The Peoples King Page 2
For their interest and encouragement, I am immensely and especially grateful to Monica Ede, Jackie Lee, Elizabeth Patience, and Margaret Wynn. I also thank Barbara Bamber, Dennis Dean, Theresa Hallgarten, Ferelith Hood, Tom Hooke, Lesley Hall, Ornella Mos- cucci, Jennifer Pader, Tina Perry, Desna Roberts, Sandra Stone, Alfred Thomas, James Thomas, and Joan Williams, and also my colleagues at the Institute of Education, University of London.
I am deeply indebted to Mr Eric Ezra of Moorfields Hospital, who rescued my sight during the final stage of producing this book.
It is a privilege and a pleasure to write for Penguin. I am grateful beyond measure to my editor, Margaret Bluman. She was always willing to read and comment on drafts, despite her own busy schedule. At every stage we discussed the implications of new findings and the way forward. Her advice and guidance were unfailingly right. It is no exaggeration to say that without her involvement, this book would not have been written. Cecilia Mackay is a brilliant picture editor whose detective skills deserve special mention. John Woodruff is a gifted copy-editor who not only picked up blunders but also made important suggestions which have improved the book's readability.
My daughter, Tendayi Bloom, was instrumental in the decision to write about the abdication. I was still wondering whether or not to do so - and talking incessantly about this - when we went together to visit Horace Walpole's home at Strawberry Hill, Surrey. While there, we had a cup of tea in the cafeteria. She told me to look up at the wall - where I saw a portrait of Edward VIII - and observed that I must be destined to write the book because he seemed to follow us everywhere.
She cheerfully accepted the book as a new member of the family circle and came with me to South Wales on a fruitful mission of research. Benedict Wiseman offered useful insights on the politics of the interwar period and encouraged me in my efforts during the long days of writing. His thoughtful gifts of music gave special pleasure to those days. Gervase Hood, my husband, contributed to the book in important ways that are too numerous to list. His loving presence kept me going when I faltered; and his delight at my growing excitement multiplied the joy.
1 'Something must be done'
More than two thousand people were waiting for King Edward VIII at the abandoned steelworks of Dowlais in South Wales on Wednesday, 18 November 1936. It was a damp and chilly day: jackets were tightly buttoned and shawls held close. As soon as the royal car was seen driving up the hill from Merthyr Tydfil, everyone cheered in delight and the Dowlais Aged Comrades' Choir struck up God Save the King. Excited children jumped up and down, waving their Union Jacks in a sea of flags. The King - a short, slight figure, with deep blue eyes and a shock of thick, golden hair - stepped from his car, smiling, and waved his hand in greeting. Forty-two years of age, he was sovereign of over 600 million people, the citizens of Britain and its Empire. And today, just ten months after his accession to the throne, he had travelled through the night to visit the people of South Wales.
But once the King had looked about him, he stopped still. He was evidently distressed and stood quietly for a few minutes on the road, his bowler hat in his hand. He was facing a scene of desolation - hundreds of gaunt and weary men sitting on heaps of twisted metal. Their clothes were worn and their boots were broken. Three-quarters of the men of Dowlais were unemployed: once a symbol of industry and prosperity, the Dowlais steelworks had closed down six years before and was now a derelict ruin. The King stood gazing in silence at the wreck of the huge blast furnace; few people, observed a Pathe Gazette newsreel, would ever forget His Majesty's expression at that moment.' Then he went slowly among the men, who rose to their feet and removed their caps. Some of them started to sing the Welsh hymn Crugybar, and the strains of deep male voices lifted into the air. The King walked down a gangway into the centre of the works, through the roofless buildings and in the shadow of a skeleton of steel girders. Doffing his hat again and again to the crowds, he turned to the officials walking next to him. 'These steelworks brought the men hope', he said. 'Something must be done to see that they stay here - working.'2 The royal visit to Dowlais was just one stop on a hectic two-day tour of the industrial valleys of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, South Wales. The King had left London shortly after midnight on a special train, arriving in the morning at the tiny railway station of Llantwit Major, a little town on the coast of Glamorgan. Being in Wales in the autumn of 1936 was a powerful reminder to the King of his investiture as Prince of Wales in the summer of 1911, when he was sixteen years of age. 