Blocking Action – 1948
Tower of London, London, U.K.
Before his execution, King Charles the First had worn an extra shirt. It had been a chill morning and he had feared the cold would make him shiver and that his enemies would mistake his shudders for those of fear. Today, Lord Halifax had done the same. It wasn't the probability of taunts or derision that he took exception to, Lord Halifax had to tolerate those all his life. He had been born with an atrophied left arm that had no hand and his three elder brothers died before he reached the age of nine. The disability had made him the subject of bullying throughout his school life and the lack of brothers had left him to depend on his own resources. The deaths of his brothers had also left him the heir to the title and great estates in Yorkshire but that was hardly compensation. Edward Frederick Lindley Wood had spent his childhood virtually alone, without support from his family and at the mercy of any who felt inclined to torment him.
Looking out from the window overlooking Execution Green, Lord Halifax sighed. He had learned a lot from those days. One was the futility of fighting those bigger, stronger, more powerful than oneself. His disability hadn't affected his riding, hunting or shooting but in a schoolboy brawl, to have only one arm was a disastrous liability. After being beaten bloody over and over again, he'd finally understood that fighting was futile, that resistance to overwhelming force was stupid and pointless. He'd learned to talk his way out of situations, to compromise, to appease those who hounded him If his tormenters wanted something from him, it was more sensible to give it up and escape a beating that get battered into submission and have it taken anyway.
The Army hadn't been any better. He'd joined up in 1914, along with everybody else when the war had started, but as soon as the brass had seen his arm they'd moved him to a desk job in the Yorkshire Dragoons. A cavalry unit, it had spent the war waiting behind the lines for the breakthrough that had never come. What he had seen of the war was enough though to confirm what he had learned at school, fighting was futile, pointless, a hideous waste of life and treasure. Nobody had gained anything out of World War One, the winners had been only marginally less destroyed than the losers. Except the Americans of course, they'd sat back, let others do the fighting for them while their bankers sucked the financial blood dry from those who thought they were American allies. They'd only come in when their enemies were defeated and their allies bankrupted. Then, they'd forced through a peace treaty that was bound to start another war so they could repeat the whole process again.
Lord Halifax found his right hand knotting with anger at the thought of the sneering, bullying Americans. He spun away from the window for a brief second, the urge to kick something, to lash out almost overwhelming him. Why couldn't others see what he could? Why did they understand what was so clear to him? The damned Americans had done it again. They'd spent the whole of World War Two sitting back letting others do the work for them. The fools who'd lead the British Empire into war again had seen it destroyed, the Russians had been bled white of manpower and treasure, then, when there was nothing left to take, the Americans had ended the war by sending a few bombers over the Atlantic. Now they were lording it over the world as if it was their own personal estate. Halifax breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. This was the last morning he would ever see, the last. Every moment that was passing was his last, never to be repeated. They were too precious to be wasted raging against barbarians.
His situation hadn't been much better after the First War. He'd been given a string of minor, second rate jobs, none of them fit for his talents. The worst insult had come from South Africa, he'd been offered the Governor Generalship there, but they'd had the impertinence to turn him down. It was rumored they'd wanted somebody related the Royal Family. Still, it had all worked out for the best, he hadn't got South Africa but he had been made Governor General and Viceroy of India in 1925. Even then, his enemies had whispered that he'd only been given the post because King George V had insisted as a tribute to his grandfather who had been secretary of state for India. Halifax sighed, he'd had such great plans to improve Anglo-Indian relations and put an end to the religious rioting that was taking place. He'd even set up a commission to examine the country's readiness for self-government. The Indians had stabbed him in the back. They'd demanded representation on the commission and when he'd refused, they'd provoked another outbreak of serious violence. He had struck back at them of course, he'd used his emergency powers to arrest all the prominent Indian leaders, especially the one called Ghandi. That had shown them, by the time he'd returned to Britain the situation was calm again.
That was when things had started to change for him. On his return, he'd been offered the position of Foreign Secretary but had turned it down. He'd just inherited the family title and wanted to spend some time at home. One of the privileges of his new position was that he was master of the local Hunt, the Middleton. There he'd met the man who had taken the Governor-Generalship of South Africa from him, Lord Milner. Halifax shuddered to think how near he had come to disaster that day, he'd been all set to cut the man publicly, creating a minor scandal that would have finished them both, but before he could, Milner had welcomed him warmly and commended him for his work in India. They'd sat down together and Milner had spent the evening seeking his advice on how to handle the problems that were afflicting South Africa.. By the end of the meeting, Milner was thanking him for his insights and invited him to meet some mutual friends who shared their interests.
