Churchill:
a Party Ma by Richard Peel, Skedsmo vgs.
Introduction I recently read a review of the third volume of Chris Mullin’s Diaries. (1) Mullin was for a while a junior minister under Tony Blair, and the review picked up Mullin’s disillusioned comment that, soon after Blair’s Labour party had walloped John Major’s Conservative Party in the 1997 general election, it became apparent to him that Blair was politically less radical than Major. Blair, we all remember, led a youthful dynamic drive to the centre of politics, determined to appeal to Middle England by dropping much of the Labour party’s ideological baggage, while Major, in his scurry to the centre, was determined to distance his party from the extremes of Thatcherism. These two leaders had, so to speak, passed each other in the night, without noticing it.
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Mullin has a point. The old political labels have lost much of their meaning. Ideologues of both parties have been
left behind on their left wing (Labour) or right wing (Conservatives), huffing and puffing while the leadership goes its own way and all the perks go to party faithful who toe the line. This is the age of spin and of packaging, in which fair-wind politicians pretend that listening to what the public wants is statesmanship. Way back in the 1770s, Edmund Burke maintained, in his classic speech to the electors of Bristol, that it was the duty of an MP to think independently: “But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.” (2) Where is that searching independence of spirit today, when party organization rules supreme? Party discipline has replaced intellectual energy. For years it has been an accepted truth that parties are essential to politics – the glue of politics. No politician in Britain can hope to aspire to a successful career in public life without tying himself or herself firmly to one of the main parties. Those who reject their party disappear into oblivion. Those
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who stand at elections as independents usually win just a handful of votes, and if, in extraordinary circumstances, they get elected as an MP, they nearly always disappear at the next general election. In the 2010 general election, in Northern Ireland Sylvia Hermon won the North Down seat. She is the only independent MP in the present House of Commons. Most people look at the 2010 results and see that they underline the truism that British politics are dominated by the two big parties and that the system militates against medium-sized and small fish, even though the mathematics of the results allowed the Liberal Democrats to join a coalition government – the small fry joining the big fish. The logical and unhappy conclusion must be that to succeed in British politics you must be a party loyalist. All right, MPs stand up for their constituents’ interests when they can – something Burke regarded with suspicion – but in most matters they follow their leader, who is primarily concerned with the short-term business of getting re-elected in a political environment where the media call the shots. This torrid picture is, or course, true of many democracies. Can we look back and find someone who had no time for this follow-my-leader philosophy? Can we learn from such a person’s political life? The choice naturally falls on a colossus of 20th century British politics.
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Churchill’s early political life Many people seem to imagine that Winston Churchill was a natural Conservative. After all, they say, his father was a prominent Tory politician, and he was born in one of England’s largest and most extravagant country houses, Blenheim Palace. Moreover, he
11 12 13 14 15 16 Tony Blair, former PM, at the World Economic Forum in 2009 (Flickr)
Portrait of Edmund Burke (1729-1797). ©Thinkstock
Man? was a Conservative during the Second World War, and his scepticism of socialism was well-known. All this might suggest he was a natural Tory. Winston Churchill with Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 1916. @Scanpix
However, this is a misleading picture. Of Churchill’s father, Roy Jenkins has written, “The real trouble with Randolph Churchill was that nearly all his political attitudes were dictated by opportunism and not by any coherent corpus of belief.” (3) Churchill himself, throughout his long political career, also, it could be argued, lacked that coherent corpus of belief, if by that one means a constant guiding political philosophy that was clear enough to hold him permanently in the bosom of a single party. The plain fact is that he changed party allegiance twice in his parliamentary career. This is unusual, to say the least, for a politician who not only reached the highest office in the land, but who also earned a world-wide reputation as statesman. We must look more closely at these two cross-overs.
