March 28, 2013

Finest Hour 155, Summer 2012

Page 42

Not for the Faint of Heart

Before the Wars: Churchill as Reformer 1910-1911 (originally Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill: Penal Reformer) by Alan S. Baxendale. Peter Lang, softbound, 232 pages, $31.95.

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By Richard A. Devine

Mr. Devine, author of “Top Cop in a Top Hat: Churchill as Home Secretary” (FH 143:20) served as States’ Attorney of Cook County, Illinois, and is now a Chicago private attorney.


Any new book about Churchill tempts us to ask if there is anything more to say about him. Alan Baxendale has happily provided some meaningful “more” on Churchill’s time as Home Secretary, from February 1910 to October 1911. The Home Office then covered a wide range of government activity, but Baxendale focuses on how Churchill addressed his responsibilities for Britain’s prison system, particularly treatment of prisoners and sentencing. He brings an insider’s view to the subject, having served as chief education officer at the Home Office Prison Department from 1967 to 1985.

In researching a potential book on the “history of educational endeavors” among English prisoners, Baxendale learned that Churchill was the only Home Secretary to have looked at education as an “integral part of prison regimes” (xii). Further research sparked the author’s interest in what drove WSC to champion a number of proposals for prison reform. The result is a relatively short but interesting account of the major initiatives undertaken by Churchill in the corrections field.

Given his World War II bulldog image, some might expect that Churchill would have adapted a conservative, law-and-order approach to prison management. In fact, per the book’s title, he was very much the reformer, and brought a humanitarian philosophy to his oversight of the system. His views may have been the result in part of having been captured during the Boer War. Although he was not a prisoner for long and not confined in a traditional prison setting, he never forgot what it was like to lose one’s freedom.

Churchill’s predecessor at the Home Office, Herbert Gladstone, had, like Churchill, progressive views on how prisons should be run, but his approach to the role of Home Secretary was, according to Baxendale, one of “gentle- manly management” (9). Needless to say, that was not Churchill’s way of doing things. He was full of energy and ideas, determined to make a difference as quickly as possible.

Churchill’s aggressive push for immediate change put him at odds with the civil servants responsible for the prisons. They were, as the author notes, “accustomed to advising their minister but now found themselves being advised—and directed—by him” (9). They did not jump at the chance radically to alter what they had spent their careers building. The book offers short biographies of the main players at the Home Office, including Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, long-time chairman of the Prison Commission, and Sir Edward Troup, Permanent Under-secretary of State at the Home Office. These men knew their business and were not reluctant to disagree with Churchill.

Not surprisingly, Churchill pushed back. In the same method he later used with his World War II generals, he challenged their positions, asked pointed questions, demanded facts and offered counter-proposals. While the process was not without pain, and often left Brise, Troup and their colleagues frustrated and unhappy, progress was made.

Baxendale says there were two main phases in Churchill’s tenure at the Home Office. During the first, which ran roughly from February through July 1910, he concentrated on issues left over from Gladstone, relating primarily to prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners, including methods for handling prisoners of conscience and separate confinement. On 20 July 1910, Churchill outlined in Parliament his major proposals for penal reform. From then until he left the Home Office in October 1911, he focused on legislative measures to reduce the number of people who went to prison (8-12).

Baxendale’s book discusses in some depth debates with regard to the issues of separate confinement, the treatment of young offenders, the use of preventive detention, aid to discharged convicts and Churchill’s proposals for drastically reducing the prison population.

Churchill did not get his way on every proposal, but his aggressive push for change, moderated by the more conservative senior staff at the Home Office, led to meaningful progress on many of the reforms he proposed.

Yet Churchill’s relentless calls for action at times drove even his most experienced advisers to distraction. Brise had been around a long time and had worked with many political leaders at the highest level, but Churchill was a special case: “We are still groaning under the domination of WSC,” he wrote Gladstone. “I could tell you stories of him which would make your hair turn white! But I must be silent on paper from the traditional loyalty of a public servant to his Chief” (31).

As exasperated as Brise might have been, he and Troup stood up to Churchill many times, which helped to create sounder measures. It was valuable and necessary work—but not for the faint of heart. Churchill was not unhappy to go to the Admiralty in late 1911, not only for the broader challenge but perhaps also because he had felt some frustration in dealing with the Home Office bureaucracy.

Baxendale concludes that Churchill left a mark on the prison system, as he did on so many other areas of government. He wasn’t always right—in fact he could be incredibly wrong—but he was determined to make things happen. Many of his proposals, including the elimination of separate confinement, came to fruition over the years. As in all his government offices, Churchill challenged the system to do better. Looking back from today, when gridlock in government appears to be the order of the day, it is refreshing to see that a leader like Churchill, filled with ideas, determination and drive, working with an intelligent and experienced staff unafraid to debate him vigorously, could make things happen. And, quite often, they were good things.

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