Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
These are the notes from the U3A British History group meeting on
Tuesday 17th February 2015. Geoff Kean gave the talk.
Note the name Spencer – we shall be looking at the life of Winston’s
seventh cousin, twice removed, Diana, Princess of Wales, on Tuesday
21st July.
Winston Churchill was born on 30th November 1874 and died 24th
January 1965. He was British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and
from 1951 to 1955. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest
wartime leaders of the twentieth century. He was multi-talented and
was variously a politician, army officer, historian, writer and artist.
He refused to be made a duke but did accept a knighthood from
Queen Elizabeth II. He was the first person to be made an honorary
citizen of the USA.
Winston was born at Blenheim Palace into the aristocratic family of
the Dukes of Marlborough. He was born almost two months
prematurely following a riding accident suffered by his mother,
Jennie Jerome, an American socialite. His father was Lord Randolph
Churchill who became Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Winston did not have a happy childhood and historians have
speculated on the emotional impact of his early years on his
personality. Winston worshipped his father, but Lord Randolph was
often away in Westminster and when at home he could be cruel. After
his father’s early death Winston wrote, “All of my dreams of
companionship with him, of entering Parliament at his side and in his
support, were ended. There remained only for me to pursue his aims
and vindicate his memory”.
Winston craved attention from his mother, unsuccessfully. She was,
allegedly, one of King Edward VII’s many mistresses. Letters from
boarding school, written in vain, imploring mummy to visit him,
make sad reading. He was beaten rather savagely at prep school for
being unruly and had to be moved to a more liberal establishment
when the family doctor discovered extensive bruising to his buttocks.
He was academically undistinguished at Harrow; one report stated
that he “lacked ambition”.
Winston scraped into Sandhurst at the third attempt but only into the
cavalry and not, to his father’s disappointment, the infantry. However
once there he thrived, developed a love for horse riding and passed
out 20th out of 150 in his class. As a young army officer he served in
India and the Sudan where he enjoyed the thrill of adventure and
risk-taking. He then gained praise for his work as a war
correspondent for the Morning Post during the second Boer War in
South Africa. He gained fame for the rescue of troops with whom he
was travelling when their train was ambushed and for his
subsequent escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria. He
wrote a book about his experiences in order to supplement his
income and to increase his chances of being selected as a
Conservative parliamentary candidate.
Like his father, Winston chose to shorten his surname to Churchill in
public life. His political career spanned over half a century. He had
many successes and quite a few failures. In writing an appreciation of
him I do not intend to draw up a balance sheet of his career and to
decide which side of he ledger carries the most weight. Instead, I
intend to show how his very promising career was ‘finished’ by the
early 1930s and how, a decade and a half later, he came to be hailed
as the ‘savior of our nation’.
Winston entered Parliament in 1900 as Conservative MP for Oldham.
He resigned the Conservative whip and crossed the floor of the House
of Commons to join the Liberals in 1904 in support of Free Trade as
opposed to Protectionism and Empire Preference. He may well have
noted that the Conservative government had run out of steam and
was likely to be replaced by a reforming Liberal government at the
next election. He was elected Liberal MP for Manchester NW in 1906
and for Dundee in 1908 after which he joined the Cabinet as
President of the Board of Trade. Success as a minister was attributed
to his hard work, his ability to carry his proposals through Cabinet
and Parliament and his ability to carry his department with him.
His overall contribution to the passage of the People’s Budget in
1909, and of the Parliament Act of 1911, marked him out for high
office. Amongst his early achievements were the introduction of the
tea break in the workplace and the introduction of the Labor
Exchange. He formulated policy that led to the introduction of
Unemployment Insurance. He was therefore in at the birth of the
Welfare State.
As Home Secretary 1910-1911 his tenure was marred by
controversies regarding his tough handling of the Tonypandy riots
and the siege of Sidney Street. He lost the support of womenfolk after
his public criticism of Suffragette agitation. He was unsure how they
would use the vote and feared losing his seat.
