William Tyler
Churchill: The Political Animal 1900-22
William Tyler | Churchill The Political Animal 1900-22 | 06.28.21
- Hi, William. You went swimming today?
Hi. Yes, swimming today. Yes.
You went swimming today?
It’s been nice weather here.
Yeah, it’s lovely here in LA as well. A bit windy today but beautiful.
[Judi] Can I just give a shout out quickly to David Garfield? Happy 83rd birthday, David.
Ah great! Happy birthday.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday, David. And it’s Pam. And Pam as well. Pam Jacobson, it’s her birthday today as well.
[Judi] Yes happy birthday, Pam.
Happy birthday.
[Judi] And Cella, if you’re watching as well. Happy birthday, Cella.
Oh, lovely. Well, happy days to everybody. And then, turn to the South Africans, honesty, I know that you’ve gone back into lockdown, those of you’re living in South Africa. I know that you’ve gone in lockdown for another two weeks. You know, we will get through this. And hopefully, oh my goodness, let’s hope that they just really manage to deal with this variant. But one day at a time and we will turn things around, I’m sure of that. Let’s hope so. All right, William, over to you. We’re looking forward to hearing about Churchill, the great Churchill.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Wendy. And hello to everybody who’s tuned in for this Zoom talk. This talk on Churchill takes Churchill’s life between 1900 and 1922 but it’s the first of three I’m going to do. The next one will be what he himself called the Wilderness Years of the ‘20s and '30s. And then finally, we come to the third one, which is Churchill as war leader. It’s Disraeli, another Conservative British Prime Minister who said, “Read no history. Nothing but biography for that is life without theory.”
So then, what else do I need to justify talking about a biography and talking about the biography of what is a person who’s been voted time and again as the greatest Englishman of the 20th century. I call this talk, “The Political Animal 1900, 1922” because 1900 was the year that Churchill was first elected to the British House of Commons. He didn’t take his seat until February, 1901, because he had a pre-booked lecture tour in America and he had to fulfil that. Well, not only did he have to fulfil it for contractual reasons but he needed to fulfil it for financial reasons. Churchill, throughout his life, was always short of money. Why? Because he spent it as soon as he got it. My brother was- My mother always said to relations who tried to give my brother and I money, “Don’t give it to George,” my brother, “because he’ll only spend it as soon as he’s got it.”
And that was Churchill throughout his life. And he was only controlled or controlled to a certain extent by his wife, Clemmie. So Churchill is elected as an MP in 1900. He was 26 years of age. And he had something to prove, to prove to himself, that he could make it in the field of politics and make his father proud. Although his father was five years dead. Lord Randolph Churchill, his father, had risen to the heights of being Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain and had always rather looked down upon Winston to be honest, as being not very bright, as being rather naughty, which he certainly was. And he was only fit in his father’s view for a military career. And he only got into Sandhurst, the officer training college, on his third attempt, having been coached by private tutors.
So there were some grounds for his father perhaps thinking that Winston wasn’t the brightest button in the box. But his father had misjudged him. It’s true that both at his prep school and later at Harrow School, Winston was not an outstanding scholar. But, and there’s a big but here, he wasn’t stupid. He was one of those boys, and I think I do mean boys rather than boys and girls, one of those boys who really didn’t like school at all and made his feelings well-known. And the basis of why he didn’t like school was, well, two really. One was discipline. Churchill never took other people’s orders willingly.
But I think more than that, he questioned the value of the education he was given. And he himself in a book that he wrote about his early life simply called “My Early Life” which he published in the early 1930s, he tells this story, which is, I have to say, one of my favourite stories of all of Churchill. This is Churchill at quite a young age, something like eight: “You’ve never done any Latin before, have you?” the Master said. “No, sir.” I replied. “This is Latin grammar.” He opened a well-thumbed page of a book.
“You must learn this,” he said, pointing to a number of words in a frame of lines. “I will come back,” said the Master, “in half an hour and see what you know.” “Behold me then,” says Churchill, “on a gloomy evening, with an aching heart, seated in front of the First Declension. Mensa, a table. Mensa, O table. Mensam, a table. Mensae, of a table. Mensae, to or for a table. Mensa, by, with or from a table. What on earth did it mean? Where is the sense in it? It seemed absolute rigmarole to me. However, there was one thing I could always do, I could learn by heart.”
In due course, the master returned. “Have you learnt it?” “I think I can say it, sir,’ I replied; and I gabbled it off, "Mensa, mensa, mensam, mensae, mensae, mensa.” He seemed so satisfied with this that I was emboldened to ask a question. Oh no, you know disaster is about to happen. “What does it mean, sir?” “It means what it says. Mensa, a table. Mensa is a noun of the First Declension, there are five declensions. You’ve learnt the singular of the First Declension.” “But,” I repeated, “what does it mean?” “Mensa means a table,” he answered. “Then why does mensa also mean O table,” I replied, “and what does O table mean?” “Mensa, O table, is the vocative case, Churchill.” “But why O table?”
I persisted in genuine curiosity. “Well, O table, you would use that, Churchill, in addressing a table, in invoking a table.” And then seeing he wasn’t carrying me with him, he added, “You would use it in speaking to a table.” “But I never do,” I blurted out in honest amazement. “If you are impertinent, Churchill, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely.” “Such,” writes Churchill, “was my first introduction to the classics from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit.” Well, make your own minds up. I don’t think Churchill was stupid.
In fact, I think he was the opposite of stupid. In fact, at Sandhurst, he did very well in his year and obviously found the army congenial and therefore put his mind to it and was good at it. He entered military service then in the 1890s with enthusiasm and a sense also of daring do. He set out to make a success of his military career. He set out to make a name for himself. But his ultimate goal remained the same, to enter politics. Churchill was not happy to sit back in barracks in peacetime. He saw service around the world. He went to Cuba as a volunteer to fight for the Spanish. He fought with his own regiment on the North West Frontier in India.
