Walter Monckton was born in Plaxtol, Kent on 17th January, 1891. Educated
at Harrow and Balliol
College, Oxford, he served with the
Royal West Kent Regiment during the First World
War. He reached the rank of captain and won the Military
Cross.
After
the war Monckton became a lawyer and in 1932 he was appointed Attorney-General
to the Duchy of Cornwall. In this role he was adviser to Edward
VIII during
the abdication crisis of 1936.
On
the outbreak of the Second World War the British
prime minister, Neville
Chamberlain,
appointed Monckton as Director General of the the Press and Censorship
Bureau. The following year Winston
Churchill asked
him to work under Alfred
Duff Cooper as
Director General of the Ministry of
Information and Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
In
July 1941 Brendan
Bracken replaced
Cooper
as Minister of Information. Later that year Bracken sent Monckton
on a propaganda mission to the Soviet Union.
He wrote to a close friend about what he intended to do: "My
idea is not to go out and say smooth things but to be quite candid
about differences of ideology, and at the same time to let them see
that we on this side realise how desperately each needs the other's
help, and that in the last analysis we are on the same side."
In
1942 Monckton was Director-General
of British Propaganda and Information Services in Egypt
under Oliver
Lyttelton,
Minister of State Resident in Cairo.
Winston
Churchill wanted Monckton
to join his government. Monckton refused because he disagreed with
some of Churchill's political views. However, in May 1945 he agreed
to serve as Solicitor-General in Churchill's caretaker government
and in July went to Potsdam
as the United Kingdom delegate on the
Reparations Commission.
After
the war Monckton joined the Conservative
Party and on 15th February, 1951 was elected to the House
of Commons. Winston
Churchill became
prime minister following the 1951 General Election
in October and Monckton was appointed as his Minister of Labour. He
later wrote: "Winston's riding orders to me were that the Labour
Party had foretold grave industrial troubles if the Conservatives
were elected, and he looked to me to do my best to preserve industrial
peace."
Anthony
Eden appointed
Monckton as his Minister of Defence in 1955. However, he was the only
cabinet minister who disagreed with Eden's policy during the Suez
Crisis. Eden believed that if this dispute became common knowledge
it would bring his government down. Therefore he managed to persuade
Monckton not to resign and instead he became Paymaster General.
In
January 1957 Monckton was elevated to the peerage. After leaving the
House of Commons Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
was Chairman of Midland Bank (1957-64), President of the MCC (1956-57),
Chairman of the Iraq Petroleum Company (1958), Chairman of the Advisory
Commission on Central Africa (1960), and Chancellor of the University
of Sussex (1961-65).
Walter
Monckton died on
9th January, 1965.
(1)
Walter Monckton wrote about the abdication in his unpublished memoirs.
Before October 1936 I had been on terms of close friendship
with King Edward, and, though I had seldom met her save with the King,
I had known Mrs Simpson for some considerable time and liked her well.
I was well aware of the divorce proceedings which led to the decree
nisi pronounced by Mr Justice Hawke at Ipswich in October. But I did
not, before November 1936, think that marriage between the King and
Mrs Simpson was contemplated. The King told me that he had often wished
to tell me, but refrained for my own sake lest I should be embarrassed.
It would have been difficult for me since I always and honestly assumed
in my conversations with him that such an idea (which was suggested
in other quarters) was out of the question. Mrs Simpson had told me
in the summer that she did not want to miss her chance of being free
now that she had the chance, and the King constantly said how much
he resented the fact that Mrs Simpson's friendship with him brought
so much publicity upon her and interfered with her prospects of securing
her freedom. I was convinced that it was the King who was really the
party anxious for the divorce, and I suspected that he felt some jealousy
that there should be a husband in the background.
No one will ever really
understand the story of the King's life during the crisis who does
not appreciate two factors: The first, which is superficially acknowledged
by many of those who were closely concerned in the events of these
days, was the intensity and depth of the King's devotion to Mrs Simpson.
