April 17, 2015

Finest Hour 121, Winter 2003-04

Page 14

By Michael McMenamin

125 Years Ago:

Winter 1878-79-Age4

“Lord Randolph was mute”

After Lord Randolph’s scathing attack on the President of the Local Government Board earlier in the year, nothing more was heard from Lord Randolph on the political front. As Winston wrote in his biography of his father, “For the rest of the Parliament Lord Randolph was mute. Scarcely a mention of his name occurs in the ‘Debates.’ He was absent from many important divisions. His relations and feelings towards the Government seem somewhat to have improved as the Russian war crisis receded, and he remained an impassive spectator of their doings in Afghanistan, in Zululand, and the Transvaal.”

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Meanwhile, Churchill’s parents continued during the winter their extensive travels throughout Ireland. As Lord Randolph wrote to his mother, “This weather is certainly very wintry and does not seem to lend itself to anything congenial, while anything more odious or unfortunate for fishing cannot be well imagined. I fished for two days in the Suir and never moved a fish, nor did anyone else. However, I have added another Irish county (Tipperary) to my peregrinations in this island.”

Winston’s brother Jack was born in Dublin on February 4th. The family now prepared to return to London to face a general election, in which Lord Randolph would manage to hold on to the family seat, Woodstock.

100 Years Ago:

Winter 1903-04-Age 29

“Governments have nothing to give but what they have first taken away”

In December, Churchill wrote a long letter to his friend Bourke Cockran, the American Congressman and orator: “I believe that Chamberlain will be defeated at the General Election by an overwhelming majority….Feeling is getting much more bitter on both sides than when you were here last and I think there are very stormy times ahead ….I have had all sorts of rows and troubles in my own constituency and I am thinking of trying my luck in pastures new….I have never received a copy of your speech at the Liberal Club. I wish I had been able to get hold of it. It would be very useful….I wish you would send me some good free trade speeches that have been made in America, and some facts about corruption, lobbying, and so forth….”

Since their first meeting in 1895, Cockran had played a formative role in Churchill’s political thought and was the person after whom Churchill patterned his speaking style. (See “Churchill’s American Mentor,” FH 115.) The Liberal Club speech to which Churchill referred was one Cockran had given in London on 15 July 1903, titled “The Essential Conditions of National Prosperity.” An excerpt from that speech by Cockran compared with one given by Churchill on 11 November 1903 at Birmingham illustrates how closely aligned the two men were politically and oratorically.

Cockran: “Since Government of itself can create nothing, it can have nothing of its own to bestow on anybody. It cannot, then, be both just and generous at the same time, for if it be generous to some it must be oppressive to others. If it undertake to enrich one man, the thing which it gives him it must take from some other man. If it have a favorite, it must have a victim; and that Government only is good, that Government only is great, that Government only is just, which has neither favorites nor victims.”

Churchill: “You may, by the arbitrary and sterile act of Government— for, remember, Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away—you may put money in the pocket of one set of Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way. Every vote given for Protection is a vote to give Governments the right of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and charging the public a handsome commission on the job.”

Churchill’s reference in his letter to Cockran of “troubles in my own constituency” was borne out on 8 January 1904, when the Oldham Conservative Association nearly unanimously passed a resolution of no confidence in him because of his outspoken views on free trade. Churchill’s reference to “trying my luck in pastures new” was in retrospect a foreshadowing of his coming decision to leave the Conservatives and “cross the floor” to join the Liberals.

Cockran undoubtedly honored Churchill’s request to send him “some good free trade speeches” for, in February, 1904, Churchill made a speech at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester which The Times described as “one of the most powerful and brilliant he has made.” Churchill said, “It is the theory of the Protectionist that imports are an evil. He thinks that if you shut out the foreign imported manufactured goods you will make these goods yourselves, in addition to the goods which you make now, including those goods which we make to exchange for the foreign goods that come in. If a man can believe that he can believe anything. [Laughter.] We Free-traders say it is not true. 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. [Laughter and cheers.]”

