OPERATION NIGHT FLIGHT
NARRATED BY
VANESSA REDGRAVE
1979
INT. VILLAGE HALL – MORNING, 1929
It is a cold, late-February morning and people arrive to cast their votes. There are men and women with rifles stood outside the hall keeping watch over proceedings. It is unclear whether they are Fascisti, worker volunteers or some other force entirely.
Redgrave: On Thursday 21st February, 1929, the voters of Britain went to the polls for the second time in under a year. The attempts of Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour government to solve the crises that faced the country had broken down, and it was hoped that the election of a fresh ministry could break the deadlock. The choice open to voters was, in essence, threefold: continuity with MacDonald, a restoration of “order and security” with Winston Churchill’s Conservatives, or a radical restructuring of the economy under Oswald Mosley’s new Provisional Labour–Unionist Alliance, or PLUA. Liberal leader David Lloyd George had taken a back seat.
EXT. NORTHERN TOWN – DAY, 1929
Young women seen queuing outside a school hall to cast their votes for the first time.
Redgrave: For millions, this was their first time at the polls. MacDonald’s government had passed the Fifth Reform Act with little fanfare in March 1928, finally granting full suffrage to all men and women over the age of 21. It was a significant time to receive the vote: the 1929 election can be described with little fear of hyperbole as a vote on the very future of the United Kingdom.
VARIOUS – 1929
Stock footage of Mosley, Churchill and MacDonald campaigning. Churchill arrives at Cliveden under armed guard. Mosley addresses a crowd in Parliament Square.
Redgrave: When the results came in two days after polling, it soon became evident that the ballot had not cleared the hoped-for path out of the deadlock; the voters of Britain had elected a hung parliament. Churchill’s Conservatives were the largest party – just; the Tories secured 266 seats, only marginally ahead of Mosley’s new PLUA, who defeated the Labour Party at the first attempt by winning 259 seats. MacDonald was left with only 23 seats, pushed into fourth place by Lloyd George’s Liberals, who experienced an unexpected resurgence to take 55 seats. The Communist Party, building on a solid campaign of concentrated activity in key areas, increased their 1928 showing by two seats, achieving victory in nine constituencies.
Graphics showing the composition of Parliament and the geographical spread of party support. Compared with map showing spread of worker control.
Map showing approximate extent of worker control by February 1929.
Redgrave: The electoral map from 1929 can be made to double as a map of the boundaries of the revolutionary conflict. Regions under worker control largely backed the PLUA, with the most militant areas electing Communist candidates. Labour MPs were returned in more rural areas, generally supportive of the workers’ movement but not necessarily under syndicalist control. Liberal gains show areas where people were broadly in favour of measures against the strike, but who found Churchill’s militancy hard to swallow. The Tories meanwhile won in the most rural areas, securing their biggest majorities in the Home Counties where Fascisti groups had taken their strongest hold over social life.
Given these numbers, it was hard to see how a stable government could be formed. Matters were at once complicated and made simpler by the policy of abstention espoused by both the PLUA and the CPGB. Backed by the workers’ movement, these parties did not recognise the Cliveden Parliament as a legitimate body and sat instead – at the pleasure of the trade unionists outside – in Westminster. Thus while Britain’s elected MPs were divided geographically as well as politically, Prince Edward was faced with a situation where the Cliveden Parliament, still recognised as legitimate by the ailing British state, was entirely dominated by the Conservatives. While the abstentionist parties sitting in Westminster outnumbered the Tories by 268 seats to 266, in Cliveden Churchill had a majority of 185. Thus on February 24th, Winston Churchill was appointed prime minister.
EXT. CLIVEDEN, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE – DAY, 1929
Military vehicles move around the estate. Fascisti guards in British Army uniforms stand around beside entrances. Churchill speaks to his cabinet in Lady Astor’s boudoir.
Redgrave: Cliveden was the home of Lord and Lady Astor, 30 miles west of Westminster just outside the village of Taplow in Buckinghamshire. Lady Astor was an American socialite who had in 1919 become the first woman elected to Parliament to take her seat[1]. As a leading figure in Conservative society, she was at the heart of an aristocratic group who entertained numerous anti-catholic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The group lived in almost constant fear of a Communist takeover of the British Empire.
When Astor invited Parliament to relocate to her home in September 1928 after the occupation of Westminster by workers that summer, the local branch of the Territorial Army were seconded to the estate to provide protection to Members of Parliament. In January 1929, Nancy Astor met with British Fascisti leader Rotha Lintorn-Orman to discuss engaging the Q Divisions as supplementary guards. Her husband, Waldorf, Viscount Astor, was reluctant to give the appearance of hiding away at Cliveden guarded by armed thugs. A compromise was reached whereby the Fascisti would be outfitted so as to look like TA volunteers. Thus were appearances of relative normality kept up.
