January 17, 2009

“Fiel Pero Desdichado”

BY RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Finest Hour 35, Spring 1982

IF THE TYPICAL Churchillophile were asked to define Winston’s greatness, he would allude immediately to 1940: the Battles of Britain, France and the Atlantic. We all seem to know dimly that WSC was called upon then only in extremis; that he’d been out of power for a decade; that for four decades he’d been thought of m none-too-flattering terms by all three parties.

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We are missing a great deal. There is no better remedy for this deficiency than to read the official biography: Volume II, “Young Statesman” by Randolph S. Churchill, and Volume III, “Challenge of War” by Martin Gilbert.

RSC succinctly describes how his father entered Parliament, joined the young Tory malcontents (nicknamed the “Hughligans” after Lord Hugh Cecil); how he bolted to the Liberals; and how he made himself equally worrisome in that party, contending with everybody from Lord Elgin to H. H. Asquith. Gilbert, who brilliantly continues the biography where RSC left off, covers Winston’s plunge from the heights: from the second or third most important man in the Government in 1914 to a discredited failure two years later.

Most of the alleged blunders, which were thrown against Churchill when he tried to warn of “the Gathering Storm”, occurred between 1910 and 1915. All are evenly but effectively dismissed by the solid, primary-source research in these two volumes. It does WSC’s admirers good to read them. (It would have done Harold Wilson good too; one remembers how Wilson, in his otherwise generous eulogy in 1965, found it necessary to remind the House of Commons about Tonypandy, Sidney Street, Coronel and Gallipoli.)

But let’s look at the record

1. Tonypandy. Long before Wilson’s eulogy, it had become accepted Socialist dogma that Churchill, as Home Secretary, sent “troops to shoot” striking Welsh miners in the Rhondda Valley in 1910. One Oxford undergraduate had it that WSC used tanks-a tribute to his acumen, since they hadn’t yet been invented.

The facts: Churchill sent no troops. The officer commanding the Southern Command despatched 400 standby soldiers; Churchill ordered that they could not be used unless the chief constable of Glamorgan considered the situation beyond the police. He did not. Churchill’s determination to face rioters with police and billyclubs, rather than soldiers with bayonets, was approved by the Manchester Guardian as having “saved many lives.”

2. Sidney Street. In late 1910 an East End mob caught tunneling into a jewelry shop barricaded themselves at 100 Sidney Street, resisting the surrounding police with Mausers. During the siege the house caught fire, eventually asphyxiating two burglars. Churchill was photographed at the scene, to be maligned for exposing himself to danger, for letting the poor burglars burn, and for interfering with the police.

The facts: When apprised of the affair WSC went to the Home Office, which knew: nothing. Typically, he left for the scene of action, but did not intervene. When the house caught fire the police let it burn lest firemen be killed by the barricaded gang. Though WSC confirmed this decision to one fireman, he did not make it. But Sidney Street was hung around his neck, and in many quarters it still hangs.

3. Ireland. The Home Secretary was a staunch proponent of Irish Home Rule, though you’d never know it today. Nor was it mentioned in World War II, when Ireland stood aloof from a battle which-if lost-would have rendered Ireland a German colony.

Most Irish Republicans profess admiration for Gladstone, the Liberal prime minister whose career was wrecked over his premature support of Home Rule. The same Irishmen rarely mention the later Liberal government which won Home Rule, and later independence. Among the members of that government who fought hardest for Ireland was Winston Churchill – now the very devil incarnate to any self-respecting IRA fanatic.

Likewise the Ulstermen called WSC a traitor, for it was Churchill’s father who had torpedoed Gladstone with the cry, “Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.” Throughout his tenure as Home Secretary WSC tried to appease both sides and, to his misfortune, pleased neither. But you can’t address the Irish problem with logic – then or now.

4. Antwerp. By October 1914, World War I was raging and the Germans were threatening vital Antwerp -one of Belgium’s last lines of defense. Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War (and the whole Asquith cabinet with him), feared Antwerp’s fall would jeopardize the French coast. Yet Belgium informed Whitehall that they would have to surrender by 5 October.

Churchill, enroute to France for consultations with the British commander, was called back to London. At once he volunteered to reroute himself to Antwerp, and report to Kitchener whether relief was possible. Kitchener meanwhile promised troops under Sir Henry Rawlinson to relieve the Belgians, and also said he would ask the French to supply territorial soldiers.

Churchill was in Antwerp in 48 hours, rallying the dispirited Belgians. An eyewitness wrote later to Martin Gilbert: “He put his ideas forcefully, waving his stick and thumping the ground with it.” (It sounds like him!) The Belgians agreed to fight on. While awaiting Rawlinson, Churchill decided to throw the Admiralty’s two Royal Naval Brigades into the battle, which was at this stage desperate. He asked Kitchener to cable his request to the Admiralty, but that the Brigades should come “minus recruits.

On 5 October Rawlinson still hadn’t arrived in Antwerp. There was no leader at all, save Churchill, who cabled Asquith his willingness to resign his office to conduct the defense. Instead of an unsordid sacrifice, this proposal was greeted by Asquith as a piece of glory-seeking. Churchill was needed at home, the PM replied. When would he return?