75 Years Ago:

Winter 1928-29-Age 54

“You will be very sorry after the Socialists are returned”

In the latter part of November, Churchill wrote to the press baron Lord Rothermere, warning of the consequences to follow if he and his fellow newspaper owner Max Beaverbrook abandoned the Conservatives: “Of course, if you and Max rock the boat it will do a good deal of harm and I am sure you will be very sorry after the Socialists are returned. Certainly everything you have stood for, friendship with France, breach with Russia, economy in expenditure, reduction of taxation, will be violently overthrown…. However, this is a free country and everyone may try to make his own bed so long as he is ready to lie in it afterwards….”

Over the Christmas holiday, Churchill continued work on The Aftermath, sending chapters to Arthur Balfour, Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin. In a letter to Baldwin accompanying the chapters, Churchill gave his views on the general theme of the coming election: “I am sure that everything should be done to confront the electors with the direct choice between Socialism and modern Conservatism. The more blunt and simple the issue, the better for our cause. The world tides are favourable. They set in every country towards Conservatism, co-operation and continuity of national policy.”

Churchill warned in a speech on 12 February that a Socialist government would “bring back the Russian Bolsheviks, who will immediately get busy in the mines and factories, as well as among the armed forces, planning another general strike….If a Socialist Government came into power, they might well have a facade of well-meaning and respectable Ministers who were moved here and there like marionettes in accordance with the decision of a small secret international junta.”

Privately, Churchill was pessimistic about the election, but not so his cabinet colleagues, who were busy discussing, if not plotting, behind Churchill’s back to move him out of the Exchequer in a new government.

50 Years Ago:

Winter 1953-54* Age 79

“This old carcass of mine is a bloody nuisance”

Churchill was in Bermuda for a summit conference with the Americans and the French. “I don’t feel old, though I have some of the disabilities of old age.” he told Lord Moran. “My outlook on things has not changed. It is exactly what it was. In the mornings I feel the same as I always did, but I have become torpid in the middle of the day. …This old carcass of mine is a bloody nuisance.”

Churchill’s purpose in coming to Bermuda was to persuade the new American administration that the death of Stalin offered an opportunity to explore detente with the new Soviet leadership. Lord Moran asked Churchill if Russia wanted war, to which he replied, “I believe it is not in her interest to make war. When I meet Malenkov we can build for peace.” Who was making it difficult?, Moran asked. “Ike,” Churchill said. “He doesn’t think any good can come from talks with the Russians. But it will pay him to come along with us. I shall do what I can to persuade him. I might stay longer here than I meant, at any rate if I could persuade Ike to stay too.”

At Bermuda Churchill told Eisenhower: “If this gathering were being held to find ways to reduce our defenses, that would be an extreme act of criminal folly, but if we were resolved to continue our preparation with the utmost vigor and perseverance…then this second question whether there was any reality in a Russian change was one that could be examined within limits and it should find its part in a general survey of the scene, once we had convinced them that there was no hope of dividing the allies.”

But Eisenhower characterized the Soviet Union as a streetwalker. As John Colville records his words, “If we understood that under this dress was the same old girl, if we understood that despite bath, perfume or lace, it was still the same old girl on that basis then we might explore all that Sir Winston had said….Perhaps we could pull the old girl off the main street and put her on a back alley. He did not want to approach this problem on the basis that there had been any change in the Soviet policy of destroying the Capitalist free world by all means, by force, by deceit or by lies.”

The most Churchill could do was to persuade Eisenhower, in his forthcoming speech to the United Nations, to substitute “reserve the right to use the atomic bomb” in place of “free to use the atomic bomb.” Colville records Eisenhower’s comment on the differences between him and WSC: “Whereas Winston looked on the atomic weapon as something entirely new and terrible, he looked upon it as just the latest improvement in military weapons.”

Back in London, Churchill learned on 21 January of the death of Richard Molyneux, a fellow soldier who had been wounded at Omdurman and had received a skin graft from Churchill at that time. Whistling past the graveyard, WSC observed “He will take my skin with him, a kind of advance guard, into the next world….”