Subscribe now and receive weekly newsletters with educational materials, new courses, interesting posts, popular books, and much more!
Articles
Humorous Exchanges in the House of Commons Cloakroom
- By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
- | August 21, 2015
- Category: Personal Matters Q & A
Q: Can the cloakroom story be true?
In his Hillsdale College Constitution Day lecture of 2011, Charles Krauthammer cited an amusing encounter between Churchill and Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee in the Members’ Cloakroom of the House of Commons.
Attlee is standing over the trough as Churchill enters on the same mission. Observing Attlee, Churchill shuffles as far away as possible.
Attlee: “Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?”
WSC: “Yes. Every time you socialists see something big you want to nationalize it.”
This is labeled an unattributed quotation in the “Red Herrings” appendix in Churchill by Himself, edited by Richard Langworth. Can you verify the facts? —E.G., Miami, Fla.
A: Reliably established
We are always suspiscious of off-color or mysoginistic humor-stories. We’ve often found them to be tales made up long ago. Churchill happens to be a handy vessel to put them in, to make them more interesting or amusing.
The Cloakroom story has long been among the doubtful. However, with the help of columnist Christian Schneider (who also published the quote), we are happy to advise that Churchill’s wisecrack is reliably established.
Mr. Schneider advises that he had this from William Manchester’s The Last Lion.1 On our guard, because Manchester made many detail errors, I looked up the footnote. The reference is to a 21 October 1980 interview by Manchester with Sir David Pitblado (1913-1997). A civil servant, he served as Principal Private Secretary to Attlee in 1951 and joint PPS to Churchill in 1951-55. Sir David was a reliable source, so we have restored this one to the ranks of the genuine. It appears in Hillsdale College Press’s new edition of Churchill by Himself, 2024.
1 Boston: Little Brown, 1982. Vol. 1, p. 35, n. 47.
Attlee and Churchill…
…had a respectful relationship, despite agreeing on very little save beating the enemy in both World Wars. Attlee considered Churchill’s Dardanelles scheme the most imaginative idea of the First World War, and loyally served WSC as Deputy Prime Minister in the Second. For further reading on less prosaic subjects than the House of Commons cloakroom, please see:
Bradley P. Tolppanen, “Two Views of Churchill’s Relationship with Clement Attlee,” 2019.
Richard M. Langworth, “Leo McKinstry on Churchill and Attlee,” 2019.
Clement Attlee, “The Churchill I Knew,” Part 1 and Part 2, 2018.
Greatly relieved to learn this is a reliably accurate quote.