Vernon
Bartlett was
born in Swanage on 30th
April 1894. After being educated at Blundell's School, Tiverton, he
worked as a journalist for the Daily
Chronicle and
Picture Post.
Bartlett
wrote about Adolf Hitler and Nazi
Germany and warned against the appeasement policy of Neville
Chamberlain and
the Conservative government. Bartlett was a harsh critic of the Munich
Agreement and afterwards was approached by Richard
Acland
to
stand as an anti-Chamberlain candidate at a by-election in Bridgwater.
Bartlett agreed and in November, 1938, surprisingly won the previously
safe Tory seat and became a member of the House
of Commons.
During the Second World War Bartlett was appointed
Assistant Director of Propaganda. One suggestion made by Bartlett
was that German food distribution could be disrupted by getting the
Royal Air Force to drop large numbers of
forged ration cards. The idea was rejected by Neville
Chamberlain who
insisted that Britain must "fight fair".
Bartlett
also served as director of the British Press Services and in 1941
was sent to the Soviet Union to arrange for
a better exchange of information between the country and the British
Commonwealth.
Bartlett
was also a member of the 1941 Committee. Other
members included Edward
G. Hulton,
J.
B. Priestley,
Kingsley
Martin,
Richard
Acland,
Michael Foot, Peter
Thorneycroft, Thomas Balogh, Richie
Calder, Tom
Winteringham,
Vernon
Bartlett,
Violet Bonham Carter, Konni
Zilliacus, Victor Gollancz, Storm
Jameson and David
Low.
In December
1941 the committee published a report that called for public control
of the railways, mines and docks and a national wages policy. A further
report in May 1942 argued for works councils and the publication of
"post-war plans for the provision of full and free education,
employment and a civilized standard of living for everyone."
Later
that year Bartlett, Richard
Acland,
J.
B. Priestley
and other members of the
1941 Committee established the socialist Common
Wealth Party.
The party advocated the three principles of Common Ownership, Vital
Democracy and Morality in Politics. The party favoured public ownership
of land and Acland gave away his Devon family estate of 19,000 acres
(8,097 hectares) to the National Trust.
After
the war Bartlett joined the Labour Party.
However, he retired from politics at the 1950
General Election and decided to become a full-time journalist.
As well as working for the Daily
Chronicle he
was staff reporter for the Manchester
Guardian between
1954 and 1963.
The
author of several books, his autobiography,
And Now, Tomorrow, was published in 1960.
(1)
Vernon
Bartlett was in Godesberg
working for the Daily
Chronicle when
Neville
Chamberlain met Adolf
Hitler on 22nd September 1938. He wrote
about it in his book And Now, Tomorrow (1960)
The
mood of the German officials when it was announced that the Prime
Minister would not see the Chancellor again was one almost of panic.
This meant either war or a Hitler surrender. The crowds that applauded
Chamberlain as he drove along the Rhine consisted not so much of ardent
nationalists, delighted that a foreign statesman had come to make
obeisance to their Fuehrer, as of ordinary human beings who wanted
to be kept out of war, Since history cannot - thank God - repeat itself,
one cannot produce proof to support one's opinions, but I am firmly
convinced that, had Chamberlain stood firm at Godesberg, Hitler would
either have climbed down or would have begun war with far less support
from his own people than he had a year later. The British forces,
one is told, were scandalously unprepared, and were able to make good
some of their defects during that year. But meanwhile the Western
Allies lost the Czechoslovak Army - one of the best on the Continent
- defending a country from which the German armies could be out-flanked.
Was it not Bismarck who claimed that whoever controlled Bohemia controlled
Europe?
(2)
Vernon Bartlett, And Now, Tomorrow (1960)
Very late that night we learnt that agreement
had been reached. But the people whom it principally concerned - the
Czechoslovaks - had not been consulted. When it was all over, and
the German journalists who had shown such alarm a week earlier were
standing on the tables and toasting everybody in large glasses of
beer, I watched the two Czech observers enter Mr. Chamberlain's room
on the first floor of the Hotel Regina at 2 a.m. in order to learn
the fate of their country. "Two days ago," I wrote in my
dispatch, "the British and French governments were prepared to
help Czechoslovakia if she were attacked; the same governments are
now pledged to hold themselves responsible for the fulfilment of the
plan for German occupation." It was clear to the Czechoslovak
representatives, and surely to everybody else who was there except
the British Prime Minister himself, that the independence of their
country had been signed away by statesmen (the word should, perhaps,
be printed in inverted commas) whose fear had stifled all sense of
honour.
(3)
Henry
(Chips) Channon,
diary entry (18th
November, 1938)
I am dumbfounded by the news of the Bridgewater election,
where Vernon Bartlett, standing as an Independent, has had a great
victory over the Government candidate. This is the worst blow the
Government has had since 1935. Of course, there are extenuating explanations,
but they are meague comfort.
(4)
Vernon Bartlett, Daily
Chronicle
(13th April, 1939)
Yesterday I spoke with Ambassadors, Ministers
or high officials in eight Embassies or Legations, and in seven of
them the great fear was expressed that the British government's prejudice
against genuine co-operation with Russia was daily bringing war nearer.
