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Beaverbrook: The honest intriguer

Patrick Cosgrave

Was Beaverbrook an intriguer, a manipulator, a Machiavellian figure? And how successful was he in this nether world of politics? Writing to Evelyn Wrench of perhaps the most important manoeuvre of his life — the bringing down of the Asquith government in 1916 and its replacement by the Lloyd George coalition — Beaverbrook wrote:

The destruction of the Asquith Government . . . was brought about by an honest intrigue. If the Asquith Government had gone on, the country would have gone down.

It is clear that Beaverbrook meant by this not only that the intrigue was honest because it was patriotic, but that it was honest in its methods. He seems — and Mr Taylor* amply illustrates this — to have been convinced that, despite his own delight in the trappings of Machiavellism, and his often deliberate encouragement of others to think that he was a master manipulator, his techniques of politics were essentially open and above board. His contribution, Mr Taylor writes, to the change in Conservative leadership in 1911 did not lie in his cleverness: "The later stories of his elaborate lobbying are mythical, even when originated by Aitken himself. Aitken's real task was to hold Law steady." And when, against all the odds, he brought Asquith and Law to his home in 1913 to discuss the Irish question his

part was to bring the two leaders together. The suggestion for a meeting came from Asquith. Law answered by proposing Cherkley as the meeting place. On 14 October Asquith drove down secretly, in one of Aitken's cars. He found Law and Aitken playing double dummy — not the only occasion when bridge entered into their relations. The two leaders were constrained and hostile. " Bonar Law was harsh and Asquith subsided into silence." Aitken relieved the tension by telling a

comical story about Blumenfeld. His hearers laughed "and a contact of personality was instantly established." Aitken drew the moral that "negotiations proceed better and national interests are more readily served when the negotiators on both sides are not too serious." Aitken always acted on this principle.

In Mr Taylor's view — and in his own when he was being really serious about himself — Beaverbrook was a political catalyst, a disinterested go-between, serving only the public interest. Certainly, except when he dreamed of supreme leadership — and it was always only a dream — the rewards he sought for himself were paltry. "I am very anxious to obtain appointment as [Law's] Parliamentary Secretary ", he wrote to his friend Hazen in 1911, "Will you ask Borden [the Canadian Prime Minister] to send private and personal message to Bonar Law recommending me?" And it is also the case that, when he reached the summit of achievement, he instantly wanted to come down again. In the midst of his tremendous struggle to build aircraft for the Battle of Britain, and when he was slowly, with Churchill's support, gaining the edge over the Air Ministry, he wrote to the Prime Minister, "1 should be relieved of my duties after my successor has been informed of all our projects. . . . My decision to retire is based on my firm conviction that I am not suited to working with the Air Ministry." And again, at the height of the battle, he penned a letter never sent because he feared it would upset Churchill. It read, in part,

Things get a little out of focus with me. No man who is awake all night can give good judgements or sound opinions in the morning light.

If I ' thought I could carry the burden, I would gladly undertake it. But it is entirely beyond my physical powers.

The paradox of Beaverbrook's career lay in the contrast between his obsessive concern with power and the machinations of power and his inability to apply himself to its use. It is true that he lacked physical robustness, but he could show remarkable endurance over a period, and he enjoyed a long life. The deficiency in application in fact probably had a nervous source. "I always thought ", his doctor wrote to him, after a serious illness in 1913, "that what was wrong with you was chiefly nervous and I still think that is at the bottom of it." It may also have been connected with his only true, and truly obsessive, interest — the character and motivation of the human personality. It is always at the point where men are seen in the exercise of power, where personality and politics come together, that Beaverbrook's writing is at its most vivid. Even if the details are wrong, or embellished, one feels one is at the heart of the matter when he describes, in his neo-primitive Biblical style, the development of a political event. He was with Churchill when news came of the outbreak of war in 1914 and has etched the scene for us with the simple artistry of a master: For my own part, I simply saw a man who was receiving long-expected news. He was not depressed; he was not elated; he was not surprised. He did not put his head between his hands, as many another eminent man might well have done, and exclaim to high heaven that his world was coming to an end. Certainly he exhibited no fear or uneasiness. Neither did he show any signs of joy. He went straight out like a man going to a well-accustomed job.

One of the most distinguished features of Mr Taylor's panoramic, yet terse and epigrammatic, book is the way in which he describes the writing and editing of Beaverbrook's chronicles of his times. Towards the end of his life these became his principal occupation, and he laboured at them with love. But, even as they grew and developed under his hand, even as details and colour were added or, sometimes, invented, the preoccupation with defining the essence increased rather than diminished. He would heighten language to provide a starker contrast in conflict as in his superb evocation of relations between Asquith and Grey which "were of that distant but friendly kind which an ocean might have with a contiguous mountain peak." And he has recorded for all time the elusive personality of Arthur Balfour when he describes Balfour's relations with Bonar Law thus: It would be hard to analyse Lord Balfour's attitude towards Bonar Law, his successor in the Tory leadership. It was not exactly friendly. Quite definitely it was not hostile. Never was there the slightest hint of an intrigue encouraged in that quarter against the new leader. And yet Lord Balfour was not helpful. The keynote seemed to be a slightly cold but absolute correctitude.

