Empress Hall, Earl's Court, for the third annual LBC rally. Second World War At the outbreak of the Second World War, Roberts was commissioned into the Border Regiment. He returned to politics, however, and in 1941 was in the Air Ministry. There he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Liberal Leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, who at the time was Secretary of State for Air in the Coalition Government. 1941 In November 1941 Lancelot Spicer founded the "Liberal Action Group" or "Radical Action", a pressure group inside the Liberal Party. It lobbied for the party to withdraw from the wartime electoral truce and sought to rally progressive opinion irrespective of party. Roberts was a founding member of the group, along with Megan Lloyd George, Thomas Horabin, Clement Davies, Vernon Bartlett, and William Beveridge. Roberts tried to re-energise the Liberal Party machine during the war years. He became Chairman of the Organising Committee of the party. The party headquarters moved back into central London in December 1941, and he worked to reconstruct Liberal organisations. At the end of 1941 a group consisting of the Conservative Herbert Williams, Clement Davies, and Roberts began pressing for a reorganised government. Davies attacked Winston Churchill's running of the War Cabinet. Churchill brushed Davies aside, but Roberts backed him in a public speech. His position as PPS to Sinclair made this an awkward situation, and Sinclair made an offer to Churchill to sack him. Churchill turned it down, but said Sinclair should "teach him how to spell". 1942 This year saw open discontent with Winston Churchill's leadership, involving some Conservatives. James Chuter Ede observed mealtime meetings in the House, on 21 January seeing Roberts sitting with Tories (Charles Emmott, Arthur Evans), and a group from other parties. Roberts on 26 March opened the "Freedom of the Press" debate caused by a Philip Zec cartoon in the Daily Mirror, aimed at the Battle of the Atlantic, and called "wicked" by Herbert Morrison. He argued that the cartoon's target was the "wasters of oil". According to Maurice Edelman, Roberts was an "uninspiring speaker" who had difficulty holding an audience in the Commons, but on this occasion rumour had it that the government sought a "showdown" with the Mirror, through Morrison and Brendan Bracken, and the House filled. Roberts finished with a quote from Bracken on "blindfold democracy". Sir Irving Albery followed, in sympathy with the argument. Hugh