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Articles
Churchill and the Great Smog: Another Example of Artistic License
- By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
- | August 5, 2022
- Category: Churchill in the Nuclear Age Personal Matters Truths and Heresies
Preemptive Strike
The Churchill Project was asked by a London television producer of a documentary on London’s Great Smog of 1952: “What was Winston Churchill was doing during the crisis? We are struggling to find any records.”
Our sensitive antennae reverberated. The Great Smog came up in Season 1, episode of a popular TV series, The Crown, reviewed in 2016. A viewer wrote: “Churchill is accused of killing 12,000 because he insisted on keeping coal and wood burning, causing pollution, smog, emphysema, civil unrest and mass murder. The Clean Air Acts were only passed after the evil Global Warmer was finally brought down, which The Queen was just about to do.”
Let us omit the most logical rejoinder: how many would have died without heat? Instead consider what really happened, and Churchill’s role (or non-role) in it. Call this a preemptive strike, in the event we are confronted with more inaccurate history in the upcoming production.
The Great Smog of 1952
The smog which descended on London on 5-9 December 1952, is accurately described on Wikipedia.1 Poor air quality had been known in the capital since the 13th century. In 1952, it occurred following a temperature inversion during a very cold December. Londoners burned more coal than usual to keep warm. Contemporary estimates that 4000 died from respiratory effects have since expanded to 10-12,000. Whatever the number, this was a serious misfortune.
Environmental legislation swiftly followed: The Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968 diminished air pollution. Financial incentives saw homeowners replace open coal fires with gas, or switch to low-smoke coke instead of coal. Central heating was not then common in Britain, but its expansion eventually contributed to a cleaner environment.
What was Churchill doing?
We readily answered the producer’s question. On the week of the Great Smog, Churchill was in London. On December 4th he faced down a motion of Censure (that his government was dealing “incompetently and unfairly” with the needs of the nation). He deftly handled Labour’s chief critic, Aneurin Bevan, in a famous exchange. The Conservatives’ thin majority prevailed, 304-280.2
Churchill spent the weekend at Chequers, where he met with Anthony Eden on foreign affairs. By Monday the 8th he was back at work on the Budget Estimates. He did find time for an amusing exchange with Willie Ross (Lab.-Kilmarnock, Ayr and Bute). In Parliament, Ross had used the expression “Boo to a goose,” which Churchill mistakenly thought should be “Bo” from Swift. Ross replied that he was quoting Homer, and WSC thanked him: “We shall certainly not quarrel on the differing usage of ‘Boo’ and ‘Bo’ north and south of the Tweed.”3
This is a nice example of educated repartee from a vanished time. But we could find no Churchill comments on the Great Smog. We also searched the online Churchill Archives without success. Nor does the Great Smog appear in the Harold Macmillan memoirs (Tides of Fortune 1945-55). (It fell under Macmillan’s ministry in 1952.) Nor is there anything about smog, fog or pollution in Hansard (the Parliamentary Debates) during the period in question.
One solitary reference…
…occurs in the Churchill Project’s digital archive—80 million words by and about him. That is in Anthony Seldon’s excellent book on the 1951-55 Churchill government. Seldon writes:
As a result of Macmillan’s concentration on housing he was unable to devote as much time as he would have liked to his other ministerial responsibilities, in particular the problems of rates, housing subsidies, requisitioned houses, local government and public health. In this latter category, the Ministry had to cope with the notorious “smog” of December 1952—when the death rate suddenly shot up by 4000 a week….4
In Parliament
Churchill took no part in subsequent debates over air pollution. Remarkably, the subject didn’t even come up during the December event. Not until 12 February 1953 did Marcus Lipton MP raise the issue. Lipton asked if the Ministry of Works was not researching “the heavy mortality in the London area caused by the fog last December.”5 Arthur Molson, the Ministry Secretary, said they only compiled statistics. On the 24th Lipton criticized “the miserable sum of £3000 spent on researching the problem. Ernest Marples assured him that “intensive inquiry” would occur.6 The Clean Air Act of 1956 eventually followed.
One cause of the smog Parliament did recognize was “nutty slack,” a soft coal then in domestic use. Ironically, governments past and present had contributed to its use at home by encouraging hard coal exports. Col. Lipton noted this in debate on February 16th. Geoffrey Lloyd, Minister of Fuel and Power, replied: “Even good coal produces smoke…but it also produces warmth, which is very much required at the present time.”7
None of this featured in The Crown, which carried its own spin. As Hugh Fullerton wrote, the film
depicts Churchill as uninterested in the fog, much to the chagrin of his ministers and new Queen and to the detriment of the country. It also shows Labour leader Clement Attlee being briefed about the crisis before it unfolds, and using it to his political advantage. But in actuality, there’s little evidence for any of these dramatic interpretations, with most newspaper reports from the time mainly focusing on the effects of the fog itself and not the politicians in charge. There’s also little to suggest that the government would have anticipated the strength of the fog beforehand, or been expected to.8
That was of course a time long before government was involved in everything, and immediately blamed or appealed to when anything went wrong.
Postscript: 1962
This is all we can find involving Churchill the Great Smog. The event provoked demands for clean air legislation, and there is no evidence that Churchill opposed it. If he said anything at the time, it has not to our knowledge been revealed.
London was infamous for its fogs, and Londoners coped with them. Ten years after the Great Smog, another “pea-souper” descended. Sir Winston was now 88, but it was not enough to keep him from attending The Other Club. This should not infer that he was indifferent to the problem, only that he was determined to “never give in”:
… the worst smog of the year swirled round the Savoy and quite a few members decided that conditions were too bad for them to attend; but not the founder member. With his black hat set at a rakish angle, the honorable member for Woodford announced to his household, “Of course I must go.” There were some doubtful looks but he had his way as usual and he determinedly climbed into his car which gradually groped its way through the smog to the Savoy. He was so keen to be present that he was the second member to arrive! Only eleven members of the club attended that night.9
Endnotes
1 Wikipedia, “Great Smog of London,” https://bit.ly/3k3Ot2d, accessed 26 April 2022.
2 Martin Gilbert & Larry P. Arnn, eds., The Churchill Documents, vol. 23, Never Flinch, Never Weary, October 1951-February 1965 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2019) 753-64.
3 Ibid., 768.
4 Anthony Seldon, Churchill’s Indian Summer: The Conservative Government, 1951-1955 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981), 254.
5 Lt. Col. Marcus Lipton MP (Lab.-Lambeth Central), 12 February 1953, Hansard, vol. 511, cc75-76.
6 Ibid., cc1912-13.
7 Ibid., cc857-59.
8 Hugh Fullerton, “The Crown: Discover the Real Great Smog,” Radio Times, 26 March 2019, https://bit.ly/3Ko9zmp, accessed 26 April 2022.
9 Roy Howells, Simply Churchill (London: Robert Hale, 1965), 104-05.