Six Minutes in May by Nicholas Shakespeare

Author:Nicholas Shakespeare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

THE DEBATE

15

TUESDAY 7 MAY

‘The dead columns of Hansard cannot reproduce it.1 They can only provide those who were present with the necessary aids to memory.’

ALFRED DUFF COOPER MP

‘The doped somnambulists have been jerked back to consciousness.’

Daily Mirror, 9 May 1940

No matter how often the story is told, nothing seems predestined about the upheaval that took place in the House of Commons on Tuesday 7 May 1940. As in the Dardanelles, hardly anyone behaved on that day as expected. When Giles Romilly’s fellow war correspondent on the Express, Alan Moorehead, looked back at Gallipoli, he felt in a curious way that the battle ‘might still lie before us in the future; that there is still time to make other plans and bring it to a different ending’.2 The same is true of the Norway Debate, with the Chamber on the opening afternoon packed to capacity, and Members jammed in at the Bar to watch a piece of parliamentary theatre that for dramatic tension vied with Gielgud’s performance in King Lear at the Old Vic.

The Commons assembled at 2.45 p.m. The Speaker and Chaplain walked up the Chamber, turned and knelt at the Table. The Members lining the green benches bowed their heads as the Chaplain prayed for them. ‘May they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals, but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind.’

The sources available to historians are punishingly similar, yet there is a contemporary account which has been overlooked, written by Harold Nicolson in the pressure of the moment, and cabled to the now defunct Montreal Standard. Not cited before, Nicolson’s words describe the scene as it unfolded, without the blemish of over-familiarity or hindsight, capturing the picture and the mood from the perspective of someone who was present throughout. This is how it begins: ‘The general opinion on that first day of the debate was that the Opposition would not press for a vote, but that the Commons would be able to indicate that the country as a whole, not content with the present administration, would expect an early strengthening of the Cabinet.3 No unusual dramatic developments were foreseen.’

At 3.45 p.m. the Serjeant at Arms advanced to the desk, bowed to the Speaker, and lifted the Mace from the top of the Table to the rack below. The House transformed itself for a few moments into a Committee of Supply. Nicolson informed his Canadian readers: ‘The House never allows procedure to be altered by historic events since that procedure is even more historic.’

A proposal was made that ‘a sum not exceeding £319,655’ should be granted His Majesty the King for salaries and expenses of the House of Commons, including a grant in aid of the Kitchen Committee.

The Speaker in charge of the Norway Debate was a tall, crusty cattle-farmer who had been wounded at Ypres. A taciturn ex-soldier, Captain Edward FitzRoy was famously ineffusive, though not always.

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