Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (112 page)

And later in characteristic vein:

I am leaving Moscow in the morning. Am going to do
a little sight-seeing in Berlin, then home. The business
here came off reasonably well, and both Averell and I
are very hopeful that at least some of these prisoners
are going to be sprung.

I want you to know I have not the vaguest notion
what the word “amnesty” means, and I hope British
Cabinet did not spend too much time debating this one.

The only thing I ever said to Stalin was to let these poor
Poles out of jug. If you should find out what technical
definition of “amnesty” is won’t you please let me know.

I persuaded Mikolajczyk to go to Moscow and in the upshot a new Polish Provisional Government was set up. At Truman’s request this was recognised by both Britain and the United States on July 5.

It is difficult to see what more we could have done. For five months the Soviets had fought every inch of the road. They had gained their object by delay. During all this time the Lublin Administration, under Bierut, sustained by the might of the Russian armies, had given them a complete control of Poland, enforced by the usual deportations and liquidations. They had denied us all the access for our observers which they had promised. All the Polish parties, except their own Communist puppets, were in a hopeless minority in the new recognised Polish Provisional Government. We were as far as ever from any real and fair attempt to obtain the will of the Polish nation by free Triumph and Tragedy

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elections. There was still a hope — and it was the only hope — that the meeting of “the Three,” now impending, would enable a genuine and honourable settlement to be achieved. So far only dust and ashes had been gathered, and these are all that remain to us today of Polish national freedom.

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16

The End of the Coalition

The Achievements of the National Government —

Strength and Weaknesses of the Rival Party
Organisations
—
My Speech to the Commons,
October
31, 1944 —
The Need for an Appeal to
the Electorate Once Germany Was Defeated —

The Choice Between June and October — My
Desire to Postpone a General Election until Japan
Surrendered — Correspondence with Mr. Eden —

I Suggest that the Coalition should Continue until
Victory over Japan had been Gained — Mr. Attlee
Rejects This — I Tender my Resignation to The
King, May
23 —
The “Caretaker Government”—

Declaration of the Poll Fixed for July
26.

F
EW QUESTIONS, national or personal, have so perplexed my mind as did fixing the date of the General Election. The war-time Parliament had lasted nearly ten years, or double the normal span. The supreme task for which the parties had come together in May 1940 was already accomplished.

Nothing could have enabled Britain to evoke her gigantic latent strength and endurance except an all-party National Government, strong enough to withstand long years of peril, misfortune, and the disappointment resulting from the errors and chances of war. Now the task in Europe for which we had come together was done. The fruits were yet to be gathered. This process involved a range of less violent but no less vital problems affecting all that we had Triumph and Tragedy

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fought for. If not done well and with war-time strength there could be no fruitful, and even perhaps no lasting, peace. No Prime Minister could ever have wished for more loyal and steadfast colleagues than I had found in the Labour Party.

Nevertheless, as the total defeat of Germany drew ever nearer their party machine began to work, as was certainly its right with far-reaching and ever-increasing activity. As the war deepened and darkened practically all the agents of the Conservative Party had found war work. Many were young enough to join the forces. The core of the Labour, or, as we call them in our controversial moods, the Socialist Party was at that time the trade unions. Many of the trade union leaders wanted of course to go to the front, but the whole process of organising our production and getting the highest results from day to day forbade their release. They all did work on the home front which no one else could have done, and at the same time they maintained — and who could blame them? — their party affiliations; and once our mortal danger had passed these increasingly took on a partisan character. Thus on the one side there had been complete effacement of party activities, while on the other they ran forward unresisted. This is not a reproach, but a fact. Party conflict and party government should not be disparaged. It is in time of peace, and when national safety is not threatened, one of those conditions of a free Parliamentary democracy for which no permanent substitute is known.

On the Conservative side we became acutely conscious, as the war danger waned and as victory brightened on our horizon, that we stood at an unusual disadvantage so far as political organisation was concerned, and now very sharply up against us came the constitutional need for an appeal to the people by an election on universal suffrage. As this drew nearer the members of the Government felt Triumph and Tragedy

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themselves dividing off in opposite directions, and a whole new set of values became apparent. Instead of being comrades-in-arms we became rivals for power. In Britain, where party differences are now in practice mainly those of emphasis, all points of vantage are contested, and whole hives of men and women are busy night and day in canvassing support for their views and organisations.