By networking and the influence of his mother’s friends, he got drafted into the army in the Sudan, fighting the Mahdi. And as such, he took part in the last major cavalry charge of the British army at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. And finally, first as a journalist and then as an enlisted soldier, in South Africa, he fought in the Boer War. He had the misfortune in South Africa to be captured by the Boers and put in a prisoner of war camp. But actually it wasn’t a misfortune. For Churchill, it was a real opening and chance. Why? Because he managed to escape from the prisoner of war camp and he was big news, not only in South Africa itself, but in Britain as well. He was the hero of the hour.
Today he’d be on every television talk show there was on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a legend in his own youth after his escape from the Boers. And he made sure everybody knew about it and about his military career because he wrote a book. Every time on all of these campaigns, he wrote books. On the South African campaign, he managed to write two books. This earned him money that he needed, but it also brought him to the attention of the public. Of course, some of those in power, particularly in the military, rather disapproved at his scathing comments about senior officers in the army. But Churchill never bothered. Nothing ever fazed Churchill.
He really did have the gift to walk with kings and to walk with humble people as well. And he was the same man throughout. He never took anyone as being superior to him or lower than him. The only people he could never abide in his life were those who were, you might say, his equals, who wished to show off. He couldn’t abide people like that. People like General Montgomery. But on the other hand, Churchill as a administrator, and particularly as Prime Minister in the Second World War, appointed people he wouldn’t particularly have liked, Montgomery comes to mind, but he knew could do the job he wanted done. That’s real leadership, real character. That’s Churchill.
Now all this military service and all the books he’d written and all the stuff in the newspapers about him, stood him in good stead in the general election of 1900. It was called the Khaki Election because the Conservative government under Lord Salisbury fought the election on the grounds that they were winning, they hadn’t quite won, they were winning the Boer War after early defeat. Much as Mrs. Thatcher won an unexpected election victory after the Falklands War. Well, Churchill stood and gained a seat at Oldham, in Lancashire, on the wash from this campaign in the Boer War, of which he was himself a hero. It couldn’t possibly go wrong.
He had fought in a by-election run in the previous year and it failed. But this time he succeeded, he was duly elected. And in 1901, he made his maiden speech in the House of Commons. And he writes very interestingly of this in his own book, “My Early Life.” And he writes in this particular way, of his maiden speech: The hour arrived. I sat in the corner seat above the gangway, immediately behind the ministers, the same seat from which my father had made his speech of resignation.
On my left, a friendly counsellor sat, the long-experienced parliamentarian, Mr. Thomas Bowles. Towards nine o'clock, this is at night, towards nine o'clock, the House began to fill. Mr. Lloyd George, the Liberal and the radical member and the excitingly intellectual member of the Liberal Party, Churchill is seated, as a Conservative, because his father was a Conservative. Mr. Lloyd George spoke from the third bench below the gangway on the Opposition side, the Conservative Party of Lord Salisbury being the government, surrounded by a handful of Welshmen and Radicals, and backed by the Irish Nationalist Party. He announced forthwith that he did not intend to move his amendment, but would instead speak on the main question.
Encouraged by the cheers of his Celtic fringe, he soon became animated and even violent. I constructed in succession sentence after sentence to hook on with after he should sit down. Each of these poor couplings became in turn obsolete. A sense of alarm, even despair, crept across me. I repressed it with an inward gasp. Then Mr. Bowles whispered “You might say, Winston, instead of making his violent speech without moving his moderate amendment, Mr. Lloyd George had better have moved his moderate amendment without making his violent speech.” Manna in the wilderness was not more welcome! It fell only just in time.
To my surprise I heard my opponent saying that he would curtail his remarks as he was sure the House wished to hear a new member. And with this graceful gesture, he suddenly resumed his seat. And Churchill is up and away as a politician. Now he may have begun his political career with a speech attacking the Liberal, David Lloyd George, but it was the Liberal Lloyd George who was to have an enormous influence on the young Conservative member, Winston Churchill. They soon, despite the gap in age, despite belonging to opposition parties, became friends.
Indeed, you could say I think with justification that Lloyd George was perhaps Churchill’s only contemporary political hero. It’s also true to say that Churchill was never truly happy in any one political party. He was always his own man. And he soon fell out with the Conservative government, and in particular, over their abandonment of free trade in favour of the introduction of tariffs. It’s something that the British government is interested in, this issue now post-Brexit. It was this one issue in May 1904, so that’s three years after entering the Commons, that finally led Churchill to cross the floor of the House and become a Liberal. And he was to remain such until 19, early 1920s.
However, there are some who are sceptical about his movement from the Conservatives, the Liberals saying he only did so because Lloyd George had promised him that if the Liberals won an election, and it was pretty sure they were going to win the next one, if they won the election, Churchill would be given a position in the government. And Churchill wanted power. He saw no purpose in being a backbench member of Parliament. He wanted action to do things. I’m not sure that’s- I mean I think there’s an element of that, certainly. But I also think he was committed to free trade. But more than that also he was considered, he was committed to Lloyd George’s social agenda.
Remember Lloyd George came from a fairly humble background in West Wales, whereas Churchill was the grandson of a Duke. And he, through Lloyd George, became socially aware. And I don’t think there’s any way you can doubt his social awareness that he gained at this time. That is to stay with him all his life. During the war as Prime Minister, he employed William Beveridge to draw up a plan for the reconstruction of Britain socially post-war. And Beveridge did draw up that plan and the plan was implemented, not of course by Churchill, but by the incoming 1945 Labour government under Clement Attlee, and Britain gained a welfare state. But the origins of that are with Churchill and Lloyd George in the years before the First World War.
When Churchill became Prime Minister in peacetime in 1951, he appointed Lloyd George’s son as Home Secretary. And when he was asked by the Minister of Labour in his Conservative government in ‘51, said, “Sir, what is our policy towards the unions?” Churchill replied, “Concede, concede, and concede again.” One can’t imagine Margaret Thatcher or indeed any other Conservative Prime Minister saying something similar. Churchill is his own man. In the general election of 1906, which the Liberals won, of course Churchill was returned as the Liberal member of parliament for Manchester Northwest. Manchester was the city committed above all places in Britain to free trade.
