According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, four fifths of the UK population now live in urban areas (here).
Looking across the Vale of York to theYorkshire Dales courtesy of DocsPics
For most of us, the rural landscape that surrounds the settlements in which we live and work is something to be enjoyed during moments of leisure. We do not depend on it either for sustenance or income, but value it as a place for relaxation, exercise and enjoyment.
The fields, woods and moorland that form by far the largest part of the British landscape still have a significant role in the national economy, but this is no longer an essential element of our prosperity or an essential means of feeding the population. Tourism rather than agriculture is becoming the main business of the countryside. A vast network of country lanes and footpaths provide access to even the most remote areas for anyone who wishes to reach them and the desire to enjoy the beauty, peace and tranquillity that they may offer. This is of unquestionable value to the life and spiritual well being of our crowded homeland, but it is no longer a vital means of sustaining life. In a sense, and for the vast majority, the countryside, and enjoyment of all that it has to offer, is becoming little more than a lifestyle option, to be enjoyed or ignored at will.
Here is a story that throws a very different light on the role of the countryside in our recent past, and illustrates the way that attitudes have changed within living memory.
In A History of Britain, Simon Schama suggests that the weeks that followed the resignation of Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in 1940 were arguably the most important in our long history. War had been declared on Germany as a result of a series of events that, combined with political mismanagement, could have led to no other conclusion. A military expedition to deprive the Nazis of vital mineral resources in Norway had failed, and very much nearer home the British army was being driven back towards the beaches of Dunkirk with the very real prospect of annihilation. Having entered the war with armed forces that were ill equipped, and utterly dwarfed by our opponents, it now seemed that defeat would be swift and humiliating. Chamberlain’s successor would have a stark choice; to fight on alone, without any prospect of finding allies to provide support, or to seek an accommodation with Hitler through negotiation.
Of the two candidates for the premiership, one was a diplomat and politician of great experience with a reputation for being calm, levelheaded and dependable. The other was a politically ambitious maverick, much given to emotional rhetoric and histrionics, who was neither liked nor trusted even within his own party. Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill could not have had less in common either temperamentally or in terms of political style. They were also divided on the most vital issue of the moment; to continue to fight, or to negotiate. They both sincerely believed that their preferred course of action was in the best interests of the country.
Halifax had entered politics more out of a sense of duty than with any great personal ambition, yet his undoubted intellectual ability led him to high office. After a term as Viceroy of India he had returned to domestic politics and was foreign secretary at the time of Chamberlain’s resignation. Born into a Yorkshire landowning dynasty, his interests outside politics were typical of his background, class and time. Hunting was the great passion in his life, with shooting coming a close second. He was also active in the administrative affairs of the Church of England. Such a CV as this would be more than enough to make him a laughing stock in the 21st century, but only sixty years ago it was no barrier to the premiership. A modest man of great integrity, Halifax’s role in history has been eclipsed by Churchill’s charisma and achievements, yet his contribution was of crucial importance, as we shall see.
As foreign secretary, his attitude to Chamberlain’s attempts to appease Hitler seems to have been ambivalent, and some revisionist historians have even portrayed him as a crypto-fascist with more than passing sympathy for the Nazi cause. This is unjust and simplistic as his personal correspondence shows. Halifax had served in the First World War and carried with him memories of the awfulness of trench warfare. He was not alone in feeling that another conflict with Germany should be avoided at almost any cost. He was well aware of the barbarity of the Nazi regime, particularly after the Kristallnacht pogrom, and was revolted by the prospect of this evil regime becoming the rulers of much of Europe.
The choice of successor to Chamberlain lay, in the first instance, with the outgoing prime minister himself. He was required to advise the King on which man he should ask to form a government, and Halifax was the obvious choice. Churchill had little support within his own party, was disliked by the civil service who considered him to be an unpredictable liability, and he was not the King’s preferred candidate. All that Halifax needed to do was wait, and the highest office in the land would be offered to him without even having to compete for it.
Halifax’s response to this situation was astonishing. He refused to let his name go forward to the palace on the grounds that he considered Churchill to be better equipped for the task. Such selflessness is rare in politicians at any time; in the context of present day political life it would seem quite inconceivable.
