Chapter 24, The Treasury, 1 June 1936
It was a glorious day, bright with no rain and not too warm; a persistent east to northeast wind had brought a refreshingly cool air westwards from the southern North Sea.
Four besuited men gathered in one of the grander rooms of the Treasury building. Three of them were guests while the fourth, the host, stretched his long legs and stifled a yawn. “Well, gentlemen,” he began lightly, “it has been quite the couple of months, hasn’t it? Here, Clive old sock, take a fairy cake.” He pushed a plate of the brightly decorated cakes across the coffee table. “You look half-starved my dear chap. I’ll keep this succinct, given all that has occurred,” he said, changing to a commanding tone, “we frankly need to share our notes.”
The guests were the Cabinet Secretary Sir Maurice Hankey, the Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office Sir Robert Vansittart, and the soon to step down Private Secretary to the King Clive Wigram. They all nodded at their host Sir Warren Fisher’s observation.
“Good. I’ll start, as there isn’t much from a Treasury point of view that you need to worry about,” Fisher said in a quick voice. “His nibs ‘the undertaker’ is fretting over the likely demands on public borrowing,” he said in a condescending tone, “and I am about to brief him on the National Debt. Frankly we’re seeing a lot less of him here.”
They all nodded and Fisher, his Treasury brief covered, relaxed slightly. But he still sat with pen poised and notebook opened.
“I’ll go next,” Vansittart from the Foreign Office followed, “there is a lot going on but most of it can be skipped. We’re busy with diplomats negotiating on the Turkish Straits, Eden wants to go to France, Haile Selassie is continuing with his cruise at the British taxpayer’s expense, we’re watching the Admiralty fluff the decision on basing in the Med, more League stuff, and the Egyptian treaty…”
“…foreign interest in you-know-who?” Fisher interrupted.
“Assuming you mean HM, we assess steady. Washington and Canada are handling it as best they can. The death of the Med cruise idea, as well as his lack of public activity will help,” Vansittart said with evident relief. “The lack of official guidance on the PM’s absence has been difficult,” he said in pointed comment.
“Pity about the cruise, I heard Agatha Christie was going to write about it,” Fisher quipped, earning a cough of passive-aggressive protest from Hankey and a groan from Wigram.
Vansittart, whose briefing had been the target of the waspish comment, chose to find it amusing. “A ha,” was his only response. “Two final points. First, and we’ve discussed this before, you need to get Chamberlain to add recognition of Italian gains in Ethiopia to the next Cabinet.”
“Done, I’ll ask him when he gets here,” said Fisher, disinterested and unwilling to waste time on it. “Next?” He smiled to take away the sting of his snappishness.
“The ‘glamour boy’ is frankly very worried that your chap ‘the undertaker’,” he looked at Fisher, “has stolen a march on the Premiership, assuming,” Vansittart raised a hand in acknowledgment that it wasn’t a done deal, “that the Premiership is up for grabs.”
“Is it?” That was Wigram, innocently.
“Ooh yes, is it?” Fisher said with malevolent delight at the intrigue. Having ‘fired his bolt’ he made an elaborate gesture of eating a fairy cake.
“I’d love to know if it is,” Vansittart added.
Hankey groaned. “Rotten swines,” he said, half in jest, half as a rebuke.
Fisher regained control. “Well, as Maurice is being coy, shall we pressure him further and move on to the choice cuts?” Together with Vansittart, he looked at the increasingly uncomfortable Hankey and Wigram. Hankey, who liked Fisher but had a complicated relationship with him, sat back; he had exercised, despite his exalted position, little real control over the meeting and so wielded one of his few remaining weapons, silence.
Wigram saw that the other three were looking at him and with a sigh sat up. “Well chaps, I’m off. I, along with the Equerry, have…”
“Start at the beginning, Clive,” Vansittart said in a firm but friendly voice.
“Well, since our last gathering it’s all gone rather awry. The King had a disastrous dinner party; I was there,” he said with pained recollection, “and it was awful. Anyway, the one good thing to come out of it was a realisation that the King and PM needed to re-establish the audiences. This has been done, and they’ve met. Er, more on that in a moment.” He paused, a shake of the head refusing another fairy cake. “But it didn’t do any good where that woman, that bloody woman is concerned. He is determined to marry her.”
