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Winston Churchill

Prime Minister 1940 - 47 and 1951 - 55

The life of Winston Churchill is an illustration of Tolstoy's dictum that "The activity of Alexander or Napoleon cannot be termed beneficial or harmful, since we cannot say for what it is beneficial or harmful." (War and Peace P1341) Churchill's qualities depended very much on circumstance. In certain circumstances Winston Churchill was villian rather than hero. But at other times he was exactly what the moment required.

Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace on 30th November 1874. After a rather undistinguished school career he joined the army, and started writing journalistic pieces about battles he took part in. He was present at the battle of Omdurman in 1898 when Kitchener reinvaded the Sudan, and was horrified at the subsequent ill-treatment of defeated Islamic people by Kitchener. In the Boer War Churchill was captured, only to escape from jail in Pretoria and walk hundreds of miles to freedom. These exploits, and his talent for putting them into words, turned him into a national hero.

 

Tredegar

In 1900 Winston began his political career, winning for the Conservatives in Oldham. By 1908, having crossed to the Liberals, he was in Herbert Asquith's cabinet. By 1910 he was home secretary and was becoming a controversial figure. Winston's time as home secretary coincided with a number of crises. There were suffragette riots, anarchist riots, and industrial disputes involving miners of south Wales. All of these emergencies involved controversy. In south Wales, for example, export demand for coal was shrinking. While mine owners needed to cut costs, miners were demanding a minimum wage. Unrest was met first with extra police. After a serious riot in which one miner was killed, troops were deployed. In Tonypandy troops fired on strikers, killing two and triggering another riot. Many people condemned Churchill at the time and some still do. Others point out that this situation wasn't simply a case of defenceless workers with a noble cause facing bullies in government. ( See The Isles by Norman Davies) As strikes spread, Cardiff seamen were attacking Cardiff's small community of Chinese shopkeepers, and in Tredegar there were concerted attacks on the Jewish community. Communist groups also made no secret of the fact that they were exploiting unrest for their own ends.

Churchill became first lord of the admiralty in 1911, a position he held at the outbreak of World War One in 1914. Churchill thought it unlikely that the Germans could be defeated in France, and he planned an attack at the German alliance's weakest point, in Turkey. This operation at Gallipoli peninsula in 1915 was a disaster and nearly finished Churchill's career. He resigned from government and after recovering from depression went to fight on the Western Front as a colonel in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. Churchill survived a war which saw 700,000 British servicemen killed and one and a half million wounded. One in ten of an entire generation of young men had been killed. Losses were double what they would be in World War Two.

After the war Churchill rejoined the government and became colonial secretary in 1921. He was embroiled in more controversies, seeming rather keen to use poison gas against tribes rebelling against British rule in the former Ottoman Empire. In response to unrest in Ireland he sometimes defended brutalities inflicted by Black and Tan paramilitary policemen. At other times his belligerence was softened by second thoughts, and it was Churchill who negotiated a two state solution with Sinn Fein leaders Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, with whom he got on well. In 1922 his political career seemed to end once more when he lost his seat, only for recovery to come in 1924 with a return to Parliament. As always there were controversies, and these again involved the miners. The perennial problem was shrinking export markets meeting demands for increased pay. The General Strike of 1926 saw Churchill setting up his own propaganda paper, called The Gazette, which was sometimes escorted to news-stands by tanks. Pressure was also put on the BBC to present news in a way that favoured the government. By the 1930s Churchill was out of favour, and spent his time shouting about the need to hold India at all costs, and making famously insulting remarks about Indian leader, Gandhi.

Cabinet War Rooms, Whitehall

It was in 1940 that Churchill came into his own. Churchill saw Hitler for what he was, and made repeated warnings about him. When the Second World War finally did begin, prime minister Neville Chamberlain, struggling through the early months of the "phoney war" said: "How do I hate and loathe this war. I was never meant to be a war minister." For good or ill Winston Churchill was meant to be a war minister. Churchill took over as prime minister on 10th May 1940, the day that Holland and Belgium were invaded by Germany. This time all his characteristics, which could have played out well or badly, came together in the person that Britain needed. Churchill himself felt this: "...all my past life had been but preparation for this hour and this trial." At a crucial moment when Britain could easily have sought a settlement with a rampaging Nazi Germany, Churchill, through his presence and his words, galvanised the country to resist. In popular myth it was all down to Churchill and his speeches that Britain fought on. Whether this is actually true is a curious point. The Liberal politician Jo Grimmond has written: "Some people seem to believe that we should have surrendered in the last war had it not been for Churchill. To me it is inconceivable that Britain would have folded up without a fight in 1940 whoever led us." (The Prime Ministers Vol2 P206) As Tolstoy said in War and Peace a leader often becomes successful not because they change the direction of history, but because they catch the tide of the way history is going anyway. But whether Churchill created what happened, or reflected what had to happen, or a bit of both, Britain decided to fight. His speeches are now famous, and were his main weapon:

 

 

 

 

Battle of Britain Memorial, Chapel le Ferne

"You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory inspite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival." (Speech to Parliament 13th of May 1940)

"I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground." (Speech to Cabinet 28th of May 1940)

"...we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." (Speech to Parliament 4th of June 1940)

"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." (Speech to Parliament 13th of August 1940 following success in the Battle of Britain)

 

 

 

View of the Channel from Admiralty Casement, Dover Castle

Britain really was alone during 1940. President Roosevelt had refused a request for a British carrier to enter a U.S. port to embark aircraft the British government had purchased, since to do so would compromise United States neutrality. In these isolated circumstances the kind of defiance captured in Winston Churchill's speeches was necessary for Britain to carry on. As Jo Grimmond suggests it would be foolish to suggest that these speeches on their own won the struggle. But as Hegel wrote: "The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of the age, tell the age what its will is, and accomplish it." (Hegel Philosophy of Right P295)

 

In December 1941 America entered the war, following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour, and the tide was to turn against Germany. As the war continued Churchill ironically, seemed to lose his way. The United States took over allied military leadership, and Winston's finest hour had passed. His government was voted out of power only months after the war's end in 1945. He returned to government between 1951 and 1955, but life as a peace time leader was very different. In a war there is a clear goal, and Churchill was good with clear goals. In this sense he was not really a politician at all. Plutarch has said that politics should not be seen as an ocean voyage, or a military campaign with an end in view, but as a way of life. Churchill, a war leader, did not fundamentally see things like this. Chamberlain may have done so, and Clement Attlee who followed him may have done so. But for Winston Churchill, a member of a great military family, there was a war to be won. As prime minister 1951 - 55 it seemed that politics was the kind of war where there never is a final victory. He was not suited for this kind of role. An interest in foreign affairs continued, but home affairs were left very much alone. By 1955 Churchill's health was failing and he was persuaded to step aside. Retreating to his office at Chartwell time was spent writing and painting, and it was another ten years before Winston Churchill finally died. As Churchill's coffin was taken to Blenheim Palace for the funeral, all the cranes in the Pool of London were dipped in salute.