October 4, 2013

ACTION THIS DAY: FINEST HOUR 102, SPRING 1999

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

=================

One hundred years ago:
Spring 1899 • Age 24
The First Campaign

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

In late March 1899, on his way home from Egypt, Churchill wrote to his grandmother explaining his decision to leave the Army for a writing career: “Had the army been a source of income to me instead of a channel of expenditure I might have felt compelled to stick to it. But I can live cheaper & earn more as a writer, special correspondent or journalist; and this work is moreover more congenial and more likely to assist me in pursing die larger ends of life.”

To Churchill “the larger ends of life” meant a career in politics. His son Randolph reports in the official biography that Churchill even “consulted a fashionable palmist, Mrs. Robinson, who claimed to see favourable omens in his hand.” Churchill was courted by a number of Conservative constituencies who wanted him to stand as their candidate at the next general election.

One of them was Oldham, a working-class district with two MPs one of whom, James Oswald, was in poor health. The other Member, Robert Ascroft, asked Churchill to stand with him in Oswald’s place at the next election. In the event, it was Ascroft who unexpectedly died on 19 June 1899 and Oswald resigned in turn, setting up a double by-election.

Churchill’s Conservative running mate was a trade union leader named James Mawdsley, the General Secretary of the Lancashire branch of the Amalgamated Association of Cotton Spinners, which Ascroft had long served as its lawyer. Matching the young Churchill with a union leader— “The Scion and the Socialist”—was thought to be a good way to appeal to the working class vote as their Liberal Party opponents were both wealthy men. It didn’t work. As Churchill later said: “My poor Trade Unionist friend and I would have had very great difficulty in finding £500 between us, yet we were accused of representing the vested interest of society, while our opponents, who were certainly good for a quarter of a million, claimed to champion in generous fashion the causes of the poor and needy.”

Prior to the campaign Churchill had written to his namesake, the popular American novelist Winston Churchill, proposing a solution to the possible confusion engendered by the American’s forthcoming publication of Richard Carvel and Churchill’s own Savrola, then being serialized in Macmillaris Magazine, and his forthcoming The River War:

“Mr. Winston Churchill presents his compliments to Mr. Winston Churchill, and begs to draw his attention to a matter which concerns them both…Mr. Winston Churchill has decided to sign all published articles, stories, or other works, ‘Winston Spencer Churchill’ and not ‘Winston Churchill’ as formerly. He trusts that this arrangement will commend itself to Mr. Winston Churchill…He takes this occasion of complimenting Mr. Winston Churchill upon the style and success of his works, which are always brought to his notice…”

The American responded in kind: “Mr. Winston Churchill is extremely grateful to Mr. Winston Churchill for bringing forward a subject which has given Mr. Winston Churchill much anxiety. Mr. Winston Churchill appreciates the courtesy of Mr. Winston Churchill in adopting the name of “Winston Spencer Churchill” in his books, articles, etc. Mr. Winston Churchill makes haste to add that, had he possessed any other names, he would certainly have adopted one of them.. .Mr. Winston Churchill will take the liberty of sending Mr. Winston Churchill copies of the two novels he has written. He has a high admiration for the works of Mr. Winston
Spencer Churchill and is looking forward with pleasure to reading Savrola.”

Seventy-five years ago:
Spring 1924 • Age 49
“The Essential Principle”

Churchill, who suffered his second consecutive by-election loss on 19 March, opened negotiations with the Conservative Leader, Stanley Baldwin, to bring more than 30 anti-Socialist Liberal MPs into an informal alliance with the Conservatives, provided the Conservatives agreed not to contest their seats at the next General Election.

On 6 April 1924, Churchill published an article, “Socialism and Shaw,” in The Sunday Chronicle, vigorously attacking the minority Socialist government: “The leaders of the Socialist movement themselves have hardly succeeded in shaking themselves free from personal considerations. The Socialist Lord Privy Seal asks the House of Commons to raise his salary from two thousand to five thousand pounds a year—a proceeding perfectly proper on the Capitalist hypothesis, but hardly in harmony with Socialist idealism.

“Mr Bernard Shaw, that sparkling intellectual and brilliant champion of the Socialist Utopia, squealed like a rabbit when subjected to the mild Lloyd-Georgian supertax. Even Mr Moseley, the latest recruit, has not yet divested himself of his unearned increments or quit the life of elegance and luxury in which he has his being.”

Churchill then set out his own classical liberal philosophy: “The essential principle is personal freedom, the right of the individual to make the best of himself, or, within limits, the worst of himself, if he chooses; the stimulation of all these individual activities by the reward of enterprise, toil, and thrift; and their reconciliation through the laws.” The Socialists, he said, aspire “to prescribe from year to year, from month to month, or from week to week, the life and labour of every single citizen; what he was to do; where he was to do it; what he was to receive for doing it; where he was to live; under what conditions he could change his employment or his habitation. Nothing would be omitted from their control.”