“He is?” Vansittart was disbelieving.
“He is,” Wigram said sadly. “And that’s what he told Baldwin.”
Fisher frowned, and looked back and forth between Hankey and Wigram. “When you say ‘marry’…”
“…we are no further forward on the means by which that could be done, Sir Warren,” Wigram said with a sad nod. “Monckton has that task.”
“Well Walter is a good chap,” Hankey spoke up for Walter Monckton, the King’s lawyer, earning a lugubrious glance from Fisher.
“Shall we bring him in?”
“Yes I think so Robert,” Hankey confirmed.
“So,” Fisher said shortly, “the King wants to marry, Baldwin doesn’t like it, and the canny lawyer is looking at
how he gets what he wants. The Palace staff are leaving in droves and the secret meetings are continuing. They are continuing?”
“He has met at least once with Lloyd George in private at Belvedere,” Wigram confirmed, “and Hoare and Duff-Cooper have dined at the Palace. I was there,” he said sadly, “it was…”
“…
please Clive,” Hankey, very frustrated, said to his friend.
“Has there been any domestic preparation for a marriage?” That was Vansittart.
“No, no,” Wigram said wearily. “She tends to stay at Belvedere. But there is talk of her taking an increasing role, as soon as the divorce is settled, to get the people used to her as his consort.”
“The rest of the Royals?” Fisher was scribbling in his notebook.
“The Queen Mother has agreed to dine with him shortly, a few weeks’ time,” he offered, “all agreed after Baldwin’s recent visit. Halifax is meeting soon with York.” Fisher smiled at the notion of two Yorkshire towns seeming to visit one another.
“And your replacement?” Hankey asked this softly.
“No firm decision has been made,” Wigram said, seeming to have mentally moved on from his employment in the Palace. “It could be Lascelles, Monckton…”
“…what about Mr Ernest Simpson,” Fisher, who had been relatively quiet, couldn’t resist the jibe. Hankey rolled his eye at the display, while Vansittart’s smile was a mix of amusement and rebuking. Wigram, who had been rallying, seemed to crumple at the remark.
“Warren this is difficult enough,” Hankey pleaded.
“Sorry, sorry. Go on Clive,” he said, changing his posture as he changed his countenance from whimsical to serious. Hankey’s eyes were heavenward, beseeching the Almighty for a respite that wouldn’t come. Vansittart looked amused.
“Well, I think that you need to be patient. We haven’t got a firm idea of how the King intends to carry out his threat…”
“…so we cannot advise our political masters,” Hankey finished. Fisher and Vansittart nodded.
“Alright Clive, thank you,” Fisher said in a reassuring tone. “Maurice?”
Hankey had, like Wigram, much to cover. He frowned as he began. “Where to begin,” he paused to allow for a Fisher quip that didn’t come, “the Prime Minister I suppose. He has, as you are all aware, retreated to Chequers for a spell of recuperative isolation.”
“
Not informing His Majesty,” Wigram said with a sour look. Fisher and Vansittart both looked up in surprise.
“I’m not sure that that was a necessity,” Hankey said with a frown, “although it would have been neater. I am afraid that Baldwin’s hiatus was badly administered: he didn’t sign over anything of note to the Chancellor or Foreign Secretaries.”
“So,” Wigram had been absent from the discussions of governance, “what power do Chamberlain and Eden actually have?”
“Minimal,” Hankey offered, “merely written authority for Chamberlain to chair the Cabinet and Eden to continue foreign negotiations. But,” he tapped with his pencil at the table, “he hasn’t given any formal authority. Eden, for example,” he gestured to Vansittart, “cannot conclude any treaties.”
“Does the Chancellor,” Fisher asked seriously, “have any latitude for dealing with Clive’s former employer?”
Hankey nodded at the relevance of the question. “I don’t
know Clive, I think that Baldwin’s briefing to them of a couple of weeks ago gives him authority to plough on.”
