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.^[38][39]

Roberts tried to re-energise the Liberal Party machine during the war years. He became Chairman of the Organising Committee of the party.^[12] The party headquarters moved back into central London in December 1941, and he worked to reconstruct Liberal organisations.^[40]

At the end of 1941 a group consisting of the Conservative Herbert Williams, Clement Davies, and Roberts began pressing for a reorganised government.^[41] 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".^[42]

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.^[43][44]

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".^[45][46] 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.^[47] Hugh Cudlipp wrote later that Defence Regulation 2D, which Morrison had applied in the past, was "a version of the stocks", and his account of the debate was that Roberts led Liberals and Socialists against Morrison, who "suffered" at the hands of Aneurin Bevan and Fred Bellenger, who quoted back at Morrison something he had written as a pacifist of World War I. Edelman points out that Ellen Wilkinson supported Morrison.^[48][47] The outcome that the government made no further efforts to silence the Mirror as critic.^[49]

On 19 May, Chuter Ede observed, at a "Liberal table" with Roberts the sole Liberal, there were a diverse group: Evans and Reginald Clarry (Conservatives), Alexander Erskine-Hill (Scottish Unionist), Geoffrey Shakespeare (National Liberal) and Bevan (Labour). Percy Harris with difficulty sat down. Chuter Ede considered it a "Cave of Adullam".^[50]

From mid-1942 Roberts was chair of the Food and Agriculture subcommittee of the Liberals' Reconstruction Committee.^[51] Later in 1942 he was behind moves to get the annual Liberal Party Assembly in August to debate a series of progressive social policies. Lord Meston let it be known that he thought potential supporters who were businessmen might be lost to the party.^[52]

In September 1942 MI5 paid some attention to Roberts, as reported in Guy Liddell's diaries (23 September). Claud Cockburn was using a small group of contacts to research stories for his scandal sheet, This Week, in an effort to embarrass the government. Derek Tangye, then a journalist, was included, as were Roberts and Douglas Hyde: but covertly Tangye was working for MI5.^[53]

1943

The Beveridge Report was published in November 1942. in which Beveridge outlined his programme for social reform. Following its publication, Roberts declared himself a supporter of the proposals. At a 1943 Liberal conference, he told the gathering "We must plan our economic system to make the very best use of all our resources".^[54]

In August 1943 Roberts was part of a delegation of senior Liberal party members who met with leaders of the Liberal Nationals to discuss the possibility of merger. The discussions came to nothing.^[55] In 1944 he urged his party leader Sinclair to agree to take part in a series of public meetings, advancing Liberal party policy. Sinclair declined, commenting that the other party leaders, Churchill and Attlee, were not doing so.^[56]

In his diary entry for 29 November 1943, Guy Liddell recorded another MI5 investigation of Roberts, It concerned leaked documents, passed to Roberts to form the basis of a parliamentary question, in concert with the Evening Standard.^[57]

1945

In 1945 Roberts went on a mission to Moscow, to meet Stalin, and published a pamphlet in April of that year with his views of the USSR.^[58][59] He was re-elected to parliament in the 1945 general election.