Guilty Men
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Guilty Men was a polemic book published in the summer of 1940 in the United Kingdom, which attacked the leading politicians of the 1930s for failing to confront Nazi Germany.
The idea for the book was thought up by three left-wing journalists who worked for Lord Beaverbrook's newspapers, principally the Evening Standard. They had the habit of meeting in private on the roof of the Evening Standard offices after the evening edition of the paper had been completed. With the Battle of Britain about to start, they surveyed the London skyline and considered what might happen to it. The journalists were Michael Foot (a future Leader of the Labour Party), Frank Owen (a former Liberal MP), and Peter Howard (who was 'Crossbencher' in the Sunday Express, and had previously captained England at rugby).
The three had the idea for a book looking at the politics of the 1930s in the UK. They believed that the country had been led by a succession of bad leaders - Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, who, together with various junior ministers, advisers and officials, had failed to prepare the country for war, and had conducted an allegedly disastrous foreign policy toward Germany known as "Appeasement". As their employer Beaverbrook was an active Conservative and banned his journalists from writing for other publications without his consent, the three adopted the pseudonym 'Cato' - after Cato the younger, the most prominent opponent of Julius Caesar. They persuaded Victor Gollancz, creator of the Left Book Club, to publish their book. The authors divided the 24 chapters equally between themselves and wrote the text in four days, ending on June 5, 1940.
The rush in which Guilty Men was written shows in the over-detailed description of Dunkirk at the beginning and in a few mistakes in the text, for example mis-ascribing Baldwin's observation on the electoral unpopularity of rearmament from the East Fulham by-election of 1933 (misprinted as 1935 in the original edition) as a reference to the 1935 general election.[1] Gollancz himself asked for some of the rhetoric in the book to be toned down, fearful of the reaction it would provoke.
The first edition of Guilty Men was published in early July, a few weeks after Chamberlain had resigned and been succeeded by Winston Churchill, after the Dunkirk evacuation had shown how weak Britain's military effort was, and after the defeat of France, leaving the UK with few allies in the war. The three authors wanted to see the removal of all the remaining ministers who had conducted British foreign policy, and to this end wrote the book as a protest. They were unsuccessful, but the book's assessment of the mistakes of the 1930s did become generally accepted.
Due to the content, the major book wholesalers W H Smith and Wyman's refused to handle it. The largest book distributor, Simpkin Marshall, also chose not to have it. There were also reports that some independent bookshops were visited by the police and warned that they were selling a banned book (which it wasn't). However, by selling through newsstands and from barrows in the street, it managed to sell out. Further printings were ordered, and the book sold 200,000 copies within weeks and went through 12 editions in July 1940 alone.
The authors took innocent pleasure in reviewing their own work, with Michael Foot contributing a review which was headlined "WHO IS THIS CATO?". There was indeed much speculation, with Aneurin Bevan being fastened on by many. Beaverbrook joked (without knowing the truth) that he made do "with the royalties from Guilty Men." Unfortunately, the authors failed to realise any of their royalties, as their literary agent Ralph Pinker had disappeared with them.
The book's arguments and conclusions have been strongly challenged by many historians, but it remains in circulation and has been reprinted on many occasions for historical interest. It came to be seen as contributing to a backlash against the Conservative Party which led to their defeat in the 1945 general election, as well as setting the tone for much historical discussion of the period.
