Norway Debate

• 1. Introduction

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  The Norway Debate opened at 14:45 on Tuesday, the 7th of May 1940, with Speaker Edward FitzRoy in the Chair. Three days later, Neville Chamberlain was gone as prime minister. In his place stood Winston Churchill, leading a coalition government that would govern the United Kingdom until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945. What happened in between was what Roy Jenkins later described as, by a clear head, both the most dramatic and the most far-reaching in its consequences of any parliamentary debate of the twentieth century. The official title in Hansard was simple: Conduct of the War. The occasion, however, was anything but simple. Across three days, from the 7th to the 9th of May, respected Conservatives rose against their own prime minister, a decorated Admiral of the Fleet appeared in the chamber in full uniform, and a backbencher delivered a peroration that ended in six words directed at Chamberlain like a pointed finger. The questions at the heart of those three days were not just about Norway. They were about whether Britain could fight and win a war under the people who were leading it.

• 2. The Road to May

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  Neville Chamberlain had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister in 1937, inheriting a National Government overwhelmingly made of Conservatives but supported by the small National Labour and Liberal National parties. Since Adolf Hitler had assumed power in Germany in 1933, Chamberlain's government had pursued appeasement as the primary tool of foreign policy, a strategy that culminated in the Munich Agreement of September 1938. Germany's full occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 made that strategy untenable. After Germany invaded Poland on the 1st of September 1939, the United Kingdom and France declared war two days later. Chamberlain then brought Churchill, a prominent Conservative backbencher who had last held government office in 1929, back into cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. A private note, written possibly by Government Chief Whip David Margesson, captured the paradox of the moment: even after diplomatic failure after failure culminating in the outbreak of war, Chamberlain was still, in that observer's estimation, probably the most popular statesman in the land. That assessment was about to be tested. On the 3rd of April 1940, in an address to the Conservative National Union, Chamberlain declared that Hitler had "missed the bus". Six days later, on the 9th of April, Germany launched an overwhelming attack on neutral Norway after swiftly occupying Denmark. The phrase would follow Chamberlain into the chamber like a ghost. Chamberlain's Assistant Private Secretary John Colville, writing in his diary on the 6th of May, the day before the debate began, thought the government would survive but worried that "the confidence of the country may be somewhat shaken".

• 3. First Day: The Temperature Rises

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  Clement Attlee opened for the Opposition and set a tone of surgical restraint. He avoided calling for a vote. Leo Amery later argued that this restraint was of greater consequence than all of Attlee's criticisms, because it made it easier for Conservative members to be moved by what they heard. Attlee quoted Chamberlain's own confident assertions about victory and contrasted them with the scale of the defeat in Norway. He raised the question of planning, a theme that would be revisited throughout the day, and attacked the grant of additional strategic powers to Churchill as placing one man in an impossible position. Most significantly, he separated Churchill from Chamberlain, calling him a victim of misdirection rather than a cause of failure. His closing words fell on Conservative members directly: "They have allowed their loyalty to the Chief Whip to overcome their loyalty to the real needs of the country." Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair followed, drawing on accounts from servicemen who had returned from Norway. He reported that Norwegians at Lillehammer had, with rifles alone, held a German force equipped with tanks, armoured cars, and bombing aircraft for seven days. He called for Parliament to speak out against half-measures. Then came the moment Harold Nicolson, who was present and possibly the pre-eminent diarist of British politics in the twentieth century, identified as the one that transformed an ordinary debate into a tremendous conflict of wills. Labour's Colonel Josiah Wedgwood had asked whether the government had any plan to prevent an invasion of Britain. When a Conservative MP invoked the Royal Navy in reply, Wedgwood shot back that the British Navy could perfectly well defend the country if it had not gone to the Mediterranean to keep itself safe from bombing. At that moment, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes arrived in the chamber in full uniform, six rows of medal ribbons visible. He passed a note to the Speaker asking to be called immediately on the ground that the honour of the navy was at stake.

