The Peoples King (24 page)

Waiting in the last days of November to hear Baldwin's views on
the proposed morganatic marriage, Edward consulted Samuel Hoare
and Duff Cooper. These were the two men that he had wanted as
witnesses to his previous meeting with the Prime Minister - a request
that had been refused by Baldwin. Edward mentioned these friends
again, and Baldwin agreed that the King could consult them on a
private basis. Edward had been careful to observe the formality of this
application, Duff later wrote, in the same way that he 'behaved with
punctilious constitutional rectitude throughout the crisis'.
²⁶

Edward first saw Hoare, who was sympathetic but not encouraging.
He warned that any attempt to press the marriage plan would meet
with a stone wall of opposition from the Cabinet. Duff Cooper took
a different, more optimistic, view. He was determined that Edward
should stay on the throne but strongly advocated delaying the mar­riage. He urged Edward to ignore the furore and go ahead with his
coronation, staying away from Wallis in the meantime. People would
then see, said Duff, that he had done his best to get on without her
but found it impossible. He might then, as King, proceed to marry
Mrs Simpson. But the King refused even to consider the suggestion of
postponement - 'for a reason', said Duff, 'which did him credit. He
felt it would be wrong to go through so solemn a religious ceremony
as the Coronation without letting his subjects know what it was his
intention to do. I could not argue against such scruples, but could only
respect them.'
²
'

Edward summoned his Prime Minister on 15 November and asked
him whether he had considered Harmsworth's proposal. Baldwin
replied that he was not yet ready to offer a considered judgement. But
if the King wanted a 'horseback opinion', he added, it was his view
that Parliament would never agree to pass a Bill allowing a morganatic
marriage. He then asked the King if he wished him to examine the
proposition
formally.
This, he said, would require putting it before the
whole Cabinet and also before the Prime Ministers of the Dominions -
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Irish Free
State.
²⁸
The Dominions were formerly British possessions that were
now independent states, joined to the mother country by a common
bond of allegiance to the Crown.

Edward agreed to Baldwin's proposals. The Prime Minister left
quickly; the meeting had been short, and an agreement swiftly reached.
But it was yet another turning point in the crisis, even more significant
than the Hardinge letter. As the door closed behind Baldwin, it dawned
on the King that 'with that simple request I had gone a long way
towards sealing my own fate'.
²⁹
For by submitting the issue as a matter
for constitutional 'advice', he had put himself and his marriage into
the hands of his Ministers. He had now bound himself to submit to
whatever he was told - since the 'advice' would, in practice, take the
form of an instruction from the Prime Minister to the King. If the
Cabinet and the Dominion governments would not support a morgan­atic marriage, then the King would have no choice but to follow the
'advice'. In other words, Edward had put himself at the Government's
mercy. 'The Battle for the Throne has begun', wrote Chips Channon
in his diary, when he heard about the meeting.
³⁰

Baldwin was acting correctly in considering the wishes of the
Dominions. The Statute of Westminster of 1931, which followed the
Imperial Conference of 1926, had formally recognized and defined
the new concept of Dominion status, and declared in its preamble that
any change in the royal succession, style or title required the assent
of Dominion parliaments (neither Australia nor New Zealand had
adopted the Statute by 1936, but they were expected to behave as if
they had).
³¹
Baldwin had a fair idea already of how at least one of
the Dominions would respond, since he had discussed the topic at
length with Stanley Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner, on
15 November. Bruce had made it clear to Baldwin that the Australian
Prime Minister, Joseph A. Lyons, took the same view as himself - that
marriage to Wallis was simply unacceptable.

Max Beaverbrook returned to London from his truncated trip to
North America on the following day, the 26th, and drove straight to
the Fort. He was appalled at the rapid turn of events and strongly
urged delay. Baldwin's offer to consult the Cabinet and Dominions
would carry great risks for the King, he argued, and should be stopped
immediately. But Edward felt unable to do so: he feared that this
would involve him 'in a long course of seeming dissimulation for
which I had neither the talent nor the appetite.'
³²

Beaverbrook resigned himself to the inevitable. He later attributed
Edward's weak strategy - indeed, absence of any viable strategy at all
- to his lack of political nous:

His interests were never political. They were social in both senses of the term.
They were social in the sense that he liked sports, parties and the company of
brisk and lively people. They were also social in the sense that he was deeply
interested in conditions of ordinary life and work, and in the expansion of
British export trade in the markets of the world.

