Churchill stood again for the seat of Oldham at the 1900 general election. After winning the seat, he went on a speaking tour throughout Britain and the United States, raising £10,000 for himself (about £940,000 today). From 1903 until 1905, Churchill was also engaged in writing Lord Randolph Churchill, a two-volume biography of his father which was published in 1906 and received much critical acclaim.
In Parliament, he became associated with a faction of the Conservative Party led by Lord Hugh Cecil; the Hughligans. During his first parliamentary session, he opposed the government’s military expenditure and Joseph Chamberlain’s proposal of extensive tariffs, which were intended to protect Britain’s economic dominance. His own constituency effectively deselected him, although he continued to sit for Oldham until the next general election. In the months leading up to his ultimate change of party from the Conservatives to the Liberals, Churchill made a number of evocative speeches against the principles of Protectionism; ‘to think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle.’ [ Churchill, Speech to the Free Trade League, 19 February 1904. As a result of his disagreement with leading members of the Conservative Party over tariff reform, he made the decision to cross the floor. After the Whitsun recess in 1904, he crossed the floor to sit as a member of the Liberal Party.
As a Liberal, he continued to campaign for free trade. When the Liberals took office with Henry Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister, in December 1905, Churchill became Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, dealing mainly with South Africa after the Boer War. As Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1905 to 1908, Churchill’s primary focus was on settling the Transvaal Constitution, which was accepted by Parliament in 1907. This was essential for providing stability in South Africa. He campaigned in line with the Liberal Government to install responsible rather than representative government. This would alleviate pressure from the British government to control domestic affairs, including issues of race, in the Transvaal, de a greater proportion of power to the Boers themselves.
Following his deselection in the seat of Oldham, Churchill was invited to stand for Manchester North West. He won the seat at the 1906 general election with a majority
of 1,214 and represented the seat for two years. When Campbell-Bannerman was succeeded by H. H. Asquith in 1908, Churchill was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Under the law at the time, a newly appointed Cabinet Minister was obliged to seek re-election at a by-election; Churchill lost his seat but was soon back as a member for Dundee constituency. As President of the Board of Trade he joined newly appointed Chancellor Lloyd George in opposing First Lord of the Admiralty Reginald McKenna proposed huge expenditure for the construction of Navy dreadnought warships, and in supporting the Liberal reforms. In 1908, he introduced the Trade Boards Bill setting up the first minimum wages in Britain. In 1909, he set up Labour Exchanges to help unemployed people find work. He helped draft the first unemployment pension legislation, the National Insurance Act of 1911. As a supporter of eugenics, he participated in the drafting of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913; however, the Act, in the form eventually passed, rejected his preferred method of sterilisation of the feeble-minded in favour of their confinement in institutions.
Churchill also assisted in passing the People’s Budget, becoming President of the Budget League, an organisation set up in response to the opposition’s Budget Protest League. The budget included the introduction of new taxes on the wealthy to allow for the creation of new social welfare programmes. After the budget bill was passed by the Commons in 1909 it was vetoed by the House of Lords. The Liberals then fought and won two general elections in January and December 1910 to gain a mandate for their reforms. The budget was passed after the first election, and after the second election the Parliament Act 1911, for which Churchill also campaigned, was passed. In 1910, he was promoted to Home Secretary. His term was controversial after his responses to the Cambrian Colliery dispute, the Siege of Sidney Street and the suffragettes.
In 1910, a number of coal miners in the Rhondda Valley began what has come to be known as the Tonypandy Riot. The Chief Constable of Glamorgan requested troops be sent in to help police quell the rioting. Churchill, learning that the troops were already travelling, allowed them to go as far as Swindon and Cardiff, but blocked their deployment. On 9 November, The Times criticised this decision. In spite of this, the rumour persists that Churchill had ordered troops to attack, and his reputation in Wales and in Labour circles never recovered.
Churchill, in early January 1911, made a controversial visit to the Siege of Sidney Street in London. There is some uncertainty as to whether he attempted to give operational commands, and his presence attracted much criticism. After an inquest, Arthur Balfour remarked, “he (Churchill) and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing, but what was the right honourable gentleman doing?” A biographer, Roy Jenkins, suggests that he went simply because “he could not resist going to see the fun himself” and that he did not issue commands. Another account said the police had the miscreants—Latvian anarchists wanted for murder—surrounded in a house, but Churchill called in the Scots Guards from the Tower of London and, dressed in top hat and astrakhan collar greatcoat, directed operations. The house caught fire and Churchill prevented the fire brigade from dousing the flames so that the men inside were burned to death. “I thought it better to let the house burn down rather than spend good British lives in rescuing those ferocious rascals.” His proposed solution to the suffragette issue was a referendum on the issue, but this found no favour with Asquith and women’s suffrage remained unresolved until after the First World War.