To him she was the perfect woman. She insisted that he should be at
his best and do his best at all times, and he regarded her as his
inspiration. It is a great mistake to assume that he was merely in
love with her in the ordinary physical sense of the term. There was
an intellectual companionship, and there is no doubt that his lonely
nature found in her a spiritual comradeship. Many find any assertion
of a religious side to the problem impossible to contemplate, but
it was there. The King had the strongest standards which he set himself
of right and wrong. They were often irritatingly unconventional. One
sometimes felt that the God in whom he believed was a God who dealt
him trumps all the time and put no inhibition on his main desires.
(2)
Walter Monckton, letter to Leonora Corbett (27th March, 1941)
I get horribly depressed from time to time with the burden
of this Ministry. There is so much to do, and with all his great and
good qualities my Master (Duff Cooper) is very hard to get to the
point of drastic action or to take great interest in a concrete form.
Still I cannot expect everything and it is something that he does
not worry or interfere with me. I am desperately anxious to get our
work in the USA into a reasonable condition. At present I feel that
the Ministry is flopping badly in its foreign propaganda, and that
big changes in personnel must take place to improve the thing, but
it is just in this direction that I find my Master unready to move.
(3)
Walter Monckton, letter to Leonora Corbett (2nd October, 1941)
I have
been in a frightful whirl during the last week over the Moscow project.
I feel that there is a piece of work to be done and that it is the
right gesture. I am not going out simply to get something or to make
a bargain, and there is some virtue in talking over things with friends;
and when two of you are fighting the same dragon and the lives of
all are at stake it is just as well to be friends. My idea is not
to go out and say smooth things but to be quite candid about differences
of ideology, and at the same time to let them see that we on this
side realise how desperately each needs the other's help, and that
in the last analysis we are on the same side.
(4)
Oliver Lyttelton,
Memoirs of Lord Chandos (1962).
About this time (1942) Walter Monckton came to join me as Director-General
of British Propaganda and Information Services. I asked him to stay
at Beit el Azrak and he added greatly to our small society. Few people
that I have known have been more persuasive, and his flexible mind
and musical voice, so often used to advantage in the courts, were
now turned either to the public business of propaganda or to embellishing
the gaiety and conversation at Headquarters.
(5)
Walter Monckton wrote about a meeting with Winston
Churchill in 1944 in his unpublished memoirs.
On some date in 1944... I was at a lunch party with the
Duchess of Kent at 'Goppins', and after lunch Mr Churchill took me
for a stroll in the garden. After some general conversation he said:
'You must think me a very hard man.' I knew at once that he was referring
to our difference about Malta... I said: 'No, I don't at all. I knew
one of us had to go, and I did not think it would be you.' He then
turned to me abruptly and said: 'It has been our only difference;
you were right, and I was wrong.' A little later he said that he would
like me to come back into public affairs, and to join his Government.
I said I was not a Conservative, and that I should feel difficulty
about that. He said he knew that, and did not think it made any difference.
It was a Coalition Government.
(6)
Walter Monckton wrote about the Potsdam
meeting on 3rd August, 1945.
He (Truman) would come prepared on each subject with a
short, firm declaratory statement of US policy, and when he had said
his little piece he did little in subsequent discussion except reaffirm
it. Winston was good but patchy. He was perhaps too ready to indulge
in long dissertations which were evidently not to President Truman's
taste.
Stalin, on the other hand,
spoke quietly, shortly, in little staccato sentences which Pavlov,
his young interpreter, translated immediately into forceful English.
In the discussions Stalin was often humorous, never offensive; direct
and uncompromising. His hair was greyer than I expected, and was thinning.
His eyes looked to me humorous, and often showed as mere slits, but
he had a trick of looking up when he was thinking or speaking, to
the ceiling to the right, and much of the time he would be pulling
at a Russian cigarette.
(7)
Walter Monckton wrote about the Suez
Crisis in his unpublished memoirs.
I was in favour of the tough line which the Prime Minister
took in July when
Nasser announced the nationalisation of the canal and I must say that
I was not fundamentally troubled by moral considerations throughout
the period for which the crisis lasted. My anxieties began when I
discovered the way in which it was proposed to carry out the enterprise.