But now, said Beaverbrook, he was facing 'a grave political problem
quite unprepared for the task'. He had shown the same lack of political
savoir faire in his dealings with the court. It was not that King Edward
was inexperienced, rather that the kind of experience he had gained
was of no use to him in dealing with political men. 'He had mixed
more freely with the people than any Heir Apparent had ever done
before,' wrote Beaverbrook, 'but he had hardly mixed at all with
politicians ... he had friends in coal-mines, but not in the Cabinet.'
³³

Baldwin and Chamberlain were not allowed to forget about these
'friends in coal mines', once Edward's visit to South Wales had taken
place. On 26 November, during Oral Answers in the House of Com­mons, questions were put to Ernest Brown about the usefulness of
what was being done in the Special Areas. These questions made
implicit references to the King's recent visit to Wales and used the
phrase 'something must be done'. 'As this matter has been in the hands
of the right hon. Gentleman and his Department for the last 15
months,' asked the Labour MP George Hall,
'is it not time something
were done
?'
³⁴
Even though it was not permissible to refer directly to
the King, for constitutional reasons, the radical Glasgow MP, David
Kirkwood, was determined to mention directly the King's tour of
Wales. 'Seeing that the right hon. Gentleman was in such close contact
with the King,' he asked Brown, reminding the House in this way that
Brown had accompanied the King to South Wales, 'did not the King
suggest that the means test should be done away with?' The Speaker
admonished Kirkwood with the reminder that, 'The hon. Member
must not bring in the King's name',
³⁵
but Kirkwood had successfully
used the King's visit to draw attention to the Government's failure on
unemployment. He had also given weight to the policy of the op­position by associating with it the name of the King.

Despite his left-wing politics, Kirkwood had been a staunch sup­porter of the King for many years, ever since he had been summoned
by Edward, when Prince of Wales, to give an account of his political
views. 'I have never talked to any man in my life', he said after the
meeting,

who was more eager to know just what the workers were thinking ... We
were two British citizens talking about our land and our people. A man's a
man for a' that. It was as if we were on a ship in a storm, when class and creed
and caste are forgotten.

Kirkwood added that he felt he had 'been in the presence of a man
who had a big job to do, and is earnest, and determined to do his job
well.'
³⁶

The King's visit to Wales had led to increased concern outside the
House of Commons about the Special Areas. In the week that followed,
the
New Statesman
sent some journalists to South Wales to investigate
conditions there. 'What is to be done about it?' they asked.'
Something
ought
to be done at once . . .'
³⁷
'The people want
something done',
observed John Rowland at the Welsh Board of Health, 'and they think
the King is out to help.'
³⁸
The
Seaham Weekly News,
a local paper in
the impoverished region of County Durham, made the same point.
Referring to the dreadful conditions which were being allowed to
continue in South Wales, Durham and other distressed areas, it argued
that, 'What is needed is action, immediate and stern, not columns
of words, with much promise and little performance.'
³⁹
Fear was
expressed, too, that the anger of the unemployed would erupt in
serious unrest. Edward himself, as Prince of Wales, had warned the
American Ambassador, Robert Bingham, of this risk in 1934. There
had to be change in conditions in Britain, he said, and a correction of
social injustice among the English people which would relieve poverty
and distress - 'that this must come and that it would come either wisely,
constructively and conservatively, which would save the country, or
it would come violently, which would destroy it. . .'
⁴⁰

In May 1926, just ten years before the King's visit to Wales in 1936,
a General Strike had almost brought the nation to a standstill. It had
been sparked by an attempt by coal owners to cut wages and extend
working hours in the pits, which was firmly resisted by the miners.
The workers of Britain had rallied to the miners' cause, in a national
strike that was seen by the Government as a serious threat to stability.
'Constitutional government is being attacked', warned Baldwin, the
Prime Minister. The General Strike, he added, 'is a challenge to Parlia­ment, and is the road to anarchy and ruin.'
⁴¹
Those who identified
themselves with the position of the Government - the ruling classes -
rushed to take over the running of essential services. Most of these
volunteers had never done any menial work in their lives before,
commented the
Illustrated London News:

Armoured cars escorted convoys of lorries carrying food through the London
streets and a battalion of the Grenadier Guards marched into the docks. Young
men from Oxford and Cambridge poured into the capital to volunteer as bus
drivers, train drivers and special constables.