In October 1911, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and continued in the post into the First World War. While serving in this position, he put strong emphasis on modernisation and was also in favour of using airplanes in combat. He undertook flying lessons himself. He launched a programme to replace coal power with oil power. When he assumed his position, oil was already being used on submarines and destroyers, but most ships were still coal-powered, though oil was sprayed on the coals to boost maximum speed. Churchill began this programme by ordering that the upcoming Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were to be built with oil-fired engines. He established a Royal Commission chaired by Admiral Sir John Fisher, which confirmed the benefits of oil over coal in three classified reports, and judged that ample supplies of oil existed, but recommended that oil reserves be maintained in the event of war. The delegation then travelled to the Persian Gulf, and the government, largely through Churchill’s advice, eventually invested in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, bought most of its stock, and negotiated a secret contract for a 20-year supply.
On 5 October 1914, Churchill went to Antwerp, which the Belgian government proposed to evacuate. The Royal Marine Brigade was there and at Churchill’s urgings the 1st and 2nd Naval Brigades were also committed. Antwerp fell on 10 October with the loss of 2500 men. At the time he was attacked for squandering resources. It is more likely that his actions prolonged the resistance by a week (Belgium had proposed surrendering Antwerp on 3 October) and that this time saved Calais and Dunkirk.
Churchill was involved with the development of the tank, which was financed from the Navy budget. He appointed the Landships Committee, which oversaw the design and production of the first British tanks. In 1915, he was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings in the Dardanelles during the First World War. He took much of the blame for the fiasco, and when Prime Minister Asquith formed an all-party coalition government, the Conservatives demanded his demotion as the price for entry.
For several months Churchill served in the sinecure of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. However on 15 November 1915 he resigned from the government, feeling his energies were not being used. Although remaining a member of parliament, on 5 January 1916 he was given the temporary British Army rank of lieutenant colonel and served for several months on the Western Front, commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. While in command he personally made 36 forays into no man’s land, and his section of the front at Ploegsteert became one of the most active. In March 1916, Churchill returned to England after he had become restless in France and wished to speak again in the House of Commons. Future prime minister David Lloyd George acidly commented: “You will one day discover that the state of mind revealed in (your) letter is the reason why you do not win trust even where you command admiration. In every line of it, national interests are completely overshadowed by your personal concern.” In July 1917, Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, and in January 1919, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. He was the main architect of the Ten Year Rule, a principle that allowed the Treasury to dominate and control strategic, foreign and financial policies under the assumption that “there would be no great European war for the next five or ten years”.
A major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that Bolshevism must be “strangled in its cradle”. He secured, from a divided and loosely organised Cabinet, intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation—and in the face of the bitter hostility of Labour. In 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded Ukraine. He was also instrumental in having para-military forces (Black and Tans and Auxiliaries) intervene in the Irish War of Independence. He became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State. Churchill was involved in the lengthy negotiations of the treaty and, to protect British maritime interests, he engineered part of the Irish Free State agreement to include three Treaty Ports—Queenstown (Cobh), Berehaven and Lough Swilly—which could be used as Atlantic bases by the Royal Navy. In 1938, however, under the terms of the Chamberlain-De Valera Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement, the bases were returned to Ireland.
In 1919, Churchill sanctioned the use of tear gas on Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq. Though the British did consider the use of non-lethal poison gas in putting down Kurdish rebellions, it was not used, as conventional bombing was considered effective. In 1923, Churchill acted as a paid consultant for Burmah Oil (now BP plc) to lobby the British government to allow Burmah to have exclusive rights to Persian (Iranian) oil resources, which were successfully granted.
The Conservative Party, in September, withdrew from the Coalition government, following a meeting of backbenchers dissatisfied with the handling of the Chanak Crisis, a move that precipitated the looming November 1922 general election. Churchill fell ill during the campaign, and had to have an appendectomy. This made it difficult for him to campaign, and a further setback was the internal division which continued to beset the Liberal Party. He came fourth in the poll for Dundee, losing to prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour. Churchill later quipped that he left Dundee “without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix”. He stood for the Liberals again in the 1923 general election, losing in Leicester.
In January 1924 the first Labour Government had taken office amongst fears of threats to the Constitution. Churchill was noted at the time for being particularly hostile to socialism. He believed that the Labour Party as a socialist party did not fully support the existing British Constitution. In March 1924 Churchill sought election at the Westminster Abbey by-election, 1924. He had originally sought the backing of the local Unionist association which happened to be called the Westminster Abbey Constitutional Association. He adopted the term ‘Constitutionalist’ to describe himself during the by- election campaign. After the by-election Churchill continued to use the term and talked about setting up a Constitutionalist Party. Any plans that Churchill may have had to create a Constitutionalist Party were shelved with the calling of another general election. Churchill and 11 others decided to use the label Constitutionalist rather than Liberal or Unionist. He was returned at Epping against a Liberal and with the support of the Unionists. After the election the seven Constitutionalist candidates, including Churchill, who were elected did not act or vote as a group. When Churchill accepted the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s Unionist government the description ‘Constitutionalist’ dropped out of use.
