Wakefield ~ Hidden In Plain Sight: 13. BLUE PLAQUES OF WAKEFIELD

ARTHUR GREENWOOD - WAKEFIELD MP & MEMBER OF THE WAR CABINET DURING WWII - GREENWOOD HOUSE, GEORGE ST

Servant of Wakefield and mobiliser of minds in Poland's hour of need...

Leaving the Bull Ring and William Whiteley behind [Read #2 here], I climb back on the bike and head along Marygate, then down Queen Street. A left turn onto George Street and I’m soon at my next destination.

Just past the rear entrance to Morrisons, at the junction with Almhouse Lane sits Greenwood House. It’s a standard 70s-style block of high rise flats, but is made considerably more interesting by the blue plaque screwed to its front wall. It is in honour of Arthur Greenwood who served as Wakefield’s MP from 1932 to 1954. A quick perusal of the inscription, however, reveals that his sphere of influence extended far beyond West Yorkshire. He was for a time a pivotal member of the Labour Party. The plaque, for example, credits him with a central role in the foundation of the National Health Service – more on the actual level of his involvement later – but it is his position within the War Cabinet of the early 1940s that motivated me to find out more about Wakefield’s MP of twenty-two years. What I discovered was that for one day at least it could be argued that Arthur Greenwood was the most important man in Britain.

The day in question was September 2^nd 1939. It was a warm evening and the atmosphere within the main chamber of the House of Commons was crackling as it attempted to face up to the crisis in Europe. The Wehrmacht had marched into Poland the day before and MPs were arguing about what should be done about it. The Conservative Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had been advocating appeasement of Germany for the last few years but it was now clear that his policy was dead in a ditch somewhere in Warsaw. The Government was still dithering, however, and it needed a kick up the backside.

Labour thought the country should stand shoulder to shoulder with Poland, as Britain had promised. Their leader, though, Clement Attlee, was absent from the debate. I’ve not been able to find any mention of why in my research. My only theory rests on the fact that it was a Saturday night and maybe he had a long-standing engagement to go clubbing. Whatever the reason, it fell to the Deputy Leader of the party to provide an exposition of Labour’s position, one Arthur Greenwood.

Chamberlain had just given a speech where he kept the Government’s position vague in respect of whether or not the country would aid Poland by declaring war on Germany. As Greenwood stood up and opened his mouth to speak, Labour colleagues exclaimed, ‘Speak for the workers!’ A Conservative backbencher, the veteran Leo Amery, cried out, ‘Speak for England, Arthur!’ Everyone waited eagerly to hear what he was about to say.

But before we explore what happened next, imagine the screen has gone all wavy in typical flashback manner, as we take a brief tour of Arthur Greenwood’s life and career up to this point.

He was born in 1880 in Hunslet, Leeds, the son of a painter and decorator. Humble beginnings proved no obstacle to the bright Greenwood lad as he was awarded a scholarship to one of the area’s best schools. He later studied at Yorkshire College, which would become the University of Leeds and before the First World War began he lectured in economics there. It was around this time that his socialist thinking began to take hold. As someone who had managed to climb the ladder of academia from near the bottom, he believed that working-class kids had the right to a good general education, not just a vocational one.

By the 1920s he was a prominent member of the Labour Party – he first became an MP in 1922 – and served in the short-lived Labour government of 1924. In 1929 he was appointed Minister for Health, but lost his seat in 1931. No matter, he was an MP again by the following year, winning a by-election in Wakefield, and so began his long association with the city.

In 1935 he became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Indeed, he almost became leader at this point till a late switch of allegiance to Attlee among the Party voters. During the late thirties Greenwood and Attlee opposed the policy of appeasement adopted by the Government but Chamberlain simply kept waving a piece of paper in their faces and saying, ‘Peace for our time’, even after Hitler kept claiming chunks of Czechoslovakia for himself. By March 1939, after Hitler had said, ‘Well, there’s only that bit of Czechoslovakia left, we may as well have that too,’ even the Government agreed that the current plan of inaction wasn’t really working. Books have been written on the topic of why Chamberlain persisted on this course for so long. Undoubtedly, he was sincere in his thinking for a whole host of reasons but change was now needed. After pursuing one path for years, however, he seemed unable to turn the tanker around.

We are back to the evening of September 2^nd 1939. The 60-year-old Arthur Greenwood opened his mouth to talk, but the cries from the backbenches to speak for the whole of England seemed to throw him initially. In truth, he wasn’t known for his inspiring speeches. In many respects, he was an intellectual rather than a natural politician. His oration was mostly regarded as underwhelming, cliché-ridden and over-rehearsed. On this occasion, however, once he had got his teeth in, he went on to denounce Chamberlain’s ambivalent position in a passionate, off the cuff manner that had his colleagues applauding him all around:

"I wonder how long we are prepared to vacillate at a time when Britain and all that Britain stands for, and human civilisation, are in peril. We must march with the French. The moment we look like weakening, at that moment dictatorship knows we are beaten. We are not beaten. We shall not be beaten.”