'From Llantwit Major, where I got off the train,' he commented later in his memoirs, A King's Story, 'it is not over one hundred and fifty miles to Caernavon where, one July morning, a quarter of a century before, in the pomp and splendour of the mediaeval setting of the ancient castle, my investiture as Prince of Wales had taken place.'3 His style and titles had been proclaimed from the battlements of the castle by Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary. This was the start of a steadfast friendship between Edward and Churchill, characterized by mutual admiration and respect. Ever since the investiture, said Churchill, years later, Edward 'honoured me . . . with his personal kindness and, I may even say, friendship . . . In this Prince there was discerned qualities of courage, of simplicity, of sympathy, and, above all, of sincerity, qualities rare and precious.'4 The investiture had taken place twenty-five years before. This time, Edward was no longer Prince of Wales but King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India. And this time, he was not greeted by pomp and splendour. Instead, he was met 'by humble arches made of leeks from Government-sponsored co-operative farms, and of unlighted Davy lamps strung together by jobless miners.' The people looked thin and weary and were dressed in shabby clothes. Even a King, 'who would be among the last to feel the pinch of a depression', said Edward, 'could see that something was manifestly wrong.'5
There was indeed something wrong. Industrial South Wales had been unable to pull itself out of the economic depression that followed the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929. By 1936 most parts of Britain had recovered from the national slump, and a Government leaflet issued the previous year had claimed that over a million workers had got back into employment and wages had started to rise.6 But this recovery had not spread everywhere. In South Wales, West Cumberland, Durham, Tyneside and industrial Scotland unemployment was still very high, and desperate families were forced to depend on the meagre dole provided by the Unemployment Assistance Board. King Edward was deeply troubled. He looked upon unemployment 'as the one black spot in the country' and was anxious to help in any way possible, wrote Major Alexander Hardinge, his Private Secretary, to the Minister of Labour in October 1936. Referring to Edward's coronation, which was planned for May the following year, he added that it would give His Majesty 'the greatest gratification' if the celebrations were to coincide with 'a real improvement of the lot of these unfortunate people, whose share in the general recovery has as yet been so very limited.'7
Even when their men had been in work, for families in South Wales life was a daily grind. Many of their homes had just two rooms, one bedroom and a kitchen, while some families lived in a one-room cellar dwelling. Almost every home lacked electricity. Water was carried in from a tap in the backyard, and the toilet, which was also outside, was shared by several families. These harsh conditions had been worsened by long years of unemployment. Families could not even afford to buy the coal that lay at the centre of their lives and had to scour the tips daily in search of bits of coal for a fire.8 Children were dressed in ragged clothes and broken boots, handouts from organizations such as the Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil's Distressed School Children's Fund.9 Short of money for food and fuel, women were unable to provide their families with nourishing meals. 'Two tin mugs and one plate were the whole equipment of a family of nine', reported the Evening Standard in an article on South Wales. 'There was no pot in which to warm the soup. Neither could the neighbour provide one . . . Both households had been unable to cook anything at all
for months, and had apparently lived on bread and margarine and tea.10
Men and boys with no jobs and no money for hobbies and entertainment spent their days hanging around on the streets.
For many of the rich of Britain, little had been changed by the Depression. The women still organized 'coming out' parties for their debutante daughters, and the men still relaxed in the clubs of Pall Mall. Joey Legh, a royal courtier, lost some money in the Depression, but all he had to do was cut down on domestic staff - 'making do with one footman instead of two.'11 Even in the Monmouthshire valleys, near the coalfields, there was luxury and splendour. Tredegar House, the glittering home of Viscount Tredegar, hosted an endless round of weekend parties attended by footmen dressed in breeches and powdered wigs.12 In County Durham, another coal-mining region of Britain that had been hit badly by the Depression, the enormously wealthy Londonderry family enjoyed every luxury at Wynyard Park - just one of their three family seats. At Londonderry House, in London's exclusive district of Mayfair, Edith, Lady Londonderry held massive receptions to mark the opening of Parliament; the guest lists, of about a thousand people, took up nearly two full columns in The Times.