“So,” Fisher said in a pointed tone, “perhaps we should use him?”
“Perhaps,” Hankey allowed.
Vansittart looked puzzled. “Baldwin kept talking about writing to the Dominions. Has he?”
Hankey shook his head. “There wasn’t time, not helped by the lack of clarity from the King.”
“He said he wanted to marry the Simpson woman,” Wigram shot back, “
that is enough.”
“And if I may, Robert,” Fisher added, “I’m not sure that Eden has the authority to…”
"…which means Baldwin has left us high and dry,” Vansittart said bitterly. “Sorry Maurice, not entirely your fault, go on.”
“The Archbishop of Canterbury and DG of the BBC are aligned with us and Baldwin has secured their support. Next would be a meeting with the opposition leaders.”
“Something else that could have been achieved before departure,” Wigram snapped.
“But we didn’t have anything
formal, from the King,” Hankey said in a very wounded tone.
“
That is going to come back time and again, isn’t it,” Fisher said without relish. Maurice?”
“Yes, there’s more. In purely party matters everyone is jittery about Sir Samuel Hoare. There has been discussion that he is going to be dropped into a Cabinet position.”
“Colonial?” Vansittart, whose Foreign Office had a close relationship with the Colonial Office, asked this with real interest.
“Possibly,” Hankey agreed, “possibly not. I think we need to let Chamberlain and Eden know that our civil servants are being asked a lot of questions on this.
“Yes yes,” Fisher said airily, “I’ll ask ‘the undertaker’ if he’s lobbying for ‘Slippery Sam’ for you Maurice,” he said caustically.
There was a gentle knock at the door and one of the junior civil servants peered around the door. “Sir Warren,” he said with an expectant tone.
“Ah,” Fisher said with raised eyebrows, “
he is here. I’ll have to go soon, but to summarise. Robert wants me to get Neville to add a couple of things to Cabinet. Done. In Palace affairs the King wants to marry but hasn’t yet told us how intends to achieve the miracle. The brother and mother will be approached to get their views and to use their influence. Clive has no formal replacement and we might try and get ‘the undertaker’ to meet with the King. Meanwhile the Prime Minister has fled to Chequers without clear authority residing in any of political masters. It seems to me, gentlemen, that we need more than activity; it must be genuine, with a plan. This has drifted, for far too long.”
“Agreed,” Hankey said heavily.
The junior Treasury official returned. “Forgive me, but the blessed Neville, the sainted Neville, he graces us with his holy presence.” It was so sarcastic, it was so mocking, and it was said so dramatically that Vansittart and even Hankey laughed (Wigram was beyond mirth). Fisher, seeing this, tried again. “Pray! Be upstanding! I must not tarry, I must not be late, I must gallop to the great man’s side!”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Regardless of the weather, he maintained standards. As befitted the second most important man in the Government (although, he allowed immodestly, recent improvements to his prospects might legitimise his elevation) he wore a formal morning suit, with wing collar, carrying his habitual umbrella. The porter, well used to the Chancellor’s ways, stood in wait to collect that, the coat and the top hat, at the bottom of the stairs. At the top of the stairs stood Sir Warren Fisher; seeing Chamberlain arrive in full Edwardian dress despite the brightness of the Spring day, he whistled a few bars of ‘mad dogs and Englishmen,’ earning an immediate look of reproof.
“You loiter here,” Neville Chamberlain greeted his senior civil servant, “as you have news?” There was no warmth in his greeting.
“Seven billion, seven hundred and eighty five million,” he said, in a slightly ridiculous mocking of Chamberlain’s chilly greeting.
Chamberlain raised an eyebrow. “Funded
and unfunded?”
“Indeed. That is our total national debt as of the financial year’s end.”
“And calendar?”
Fisher rolled his eyes. “If we plough on as your Cabinet colleagues seem insistent upon doing,” he said with sarcasm smeared over every word, “seven billion,
nine hundred and God alone knows about the rest.”
Chamberlain closed his eyes. Two hundred million was being added to the debt on his watch. “Anything else?”