And many of you will have heard of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. And as Lloyd George had promised, he kept his promise and Churchill became for the first time, a government minister. He became Under-Secretary for the Colonies in 1906. He undertook a tour of British West Africa from Mombasa to Alexandria in this role. And he wrote another book, “My African Adventure.” Not a book I would necessarily advise you to read, it’s fairly florid descriptions of African and Africans. His political rise within the Liberal Party where Lloyd George had given him a heave up onto the first rung of the ladder, rose dramatically. In 1908 at the age of 33, he’s appointed to his first Cabinet post as President of the Board of Trade.
Now in those days in Britain, your first appointment to the Cabinet required you to resign your seat and to fight for it in a by-election. Unfortunately, Churchill lost his seat in Manchester. But a month later, the Liberal government found him another seat in Scotland. The sitting MP was given a peerage, pushed up to the House of Lords, and Churchill stood as MP and was a duly elected member of parliament for Dundee. So 1908 saw him become a Cabinet minister for the first time. It also saw him in his private life, married to Clementine Hozier.
Of his defection to the Liberals, his rise in the Liberal government, and his marriage to Clemmie, he wrote in 1933 in his book, “My Early Life,” I think rather mischievously at the end, it’s right at the end of the book, last paragraph, Churchill writes, “Events were soon to arise in the fiscal sphere,” free trade, what made him leave the Conservative Party, “which were to plunge me into new struggles and absorb my thoughts and energies.” And that’s becoming a minister and then subsequently a Cabinet minister. “Plunge me into new struggles and absorb my thoughts and energies at least until September 1908, when I married and lived happily ever afterwards.” And that’s how he ends the book.
You know, if I’m lucky enough to go up and I’m invited to speak to anyone and ask one question, I would like to ask Clemmie, “When you read what Winston wrote at the end of 'My Early Life,’ what was your reaction?” I think it would be very, very interesting to find out. She was so important to him. She is to to become the great anchor in his life, loving and critical. They had a very close loving relationship. But it was one of those marriages in which they also argued a lot. It did not mean they loved each other less, but neither of them were the sort of people that would give in to the other.
I was told a story directly by someone who had worked for them, a lady who worked with him after Churchill was long retired. She worked for him in his house at Chartwell and her husband worked for him in the garden. She worked in the house, he in the garden. And she tells the story that Lady Churchill was so annoyed that moles were upsetting the lawn, digging holes in the lawn. And she asked this lady’s husband, the gardener, “Would you put some poison down?” “Oh I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that, Lady Churchill. Sir Winston wouldn’t like it.”
Churchill always was highly protective of any animals, even insects, anything. “Churchill didn’t like you killing flies in the house,” this lady said. And he certainly wouldn’t have approved of putting poison there. But one day Churchill left very early in the car for London, very early in the morning. And Lady Churchill made straight down to the gardener’s shed and said to the gardener, “Sir Winston isn’t here. You are to poison those moles.”
So he had no choice and he poisoned them. And Winston came back after dark so he never noticed what had happened. In the morning at breakfast, he noticed. And this lady said he did not talk to Clemmie for nearly a week because he was so angry that she had done that. But they nevertheless were a loving couple. And they had a lot of trouble throughout their lives. In their private lives, they’d lost a daughter at the age of two; a daughter called Marigold in 1921. And Churchill never really ever got over the death of his daughter, Marigold.
And then of course Clemmie had to see him through the horror of losing his government position after Gallipoli. She had to see him through those wilderness years between 1929 and 1939 when he didn’t have office. And she had to stand by him and hold him together on occasions during his wartime premiership. She was something different, was Clemmie. I think she’s still unsung. I think she is the hero of the story. I dread to think what would have happened if Churchill had married any other of his earlier girlfriends who were, well, society girls with, frankly, not much between the ears.
Now Clemmie, in a sense, was a society girl as well. But she was bright, clever, and knew her own mind. And she wasn’t going to be simply a doormat for Churchill’s career. I have a huge respect for Clemmie. Do read, if you read nothing else about Churchill, do read the letters between Churchill and Clemmie which their youngest daughter, Mary Soames, published as “Speaking for Themselves.” I’ll put some of these books on a blog tomorrow morning. Before the war came in 1914, Churchill held three major offices of state; President of the Board of Trade, as I’ve mentioned, from 1908 to 1910; Home Secretary, 1910 to 1911; and finally First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 onwards. These years were arguably the busiest and most challenging of his life until 1940.
As President of the Board of Trade, he worked tirelessly alongside Lloyd George, the Chancellor, to improve the lot of ordinary working people. Together they pushed and cajoled the Liberal government to introduce revolutionary social reform. And Mary, Mary Soames, in her book edited of their letters, writes in an editorial piece this, and she writes: Winston and Lloyd George in effect laid the foundation of the modern welfare state. At the Board of Trade, Churchill was fully occupied with legislative measures which touched closely the working lives of millions of men and women. Unemployment had risen. And to grapple with this problem, Churchill, influenced by the work of the socialists, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and taking note also of German models, pioneered the creation of labour exchanges.
He laid the foundations of a scheme for compulsory unemployment insurance and of old age pensions. These were carried forward by Lloyd George’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and became a built-in part of Liberal legislation. Churchill is on the left of the Liberal Party, not on the right. He’s on the Radical left with Lloyd George on the social reforms. And my argument is always, that remained with him. And when Mrs. Thatcher kept talking about “Our Winston,” it used to annoy me so much. He would have been opposed to all her policies at home with unions and so on. It would have appalled, as indeed with the present government’s attitude towards things like immigration. That was not Churchill. Churchill is a one-off.
