Churchill was a British statesman and the prime minister who played a huge role during World War II, leading Britain. Despite the fact that he was not a very brilliant student academically, he had a very illustrious political career. He joined the army and had many adventures in Cuba, India, and Sudan. In 1899 he quit his military career and embarked on a new career path as a newspaper reporter, covering the Boer War in South Africa. His political career began in 1900 when he was elected to parliament. He held several government posts, and during the First World War, he served as head of the Admiralty. During the 1930s, Churchill was away from the political scene though he warned people about the dangers of another world war. When the Second World War began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain put Churchill in charge of the Admiralty again. When German armies created havoc in Europe in May 1940, King George VI invited him to be Prime Minister, which post he adorned until the election of 1945, just before the war ended. He became prime minister again from 1951 to 1955. He gave up politics in 1964 and died in 1965. Thesis: Winston Churchill’s illustrious political career can be studied under the following six phases: Radical (1900-1911); Warmonger (1911-1915); Chancellor (1924-1929); Exile (1929-1939); Warlord (1940-1945) and Elder (1945-1955).
Radical (1900-1911)
Churchill entered the House of Commons as MP for Oldham and as a Conservative Unionist. However, within four years, he crossed the floor to join the Liberals, much to the surprise of many Conservatives. This was because, after being elected MP for Oldham in 1900, he found himself opposing several Conservative policies, chief among them being increased spending on the army, the post-war settlement with the Boers, and, after 1903, Joseph Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform campaign. It was mainly because of his strong opposition to Tariff Reform was he defected to the side of the Liberals in March 1904. Churchill was totally supportive of all Liberal policies. In fact, before joining the Liberals, he had opposed their policy of Home Rule in Ireland. Churchill served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1906-1908, during which time he argued for restraint and reconciliation and helped restore a responsible government in South Africa. In 1908 Churchill was made the President of the Board of Trade, during which time Churchill established labor exchanged to help the unemployed and drafted legislation to streamline working conditions for miners and other laborers. He also worked alongside Lloyd George towards a party revival, and they became known as the ‘heavenly twins’ of New Liberalism.
Churchill believed in many Liberal policies such as individual freedom, progress, and reform. He was also a humanitarian, and as Home Secretary, he worked towards extensive prison reform, reduced the period of solitary confinement of new prisoners from nine months to one, and took steps to ensure justice for all. When the People’s Budget of 1909 was introduced, he supported it from its inception until it was passed in parliament after facing several hurdles. He also supported the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the National Insurance Act, the bill for shop workers, the Coal Mines Act of 1911, and the 1909 Trade Boards Act. He created a Committee of National Organization in which multiple ministries could work together as a team to fund and manage public works programs to provide employment during hard times. Churchill and Lloyd George did not support the Gladstonian principles of low state intervention and low taxation and were convinced that only radical solutions would do. They also liked the idea of cross-party cooperation or government by the coalition so that national-level problems could be tackled without any interference from petty party politics. He was attracted towards Eugenics and supported the sterilization of the physically and mentally ‘unfit’ in the cause of selective breeding to strengthen the British race. This proved to be controversial, as was the way he handled the social and industrial unrest during the years 1910-1911. ‘He was prepared to countenance social reform, provided it was regulated and ordered by the government: he was not prepared to suffer dictates from below that threatened the social order he held dear.’ He used military strength to suppress the strikes during the period, and his zeal for confrontation spoiled relations with colleagues in government and members of organized labor.