He formally rejoined the Conservative Party, commenting wryly that “anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat. Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer oversaw Britain’s disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the miners’ strike that led to the General Strike of 1926. His decision
announced in the 1924 Budget, came after long consultation with various economists including John Maynard Keynes, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Otto Niemeyer and the board of the Bank of England. This decision prompted
Keynes to write The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, arguing that the return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity in 1925 ( would lead to a world depression. However, the decision was generally popular and seen as ‘sound economics’ although it was opposed by Lord Beaverbrook and the Federation of British Industries.
Churchill later regarded this as the greatest mistake of his life. However in discussions at the time with former Chancellor Reginald McKenna, Churchill acknowledged that the return to the gold standard and the resulting ‘dear money’ policy was economically bad. In those discussions he maintained the policy as fundamentally political—a return to the pre-war conditions in which he believed. In his speech on the Bill he said “I will tell you what it (the return to the Gold Standard) will shackle us to. It will shackle us to reality.”
The return to the pre-war exchange rate and to the Gold Standard depressed industries. The most affected was the coal industry, already suffering from declining output as shipping switched to oil. As basic British industries like cotton came under more competition in export markets, the return to the pre-war exchange was estimated to add up to 10% in costs to the industry. In July 1925, a Commission of Inquiry reported generally favouring the miners rather than the mine owners’ position Baldwin, with Churchill’s support proposed a subsidy to the industry while a Royal Commission prepared a further report.
That Commission solved nothing and the miners’ dispute led to the General Strike of 1926. Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government’s newspaper, the British Gazette, and during the dispute he argued that “either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country” claiming that the fascism of Benito Mussolini “rendered a service to the whole world,” showing “a way to combat subversive forces”—that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat Of communist revolution. At one point, Churchill went as far as to call Mussolini the “Roman genius … the greatest lawgiver among men.”
Later economists, as well as people at the time, also criticised Churchill’s budget measures. These were seen as assisting the generally prosperous rentier banking and salaried classes (to which Churchill and his associates generally belonged) at the expense of manufacturers and exporters which were known then to be suffering from imports and from competition in traditional export markets, and as paring the Armed Forces too heavily.
The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 general election. Churchill did not seek election to the Conservative Business Committee, the official leadership of the Conservative MPs. Over the next two years, Churchill became estranged from Conservative leadership over the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home Rule, by his political views and by his friendships with press barons, financiers and people whose character was seen as dubious. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931, Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was at the low- point in his career, in a period known as “the wilderness years”.
He spent much of the next few years concentrating on his writing, works including Mar/borough: H/s Life and Times—a biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough—and A History of the English Speaking Peoples (though the latter was not published until well after the Second World War), Great Contemporaries and many newspaper articles and collections of speeches. He was one of the best paid writers of his time. His political views, set forth in his 1930 Romanes Election and published as Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem (republished in 1932 in his collection of essays “Thoughts and Adventures”) involved abandoning universal suffrage, a return to a property franchise, proportional representation for the major cities and an economic ‘sub parliament’.
Churchill opposed Gandhi’s peaceful disobedience revolt and the Indian Independence movement in the 1930s, arguing that the Round Tab’e Conference “was a frightful prospect”. Later reports indicate that Churchill favoured letting Gandhi die if he went on a hunger strike. During the first half of the 1930s, Churchill was outspoken in his opposition to granting Dominion status to India. He was a founder of the India Defence League, a group dedicated to the preservation of British power in India. Churchill brooked no moderation. “The truth is,” he declared in 1930, “that Gandhi-ism and everything it stands for will have to be grappled with and crushed.” In speeches and press articles in this period, he forecast widespread unemployment in Britain and civil strife in India should independence be granted. The Viceroy Lord Irwin, who had been appointed by the prior Conservative Government, engaged in the Round Table Conference in early 1931 and then announced the Government’s policy that India should be granted Dominion Status. In this the Government was supported by the Liberal Party and, officially at least, by the Conservative Party. Churchill denounced the Round Table Conference.
At a meeting of the West Essex Conservative Association, specially convened so that Churchill could explain his position, he said “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace … to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.” He called the Indian National Congress leaders “Brahmins who mouth and patter principles of Western Liberalism”.
Two incidents damaged Churchill’s reputation greatly within the Conservative Party in this period. Both were taken as attacks on the Conservative front bench. The first was his speech on the eve of the St George by-election in April 1931. In a secure.
Sir Winston Churchill
