskip, listened during three- or four-hour sessions on each of the successive days. He said little, as might have been expected, although one of his
obiter dicta
is remarkable both for its potential value, had it been publicly known, to the Soviet apologists of 1939-40, and for the slovenliness, almost the vulgarity, of language for the occasion. ‘I am not going to get this country into a war with anybody for the League of Nations or anybody else or for anything else,’ Baldwin is recorded as saying. ‘If there is any fighting in Europe, I should like to see the Bolshies and the Nazis doing it.’
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Against this background Baldwin in November felt under some pressure from his backbenches, particularly as his speech had been preceded by a denunciation, at once contrived and powerful, from Churchill. Baldwin’s reply was not very different from words he had used to the July deputation, but this time of course he was speaking in public and with his words immediately available for all to refer to:

I put before the whole House my own views with an appalling frankness [he typically but unwisely began the crucial passage]. From 1933,1 and my friends were all very worried about what was happening in Europe…. You will remember at that time there was probably a stronger pacifist feeling running through the country than at any time since the War. I am speaking of 1933 and 1934. You will remember the election at Fulham in the autumn of 1933, when a seat which the National Government held was lost by about 7,000 votes on no issue but the pacifist….

That was the feeling in the country in 1933. My
position as a leader of a great party was not altogether a comfortable one. I asked myself what chance was there … within the next year or two of that feeling being so changed that the country would give a mandate for rearmament? Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain.
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