as if it might even have been a knockout, and the talk in political London was that Churchill might be preparing to step aside.
In fact, that was the last thing he meant to do. While Churchill had been managing the unrest in his party, Truman had officially confirmed his offer to introduce the Fulton speech. Since then, Churchill had been back and forth with Washington to press for a firm date, to ask that the event be announced simultaneously from the White House and in London, to urge Truman to make public his endorsement of the invitation, and to express a wish for talks between the President and himself. Ironically, when Truman granted all of these requests, the news of Churchill’s impending trip, to speak in Missouri and to enjoy a rest in Florida with Mrs Churchill, sparked new rumours of resignation.
Speculation was rife that Churchill’s willingness to leave Britain at a time of deep division in the Conservative Party meant that he intended to give up the leadership upon his return. There were reports in the world press that he was travelling to Florida on doctor’s orders and that the state of his health might soon force him to retire. Meanwhile, mindful of the havoc that had ensued when both he and Eden were missing from Parliament on 19 November, Churchill reassured a large gathering of Opposition members that Eden was set to lead in his absence. Instead of allaying fears, however, his comments provoked upset in certain Conservative quarters.
Eden enjoyed broad support in the party, but if indeed Churchill was preparing to hand over, not everyone was pleased with the prospect of power passing to Eden. His critics dismissed him as a lightweight who possessed more style than substance and who had risen only because so many of the best young men of his generation had perished in the First World War. In a public challenge to received wisdom about the succession, the Evening Standard, which was owned by Lord Beaverbrook, questioned whether Eden was quite up to the task. There followed a round of press comment, both at home and abroad, about Rab Butler and other possible successors should Churchill retire.
As 1946 began, representatives of fifty-one countries gathered in London for the first United Nations General Assembly. On 9 January, final preparations were under way at St James’s Palace for that night’s state banquet on the eve of the historic session when the Churchills sailed for America. Their giant liner, the Queen Elizabeth, which had delivered Eleanor Roosevelt and other members of the US deleg ation four days previously, was part of the effort to repatriate nearly two million American and Canadian troops that had begun after the surrender of Germany. On the present westward crossing, more than twelve thousand Canadians were finally on their way home. The day before they reached New York, Churchill addressed the troops over the ship’s loudspeaker system. In the course of speaking to them of their future, the old warrior offered some hints about how he saw his own.
As the young men prepared to begin new lives after the war, Churchill promised them that the future was in their hands and that their lives would be what they chose to make them. The trick, he told them, was to have a purpose and to stick to it. He recalled that the previous day he had been standing on the bridge ‘watching the mountainous waves, and this ship – which is no pup – cutting through them and mocking their anger’. He asked himself why it was that the ship beat the waves, when the waves were so many and the ship was one. The reason, he went on, was that the ship has a purpose while the waves have none. ‘They just flop around, innumerable, tireless, but ineffective. The ship with the purpose takes us where we want to go. Let us therefore have a purpose, both in our national and imperial policy, and in our private lives.’
Some people at the time interpreted those remarks as Churchill’s ‘farewell to politics’. In retrospect, they appear to have been anything but that. Far from being inclined to shut down his political life, Churchill, though he too was no pup, was about to restart it.
V The Wet Hen St James’s Palace, 1946
A cold rain pelted London on the night of Britain’s first state banquet since 1939. Inside St James’s Palace, crackling wood fires perfumed the air. Servants wore prewar red-and-gold and blue-and-gold liveries, and royal treasures that had been stored away for the duration of the war were once again on display. Candles twinkling in gold candelabra illuminated a banquet table set for eighty-six with heavy gold plate. As each of the fifty-one chief UN delegates and other guests entered, they were taken to a cavernous, tapestry-lined room where they were presented to the King. The fifty-year-old George VI wore the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. The Colombian delegate responsible for overseeing the preparations for the first General Assembly sat at his right, and the Belgian who was expected to be elected its president the following day sat at the King’s left. Among the topics dominating the delegates’ conversation was who would be appointed to the post of Secretary General.
Hours after Churchill sailed, Anthony Eden arrived at the UN dinner for what would be his first public appearance as deputy leader of the Opposition. For at least a week he had been fuming at the prospect of being left in charge, as he complained to Cranborne, ‘rather like a governess on approval’. Unlike Churchill, he lacked the stomach to prove himself again. Eden believed that as Foreign Secretary, as well as Leader of the House of Commons, he had demonstrated his abilities and should not have to endure another round of tests. Had not a decade passed since Stanley Baldwin made him Britain’s youngest Foreign Secretary since the mid-nineteenth century? Had not Churchill singled out his experience and capacity when he anointed him heir apparent?
There had been a time before the war when Eden struck many of the anti-appeasers as a more viable candidate for prime minister than the pugnacious, provocative, unabashedly and carnivorously ambitious Churchill. There had been a time when Cranborne, Eden, and others in their circle had barred Churchill from their meetings because they thought him unstable, untrustworthy, and unsound, and because they feared he would dominate their discussions and corrupt their cause by involving them with the adventurers who formed his claque. There had been a time when Eden’s determination to bring Conservatives together and to formulate a unified Tory position on the Fascist threat had seemed much more sensible and appealing than Churchill’s willingness, even eagerness, to split the party asunder.
Cranborne believed that when he became prime minister Churchill never really forgave the Edenites for shutting him out. Close observers would long suspect that however highly and affectionately Churchill spoke of Eden, he truly ‘despised’ his second-in-command. One could never be sure: when Churchill ostentatiously referred to Eden as ‘my Anthony’, was that a note of contempt in his voice? Nevertheless, from early on the matter of the succession in general and of Eden’s claims in particular had been prominently in play. At the outset of his premiership, Churchill had spoken of his intention to resign at the end of the war to make room for younger men. In 1940 he told Eden that he regarded himself as an old man and was not about to repeat Lloyd George’s error of attempting to carry on after the war. On various occasions and in various ways he made it clear that he wanted Eden to succeed him.
As the war dragged on, it seemed as if Eden would not have to wait for the peace after all. When there was broad dissatisfaction with aspects of Churchill’s leadership and the progress of the war, when the old man was gravely ill, and when there were fears he might soon die, Eden had had reason to believe the handover would occur at any moment. Both verbally and in his letter to the King, Churchill spelled out his wish that should anything happen to him Eden would take his place.
Despite Churchill’s assurances to Eden that it would not be long before the younger man took control, somehow that golden day always failed to arrive. There were persistent grumblings in certain quarters that the Prime Minister was ‘losing his grip’ (Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1942) and ‘failing fast’ (Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, 1944), that he had grown too old, sick and incompetent, and that he really ought to ‘disappear out of public life’ (Brooke) before he damaged both his reputation and the country; but still Churchill managed to endure. As a friend of Eden’s later said, ‘Waiting to step into a dead man’s shoes is always a tiring business, but when the “dead” man persists in remaining alive it is worse than ever.’ Ironically, in 1944 it was Churchill who took on Eden’s duties in addition to his own when the ill, exhausted heir apparent, twenty-two years his junior, needed to go off