But to describe him as a typical Conservative Prime Minister, is absolute errant nonsense. He is an imperialist in foreign policy as indeed was on right of the Liberal Party. But in terms of home affairs, he’s decidedly left wing. And I don’t think he ever forgot the lessons that he learned in that pre-war Asquith government from David Lloyd George. However, when he becomes Home Secretary in 1910, 1911, he’s faced with a whole raft of Trade Union disputes and strikes and a growing fear amongst the British establishment. The revolution was just another strike away. They had witnessed the 1905 aborted revolution in Russia, they were scared rigid of revolution.
As earlier generations had been scared in Britain by the French Revolution, they were now scared by Marxist revolution. And there was absolute mayhem in Liverpool and in the South Wales Valleys. And Churchill, as part of the government response, sent troops in. And ever since, the left in Britain has accused Churchill, in the words of Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, of acting diabolically. And Keir Hardie, the early leader of socialism in Britain, in the House of Commons said of Churchill at this time the following, quote: Once more, the Liberals are in office and Asquith is Prime Minister. And troops are let loose upon the people, to shoot down if need be whilst they are fighting for their legitimate rights.
Two people were killed in Liverpool, shot. Two people were shot in Tonypandy in South Wales. And the left have never forgiven Churchill. But Churchill was faced with a huge problem because there was a railway strike. And that meant they couldn’t move police or soldiers around the country. And they were petrified. The Conservative government, in fact, thought Churchill should have acted with more force rather than less. He was posed an appalling situation. He and Lloyd Georgia were of course deeply opposed to this, but they kept the peace and in the end settlements were reached in both Liverpool and South Wales with no more deaths.
And the solution was to order the employers to give in to the demands of the workers. This hardly sounds like a far right attitude by Churchill and Lloyd George. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. And revolution was avoided. The Lord Mayor of Liverpool had even sent a telegram to the Home Office to Churchill after what was called Bloody Sunday in 1911 in Liverpool, “Revolution has broken out in my city.” Imagine being a Home Secretary receiving that telegram from a Lord Mayor, “Revolution has broken out.” Well, revolution did not break out and these same men went gladly to war in 1914. But it’s probably the nearest we’ve come in Britain to a revolution.
Maybe we should be thankful that it was Lloyd George and Churchill and not the Conservative Party of the day or the right wing elements of the Liberal Party that were in charge. But I don’t think it’ll ever disappear, the attack on Churchill. In 1911, Churchill was moved to the Admiralty as First Lord of the Admiralty. This was a key position in 1911 because if war was to come, and Churchill was now of the opinion that war was almost inevitable, having been to military exercises in Germany the previous years, a guest of the Kaiser, he was now considerably worried, as were other people in Britain, that war was around the corner. And the importance of Britain of having a navy of sufficient strength and power to keep control of the North Sea and Channel against a Germany Imperial Navy was absolutely paramount.
Remember, this is the days before aircraft that could have defended Britain. We were defended by the navy. And had the navy been defeated, Germany could have launched an invasion with relative ease. Quite unlike the situation in World War Two. Churchill, having been appointed, and a realist about this, changed his position. Now you may say this shows his shallowness and some have said that. He changed his position from arguing in Cabinet that less money should be spent on the army and navy and more money should be spent on social welfare. Now he changes his position and he wants more money spent on the navy.
I think the two things are reconcilable. He saw his job as doing the post that he was given to the best of his ability. If you move from the Department of Health to the Department of Education, for example, in any country, wherever you’re listening, I can see that any man or woman move from health to education, having argued heavily for more investment in health, being appointed to education, would then argue for more money for education. They’re the political focus of the professionals working in the field. And if they don’t speak up their own professionals, who is going to? And in this case, it isn’t just that Churchill is concerned that the navy should have a fair crack at the whip, it is because he is genuinely fearful that war is coming, and the navy, in his view, is unprepared. So he argued in Cabinet.
Now this gives you the strength of Churchill. He’s a young man, a junior in terms of age, but he persuaded the Liberal Cabinet to back him. And he made then attempts in the three years as it happened, 1911 to 1914, to bring the navy up to strength. His naval reforms. He had new super-dreadnoughts built, the Queen Elizabeth class they were called. They could fire at a range of just under 11 miles. And so they could outgun every lesser ship. And his policy was to build 60% more ships than the Germans. Now although he never achieved that, we still had in 1914, just, in Britain, an advantage in numbers and, in particular, in the super-dreadnought over the German fleet.
Had it not been Churchill appointed, and someone that would not have stood up for the navy, then we might not have been in a position in 1914 to have, not just matched, but superseded the numbers and firepower of the Germany Imperial Navy and we would have faced invasion. He changed from coal to oil. And in doing so, he could keep his ships longer at sea. And he entered into contracts in the Gulf; the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, for instance. He strengthened the North Sea fleet by weakening the Mediterranean fleet. The Germans aren’t going to attack through the Mediterranean. And he told the French, “That’s your responsibility. You must look after the Mediterranean.”
I can’t imagine a British minister today saying that to the French and having a positive response. But in 1911, 1912, Churchill got the positive response. And don’t forget what I said earlier about his social commitment. He managed to get money out of Lloyd George to pay ordinary seamen more; better pay. He also improved the prospects for promotion of ordinary seamen. And he sacked a number of old admirals who he thought were past it and he appointed younger men. Sadly, I think he thought he was appointing a generation of new Nelsons. And he was wrong.
Because these men had all been trained at places like Dartmouth and Osborne in the Victorian navy, which was very stuck up, didn’t expect anyone to use their own initiative. And it was so different from Nelson’s navy as to be unrecognisable in its senior officer core. And I think Churchill never fully understood that. He was, of course, oh what a surprise, criticised for his actions and for his meddling. The old admirals were infuriated at this young man who came in and did all these things. He even went on an eight-month trip on the Royal Navy’s yacht called the Enchantress, eight months on board, going all the way round Britain looking at naval bases, naval training and so on. He was thorough. Extraordinary.