“With the Prime Minister on gardening leave,” the lean, animated civil servant began, “everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to schedule meetings.” Fisher’s tone suggested that he resented being used as a personal secretary.
Chamberlain gestured at Fisher to follow him. “Anything else?”
“Not for the corridor, no,” Fisher immediately replied.
Chamberlain took his place at his desk and Fisher immediately sat down, without invitation (knowing it irritated Chamberlain) opposite him.
Chamberlain, scanning through his letters and papers, nodded as soon he was ready to proceed. “Well?”
“Hankey and I,” Fisher said, now utterly focussed, “have been asked a few times about Hoare. That’s not civil service business, might I add…”
“…noted. I will talk to Margesson when I go to the House later. Speculation?”
Fisher, his reprimand to Chamberlain seemingly ignored, rolled his eyes but nevertheless replied. “Yes. Every Conservative minister is worried that Slippery Sam is bound for their desk.”
“I shall confer with the Prime Minister on the telephone this evening,” he said, jotting a reminder in his notebook. “Hoare would, at least, receive the approval of His Majesty.
Fisher, who was forming an aloof, oddly disconnected obsession with the crisis that seemed ever ready to overwhelm the Government (yet never came to anything other than sending a Prime Minister to his retreat for a few days), smiled before he pounced. “We need your direction on that,” he said in gentle chiding. “That isn’t Eden’s brief…”
“…you shall have it,” Chamberlain snapped. “I am as one with the Prime Minister.” He looked briefly at his notes. “That unsuitable woman,” he said primly, in his reedy voice, “is baggage, absolute baggage.” He seemed to spit the word ‘baggage’ at Fisher. “A thoroughly selfish and heartless adventuress.” He continued what was seeming like a rant. “There is no saving him or her. Should the King marry her, I predict,” he said with great certainty, “it will end speedily in disillusionment and disgust.”
“That’s lovely,” Fisher said, not bothering to contain his sarcasm, “but what is it that you want to actually
do.” He looked around for inspiration. “Baldwin has held a few meetings, Eden is faithfully reporting how the foreign press is covering the story, but none of you have done anything.”
Chamberlain was not a man prone to doubt, but here he felt utterly uncertain. “The Dominions?”
“Haven’t been even informally consulted. Do we have a proposal from the King?”
“Proposal?” Chamberlain was alarmed that he meant
that type of proposal.
“I meant,” Fisher said, his tone acknowledging the ambiguity, “has the King spelled out how he will overcome the difficulties in getting Queen Wallis up the wedding aisle before the coronation aisle?”
“Do not,” Chamberlain said, his patience with Fisher’s sense of humour finally snapping, “ever consider such a motion again.”
“But the initiative remains with the King, and it shouldn’t, it
really shouldn’t.”
“Should I call upon him?”
“The King?”
“Hmmmn. Obtain from him precisely how,” he couldn’t bring himself to repeat Fisher’s earlier flippant description, “how he thinks that the matter can be resolved.”
“It might help,” Fisher said in ready agreement, “but if I may,” he offered. “Go in with a plan. Baldwin’s approach to domestic matters has always been not to have a plan of action in place,” he shook his head in frustration, “he determines his policy and attitude according to the course of events.”
Chamberlain actually agreed with this, and nodded stiffly. Unlike Halifax, he wasn’t personally that close to Baldwin, despite being each being the other’s key ally in Cabinet. It had made Chamberlain timid around the Prime Minister, a figure only happy to operate in the shadows. That reminded him…
“My next appointment?”
“He’s loitering in an anteroom,” Fisher said with obvious disdain.
“We cannot always fight with the angels,” Chamberlain said in gentle explanation. “Alright,” he said with an emotionless smile, “that seems clear.”
“One more thing,” Fisher said as he left. “Vansittart and Eden want us to consider objecting to the Italians over Ethiopia.”
“Oh that,” he said with a dismissive wave. He pulled out a handkerchief. “I thought that we were done and dusted with that!”
“The Americans want us to reconsider accepting Italy’s annexation of the country.”