On 7 May 1924, Churchill pressed his attack in a speech, “The Present Dangers of the Socialist Movement,” given at a Conservative Party meeting in Liverpool of over 5000 people, the first time he had spoken at a Conservative gathering in twenty years: “This political cuckoo (loud laughter)—if I may without disrespect borrow a metaphor from our tardy spring (laughter) —is strutting about in borrowed plumes. This Socialist, whose life has been one long sneer at the British Empire, is able to appropriate as unearned increment to himself and his friends the whole of the fruits of the toil, the thrift, and the self-denial of his predecessors. Without that constitutional authority which springs from a majority at the polls, and without having had to do a hand’s turn of work or make the slightest effort, he has been placed in a situation where he was able to distribute a surplus for which he had neither toiled nor spun.”

Earlier in the Spring, Churchill had written his first letter from Chartwell to his wife, Clementine, who spent Easter in Dieppe with her mother: “My darling, this is the first letter I have ever written from this place & it is right that it shd be to you. I am in bed in your bedroom (wh I have annexed temporarily) & wh is sparsely but comfortably furnished with the pick of yr two van loads. We have had two glorious days.

“The weather has been delicious & we are out all day toiling in dirty clothes and & only bathing before dinner. I have just had my bath in your de Luxe bathroom. I hope you have no amour propre about it…I drink Champagne at all meals & buckets of claret and soda in between, & the cuisine tho’ simple is excellent. In the evenings we play the gramophone (of wh we have deprived Mary) & Mah Jongg with yr gimcrack set.

“Everything is budding now that this gleam of deferred genial weather has come.

“Only one thing lacks these banks of green —

“The Pussy Cat who is their Queen. “I do hope, my darling, that you are
all enjoying yourselves & that you are really recuperating. How I wish you were here…”

Fifty years ago:
Spring 1949 • Age 74
Soviet Policy and India

Churchill was in New York on 25 March 1949 where he spoke at a dinner given by Time publisher Henry Luce:

“What is the explanation of the Soviet policy? Why have they deliberately united the free world against them. I will hazard the answer….It is, I am sure, because they feared the friendship of the West more than they do its hostility. They can’t afford to allow free and friendly intercourse between their country and those they control, and the rest of the world. They daren’t see it develop—the coming and going and all the easements and tolerances which come from the agreeable contacts of nations and of individuals. They can’t afford it.”

Upon his return to England, Churchill found himself under attack within the Conservative Party for accepting the Labour Government’s position that India could remain in the Commonwealth as an independent republic. Churchill, whose wilderness years out of power in the 1930s were attributable in part to his unwillingness to accept the Conservatives’ compromise over India, was unsympathetic. As he wrote to Lord Salisbury on 7 May 1949:

“…the fatal step towards India was taken when Baldwin supported the Ramsay MacDonald plan in 1930 and enforced it upon the Conservative Party in 1931. I and seventy Conservatives and your Father resisted this for four long years, and were systematically voted down by the Baldwin-Ramsay MacDonald combination, supported for this purpose, I need hardly say, by the Socialist Party in opposition. Once the Conservative Party cast aside its duty to resist the weakening of the Imperial strength, the gap could not be filled, and from this point we slid and slithered to the position we have reached today. I could not therefore accept any reproach for the present situation from any Conservative who supported the Baldwin and Chamberlain policies.”

Later in May, Churchill previewed the film “Crusade in Europe” at Chartwell. As one guest recorded: “It was the custom at Chartwell to invite everyone who lived or worked on the estate to view the movies. Among the group of twenty or thirty was an ex-German prisoner-of-war named Walter, who did odd jobs like wood-cutting and lawn-moving….The March of Time film was not under way more than a few minutes before it was clear that it would not evoke happy memories for a former member of the Reichswehr. Churchill rose from his seat at once, tapped Walter on the shoulder, and motioned him to leave the theater with him. Later we learned that Churchill’s object in going out was to suggest to Walter that perhaps he would prefer not to see the film that evening. Walter, however, returned to the theater with Churchill and remained till the end.”

Twenty-five years ago:
Spring 1974
“Just a Curmudgeon”

For Finest Hour 1974 was the Silent Spring and Summer. No issues appeared while we sought a new editor—ironically during the Churchill Centenary, with a six-month exhibition at Somerset House, London. Here many newspapers, loaned by John Frost, were on display recalling Churchill’s exploits at Omdurman and the Boer War, his wedding day in 1908, and the events of both world wars.

The exhibit proved a disappointment to the organizers, who said it was drawing only 500 visitors a day instead of the planned 1000. “We have just not succeeded in getting this exhibition sufficiently across to the public,” said the organizer, John Colville. The parallel appeal on behalf of the Churchill Centenary Trust (“A Million Pounds from a Million People”) was also running behind. “I personally have asked about 350 people for £1 and they have all paid up,” Colville added. “There was only one exception—he was just a curmudgeon.”

Simultaneously it was announced that Richard Burton would star as WSC in a television documentary, “Churchill’s Walk with Destiny,” spanning the years from 1934 to 1940 and based on “The Gathering Storm,” under which tide it was finally produced. In Vancouver, the first volume of the “Collected Works” of Sir Winston was presented to the parliamentary library by former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker on behalf of Lady Churchill. Nine others who, with Diefenbaker, were members of Canada’s Parliament when Churchill gave his “some chicken, some neck” speech in 1941 were invited to attend the presentation ceremony.
 

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.