On Wednesday 7 May 1940 the House of Commons began debating the innocuous sounding motion ‘That this house do now adjourn.’ It was a very indirect, very British, way of conducting a parliamentary inquest into the humiliating military defeat in Norway, and quickly turned into a test of the Chamberlain government’s parliamentary numbers, which the historian and former politician Roy Jenkins has described as being
‘by a clear head both the most dramatic and most far-reaching in its consequences of any parliamentary debate of the twentieth century. It was also one in which nearly every MP who occupied or sought first rank took part…’
One of those in the first rank who made a telling contribution was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes, a supporter of the then First Seal Lord Winston Churchill’s bolder and more adventurous approach to strategy, who used the occasion to advocate subtly and indirectly for a change of government to be led by Churchill. Dressed for the occasion in full admiral’s uniform and medals to reinforce he was speaking for the navy, Keyes ended his speech, as Jenkins records, ‘by playing on the most obvious but nonetheless evocative chord in naval history: ‘One hundred and forty years ago Nelson said, ‘I am of the opinion that the boldest measures are the safest,’ and that still holds true today.”’ Invoking Nelson —the hero of Trafalgar, who saved Britain from invasion by Napoleon— signalled the significance of the historical moment of the debate.
But an even more historically loaded and forceful rhetorical blow was landed in the same debate by a renegade Tory Leo Amery. To understand its point and impact we need to digress for a moment and go back to the 1640s and 1650s. During those two decades, England experienced a revolution, involving two major civil wars, the execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, the establishment of a republic and the eventual restoration of the monarchy. The driving force of the revolution was the parliamentary army commanded by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell believed in a hierarchy of talent and godliness, and, believing that fighting spirit not social rank was the only criterion for the selection of his armored cavalry, famously remarked that: ‘I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than what you call a gentleman and is nothing else.’
By 1653 these godly and committed Ironsides had grown impatient of the Long Parliament, which was unable to make a decision about its dissolution and replacement with a new form of republican government that would protect the revolution from its royalist enemies. On 20 April, now totally fed up with the Long Parliament’s indecision, Cromwell, assisted by a squad of musketeers, entered the chamber of the House of Commons and dissolved it with these well-known words: ‘It is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.’ By the end of the year, Cromwell was the Lord Protector, the first ever republican head of state in the British Isles.
Like Nelson’s famous lines, Cromwell’s were known by every English public schoolboy —including Leo Amery and the MPs listening to the debate on 7 and 8 May 1940. Here is Amery’s diary entry about his most famous and decisive parliamentary speech:
‘I looked up my favorite old quotation of Cromwell’s about his selection of Ironsides and then remembered his other quotation when he dismissed the Long Parliament. I doubted whether this was not too strong meat and only kept it by me in case the spirit should move me to use it as the climax to my speech, otherwise preparing a somewhat milder finish… Down to the House… But it was not until after eight that I got up in a House of barely a dozen Members. However they streamed in pretty rapidly… and I found myself going on to an increasing crescendo of applause… I cast prudence to the winds and ended full out with my Cromwellian injunction to the Government…’
Here is the speech’s peroration, given in the House of Commons on 7 May 1940.
”Somehow or other we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory. Some 300 years ago, when this House found that its troops were being beaten again and again by the dash and daring of the Cavaliers, by Prince Rupert’s Cavalry, Oliver Cromwell spoke to John Hampden. In one of his speeches he recounted what he said. It was this:
“I said to him, ‘Your troops are most of them old, decayed serving men and tapsters [publicans] and such kind of fellows… You must get men of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they will go, or will be beaten still.”
‘It may not be easy to find these men. They can be found only by trial and by ruthlessly discarding all who fail and have their failings discovered. We are fighting today for our life, for our liberty, for our all; we cannot go on being led as we are. I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words which I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”’
Note Amery’s instinctive grasp of the importance of decorum. He understood that if the mood wasn’t right invoking Cromwell would do more harm than good, making his criticism of the government seem exaggerated. The speech’s effect was shattering. As Jenkins relates, ‘Lloyd George told Amery that it was the most dramatic climax of any speech he had ever heard, And Amery himself thought it helped push the Labour party to force a division at the end of the second day.’ That division exposed the Chamberlain government’s failing support in the House, and by 6 p.m. on Friday 10 May Winston Churchill was the new prime minister. It just so happened that that very morning Hitler had chosen to end the Phoney War by invading France and the Low Countries. Another dramatic historical turning point offered. Another English public schoolboy soaked in the drama of his country’s literature and history was now in charge. What would he say — what could he say— to affect the course of history?
