February 10, 2015

Ireland was prominent in Churchill’s attention. He had been an early supporter of Home Rule, contrary to the policy espoused by his father. However, when he had moved die second reading of the Home Rule Bill in April 1912, he acknowledged the need for some concessions: “I admit that perfectly genuine apprehensions of the majority of the people of North-East Ulster constitute the most serious obstacle to a thoroughly satisfactory settlement … but whatever Ulster’s rights may be, she cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of Ireland.”

He accused the Tory leader, Andrew Bonar Law, of treasonable activity and of inciting the Orangemen. In a letter to The Times he wrote: “In a constitutionally governed country … there is no need and no excuse for violence…. All this talk of violence, of bayonets and bullets, of rebellion and civil war has come from one side alone. ” He charged the Tories with using the fanaticism of the Orangemen as a short-cut to office.

During the previous winter the debate on Ulster had become so intense that the Speaker adjourned the House. When Churchill waved his handkerchief in response to a taunt of “rats,” he was hit and cut on the head with a copy of Standing Orders, hurled from the Tory benches.

By the summer of 1913 the Bill had twice been passed by the Commons and both times rejected by the Lords, reminiscent of ft fate of Gladstone’s Bill in the 1880’s. But now the Lords could not stop a Bill from becoming law after a third reading in the Commons.

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Unable to win in the Commons the Tories turned to the King in the hope that he would dissolve Parliament. So violent was Tory opposition that Churchill and Lloyd George and some other Ministers were anxious to find a settlement. Churchill hoped to discuss the matter with Bonar Law when both were invited to Balmoral in September. Despite Bonar Law’s threat of civil war, Churchill and Asquith were prepared to carry forward with Home Rule but agreed that some compromise was necessary with Ulster.

Churchill also had a protracted disagreement with the King over the naming of vessels in His Majesty’s Navy. While they agreed on Hero, Agincourt and Raleigh for the new battleships they differed on the name Pitt, which the King considered neither “euphonious nor dignified. ” Nor did the King like Ark Royal which seemed to him a misnomer to apply to a ship of metal. He feared that it would eventually be known as the Noah’s Ark.

Churchill & King George V had disagreed on the matter of mining ships before so the First Lord reminded His Majesty of a Minister’s responsibility for the action so that public criticism could not be directed at the Crown. The King replied that the officers and men of the Royal Navy would like to feel that the ships were named with the approval of the Sovereign particularly as the present king was a former Royal Navy officer.

While in Scotland on Enchantress, he wrote Clementine about the affection he had for his family: “Tender love to you my sweet one and to both those little kittens and especially the radiant Randolph. Diana is a darling too but somehow he seems a more genial, generous nature, while she is mysterious: but I repent to have expressed a preference. They are very beautiful and will win us honour some day when everyone is admiring her and grumbling about him.”

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