On the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, we should all be grateful for Winston’s bar-room bravado Phil Craig It is 1940. Britain has a new prime minister. In Washington President Roosevelt is addressing his Cabinet. Writing in his diary, Roosevelt’s interior secretary, Harold Ickes, noted: “The president said that he supposed that Churchill was the best man that England had, even if he was drunk half of the time. Apparently Churchill is very unreliable when under the influence of drink.” There has been a lot of respectful self- censorship on the subject of Winston Churchill and the bottle. Keepers of the flame, like official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, are defensive about the drinking, in case reference to it somehow gives comfort to their enemies – enemies like John Charmley whose pro-appeasement, Churchill-bashing books are full of photographs of the great man looking plastered.
I was making a TV series and writing a book on 1940, and my chief consultant was Gilbert. I love Gilbert’s work and would generally side with him against the Churchill-bashers, but the more I thought about it, the more Churchill’s bar-room bravado seemed an important part of the story. A perfect metaphor for the odd, intoxicating atmosphere of this year. My American consultant, historian Warren Kimball’s view was simple: “Churchill was never falling-over drunk, but he was drink dependent, booze was his fuel.” Along with the tall hats and bow ties, the soggy cigars and the two-fingered salutes, drinking was part of Churchill’s personality. There would be champagne, wine and brandy with every meal and then a weak whisky and soda to carry around later. “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me”, he would say. And it is hard to imagine all that drive and panache, all those big ideas and expansive phrases, without the glass in his hand and the booze coursing through his veins. Churchill liked to be at the centre of informal late-night brainstorming sessions with favoured ministers and generals. “The Crazy Gang”, one official called them. His mind would race and a plethora of memos, directives, and letters would result. Although 65, he was working harder than at any other time in his life and carrying huge responsibilities at a moment of unsurpassed crisis, with bad news breaking by the hour. No wonder he needed something to keep his spirits up. One evening he met a general at the door with the words: “I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired. Let’s have some bubbly!” The icily sober and logical Lord Halifax, Churchill’s foreign secretary and chief rival, likened the choice facing Britain in 1940 to that between “common sense and bravado”. Halifax and his deputy, “Rab” Butler, were convinced that Churchill was leading the country towards “avoidable disaster”. They believed that with Adolf Hitler dominant in Europe, the Soviet Union allied to Berlin and the United States firmly on the sidelines, Britain faced an impossible situation. To them, Churchill’s policy was based more on wishful thinking and the brandy bottle than a reasoned assessment of Britain’s position in the world.
Halifax and Churchill’s arguments about Hitler’s generous-sounding peace offer in late May went to the heart of the differences between them. All Churchill’s instincts were to fight on and see what might happen, believing that a show of defiance could change everything. But Halifax did not see the war in such melodramatic terms. At this moment Britain’s leaders were as close to caving in as they ever came. Had Halifax been sitting in Churchill’s chair then a peace deal would have been attempted. But out of the mouth of the embattled prime minister a kind of script for the Battle of Britain began to emerge. Instead of accepting the logic of defeat, Britain would rearm, regroup and remotivate herself. From her island fortress she would spit defiance, her sailors would deter invasion and her pilots would claw the Luftwaffe out of the skies. Even though her cities might be flattened she would put up such a glorious show of resistance that the rest of the world, and especially the US, would realise that she was worth supporting.
Such an epic scenario must have seemed to many of his colleagues like the worst kind of wishful thinking. Romantic, implausible pub talk. But it was all the policy the prime minister had to offer. Somehow, and quickly, Churchill had to find the words to persuade the rest of the British people to act out their parts in the script. And he did.
Churchill’s “Fight on the Beaches” oratory worked on many levels, but one was undoubtedly that of the saloon-bar brawler, all boozy bluster: “Come on then, I’ll take on the lot of you.” Britain, as even Churchill knew, could not hope to win this war alone. But by refusing to lose it in 1940 she managed to give hope to the occupied peoples of Europe. After a decade of fascist success here was proof that Hitler could be resisted. All this took the ingenuity, courage and sacrifice of millions of ordinary people, but there’s no doubt that it also took the single most impressive act of political leadership of the century. And if some of that will power came from a bottle then why not admit it? If, 60 summers ago, you had believed that Hitler could be beaten, you were probably a bit pissed too.