Subsequently, Labour Leader Clement Attlee and his deputy, Arthur Greenwood, agreed to go to Bournemouth to put two questions to Labour’s National Executive Committee: (1) ‘Would they enter a Government under the present Prime Minister?’ (2) ‘Would they come in under someone else?’ 1 Attlee would relay the answers to No. ![]() The next day Chamberlain met with Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, and agreed that the Labour and Liberal parties should be invited into the Government. Chamberlain lost the support of a significant number of MPs in his National Government: in a division of the House (effectively a vote of confidence) on 8 May, the Government majority was reduced from over 200 to 81. Catalogue ref: CN 11/6 (53)Īfter British Forces failed in their attempt to stop the German occupation of Norway in April 1940, and while Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty might have expected to be in the firing line, it was Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who faced a barrage of ferocious criticism in the House of Commons during the Norway debate. That evening, Winston Churchill ‘walked with destiny’, becoming Prime Minister at the age of 65. The ‘phoney war’, the eight-month period at the start of the Second World War, during which military operations in the West were limited, was well and truly over. At dawn, Hitler invaded the Low Countries – Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – and France. ![]() ![]() Friday was surely one of the most dramatic days in modern history.
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