In analysing politics and humanity Beaverbrook combined fascination and disinterest. The disinterest, like the deceptiveness, the concealing of aims which he often liked to practise, and which aroused dislike and fear, was in part a defensive cloak, thrown around himself to conceal his consciousness of being an outsider. It was also, as detachment, a way of testing his gently cynical appraisal of the well-springs of human action; and it was invariably employed for good. He was, as Mr Taylor writes, "a foul-weather friend" and his powers, his wealth and his influence were more often than not used, not merely to help those in distress — even when, like Asquith, they were enemies — but in the service of the public good as well. In all his accounts of the shunting of individuals about the political scene, of the interplay of personalities, there is a clear appreciation of what personality the political situation, the national interest, required. Mr Taylor and Mr Michael Foot have both argued that, contrary to his books, Beaverbrook's real hero was, not Law, but Lloyd George. It seems to me that he had no heroes, and no great concern with, or even belief in, the permanence of issues: what he had was an extraordinary clear and abstract grasp of what the public interest required — or what man it required — in any given situation.

His understanding of the nature of the operations of power in such situations was cold and clear, and was served by his comprehension of human nature. When Neville Chamberlain died and Churchill was tempted, as the head of a great national coalition, to allow the leadership of the Conservative Party to pass to someone else, while himself remaining, detached on the peak, Beaverbrook expostulated with him:

I pointed out to him the dangers of leadership in the hands of another. No matter how loyal such a colleague might be he would be sure to listen to arguments from backbenchers complaining of the conduct of their Prime Minister. He would have conflicts over appointments and promotions. He would be at one remove from the Chief Whip of the Conservative Party.

The opportunity to succeed Chamberlain afforded him a benefit and advantage which should not be neglected. Churchill decided to accept the offer. He became leader of the Party.

It was in the small things of life — small, that is, in relation to his wealth — that Beaverbrook was selfish: in larger matters he served others.

Yet, for all the clarity of his vision, one is continually drawn back to his extraordinary lack of application in politics. Even at the height of his achievement, whenhe built the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain, he was in a continual turmoil of nerves, and continually on the brink of resignation. He could always see what needed to be done, he felt he could do it and hungered to do it, but he won more ultimate peace of mind and happiness in getting others to do it. He longed for office during the Second World War and sought it through Churchill. Once he had it he spent too much time trying to get rid of it, and it required all Churchill's patience and authority to keep him at the Ministry of Aircraft Production as long as he was needed there. It is a little tedious to find, in an historian of Mr Taylor's seniority and ability, another rehearsal of the relative merits of the two men. The fact of the matter was that they were indispensable to one another and indispensable to the war effort. Churchill's genius and sureness of touch — together with the calm and certainty that came over him when crisis and storm were at their worst — was never more surely in evidence than when he made the startling appointment of Beaverbrook to head aircraft construction. But his capacity for leadership was much greater than Beaverbrook's, while Beaverbrook's capacity for understanding men and matters was much greater than that of his chief. He understood Churchill better than did any other colleague:

Rancour is the worst fault. Churchill is essentially a man without rancour. He has been accused of being bad-tempered. It isn't true. He could get very emotional, but after bitterly criticising you he had a habit of touching you, of putting his hand on your hand — like that — as if to say that his real feelings for you were not changed. A wonderful display of humanity.

In one field — as an historian — Beaverbrook was certainly great. It is salutary for younger historians to re-read his chronicles and to discover not just the drama, the concern with essence, that characterise them, but the complexity of their construction and argument, concealed as it is by apparent artlessness. His influence on the history of his time is more debatable: so complicated are the politics of the First World War that it will probably be for ever impossible precisely to define the influence of any actor on the margins, such as Beaverbrook was. His contribution to the war effort in 1940 is beyond dispute, and without it the Battle of Britain could not have been won. His true greatness, however, lay in his character, and it transcended his manifold faults, indulgences and petty appetites. It is this more than anything else that Mr Taylor makes clear in his monumental tribute to his old friend and patron. Like Beaverbrook, Mr Taylor thinks that most history is accident. But he is sceptical about the human actors who cross its stage; and Beaverbrook was much less of this frame of mind. He was always clear about the policies he advocated — and they were usually wise ones — but he was readier to trust a man than a policy.

Beaverbrook's faith was put not in human nature but in individual human natures. He sought greatness in his fellow men, and saw it as capable of existing alongside the most grievous faults and inconsistencies. His cynicism about motivation never caused him to lose his trust in ultimate capacity, because his morality was based on an understanding of power and an appreciation of national interest. It is this quality of understanding things and men, of seeing into them and not being appalled, of being able to make his faith in possibility march hand in hand with his comprehension of frailty, that constitutes his real fascination. His biography recalls a time when history was as much about what men were as about what they did, and it is important that we re-learn that lesson of interaction between the two which he has to teach us. In any history of twentieth century Britain Beaverbrook must bulk large, and he will do so more for his understanding of that history, and for the size of his personality in it, than for what he achieved through power or in office.