AHC: A British Version of Eisenhower/De Gaulle
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Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
How about Mountbatten? Perhaps an emergency PM to put down the communist plotters - like Major Attlee and Major Healey?
Not sure if that would be the result of a coup or to avoid one.
Not sure if that would be the result of a coup or to avoid one.
shiftygiant
Gone Fishin'
You can't really go faster than IoTL (He was only one of two men to rise from Private to Brigadier), however you can have him rise higher by keeping in the military and accepting the post of assistant commandant of the Indian officers' training academy. He has ambitions to become Viceroy (hence his remarkable anti-colonial tone after Indian Independence), or at the very least head of all British military intelligence.
The late 60s and early 70s were his golden opportunity, but if he keeps in the Military he may be involved as the figurehead for a right-wig coup is everything goes to hell in a hat basked, as many had expected in the leader to the 70s.
Powell already held the record for fastest promotion from 2LT to One Star ever, he moved up more grades in WW2 than Eisenhower did.
(Having joined in 1939 as a Private, and declining a promotion, twice!)
Has anyone suggested Mountbatten? Strictly speaking there are no legal obstacles to a Peer of the Realm holding the office of Prime Minister, he would still be a Member of Parliament, just not of the House of Commons. Lords have still held Cabinet positions and been expected to appear before the Lower House, its just less common than it was.
The position of GG is about as apolitical as it gets for anyone in public life.
Deleted member 94680
What’s the average age for someone to enter politics and what’s the average age of a retired General?
Way I see it, most of the figures with a big enough reputation to become PM quickly upon entering politics were probably too old once they’d finished their military careers.
Way I see it, most of the figures with a big enough reputation to become PM quickly upon entering politics were probably too old once they’d finished their military careers.
Well it can't be too soon after the war as his Military Career went on after it - he was CIGS after Monty and it was Slim to who we owe the modern return to all volunteer career professional armed force of the 60s +
So any political career wither has to happen after 1948 before he becomes CIGS or after he compeltes his time as CIGs in 1952.
Perhaps rather than becoming Gov. Aus he builds up a good relationship with Clement Attlee and he convinces Slim to stand as an MP - he wins a seat
Despite his bluff no nonsence demenoir, or maybe because of it, he is soon offered a place on said governments cabinat in Churchills 1951 Gov - serving as Min Def and Educatin (he was once a teacher)
From there he survives and stays on as part of the Conservative leadership becoming Dept PM in 1955 and becomes PM instead of MacMillan (due to his popularity with votors and reputation as a straight shooter) and remains PM until his retirement in 1964 (after laading the Conservatives to a narrow Victory that year over Harold Wilsons Labour).
Very well thought out but why would Attlee convince Slim to stand if he would join the Conservatives
Fitzroy Maclean is the other obvious candidate apart from Enoch Powell - both men made it from Private to Brigadier, which in any other army would be considered a General Officer rank. He was apparently rated by Macmillan as very able but a liability in the House and never got further than a junior minister - if he'd managed to get a grip in Parliament however (which shouldn't have been that hard given that he spent a couple of years running the British support for Tito more or less singlehanded) then he might well have been a good option.
While not a high ranking military officer could we end up with Colin Campbell Mitchell as PM should he not pack in parliament for a high paying (and non-materialising) Estate management job.
Perhaps if 70s/80s Britain goes strongly Right? I doubt he's suited to the job temperamentally but it's possible he could get the top job via a push of the Monday Club and backbenches, perhaps as a stalking horse that accidently ends up in charge.
Perhaps if 70s/80s Britain goes strongly Right? I doubt he's suited to the job temperamentally but it's possible he could get the top job via a push of the Monday Club and backbenches, perhaps as a stalking horse that accidently ends up in charge.
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
Very much too soon. You've a number of problems with getting Powell to being a senior Army officer who becomes PM.
1. Powell was regarded by the army as being suitable for intelligence work and sifting through reports. He was considered unsuitable for combat operations. Powell himself viewed things differently, but for all his education and erudition, he wasn't actually that self-aware. The chances of him getting to a position where he could climb more rapidly than he did are slim (not Slim). About the only way might be to get him involved in the Boxes at Kohima, which is not out of the question. The trouble is, while that gets him into a position where he could prove his talent (or, more likely, stop a bullet from one side or the other) - assuming he had that talent which is an unknowable as he never saw combat OTL, it doesn't leave much time for subsequent promotions.
2. Politics. He first entered Parliament in 1950, and there's no real way to speed this up. Almost immediately, his inflexibility came forward, and he pissed off senior figures in the party by talking against measures they favoured. There's no real way of getting Powell to keep his mouth shut on matters he felt a need to talk about, there's no real way to stop his party putting forward the things he's going to oppose. There is going to be a period where the party leadership aren't going to touch him with a bargepole. It's only really in the aftermath of the Suez crisis, which ended a number of careers, that he started to make any moves forward, which means that his career effectively starts late 1956. OTL, he disagreed with the Government over monetary policy and resigned, consigning himself to brief obscurity. That was 1958, and it's only around here that we can realistically tweak things such that government monetary policy is in line with his. Smooth this out, and by around 1962, he's possibly sufficiently senior to be considered. However,
3. Personality. Getting to be PM involves making alliances and having people back you. I think it would be fair to say that Powell was not noted for his flexibility or his appeal to voters on a personal basis. For example, his attitude towards the Thalidomide victims was less than helpful (basically, he told them it was their own fault, so piss off; he used more elegant language than that, but they got the message). He's never going to bend. He's also going to totally piss off the Americans, which after Suez, would not be the best move. I can't see anyway he could manoeuvre himself to be PM. He was considered a risky choice as mid-ranking Minister; I can't see the party dedicated to being in power turning to him as leader.