Warmonger (1911-1915)
This was the most disturbing period of Churchill’s long political career. He assumed responsibility as the First Lord of the Admiralty with alacrity. During the Agadir Crisis of 1911, Churchill became aware of the dangers of the European situation and the need to increase military spending. His increased naval estimates created problems in his relationship with Lloyd George and were perceived as a shift from Liberal policies. Churchill also had difficulty tackling Ireland’s demand for Home Rule. Irish Nationalists demanded Home Rule. The Bill introduced on 11 April 1912 was a modest measure of self-government. However, not all in Ireland were pleased with Home Rule Bill. Unionists, especially those in Ulster, were for the continued union of Ireland with the United Kingdom, and they were fiercely determined to resist Home Rule. The Liberal government and its fiery leader John Redmond were intent on passing the Home Rule Bill, and Churchill supported them. Unionists in Ulster moved to place themselves on the military footing and founded a disciplined people’s army, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). In retaliation, the Irish nationalists formed their own army, the Irish Volunteers.. In 1913, Winston Churchill, a liberal and supporter of home rule felt that excluding Ulster from the Home Rule Bill might prevent civil war in Ireland. This was also perceived as a shift away from Liberal policies. The outbreak of World War I resolved the Irish crisis by bringing the two sides together, and ultimately the Home Rule Bill was passed in September 1914. One of the major reforms of Winston Churchill was the creation of a naval war staff at the Admiralty and conversion of all Royal Navy vessels from coal to oil. He thus made the British fleet ready for war in 1914. He held his post for four years, advised informally at first and officially after 1914 by Admiral Sir John Fisher. Fisher wrecked him in the end by suddenly resigning at the height of the crisis over the Dardanelles expedition in 1915. The failed naval campaign in the Dardanelles and the subsequent futile attempts to take the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915 proved to be a setback to Churchill’s political career. The entire campaign was judged to be badly planned, poorly coordinated, and timidly executed. Churchill, as its main advocate, was forced to take the blame. The fiasco of the Dardanelles led to a reconstruction of the government on the basis of a coalition with the Conservatives. Their leader, Andrew Bonar Law, did not trust Churchill and made his exclusion from the Admiralty a condition of joining. Churchill’s fall from power plunged him into despair. Because of his arrogant and authoritative use of power, he had antagonized many of his colleagues in the Admiralty and Parliament. He then enlisted in the army and spent six months at the front. He returned in 1916, hoping to return to political life in the Coalition government, but his return to his political path was blocked by both Tories and Liberals. Recognizing Churchill to be a valuable person, Lloyd George revived his political career by appointing him Minister of Munitions in 1917. Churchill took up the responsibilities with much vigor. Hence, when the Coalition won in the general election at the end of 1918, he stood poised to take office in Lloyd George’s first peacetime administration.
Chancellor (1924-1929)
After Lloyd George’s coalition to power won the election in 1918, Churchill was appointed Secretary of State for War and Air. He first tried to demobilize the army by doing away with existing unpopular plans, replacing them with more practicable plans. He also adopted the ‘Ten Year Rule’ in 1919, according to which military spending will be based on the assumption that British forces would not go to war within the next ten years. This led to a reduction in military expenditures, and he had to fight against such reductions in the future. Convinced that airpower will soon be the dominating military asset, he presided over the creation of the Royal Air Force as a separate force. Politically, Churchill supported greater allied intervention in the Russian Civil War as he hated the ideology and nature of the Bolshevik regime. However, it was not possible for Britain to intervene immediately because of its exhaustion in World War I and its conflicts with Ireland. By 1920, Churchill worked towards a settlement for Ireland. During his tenure as Secretary of State for the Colonies, he successfully steered the controversial legislation for the establishment of the Irish Free State through Parliament and managed to settle disputed borders in the Middle East. By 1922 due to various reasons, the Conservatives lost trust in Lloyd George as Prime Minister and voted to withdraw from the coalition, forcing him to call an election. When the coalition government fell, Churchill lost his post, and he did not enter Parliament again until 1924. He spent this period of his life traveling, painting, lecturing, and writing. He continued to drift towards the right. However, he did not approve of the protectionist policies of the Conservatives in the 1923 election. When the Conservatives lost the election, they abandoned protectionism, while the Liberals formed the first Labor Government. Church viewed the government as a “menace of socialism.” He, therefore, in 1924, went back to his roots and joined the Conservative Party after some negotiation. He exploited the scandal of the Zinoviev letter in attacking the Liberals during the general election in 1924.