It was the finest moment of his political career. Not only did his rallying cry help persuade Parliament of the need for decisive action but it also played a pivotal role in swaying public opinion. Memories of the conflict that barely finished twenty years previously were still fresh in everyone’s consciousness yet the country’s choices had now diminished to precisely one.

At 11am the next day, Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war with Germany.

A small War Cabinet was formed, with Chamberlain limping on as its head. By May 1940, however, any lingering confidence in him had vanished and Churchill took over. Greenwood joined him in a Cabinet that numbered only five people initially, along with Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and Clement Attlee.

The War Cabinet, when its ranks had later swelled to eight people.

Arthur Greenwood is back left.

Britain’s position at this point seemed pretty hopeless. Hitler was planning to invade and the country was hopelessly under-prepared. France was already reeling under the jackboot and things were not going well for the British Army in the first skirmishes on the Continent. Against this backdrop, the Cabinet were willing to consider the unthinkable – make peace with Hitler.

Thus began three days of ultra-secret talks in which Britain tried to decide whether or not to continue fighting. These talks were so secret, in fact, that they remained so for many years afterwards. Churchill’s memoirs maintained that the question was never asked and Halifax adopted the same stance. As Foreign Secretary, it was actually Halifax who had suggested that Britain should approach Mussolini and get him to ask Hitler what his terms for peace would be. Roosevelt also got involved, offering to make the phone call to Mussolini himself. Italy was not yet at war with Britain, so this seemed like a reasonable option, as Mussolini had Hitler’s ear.

Churchill had only been Prime Minister for a couple of weeks and his appointment had not been universally applauded (the top job had almost gone to Halifax). His position, therefore, was almost as vulnerable as that of the country at this time. He thought the nation should fight on and he needed allies. Enter Arthur Greenwood. He was Churchill’s most vocal advocate, agreeing that Britain should reject any peace offer from Germany. ‘If it got out that we had sued for terms,’ he argued, ‘at the cost of ceding British territory, the consequences would be terrible.’ Attlee was of the same mind.

Lord Halifax (top) and Churchill, in much happier times when victory had come. In 1940, matters were rather more precarious.

As it turned out, Mussolini told the American Ambassador that his country wanted war. Halifax said he could still contact Hitler and see what his terms were, but Greenwood and Attlee argued that simply asking would fatally weaken Britain’s position. Churchill suggested that any peace terms wouldn’t be any worse as the result of a surrender at the end of the war, if worst came to worst. They had to appear to be ready to fight at all costs.

So in a Cabinet of five men, when the odds looked stacked against Broken Britain, the three who said we must carry on won the day. How different British and European history could have been. (Dunkirk happened only a month later. Interestingly, the question of capitulation never arose again, even at this low, yet heroic point. Halifax had been swimming against the tide and from May 1940 he gave up suggesting cutting any deal with Hitler.)

Greenwood working with Labour leader Clement Atlee

However, the secret talks proved to be the high watermark of Greenwood’s time in the War Cabinet and his influence began to fade. He had been made Minister without Portfolio but was widely regarded as ineffective in this post. He was supposed to be looking into how Britain would organise its post-war reconstruction but alcohol was effecting his ability to do the job as he became more interested in the drinks cabinet than the War Cabinet. In February 1942, he was unceremoniously sacked by Churchill (he must have been fairly well-oiled if Churchill thought he was drinking too much).

Arthur Greenwood’s son, Anthony, also served as an MP from 1946-1970 and later became Lord Greenwood.

He continued to hold important positions – Leader of the Opposition, Treasurer of the Labour Party and Paymaster General – but his influence in the Labour Party was diminishing fast. As Chairman of the Social Services Committee he did have a hand in the Beverage Commission. Some therefore say that he had a key role in the formation of the NHS and National Insurance Scheme, but others say this has been overstressed. Undoubtedly, he was at Labour’s ‘New Jerusalem’ party, but whether he remembered being there is another matter.

Nowadays Arthur Greenwood is little remembered, certainly outside of Wakefield. His career peaked and troughed in the blink of an eye, but his influence in the Labour Party and in the political landscape as a whole due to his position on German aggression was considerable up to 1942. On the occasions when he is remembered it is as a charming, insightful and tolerant man. He also, of course, served Wakefield for over twenty years, remaining its MP till 1954 when he departed to head to the great Parliament in the sky. His remains lie in Golders Green Crematorium.

The author of ‘Labour and the Left’, Ben Pimlott, has argued: ‘Greenwood was a political rarity among the younger leaders in that he was both working-class in origin and an intellectual.... Greenwood was respected as a shrewd and balanced leader with a remorseless appetite for detail... Open-hearted, genial, and with great personal warmth, he aroused more affection than any other Labour leader. Yet he remained more of a back-room intellectual than a politician. In some ways he was too nice. He lacked forcefulness. A heavy and near-compulsive drinker, a point on which his enemies readily capitalised, he was too tolerant and kindly in his treatment of others to be a really effective administrator.’

In politics, we still wait for the meek to inherit the earth.