Commonwealth interests, while free trade was a firm plank in Liberal policy, indeed it was the issue that reunited the Liberals. Churchill had always been strongly in favour of free trade, and as the issue of free trade came to dominate politics so did his discomfort within the Conservative party. There were also other issues that estranged him from the Conservatives. For example, his speeches and writings attacked them for blindly supporting capitalism and turning a blind eye to social deprivation in Britain. But trade was the crucial issue. In 1904 he “crossed the floor”.
With five frantic years of soldiering, journalism and travel behind him, with five books already under his belt, and after one unsuccessful bid to get elected to the House of Commons, Churchill was first elected MP in 1900, as a Conservative to represent Oldham. He was 25. The Conservatives won this socalled “khaki election” against a Liberal party split on the issue of the Boer War. Churchill, a much-publicised celebrity because of his exploits during that war, seemed to sit snugly in the Conservative ranks.
There was a real rumpus. We must remember that he was already a celebrity, not so much because he was the son of his father, as because of his military and journalistic exploits in the five years prior to the 1900 election. Churchill’s desertion from the Tory ranks was remembered for a long time, as we shall see. In the short term, it brought him political gain, but also a reputation for taking loyalty lightly. Tory prime minister Arthur Balfour resigned in December 1905, and Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman took over as prime minister. In the ensuing election in 1906, the Liberals won a crushing victory, and Churchill fought and won a Manchester constituency as Liberal candidate.
But not for long. Trade policy replaced foreign policy as the dominant political issue in the next few years, and it was on trade that Churchill and the Conservatives parted company. Conservative policy supported protectionism, especially to protect
Churchill the Liberal In the course of the next seventeen years Churchill held no less than seven ministerial posts. He was a man who made an impact rapidly and emphatically wherever he trod. His hallmark as government minister was a brisk
evaluation of what needed to be done in every new area that came within his responsibility, and a relentless push to put into effect the changes he wanted. For example, as President of the Board of Trade, he got labour exchanges set up to relieve unemployment. He was also strongly in support of the reduction of the power of the House of Lords in 1911. In all these matters he was a “good” Liberal, and flew in the face of most Conservatives. He was impatient, and sometimes laid himself open to the charge of being rash – most notably in the botched attempt in 1915 to land a major force in the Dardanelles, for which he, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had a large degree of responsibility. David Lloyd George had led an all-party coalition government since 1916, in which Churchill had been Secretary for War and Air until 1921, when he took over as Colonial Secretary. To the surprise of many people, the Conservatives left the coalition in late 1921, provoking Lloyd George’s resignation. He was replaced as prime minister by Andrew Bonar Law, who led a purely Conservative government. There had to be a general election, and the Conservatives fought it, in November 1922, as a united party, while the Liberals were split.
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This was the second general election after the extension of the franchise in 1918, when women (most, but not all) had at last received the vote, and when all males over 21 had the vote.
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Churchill defended his parliamentary seat in Dundee in this election as
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which the Conservatives did more vocally than the Liberals. But as long as the Conservatives preached the gospel of protectionism and the Liberals continued to support free trade, Churchill stuck with the latter.
a Liberal. The Liberals had become unpopular in the country, and Churchill had lost his hold on the electorate of Dundee, which was, of course, enlarged to include thousands of working-class voters. These were difficult times in industrial Scotland, and many voters saw Churchill as a natural enemy of the left. He had, it must be said, never been assiduous in visiting the constituency. It was a two-member constituency, but Churchill came fourth – truly a humiliating result. The great parliamentarian now entered a two-year period without a seat in the House of Commons. Later – never being at a loss for words – he quipped that he was left “without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix.”
