“Let me remind the House . . . when I, with some friends, was pressing [for rearmament], it was not only the government that objected but the opposition parties.”

Harold Nicolson thought the speech masterful. “Winston [sounded] absolutely loyal” while at the same time signaling that “he really has nothing to do with this confused and timid gang.” Other listeners were less impressed. John Peck, one of Churchill’s Admiralty aides, thought his performance “did not ring entirely true.” Violet Bonhom Carter, the daughter of former prime minister Herbert Asquith and a leading figure in the Liberal Party, also detected a note of inauthenticity in the speech. In particular, Bonhom Carter thought Churchill’s summation sounded “forced.” Dingle Foot, another Liberal politician, called the speech “the least impressive of [Churchill’s] career.” Like many Chamberlain supporters, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe suspected there was a reason why Churchill, usually a sublime orator, had sounded so flat. She also found his reaction to Lloyd George’s air raid shelter quip revealing. “Winston [looked] like a fat baby swinging his legs on the front bench trying not to laugh” while the other ministers sat “stone faced.”

After Churchill finished, shouts of “Clear the lobbies!” and “Division!” filled the air, and the ancient rhythms of parliamentary life asserted themselves. MPs rose from their seats, walked to the back of the House, and divided. Chamberlain’s supporters joined the line in front of the government lobby, opponents joined the line in front of the opposition lobby. (The lobbies were long corridors.) Normally, divisions are decorous affairs, but not that night. Too much was at stake. Taunts of “Missed the bus!” and “Yes men!” “Get out! Go! In the Name of God, go!” and “Rats!” flew between the two lines.

For the Labour MPs, that night was about Chamberlain and his conduct of the war, but it was also about the hunger marches of the 1920s and the doles of the 1930s. It was about billy clubs and blood-drenched strikers and hatreds and resentments that had accumulated over seventeen years of mostly Conservative rule, the last three under Neville Chamberlain. For the dissident Tory MPs, it had the character of a family tragedy. In background, outlook, and belief, the members of the House Conservative caucus were similar. They had gone to the same schools, served in the same regiments, attended one another’s weddings. They had watched one another’s children be baptized, had buried one another’s parents, and, except for Neville Chamberlain and his government, they had believed in the same things: in England, in Crown and Empire, in patriotism, loyalty, duty, and the Conservative Party, the party of their fathers and their fathers’ fathers. If betraying one’s country was the worst thing a man could do, then, for many of the dissident Tories standing in the opposition line, betraying one’s party with a cabal of socialists was a very close second. It was especially so when David Margesson would be waiting to greet you at the other end of the opposition lobby, his face screwed up into an “expression of implacable resentment.” Approaching the passage to the lobby, Edward Spears found himself thinking, “How many men have faced [this entrance] wondering whether they were doing the right thing, whether in four steps they had ruined their political careers?”

The outcome of the division was never in doubt. The large Conservative majority in the Commons ensured a Chamberlain victory. What mattered was the margin of victory, and here the tellers [the vote counters] had a surprise: the prime minister’s customary majority, 200 to 250 votes, had shrunk to 81. The House erupted. “Go! Go!” “Resign! Resign!” “Missed the bus!” Harold Macmillan, a future prime minister, and Joshua Wedgewood, a Labour MP, stood up and sang an off-key version of “Rule Britannia.” Chamberlain endured the taunts for as long as he could, then “pick[ed] his way over the protruding feet of his colleagues” and left. Watching him walk out, “following in the wake of all his dead hopes and fruitless efforts,” Spears “was surprised to find himself feeling intensely sorry for him.”

When Clem Davies met Joe Kennedy later that night, the prime minister’s supporters were already putting it about in London clubland that Chamberlain planned to remain in office. Davies and Kennedy discussed the political situation for a while with their host, the press magnate Lord Beaverbrook. Then Kennedy said that President Roosevelt would want to be briefed on the debate, and disappeared into another room to place a transatlantic call. When Kennedy returned, he looked “haggard and shaken”—Roosevelt said Holland had been invaded, Rotterdam was in flames, and German parachute troops had seized control of all the main bridges in the Netherlands. Davies immediately placed a call to Churchill, then to Sam Hoare, the air minister. Neither man had heard anything about an invasion. Nor had the Dutch ambassador, who fainted when Davies told him the news.