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Articles
Leo McKinstry on Churchill and Attlee: A Primer on Political Collegiality
- By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
- | November 29, 2019
- Category: Books
Churchill and Attlee: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace, by Leo McKinstry. New York: London, Atlantic Books, 736 pages, £25, Amazon $25.66.
The McKinstry Epic
My first reaction to this massive study by Leo McKinstry was: “Is there this much about Churchill and Attlee?” As one quickly learns, there is indeed. McKinstry requires 738 pages—twice the size of the previous Attlee-Churchill book. His tome is as thick as an average volume of The Churchill Documents. It is not something you should drop on your foot. And it is riveting from cover to cover.
McKinstry is thorough and scrupulously fair. Unlike too many historians today, he goes in with no axes to grind. He simply tells the story, backed by a voluminous bibliography, extensive research and private correspondence. In scope and balance, the book reminds us of Arthur Herman’s Gandhi and Churchill—another elegant account of two contentious figures. Like Herman, McKinstry captures Churchill’s generosity of spirit and his rival’s greatness of soul.
The Ronald Cohen book collection includes a first edition of Liberalism and the Social Problem. Churchill’s 1909 polemic for the Liberal Party’s social reforms, it bears the bookplate of Clement Attlee. Leo McKinstry duly reminds us that Attlee was a lifetime Churchill reader. Nearly 50 years later, he was scribbling marginal notes in WSC’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Most of them, his daughter-in-law quipped, are where “Pa reckoned Churchill was blithering.” Attlee himself cracked that HESP would have better been called “things in history which have interested me.” Yet he read every page.
“Sometimes turbulent, often fruitful, theirs was a relationship unprecedented in the annals of British politics,” McKinstry concludes. It was partly “a reflection of Churchill’s greatness, and partly of Attlee’s patience.” It is beautifully written, hard to put down.
Contrasts
Attlee was the longest-serving party leader of the 20th century, Churchill one of the longest-serving prime ministers. From 1940 to 1955, one of them was always PM. There have been other great rivalries, but the bond between them was unique, especially for persons with such opposite views. One spoke for liberty and a “minimum standard” guaranteed by the State. The other declared himself a socialist, but practiced a far milder form of socialism than dialectic Marxists. In the war, Churchill had but one goal: defeating Hitler. Attlee, as Deputy Prime Minister (a position Churchill created expressly for him) ran the country. In doing so, he set himself up for his own premiership.
Churchill lived luxuriously; Attlee mowed his own lawn and cleaned his roof gutters. Churchill drank vintage champagne and spirits; Attlee went to bed with a cup of cocoa. Churchill holidayed in Monte Carlo, Attlee in Frinton. WSC had an exalted lineage, was hailed as a genius and in his youth was pronounced a future prime minister. “No one,” says McKinstry, “ever discerned such a prospect for Attlee.” Clementine Churchill once called him “a funny little mouse.”
Both wrote autobiographies, but Churchill’s My Early Life is a triumphal progress compared to Attlee’s As It Happened. The latter was described as “lamely written, clumsily constructed…as boring as the minutes of a municipal gas undertaking…. Not [exactly] Alcibiades or Churchill.”
Both were devoted to their wives, who were much alike: “fiercely loyal but often exhausted by the strain of public life.” Clementine suffered from neuritis, Violet from sleeping sickness. Clemmie was a lifelong Liberal. Vi only joined Labour five years after her husband became party leader.
Independent thinkers
Attlee and Churchill were Conservatives in their youth, “devoted to the established social order.” Churchill once called a Liberal a “snub-nosed radical.” Attlee called Liberals “waffling, unrealistic have-nots.” Both became disillusioned with the Conservatives, influenced by the Fabian socialist H.G. Wells. Wells inspired Churchill’s belief in the need for the State to act as reserve employer and provide welfare assistance. But while Churchill joined the snub-nosed Liberals, Attlee joined Labour.
Churchill became a crusading reformer, Attlee a welfare worker and activist in London’s East End. There he helped implement Churchill’s labor exchanges and National Insurance. Deciding that East Enders were “decent people who had been denied fair opportunities,” Attlee began questioning the whole organization of society. “The seeds of his socialism had been sown.”
Attlee and Churchill were patriots with faith in Britain and the Empire. Both fought in World War I, Churchill in Belgium, Attlee in Gallipoli. The latter always approved of that campaign, which eclipsed Churchill’s political career. “I have always regarded the strategic conception as sound [but] it was never adequately supported,” Attlee said in 1960. Gallipoli made Attlee admire Churchill as a strategist. This paid dividends when they worked together in another war a quarter of a century later.