The Conservatives were returned to the government and Churchill to Parliament. Surprisingly, Baldwin appointed Churchill as his Chancellor because of his immense experience. Churchill was anxious to prove to his readopted party that he was politically sound and deserving of their trust. His first budget confirmed the return to the Gold Standard, valuing the pound at its pre-war rate of £1 to $4.86. This was a popular financial move at the time. But this same policy ‘is commonly regarded as the greatest mistake of that main Baldwin government, and the responsibility for it came firmly to rest upon Churchill’. Churchill had viewed the issue of returning to the Gold Standard politically and failed to see the economic consequences. He ignored the predictions of J. M. Keynes, who warned the overvaluation of the Pound would lead to British exports becoming too expensive and the fall in exports would lead to reduced wages and employment. All of this happened very soon. Jobs were cut, and wages were forced down as industries struggled to survive, leading to unrest and strikes. Churchill took the blame and admitted that it had been ‘the biggest blunder in his life.’ This blunder cost Baldwin’s administration the election of 1929 and a dramatic rise in industrial conflict. The coal industry was severely affected by the high exchange rate, and when a lockout ensued, other unions supported it, and Britain’s first General Strike was begun. As a result of such problems, Churchill’s budgets of 1926 and 1927 involved many cuts in government spending. He used up all the Road Fund, raised money through taxes, and cut expenditures in the navy and army. Churchill ran a budgetary deficit of nearly £37 million in the years 1926 and 1927. Churchill, to resolve the economic crisis, came up with a de-rating scheme announced in his budget of 1928, but it was not very successful. He introduced a small number of duties on silk, wine, and sugar and reduced or abolished those on tea and dried fruits. Churchill needed expert guidance to overcome the financial crisis. He had a commitment to social reform, and as a result, he financed a number of important schemes: the Widows and Old Age Pensions Act of 1925 and the National Health Insurance Act, increasing the number of people eligible for pensions and unemployment benefits and a fifteen-year scheme to subsidize the construction of houses by local authorities. However, financing these schemes created retrenchment in other spheres, and this retrenchment, combined with the inflated value of the pound and an unwillingness to resort to Keynesian solutions, lead to the economic depression. It was only after the financial crisis of 1931, Churchill understood how outdated his economic ideas had been and how free trade and the Gold Standard were no longer enough to stabilize Britain’s economy.
Exile (1929-1939)
In 1929, Baldwin lost the election due to his government’s inability to revive the economy, and with Liberal support, Ramsay MacDonald formed the second Labour administration. Churchill thought the Labor rule would not last long as it had a very short life in 1923-1924. He was happy being a senior Tory, and he looked forward to leading the opposition along with Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain from the front bench. But by 1931, he was facing conflicts within his own party on issues regarding India’s status as a dominion and tariff reform. Though he was a proponent of free trade, Churchill accepted protectionism due to the dire economic straits of 1931. But he did not approve of the idea to grant India dominion status. In this matter, he differed with his party and most of his former colleagues and soon lost much of the respect he had gained as Chancellor. He opposed the Irwin Declaration of 1929 and the subsequent India Bill vehemently to reform the Indian government. He argued that the loss of India would be an economic disaster for Britain and a political one for India and persisted with ill-judged ‘jibes’ about Gandhi. Because of his stubborn views on this issue, he was forced to resign from the front bench in early 1931 and campaign against his own party and against popular political thinking. His opposition to the passage of the India Bill actually caused him much harm. When the National Government was formed in 1931, Churchill was totally ignored by his own party. His exclusion from the National Government was not only due to his stance over India. It was also because his ‘colleagues thought that his natural temperament would be antagonistic to the Labour members of a small Cabinet determined to maintain a “national” and united front.’ He was held accountable for his attacks on the Labor Party during the Zinoviev affair in 1924, the General Strike of 1926, and then MacDonald’s Indian policy. Labour did not want Churchill in the coalition Cabinet, and neither did his past Tory colleagues. His reputation for confrontation and attacking his own party made him unsuitable to participate in a cross-party coalition government. Churchill was thus pushed to the background in 1931. He also suffered huge losses in stock investments, suffered a serious injury in a car accident in 1931, lost his close friend Lord Birkenhead who died in 1930, and suffered embarrassment due to his son Randolph. Churchill suffered from depression, and to escape from depression, he became a workaholic, wrote several books and articles, took care of his farm, and painted during this period. From the time Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Churchill sensed a threat and began to urge increased spending on Britain’s air defenses. Recognizing his potential for military planning, Baldwin, in 1935, offered him membership of the Air Defense Research Subcommittee of the CID (Committee of Imperial Defense). It was more of an attempt to soothe his frayed feelings rather than a move to bring him back to the frontline. He was not named for the post of the Minister for the Coordination of Defense, a new post created in March 1936. His isolation became complete in May 1937 when Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister. Churchill himself wrote, ‘I had no expectation that he would wish to work with me … His ideas were far different from mine on the treatment of the dominant issues of the day.’ Churchill established himself as a consistent critic of the government’s policy of catering to the territorial demands of Germany. Neville Chamberlain was committed to this cause, and once again, Churchill was fighting for an alone cause. Between 1937 and 1939, he fought a lonely battle, and he was labeled as a warmonger. Thus, even during the early months of 1939, Churchill was still in exile and perceived as leading a dangerous campaign against Chamberlain’s foreign policy. The outbreak of the Second World War changed it all.