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The second cross-over He had indeed lost his ministerial office, parliamentary seat and appendix – the latter had been removed just before the election. He was, however, for the moment, still a member of the Liberal party. This lull in Churchill’s political life at the top afforded him an opportunity to re-assess his party allegiance – as well as time to indulge in those secondary activities this extraordinarily vigorous man turned to when political life was frustrating: writing and painting. The political situation was extremely fluid. There were three general elections within two years. The Labour party, with the Reform Act of 1919 enfranchising millions of its supporters, was in the ascendant as the new force on the left. Gradually, Churchill began to experience that his politics were no longer left of centre, but had entrenched themselves right of centre, and that the Liberals were, perhaps, no longer his natural home. One reason was the Russian revolution: the ultimate triumph of communism in Russia horrified Churchill, and he felt most comfortable with others who shared this scepticism,
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Winston Churchill addressing a joint session of the United States Congress, 1900
1924 was a fateful year for him. The Labour party leader Ramsay MacDonald led a minority government after the 1923 general election, in which Churchill stood as candidate in a Leicester constituency and failed dismally. Soon, however, Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin dropped his attachment to protectionism. Churchill loosened his ties with the Liberals, and stood at two elections as, to all intents and purposes, an independent. First, he stood as an anti-socialist in a by-election early in 1924, and lost, and then as a “Constitutionalist anti-socialist” candidate in the general election later in 1924, in Epping, and won. In no time the prime minister, Baldwin, showing a decisiveness he was not famous for, appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Conservative cabinet. Churchill had bounced back into the centre-stage of British politics. In 1925 he formally re-joined the Conservative party. He remained MP for his new constituency for forty years. He remained a Conservative, too, but his relationship with the party faithful was troubled. Martin Gilbert says of Churchill’s period as Chancellor of the Exchequer, “He remained to most Conservatives a hated figure.” (4) The main reason was, of course, his 20-year “affair” with the Liberals. But he was remembered as a politician who had pushed for many reforms that were anathema to Conservatives. He had even argued against harsh peace terms for Germany in 1919. He was now, of course, also distrusted by the Liberals because he had deserted them, and began to take very different views from them on some vital issues, notably India. He was distrusted by the Labour party because of his frequently voiced hostility to socialism, and because
Winston Churchill in Downing Street giving his famous ‘V’ sign, 1943
myths arose about his willingness to aggravate conflicts involving striking trade unionists. In fact Churchill was adamantly opposed to any use of military force against civilians, be it in India, Wales or England. His reputation was not enhanced by his performance as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924–29. Finance and economics were not his main interests, and generally speaking, he followed the advice of the Bank of England. However, he was not an enemy of social reform in this period, although his many small successes in piloting changes through parliament were forgotten, while his failures were remembered. Moreover, he was still considered by many to be more an adventurer and opportunist than statesman. The old Liberal leader Henry Asquith had said while he was prime minister in 1914, “He will never get to the top in English politics, with all his wonderful gifts; to speak with the tongue of men and angels, and to spend laborious days and nights in administration, is no good if a man does not inspire trust.” By 1929 Churchill had got pretty close to the top, but then the bottom fell out of his world … for ten years. The lonely voice The economic recession of the late 1920s was biting when the general election of 1929 was held. The Conservatives slumped to defeat. Churchill retained his seat, but was now on the Opposition benches. Unloved by the Conservatives, deeply distrusted by the Liberals, seen as a political opponent by Labour, he could have disappeared from the limelight, or even retired from politics, had he been a lesser figure. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1935, Baldwin, once again prime minister, ignored him, in sharp contrast to what he had done eleven years earlier. Churchill was a back-bencher, albeit a famous one. He entered the period in his career when he stood alone, in a party, but outside it. He chose his own agenda, making up his own mind on what issues to write and speak. One issue he chose was India, which is probably the least impressive chapter in the Churchill story. Churchill refused to acknowledge that Indians could or should run India, and he opposed Indian independence throughout the 1930s. Another short-term issue in which Churchill took a stand that damaged his reputation was the
and views irrespective of what the party leadership expected. He was definitely not a typical party man. In a sense, Churchill, after the end of the Second World War, remained a coalition man, as if his role as party politician now was one moment shaped by his old prejudices but the next moment shaped by his wartime all-inclusiveness.