The answer proved to be: when Rawlinson got there. He finally showed up late on the 6th, having taken three times as long to arrive as Churchill. Ironically, Rawlinson left Antwerp shortly after Churchill-on the 6th-because he concluded the Germans were too strong. One wonders whether WSC would have left…

The First Lord returned home believing he had stemmed the tide. Instead of a welcome, he faced a witchhunt. He had been impetuous, foolhardy; he had tried to tell generals how to fight; he had exposed himself to fire; and (the worst rub of all) he had sent raw recruits into battle! It was an unprecedented attack on a cabinet minister in wartime-but as a minister, Churchill could not reply.

The facts: WSC had specified “minus recruits;” the Admiralty sent them because there was nothing else. They were closest, easiest to transport-and they acquitted themselves well, with only 57 deaths out of 8000. Kitchener and Rawlinson (in a foretaste of Gallipoli) had dawdled and failed to deliver. The French (in a foretaste of 1940) had failed utterly.

King Albert of the Belgians summarized what really happened in March 1918:

“Delaying an enemy is often of far greater service than the defeat of the enemy [Churchill’s action] allowed the French and British Armies to move NW. Otherwise our whole army might have been captured and the Northern French ports secured by the enemy. [Churchill’s reinforcements] inspired our troops . . . great quantities of supplies were enabled to be destroyed. .. the Royal Naval Division rendered a service we shall never forget.”

5. Coronel. During the Antwerp battle Britain suffered her only naval defeat of the war, off Croronel, Chile. The German Admiral von Spee was loose in the South Atlantic. Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock was ordered by the Admiralty to intercept him, being sure to concentrate his fleet, including the battleship Canopus. Though old, Canopus’ 12-inch guns gave Craddock superior firepower. But Craddock’s fast cruisers left Canopus behind, contacting and engaging the enemy on 1 November. Lacking firepower, the British went down to a shocking defeat: two capital ships were sunk, and 1500 were lost including the Admiral himself.

Once again the cacophony sounded against the First Lord, joined now by his alleged friend, David Lloyd George. Wrote Lloyd George’s secretary: “Churchill is too busy trying to get a flashy success to attend to the real business of the Admiralty. The Admiral presumably having gone down with his ship & so unable to clear himself. This is characteristic of Churchill.”

What it was characteristic of was Churchill’s detractors. Craddock had violated orders and attacked without the essential Canopus. But the lies roll on while the truths are muted.

6. Gallipoli. The biggest dead cat of all is hardly within the scope of the small space we have left. Martin Gilbert’s sources reveal the monumental hypocrisy, hopeless logic, idle gossip and blind inertia that assailed the wartime Asquith government. Absorb it and you wonder why the Prime Minister wasn’t forced into coalition sooner. Or why Germany lost.

Here was a nation – the most important on earth – fighting for its life, or at least its honor. At critical meetings of the War Council Asquith rarely opened his mouth; but afterward he talked like a washer-woman to his lady friend Venetia Stanley. To his face Asquith encouraged Churchill; behind his back he doubted and disparaged him. Neither was Lloyd George above demolishing his friend Winston. Within the Admiralty itself, the First Lord was unknowingly subjected to being second-guessed by the second civil lord, Sir Francis Hopwood, who went so far as to carry slander to the King’s private secretary. Churchill’s hand-picked First Sea Lord, Fisher, owed his renaissance to WSC – and threatened to resign every time WSC failed to give him his own sweet way. Above all stood Kitchener, convinced beyond recall that the only place for the Army was in Flanders, unwilling to commit the troops to make the Gallipoli expedition the success it could have certainly been: vain, abrupt, unyielding, with an absolute veto over the decisions of the PM himself. How anything as dependent on timing and Army-Navy cooperation as the Dardanelles could have succeeded, only heaven knows.

Originally Admiral Carden, commanding at the Dardanelles, told the cabinet he could force the straits by ships alone. To a man, the cabinet bought Carden’s thesis, though they would all later claim it was Winston’s idea. Remarkably Churchill alone held out for the alternate of attacking the north German coast. Kitchener said there would be no troops for that (Lord K never supplied troops, except to be slaughtered in Flanders), and WSC had to give it up.

The snafus that followed are well known. Carden, later relieved by de Roebuck, soon found the shore defenses of Turkey too strong; Ian Hamilton, commanding the military, pleaded in vain for Kitchener to send better artillery and better trained, regular troops. Lord Fisher ran hot and cold, and finally made good his constant threats to resign at a critical moment. Churchill should have resigned; it’s very possible he would have, if resignation would have achieved the desired result. But it would not. When Kitchener was killed in 1916, WSC was prohibited from revealing the almost treacherous role he had played because the Liberal Party could not afford to puncture K’s hero image.

What a story: a Prime Minister afraid to make any move Because Something Might Go Wrong; a war secretary unwilling to make war; backbiting among colleagues; idle babble to secretaries and lovers; daily changes of tune; loquacious dreaming about the spoils of Turkey before victory was won; media slander against those who understood the real needs of the moment. It doesn’t sound so far removed from Viet Nam and Watergate, from Suez and the IRA, from the dead cats now thrown at US and UK governments who have inherited the mistakes of a generation, and are now expected to mend them overnight. Yet in “Great Contemporaries” WSC wrote of Asquith, who let it happen: “…disinterested patriotism and inflexible integrity were his only guides . . . he was always on his country’s side in all her perils, and he never hesitated to sacrifice his personal or political interests to the national cause.”

But the Gallipoli story was enough to make a grown man cry. And certainly, at the time, Churchill did. His family motto has a poignancy here: “Fiel Pero Desdichado” – Faithful but Unfortunate.