So Churchill entered Downing Street as the second choice – if choice at all – of the King, the outgoing premier, the civil service and his own party; a very perilous start to his premiership. If that was not bad enough, he knew that he must keep Halifax on as foreign secretary and include him in his war cabinet, in spite of the fundamental difference between the two men on policy. If he sacked his rival his administration would loose the one member who gave it some kind of credibility.
Events in Parliament shortly after Churchill’s appointment set the scene for the conflict that was to follow. When Halifax entered the House of Commons he received an ovation from members who would have preferred to see him do so as prime minister, but when Churchill followed him into the chamber he was greeted almost in silence. He spoke only briefly, but it is Churchill’s speech that is remembered today, and not Halifax’s popularity:
I would say to the House, as I said to those who joined this government, that I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind….. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
With these words Churchill committed himself to a policy that brought him into conflict on two fronts; with the Germans on the field of battle and in cabinet with cautious opponents who considered that outright victory was impossible and that the only prudent course was to seek a negotiated settlement that might preserve some vestige of independence for Britain. Halifax was the undisputed champion of this faction and without his support in cabinet Churchill’s hands were tied.
The summer of 1940 was one of the finest in living memory, and many contemporary commentators remark on the contrast between the glorious weather, the beauty of the countryside, and the dark fears of defeat and subjugation that had become inescapable. During the last days of May 1940 a series of cabinet meetings were held at which the choice between continued resistance to Hitler’s headlong assault and seeking a pragmatic, but perhaps dishonourable, peace was considered. At this moment, the very traits in Churchill’s character that had caused his unpopularity were brought into play. With pugnacious, pig-headed obstinacy he refused to countenance arguments for any course of action other than a total commitment to fight for an eventual victory, however unlikely such an outcome might be.
Abandoning the normal caution of the historian, Simon Schama points to this period, during which one man’s bloody-minded intransigence and self-belief prevented capitulation, as being the defining moment not only of Churchill’s career, but also in the whole of our long history. The great speeches that rallied a nation in its darkest hours were to come later, and it is on these that Churchill’s public recognition rests, but there would have been no arena in which his charismatic leadership could sustain the morale of the nation if he had acted otherwise at this moment. It is ironic that this battle was fought secretly, in the twilight world of the cabinet room, and that Churchill’s chief opponent was that most honourable of men, Lord Halifax. What is certain is that the outcome of this trial of political strength shaped the destiny not only of their own country, but also of millions of people throughout Europe and the rest of the world for decades, if not centuries, to come.
A deadlock that was paralysing government when action and decisive leadership was urgently needed could only be broken by some intervention that would change the views of one of the adversaries. This came about when Halifax paid a short visit to his home in Yorkshire. He recalls in his memoirs that he took a long walk on his estate trying to clear his mind of the political problems that were troubling him. Eventually he reached the top of a hill where there was a fine view out over the Vale of York, a sight familiar to this countryman since childhood. For Halifax this was not just a beautiful panorama, to be admired for a few brief moments before wandering on. This was his home, the landscape in which his personality and character had been formed as he grew up. More than that it represented a historical continuity that stretched back beyond the Industrial Revolution and the turmoil of medieval times, beyond the Norman Conquest and beyond the Saxon Dark Ages, even to the barely glimpsed aeons before the Roman occupation. He was fortunate to have been born in an age when history was still taught in its entirety, so that those who cared to take an interest in such things were able to see their own times in the context of all that had gone before. And the story that this chronological portrayal of history told was one of progress, often uncertain, imperfect and slow with many wrong turnings, but always towards a free, just, and democratic society in which ordinary individuals were protected from oppression.
Halifax began to consider how he would feel if this beautiful and quintessentially English landscape was occupied by an evil and brutal invader. This premonition must have been very graphic for he actually mentions the prospect of jackboots tramping the Yorkshire lanes, sullying this countryside that spoke to him of peacefulness and the struggle to establish a well-ordered and compassionate world founded on personal freedom; the very antithesis of everything that the Nazi regime stood for. The ancient countryside of the Vale of York that stretched out before him was a symbol of a culture in which fascism had no place.
By the time Halifax returned to London he had decided to give Churchill his full support, and the united war cabinet was able to prepare for a conflict in which there would be only one overriding objective; final victory.
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References: Churchill, Roy Jenkins; History of Britain, Simon Schama; Dicrionary of Naional Biography
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