He served as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 and continued to
modernize the navy in preparation for a possible war at sea against
Germany. However, in November 1915, his support for the disastrous
British naval action in the Dardanelles, at Gallipoli, led to resignation
from the Cabinet. He had an intense dislike of inaction and so went to
serve on the Western Front as Lieutenant Colonel until rejoining the
Cabinet under Lloyd George in 1916. He served as Minister for
Munitions until the war was won and oversaw the efficient well-run
supply of arms to the forces. He was appointed Secretary of State for
War and Air in 1919 and advocated allied intervention in Russia
against bolshevism saying that it must be “strangled in its cradle”. He
became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1921 until the Coalition
fell in 1922 when he also lost his seat in Parliament. He had gained
valuable experience in the complexities of Irish and Middle Eastern
politics.
Winston returned to Parliament as independent MP for Epping in
1924 and accepted the Conservative whip in 1925; he said “Anyone
can rat but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat”. He was immediately
appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and presided over Britain’s
disastrous return to the Gold Standard in 1924 that would result in
deflation and unemployment. He was skeptical but bowed to political
pressure. He later regarded this as the greatest mistake of his life. He
alone could have rejected the ‘dear money’ policy that resulted in so
much human misery.
His attitude to the resulting General Strike of 1926 was curiously
ambivalent, a heady mix of imperial rule and practical politics. He
said, “I have always urged fighting war with might and main till
overwhelming victory is achieved and then extending the hand of
friendship to the vanquished…I thought we should have conquered the
Irish then given them Home Rule… and that having smashed the
General Strike we should have met the grievances of the miners”.
Conservative defeat in 1929 put Winston on the backbenches where
he remained for a decade. During his ‘wilderness years’ he became
increasingly isolated in politics, opposing Indian Home Rule and
protective trade tariffs. He advocated rearmament against a
resurgent Germany despite the unpopularity of war after the recent
sacrifices of the Great War. In 1932, when visiting Stalin in Moscow,
Lady Astor commented, “Churchill is finished”. Stalin replied
prophetically, “If the British are ever in trouble, they may need the old
war horse again”.
Winston wrote a major historical work on his ancestor, John
Churchill, ‘Marlborough – His Life and Times’. In the book he
identified a corridor of mainland Europe from Flanders eastwards
that had posed a threat to Britain’s security since William, the
Conqueror. He praised the strategic grasp of Marlborough in the
Battle of Blenheim and his political acumen in opposing Louis XIV’s
bid for European hegemony in the War of he Spanish Succession.
There were close parallels with Churchill’s own stand against
appeasement and the threat of Nazi hegemony in Europe.
He was criticized for drinking, gambling and holidaying with the rich
during the depression years. He campaigned against granting Home
Rule to India. He said it would bring conflict to India and further
economic hardship to Britain. He did come to respect Gandhi after
the latter stood up for the ‘untouchables’. His campaign was
described as ‘pugnacious, stubborn, deluded and conservative’; traits
that were to make him great during the 1940 Battle of Britain.
In researching the life of Marlborough, he had visited Bavaria and
therefore had first-hand experience of the insidious Nazi threat. Two
years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Churchill warned
that he would start a war in Europe as soon as possible. He warned of
the danger of German rearmament and of the consequences of
Britain’s disarmament in the previous decade. He omitted to say that
he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time.
He was not quite the ‘lone voice’ that he claimed to be but he was in a
very small minority. His bywords were freedom and peace. In other
words we should be very wary of nations that ignored the rule of law,
particularly among our neighbors and that we should invest in our
national security. His only access to official information was a small
group of disaffected civil servants at the War Office.
German reoccupation of the Rhineland in February 1936 heightened
tension in Europe. Nevertheless Churchill was passed over for the
post of Minister for Co-ordination of Defense. AJP Taylor describes
the appointment of Thomas Inskip, Attorney General, as “the most
extraordinary since Caligula made his horse a consul”.
Churchill’s views were gathering some support in Parliament and in
the country, but the Establishment saw him as impetuous and
unstable. The Conservatives did not want a ‘war-monger’ in the
Cabinet. They thought war a most unattractive option to a people still
scarred by the memories of the Great War that had been won less
than 20 years earlier.