“Anthony keen to keep up the pressure, is he,” Chamberlain said snidely. “As for Roosevelt.”
“Nevertheless,” Fisher pressed, “you are chairing Cabinet.”
“Fine,” Chamberlain said tartly, “get Hankey to add it to the next meeting, Anthony can preach, Halifax and Simon will stop him, we can get back to more pressing matters,” he said with bitterness at the thought of a long Cabinet meeting looming.
Fisher stalked from the room and another man, podgy, unremarkable figure entered. Everything about him was slightly ‘off’; his suit was just a tone too shiny, the stripes on the pinstripe just marginally too loud. His shoes had, just a smidge, of course, too shiny, too American, a cut.
“Joseph,” Chamberlain said, again without warmth.
“Well, Neville?” If Chamberlain was irritated by the lack of formality, he didn’t show it.
“I need,” Chamberlain began, “two things. We need a campaign on morality, make the nation weary of scandals and impropriety.”
“The ‘paper can do that,” the fat figure agreed.
“As well as the usual monitoring, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Good. And we may need to step up attacks, not only on the diehards, but on Eden and his ‘glamour boys’,” Chamberlain said with the slight hint that he was enjoying it. “I believe that we ought to ask some searching questions about how our diplomacy is being conducted in our name.”
“Got it,” the figure said. “Look, on the first point, if I print anything in
Truth…”
“…then our enemies might conclude that it comes from me,” Chamberlain agreed. “I think that we are too strong to fail,” he said with a tight smile. “And we must not name His Majesty, at least not yet,” he said, again with a slight smile.
The figure left and Chamberlain, quite tired, thought it time to write a letter. He always wrote to his sisters, (less so Austen, these days) and while waiting for the latest unemployment figures, jotted a quick letter.
Dearest Ida,
I am not a superstitious man and indeed I should not greatly care if I were never to be PM. But when I think of Father and Austen and reflect that less than mere weeks of time and no individual now stands between me and that office I wonder whether Fate has some dark secret in store to carry out her ironies to the end.
The crisis at the Palace continues its unforgiving progress and I fear that the time is coming when I will be asked to intervene. I do not think that the interests of the nation are best served by me running to clear up this mess and wonder if Baldwin should not finish that which he has started. But I must be careful, I must balance inactivity with overreaction. I am hopeful that some other worthy will make the noble sacrifice that is their duty to conduct.
Eden continues to bombard Cabinet with the most frightful rot and I fear that he intends to overwhelm me with endless and pointless sniping at the Europeans. I may be the only one who can bring reason and balance to our Foreign policy.
He signed off on the letter, popped in his out tray, and read with relish the next file as it arrived on his desk. Foreign affairs might be a mess but he, Neville Chamberlain, would continue to manage domestic matters with unswerving attention to detail.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GAME NOTES
While the meeting of the senior officials dominates, this is really an update on Chamberlain; the civil servants, a second gathering of the Establishment figures that we saw in an early chapter, is really a ‘last time on…’ style roundup that also, I hope, captures their characters. Fisher really was as quirky, witty and sarcastic as depicted; I have ‘dialled up’ his character slightly for amusement but he really was an eccentric and very clever administrator. That he called Chamberlain ‘the undertaker’ is pure speculation but is, I suspect, not far from the truth (I also toyed with ‘the grocer’ and ‘the gravedigger’) and I am amazed that they were able to work together; there is, I believe, more to this tale, but this is not a Chamberlain AAR and I didn’t want to divert more time than is necessary to finding this out. Wigram, Hankey and Vansittart’s characters are more or less are they were in real life. In the rush to get Baldwin off to Chequers mistakes were made and the recap at least considers some of these. I have tried to be balanced, and to show that no system is perfect; Hankey is probably the most at fault, and again, for a civil servant who has steered the Cabinet through and around several challenges, a ‘misfire’ is to be understood, I think.
