SHARED OPINION
Whatever the outcome of the class war, Mr Blair will be the victor
FRANK JOHNSON
Asomeone who has suggested in this column that Churchill might have done likewise in 1940, I read with interest, as this page goes to press, that Mr Blair may have sought a negotiated peace at the height of the class war in 2000. 'No. 10 strives to quell education "class war" ' was how the Tirnes's headline put it.
After 1945, with the second world war safely won and the legend of his implacabil- ity safely established, Churchill never men- tioned that he had been party to possible negotiations with the Germans in 1940. He did not refer to the subject in his memoirs. Our knowledge of the matter is derived from Cabinet documents made public 30 years later. Even so, those documents are interpreted by Churchill's partisans — per- haps rightly — as showing that Churchill was just stringing along the old appeasers in his War Cabinet, Chamberlain and Halifax, and had no intention of entering into any negotiations with Hitler.
Suppose that Labour goes up in the opinion polls during this present class war and goes on to win the general election comfortably. Then we may be sure that Mr Blair and his partisans will deny that the Prime Minister ever sought peace during those dark days of June 2000 when Britain stood alone against Magdalen College, Oxford. What? Tony an appeaser? Ridicu- lous! He was the national symbol of defi- ance. Throughout the previous decade he had warned the nation, and the craven John Major, that Magdalen's ambitions were insatiable. Those dons would not rest until all comprehensive schoolgirls were deported to the east, to the University of Essex at Colchester. Those men sought a Magdalen in which all the undergraduates were the elder sons of dukes and marquess- es. That bulldog of a man, Tony, always knew that this was incompatible with both humanity and British interests.
When Magdalen finally declared war in 2000, using the Geordie schoolgirl as an excuse, Mr Blair was therefore our natural war leader. No one who lived through those days will ever forget them. All the nations of the kingdom, and all the regions, with their varying accents, spoke as one. There was Baroness Jay — the Dame Vera Lynn of the class war. There was Mr Gordon Brown — the Harry Lauder. There was Mr John Prescott — the J.B. Priestley, or possi- bly the George Formby or Gracie Fields. During the blackout, perfect strangers would embrace, for the gays supported the war effort too. Would that these clever young revisionist historians, who were not around at the time, stopped their envious attempts to debunk our national heroes.
But what if Labour goes down in the polls as a result of this present war? What if it goes on to lose lots of seats at the general election? Then Mr Blair and the Blairites will claim that the disaster was all because of Mr Brown's bellicosity in June 2000 on the aspiring middle class, the only people who now voted in British elections. It was no acci- dent that Mr Brown mobilised and struck while the Prime Minister was distracted by the demands of New Manhood and paternity leave. By the time Mr Blair was back at his desk, our forces were advancing on Oxford. What could Mr Blair do? He could not pos- sibly cast doubt on the justice of the cause while our men were in action. Mr Prescott and Mr Brown had whipped up a war fever in the Cabinet. Mr Mandelson was of course against it, but he counted for nothing among the by-now-crazed ministers because he was an old appeaser. He had negotiated the Munich of May 1997, the infamous deal with the middle class by which they voted Labour in exchange for no income-tax increases. In the end, by mid-June 2000, Mr Blair was able to arrange a peace of sorts, disguised as a new policy for university admissions, but by then it was too late. That aspiring middle class had become convinced that, on educa- tion, New Labour was just like Old Labour.
As always, then, Mr Blair will stand to gain whatever happens. Years hence, Mr Brown and Mr Prescott will write their war memoirs. If the polls go down and seats are lost, they will say that it was because Mr Blair was no war leader. If the polls go up and no seats are lost, Mr Blair will say that the bravest thing he ever did was to over- come the defeatism of Mr Prescott and Mr Brown and declare the class war of June 2000, supported in the War Cabinet only by Mr Mandelson.
My raising of the subject of Churchill's possible acquiescence in a negotiated peace in May–June 1940 seems to have interested a number of readers. (I had pointed out that the relevant minutes implied that Churchill had agreed in the War Cabinet with Cham- berlain and Halifax that it might be neces- sary, with France, to find out what peace terms were available. I thus brought down on myself the more bullying Churchillians the sort of siders-with-power who would have supported Chamberlain against the troublemaking Churchill over Munich in 1938 — as well as the dissent of the more civil, such as the author of the reader's letter which we published last week.) It is pointed out against me that Churchill had broken off from these War Cabinet deliberations to rally the rest of the ministers against negotiation. Therefore he had no intention of doing what Chamberlain and Halifax wanted. My reply to that is this: from his tone in the address to the larger group of ministers, Churchill seemed to use 'negotia- tion' and 'surrender' as synonyms. But sur- render was not what anyone in the War Cab- inet had proposed. The proposal was for negotiation. In any case, even as he was making his 'no surrender' speech to the wider ministry, Chamberlain and Halifax, as Churchill had earlier agreed in the War Cabinet, were drafting a proposal as to when, and how, peace terms might be sought — a draft which Churchill later agreed. Ali this is in Cabinet minutes which have been public for a quarter of a century but ignored by those who misguidedly think that .to quote from them reflects badly on Churchill, a realist who accepted that it might be nea essary to do business over territory with dic- tators, as he showed four years later vvi,t11 Stalin. On the subject of concessions to dic- tators east of the Elbe, the War Cabinet minutes for 27 May 1940 quote Churchill as saying that he would not object in principle, to negotiations 'if Herr Hitler was prepare° to make peace on the terms of the restor- tion of German colonies and the overlordship of central Europe' (my italics). Does tba,s mean he would have acquiesced in Hitler holding on to Prague and Warsaw? True:, Churchill added that, since Germany itself winning the war, such re agreement was 'most unlikely'. None t° less, he seems to have countenanced it. The written record is not conclusive one way or the other. It is open to the constrt, tion that Churchill was simply stringing tt:2-0 old appeasers along. Equally it is open the construction that he agreed with the al What is the truth? That is not a rhetorl7r question. It is a question seeking an answ which I wish readers would, if possible, Pr" vide (civilly).
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