This is Andrew Roberts’ biography of Churchill. And Andrew Roberts writes: To the diehards who complained about Churchill violating naval traditions, Churchill is said to have rejoined, “Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous! Nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.” Well, I think he almost certainly did say that. But then he did have this enormous facility for making serious subjects sometimes very humorous indeed. “Rum, sodomy and the lash,” he said.
Whatever the criticism, the Royal Navy was ready in 1914. And Churchill entered the war, the Liberal Cabinet was split. Some pacifists in the Liberal Cabinet resigned. Churchill was gung-ho, ready for war. But it will be quite wrong to say that he was keen to have a war. When war came, he was keen to fight it, but there’s lots of evidence in things he wrote that he would, like any normal person, like all of us, had preferred peace. But when he realised peace was impossible, then it had to be war. And he didn’t think we could abandon- It’s not about Belgium that we went to war. It is, in the opinion of people like Churchill, that if the Germans had taken the French seaports and the Channel, then we would have been next. And whatever the Germans said about wanting to come to peace with us, they would not have.
And thus it was better to fight in the fields of Flanders than in the fields of Kent. And that argument won the day. Not only in the Cabinet but with the king as well. But this war, which promised so much in terms of Churchill’s own standing and career, was nearly his final undoing. The Gallipoli campaign of 1915, of which he was an enthusiast and a great supporter, ended in humiliating defeat, ended in Churchill’s own resignation in the aftermath of personal criticism. One historian of Churchill has written, “The Dardanelles”- It was, first of all, it was a naval attack on the Dardanelles, south of Constantinople.
The idea was to force the Dardanelles by a joint British and French naval force and seize Constantinople and take Turkey, or Ottoman empire as it then was, out of the war. That didn’t happen. And it changed into a landing at Gallipoli, on the peninsula of Gallipoli opposite Constantinople, which ended in such defeat. And whether Churchill’s idea that it could be forced by the navy alone to surrender, has been put in question. There is little doubt that if the navy had reached Constantinople, the Allies, French and British, could have sent troops there. And it would have led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
I would argue that was perfectly logical. But as this historian has written, “The Dardanelles hovered as a black cloud in Winston Churchill’s sky for the last half century of his life.” So we’ve had two disasters of Churchill. We’ve had the disaster of the attack by the left, by the use of force in Liverpool and South Wales; and now we’ve got the attack of lots and lots of people, then and since, that the failure of the Dardanelles was Churchill’s own failure. There’s never an answer about the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. If you want my point, and I am unreservedly as it were, as someone who would defend Churchill, the admiral in charge of the Anglo-French fleet, Admiral Carden, lost it.
That mean, in common parlance, he went nuts and had to be withdrawn from service. And then Churchill did make a mistake. He appointed Admiral de Robeck, who was the second-in-command, and British, to take charge. Whereas he had a really good senior officer in Robert Keyes in Alexandria who could have got there very easily. But because Keyes was junior, he didn’t get the job. Had Keyes got the job, he was the nearest that Churchill had to Nelson, they might have forced the straits at the Dardanelles; might. As I said earlier, Churchill thought he was commanding Nelsons, and he wasn’t.
It was Churchill who proposed to Ian Hamilton to lead the military expedition at Gallipoli. And Hamilton was a complete disaster and had to be withdrawn in the middle of it. But then the whole thing was ill-planned. When Hamilton was appointed in the War Office in London, he asked for a map and was told there are no maps. So he had to go down to the famous map shop in London, Stanfords, and in Long Acre, and buy himself a copy of a tourist map, a Baedeker map. How ridiculous. And even more ridiculous when you know that the British military attache in Constantinople had done a bicycle tour of Gallipoli before the war and had drawn a map of the area which has subsequently been lost conveniently. And no one has ever seen it from that day to this.
Lord Kitchener, when he personally went to Gallipoli towards the end of the campaign, took one look and said, “Had I realised it was as bad as this, I wouldn’t have sent you.” Well, thanks a lot. Lord Kitchener is just as guilty if not more guilty than Churchill, in my opinion. Not necessarily in yours. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible disaster. So Ian Hamilton himself said on the 25th of April, on the day that the landings took place at Gallipoli: The enemy’s machine guns were too scientifically posted. Generally speaking, the coast is precipitous and good landing places are few. In most of these landing places, the trenches and lines of wire entanglement are plainly visible from onboard ship. No one had looked at the terrain.
Churchill’s younger brother, Jack, was at Gallipoli and said, “Well, I couldn’t see the beach.” He said, “There was no beach, there were just cliffs!” They said the sea was red with the blood of the soldiers who never, ever touched Gallipoli’s shores. Attlee, who is later to be Churchill’s number two during the war and later the Labour Prime Minister in 1945, in his book, “As it Happened,” and Attlee was a major at Gallipoli, he saw it with his own eyes; Attlee wrote: The Gallipoli campaign will always remain a vivid memory. I’ve always held that the strategic conception, that is Churchill’s, was sound.
The trouble was that it was never adequately supported. Unfortunately, the military authorities were Western Front-minded. Reinforcements were always sent too late. For an enterprise such as this, the right leaders were not chosen. Elderly and hidebound generals were not the men to push through an adventure of this kind. Had we had at Sulva generals like Maude, who came out later, we should, I think, have pushed through to victory. So Attlee, who is Churchill’s political opponent, said unequivocally the conception was sound. And Churchill himself later said in the House of Common when it all went pear-shaped, it has been said that it was political decisions that led to the disaster.
And he said, “No, no, no, it isn’t. It’s military decisions.” And anyhow, Kitchener was an active soldier, but also in the Cabinet as Minister of War. If anyone should take- But of course by the end of the war, Kitchener is dead. His ship was blown up on a later occasion. And Churchill became the scapegoat. I don’t suppose any of you have ever served in a Cabinet in the country in which you’re living and being blamed. But if something goes wrong, you can bet your bottom dollar the Prime Minister comes out smelling of roses. Someone has to take the can. And Churchill’s always been outspoken, loud. He’s not everyone’s favourite person. He’s an acquired taste, shall we say. So when it goes wrong, all the fingers point at Churchill.