MacLean might be the better bet.
Comparing Powell's speeches condemning British policy and attitudes in Kenya
following the Mau Mau rising and the Rivers of Blood, and you see a unprincipled opportunist rather than
the rabid bigot of popular culture. Perhaps Powell was more flexible than people gave him credit for,
or he was trying to be flexible and populist and it backfired. Whichever way you look at it, it seems
to demonstrate poor judgement, which was probably why the higher ups distrusted him.
Comparing Powell's speeches condemning British policy and attitudes in Kenya
following the Mau Mau rising and the Rivers of Blood, and you see a unprincipled opportunist rather than
the rabid bigot of popular culture. Perhaps Powell was more flexible than people gave him credit for,
or he was trying to be flexible and populist and it backfired. Whichever way you look at it, it seems
to demonstrate poor judgement, which was probably why the higher ups distrusted him.
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
There was a logical consistency to his views. His Rivers of Blood speech, and many others he made on the subject of immigration, were based on the assumption that immigrants who looked different would inevitably be excluded, and that inclusion would swamp the local population. He referenced Danish invasions, and so on and so forth, and held the view that incursions pretty much meant antagonism which would grow into violence and a struggle between the two sides for supremacy.
With regard to the Mau-Mau, what he said was:
Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, "We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home." We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere.
Basically, his objection to the specific British actions were that they were inconsistent with British standards. His point was that British standards state that illegal actions are illegal, whether they are committed against worthy citizens or the scum of the earth. He was calling out illegal behaviour, no more, no less.
Powell had an unfortunate combination of high intelligence, a logical frame of mind, and a total absence of empathy or willingness to see alternate points of view. Flexibility is about the last word that could possibly be applied to him.
Deleted member 94680
This. I always think Powell’s best bet for power is an alt-Britain in need of a head of a Secret Police. A “Cambridge Heydrich” if you will.
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
Given his wartime involvement in Military Intelligence, his studying at Cambridge more or less contemporaneously with the Cambridge Five, and his tendency towards seeing threats, I can quite see him entering MI6 and climbing extremely high. Given the quality of the top echelons of MI6 when he would be reaching his peak; Dick White (1956-1968) - who basically never really quite grasped that MI5 and MI6 had different requirements; John Rennie (1968-1973), who was basically a civil servant who never quite grasped what intelligence work involved; and Maurice Oldfield (1973-1978), who infamously conducted witch hunts against homosexuals within the service because they were open to blackmail. He was himself a homosexual, openly so, and this destroyed morale, particularly when he tried to get MI5 and MI6 combined under his authority, and reporting directly to the Home Secretary rather than the JIC.
The competition is feeble, and I could quite believe him working his way to the top post. Which would have implications for the UK Mission in Washington.
That's the best summing up of old Enoch I've read, to date, after years of postgraduate beavering in British and imperial history and general interest on beyond. That's him in a tin of biscuits.
Despite the sheer personal appeal of Slim (and the fact he was perhaps the most competent and capable British theater [sorry, "theatre"] level commander since Arthur Wellesley) I vote with the poster who put forward Alanbrooke above. Make him just a bit better at the politics of self-promotion relative to Monty and you have at the very least a British George Marshall, who if Marshall had not believed to the point of nervous disorder in the apolitical nature of military service would have made at least as compelling a presidential candidate as Eisenhower. De Gaulle's in a special class because of the nature of his role, the "resister of the first hour" when France fell apart. It's not even clear that, with his brilliant but prickly-as-a-sack-full-of-overcaffeinated-hedgehogs personality, he would've been the Chief of General Staff-equivalent in a France Fights On scenario. More akin to De Lattre de Tassigny probably -- a Field Army commander of great import but not the top guy. (And arguably de Lattre was a better commander of large formations in the operational sense, based on First Army (FR)'s solid performance in late '44 and 1945, and his temporary salvation of France's flailing position in Indochina in 1950-52, before his son's tragic death in action.)
For the Eisenhower role I'd put forward a, er, more "forward" Alanbrooke. Of course now that I've said that Field Marshal Lord Alexander did end up as Minister of Defense for a bit in the early Fifties, so if for example Monty had gotten in a snit at the wrong moment sometime early in '44 and Alexander was instead offered command of UK forces within SHAPE based on his performance in North Africa, then Alexander suddenly becomes the go-to man, linked to the two clearest successes (mopping up Rommel and the slog to Luneberg Heath) of British soldiery in WWII Europe. (I have a special fondness for the "D-Day Dodgers," having a much-loved great-uncle who fought and died with the American contingent there, but Italy was always the red-headed stepchild in public perceptions of the war effort.) That would -- North Africa plus Northwest Europe -- put Alexander in a much more directly "Eisenhower-like" role and his connections to the Conservative Party were a bit more blatant.
Let's say he gets that ministry job a bit later, not as a filip from Churchill once he felt overworked holding the portfolio in addition to the premiership, then pulls a Walter Monckton over Suez. In Alexander's case that would be on the grounds that the military lacked the resources to properly marshal and deploy a sizeable armo(u)red force at Port Said and cut south to beleaguer Cairo. Then he's the war-hero man of principle, and any of several longer-term Tory players could put Alexander forward as a front man for a government they would try secretly to control from beside his chair. That could work.
It would indeed. Enoch Powell, Superspy working in concert with Richard Helms would be ... disconcerting.
Deleted member 94680
Not quite superspy, but definitely a ‘C’ who would have no compunction in leaving agents behind the curtain or unveiling ministerial wrongdoing or even taking the ultimate sanction against foreign heads of state. There would be pros and cons to Enoch as C or M, definitely.