Nailed to their respective masts
By the time the India issue arose in 1930, Churchill had returned to the Conservatives. Attlee believed in Britain’s role in India, but supported the reforms of the India Act, which Churchill stridently opposed. From across the aisle, Attlee offered a sympathetic appraisal. “Trouble with Winston: he nails his trousers to the mast and can’t climb down.”
They also divided over the 1936 Abdication Crisis. By then Attlee was the Labour Party leader, yet he supported Prime Minister Baldwin versus King Edward VIII. When Baldwin declared that his government would resign rather than agree to the King marrying twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, Attlee promised that Labour would not form an alternative government. Churchill, demanding more time for the King to decide, was shouted down in the Commons. Once again, Attlee thought, Winston had nailed his trousers to a tottering mast.
Neither were they of the same mind about rearmament—particularly air power. Calling Churchill a “brilliant erratic genius,” Attlee referred to a 1929 Churchill book, The Aftermath. In it, he said, Churchill’s “brilliant imagination” envisioned control of military air power by the League of Nations! Churchill snorted that the Nazi threat demanded a national response. “I dread the day when the means of threatening the heart of the British Empire should pass into the hands of the present rulers of Germany.”
As Hitler marched on, pro-armament socialists like Hugh Dalton urged Attlee to tilt toward Churchill. Yet Attlee had to mollify his left, which held Churchill an uncompromising right-winger. Meanwhile, Conservative stalwarts Eden and Duff Cooper would have no truck with socialists. “Only Churchill was ready to stand with Labour,” McKinstry writes, “but that just emphasized how badly isolated he still was from the Tory political mainstream.”
The Great Coalition
World War II threw them together. McKinstry accurately describes the fateful May 1940 meeting when Attlee refused to join a national government under Neville Chamberlain. This effectively made Churchill prime minister. Attlee took criticism from his left, but responded: “I never believed that Winston had been hostile to the working-classes.”
The PM and his Deputy were an odd couple, wrote Jock Colville: “Temperamentally, Churchill remained a radical just as Attlee by temperament was a conservative.” McKinstry, adds, “Attlee on a personal level was far more of a conformist than Churchill.” The latter sounded like a crusader, said Australia’s PM Robert Menzies, but “Attlee sounded like a company director.”
“They jousted constantly,” writes McKinstry, “though Churchill, with his quicksilver tongue, usually had the last word against the leaden Attlee.” They frequently dined together. Yet Churchill did not invite Attlee to join The Other Club, saying he was not really “clubbable.” Politically, McKinstry explains, Attlee had “to perform a balancing act between the left of the party,” but would do nothing to undermine the Coalition. “I am sufficiently experienced,” he told the outspoken socialist Harold Laski, “to know that a frontal attack with a flourish of trumpets, heartening as it is, is not the best way to secure a position.”
Critic in chief
Their confrontations were pointed, but often amusing. Once Churchill told the Cabinet: “Well, gentlemen, I think we can all agree on this course.” Attlee shot back: “You know, Prime Minister, a monologue by you does not necessarily spell agreement.” Sir David Hunt, a private secretary who served both, said Attlee would accept the explanation, “This is the way we have always done it.” But “you wouldn’t dare say that to Churchill.” He would instantly reply, “That is a very good reason for doing it differently this time.”
Attlee was not averse to telling off the PM in the bluntest language, albeit privately. By himself, he once banged out a letter on his battered typewriter. Churchill’s habits at meetings were disruptive, he complained. He was often unprepared, refusing to read the relevant documents. “I would ask you to put yourself in the position of your colleagues [and ask yourself whether] you would have been as patient as we have been.” Instead of blasting back, Churchill consulted his “familiars.” They all said Attlee was right. Clementine wrote: “I think that’s very brave of Mr. Attlee and I’m sure he’s representing the views of the Cabinet…and indeed all your friends and well-wishers.”
Tactics and strategy
They were united on the big things, but sometimes differed in detail. Early on, Attlee urged Churchill to repeal the 1927 Trade Disputes Act, which Labour hated. Churchill as Chancellor had helped pass it. He was sympathetic, but resisted, because he knew it would never get by the Tory-dominated House of Commons. In 1941, Attlee wanted to dismiss Horace Wilson, Chamberlain’s appeasement toady, as head of the Civil Service. Churchill calmly passed. He let Wilson retire gracefully in 1942—reversing the usual image of an impulsive Churchill versus a careful Attlee.