A final thought. The planning for D-Day was meticulous. Some would say even over-meticulous. It was on an entirely different level than the planning for Gallipoli. Churchill is someone who learnt from his mistakes. You can ask nothing more of anyone in life, whatever their position, to have learnt from mistakes. I said before we began, and I was talking to Wendy, I said, what I find interesting about Churchill, he was like all of us. He made mistakes, he did good things, he did bad things. But he always bounced back. And he was always self-critical. If not in public, in private he was. And if he wasn’t, there was always Clemmie to be critical.
And I’ve always said, I don’t care anything about Churchill before 1940, and I don’t care anything about Churchill after 1945, well actually 1941. Without Churchill in 1940 and ‘41, it’s very dubious if Britain could have succeeded. And had Britain fallen, I think it would have been impossible for the Americans to launch a D-Day across the Atlantic, even if they were of a mind to do so. So for '40, '41, Churchill was not just the voice of Britain. He was the voice of the Free World, of democracy, of civilization itself. And I’ve always said that all his strengths were enhanced in 1940, but all his weaknesses were somehow transformed by, I always say, England’s fairy godmother who scattered stardust on him so that the weaknesses became strengths. So I don’t care and I won’t rise.
If you don’t agree with my assessment of Tonypandy or Gallipoli or any other episode before 1940, I don’t mind. Because what I mind about is that he was there in 1940 when there was quite literally no one else. No one else could have done it. And I don’t care, after 1945, he was slightly gaga in his 1951 administration. I don’t care. I care that Churchill was there in 1940 and '41. I live in Britain. Without Churchill, I might be speaking German and forbidden to give this lecture about Churchill. I’ve got lots and lots of Jewish friends here in Britain. Without Churchill, I would have none of them. That’s why Churchill is so important. But Churchill lost his job in the Admiralty and was given a non-job as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Well he did the only honourable thing, he resigned. He rejoined the army and he headed to the Western Front in November, 1915. He was to stay on the Western Front until May, 1916, when he was anxious to return to parliament. He was still an MP, of course, when he went out.
There are so many lovely stories of Churchill in the front line. This is Martin Gilbert, the doyen of Churchill historians. And he writes this little story which I love: Second Lieutenant Edmund Hakewill Smith was the most junior officer that Churchill had under his command. Recalling the moment when Churchill was announced as their new commander, he spoke to me, that’s Sir Martin Gilbert, of the horror with which the news was met. He also remembered the lunch that Churchill gave to the officers of his headquarters staff on the day of his arrival. Quote: It was quite the most uncomfortable lunch I’ve ever been at. Churchill didn’t say a word. He went right round the table, staring each officer out of countenance. We disliked the idea of Churchill being in command; now having seen him, we disliked the idea even more.
At the end of the lunch, he made a short speech. “Gentlemen, I am now your commanding officer. Those who support me, I will look after. Those who go against me, I will break. Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Everyone was agreed, we were in for a pretty rotten time. And that’s almost the same words as an English writer wrote in 1940 when Churchill became Prime Minister. Everyone was agreed that they were in for a pretty awful time, but were pleased. And so were these officers pleased. Churchill’s only serious disagreements, says Martin Gilbert, was with his officers was over military discipline. He’d been moved by the stories he heard of the sufferings of his battalion at the Battle of Loos six months earlier.
His first question to any troublemaker who came before him on a charge of disciplinary was, “Were you in the battle?” When the man replied, “Yes sir,” the charge against him was dismissed. The officers were at first surprised by this generous act, then horrified. “One of them told me,” says Martin Gilbert, “Everyone then said they had been at Loos.” “Were you at Loos?” “Yes sir,” they answered. He was adored by the troops. And in the end by the officers as well. He had the common touch. He’s Kipling. He’s Kipling’s man, the man that could walk with kings nor lose the common touch. This was Churchill.
He sent huge demands to Paul Kenny back in London of what he needed including footballs for the troops and ham. He asked for ham. And she sent a rather tiny tin ham from Fortnum & Mason shop in London. And he wrote back, “Do you realise I’ve got so many men to serve and you’ve sent this little ham? My god, ridiculous!” And she replied, “Dear Winston, there is a war on in case you’ve forgotten, and that is the only ham I can get. Yours, Clemmie.” And she was wonderful. And he always writes apologetic letters back to her. It’s fantastic, the correspondence between them.
He came back in 1916. In July, 1917, he became Minister of Munitions. In 1918, he became Secretary of State for War and Minister for the Air. And his final Liberal government post was as Colonial Secretary, a full circle. He’d begun as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, now he’s Colonial Secretary in 1921. In 1922, he was defeated in an election at Dundee during which his appendix was removed. And that was a serious operation, of course, in the 1920s. And he himself said this, this is Mary Soames: As 1923 dawned, Winston was, as he wryly wrote in himself much later, quote, and this is Winston, “Without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.” Fantastic.
So that’s my story of Churchill from 1900 to 1922. Robert Rhodes James, a later Conservative member of parliament historian, wrote a book which I’ve been using simply called “Churchill: A Study in Failure.” But its date is 1900 to 1939. Disraeli once said, I began with Disraeli, I will end with Israeli, “There is no education like adversity.” There is no education like adversity. And when Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, he’d had a lot of adversity and he’d risen above it and he’d learned from it. Thank God. I’ll stop there, Judi, if I may. And there’s probably some questions. Let me see if I can bring any up. Shall I do that?
- [Judi] Yes go ahead, William. Thank you.
Q&A and Comments
- I think he was a correspondent, not a soldier when captured. Absolutely right. Except he’d taken command of the train. And so he began as a journalist and was later a soldier when he came back to South Africa. But he was indeed a journalist for the Morning Post. But he’d acted, when the train he was on, an armour train, was attacked, he took control as though he was.