Support for the King in the Abdication Crisis of 1936 and speeches
against the Government making a hasty decision lost Churchill, and
therefore the anti-appeasement lobby, support in Westminster and in
the country.
When Chamberlain replaced Baldwin as PM in May 1937 Churchill
was not brought into the government. Besides his opposition to
appeasement it was thought that he would seek to dominate
discussions. Churchill talked of retiring from public life but decided
stubbornly to continue to speak from the backbenches. Of
Chamberlain at Munich he declaimed, “You were given a choice
between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war”.
However, Churchill’s reputation was at its lowest ebb. Those who
knew no better received Chamberlain’s ‘scrap of paper’ with loud
cheers.
In 1938 Germany absorbed Austria and conquered Czechoslovakia.
Churchill was seen to have been right about the Nazi threat.
In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared
war on Germany. Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty
and member of the War Cabinet. He was one of the highest profile
ministers during the ‘phony war’ of 1939-40.
In early 1940 he proposed a pre-emptive strike on the neutral
Norwegian iron ore port of Narvik in order to secure supplies.
Chamberlain wavered. Hitler acted swiftly to secure Narvik and the
British response was the first British failure of the war.
It soon became clear that the British people had no confidence in
Chamberlain as war leader and he resigned in May 1940. The King
invited Churchill, aged 65, to become Prime Minister. In a speech to
the House of Commons in May 1940 he stated, “I have nothing to offer
but blood, toil, tears and sweat” in order to emphasize to the nation
the difficulties that lay ahead. He was still unpopular with the
Establishment. The Conservative benches only cheered him on a
signal from Chamberlain. The War Cabinet contained an element of
support for a negotiated peace. Churchill would have none of it. His
determination to have “victory at all costs” and his boundless energy
soon had the country behind him. He worked hard at his speeches,
practicing for hours in front of a mirror at home at Chartwell. His
addresses to the nation bolstered public confidence in the war effort.
He managed to carry about him the atmosphere of an old warrior
brought back into the field. He was the right man in the right job at
the right time. It was Mr. Churchill’s government and as long as he
was there all would be OK. In Parliament the role of undisputed
leader only came with time. Incredibly, as late as 1942, a vote of no
confidence in his leadership was tabled in the House of Commons. It
was supported by only 25 votes and said more about the Cabinet
than it did about the floor of the House.
Churchill was the most experienced of all the warlords of the Second
World War. He had been in politics since the start of the century. He
had led almost all of the great departments of state. He knew how
things worked. Oddly enough, not having been Foreign Secretary, it
was in the management of the other Allied leaders that he really
shone. He had amicable relationships with both Roosevelt and Stalin,
but was not unaware of their long-term ambitions. All other
considerations were secondary to the defeat of the Axis powers.
Roosevelt said fondly of him “Winston has a hundred ideas every day
and for sure one of them is bound to be right”. Winston called De
Gaulle “My Cross of Lorraine” because of his non-stop demands but he
sustained him during France’s darkest days. He pursued Roosevelt to
bring America into the war, and knew that America would contribute
greatly to an industrial scale war, and eventually to victory. He cared
not that Roosevelt was committed to squeezing down the British
Empire and to delivering world peace via the US Army after the war.
Similarly, Winston put behind him his leadership of the War of
Intervention against the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s and
committed himself wholeheartedly to partnership with Stalin.
Of his meetings with Roosevelt and Stalin he wrote, “There I sat with
the great Russian bear on one side of me, his paws outstretched, and on
the other side the great American buffalo, and between the two sat the
poor little English donkey who was the only one who knew the way
home”.
He was very aware of the failures of risky strategies undertaken in
the past. He said he had the “medals of Gallipoli, Norway and others
pinned to my chest”. He would practice a curious mix of risky strategy
and caution. He would be cast down when his own calculations led to
failure but his ‘Black Dog’ was not a big issue when he was actively
engaged in promoting the war. He would soon bounce back with
renewed enthusiasm.