Warlord (1940-45)
In May 1940, Britain was at war and was also facing an internal political crisis. Chamberlain had lost the confidence of the House of Commons during the Norway debate of May 1940, Churchill’s ascent to Prime Ministerial office took place in a whirlwind four days, during which time five major events played key roles in the fall of Chamberlain and the rise of Churchill: the two-day parliamentary debate about the Norwegian campaign, which took place on 7 and 8 May 1940; the meeting of the rebels including Eden and McMillan on 9 May; meeting of Churchill, Halifax, Chamberlain and Chief Whip Margesson at 10 Downing Street; the telephone call of Attlee to Chamberlain informing him of his party’s decision that they would not join him in forming a new government; and finally, the War Cabinet meeting on 10 May. At the end of it all, Chamberlain finally resigned and recommended to the King that he send for his rival, Churchill, to ask him to form a new National Government. This was the finest moment in Churchill’s political career, and very few had thought he would rise so soon to so high a post. Churchill wrote in his memoirs, ‘I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour.’
Once confirmed as Prime Minister, Churchill brought together Labour, Liberal, and even trade union leaders in his Cabinet. He appointed himself as Minister of Defense with undefined powers and had more power than any Prime Minister in British history, yet he was still answerable to the Cabinet and to Parliament. It was possible for the parliament to remove him with one vote of no confidence, and hence Churchill wrote his speeches keeping the interests of the MPs in mind. He also regulated the functions of the government, reducing the War Cabinet to about six and nine men with no other ministerial responsibilities. Churchill left domestic affairs to be governed by the Lord President’s Committee. There was not much demarcation between civilian and military staff who worked and slept together during heavy air raids. In the context of military affairs, Churchill relied heavily on the Secretariat of the War Cabinet led by General Sir Hastings Ismay. Churchill always had his way with the Chiefs of Staff through argument and confrontation. With the entry of the USSR and then the USA into the war as allies of Britain, Churchill found that he did not have the freedom to devise his own strategies for Britain. By 1944 he became exhausted. Despite his huge popularity, he was rejected by the voters in the general election in 1945, and the Labour Party won a landslide victory to govern peacetime Britain. He was very popular mainly because of the oratory skills that he had practiced and perfected over forty years. He wrote his speeches himself and spent many hours finding just the right word or phrase and rehearsing his delivery like an actor learning a part. An American journalist commented that Churchill ‘mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.’ Churchill was able to create magic through his oratory skills. Historian Jablonsky has explained this phenomenon: ‘for a time in the 1940s, by dramatizing their lives and making them seem to themselves and to each other, as acting appropriately for a great historic moment, Churchill transformed the British people into a collective, the romantic and heroic whole’. Churchill thus had the power to stir emotion and motivate the British people with his words. Many of his words are still quoted: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’; ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’ Churchill’s image was developed by the media such as the radio and film though he did not give any rehearsed performances for them like Hitler. ‘He appeared, undaunted, with a bulldog air, in a variety of costumes and hats, stomping around with a cigar and walking stick, raising the morale of cinema audiences. No such heart-warming populist appearances were made by Hitler, Stalin, not even Roosevelt’. He developed a consistent and instantly recognizable media image. Churchill opposed the rationing of food and clothing, and this shows that he did not always understand the British people, many of whom saw rationing as a fair means of distribution. Churchill’s political leadership was criticized for its increased focus on the military prosecution of the war almost to the exclusion of domestic matters, which he delegated to the Defence Committee for Supply under the leadership of Anderson, and then Morrison. This shows that Churchill was not in tune with the changing times and changing societal attitudes. As a result, Churchill’s election manifesto of 1945 seemed weak and irrelevant compared to that of the Labor Party. Churchill’s long career is full of controversial episodes, from his involvement in the Tonypandy incident of 1910 to the decision to create a British hydrogen bomb in the 1950s. During wartime, he faced two controversies, such as the decision to bomb Dresden in 1945 and the decision not to bomb the death camp at Auschwitz in 1944-1945.
