Eighty years ago this week Gandhi adds to the pressure on Churchill from all sides

 

 

Mahatma Gandhi stepped up the pressure on the British by beginning a fast (hunger strike to some) in protest at his arbitary imprisonment. Unlike the fast he had undertaken in 1939, this produced no change in the British attitude, but it did cement his moral authority. He never intended it to be a fast to death.

Labour MPs as a body voted against the government (including its Labour ministers) on the question of financing the Beveridge proposals for social security measures. The Conservative Chancellor Sir Kingsley Wood insisted on "sound financing" for the proposals. The vote was a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the scale of planning for a post-war Britain that was now looking like a distinct possibility and not a distant dream. The Labour MPs were easily defeated and there was practically no risk that this marked a broader move towards opposition to the government, but a warning shot had been fired; wartime unity was a finite commodity. Moreover, Conservative MPs like Quintin Hogg and extreme right-winger Victor Raikes showed themselves willing to break ranks with the government.

In an even more surprising departure from previous loyalty (but not of political inclination) Lord Beaverbrook, who had just left the War Cabinet, made a violent call for a Second Front in the House of Lords. He was exhausted and really unable to carry out the demanding work of a departmental minister, but was happy to build up his stock of political capital by appealing to pro-Soviet sentiment. 

Rommel launched counter-offensives at Sidi-bou-Zid and the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia. Both aimed at the inexperienced US forces which were thrown back, suffering heavy casualties. The performance of General Fredendall OC II Corps was notably abject; he attempted to direct the battle from a large, well-appointed underground bunker. The setback further took the gloss of Eisenhower's promotion to four star general  (only the twelth ever in US history) of which he had learned from the BBC rather than any official communication. The promotion had been designed to improve his standing with the highly-ranked British commanders with whom he had to deal, but much had to be done to overcome British scepticism.

The London Zoological Society presented Churchill with a lion. Rota had been lodged at the Zoo by his owner, George Thomson managing director of Rotaprint, whose mascot Rota had been. Wartime food shortage and the concern of Thomson's neighbours in Pinner, where Rota had lived in his back garden, had forced this move. Churchill accepted on condition that he would not be expected to keep Rota at 10 Downing Street or Chequers, so he remained in Regents Park. A newsreel cattily observed that given Churchill's difficulties in keeping order in politics, this was just as well.