• 4. Keyes and Amery Speak

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  Keyes opened by denouncing Wedgwood's remark as "a damned insult". The House, particularly David Lloyd George, roared its applause. Keyes then pivoted and delivered the debate's first open Tory rebellion. He told the House he had come in uniform for the first time to speak for officers and men of the fighting, sea-going Navy who were very unhappy. He described in precise operational terms what had not been done: German warships and transports that had forced their way into Norwegian ports had not been followed in and destroyed. He told the House those failures were not the fault of the men he represented. When he sat down at 19:30 to thunderous applause, Nicolson wrote that it was the most dramatic speech he had ever heard, and that the debate was no longer an investigation of Norway but a criticism of the government's whole war effort. The greatest speech of the day came later. When Leo Amery was finally called at 20:03, there were barely a dozen members present. Clement Davies, chairman of the All Party Action Group, which included some sixty MPs, urged Amery to play for time while he gathered an audience. Amery did, and the chamber filled. He opened with an analogy from his own experience in East Africa, likening the government's handling of Norway to a lion hunter who slept in a railway siding while the lion came hunting instead. As he moved toward his conclusion, he quoted Cromwell to Hampden: you must get men of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they will go, or you will be beaten still. Then came the ending. Amery turned to Cromwell's words to the Long Parliament and delivered the final six words in a near whisper, pointing at Chamberlain: "In the name of God, go." Harold Macmillan said later that Amery's speech had effectively destroyed the Chamberlain government.

• 5. Second Day: Chamberlain's Fatal Appeal

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  Labour had not planned to call a vote before the debate began. But Attlee, having heard Keyes and Amery, understood that discontent within the Conservative ranks was far deeper than anticipated. A meeting of Labour's Parliamentary Executive on the Wednesday morning approved forcing a division. When Herbert Morrison reopened the debate just after 16:00, he announced Labour's intention to divide the House. Jenkins described this as turning the routine adjournment motion into the equivalent of a vote of censure. Chamberlain then made what many in the chamber considered a disastrous intervention. Rather than appeal for national unity, he said: "I say this to my friends in the House, and I have friends in the House." Bob Boothby, a Conservative critic, called out "Not I" and received a withering glare. The stress on personal friendship reduced the politics of an existential war to a partisan appeal, and it shocked many present. David Lloyd George, who had been prime minister during the last two years of the First World War and was now 77 years old, took the floor for what would be his last major contribution to debate in a House he had sat in for 50 years. He dismissed Hoare's entire preceding speech in a single sentence and then delivered a sustained attack on the lack of preparation, the half-baked expeditionary force, the absence of coordination between Army and Navy, and the failures tracing back to the Munich Agreement. When Churchill intervened to accept complete responsibility for the Admiralty's actions, Lloyd George replied that Churchill must not allow himself to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues. A spectator in the gallery, Baba Metcalfe, recorded that the only face on the government front bench not stony at that remark was Churchill's own. He was swinging his legs and trying hard not to laugh. Lloyd George concluded with a direct call for Chamberlain to sacrifice the seals of office, saying the prime minister had met this formidable enemy in peace and in war and had always been worsted.

• 6. The Division

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  Churchill wound up for the government at 22:11, the first time in eleven years he had wound up a debate on behalf of any government. He defended the Norwegian campaign with robustness while saying not one word against Chamberlain, and Nicolson noted that by manner and oratorical skill Churchill created the impression of being nothing to do with the government he was nominally defending. At 23:00, the Speaker rose to put the question. Of the total 615 members, an estimated 550 or more were present but only 481 voted. The government's notional majority was 213. When the numbers came in, 41 members who normally supported the government had voted with the Opposition, and an estimated 60 other Conservatives had deliberately abstained despite a three-line whip. The government won, 281 to 200, but its majority fell to 81. Among those who voted with the Opposition were Amery, Keyes, Harold Macmillan, Bob Boothby, Nancy Astor, John Profumo, Quintin Hogg, and Leslie Hore-Belisha. Chips Channon and other Chamberlain supporters shouted "Quislings" and "Rats" at the rebels. Wedgwood led the singing of "Rule Britannia" and Macmillan joined him from the Noes lobby. Chamberlain left the chamber pale and grim. Colville recorded in his diary that the government was "fairly satisfied" but acknowledged that reconstruction of the Cabinet was necessary.

• 7. Aftermath and Legacy

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  On the 10th of May, Germany launched its western offensive. Chamberlain initially considered staying on but, after receiving final confirmation that Labour would not serve under him, he resigned and advised the King to send for Churchill. Churchill formed a coalition government whose war cabinet at first included Attlee, Greenwood, Chamberlain, and Halifax. The coalition held until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, when Labour left to begin its general election campaign. David Lloyd George called the Norway Debate the most momentous in the history of Parliament. Harold Macmillan believed it changed British history, perhaps world history. Andrew Marr noted that nothing about the outcome had been inevitable: the plotters against Chamberlain succeeded even though their natural leader, Churchill, was inside the cabinet and obliged to defend it. Betty Boothroyd, a former Speaker, chose Amery's speech when asked to name the most historic and memorable speech for a volume marking the centenary of Hansard as an official record, writing that Amery, by elevating patriotism above party, showed the backbencher's power to help change the course of history. The irony Marr identified remains sharp: Amery's devastating final words were originally spoken by Cromwell not to defend parliamentary democracy but to dissolve Parliament in favour of military rule.