‘I will tell the Prime Minister and we will be in touch with you,’ said the Civil Servant. ‘Can you give me details of where we can reach you?’
‘I can wait here,’ said Conrad. ‘The Prime Minister really needs to hear this as soon as possible.’
‘I am sorry, Mr de Lancey, you will have to leave.’ The Civil Servant glanced at a moustachioed policeman at the door of the ante-room.
Conrad argued for a few minutes longer, but it was clear he was getting nowhere. In the end the policeman escorted him firmly but politely to the door and out into the street.
Conrad stared desperately at the door of Number 10. ‘I have to tell him. I have to tell him somehow,’ he said to the policeman, because he was the only person there. ‘The future of the war depends on it.’
The constable, who was a large, comfortable man in his fifties, examined Conrad. ‘I shouldn’t say this, sir, but the Prime Minister often lunches at the Admiralty. You might catch him there later on.’
Halifax bided his time. The War Cabinet broke up with Churchill promising to make a statement in the House of Commons preparing them for bad news from France. They agreed to meet again at four that afternoon, when Churchill was sure Halifax would make his move.
Churchill pulled Neville Chamberlain to one side and asked him if he would agree to inviting Lloyd George into the cabinet. The ostensible reason was to strengthen government unity. Lloyd George was known to be defeatist; he had spoken of Hitler in admiring terms in the past, had been opposed to the war and had argued for peace intermittently since its outbreak. But if the worst came to the worst, Churchill preferred the idea of his old political partner Lloyd George taking over from him than someone like Oswald Mosley.
The success of Vidkun Quisling in usurping the Norwegian government in April had shaken Churchill and was one of the reasons why he had sanctioned locking up Mosley and Maule Ramsay. But they could always be let out of prison again once Churchill had gone.
Neville agreed to Lloyd George. Churchill then went off to lunch at the Admiralty to work on his speech to the House. He was still lodging there, having allowed Neville and his family to stay on at 10 Downing Street.
The food, and especially the wine, fortified him and, clutching a newly lit cigar, he left the Admiralty for Parliament in slightly better spirits.
‘Prime Minister! Prime Minister! May I have a word?’
Churchill glanced at the young man trying to attract his attention. He recognized him. ‘Mr de Lancey?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Conrad. ‘I must speak to you.’
Churchill grinned. ‘If I stopped and talked to everyone who wanted to speak to me, I’d never get anywhere.’
‘What I have to say is more important than the message I gave you at Chartwell two years ago.’
Churchill frowned. He was intrigued. He had liked de Lancey. They had talked then not only about his German friends’ plans to remove Hitler, but about history and about bricklaying. Those days, which had seemed so dark at the time, now seemed a period of tranquil unemployment. How he would love to be working on his kitchen-garden wall at Chartwell and chatting to this young man!
‘What is it, de Lancey?’
‘We need to talk privately, sir.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ said Churchill. ‘I’m on my way to speak in the House.’
‘I have become aware of a plan to replace you as prime minister,’ Conrad said. ‘My father was involved, I am ashamed to say.’
‘Your father!’ Churchill was surprised. Although Lord Oakford’s pacifism, even defeatism, was well known, Churchill had always held him in high regard. ‘Who else?’
He noticed de Lancey glance to see who was within earshot. Just Churchill’s detective and a uniformed policeman. ‘Henry Alston. And the Duke of Windsor.’
Churchill considered the young man in front of him. Could he be speaking the truth? He had done so at Chartwell in the summer of 1938. Churchill’s instinct was that he was doing so now. The duke was a worry, and Churchill had never trusted Alston.
‘See me in the House of Commons this afternoon.’
Churchill made his speech and then met the War Cabinet at four o’clock in a room in the Commons. Halifax went on the offensive immediately. He opened proceedings by stating that Vansittart had learned that the Italian government was prepared to act as mediator between Britain and Germany. The question was now firmly on the table. Should Britain discuss peace with Germany?
Halifax’s logic was persuasive. There could be no harm in seeing what terms would be acceptable to the Germans. And Britain would achieve much better terms before France was knocked out of the war and Britain’s aircraft factories had been bombed than after.
Persuasive, but wrong. Churchill made the point that once negotiations had been opened with Germany it would be impossible to back away from them and still maintain the defiance necessary to win the war. Nations that go down fighting rise again, but those that surrender are merely finished. Besides, Churchill believed the chances of Germany offering decent terms were a thousand to one against.
The War Cabinet wasn’t swayed one way or the other. Churchill adjourned the meeting to speak to the wider Cabinet, saying that the War Cabinet would reconvene at seven.
The Outer Cabinet met in Churchill’s rooms in the Commons, without the presence of the other War Cabinet members, including Halifax. It had become common practice for one or other of the members of the War Cabinet to brief the rest of the government on what was going on, but Churchill insisted on doing this particular briefing himself. The Outer Cabinet consisted of twenty-nine ministers, half Conservatives from Chamberlain’s government, half new men.
Churchill gave it his all. He said that it would be foolish not to consider discussing peace with Hitler, but that the peace terms would probably be harsh, involving giving up the fleet and naval bases. Britain would become a slave state and a puppet government would be set up by Hitler under Mosley or some such person. He concluded by saying that of course, whatever happened at Dunkirk, the British would fight on.
He had thrown in the last remark as a casual observation, but it was the key question. Would the British government fight on?
They would. Quite a few rushed up and patted him on the back. There wasn’t a voice of dissent.
Churchill was buoyed by their support, but he knew it would count for nothing if Halifax succeeded in pushing for peace in the War Cabinet. Everyone respected the towering figure of the Foreign Secretary, even Churchill himself. Unless he could win Halifax round, the war was lost.
So Churchill would find a way of winning him round.
Conrad watched Churchill’s speech to the Commons from the Strangers’ Gallery. It was grave. Belgium had surrendered. Things were clearly going badly in France, although the Prime Minister wasn’t specific about exactly what, promising instead to speak to the House at the beginning of the following week. He warned of ‘hard and heavy tidings’.
The House listened intently, and there were brief speeches of support from a Labour and a Liberal MP, but none from any Conservatives. Conrad wondered if that was a bad sign. The Conservatives were in a majority and it was they who would dump Churchill if he was going to be dumped.
Conrad picked out Sir Henry Alston’s disfigured face on the benches behind the Prime Minister. The scarring made it difficult to read the MP’s expression at distance, but Conrad was confident that it would show nothing more than outward loyalty and sincerity. Conrad was half hoping he would see either Lloyd George or Alston speak, but of course that was not part of the plan. They were waiting for their moment.