I shall not leave unless their father does, and the king will not leave the country in any circumstances, whatever.” In any case, the Queen (later known as the Queen Mother) insulated the Royal Family from public resentment by choosing not to send princesses Elizabeth and Margaret to Canada because, as she said, “The children will not leave unless I do. Moreover, he had just given his famous never surrender speech, “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills we shall never surrender…” Such a man was unlikely to approve of the Royal Family leaving their stations. This the Prime Minister, who has ticked this note in red pencil, strongly opposed and the plan was dropped.” Churchill felt that if the Royal Family left the country, it would be bad for morale, and strongly opposed such a plan. Colville has notated Chamberlain proposed subject and Churchill’s response: “The points which the Lord president wishes to discuss with the War Cabinet alone were the proposals to evacuate the Princesses to Canada. Could I have 2 minutes with the Cabinet alone to raise points which I think they will wish to talk?” Churchill has slashed an energetic red line across the paper indicating his refusal. Chamberlain, who had been Prime Minister and was a friend of the King, was concerned for his family.Īutograph note, in the hand of Chamberlain: “The King and Queen have asked me to see them this afternoon. We learn from this memo that one of these was the Lord President, Neville Chamberlain. In the end, about 13,000 were evacuated abroad.Ĭhurchill’s private secretary at this time was John Colville, whose diaries, now in the Churchill Papers at Cambridge, form a prime resource for the times.ĭespite the opprobrium, there were a lot of people, at that moment of danger, who felt that the Royal Family should be sent to Canada for safety sake, or at least the young princesses (Elizabeth, the present Queen, and Margaret Rose). One atypical evacuee, Jessica Mann, the daughter of German Jewish refugees whose parents were determined to ensure her safety, recalled hearing children who fled the UK called “horrid little cowards who ran away”. It seemed that everyone we knew was there.” Those sent overseas at their parents’ expense included children with the surnames Mountbatten, Bowes-Lyon (the Queen’s maiden name), Sitwell and Guinness, families high in the upper echelons of British society. When the Conservative MP Henry “Chips” Channon delivered his son Paul for overseas evacuation, he recalled that “there was a queue of Rolls-Royces and liveried servants, and mountains of trunks. The result was an impression of grave social injustice. Moreover, some of the wealthy and influential British families began privately evacuating their children to the USA and Canada. In the spring and summer of 1940, with the threat of German invasion in the air, the British government began evacuating children to dominion countries such as Canada and Australia. Two memos from June 1940 retained for posterity by Churchill’s private secretary John Colville, affixed by him in a form of journal entry, with Colville’s handwritten explanationsĮvacuation of children in Britain from the cities to the countryside started in September 1939, in the wake of seeing the German bombing of Poland. A remarkable set of 2 manuscripts bearing the handwriting of both Churchill and his predecessor Neville Chamberlain
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