When I had moved the prolongation of Parliament on October 31, 1944, I said to the House of Commons:
Let us assume that the German war ends in March,
April, or May, and that some or all the other parties in
the Coalition recall their Ministers out of the Government, or wish to bring it to an end from such dates.

That would be a matter of regret, both on public and on
personal grounds, to a great many people, but it would
not be a matter of reproach or bitterness between us in
this Government or in this House once Germany has
been defeated….

When the whole of the Japanese problem is
examined, on military grounds alone it would certainly
not be prudent to assume that a shorter period than
eighteen months after the destruction of Hitler would be
required for the final destruction of the Japanese will or
capacity to fight, and this period must be continually
revised every few months by the Combined Chiefs of
Staff.

The prolongation of the life of the existing Parliament by another two or three years would be a very
serious constitutional lapse. Even now no one under
thirty has ever cast a vote at a General Election, or
even at a by-election, since the registers fell out of
action at the beginning of the war. Therefore it seems
to me that unless all political parties resolve to maintain
the present Coalition until the Japanese are defeated
we must look to the termination of the war against
Nazism as a pointer which will fix the date of the
General Election.
1
I should regret the break-up of the
present highly efficient Government, which has waged
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war with unsurpassed success and has shaped or
carried out within the last two years a programme of
reform and social progress which might well have
occupied a whole Parliament under the ordinary
conditions of peace for five or six years. In fact, I may
say — and I will indeed be quite candid on this point —

that, having served for forty-two years in this House, I
have never seen any Government to which I have been
able to give a more loyal, confident, and consistent
support. [Laughter.] But while I should regret and
deplore the break-up of these forces, so knit together
by personal goodwill, by the comradeship of fighting in
a great cause, and by the sense of growing success
arising from that comradeship, yet I could not blame
anyone who claimed that there should be an appeal to
the people once the German peril is removed. Indeed I
have myself a clear view that it would be wrong to
continue this Parliament beyond the period of the
German war….

I can assure the House that, in the absence of most
earnest representations by the Labour and Liberal
Parties, I could not refrain from making a submission to
the Crown in respect of a dissolution after the German
war is effectively and officially finished. I am sure this is
a straightforward, fair, and constitutional method of
dealing with what is in many ways an unprecedented
situation, though not one which need in any way baffle
our flexible British system. Meanwhile I must confess
that the position will not become increasingly easy. The
odour of dissolution is in the air, and parties are inclined
to look at each other across the House with an
increasing sense of impending division….

The announcement of the dissolution would
necessarily mark the close of the present Administration. The Conservative Party have a majority of more
than a hundred above all parties and Independents in
the present House, and it would therefore fall to us to
make arrangements for the inevitable General Election.

I cannot conceive that anyone would wish that election
to be held in a violent hurry or while we were all
rejoicing together and rendering thanks to God for our
deliverance. There must be an interval. Moreover, we

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have above all things to be careful that practically
everybody entitled to vote has a fair chance to do so.

This applies above all to the soldiers, many of whom
are serving at great distances from this country….

It may therefore be taken as certain that from the
moment the King gives his consent to a dissolution a
period of between two and three months would be
required. This also would be fair to the political parties
and candidates, who have to set about one another in
the usual lusty manner…. Finally, it is contrary to
precedent for Governments to hold on to office until the
last moment of their legal tenure, or legally extended
tenure, and it would be very unwholesome for any
practice of that kind to be introduced.

It will be seen how decisively I had committed myself in the previous autumn to an election at the end of the German war. Looking back, it would have been prudent to claim more latitude than I did. This could easily have been obtained. I had not done so, and from the moment of the German surrender the public mind turned swiftly from national rejoicing to party strife. The choice lay between June and October. I now hoped and urged that we should stay together till Japan was defeated, the peace settlement made, and the armies brought home. Mr. Herbert Morrison, who stood in the forefront of party affairs, eventually made the offer that the Labour Ministers should remain in the Government until the end of October. The sense of deliverance from the German peril would have abated, the burden of the redeployment of our forces against Japan would have become heavy, and the new register, which came into force on October 15, was thought to give the Labour Party greater advantage. As we had assimilated the local and national franchise, and thereby doubled the municipal electorate, they might expect a victory in the local Triumph and Tragedy