One Of The Builders

“One of the Builders” – An Alternate History Story

Prologue – A Most Respectful Coup – Part I

The events that led to the resignation of Winston Churchill as both Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party – called “A National Disgrace – A Sordid Little Rebellion” by the Daily Mail and described as “…perhaps the most difficult day in my political career, and one of the most trying days in my life” by Anthony Eden in his personal diary – began in June 1947. Churchill’s health had suffered significantly during his time as Prime Minister during the Second World War; there were a number of heavy colds during the period, as well as an abscessed tooth, a minor heart attack while visiting the United States at the end of 1941, and no less than two bouts of severe pneumonia; one of these bouts, contracted in Casablanca in 1943, was considered to be especially life-threatening, and it took some time for Churchill to fully recover. These medical conditions were only exacerbated by his age (65 when he entered No. 10 Downing Street in May 1940) and by the number of prolonged trips he took overseas during the conflict, ranging as far as the United States, North Africa and Iran for conferences and diplomatic missions.

Despite these health scares Churchill survived the war, and so, it seemed, had his general health. As such, he was not overly concerned when he was informed by his personal physician Lord Moran (Dr. Charles McMoran Wilson) on the 5th September, 1945 that he had developed a hernia; this had resulted in a painless swelling, and would need to be fitted with a truss as a result. Although an operation would be required, Churchill appears to have put off the decision to have this done, and it was not until June of 1947 that it could no longer be put off. In his diary, Moran wrote that the hernia had grown in size and could no longer be effectively controlled with a truss, and that he was deeply concerned by its continued presence in his patient. Churchill therefore reluctantly consented to an operation, which would take place in a small private surgery on Berwick Street in London, and be conducted by Thomas Dunhill, who had been the Royally-appointed surgeon for King George V, King Edward VIII and King George VI. On the morning of the scheduled day, 11th June, Churchill was in a fine mood, and eager to get the surgery over and done with as soon as possible: “Wake me up soon, I’ve got lots of work to do”, he told Dunhill.

The operation was conducted under general anaesthetic, and lasted just over two hours. After the surgery Churchill appeared to recover well and did not complain of any significant pain or discomfort, and was able to return to his lodgings at 28 Hyde Park Gate on the same day. Although prescribed bed rest after such a long operation, this did not quite have the same meaning to Churchill as an ordinary patient; the 72-year old immediately began receiving visitors and reviewing paperwork while lying in bed, including inspecting early drafts of the first volume of his war memoirs, The Gathering Storm. In a letter he sent to his wife Clementine while recuperating, he wrote: “Cast care aside. What we may have to face cannot be worse than all we have crashed through together.” This phrase would prove to be eerily prophetic of the very near future.

On the morning of 12th June, one of the first visitors Churchill received while recuperating was Herbert Morrison, Churchill’s wartime Home Secretary, and now Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons in Clement Attlee’s Labour government. Morrison’s visit itself was quite unusual, as he and Churchill had never really got on, and he was certainly never part of Churchill’s “inner circle”. This was likely due to Morrison’s strong belief in pacifism, which Churchill absolutely abhorred in a person. Although Morrison never gave a precise reason for the visit, it was likely he attended in two capacities: firstly as a well-wisher and wartime colleague who wanted to ensure that Churchill was recovering; and secondly, to act as an informal conduit between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister. It is a little known fact that although Churchill launched consistently vituperative attacks on the Labour government in public, particularly in the House of Commons, in private he often acted as an informal advisor to Attlee, particularly on issues involving foreign affairs and defence policy. The arrangement was reciprocal, with Attlee helping to ensure that Churchill had virtually unlimited access to the government documents he needed to write his war memoirs.

In the personal diary that he kept, Morrison described arriving at Hyde Park Gate and being received by Churchill, who was “…in a fantastically ebullient mood, especially for someone who had just undergone major surgery the day before.” Cigar in hand, waving about to illustrate a point or to clarify something, Churchill recounted to Morrison his recent trip to Missouri, where he had given his “Sinews of Peace” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, in the presence of President Truman and the world media. Although the overarching theme of the speech had been about the need for world peace, it had instantly become known as the “Iron Curtain” speech, for Churchill’s remarks about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and other states it had occupied.