It was against this background of extreme contrast between the lives of the rich and the lives of the poor that King Edward's visit to South Wales in the late autumn of 1936 took place. Aneurin Bevan, the radical Labour MP for Rhymney, regarded the visit as patronizing and refused to welcome him. Organizing the visit in 'much the same way as you might to go to the Congo', he thought, was an affront to the people living there." But few people in Wales shared this view. 'Everywhere the people looked delighted and hopeful at his visit', noted his equerry, Charles Lambe. 'They obviously loved and trusted him.'14 Men, women and children thronged the narrow roads of the valleys.15 'Croeso I'r Brenhin', declared a large banner - 'Welcome to the King'.16 Colourful flags and bunting hung from shops and homes. 'As everywhere it's the same story, flags waving above the grime and decay, cheers breaking the silence where work hooters have long since ceased to blow,' observed the Pathe Gazette newsreel that was shown in cinemas the following week.17 'Surely, something will happen now' was the widespread feeling in South Wales, reported the Spectator.18
The King's Ministers of Attendance on the tour of Wales were Ernest Brown, Minister of Labour, and Sir Kingsley Wood, Minister of Health. He was also accompanied by representatives of social service organizations, among them the National Council of Social Service, of which Edward was patron.19 The royal party was met at each stop by local representatives of these and other welfare groups, by town mayors and by the chairmen of urban district councils. Everywhere, groups of ex-servicemen who had served in the Great War of 1914-18 waited patiently to see the King.
The royal courtiers on the visit to Wales were led by Alexander Hardinge. The son of Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, who had been Viceroy of India between 1910 and 1916, he had been educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and fitted easily into the royal household - a closed world of upper-class men and women who shared the same background. They identified strongly with the elite of Britain and knew little, if anything, about the lives of the working classes. As Bevan suggested, to Hardinge and the other courtiers the people of South Wales must have seemed as foreign and remote as the people of the Congo. Hardinge had been a courtier to King George V and had taken part in the unchanging royal circuit of the previous reign: Buckingham Palace in the winter and summer seasons, Windsor Castle over Easter, Sandringham House in the autumn and over Christmas, Balmoral Castle in August, and sometimes the royal yacht at Cowes. He now found himself visiting very different places as Private Secretary to the new king, George V's son.
Charles Lambe was another member of the royal party to South Wales. A tall, good-looking naval officer of thirty-six, he had been appointed Edward's equerry just a few months before, in July. He had been put forward for the post by Lord Louis Mountbatten, his best friend, who was also Edward's cousin and aide-de-camp.20 Lambe had no experience of the previous royal court and served Edward with loyal and unqualified enthusiasm.
From Llantwit Major, Edward was driven in the royal car to nearby Boverton, where the Welsh Land Settlement Society was developing a cooperative farm on an estate of 650 acres. The King chatted with the settlers on the farm, most of whom were unemployed miners, and many of whom were wearing medals they had won in the Great War. With smiles and handshakes, Edward told them how much he admired their hard work. Then a drive through the rolling countryside of the Vale of Glamorgan brought him to a very different scene - to the Rhondda Valley, the heart of the South Wales coal industry, scarred with slag heaps and idle mines. 'To-day, for miles,' wrote a Rhondda man in 1935,
you see the soft contours of the valleys, gashed and streaked by rows of ugly, drab houses, built anyhow, anywhere, to serve the purposes of those gloomy collieries; the rubbish tips sprawl everywhere, polluting the mountain air with dust and the streams with inky filth.21
A small mining town called Dinas was Edward's first stop in the Rhondda. Here, a disused coal tip was being converted into a recreation ground by voluntary labour. The King sympathetically patted on the shoulder a man who had told him he had been unemployed for four years. To another man, who had been out of work for seven years, Edward said simply, 'I am indeed very sorry for you.'22
Soon after, the King was taken to the Pentrebach Preparatory Training Centre for the unemployed, where young men were learning the skills of the building trade. He received a tumultuous welcome. He paused for a moment, visibly moved, and raised his hat in acknowledgement. Lunch was scheduled at the centre. But before sitting down to eat, the King asked to see the men's dining hall. He waited until everyone was seated and then stepped briskly into the hall, where he rapped sharply on the metal wall of the hut. In the tone of an orderly officer and with a broad smile, he asked, 'Any complaints?' This produced a burst of laughter from the men as they sprang up from the tables - laughter in which the King merrily joined. After lunch, he went on a tour of the centre and asked for instructions on how to mix mortar. He picked up a trowel to try it for himself, which delighted all the working men around him, reported the Merthyr Express.
