Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill Devises a Scheme to Project War-Time Unity, Ensuring Members of His Governing Coalition Would Issue a Joint Statement Supporting Its Candidates

From the collection of Viscount Stuart, Conservative Party Chief Whip and Cabinet member who was at the meeting

James Gray Stuart, 1st Viscount Stuart of Findhorn, was the Chief Whip of Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party in the House of Commons from January 1941-1948. The job of Chief Whip is to insure that members of the party attend key votes, and that they vote vote as the party leadership desires. As is traditional, the Chief Whip is also appointed as Parliamentary Secretary of the Treasury, which is a Cabinet position, so he served Churchill in that post as well. During the war years, Lord Stuart’s easy manner and dedication to hard work won Churchill’s respect, and the two men worked in close harmony. Years later Stuart wrote a candid, insightful and vastly entertaining memoir of his experiences, which he entitled “Within the Fringe: An Autobiography.” He later served as Secretary of State for Scotland under Churchill and then Sir Anthony Eden.

In “Within the Fringe”, Stuart showed respect for Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement of Hitler he had opposed, stating that Chamberlain made his mistakes because he was an honest person and assumed the same of others; Hitler had lied to him and betrayed him. On May 8, 1940, after a series of disasters in the war, Chamberlain barely survived a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons, but the opposition Labor and Liberal parties made it clear that they would not participate in a coalition government headed by Chamberlain, as they had no confidence he was capable of providing the leadership to win the war. Since the full unity and joint determination of the British people were absolutely essential at that moment, with a potential German invasion imminent, Chamberlain realized he must resign. He first asked Lord Halifax to succeed him, but Halifax fortunately (he was an accommodationist who favored cutting a deal with Hitler rather than continuing the fight) declined on the grounds that he was in the House of Lords and in no position to lead the Commons. Chamberlain then went to Winston Churchill, who agreed to take on the onerous responsibility of Prime Minister in a dark hour for Britain. As Stuart states, Churchill “accepted the great responsibility without, I have been assured, displaying any doubts about his ability to carry it, and thus the Great Wartime Coalition, as he called it, came into being. As Mr. Churchill himself said to me a few years later, ‘For once I did not even have to argue my own case’”.

On January 15, 1941, Churchill appointed Stuart as Chief Whip. The appointment was not without controversy, as there were other candidates. But Stuart got the nod at the insistence of Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s close friend who, Stuart says, “always had the best interest of the Prime Minister as his main objective.”

Britain remained a functioning democracy despite the war, and as members of the House of Commons died or resigned, by-elections were held to replace them. The four major parties – Conservative, Labor, Liberal and National Liberal – had an electoral truce, and as a district came open, the party that held it ran a candidate but the others in the coalition did not contest it. But that did not mean that the seats were uncontested; they were hotly contested by independents. These independents were often loose cannons, and they gathered support from voters of the three parties not running candidates, and others dissatisfied with the war or conditions at home. Many voters were not reconciled to voting for the government-approved candidate of a party to which they were opposed, and in the first half of 1942 four by-elections were won by gadfly independents. The Prime Minister and Wartime Cabinet were dismayed by the victories of the discordant voices, and concerned that they gave the impression of divisiveness, both at home and abroad. They realized that something must be done before the nuisance of these independents became an impediment to governing and spread the wrong message overseas.

Churchill had a proposed solution. In the book “By-Elections In British Politics”, Chris Cook writes of its result, a result illuminating the concerns Churchill had: “The party leaders banded together and issued a joint message, signed by Churchill, Ernest Brown (the National Liberal leader), [Labor Party head Clement] Atlee and [Liberal Party head Archibald] Sinclair, to electors at subsequent by-elections. The text, apart from the name of the constituency, served for the rest of the war and read as follows: ‘The verdict recorded by a single constituency is flashed around the world as though it were the voice of Britain that had spoken, and [they inserted the name of the particular constituency] will realize that it has the responsibility at this moment of indicating to the United Nations, and to neutral countries, that we are united among ourselves in our unflinching determination to organize our total resources for victory.’”

But it would be a mistake to think that all the coalition partners believed that the rest would simply be willing to issue such a united declaration, with Brown perhaps considered the most recalcitrant. Stuart reveals the backstage maneuvering engaged in by Churchill to get the agreement, and above statement. His concept was symbolized by a kangaroo that Churchill drew to illustrate what the scheme would look like, and he explained it to the Cabinet members with humor. Stuart writes: “The sketch…was made by Winston Churchill during a wartime meeting at No. 10 to explain his idea for what became known as the ‘kangaroo scheme’. The problem was to devise a method of sending joint messages to candidates at by-elections who were supporting the National Government. The leaders of the two sections of Liberals – Ernest Brown and Sir Archibald Sinclair – could not agree to sign together under the Prime Minister (as leader of the Conservatives) and Mr. Atlee (as leader of the Labour Party). Winston explained to Atlee, Sinclair and myself that he would ‘carry’ the Ernest Brown Liberals with the Conservatives – ‘like a kangaroo’. First he drew the Conservative and then the Liberal ‘baby’ looking out. As he did so he said to me, ‘You must see that E.B. does not make a mess in my pouch. I suppose the kangaroo has some strict working agreement with its young.’ He then drew the Labour kangaroo, carefully pointing out to Atlee that it was not so big. As an afterthought, however, he turned up the tip of the tail, saying ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t give you a tuned-up tail, Clem. After all, Labour isn’t quite so down as all that.’ Then he completed the drawing and said to Sinclair, ‘That’s you, Archie. That tiny little one at the bottom.’”

Thus, with this sketch, did Churchill illustrate for his governing war-time coalition how it would jointly promote its candidates, and encourage its supporters in Britain and around the world.

Stuart took the kangaroo sketch home with him, and we offer it here. It is in fact three sketches in Churchill’s hand, on his wartime Prime Minister’s letterhead, drawn in London at No. 10 Downing Street, mid-1942, exactly as published. We obtained it directly from Stuart’s descendants, and it has never before been offered for sale. A hard cover copy of Stuart’s book is included.