'We feel that the heart of England must be sound', added the magazine,
'when we read that Mr C. E. Pitman, the Oxford stroke, is driving a
train ... the Headmaster of Eton . . . and about fifty of his assistant
masters have enrolled as special constables . . . Lord Chesham is
driving a train and the Hon. Lionel Tennyson is a special.'
⁴²

After only nine days, the General Strike was brought to an end. The
miners stayed out until December, with little support apart from
nearly a million pounds sent to the Miners' Relief Fund from the trade
unions of Russia. The miners were eventually forced back to work by
cold and starvation, having to accept both longer hours and lower
wages. Baldwin then introduced the Eight Hours Act to lengthen the
seven-hour day officially. It was swiftly followed by the 1927 Trades
Disputes Act, which made any repetition of a general strike illegal.
The disaffection of the people continued to fester, especially after the
Depression of 1929. Just after the creation of the National Govern­ment in 1931, the men of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon refused
duty in protest against cuts in the pay of the ratings - some lost more
than 10 per cent. The Board of Admiralty responded swiftly to reduce
the cuts, but the nation was shocked by this naval mutiny. It was
one of the reasons for the suspension of the Gold Standard, and it
contributed to the climate of concern that led to the Special Areas Act
in 1934. In the Areas themselves, social unrest grew.

Protests against the Government became increasingly common,
especially hunger marches from the Special Areas to London. In one
of the largest marches, in 1934, there were eighteen main contingents
of Scottish, Welsh and English unemployed people. Before reaching
London they had slept in 188 towns and marched through many
hundreds of other towns and villages.
⁴³
When they finally arrived in
the metropolis, conflict broke out: police charged the crowds, and
fighting between them and the marchers broke out in and around
Hyde Park.
⁴⁴
This intrusion annoyed Chips Channon. I walked to the
House of Commons,' he wrote in his diary on 10 November, 'as we
had been warned not to bring cars.' The lobbies were full of hunger
marchers, he complained,

come to protest against the new unemployment regulations, the so-called
Means Test. . . Later, I went out into the lobby and found it full to suffocation
with marchers, who were being incited by Communists. Many of them wore
red shirts and ties. At the door was a queue singing the Red Flag. It really
seemed as if trouble must break out. But it didn't, and about 8.30 I took the
last look at these unfortunate people who have been goaded and misguided
by their leaders into walking from Lancashire and South Wales.
⁴⁵

'These marchers are a public nuisance and a public danger,' warned
the
Daily Telegraph
on 29 October 1936.
⁴⁶
Demonstrations were
held locally, too. In February 1935, thousands of people in Merthyr,
including women with prams and young children, stormed the office
of the Unemployment Assistance Board, breaking windows and
destroying records. Next day, the unpopular benefit scales that had
been introduced by the Board were suspended.
⁴⁷
The anger of the poor
and unemployed was making itself felt.

Behind the strikes and hunger marches, as well as the growing
influence of the Labour Party, the classes of wealth saw the spectre of
Communism stalking Europe. 'These Stay in Strikes are a product of
Russia,' wrote Lord Wigram to the Viceroy in June 1936, 'and without
doubt Russian influences have been at work both in France and Spain.'
He added, 'One cannot help admiring Mussolini.'
⁴⁸
The ruling class
feared that 'the Labour Party might at any moment turn red as rapidly
as a lobster in a kettle of boiling water', commented the novelist Sir
Compton Mackenzie
⁴⁹
- and that the anger of the unemployed would
erupt in revolution.