The centre of Merthyr Tydfil was the next stop, and Edward was taken to see the Merthyr Maternity and Child Welfare Clinic. This clinic sought to provide mothers and children with extra nutrition and basic medical services. So high was the infant mortality rate in the region that in Abertillery in 1935, more than eleven infants in every hundred had died before they reached twelve months.24 The Monmouthshire County Health Department reported that eight out of every ten schoolchildren in the area were sickly and that only ten out of every hundred were in normal health.25 This meant that most of the children Edward met on his tour of South Wales were suffering from some kind of physical weakness.
A major worry at the Merthyr clinic was the rate of death in childbirth, which was high nationally but even higher in areas blighted by long-term unemployment.26 At the end of 1934 the maternal death rate in the Rhondda was so grim that nearly one in every hundred women in the region lost their lives in childbirth.27 Every pregnant woman lining the roadside to cheer Edward on his tour of Wales faced this high risk of death. She knew that by the time of the King's coronation next May, she might have lost her life - and left her baby motherless. Such suffering was unnecessary: research carried out in 1936 had demonstrated a clear connection between unemployment and maternal mortality, due to poor diet, fatigue, nervous strain and inadequate medical care.28
Edward's next stop at Merthyr was the Ministry of Labour Home Training Centre at Gwaelodygarth, where girls from unemployed households were being trained for work as domestic servants. Their uniform of white pinafores and headbands had been starched and carefully ironed, and their shoes polished to a shine. Then on to the employment exchange in the town, where the King saw men queuing up to register, dressed in threadbare jackets and caps. He went to the front of the queue and spoke to some of the men waiting for work.29 A vis
it to an employment exchange had been specially asked for by the King.30
The tour continued to Aberdare and Penrhiwceiber, and then to Mountain Ash, where Edward was greeted by the singing of the local choir as he entered the pavilion in the centre of the town. Here, a great gathering of social service workers waited for him. As he stepped forward he was welcomed by thunderous applause, and for a brief moment he was overwhelmed. Then he walked up the steps of the platform and in an impromptu speech, told the audience of seven thousand that
You have made me feel at home in this part of South Wales today, and although I do not now hold the title of Prince of Wales - a title which I held for 25 years - my interest in the Principality will never diminish.11
A few weeks later the King received a letter from a woman living in Barry - 'just a "nurse" and young like yourself!' - who said she had had the pleasure of seeing him at Mountain Ash during his royal tour. 'I think you must have felt', she said, 'how sincerely the Welsh people love and admire you.'32
In a plain grey overcoat bare of official insignia, Edward's slight frame blended easily into the crowds of working men. Everywhere he went, he mingled with the people, doffing his hat. He got out of his car, reported a letter to the Spectator on 27 November, in the heart of a vast crowd, with not more than one or two policemen anywhere near him - 'His utter confidence in the goodwill and the affection of a much maligned people was magnificent.'33 This display of trust was greatly appreciated by the people themselves. Shortly after the visit, an 'ordinary married woman from the distressed areas' who signed herself 'one full & loyal heart from Wales' wrote a long letter to the King. She had always admired him, she said, 'but lately, especially since your visit here, though I saw little of you myself (how I would love to have been one of those with whom you shook hands), my admiration has grown into the deepest love towards your Majesty.' She planned to go to the coronation in May the following year and would be cheering him with all her heart, not because of who you are, but because of what you are, in spite of your Kingship. I do not suppose for one moment that you are perfect, no one in the world is, but your humanity 8c kindly interest in the people has touched me very deeply. You could profess concern & interest & yet stay away, but that you do not do, and may God bless you for it.