And then we have Neville. Some have tried to see merit in Chamberlain’s chancellorship, repeatedly appealing to suggest that he was, if not exactly right, then at least justified. I think that there is merit to this, I do agree that domestically he steered matters to the best of his ability with the information that he had. But again, his crushing arrogance and self-belief overwhelm all. By this time, Chamberlain was sure he was right about more or less everything. He dominated both MacDonald and Baldwin and dictated defence policy long before he became premier. The entire National Government, Herbert Samuel observed, was ‘run by Neville Chamberlain. What he says goes.’ This was especially true during the abdication crisis. Chamberlain, a model of outraged provincial respectability, decided that Wallis Simpson was indeed ‘absolute baggage’ as discussed in this chapter. If anything, I am now convinced that he was less forgiving, more set on abdication from the off, than Baldwin (who at least considered the morganatic marriage concept – even if he was never more than lukewarm on it).
The shadowy figure is, of course, the ex-MI5 agent Joseph Ball, a pretty unpleasant character who did conduct espionage and ‘dirty tricks’ campaigns, theoretically for the Conservative Party but more accurately for Chamberlain and his coterie, often through the Conservative ‘mouthpiece’ of
Truth. Chamberlain could be very sneaky when he wanted to be.
He was also staunchly anti-American. In 1932 he travelled to Canada to complete his father’s work by trying to fit the Import Duties Bill within a broader scheme of imperial tariffs at the Ottawa Conference of 1932, but here his hopes crumbled. ‘I never want to see Canada again!’ he said as he left. The following year, the World Economic Conference foundered almost immediately when Roosevelt launched the dollar on the path of competitive devaluation. Roosevelt believed that ‘European statesmen are a bunch of bastards,’ and Chamberlain so thoroughly returned these sentiments that he never afterwards hid his dislike and contempt for FDR and all things American. He was, indeed, the most anti-American prime minister Britain has ever had, which became more and more of a problem as war loomed.
@DensleyBlair: I was hoping for this, some “d’you know, I once knew a…” I have two, so here goes. The first of mine was from a few (cough) years ago when I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Honourable Artillery Company’s “Tommy Atkins” dinner. The guest of honour was Field Marshal Lord Inge, who was hilarious. Anyhoo. The evening then collapsed, as dinners fuelled by the military and City money tend to. I ended up chatting to a bankery chap, whose job, essentially, had been corporate espionage until he had been snapped up by a UK company as a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’. The level of bugging, and hacking, even ten years ago, was astounding. I was always wary of hotel / airport wifi, now I’m paranoid (and so should you!).
@TheButterflyComposer: This is either going to be utterly wonderful, or…
@stnylan: Thank you, the ‘ring of authenticity’ probably stems from my second story, ‘the case of the strange visitor’ when one of my uni housemates received (when the rest of us were out) a visit from a very strange chap who, my chum was convinced, was trying to recruit him. To be fair, my chum was precisely the right sort of person; very, very clever, and reasonably discreet (I am far too brash, and probably not fleet of mind enough, for intelligence work). He politely got rid as soon as he could, and nothing came of it…
@Specialist290: The book would be a few years old in 1936 so I figured that Milne could, plausibly, have stumbled across it in the library.
@Bullfilter: We’re not too early for code crackers, but for Bletchley specifically, a few year too soon, yet.
@DensleyBlair: Indeed
@TheButterflyComposer: A great post, thank you; I used to be very wary of Bletchley Park “we won the war” advertising which was unavoidable in the 90s and early 00s (I think that clever people, and largely not snobby and snooty was politically more palatable than gritty tales of troops in foxholes and the darker moments of the Battle of the Atlantic). But I now realise that I was being over sensitive and Bletchley Park is just one of the ways in which the British showed astonishing initiative and flair, and yes their work undoubtedly saved lives and shortened the war.
@Cromwell: I am unsure as to whether to revisit the Oxford spy ring, we’ll see…
@El Pip: The corporate hack I met had certainly maintained his soul, so I think that there can be hope. I’ve always wondered if the best operatives have to have a certain detachment (and Kathleen, to be fair,
might have that).
@Captured Joe: Incomparably worse!
@TheButterflyComposer: Can we just all accept the fact that for Pippy, life has not been the same since Queen Victoria died…
