I nearly killed Winston Churchill once. Yes, the man described by his latest biographer, Roy Jenkins, as "the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street". It happened in the Palace of Westminster in the early 1960s when the former prime minister was still, intermittently, attending the House of Commons.
Some months before he had fallen out of bed while on holiday at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and broken his thigh. His health, never robust in his closing years, was in fairly rapid decline, but he stubbornly insisted in taking his seat in the House from time to time. He would hobble, unaided, on his stick into the chamber and collapse heavily into his traditional place in the corner of the row just across the gangway from the government front bench.
It was on one of these visits that he had his near-fatal encounter with me. I was rushing from the press gallery to keep an appointment with an MP in the inner lobby. This was a secure area which only members of the House and lobby correspondents were allowed to enter. Leading to this sanctum was a corridor with heavy Pugin double doors at each end; these opened inwards or outwards, depending on whether one pushed or pulled.
Stormed through
On this occasion I pushed heavily in my haste to be in time for my appointment. On the other side of the door the feeble figure of the greatest living Englishman was pulling. There was no contest. I stormed through the door to find Churchill hanging on to the heavy brass handle with both hands, his stick on the floor. "Sorry sir," I whimpered as I helped to steady him. I restored his stick to his hand and held open the door, and he proceeded on his doddery way with a grunt.
I had last encountered him face to face a couple of months previously when he had received the freedom of the city of Belfast at the Mansion House in London. Churchill's state of health was too precarious for him to travel to Belfast, so Belfast had to come to him. At least that was the official version. Cynics claimed that Churchill had vowed never to set foot in Belfast again following the hostile reception he and his wife, Clementine, had received from local Unionists when he went there to speak in favour of the Irish Home Rule Bill in 1912.
At the time he was First Lord of the Admiralty in Asquith's Liberal Government. The intention was that he should share a platform in the Ulster Hall with John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Party at Westminster, and "wee" Joe Devlin, the local Nationalist MP.
Not surprisingly, the Unionists were not greatly enamoured of the plan. Was it not within the sacred walls of the same Ulster Hall a quarter of a century earlier that Churchill's father, Lord Randolph, had espoused their cause with his ringing battle cry of "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right"? They adopted spoiling tactics. The Ulster Unionist Council booked the Ulster Hall for the day before the Home Rule meeting and then threatened to hold a marathon sit-in.
Police protection
The Churchills arrived in Larne on the ferry from Scotland and travelled by rail, under heavy police protection, to the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast. A hostile mob, estimated at more than 10,000, gathered outside the hotel in Royal Avenue. In the meantime it was deemed prudent to switch the meeting to Celtic Park, the home of Belfast Celtic soccer club, near the Falls Road. Churchill and his party were heckled and booed on their way to the ground until they entered the friendlier reaches of the lower Falls.
A crowd of about 5,000 turned up to hear him. He cleverly paraphrased his father's old pro-Unionist speech. "Let Ulster fight for the dignity and honour of Ireland," he proclaimed. "Let her fight for the reconciliation of races and for the forgiveness of ancient wrongs; let her fight for the unity and consolidation of the British Empire; let her fight for the spreading of charity, tolerance and enlightenment among men. Then indeed Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right."
Half-a-century later, long back in the bosom of the Conservative Party, Churchill graciously received the Freedom of Belfast in London. Surrounded by the quartet of Ulster field marshals who had helped him win the second World War - Alanbrooke, his Chief of Staff, Alexander of Tunis, said to have been his favourite general, Montgomery, victor at El Alamein, and Templer, the Tiger of Malaya - he once again spoke highly of Northern Ireland's contribution to the Allied triumph. He was always extravagant in his praise of the North's war effort - in order, it was thought, mischievously to highlight his disdain for De Valera's policy of neutrality.Churchill believed that at least three-quarters of the population of the South supported the Allies in the war.
Nicholas Soames
Churchill survived his tribulations with Belfast and my accidental assault at Westminster and died in his bed on January 24th, 1965 at the age of 90. In his monumental and masterly new biography, Roy Jenkins relates a story he got from Churchill's grandson, the Tory MP Nicholas Soames. When he was about six Soames wandered uninvited into Churchill's study at Chartwell, his country home.
"Grandpapa," asked the youngster, "is it true that you are the greatest man in the world?"
"Yes," growled Churchill. "And now bugger off."