Please read the previous post first.

So what did the Conservatives do about their party leadership in May 1940?  Nothing.  Churchill became Prime Minister but Chamberlain remained Tory leader.  Churchill's first war cabinet comprised him, Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Clement Attlee (Labour leader) and Arther Greenwood (Labour deputy leader).  The key first issue was whether they should negotiate with Hitler.  Halifax was actively putting out feelers, using R.A.Butler as his fixer.  Chamberlain was now dubious about negotiating.  He had finally seen through Hitler, or he was simply livid at having been duped,or both. Attlee and Greenwood took the pragmatic view that if any hint of negotiation became known there would be a collapse in national morale.  So Churchill got his way.  Britain would fight on defiantly.

By October 1940, Chamberlain was dying of cancer and resigned.  (Lord Halifax was packed off abroad).  There was some talk of Churchill remaining above politics but he knew how ruthless the Tory party machine could be.  He wanted it under his control.  So Churchill became leader of the Conservative Party.  He remained such until 1955 when his longstanding heir apparent, Sir Anthony Eden, succeeded him with no serious rival in sight.

Alas, Eden quickly came to grief.  He was determined not to 'appease' Nasser - whom he likened to Hitler - over Egypt's nationalisation of the Suez Canal.  In 1956, he did a secret deal with France and Israel and sent in the troops.  The Americans, under Eisenhower, were appalled and threatened a run on the pound in the foreign exchanges. Eden ignominiously withdrew the troops, his health collapsed, and early in 1957 he resigned.

Who next to succeed him?  This time - arguably for the first time since Baldwin's appointment in 1923 - the Conservative Party was faced with making a real choice.   There was no ballot; it was all done by an inner clique sounding out opinion.  The grandee was 'Rab' Butler, who had already been acting prime Minister when both Churchill and Eden had been ill; but there were those who had never forgotten - or forgiven - his treachery in 1940.  He was blackballed. 

The new Conservative Party leader, and Prime Minister, was Harold Macmillan.  He quickly pulled the party together again, after the fiasco of Suez, and in October 1959 - saying 'some of our people have never had it so good' - he called a general election and won a landslide victory. So he had not been a bad choice as leader.

In 1963, Macmillan believed he was seriously ill and announced his retirement. As it happened, it soon emerged that he was not very ill at all but the die was cast by then.  Macmillan wanted Quinton Hogg to succeed him, but Hogg promptly made a fool of himself at the Tory party conference and was ruled out.  Who else was plausible except 'Rab' Butler?  The answer was no-one; but some people remained so hostile to Butler that the 14th Earl of Home was chosen instead.  The Earl renounced his title to become Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and was shoe-horned into a safe Scottish seat to become an M.P. (Yes, the Tories had safe seats in Scotland in those days.)

There was uproar in the party about the way in which a 'magic circle' had fixed things.  Home only very narrowly lost the 1964 general election to Harold Wilson, but the Tories lost power and Home stepped down as leader in 1965.  First however he introduced a new system of appointing a leader - by having a vote!  All Conservative M.P.s, but only they, would have an equal say in the matter.

In a fairly close ballot, they voted for Edward Heath over Reginald Maudling (who had been seen as the favourite).  The choice seemed amply vindicated when Maudling (a former Chancellor of the Exchequer) then had to resign from public life over some murky financial dealings in his business life; and even more so when Heath, unexpectedly, won the 1970 general election to become Prime Minister. 

By 1974, however, the choice seemed far less happy. Heath had panicked over inflation and unemployment to make drastic policy U-turns; mishandled a confrontation with the miners' union and put the country on a 3-day week to save fuel; and then bungled a snap election he had called, resulting in Wilson's return as Prime Minister.  Heath survived as party leader to lose another general election (albeit only narrowly again) later in 1974; but by 1975 the Conservative Party had had enough of him.

Who was the best man to replace Heath?  Why good old Willie Whitlaw, of course; it was 'obvious'.  The trouble was that Heath was too vain and proud to resign, and Whitelaw was too loyal to challenge him in a ballot.

So what was to be done?  How was the Conservative Party going to sort out its problem this time?

See the next post, coming shortly.