He presided over a small War Cabinet that made no significant efforts
to pull him back in his conduct of the war. However in order to have
control of the direction of the British war effort he appointed himself
to the new post of Minister of Defence, saying that the change will be
‘more real than apparent’.
He worked closely with the Chiefs of Staff and did not dictate to them;
rather, he wore them down with his inexhaustible capacity to go over
and over the debate long into the night. He said, “All I ask is
compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion”. When told
that Stalin bullied his generals he replied, “So do I”.
He dismissed those generals who failed to deliver success, even if it
were not their own fault (e.g. Wavell and Auchinleck). Admirals were
not so easy to remove but he would make sure they felt the heat. The
overall tone he set at the War Office was that if we kept on attacking
long enough, all would come right in the end. And it did, but for
different reasons.
Churchill’s great contribution in the early years was to ensure that,
after the fall of France, the war would go on and that the country was
united in its pursuit of victory. His speech of June 1940 in the
aftermath of Dunkirk promised that Britain would fight on, “We shall
fight on the beaches…on the landing grounds…in the field in the streets
and in the hills; we shall never surrender”. Future generations would
say, “This was their finest hour”. He bore up the whole nation in the
darkest of days.
For this country the Battle of Britain was the most decisive phase of
the war, ensuring that invasion would not take place. Victory was
achieved with the leadership of Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding.
It was as glorious a moment in our history as the victory at Trafalgar.
Churchill removed him from his post him out after the victory.
Dowding had earlier contradicted him about the need to send fighter
squadrons to France; Winston could be very unforgiving.
From 1940 to 1943 there was little engagement between British and
German troops in major battle.
Churchill had some reservations about the effectiveness of strategic
bombing as a strategy for victory. The efforts of land armies would be
needed in support. However, he had a great aversion to doing
nothing, and so the strategic bombing of Germany began; a reminder
that Britain was still in the war.
The other great commitment after 1940 was to the Mediterranean. It
would never prove an alternative route back into northern Europe,
but landings in Italy would be necessary. It had the attraction of
being somewhere that we could fight and sometimes win. The army
was in Egypt and would need to show that it could stay there. The
navy was in the Mediterranean and needed to stay; and so the forces
were right to sing, “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re
here”. The Med also appealed to Churchill’s sense of history as a vital
strand in the web of imperial domination.
The Blitz was a time of testing for the British people. As the major
cities suffered German bombing night after night it was the spirit of
Churchill that kept them going. They identified with his singular aim
of “Victory at all costs”. At the cost of the Empire, even at the cost of
bankruptcy. His strange mix of the old (aristocracy, history, empire)
and the new (democracy, technology, nationhood) inspired the
nation. He spoke in a high rhetoric but laced it with humor. His image
was on a poster on every street corner; he was an overgrown child
with a bowler hat and a cigar; he was the embodiment of our island;
‘history with a baby face’.
Mistakes were made. The Greek expedition of 1941 went badly
wrong. Churchill refused to take the danger in the Far East seriously
for fear of losing the Med. He admitted that he should have
recognized how vulnerable Singapore was; he had pushed aside the
advice given by his aides. He was at his jingoistic worst when he said,
“The little yellow men will never dare to challenge the might of the
British Empire”. By 1941 that might did not exist; 2 battleships were
sent to remind Japan of our vague menace and were promptly sunk.
Whatever his failings, his success outweighs them all. He surveyed
the whole field of war, he pursued victory at all costs, he preserved
our democracy and he saved our country from invasion. The shock of
his rejection in the General Election served to underline the
determination of the nation not to return to Conservative Party
policies at home. He retuned to Downing Street in 1951 where he
oversaw the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He handed
over the baton to Sir Anthony Eden in 1955.
Only Nelson and Wellington before him had received a state funeral.
Churchill himself worked on the plans for ‘Operation Hope-not’. On
the day of his funeral in 1965 only one element was unrehearsed, the
lowering of the cranes. He was laid beside his father at Bladon,
thereby contrasting the imperial greatness of the day with the human
simplicity of his resting place, a fitting tribute for an aristocrat who
had won the hearts of the British people.
Geoff Kean
February 2015