Winston Churchill awards a cash prize to aviators John William Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, 1919. They were the first pilots to successfully complete a non-stop transatlantic flight. ©Thinkstock
Abdication crisis in 1936. Churchill’s position was misrepresented in the recent film “The King’s Speech”. There, he appeared to be an opponent of Edward VIII, whereas in fact Churchill supported him stubbornly, further widening the gap between himself and Baldwin. (Churchill maintained that a king is a king, and whom he chooses to marry is his own business.) The key issue, of course, was Europe. No public figure read the rise of fascism and the threat of a re-armed Germany led by Hitler with the precision of Churchill; no one warned with the same resilience. The story is well-known. His calls for rearmament and his repeated criticism of the policy of appeasement advocated by prime minister Neville Chamberlain (who succeeded Baldwin in 1937) and foreign minister Lord Halifax were shunned by the Conservative leadership, right up until the outbreak of war following Hitler’s invasion of Poland. It was in fact in the Labour party he won respect for his warnings first of all, and this respect grew as Hitler’s foreign ambitions were seen to justify Churchill’s warnings. In early May 1940, it was the Labour party in the House of Commons that demanded Neville Chamberlain’s resignation, and refused to support Lord Halifax as prime minister. The leadership of the Conservative party had by now realised that a change was necessary, and their choice fell on Churchill, and in this they were supported by the Labour party. The majority of Conservative MPs, however, did not support the appointment of Churchill as the new prime minister on 10 May. Only slowly, as his defiance
and indefatigability and powers of communication became synonymous with the war effort, did he win the affection of his party. Coalition Churchill During the war he led a coalition government – party squabbles were set aside. Strangely, however, after victory in Europe, when political life returned to normal, Churchill resumed his old anti-Labour war-path, claiming during the election campaign in 1945, in an intemperate radio speech, that a Socialist government would cramp free speech and “would have to fall back on some sort of Gestapo.” Perhaps this absurd exaggeration was generated by his awareness of what kind of grip the Soviet “socialist” leader, Stalin, had on freedoms. In any case Churchill lost the 1945 election, but thereafter supported Labour’s foreign policy in the main, and when he was prime minister again after 1951 he made no attempt to undo the great social welfare reforms Clement Attlee’s government had introduced. Nor did he try to turn the clock back with respect to India. Indeed, his antisocialist fire had burned out, and this disappointed many Conservatives. So, was Churchill “a party man”? He needed the organisation, money and press support of a party – like any politician he had to win elections. But as we have seen he considered some things more important than party loyalty. He was prepared to jettison a party if he felt he could shape politics more effectively within another party, and he was prepared to stake out his policies
Unforgettable? There was, as every biographer of Churchill emphasises, a star quality about him that was something very special. He was good at very normal things, essential for any politician: he worked hard, researched hard, marshalled his facts, produced his plans and proposed his measures, and set about putting them into action with a vigour and thoroughness that left most politicians and civil servants gasping. Churchill at work was a grindstone. He drove himself; he drove others. He had a razor-sharp mind that refused to take the easy way out or the lazy answer. He also had special gifts, particularly his gift of language. He was not right on everything, but was right when the supreme test came. Of course he is unforgettable. Nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that he was primarily a politician of style, with a fine rhetorical flourish, but somehow lacking substance. He was miles from the world of spindoctor politics. He would never just be a follower of a party leader. He would have found the politics of 2011 very strange. (1) Chris Mullin, A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999 (2011) (2) The full text of this speech on 3rd November 1774 can be found (amongst many other places) here: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/ documents/v1ch13s7.html
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(3) Roy Jenkins, Churchill (2001) p. 11. Jenkins’s biography is an excellent introduction to Churchill’s life. Being written by a prominent Labour politician, who himself crossed over to another party (the Social Democrats), this biography is especially useful when looking at Churchill as party politician. Jenkins’s book should be in every school library.
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(4) Martin Gilbert, “Churchill: The Voice in the Wilderness” in History of the 20th Century, ed. A.J.P.Taylor and J.M.Roberts (issued as a weekly magazine) p. 1740. Gilbert is Churchill’s official biographer, and has written numerous books on different aspects of Churchill’s life.
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