I did not like the idea of allying ourselves with the French and the
Jews in an attack upon Egypt because I thought from such experience
and knowledge as I had of the Middle East that such alliances with
these two, and particularly with the Jews, were bound to bring us
into conflict with Arab and Muslim feeling
Secondly, and to an even
greater extent. I disliked taking positive and warlike action against
Egypt behind the back of the Americans and knowing that they would
disapprove of our course of action I felt that the future of the free
world depended principally upon the United States and that we should
be dealing a mortal blow to confidence in our alliance with them if
we deceived them in this matter.
One of the curious features
of the whole affair as far as the Cabinet was concerned was that partly
owing to a not unnatural habit on the Prime Minister's part of preferring
to take into complete confidence, when things were moving fast, only
those with whom he agreed, many of us in the Cabinet knew little of
the decisive talks with the French until after they happened and sometimes
not even then. A great deal of the public criticism of the conduct
of the Suez affair was directed at its abandonment in mid-stream rather
than at its beginning. There were some discussions, many of them at
night, with Washington, and I have always thought that the decisive
point was reached when Mr Macmillan was of opinion that the United
States would make our financial position impossible unless we called
a halt.
I ought to add for the
guidance of those who may read this, that I was the only member of
the Cabinet who openly advised against invasion though it was plain
that Mr Butler had doubts and I know that Mr Heathcoat Amory was troubled
about it. Outside the Cabinet I was aware of a number of Ministers,
apart from Mr Nutting and Sir Edward Boyle who resigned, who were
opposed to the operation.
Naturally I anxiously
considered whether I ought not to resign. Resignation at such a moment
was not a thing lightly to be undertaken. I felt that I was virtually
alone in my opinion in the Cabinet and that I had not the experience
or the knowledge to make me confident in my own view when it was so
strongly opposed by Eden, Salisbury, Macmillan, Head, Sandys, Thorneycroft,
and Kilmuir; for all of whom I had respect and admiration.
I knew that if I did resign
it was likely that the Government would fall, and I still believed
that it was better for the country to have that Government than the
alternative. What the Labour people had in mind was a kind of rump
of the Tory Government led by Butler, which they would support. This
could not last. Moreover, far more than I knew at the time, the ordinary
man in the country was behind Eden.
In any case in the result
I wrote to Eden telling him that, as the fact was, I was very far
from fit and did not feel I could continue in my office as Minister
of Defence. At the same time I told him in the letter that had it
not been for my fundamental differences with my colleagues over the
size of the forces, and over Suez, I should not have been tendering
my resignation at that moment. He behaved very generously, accepted
the position that I would not go on as Minister of Defence, but kept
me in the Cabinet as Paymaster General, thus preserving the unity
of the front.
(8)
Walter Monckton, memorandum (7th November, 1956)
I have remained in the Cabinet without resignation because
I have not thought it right to take a step which I was assured would
bring the Government down. The view which I have always expressed
has been against the armed intervention which has taken place on the
grounds -
(a) that we should have
half our own country and 90 per cent of world opinion against us;
(b) that it was difficult
to justify intervention on behalf of the invader and against the country
invaded;
(c) that it would inflame
opinion against us in the Middle East and upset the whole of the Arab
world;
(d) that it would jeopardise
our relations with the US which were the foundation of our international
and defence policy.
I have not changed my
opinion on these matters, but I have always felt that, inasmuch as
my opinion was not shared by any of my colleagues, a certain measure
of humility demanded restraint in action on my part. Moreover, I did
understand the danger of doing nothing because Nasser was succeeding
in undermining our position throughout the Middle East and North Africa,
and would continue to take similar steps in Africa as a whole if he
were not prevented. I further understood that such a policy was really
playing into the hands of the Soviet Government and that Russia at
the end of the day would be the predominating power throughout the
area concerned, and this I view, like my colleagues, with grave misgivings.
In all these circumstances
I have never been able to convince myself that armed intervention
was right, but I have not been prepared to resign. I have lived on
from day to day, and am still so living on, in the hope that I could
within the Cabinet contribute towards a settlement as soon as possible.
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