Astor was worried in the immediate term about a threat against her life. Why the workers’ movement would have targeted her in particular, as opposed to the numerous decision-makers also present at Cliveden, is unclear. Nevertheless, her other fear – that workers were plotting to storm Cliveden – was more founded: Tom Wintringham, Commander-in-chief of the Workers’ Brigades, had since the end of 1928 been formulating a plan to take the Cliveden Parliament and force the surrender of the rump British state. He was assisted by Jock Cunningham, a Clydesider who had come to prominence as the commander of a column of anti-fascist volunteers in Glasgow. Together, they masterminded the delivery of the coup de grâce that finally ended the ailing United Kingdom: Operation Night Flight.
INT. PUBLIC HOUSE, STEPNEY – FEBRUARY, 1929
Tom Wintringham and Jock Cunningham are seen enjoying a drink together with some volunteers in their respective battalions. Cut to Wintringham and Cunningham studying maps, plans and typed reports, presumably relating to the comings and goings at Cliveden. Cut to scenes of volunteers drilling. Stock footage of coaches driving battalions out of London.
Redgrave: On the morning of Monday 25th February, 1929, the newly-elected members of the rump parliament at Cliveden arrived at the Buckinghamshire estate. Oswald Mosley and Albert Inkpin, along with their respective parties, the PLUA and the CPGB, were conspicuously absent; as the day’s business started at Cliveden, workers from the Parliament Square occupation stormed the Palace of Westminster and symbolically allowed the abstentionist parties to take their seats in the House of Commons. Winston Churchill had stayed in the house over the weekend, using a guest bedroom as his base while forming his minority ministry. He also oversaw the installation of a TA bivouac on the parterre behind the house. David Lloyd George is supposed to have remarked upon arriving at Cliveden that morning that the estate looked more like a battlefield than a seat of government. It was a prescient thought.
Half a mile east, Wintringham and his battalion watch the stream of cars heading towards the Cliveden estate under the cover of an area of woodland, just west of a golf course where they had camped out overnight. Jock Cunningham was positioned with his battalion in a second area of woodland to the south-east of the estate.
EXT. CLIVEDEN – DAY
A graphic appears showing the layout of the estate with reference to Wintringham and Cunningham’s positions. We are shown a re-enactment of the storming of the driveway.
Wintringham and Cunningham's movements, from initial positions to the driveway. The main buildings of the estate are shown in black.
At half-past eight, with all of the 344 Cliveden MPs safely inside the main dining room, news reached the house that Mosley and Inkpin had been installed in the House of Commons by workers in Whitehall. The Tories were sent into uproar, with members rising one after the other to denounce Mosley and the Westminster MPs as traitors to the United Kingdom. As the revelation continued to animate those in the house, Wintringham and his volunteers arrived at the estate driveway, shooting the guards dead and advancing towards a small wood to the east of the parterre. Alerted by the sound of gunfire, the TA garrison opens fire on the volunteers, who are held in the woods. A sloping lawn separates them from the parterre.
INT. CLIVEDEN DINING ROOM – DAY
We are back with the re-enactment. MPs notice the activity on the parterre lawn below and hear the first exchanges of gunfire. Churchill realises what is happening and attempts to make a phone call, but the lines have been cut.
Redgrave: Inside the house, panic breaks out as MPs see the soldiers outside open fire on an unseen enemy. Churchill and Lady Astor soon restore calm, with the prime minister giving a speech about the “folly of the revolutionaries” and assuring the room that the odds of defeat were minimal. He does not tell his audience that all lines of communication to the outside world have been sabotaged. By quarter-past nine, just as the new government should have been starting its business, it had become apparent that parliament was under attack – and with little hope of reinforcement.
Meanwhile, Lady Astor sprang into action organising the domestic staff and leasing with the armed guards outside. At nine-twenty, a “century” of fighters from the British Fascisti are deployed to re-secure the driveway and seal off the estate. The are intercepted by the arrival of Jock Cunningham’s second battalion. Caught off guard and sustaining fire from the worker volunteers, the discipline of the fascist ranks shatters; some retreat in an attempt to alert those in the house of the approaching worker reinforcements, others are killed before they can act. Cunningham’s volunteers advance along the driveway and move down the Grand Avenue to the front of the house, engaging the TA garrison camped on the front lawn. Using the arrival of reinforcements as cover, Wintringham’s battalion come out from the woods and open fire on the government forces on the parterre.
EXT. PARTERRE, CLIVEDEN – DAY
The dramatisation footage plays on: Cunningham leading his volunteers up the Grand Avenue; a firefight between the workers and the TA on the parterre; MPs in fraught discussion, trapped inside.
Wintringham and Cunningham lead their battalions into position on either side of the house.
Redgrave: By ten a.m., the Cliveden Parliament is in a grave state: faced with worker forces on both sides and cut off from the outside world, inside the dining room MPs frantically try to agree on a strategy. Their discussions are interrupted at around quarter-past ten by news that some sections of the TA battalion have mutinied and defected to the workers’ cause. Colonel Arthur Vincent Wyndley, commanding officer of the TA battalion, calls for a retreat off the parterre and up to the south terrace. From this vantage point, Fascisti volunteers open fire on the mutinous soldiers and inflict about a half a dozen fatalities. But the workers return fire and force the garrison inside the house; worker volunteers outnumber the TA force by a ratio of six to one.