They called it a set, the Cliveden Set, but that was just journalistic nonsense. It was just a group of friend who met at the Astor's house, Cliveden, and exchanged views on the world. Neither Lady Nancy nor her husband controlled anything no matter what the gutter press alleged and if the influential were prominent, well, wasn't it only natural that those of superior breeding and ability preferred each others company? He'd met like minds and good friends there. Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden and Lord Lothian, for example, then there had been Geoffrey Dawson and Robert Barrington-Ward, Halifax had been shocked at first that the editor and sub-editor of The Times were included but he'd quickly learned to appreciate their skills. And their support, the Times had spoken well of his work when he'd been made Secretary of State for War for five months in 1935 and warmly applauded his appointment as Lord Privy Seal under Baldwin and Chamberlain.
The door banged, two yeomen warders entered, one carrying a tray, the other one of the ugly machineguns the Americans had given to the traitors in the Resistance. Typical of the Americans to seek allies in the lowest kinds of people. And how typical of them to call it a "Greasegun". Halifax looked down at his last meal. A slice of canned ham, some buttered toast and two boiled eggs. At least they'd given him two eggs, if the breakfast seemed sparse, well that was the Americans as well. Farming in Europe had collapsed over the last two years, the machinery was all destroyed, the horses gone and even the seedstock was depleted. To make matters worse, even the crops that had been planted had failed, they'd come up sick and yellow and their grain heads had been meager to the point of being nonexistent. The livestock was dying, the first year after the bombing, almost all the cattle and sheep had aborted their young. Halifax looked at his eggs and shuddered at the memory of the first months after the bombing. The chickens had laid eggs, that was as far as it went. Those eggs had been bloody inside, foul-smelling, black and red disgusting and inedible. The two fresh eggs on Halifax's plate were more than a week's ration for most people in Europe. If it wasn't for the Spanish and Italians shipping up food, most would be starving. The Americans and Australians were shipping food as well, but if Halifax had his way, he'd send it back.
Why couldn't people understand that his way had been the right one? If people had just accepted the inevitable, none of this needed to have happened. His friends at Cliveden had shown him that the recovery of Germany was a good thing, that it stabilized Europe and put a block in the way of further Bolshevik infiltration and subversion. After all, its reoccupation of the Rhineland had constituted no real threat to anybody, it was just Germany continuing its return to normality. Halifax had been to Germany at the invitation of Herman Gering. Herman had heard of Halifax's ability at the hunt through their mutual friends at Cliveden and had invited him to a hunting exhibition. Halifax smiled a little as he chewed the a piece of the cold toast, he'd almost created an international incident by mistaking Adolf Hitler for a doorman and handing him his coat. The Fuhrer had laughed the incident off and shown himself to be a real gentlemen, a man who could be trusted. As a result, Halifax had ignored Eden's directive to pass on warnings against possible German designs on Austria and Czechoslovakia. He'd also listened to Hitler's hair-raising advice on how he should have handled difficulties in India. For that alone, the meeting had been invaluable. Halifax had understood that Hitler was also somebody who should be feared and appeased.
The following year Eden resigned. He'd ignored the advice and opinions of his friends at Cliveden and eventually stopped coming to the meetings. Chamberlain and Halifax had carried on the work behind Eden's back, especially the appeasement of the new European governments, particularly that of Benito Mussolini, whom Eden regarded as an untrustworthy gangster. Halifax had been appointed Foreign Secretary in February 1938 and just three weeks later Hitler had annexed Austria. This had left Czechoslovakia now seriously at risk.. That problem had been solved without a confrontation with German. The problem was that the British Government just didn't understand that that the new leaders of Europe were essentially honorable, reasonable and were disinclined to start a major war on the Continent as long as their grievances dating form the Great War were appeased.