(5)
Vernon
Bartlett, And Now,
Tomorrow (1960)
There can surely be no other career both
so flattering and so frustrating as that of a Member of Parliament.
I left my constituency after my election with the feeling that I was
nearly as important as people there believed me to be. My maiden speech
received a whole column in The Times and, as far as I remember some
mention in its leader column. Mr. Churchill was one of those who went
out of his way to congratulate me. I had been less nervous than I
had expected. I seemed to have my foot on the marble staircase that
leads up to the Secretary of State's room on the first floor of the
Foreign Office.
But a maiden speech is
relatively easy, for the Speaker lets you know when he will call you,
the tradition of the House is
against any interruption, and the following two members are expected
- though politically they may hate your guts - to say
nice things about your effort. I should have enjoyed the House of
Commons more if I had never made a second speech. For, during the
second and subsequent speeches there is always the probability that
some opponent will leap to his feet with an interruption. You are
not compelled to give way, but it is unwise not to do so. His interruption
may be irrelevant an idiotic, but it probably succeeds in breaking
the thread of you thoughts. If it becomes obvious that it has done
so, you may anticipate a whole series of interruptions the next time
you catch the Speaker's eye. Even if they are not made, the anticipation
of them reduces the confidence with which you face the most difficult
audience in the world.
If you speak from a platform,
the chances are that you are addressing an audience that has come
partly or wholly in order to hear you. Its members may be hostile
or critical, but at least they are likely to be attentive. Not so
in the House of Commons This is what happens, and the procedure would
seem to have been designed, purposely and probably wisely, to take
the fire out of any debate.
For many years my special
subject had been foreign affairs might, therefore, expect that, in
a two-day debate on it, I should have an opportunity to say my piece.
For two or three day before such a debate, I draft notes or, perhaps,
write out the entire speech in the hope that, by so doing, I shall
learn most of it by heart. As soon as the debate begins, I go round
to the Speaker's chair to request that my name be included on the
list of would-be participants and to ask what are my chances of being
called. The first disappointment - Mr. Speaker shakes his head doubtfully.
There are already five Privy Councillor down, and they take precedence
over ordinary members. The Foreign Secretary wants an hour and a half,
and his leading opponent will take at least an hour. There is one
maiden speech and twenty members, each as convinced as I am that he
has something of value to say, have already approached him. If wait
patiently, there might be a chance when everybody have gone off to
dinner.
(6)
1941 Vernon Bartlett was
sent to the Soviet Union to arrange for a
better exchange of information between the country and the British
Commonwealth. He later wrote about his experiences in
And Now, Tomorrow (1960)
Do we realise sufficiently in the Western democracies how
remarkably the country in which Communism was first successful has
drifted away from that doctrine, which it still encourages so vigorously
in other countries? The Soviet Union now has class distinctions more
rigid than any we know in the Parliamentary democracies; one would
need to go back a long way in English history to discover a party
or a class which had so nearly a monopoly of privilege and power as
the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R. Back have come the epaulettes
which were condemned so violently after the October Revolution. Back
have come the distinctions of rank. The Soviet diplomats dress up
in uniform on the slightest
excuse or provocation, and Sir Winston Churchill is said to have caused
deep offence in Moscow during the war by appearing there in the boiler
suit he was so fond of wearing in London.
The revolutionaries of
1917, or those few of them who have escaped the numerous purges or
death by natural causes, are no longer lean, hungry and idealistic
students; they are for the most part pot-bellied old gentlemen with
no other ambition than the conservative and almost universal one of
clinging on to their jobs. No attempt in history to create a classless
society has yet succeeded. Already the Russian attempt has failed;
influenced to a considerable extent by what has happened in Russia,
the United Kingdom may come closer to success in this respect than
the Russians have done.
(7)
Vernon
Bartlett, And Now,
Tomorrow (1960)
I like best to remember Mr Winston Churchill on the day after
the House of Commons was bombed. As a journalist, I
knew - as most M.P.s did not yet know - of this disaster, and I went
down to Westminster to see what it looked like. The bomb had fallen
almost directly above the Speaker's Chair, which was crushed under
a steep hill of smoking rubble. A cloud of dust still hung over the
place. The stone of the doorway into the Chamber - later to be preserved
and to be named after the Prime Minister - had been flaked and eroded
in one night so that it looked as old and as weather-worn as the ruins
of Ancient Rome. As I clambered up the hill of rubble, I was suddenly
confronted by a figure clambering up from the other side. There stood
Winston Churchill, his face covered with dust, through which the tears
that ran down his cheeks had made two miniature river-beds. "
I am a House of Commons man," he used to boast; had that boast
not been true, he would doubtless have surrendered to the temptation
and the clamour to put a stop to Question Time, which caused him and
his ministers so much extra work and worry, but which provided that
safety-valve for public bewilderment or discontent, and which gave
the British an advantage of morale over all the other belligerents.
"I am
a House of Commons man." And Churchill wept as he saw his beloved
House in ruins.
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