Oh, you’ve got his earliest book. Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.
Q: How did Churchill acquire excellent writing and speaking skills? Was he an avid reader? Was he trained or coached? A: No, he wasn’t trained or coached. His excellent writing came from the fact that he was held back at Harrow School, and wasn’t allowed to do classics. And as a, really as a punishment, had to do English, which he adored. His speaking skills were first developed in the States when he met a rather dodgy senator. Sorry, a dodgy ex-senator who’d been an ex-lover of his mother. His mother had lovers in every continent, it appears. And this man was an excellent speaker and Churchill picked up skills from there. Was he an avid reader? No. Not until he went to the North West Frontier. And he decided he’d better educate himself, and he read. So his writing, speaking and readership skills came, gradually were developed. When he first went to the House of Commons, he was very nervous of speaking because he hadn’t gone to university and most young MPs, particularly in the Conservative Party, had gone to university and he hadn’t. And he felt that he’d missed out on public speaking as a result of that. In one debate when he was a young man, he completely dried up in the middle of his speech. He learns, that’s the point. Churchill learns from his adversity.
Yes, the International Churchill Society. No, I’m not on the board of advisors for the International Churchill Society. I once spoke to them and they are an excellent organisation.
Q: Didn’t he mean East Africa? I did mean East Africa. Did I say West? I seem to be getting my compass wrong. Yes, of course. From Mombasa to Alexandria, absolutely.
Q: Despite the fact that he was his own man and didn’t like others’ authority, wasn’t he quite conservative and Victorian in other respects? For example, his views on tradition with the Queen? A: If you’re referring to the issue of the name of the royal family when Philip made speeches saying he was merely an amoeba, well, yes, you could regard that as conservative or you could regard it as making a very clear view that Philip wasn’t really the best consort for the Queen as his later behaviour showed.
Churchill made numerous statements on race throughout his life. Chelsea thinks we must include his imperials and racist views. He did not treat everyone as equals. Well, that’s the argument of the Woke generation. You have to treat people where they are. What he said, however, about race on many occasions is very interesting. For example, when he was Prime Minister in 1951, he insisted that nobody in the empire commonwealth, regardless of colour, should be denied entry into Britain. Which was opposed by the Labour Party. He also made it quite clear during his visit to Africa that he believed that the British government officers, the district commissioners were excellent but he feared the time when British settlers and British traders would be running the country. Because he felt that they would not be right for the indigenous population. It’s, in my view, too crude to say that he was racist. Of course someone born in 1874 is going to have racist views. You’d hardly expect them to have the Woke views of 2021. And, of course, he was an imperialist. Yes, of course all of that. Does it matter? Well, I’m not sure that it does matter. We’ve got to be careful about this wokeness. We’ve got to be very careful about it. And I’m not convinced, as you can tell. Gosh!
Angela writes: My grandfather had his naturalisation paper signed by Winston Spencer Churchill, then Home Secretary in 1911. How fantastic!
Q: Do I see him as a humanitarian? A: Well, you’d have to define for me what you mean by humanitarian. I’m not sure. I’m not sure in what context. I don’t think I can answer that, I’d have to know what you meant by humanitarian.
Please comment on his alcoholism and constant money problems. His alcoholism has been much overstated, as Sir Martin Gilbert said. Throughout the war, yes, of course he had a glass of whiskey, but he poured water into it throughout the day. In terms of heavy drinking. Yes, he’s the only man we know that managed to drink Stalin under the table with vodka at a meeting during the war. Yes, he did. But then, again, that is something that’s very 19th century. My great-grandfather drank enormous quantities of gin, for example. It was a different world. Was he ever drunk when doing things? No, I don’t think he was. Yes, he did have constant money problems and not least because he gambled. Which really got up Clemmie’s nose. Yes, he did have problems.
Oh, well done. Who’s that? Lawrence. Lawrence, well done. Clarissa Eden, niece of Winston Churchill, turns 101 today. She’s the oldest living Prime Minister’s wife.
You were surely wrong to describe Churchill as left wing. He would turn in his grave if he’s thought of as being identified as a socialist. No, he was not a socialist. Yes, he would. There is a lot of difference between left wing and socialist. In his support of Lloyd George, he was on the Radical left of the Liberal Party, no question. But left wing and Radical in pre-1914 did not equate with socialism. The two things are quite different, Stephen.
I’m getting very excited. I think I better have a drink of water and calm down. Hang on, I’ve lost his question. It was something… I think Churchill was a leftist right for his time. The working class needed protecting from the excesses but like the unions, his policies have outlived their usefulness, as I said. Well, that’s true. You can only do- You can only solve the problems of the day when you’re in power. You can’t solve the problem for a hundred years in advance. And that’s absolutely true.
Yes, I mentioned- That’s the book somebody’s put, “Clementine” by Sonia Purcell. Yes, that’s the book I’ve been mentioning. Sonia Purnell actually. P-U-R-N-E-L-L. It’s this book. I’ll put it on my blog tomorrow. It is. You are absolutely right, Monica. It’s a good book.
Oh, heh look at all these little tropes appearing. One said, of the Home Department, he was impressed by theory of eugenics, and so was everybody else, and was interested in the possibility of sterilising the unfit.
Q: Was there any chance for that view prevailing? A: Absolutely no.
Q: Was there opposition? A: Yes. But it was a view that was held. And some of you may remember health and beauty clubs. When I first was in adult education, I employed a lady who’s still teaching in the 1970s, health and beauty. The health and beauty in Britain was quite all right and proper. In Nazi Germany, it was quite improper and certainly not right. And eugenics was an idea that died. Died because of Nazi Germany. But it was an idea for a moment that had some traction. In the end, Frumkin argues, that it was the leading admiral who flubbed the Dardanelles campaign. I agree with Frumkin.
That was Admiral Carden who went nuts. I shouldn’t really say that in a PC world. I mean he had a breakdown.