Between half-past ten and eleven o’ clock, Cliveden is afforded a temporary ceasefire as both sides regroup. Wintringham deploys Cunningham’s battalion to secure the estate perimeter, while his own volunteers take up positions around the house and prepare to storm it. The ceasefire is broken when gunfire erupts from the upper-floor windows on both the northern and southern facades. The worker volunteers, exposed to attack from above, sustain some of their highest casualties of the operation during this phase. In retaliation, a handful of TA soldiers are killed – including one Tory MP who had picked up a hunting rifle and joined the defence. It was only through great effort that Churchill himself was dissuaded from taking up arms.
INT. SERVANTS’ QUARTERS, CLIVEDEN – DAY
Actors playing a detachment of worker volunteers force down a service door and enter the house from below, unnoticed by the Fascisti on the upper floors. They soon encounter domestic staff, who sound the alarm. Upstairs, hearing the alarm government loyalists abandon their posts without particular direction and scramble to meet the intruding force. Wintringham uses the respite in fire from above to manoeuvre onto the South Terrace. Volunteers smash windows and begin to enter the house.
Redgrave: By noon, worker volunteers have the ground floor secured. MPs had evacuated to the upper floors earlier on, and the staircase is well defended by Fascisti loyalists. A tense firefight breaks out in the hallway as the workers are held back. Meanwhile, the defence of Cliveden continues unabated as government loyalists maintain fire from the upper floor windows. Wintringham decides to force the situation, and at twelve-forty orders his volunteers to storm the staircase. A bloody battle ensued as the loyalists on the first floor held their discipline, pinning the advancing worker volunteers under a constant stream of fire.
Yet the loyalists could not hold out forever, and the disparity in numbers soon forces gunmen at the windows to leave their posts to shore up the defensive force on the landing as it begins to falter. By one o’ clock Wintringham’s volunteers had forced themselves onto the landing and pushed the loyalists back into Lady Astor’s boudoir. Lady Astor herself entered a state of shock and passed out. She did not witness, at one-fifteen in the afternoon on Monday February 25th, 1929, the unconditional surrender of the Cliveden Parliament, and the recognition of the Westminster Parliament as the only legitimate legislative body in Britain.
EXT. CLIVEDEN – DAY
Churchill is led out of the house under guard and driven off in an attendant car. Assorted members of the Cliveden Parliament are released from the estate, again under armed escort. Worker volunteers watch over loyalist fighters confined to various outbuildings. Jock Cunningham leaves the estate in one of the Astor’s cars and heads into the nearby village of Taplow.
Redgrave: Instead, she regained consciousness later that after noon, Cliveden empty save for her husband and herself. Worker volunteers remained stationed around the estate, watching over prisoners and managing the flow of former MPs out of the grounds. Most were allowed to return to their homes, though Churchill and some other members of the cabinet were taken to Whitehall and held in lavish rooms at Derby Gate. The Astors themselves were under effective house arrest at Cliveden; they could only watch as Jock Cunningham took one of Lord Astor’s cars and drove into Taplow.
In Taplow, Cunningham entered the upmarket Skindle’s Hotel and asked at the reception desk to use the telephone. He phoned George Hardy in Westminster, who listened as Cunningham recited a verse from The Masque of Anarchy by Shelley:
Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words, that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free.
Hearing these four lines, Hardy knew that Night Flight had been a success. He put down the phone and relayed the message to Oswald Mosley, waiting for his cue in the House of Commons. Mosley stood up and went to the dispatch box, setting out the first motion to be considered by the new Westminster Parliament: the abolition of the United Kingdom and the formation of the Workers’ Commonwealth of Britain. The motion was passed by acclamation. Hardy, waiting in the lobby, rushed outside and took to the stage in Parliament Square. He repeated the declaration of the founding of the Commonwealth to the 100 thousand people assembled outside of the Palace of Westminster. Wal Hannington, sat in Parliament as a Communist MP, left the Commons and took the Tube to Hyde Park. At quarter-to-four, the occupying crowd received news of the Commonwealth’s inception.
After nearly two years of bitter struggle and fraught with sordid political crises, the workers of Britain had finally won their prize: the formation of a new state, attendant first and foremost to their needs and desires. The promise of a hopeful tomorrow echoed throughout Britain, but its arrival was not guaranteed. As the battle for the existence of the Commonwealth ended, the battle for its survival had only just begun.
1: The distinction is important: Irish Republican Constance Markievicz was elected in 1918, but did not take her seat in accordance with Sinn Féin’s policy of abstention from Westminster. Instead, Markievicz took her seat in the First Dáil, in Dublin, and from 1922 served as Minister of Labour, becoming the first female cabinet minister in the world outside of Soviet Russia.