Leo McKinstry - Attlee and Churchill: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace

By the same author

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Turning the Tide

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Jack and Bobby

Rosebery

Sir Alf

Spitfire

Lancaster

Hurricane

Jack Hobbs

Operation Sealion

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Leo McKinstry, 2019

The moral right of Leo McKinstry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84887-660-6

E-book ISBN: 978-1-78649-574-7

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84887-661-3

Quotes from the speeches, works and writings of Winston S. Churchill are reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of The Estate of Winston S. Churchill. The Estate of Winston S. Churchill

Printed in Great Britain
Atlantic Books
An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
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2627 Boswell Street
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www.atlantic-books.co.uk

This book is dedicated to
my dear brother Simon
and my sister-in-law Pauline

Section one

Churchill with his mother and brother, 1889 (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Churchill as a cadet, 1893 (Print Collector/Getty Images)

Attlee at University College, Oxford, c. 1902 (Gillman & Co/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Attlee pictured with boys at the Boys Club, Limehouse, c. 1910 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Churchill at the Sidney Street siege, January 1911 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Churchill at Armentires, 11 February 1916 (Keystone/Getty Images)

Attlee in uniform, c. 1917 ( Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans)

Churchill with his daughter Diana on Budget Day, 1928 (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Attlee speaking at a rally, 24 July 1938 (Daily Herald Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)

Attlee tries out a Bren gun, December 1939 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Churchill visits bombed buildings in Londons East End, 8 September 1940 (Mr Puttnam/Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)

Atlantic Conference between Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt on HMS Prince of Wales, 10 August 1941 (Lt. L.C. Priest/Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)

Members of the War Cabinet and ministers in the garden at No. 10 Downing Street, 16 October 1941 (Express/Getty Images)

Cartoon illustrating support of Churchill by David Low, Evening Standard, 14 May 1940 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

King George VI with Attlee, Churchill and other ministers in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, 4 August 1944 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Churchill waves to the crowd on VE Day, 8 May 1945 (akg-images/Interfoto)

Attlee speaking at the UN Conference, 1945 (Ralph Crane/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images)

Stalin, Harry Truman and Churchill during the Potsdam Conference, July 1945 (Everett Collection/Mary Evans)

Section two

Churchill campaigning at Walthamstow Stadium, 26 June 1945 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Attlee at his Limehouse constituency, 5 July 1945 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Attlee and colleagues celebrate victory in the 1945 General Election, 26 July 1945 (Daily Herald Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)

Churchill delivering his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri, USA, March 1946 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Attlee gardening at his home in Stanmore, 1945 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Attlee leaves Downing Street with his wife, Violet, 8 February 1950 (Monty Fresco/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Churchill painting at Chartwell, 7 January 1946 (Fremantle/Alamy Stock Photo)

Churchill arrives to register his vote in the General Election, 25 October 1951 (Edward G. Malindine/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

The new Queen arrives back in Britain from Nairobi following the death of George VI, February 1952 ( Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Attlee and Violet travel to the Labour Party Conference in Morecambe by bus, 30 September 1952 (ANL/Shutterstock)

Churchill makes a speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Margate, 1953 ( Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Churchill addresses Parliament, 30 November 1954 (Bettman/Getty Images)

Churchill and Attlee in conversation, 23 June 1959 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Attlee at Churchills funeral, 30 January 1965 (Heritage Images/Keystone Archives/akg-images)

Statue of Churchill in Woodford, January 1965 (Jean Tesseyre/Paris Match via Getty Images)

The unveiling of the Attlees statue in the House of Commons, 12 November 1979 (Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Getty Images)

T HIS BOOK, my twelfth, has been a major undertaking and there are a large number of people to whom I am indebted for backing me on the journey to publication.

First, I would like to thank James Nightingale, my heroic editor at Atlantic, who never lost faith in the project. He always gave me wise advice, ensured that the bulky original manuscript was turned into a manageable draft, and presided over the whole process with efficiency, humour and generosity. He also had an excellent team at Atlantic, including Kate Straker on publicity and Monica Hope, who was a superb copy-editor. In addition, my excellent agent Bill Hamilton, whose agency A.M. Heath marks its centenary this year, was a constant source of encouragement, even in the darkest hours.

I am grateful to those distinguished authors and historians who kindly read the manuscript, particularly Joshua Levine, Professor Andrew Roberts, Tom Bower, Sinclair McKay, Professor Tim Blanning, Professor David Wilson, and Professor Derek Beales. A special thanks to my friend Professor Simon Heffer, whose historical wisdom and output are a constant source of inspiration.

Much of the research took place in archives and I am grateful to the staff of many institutions for their unfailing courtesy and helpfulness. These include the British Library, the Bodleian in Oxford, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, the National Library of Wales, the London School of Economics, the University of Iowa, the Liddell Hart Archives at Kings College, London, the Imperial War Museum, the Peoples History Museum in Manchester and the National Archives at Kew. Anna Towlson, the Special Collections Manager at the LSE guided me through some of the papers of the long-serving Labour MP John Parker, while Jane Davies and Dominic Butler of the Lancashire Infantry Museum enabled me to have full access to Attlees unpublished First World War memoir. Darren Treadwell of the Peoples History Museum highlighted some of Churchills early contacts with the trade unions, as well as the records of Labours National Executive. But the biggest research debt I owe is to the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge, where the director Allen Packwood and his team were always diligent and insightful.