It was as he strode about his bedroom, doing an impression of President Truman, which Morrison described as “…particularly bad […] Winston has many talents, but mimicry is not one of them…” that Churchill suddenly put his hand to the site of his hernia operation and complained of a sudden sharp pain. What happened next is perhaps best described by quoting Morrison’s diary entry at length:

“…I immediately stood up from the chair and offered him my arm, in order to get him back into bed and be able to rest. He managed to grab my arm, but took no more than two steps towards the bed before giving out a sharp cry; his knees seemed to go out from under him, and it was only with great difficulty that I managed to control his fall and get him down to the floor. He had gone pasty and a terrible shade of white, and as I held onto him and shouted for help, I looked at him to try and give him reassurance; in that moment, every one of his 72 years suddenly seemed to appear on his face, and I had never seen him look so frail and old. It was a chastening experience, and I one I will never forget…”

Morrison stayed with Churchill while help was summoned, and within ten minutes Lord Moran had arrived and taken over care of his patient. By this time Churchill was barely conscious, and only able to say that he had a great deal of pain in and around the operation site. With a rapidly rising temperature and obvious inflammation, Moran acted swiftly and summoned a private ambulance to the house. Churchill was then taken to St Mary’s Hospital and sequestered in a side room in the private Lindon wing of the hospital. Churchill’s condition was supervised by Moran and Dunhill, as well as a team of surgeons and doctors from St Mary’s, but by the evening of the 12th June his condition had taken a turn for the worse; a post-operative infection had been diagnosed, and appeared to be spreading through his body.

Word of Churchill’s condition soon spread, and within hours of his arrival at St Mary’s a number of reporters had arrived at the hospital. They were prevented from entering the Lindo wing, and instead set up a temporary Press Room in an adjacent office suite. They were in time for the early editions of all the major newspapers, and by the morning of the 13th all of Britain was reading about how Churchill was fighting for his life. Crowds of well-wishers started to assemble by mid-morning, and by the end of the day more than 500 people were in the vicinity of the hospital, waiting for news. Churchill’s condition continued to deteriorate throughout the day despite urgent treatment by the assembled medical team, and Moran confided in his diary that he believed that the statesman had a very poor prognosis for survival; Churchill’s advanced age and general medical history, not to mention his continued smoking and alcohol consumption, were all against him.

Whether any of the other clinicians shared Moran’s view isn’t known, but it seems unlikely that his conclusions were an outlier. Whatever the private views of Moran and the other clinicians, at the wishes of Churchill’s family, the short bulletins given to the Press and the public were kept positive, usually emphasising that Churchill’s condition was stable and that he was under the best care possible. More candid medical updates, however, were sent privately to Buckingham Palace and Downing Street to ensure that the King and Prime Minister were kept informed.

The night of 13th June saw Churchill rally somewhat, with his pulse improving and the infection seeming to be reacting well to the antibiotic regime he was prescribed. Moran’s diary entry for that night was more positive, although still deeply concerned for his patient’s future health. But then, at 04:15, Churchill suddenly lost consciousness, his pulse spiked dramatically, and he was rushed into theatre for an emergency operation. The worst was feared, and privately Moran did not rate Churchill’s chances of surviving the operation highly at all. At the instigation of Clementine and Churchill’s son Randolph, urgent telegrams were now sent to Buckingham Palace and No. 10. When the Prime Minister appreciated that his wartime colleague might not survive surgery or its aftermath, he immediately called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet. At the meeting, the minutes of which were only recently declassified and released by the National Archives, show that the assembled Ministers realised the gravity of the situation; Morrison was asked to immediately begin developing plans for how the government would react if the worst did come to pass and Churchill died in hospital, including the likelihood that there would be a state funeral.

