[2] Grigg had been a career civil servant, had served at the Treasury and in India and had risen to become Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the War Office.

In this role he worked closely and effectively with Sir Alan Brooke the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and in 1942, in an unorthodox move, the prime minister Winston Churchill appointed Grigg Secretary of State for War as a replacement for David Margesson whom he dismissed after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese.

[3] The timing of Temple-Morris' appointment as a judge, albeit to replace one who had died,[4] thus creating a vacancy in Cardiff East, the appointment of Grigg as War Secretary necessitating his finding a seat in the House of Commons and the ease with which the Cardiff Tories selected Grigg as their candidate at the behest of party headquarters even though, as he admitted himself, he had no previous connection with the constituency or the Conservative Party[5] strongly suggests that the whole process was engineered by the government.

Grigg declared his support for the armed forces and his plans to improve equipment and training and he promised to continue to develop new weapons and devices by involving scientists in the war effort.

He urged the press to cease attacks on the military leadership and the performance of the armed forces, accusing those parts of the media who did so of doing Hitler's work.

They also offered voters an opportunity to rebel against the electoral truce as the success of Common Wealth and independent candidates in a number of wartime by-elections showed.