Within three weeks of Churchill’s eightieth birthday, Anthony Eden renewed his pressure for a date to be set for Churchill’s resignation. On 21 December 1954 he went to see Churchill, to put the matter to him directly, noting in his diary:
Set out for No. 10 at 9.30. Found Clemmie there with W. She was charming & worried at my colour. W said he supposed I had been living too well in Paris. Then when Clemmie had gone after a long pause he said ‘What do you want to see me about?’ in his most aggressive tone.
I said that he had had my letter and said he should be ready to discuss it. And slowly the argument began. At first he would have nothing. All was as well as possible. There was no hurry for an election or for him to hand over, the end of June or July would do very well.
Laboriously I explained first that the new administration should have a chance to establish itself with the public. This gave us none. Second that it would place me in a much stronger position if I could take over in a month when an election was possible. Then, if my authority or mandate was challenged I would have the option either to fight it out in Parliament or to say very well let the country judge, & go to the country. This I could not do in July.
He wasn’t much interested in this but when I had made it quite clear that I was not interested either in taking over at the end of June he eventually agreed to meeting at 3 p.m. with the people I chose. But it was all most grudging. There was much rather cruel ‘divide et impera’. For instance, he asked me how I got on with Harold. I said ‘very well, why?’ He replied ‘Oh, he is very ambitious.’ I laughed.2905
When a group of senior Cabinet Ministers met Churchill on the afternoon of December 22, it was ‘a very painful affair’, Harold Macmillan noted in his diary.2906 Nominally at least, the object of the meeting was to discuss the date of the next General Election. In fact, however, Macmillan added, it was ‘to discuss how long Churchill should stay. He now suggests July 1955. Eden is in despair.’2907 According to Eden’s own account of the meeting:
After a certain amount of further desultory conversation & explanation of value of an option to a new Govt, W rounded on me and said it was clear we wanted him out. Nobody contradicted him. Earlier he had said that I had made no difficulty about end of July last year. I replied that he had first said Queen’s return if not sooner. End of July had been an afterthought.
At the end W said menacingly that he would think over what his colleagues had said & let them know his decision. Whatever it was he hoped it would not affect their present relationship with him. Nobody quailed. James said afterwards to me that it had been painful but absolutely necessary. He had to be told he could not pursue a course of ‘such utter selfishness’.
Eden was later joined in his room at the Foreign Office by Lord Salisbury and Harold Macmillan, noting in his diary:
We gloomily surveyed the scene. It was clear to us that Rab would give no help. I said that I had said my say & they agreed that no more could be expected of me. Therefore they would try to hold a meeting without W or me of the remaining colleagues before Christmas. Bobbety charged himself with this task & later Rab assured him that he would attend and only wished to be helpful.
What the result of all this may be I cannot tell except that the old man feels bitterly towards me, but this I cannot help. The colleagues are unanimous about drawling Cabinets, the failure to take decisions, the general atmosphere of ‘après moi le déluge’ & someone had to give a heave.2908
Before that ‘heave’ could be given, Churchill and Eden clashed in Cabinet, in the first week of 1955, over Eden’s attitude to a railway dispute which was threatening to lead to strike action. On January 6 Eden noted in his diary: ‘W & I had rather a sharp altercation at Cabinet. He attacked me for having been bellicose from the start & added “You’ll get your strike alright.”’ There was also much talk, Eden noted, at a private luncheon with Churchill ‘about the handing over’. That afternoon, R. A. Butler told Eden that he would like the handover to be at the end of the Commonwealth Conference, ‘but that Easter was more probable’.2909
On January 7 Churchill asked Macmillan to come to see him at 10 Downing Street. It was midday. ‘He had just got up and seemed very tired,’ Macmillan noted in his diary. The two men discussed ‘a large number of defence problems’, but, Macmillan added, with the exception of those concerned with air policy, Churchill ‘did not seem to “connect” very much’. At luncheon Churchill ‘cheered up’ and was ‘very charming throughout’, telling Macmillan that he ‘would go on until Easter anyway’.
Listening to Churchill talk, Macmillan had the impression that ‘all this was trailing his coat, hoping to be contradicted’.2910
Two days later, on January 9, Macmillan saw Lord Moran, who told him that he ‘really thought Churchill could not go on much longer’. Indeed, Moran told Macmillan, Churchill himself now ‘seemed reconciled to a life out of Office’.2911 According to Moran’s account of this same conversation, Macmillan declared: ‘Winston ought to resign. He didn’t interfere in my housing, just left it all to me. But since I became Minister of Defence I have found that he can no longer handle these complicated matters properly. He can’t do his job as Prime Minister as it ought to be done. He does not direct. Of course he is still tough and he isn’t bothered with principles like Salisbury.’ Macmillan added, according to Moran: ‘When the moment comes Winston will have to decide how he goes; he has missed so many curtains, when he could have gone with everyone applauding, that it won’t be as easy now.’2912
‘Harold’s intervention has left a bruise,’ Lord Moran noted in his diary on January 20, and he added: ‘The PM had come to depend on him and counted on his support if it came to a row. After all, it was Harold who had encouraged him to hang on. Winston called him the Captain of the Praetorian Guard. And now he has gone over to the other camp.’2913
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Churchill now made up his mind to fix a date for his retirement, but to do so privately, telling only the inner circle of his closest friends. ‘During the winter months,’ Colville noted that March, ‘alone with him at the bezique table or in the dining-room, I listened to many disquisitions of which the burden was: “I have lost interest; I am tired of it all”. So he finally decided to go at the beginning of the 1955 Easter Recess.’2914
That year, the House of Commons was to rise for the Easter Recess on April 7.
News of Churchill’s decision remained a tightly guarded secret, except among his intimates. On January 17 Brendan Bracken confided to Lord Beaverbrook: ‘Our friend, under no pressure from Clemmie, Eden or other ministers, intends to depart before July. He says, without any sign of regret, that it is time he gave up. His only wish now is to find a small villa in the South of France where he can spend the winter months in the years which remain to him.’2915