On 17th November 1920, David Lloyd George met his cabinet at 10 Downing Street, with the agenda dominated by the question of resuming normal relations with Russia.
The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon and the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, began the meeting by confirming that matters were in hand to send 300 British troops to help the League of Nations conduct the plebiscite in Lithuania.
The main discussion centered on the trade deal. The President of the Board of Trade, Sir Robert Horne, made an impassioned plea to vote in favour based on the dire economic situation in Britain, with business confidence low and unemployment high.
Curzon and Churchill spoke against the motion and wanted Britain to continue supporting Poland. However, the Prime Minister exclaimed: “When I mentioned the possibility of our going to war to support Poland, a shudder passed through the House and those who were clamouring against Bolshevism showed the white feather.”
The debate continued into a second day when Churchill made one final “frantic” appeal. The Lord Chancellor had mentioned that £10 million of diamond sales would be spent in England if the deal went through. However, Churchill claimed that these diamonds “were all stolen, many of them from the dead bodies of the Russian aristocracy”.
When they were asked to vote, the majority of the Cabinet sided with the Prime Minister. But Churchill asked for it to be recorded in the minutes that no Cabinet Minister was fettered with regard to speaking against Bolshevism and that night, he travelled to Oxford where he delivered a “violently anti-Bolshevik speech” at the university.
Rupert Wieloch 