Halifax had severe doubts over the wisdom of the rearmament policies that had been started; he could see they would only serve to provoke the Germans and add tension to the situation. He'd been proved right in September 1939 when the international order he had sought to preserve fell apart with Hitler's invasion of Poland. It was much worse than he had feared, not only had Chamberlain's grossly mishandled the peace with his rearmament, he'd allowed the UK to be trapped in to foolish adventure after foolish adventure. Instead of seeking an agreement with Germany that would end the insanity, he'd prolonged the war by refusing even to consider a peace initiative. He'd paid the price though, on May 10, there had been a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons, the answer to which had been so ambiguous that Chamberlain felt his position had become untenable if it was based only on the support of his own party. He tried to save his position by forming a coalition government; but the leader of the Labor Party Clement Attlee made it clear his party would not work with a coalition government under Chamberlain, let alone assist in forming one.
Chamberlain's position hadn't been supportable any longer and he had resigned as party leader, and thus automatically lost his position as Prime Minister. The Conservatives still commanded a majority in the house so the new party leader would automatically become the next Prime Minister. He had been one of only two viable candidates, the other had been Winston Churchill. Each had a cadre of supporters and the balance between them was even. Chamberlain smiled upon Churchill as his successor, but Halifax's main ally was King George VI. The King had expressed his approval of Halifax to anybody who would listen and the committee who ran the Conservative Party had offered the leadership to him.
Halifax smiled at the memory. He had refused the position, allegedly on the grounds that he lacked the military and technical experience to lead a nation at war. In reality, he had consulted his friends at Cliveden and they had suggested he wait. Churchill and the war needed to be discredited before a peace initiative would stand a chance. It had been good advice, Churchill's problems came thick and fast and, six weeks later, the military situation was infinitely worse. The British army's escape from capture at Dunkirk was hailed as a salvation but of course it was, in military terms, a shocking setback. The continental ally whom Britain had relied on to face the German army had surrendered, Italy had come in on the German side, and Hitler was master of Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Bay of Biscay. By declining the position of Prime Minister, Halifax had isolated himself from the disaster but maintained his position as next inline and gain advantage from the delay. He had been kept on in his position as Foreign Secretary with his old friend RAB Butler as deputy and was now perfectly placed to step forth and earn himself a place in history.
Halifax had always been amazed by the misconceptions that most people held about how Britain got its Prime Ministers. Some people actually believed the Prime Minister was elected like some American President. Others, incredibly enough, actually thought that the Prime Minister was appointed by the King. Thank God, neither were right. The people elected their Members of Parliament and whichever party commanded a majority in the House of Commons became the Government. The leader of that party became the Prime Minister. In the Labor Party, the leader was elected in a meeting that was heavily dominated by the block votes of the big Trades Unions. They elected their leader and removed him by a vote of no confidence. The Conservative Party was different, it was run by a group of Elder Statesmen of the party, known jokingly as the "great and the good". They appointed the Party Leader, who served at their pleasure and could be dismissed at will. The balance on that committee between his and Churchill's supporters had been finely balanced, now after six weeks of disaster, he'd known the balance lay strongly in his favor.
The timing had been just right. Late at night on the 17th of June, he'd sent Butler to visit Bjorn Prytz, the Swedish Minister in London with a message to be transmitted to Germany. That message promised that any reasonable terms extended by the Germans to the UK would be accepted and that no diehards would be allowed to stand in the way. Less than an hour later, a reply, offering reasonable terms to be defined by noon the next day was received. Halifax smiled fondly at the memory of the Cabinet meeting agenda he'd set up. The amount of wool to be included in National Cloth, modifications to the blackout regulations, fodder allowances for agricultural horses, two of the members of the Cabinet had gone to sleep just reading it. Churchill had taken one horrified look at the Administrivia and decided to go to Windsor so he could prepare a speech, a task that would keep him away until the meetings end. Then, he'd made certain all his supporters were present.. It had been hard sitting there, trying not to look at his watch, waiting for the German message.