Elder (1945-1955)
Churchill lost the general election and was much shocked by the result. He decided to take a holiday abroad to recover his health and wounded pride. By now, he was a very popular international speaker and made a number of significant speeches on the theme of international affairs, including his description of the ‘iron curtain.’ He spent much less time in the House of Commons, which created a vacuum in the Tory leadership. Churchill won his first general election to become Prime Minister in October 1951 at the age of seventy-six. This was also the time when a new Queen ascended the throne in 1952. Because of his old age, the subject of his retirement was raised almost as soon as he had returned to Number 10, Downing Street. At the first Cabinet meeting of this administration, it was revealed to him by the Treasury revealed that Britain’s balance of payments deficit was much larger than expected. Hence Churchill decided to increase economic controls by reducing the meat ration, cutting imports, the tourist rate, and public spending in education. Churchill also insisted that all senior ministers, including him, take a pay cut. He also unraveled a new proposal called ‘Operation Robot’ to make sterling convertible and to float it on the world money markets, allowing it to find its value against other currencies. If by chance its value falls, it could restore the balance between imports and exports. But if it rises, it would cause a rise in unemployment and prices. So, the proposal was rejected. Historians like Keith Middlemass feel that the adoption of ‘Robot’ could have helped restore the economy strongly. After the rejection of ‘Operation Robot,’ Chancellor R. A. Butler raised the bank rate to reduce consumer demand and applied the first ‘stop’ of the ‘stop-go’ economics of the 1950s. By 1953-1954 there were glimpses of economic revival. The Stock Exchange was booming, and the standard of living had risen. The government decided to withdraw from the Marshall Plan a year early. The good times did not last beyond 1955.
To avoid industrial confrontation, Churchill conceded a number of wage claims that had inflationary consequences. This policy of industrial appeasement was seen as a failure on the part of Churchill to develop a strategy for the modernization of British industry after the war.
Churchill’s introduced several changes in the defense department. Because of the successful testing of the atomic bomb in October 1952, Churchill became Britain’s first nuclear Prime Minister, and this meant Britain could preserve her diplomatic status and discourage any detailed review of her overseas and international obligations. The Global Strategy paper of 1952 recommended a shift to nuclear deterrence as the cheapest way of maintaining her international obligations. Churchill’s Cabinet took the decision to go ahead with developing a hydrogen bomb in 1952. The nuclear strength of Britain forced the USA to continue to treat Britain as a partner, but it was an expensive way. Both Truman and his successor Eisenhower created challenges to closer ties between the US and Britain. Tensions arose over the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, and European security. The Cold War made the USA more tolerant of Britain’s imperial authority in such regions as Iran and Egypt. Britain helped in creating the European Union, and it appeared that Churchill had a robust foreign policy. But Churchill was unable to organize a summit of leaders that he very much desired. The failure of Churchill’s government to review Britain’s imperial commitments or outlook is a serious flaw of this phase of Churchill’s political career.
Churchill’s second premiership was a quiet period, and there was not much conflict between the Conservatives and Liberals. The term ‘Butskellism’ was coined during these years to describe the political consensus that seemed to dominate domestic policies in the areas of employment and social and welfare services. The public expected a lot from Churchill’s new government and expected him to lead the country to prosperity. Since the Conservatives had only a majority of seventeen, Churchill was crippled in his efforts to introduce radical policies. Churchill chose to work with men he knew very well in the past and wanted to reform a coalition with the Liberals. That did not happen, but ‘his constant yearning for coalition politics and his image of himself as a national leader rising above partisan political calculations.’ Dominated his political thinking. Churchill insisted on reversing the nationalization of the iron and steel and road-haulage industries but denationalizing it was very complicated. Private ownership was restored only in May 1953, and it took another ten years the sale of its assets was completed, by which time Labour had returned to power to renationalize it. Government spending on social services was increased during 1951-55.
He suffered a serious stroke in June 1953 that nearly killed him. This was kept secret from the public and the press. Churchill was bedridden for several months, and Butler was in charge of the Cabinet. Churchill decided to retire, but then, he postponed it after making a great speech at the party conference in October. He retired only in April 1955, his mental and physical energy depleted by the stroke.
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