Fortunately, these hastily drawn-up plans (dubbed “Operation Unthinkable” by an anonymous note left in the file containing the details for the aftermath of Churchill’s death and subsequent funeral) did not have to be implemented. During a three-hour open surgery, the cause of Churchill’s collapse at Hyde Park Gate, and then his lapse into unconsciousness and rapid deterioration, was discovered: an abdominal abscess had formed in the hours after the original hernia surgery, leading to significant intestinal distension and some necrotic tissue, which had in turn caused intra-abdominal sepsis. After the abscess was successfully drained and the necrotic tissue excised, the infection slowly abated, and by the evening Moran was at all confident that the worst had passed, and that a recovery was now likely. How full that recovery was, however, remained to be seen.

There was a widespread feeling of relief throughout the country when Moran stepped up to the podium that had been set up outside St Mary’s front entrance, and delivered a short statement saying that there was no longer a danger of Churchill passing away, and that he was now recovering. The crowd outside the hospital cheered when Moran finished speaking, and tens of thousands of cards and letters would be received by St Mary’s over the next few days addressed to Churchill and his family – including one from Australia that was simply addressed to “The Greatest Living Englishman”. Press releases from Buckingham Palace and Downing Street both celebrated the good news, as did messages of support sent by many foreign dignitaries, including President Truman, the Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley, and the first post-war President of France, Vincent Auriol. Notably absent, though not unexpectedly, was any message from the USSR, and the Soviet Ambassador was one of the few diplomats not to travel to the hospital, or Hyde Park Gate later on, to meet with Churchill.

Feelings in Westminster, even within government, broadly followed the same pattern as the general public and foreign dignitaries. Various MPs across party lines recorded in both public and private form their satisfaction that Churchill had survived and was recovering. In his diary entry for the evening of the 14th June, the Conservative MP Henry “Chips” Channon recorded that he was “…glad to see Churchill has survived. Wretched way for a fellow to go, dying in some hospital bed….” and Ronald Cartland, rising star of the Tory Left (and, like Churchill, an anti-appeasement rebel in the 1930s) simply wrote in his diary: “Winston survived. Thank God.” Perhaps the most notable reaction, however, was from Anthony Eden himself. Although in public he joined the rest of Parliament in celebrating Churchill’s survival, his reaction in private was quite different. On the evening of the 14th, as Churchill lay in his hospital bed, recovering but still critically weak, Eden met privately at his home with several key members of the Conservative Party senior leadership: “Rab” Butler, Oliver Stanley, Lord Woolton, Conservative Party Chairman, and Arnold Gridley, Chair of the 1922 Committee.
 
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Hmm, can't help thinking there will be rumours of a post-Nazi revenge plot.
a state funeral (the first since Wellington’s funeral in 1852).
A minor quibble, but Lords Palmerston, Napier, Roberts, Haig and Carson, along with Gladstone, were all given state funerals in the intervening period, as well as a few royals.
 
Hmm, can't help thinking there will be rumours of a post-Nazi revenge plot.
A minor quibble, but Lords Palmerston, Napier, Roberts, Haig and Carson, along with Gladstone, were all given state funerals in the intervening period, as well as a few royals.

Hope you enioyed it, and also thanks for highlighting that. I need to research as I remember there being some connection made between Churchill's funeral and Wellington’s.
 
So Ronald Cartland survived Dunkirk, very interesting, like his sister, his favourite colour was pink.
Don't know if that was a euphemism or a statement of fact but, according to James Lees-Milne, Cartland had homosexual friends but wasn't predominantly homosexual himself
 
Don't know if that was a euphemism or a statement of fact but, according to James Lees-Milne, Cartland had homosexual friends but wasn't predominantly homosexual himself

Cartland was very much a left-wing Tory, and his sister wrote over a thousand romance novels
 
Very talented speaker as well and obviously highly intelligent. I will look forward to his continued contributions with considerable interest. I think Barbara Cartland wrote a hagiographic biography of her brother as well, if memory serves. Enjoying the timeline so far!
 
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