McKinstry correctly represents (this writer is honored to be quoted) that it was Attlee, not Churchill, who authorized the fire-bombing of Dresden. He cites Stalin’s first question to Churchill at Yalta: “Why haven’t you bombed Dresden?” Attlee, McKinstry writes, had advocated mass bombing since 1940. He “had few qualms about this decision,” but later believed concentrating on specific targets would have been better.
By the last wartime summit conference in Potsdam, the election was on. Votes would be counted before the meeting ended. Churchill was confident of victory, but courteously invited Attlee to accompany him. By the way, would Attlee like the services of one of his valets? McKinstry writes: “Attlee, socially conventional if politically radical, felt no guilt about accepting the offer.”
Attlee’s triumph
Before Potsdam in a campaign broadcast, Churchill said a Labour government would need to enforce its programs with “a kind of Gestapo.” The country questioned that language and Attlee took advantage. His responses contrasted Churchill the war leader and Churchill the party leader. About any voters tempted to follow him, Attlee thanked WSC “for having disillusioned them so thoroughly.” (Personal note: A London friend of this writer, lifetime Labour, told me in the ’90s that the acts of certain Labour councils reminded her very much of the Gestapo.)
Churchill was shattered by Attlee’s election victory. Yet his basic decency triumphed over moroseness. “We have no right to feel hurt,” McKinstry quotes him as saying, “This is democracy. This is what we have been fighting for.” The people, he added, “have had a very rough time.” To a private secretary he advised: “You must not think of me any more; your duty is to serve Attlee, if he wishes you to do so.” The secretary wept.
Like Churchill, Attlee had no compunctions about using the atomic bomb to end the war. He also consulted with Churchill over Anglo-American joint nuclear research. From Lake Como, where he was nursing his regrets after the election, Churchill wrote Attlee: “My concern…is what the Americans will do. I apprehend they will be increasingly shy of imparting further developments.” This, McKinstry notes, referred to the 1943 Quebec agreement on Anglo-American nuclear cooperation.
In the 1950s
Ardent socialists were not content with Attlee’s mild, businesslike leadership. Soon they were attempting to replace him. Attlee quietly pushed on with social restructuring and nationalization. McKinstry notes also that like Churchill, he supported the foundation of the State of Israel and opposed British membership in any form of federal Europe.
After the 1951 election Churchill returned to Downing Street. He regarded the Labour domestic record “a mess,” but would brook no criticism of his old deputy. Once at Chartwell, a local MP referred to “silly old Attlee.” Churchill thundered: “Mr. Attlee is a great patriot. Don’t you dare call him ‘silly old Attlee’ at Chartwell or you won’t be invited again.” His rival reciprocated—and then some. Churchill, Attlee said, was “the greatest leader in war this country has ever known, [who] stood like a beacon for his country’s will to win.”
In 1955, just after Churchill resigned as prime minister, Attlee resigned as Leader of the Opposition. Oddly, McKinstry writes, as they entered old age, the voluble Churchill became mute, even taciturn, Attlee more talkative. Some of his words were in admiration of his old political foe. Once, after a 1962 Royal Academy dinner, Harold Nicolson recorded that Churchill, aged and feeble had almost to be carried out: “‘We may never see that again,’ said a voice behind me. It was Attlee.”
Ave atque vale
Attlee was in the Lords when Churchill died. Aging and enfeebled, he stood to address the House. “We have lost the greatest Englishman of our time,” he said. “I think the greatest citizen of the world of our time.” McKinstry quotes the Daily Mail: “Emotion choked Earl Attlee’s voice to near inaudibility as he described the tears rolling down Sir Winston’s cheeks when he spoke of the Nazi atrocities.”
Attlee and Churchill raises a question worth considering. Must politics always be a vicious cycle of name-calling and vituperation? Churchill and Attlee say otherwise. They flung political charges back and forth, but never insulted each other. Whether on the same or opposite side, they went out of their way to share their views. They didn’t use the media to bludgeon each other—and likewise the media didn’t use them. Courtesy and respect do not mean surrender. We may learn from their example. We have a way to go.
The author
Richard M. Langworth CBE is Senior Fellow for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project and author or editor of ten books on Winston Churchill.
Further reading
Clement Attlee, “The Churchill I Knew,” Part 1.
Clement Attlee, “The Churchill I Knew,” Part 2.
Bradley P. Tolppanen, “Two Views of Churchill’s Relationship with Clement Attlee”
What a beautiful and fascinating review.
Peter S. Badenoch
Great article