At 2pm it had come. Right in the middle of the blackout regulations discussion, Butler had entered the Cabinet Office with the German terms. The German terms had been reasonable all right. An armistice and ceasefire, an agreement for peaceful co-existence and non-belligerency, the Royal Navy to be restricted to port until a full peace agreement was signed, the Army to be returned to a peacetime establishment and the RAF prevented from procuring long-range bombers. He had proposed that the German terms be accepted while Butler had requested and been granted a meeting of the Great and the Good. Then, with his motion to accept the German terms accepted, he'd presented them to the ruling committee. One of his allies had moved a vote of no confidence in Churchill, it had been passed and that was it. Churchill was no longer Prime Minister. The Great and the Good offered the position to him, and this time he'd accepted. The whole thing had taken barely thirty minutes. The next stop was the Palace. The King had already been alerted to the change in leadership and welcomed him warmly. The brief ceremony called "kissing hands" that marked the King's acceptance of the new Prime Minister was quickly over and it was done. He'd brought peace back to Great Britain. That was the thing that had been decisive, oh, there'd been rumblings of discontent over the way the change of leadership had happened and even talk of a no-confidence vote but he'd brought peace. In the final analysis, that was what had mattered.
His first official act as new Prime Minister had been to issue instructions to put Churchill into "protective custody." It would have gone off so well if it hadn't been for that traitor Alexander Cadogan. He'd been the head of the Foreign Office and had got a warning out in time. Churchill had escaped, first to Portsmouth then out on a small aircraft to Ireland. From their, he'd taken a Pan-American Clipper from Shannon to New York and then gone on to Canada, the first of a long line of escapees to follow that route. The German terms were accepted and, by nightfall, the war was over.
Halifax decapitated his second egg. Soft-boiled, the way he preferred them. He cut the remaining piece of toast into strips and dunked one in the egg yolk. "Off with his head" he thought to himself, a grim joke under the circumstances, and bit off the egg-soaked end of the strip. Gaining power was one thing, keeping it was another. Of course, his friends Dawson and Barrington-Ward had helped. They were both dead now, assassinated by the Resistance. So was his old friend RAB, killed when his convoy was ambushed by the terrorists. There hadn't been enough left of his body to identify. Damned Americans with their Bolshevik allies and their rocket launchers. Dawson and Barrington-Ward had a special edition of the Times ready to hit the news-stands. "PEACE" the front page had said in 108 point bold. And a story about how Lord Halifax's peace initiative had succeeded and Great Britain had peace again on honorable terms. Even victorious ones, the paper had slyly hinted, after all the Germans had conquered everybody else who had opposed them, wasn't seeing them off a victory?
Within an hour of the paper reaching the newsstands, he'd made his first broadcast as Prime Minister. It had helped that the Director-General was another regular guest at Cliveden. He didn't exactly claim a victory, but he'd pursued the line that the situation was catastrophic and that the peace terms represented a far better deal than expected. And wasn't peace better than being invaded? Next morning, the other papers had more or less followed suit, some with more reserve than others. The Daily Herald and the Daily Worker had been the most supportive, their connections with the Trades Unions saw to that. The Telegraph had been harder to convince but he knew how to handle that. Called the editor in to an exclusive meeting, gave him the official line on the record but off the record had told him "the truth". That the war had shown British equipment was hopelessly obsolete and in desperately short supply. Britain had needed time to rearm, to bring new, better aircraft, better tanks, better ships into service. The Editor had gone away, not quite convinced but not bitterly opposed either.
The first sign of real opposition had come from the Empire. Technically, they were bound by the same terms. When the Halifax treaty arrived in Australia a few days later, the Australian Prime Minister had read it aloud in the Australian Parliament, then had held the document up and ostentatiously torn it apart. His comment 'Good riddance to bad rubbish', was something only a Colonial could say. Canada had said nothing at all, South Africa had just "deferred" it. In India, some whippersnapper called Sharpe had sent it back with the comment "Copy corrupt". But that was all just talk and bombast. There had been fighting in the Middle East that had been ended by an agreement which had by-passed London completely. Still, the fighting had ended.
The real threat was a military coup, he'd known it and there were ways around it. The Army had been reduced to peacetime establishment and dispersed. It was desperately short of equipment, supplies and ammunition after Dunkirk and being Prime Minister had allowed him to make sure that those shortages were never replaced. The Air Force was short of fuel and ammunition as well. There had been complaints about the shortages but he'd used the same line as he'd tried out on the Telegraph, equipment was inadequate and new types were needed; all the money was going on the new types, you wait until you see the new tanks, the new aircraft. And they had waited, and in the end descended into a sullen inaction. Or so he had thought.
