Norway Debate - Background

Background

In 1937 Chamberlain (previously Chancellor of the Exchequer) had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister of a National Government, which in fact was overwhelmingly composed of Conservatives. It was opposed by the Labour and Liberal parties; there were small National Liberal, National Labour, and Liberal National parties supporting the National Government. Faced with a resurgent and irredentist Germany, Chamberlain had attempted to avert war by a policy of appeasement, only abandoned after Germany became more overtly expansionist with the annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. At this point a government supporter noted privately:

For two-and-a-half years, Neville Chamberlain has been Prime Minister of Great Britain. During this period Great Britain has suffered a series of diplomatic defeats and humiliations, culminating in the outbreak of European war. It is an unbroken record of failure in foreign policy, and there has been no outstanding success at home to offset the lack of it abroad... Yet it is probable that Neville Chamberlain still retains the confidence of the majority of his fellow country-men and that, if it were possible to obtain an accurate test of the feelings of the electorate, Chamberlain would be found the most popular statesman in the land.

Once Germany had rapidly overrun Poland, there was a sustained period of military inactivity lasting until April 1940 when, days after Chamberlain had told a Conservative Party meeting that Hitler "had missed the bus", Germany ended this "Phony War" by an attack in overwhelming force on neutral and unsuspecting Norway. In response to the German invasion, Britain sent limited land and naval forces to assist the Norwegians. Apart from naval success at Narvik the subsequent Norwegian campaign had gone badly for Britain for very basic reasons.

The allied plan for bringing aid to Norway and countering the German aggression was hastily improvised, too frequently changed and came finally to grief because lack of material and above all of air power never made possible the development of the execution in terms of the conception. But in view of the difference in strength between the opposing forces it could under no circumstances have succeeded.

Churchill had had a brilliant political career before World War I; first elected as a Conservative MP, he had become a Liberal Home Secretary and then First Lord of the Admiralty. During the war, as a result of the failure of the Gallipoli campaign he had been forced to take a more junior post, and then removed from government altogether by the Conservatives before becoming Minister of Munitions under Lloyd George. Post-war he had served as a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, before entering the political wilderness. His past views and actions on domestic issues (most notably his very active exertions to break the 1926 United Kingdom general strike) did not make him a natural associate of the labour movement. He had vigorously urged various policies outside the political mainstream; when he had first warned against the rise of Germany and argued strongly for rearmament he had largely been ignored. He had argued against appeasement even at the height of its popularity.

On the outbreak of the Second World War Chamberlain brought Churchill into government as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill therefore had direct responsibility for the conduct of naval operations, and was required to defend the government of which he was a member, whatever his private views. Churchill had pressed the Cabinet to ignore Norwegian neutrality and mine Norwegian territorial waters, and to be prepared to seize Narvik, in both cases to disrupt the export of Swedish iron ore to Germany in winter months when the Baltic Sea was frozen. On behalf of the Admiralty, he had also advised that a major landing in Norway was not realistically within Germany's powers.

The deeper background was the conduct of World War I, which offered parallels both politically and militarily.

• Politically, there were two obvious precedents,

1. the reconstruction of the Asquith government in 1915 as a wartime coalition still led by the peacetime leader of the majority party,
2. (more dangerously for Chamberlain) Asquith's subsequent replacement in 1916 by Lloyd George of which Churchill later said:

• Militarily, speakers attempted to draw lessons from the experience (in many cases their experience) of the earlier war, explicitly mentioning the Antwerp expedition and the attempt to force the Dardanelles as relevant to the hazards which were run or should have been run in Norway. (Churchill had been associated with both, so in part this was a coded discussion of the soundness of Churchill's military judgement, on which opinion was sharply divided).

The debate was an adjournment debate, in which the motion technically is "that this house do now adjourn"; under Westminster rules in such debates, held to allow for wide-ranging discussion of a variety of topics, the question is usually not put to a vote. In this case the Opposition forced a vote to demonstrate their deep concern, and the vote was therefore effectively on a Motion of Confidence.

Unless otherwise referenced, quotes below are from the full text of the debate as given in Hansard, or the Official Report, Fifth Series, volume 360, columns 1073–196 and 1251–366. (see links at bottom of article).