Halifax had reached the limit of his appetite for Churchillian rhetoric, and wrote in his diary of this meeting that “it does drive one to despair when he works himself up into a passion of emotion when he ought to make his brain think and reason”. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”: Winston Churchill delivers a speech on the BBC in May 1940. The old strategic and ideological battle lines that had separated Churchill from the appeasers since the mid-1930s were once again starkly exposed. Such an emotional argument caused a sudden rift in the room.
Said Churchill at the meeting: “Even if we were beaten, we should be no worse off than we should be if we were now to abandon the struggle… The approach proposed was not only futile, but involved us in a deadly danger… If the worst came to the worst, it would not be a bad thing for this country to go down fighting for other countries which had been overcome by the Nazi tyranny.”
DARKEST HOUR 1.03 HOW TO DEFEAT BRITAIN FULL
The ensuing discussion at the meeting would finally pitch Halifax and those who supported him – a large proportion of the ruling Conservative Party – full force against one of their own: Churchill, whose stubborn will to fight on alone seemed, to Halifax, impervious to reason and hard evidence and against the country’s best interests. Operation Dynamo – the evacuation of Dunkirk – had begun, but it was looking likely that the troops would be surrounded and unlikely that British ships would make it into the harbour to rescue more than 10 per cent of them. Churchill’s inclusion in the line‑up of the Liberal Party leader, Sinclair – a long-time critic of appeasement and an old friend – was in defiance of protocol and clearly an attempt to strengthen a hand weakened by the facts on the battlefield.
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