But, Britain had been doing well since the armistice. The Germans had placed huge orders for munitions with British factories, Employment was up, wages went up, the economy looked good. The Germans had ordered so much equipment, they couldn't ship it out of the country. It had been stored in various depots, and it had seemed quite reasonable that the Germans should post guards there. Especially after what had happened at Tangmere. That had been one airbase the Germans had asked to use so their aircraft could patrol the eastern Atlantic. There had been a demonstration, some of the aircraft had been damaged and the Germans had asked to bring in some police as a guard. Halifax shook his head, he should have noticed the police being replaced by soldiers, the guard becoming a platoon, then a company, then a battalion. At each of the airbases.
It hadn't mattered until August 1942. By then, the two countries had drifted together, a little. Outright hostility had been replaced by grudging acceptance, non-belligerency by the UK drifting into being a de-facto German ally. Then, their manpower stretched by the war in Russia, the Germans had demanded troops from their allies,. Halifax remembered the conversation with Hitler when he had refused to send the troops, The German dictator had been quite reasonable about it. Then, as the real German response took place, he'd seen what had been growing under his nose. The Germans had airports guarded and ready, they'd had cadres of troops in the island, they'd had equipment stockpiled. The Germans had dropped paratroopers to link up with their prepositioned forces and they'd established themselves before anybody could react. The forces had put up a fight of course, their "sullen inaction" had been a cover for stockpiling as much fuel and ammunition as they could. They'd got all the equipment they could in the best condition they could manage. And, when the Germans had arrived, they fought. Fought hard.
Staring at the map in those days, Halifax reflected, he'd seen something the Germans obviously hadn't. The Army and the Air Force were fighting to keep the Germans away from the big naval ports. By the time the Germans realized what was happening, the fleet was out and running for Canada. The Royal Air Force and the Army had died to get the fleet out and away. The Germans had exploded with rage and sent out every aircraft, every submarine they had to stop them. One by one, the slower ships had gone down, Barham first, torpedoed just off Lands End, the film of her rolling over and exploding triumphantly shown in every German cinema. Royal Sovereign, Revenge, Malaya, Resolution and Ramillies, the Germans had got them all, only the battlecruisers and the new fast battleships had made it to Canada. The cruisers and destroyers had trickled in as well. Most of the slow ships had been sunk, of the slow battleships only Nelson and Rodney had made it into New York, the former only just, some reports said she'd actually sunk in New York harbor.
That was it, although the Germans never used the word, Britain was occupied. Soon, the Resistance had started their war, of those who tried to make the relationship with Germany a little less arduous being stabbed in the back. German reprisals were too savage to try attacks on their personnel but those the resistance called collaborators were fair game. Halifax thought he had stayed on to try and protect his people. Then, the Jews had started being deported and he'd found he could do nothing
There was a bang on the door and the guards came in. Halifax had finished his breakfast and the guards took him down the long grey stone corridor out of the tower. The morning was cold, sharp and bright when he stepped out onto the green. There were people there, lined up on seats. Halifax saw the dumpy figure of Churchill watching impassively, King George VI beside him. Halifax had thought he'd kept the King out of the public eye and in seclusion all the time, only he hadn't. The King had been waiting for the breakout and had ridden the battleship named after his father to exile in Canada. His wife had lost an arm when the ship had been hit by Condor bombers, one of his daughters had been killed. But he'd made it to exile and become the symbol of British resistance there. The King's face was impassive but his eyes blazed with the hatred of trust betrayed.
There were others watching. Boyd from Canada, Locock from Australia, Sharpe from India. Some unidentified Asian woman. An American he'd never seen before. Some Europeans. And in front of him was a wooden block on the grass. A black block with two semi-circular cutouts in the top. Standing beside the block was a big, powerful man, heavily muscled and holding a large, wickedly-sharp axe. Halifax looked at the spectators again, beside the American was a woman with a mane of black, curling hair, for a chilling moment Halifax thought her eyes were glowing bright red but it was just the reflection of the early morning sun. The Asian woman was looking at the axe with professional interest. Halifax had wanted to give a speech, but permission had been refused. He had been allowed to write his last testament though, and it had been printed and distributed.
Then he knelt before the wooden block. It was better designed than he had realized. The positioning of the two cut-outs were stretching his neck over the heavy wood, exposing his spine to the axe. In front of his face, Halifax saw the grass, strangely yellowed and sick-looking, spotted with the early morning dew.
The axe slammed down.