South Wales was seen as a flashpoint. The
Spectator
warned in
September that South Wales was 'ripe with atheism, and ripe for
revolution'. It argued that although Communism was making slow
headway in South Wales (not more than thirty seats out of many
hundreds had been won on Borough and County Councils by the
Communist Party), the influence of Communism was growing, fanned
by measures of social injustice such as the Means Test.
⁵⁰
In a leaflet
entitled 'The People Can Save South Wales!', a militant socialist
stated that

The struggle against the Means Test and the New Regulations can be ten times
more effective by challenging the whole policy of the National Government
towards South Wales . .. Today
the flag of revolt
needs to be raised to new
heights to save the people of South Wales from destruction.
⁵¹

Many of the unemployed in Wales regarded the National Govern­ment as a government of capitalists whose interests were directly
opposed to those of the working class. The
South Wales Slave Act
Special,
published by Lewis Jones for the South Wales National
Unemployed Workers Movement, made this point clearly. The
Government, it said, 'is supported in Parliament by 196 company
directors who hold between them 836 directorates, 33 landowners,
144 high society people, 136 Army, Navy and Air Force officers, and
135 lawyers to put them right when they go wrong . . . SUCH A
GOVERNMENT MUST BE BROUGHT DOWN.'
⁵²
In this climate
of popular disaffection, the King's visit to Wales in November -
drawing attention to the poverty of the unemployed and insisting that
something must be done - was most unwelcome to the Government.
It was yet one more example of a series of episodes in which he seemed
to side with the working class against those in power.

In every way, in his public life and in his private life, King Edward
VIII was a headache for the Establishment. Baldwin decided to
throw his energies behind the easier problem: the King's wish for a
morganatic marriage to Mrs Simpson. On the morning of Friday
27
November, he summoned a meeting of the Cabinet in his room at
the House of Commons. The press was informed that the Cabinet was
going to discuss the gravity of events in Spain. But although the conflict
there was certainly grave, it was not on the agenda. Instead, for the
first time in Cabinet, Baldwin raised the marriage crisis. Armed with
press cuttings from American magazines and newspapers, he brought
Ministers up to date and told them he believed the King to be passion­ately in love. He also reported on Edward's proposal of a morganatic
marriage, saying that he would not ask Cabinet for a decision that
day. It was clear, though, that nearly everybody shared the Prime
Minister's opposition to the idea. Only Duff Cooper pleaded on the
King's behalf, arguing that he should be crowned as planned in May
1937 - and that only then should the marriage question be brought
forward.
⁵³

Baldwin explained that he would need to consult the Dominion
prime ministers, and it was agreed that Chamberlain, Simon, Hoare
and Sir Thomas Inskip, as well as himself, would help Malcolm
MacDonald, the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, to draw up
telegrams to send to the Dominions.
⁵⁴
The discussion was kept secret
from Edward, even though, as head of state, he was supposed to
receive the papers relating to Cabinet meetings. The following day,
he was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the usual red box of official
documents, expecting to see the minutes of the meeting. 'But the
solitary paper that I found inside, purporting to describe the moment­ous discussions of that day,' he found to his disappointment, 'was
blank except for a perfunctory paragraph relating to the carriage of
arms to Spain.'
⁵⁵

Telegrams were sent from Baldwin to the prime ministers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa at 12.15 pm - the next day, 27 November. No telegram was sent to the Irish Free State; instead, a message was taken to Dublin personally by Sir Henry Batterbee, the Acting Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. The leaders of five overseas nations were thus being informed about a British problem that was still unknown to most of the people of
Britain. Baldwin set out the background to the crisis and presented
three choices:

(1)
   
The King's marriage to Mrs Simpson, she to become Queen.

(2)
   
The King's marriage to Mrs Simpson without abdication but on the basis
that she should not become Queen, and accompanied by the necessary
legislation on this basis.

(3)
   
A voluntary abdication by the King carried out in favour of the Duke of
York.'
⁵⁶

The Dominion prime ministers were advised that at a later stage they
would be asked to consult their respective cabinets. In the meantime,
said Baldwin, he would appreciate their personal views and their
thoughts on how the public in their Dominion might view the matter.
To maintain strict secrecy, special arrangements were made to encode
and decode the messages by trusted staff. All the telegrams were
marked 'Secret and Personal' and bore the special prefix 'A'. In the
course of the crisis, 333 telegrams on the subject were despatched
from the Dominions Office and 90 were received in reply.
⁵⁷