Every time I write about Winston Churchill, I always feel, “Well, that’s it, I don’t have anything more to write about.” But then along comes a new book with a new perspective and there I go, writing something new.
Such is the case with Andrew Roberts’ Walking with Destiny, which according to The Economist, paints a softer side of the great man—his loyalty, generosity, self-deprecation, and humor. Reading it I realize the "lovable" side of Churchill was always there, it may have been obscured by so much else in his life.
There is one vignette--not unique certainly to this biography, which is a magnificent read--is a moment in 1942. Churchill, just back from America after another meeting with Roosevelt, was faced with a vote of censure. From our perspective of nearly 80 years, we wonder: dump Churchill after he had helped mobilize the spirit of the nation and rally it against a lethal foe? That logic is fool-hardly; history is written in hindsight. Leadership is lived in the moment.
And at that moment, things were not going well. Dunkirk, Singapore and Tobruk were defeats. While it had won the Battle of Britain, as well as endured the London Blitz, but no forward momentum. Worse, Britain was losing record amounts of food and war material on the high seas due to shipping losses inflicted by the deadly Wolf Pack U-Boats.
Although Churchill’s poll numbers had dropped--three-quarters of the country was still behind him--Parliament was restless. Never entirely comfortable with Churchill because they viewed him as an outlier, having begun as a Conservative then switched to Liberal and back again to Conservative. He was something of political “bounder.” Add to that his War Cabinet was an ad hoc mixture of Conservatives, Labourites and Liberals. Some in Parliament wanted him to give up his dual office of Prime Minister as well as Minister for the War.
So here comes the moment of truth. The censure vote was put forward on July 1, 1942, by John Wardlaw-Milne, who curiously had offered to withdraw it. Churchill, revealing his strength of character, would have none of it, saying that “it was imperative that the matter should go forward to an immediate issue.”
In making his motion, Wardlaw-Milne had advocated that the Duke of Gloucester, whom Roberts describes as “an affable member of the Royal Family, but by no means a strategic genius,” become war minister. MPs met this proposal with laughter. Later, however, Aneurin Bevan, a Labour MP, lays down some serious shade. “The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.”
Churchill, on the second day of the debate, rises to make a “ninety-minute reply [that] was frank and masterly.” Churchill, with full confidence, does not spare himself. “We are at this moment in the presence of a recession of our hopes and prospects in the Middle East.” He even indulges in a lighter touch. “I have never made any predictions, except saying things like Singapore would hold out.” When the laughter subsided, Churchill adds, “What a fool and knave I should have been to say it that it would fall!”
Churchill then cuts to the heart of the matter. “I am your servant, and you have the right to dismiss me.” He insists, however, that he must have authority to run the war as he sees fit. But should he be dismissed, he says, “I would ask of you… to give my successor the modest powers which would have been denied to me.” The government won by a resounding vote, 475 to 25, and thirty abstentions.
Why this episode resonates is because it reveals two things. One, democracy matters. An elected leader is not a king; he or she can be removed. Two, a strong leader, no matter how popular, must be confident enough to admit mistakes as well as resilient enough to submit to criticism. Churchill was nothing, if not both self-assured as well as tough.
The situation did not improve overnight. It was not until November 1942 that Britain experienced true victory. The Eighth Army, under the command of General Bernard Montgomery, pushed Rommel into full retreat at the Battle of El Alamein. Churchill--always with a knack of putting things into perspective--rose again in Parliament to utter these famous lines, “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
