Yes, you’re right. But I meant a vote of no confidence about replacing commanders, which was what was mentioned in the post I was replying to. I didn’t put it very well.
That was a vote of no confidence about the overall conduct of the war, after the loss of Singapore and the fall of Tobruk. And, as the article says, Churchill won it by 475 votes to 25. They knew well enough that nobody could do better.
However, Churchill and Lloyd George did establish the modern British Welfare State, so much may be forgiven him. One good deed can wipe away a lifetime of sin according to the Muslims.
From what little I’ve read on the topic - Churchill followed the beat of his own drummer. He was difficult and was eventually ostracized from mainstream politics before WWII. While many people in politics liked the idea of strongmen in Europe opposing the dangerous horde of subversive Marxists, Churchill was quite isolated in warning through the 1930’s that people like Hitler were more dangerous that the communists and needed to be stopped, and also stridently warning that England was not prepared to properly face the inevitable war. The rest of the politicians generally tended to follow, like Chamberlain, the idea that Hitler was correcting the indignities poured on Germany after WWI. Give him what he wants, he’ll stop demanding, and we’ll have peace in our time.
Sometimes it’s the nutter who turns out to be right. When Hitler ignored further peace attempts and invaded Poland, it was inevitable that the guy who’d been warning about this was chosen to lead. But it’s indicative that not long after WWII was over, he was voted out in favour of a party that truly instituted the welfare state.
IANA UK resident, but if you watch Michael Palin’s “A Private Function” about food rationing and raising an illegal pig(!) two years after the war was over… raging socialism was not the best formula for rebuilding the economy and alleviating shortages, despite how egalitarian it might seem.
But then, in two (or three) party parliamentary systems, it’s not unusual for a party to wear out its welcome quickly and the pendulum to swing back in the next election.
I didn’t mean that he’d get voted out based just on replacing the top brass. But it would still bear some political cost, and rack up enough of those, and a vote of no confidence eventually becomes realistic. Heck, in the US, we don’t even have a real equivalent of a vote of no confidence, and most politicians are still afraid of spending too much political capital.
It does seem to me one of the dumbest things possible to switch government around during a crisis, but Chamberlain and Churchill is an example that it works for the British.
It was cool to read in Their Finest Hour: “Mr. Eden added in my private cipher…” I realize Churchill didn’t have his own decoder ring, but it is cool that a private code was used by and for him.
I’m not trying to hijack this thread, but I was wondering if it is known how much of Churchill’s books did he actually write? I’ve picked up several during $1.99 Kindle deals, but haven’t started on one. Are they ghostwritten similar to John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage or did Winston light up a cigar and hit the typewriter himself?
At another change of government, when Churchill lost the election in 1945, the Potsdam Conference was in progress. Stalin was reportedly amazed to see that the members of the British delegation remained almost unchanged after Attlee replaced Churchill.
Churchill was a VERY prolific writer, and always had been in his life. The various tomes authored by him were not ghost written. If you want some weighty reading, read A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
On this subject I’d recommend *In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War * which details the process by which his history/memoirs were written. Through the early part of composition he was out of office and had time to devote to it, but the later volumes were written when he was back in government again and much of it was drafted by his researchers with him giving only the final polish.
He was constrained from making too frank statements by his belief that if he could only engineer another summit with Stalin they could sort out most of Europe’s problems together, also by the fact that Eisenhower and De Gaulle were now national leaders and he would have to deal with them.
In the war his staff got so good at composing his Prime Minister’s Personal Minutes for him that Sir John Colville, his Private Secretary, mused that in future ages historians would be unable to tell genuine Churchill from pastiche.
Throughout the war, British representatives in Washington had great difficulty explaining to their superiors in London why the President’s wishes could not be translated into instant action like the Prime Minister’s all-too-often were, given the very broad enabling powers the government in London had arrogated to itself and the complaisant Parliament which would vote most anything it was told to.
A Minister for Defence Co-ordination had been created in 1936 during rearmament but by 1940, with Britain at war and the service ministries much enlarged in size and powers the post was largely redundant and it lapsed.
He had a prodigious capacity for work, even when he became quite infirm. It’s fair to say that he surrounded himself with trusted assistants who knew his mind, and who became very good at capturing the boss’s style, but I doubt that there’s a single word published under his name/authority that he didn’t approve - in Government or out.
The War Cabinet was a different matter. The British Cabinet consists of 20-25 Ministers, and is too large a body to take collective decisions in a rapid fashion, so there has long been a practice of smaller Cabinet committees to deal with particular issues - the Public Expenditure Committee, the Legislation Committee, the National Security Council (which deals with emergency management, not intelligence-gathering). Whenever the UK is prosecuting a signficant war there is usually a Cabinet committee known as the War Cabinet whose particular remit is the overall direction of the War - but the political direction, not the military direction. Churchill’s War Cabinet included ministers with strategically significant non-military portfolios - the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Minister of Labour, the Minister of War Production, the Minister of Supply- as well as senior figures included for their judgment or experience, even if they had no directly relevant portfolio responsibility - the Lord Privy Seal, the Deputy Prime Minister. Membership varied quite a bit over the course of the war.
Margaret Thatcher established a War Cabinet during the Falklands War. John Major established one during the first Gulf War.
As for Minister of Labour, Churchill brought in Ernie Bevin who hadn’t even been an MP, let alone in government.
Then again Churchill seems to have trusted the Labour party, whatever their differences more than whichever party he was currently attached to ---- not that Bevin was wholly Labour, having been one of the great Trade Union bosses and running the TUC which had it’s own differences with the Labour party. Churchill gave more cabinet jobs to Labour than their MPs share, and for the 1st 5-man War Cabinet he included 2 Labour members ( including, of course Major Atlee ).
And indeed Chamberlain, who turned out to be a decisive opponent to the idea of exploring peace opportunities in the latter part of May, having finally realised the worthlessness of any sort of agreement with Hitler.
It’s generally attributed to him reinvigorating the Conservative party through such measures as limiting large donations to the party, encouraging greater involvement with more of the public.
The Labour government was almost miraculously effective throughout the period, not least in mitigating the effects of Churchill’s monumental incompetence, which he consistently displayed throughout his career.
1951 Labour 13,9m Tories 13.7m
1950 Labour 13.2m Tories 12.4m
1945 Labour 11.9m Tories 8.7m
In other words, Labour increased their votes at each of those elections, and got rather more than the Tories even when voted out in '51. Churchill just did a very good job of mobilising Tories.
Odd, then, that in the '45 campaign he went on the radio to announce that the Labour party intended to set up “some form of gestapo” to force socialism upon the nation, should they get into power.