No, I refuse to talk about Boris Johnson and Churchill together. Boris Johnson is not a Conservative, he’s not a Liberal. He is a populist with very few and with a private life of immorality, and an immorality that’s gone into the public sphere. I’m desperately- Somebody accused me on this a few weeks ago of being a corbynite. I’m not. I’m right, I’m right of centre. But that means I’m opposed to Johnson who I see as populist and therefore dangerous. That’s another argument for another time.
Q: Oh, would you like to comment on the use of troops in the siege of Sidney Street? A: Sidney Street’s siege was a siege in the East End of London where two revolutionaries from Russia were hold up. And they- Again, it was in this atmosphere of revolution coming to Britain. The troops were not called up by Churchill. They were called up in support of the police because at that time the police were unarmed and couldn’t arm themselves. Churchill, when he heard about it, took a gun, a revolver, which he kept in his desk drawer, and went out himself to see. And unfortunately was captured on Pathe newsreel there and was heavily criticised. He later admitted it was wrong and that he shouldn’t have gone. But it was not Churchill that called the army out, it was the police. Oh we had ministers of war even outside of wartime. And in 1918 we were still at war because we were at war with the Red Army in Russia with the international group.
Oh, some people have been very nice. Thanks very much. It’s always encouraging if at least one person enjoyed it.
I went to a high school Rhodesia called Churchill. Our headmaster was an Afrikana who adored Churchill, as I did. How interesting that the head was an Afrikana.
No, I didn’t talk. I’m sorry. No, you’re absolutely right. Let me just make that point. You did not mention his actions as Colonial Secretary. No I didn’t, simply because I didn’t have time. And I will, I promise, I’ll start with that next time. Because in 1921, Churchill as Colonial Secretary was involved in the settlement of the Ottoman Imperial Middle East. And it was a settlement which has led to all the difficulties since. That’s absolutely right and that’s a terrible story. And I was going to start next week, whenever the next talk is, with that. I simply didn’t have time. I thought if I do that, I’m going to skew the talk I’m doing today. But thank you very much, whoever it was. Sheila, I promise I will do that. Oh well, that’s best. Were the black-
Q: Were the black dogs an impediment to his leadership functions? And when was the worst period for him? To what extent was Clemmie helpful in overcoming the depression or did he handle it primarily on his own? A: There’s a lot of problems about black dog. First of all, he could sulk as a child. And his nanny used the phrase black dog, which was a common English phrase at the time. Snap out your black dog! It is true that at times he got depressed and low. I don’t think he was ever, to be honest, clinically depressed. And yes, Clemmie did shuffle him out in it. Perhaps one of the worst occasions was when he lost the general election in 1945. He was very, very low at that point. And Clemmie bucked him up. Absolutely true. I think- I don’t think it affected him.
Q: Did it affect his judgement ? A: No, it never did. I can be confident and say that.
Q: How old was Marigold when she died? A: She was only two, just coming up to three. She died of septicemia of the throat. It was a horrible, horrible thing. He never recovered from it.
Oh thanks. That’s right. I understand that originally said he would not release Churchill as he had been a convert, which is absolutely true. And then changed his mind by which time Churchill had escaped. Yes, and, you’re absolutely right. By escaping, it made his name.
Oh, that’s an in- Somebody’s just put, I guess he’s South African- Alan, what a lovely comment. During the Battle of Spion Kop in the Natal Midlands, Churchill, Louis Botha and Gandhi were in the same hilltop on a single day. Can you imagine if a stray bomb had hit one of them? How history would have changed? Oh, I think you’ve got, um, sorry Alan, I think you’ve got a book there.
Q: Why wouldn’t Churchill have warned against landing on Omaha Beach after Gallipoli? A: Because in war, you have to make, nothing is ever perfect and you have to do the best you can. And that’s what they thought was the best they could make. And it isn’t Churchill’s decision alone. What’s wrong about Gallipoli is every bit was wrong. This was, in terms of Normandy, they had looked very carefully at all the beaches, and this was the best they could find. There was nothing better that they could have done.
Yes, was it not incredible he became one of the greatest political orators despite a speech impediment? Yes, and he could have been cured and didn’t. And it was part of his appeal. Where am I? I’m, whoops!
Robert, I’m from South Africa. As a child, I lived in Pretoria in a road called Skeen Street. I hope I pronounce that correctly. On the corner, a few hundred yards away, was Clapham High School, where Churchill had been held a prisoner of war. It was from this school that he escaped during the Boer War. My parents didn’t appreciate that we were so close to history. How fantastic! And as a high school boy, I spent time in a Boer fort close to where a friend lived on a leper colony. His father was a doctor. Crikey, what an interesting comment.
No, according to generation woke, Churchill’s response were Indian inflammatory in 1943. No, that’s a very simplistic statement, which isn’t particularly true. No, I can’t comment on Churchill in- Oh, when Churchill in India in the North West Frontier? No, I think you probably mean Churchill when he was very anti-Gandhi. Another negative of Churchill which we’ll come to next time.
William?
Yes?
William.
Yes, yes, yes?
Hi. It’s me, I’m back.
I better stop.
I just want to say thank you very much for a fabulous presentation. It was great. And we are looking to hearing more about Churchill. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. We actually have another presentation coming up, so I just want to, I just want to give Judi a break, you know. So, it’s always wonderful to have you with us and thank you for taking time to go, to answer all these amazing questions.
My pleasure. It’s really nice to have you all.
Thank you. Thank you.
Remember, you don’t have to agree with what I say. Go and read for yourselves and come to your own conclusions. You’re all big boys and big girls and you can do that for yourselves.
Well, that’s the beauty of this the platform. We don’t have to agree. And shouldn’t!
We don’t. We don’t.
And shouldn’t.
And we shouldn’t. No, we shouldn’t.
No. _ We are all democrats and we’ve got to make our own minds- Uh democrat, I don’t mean in an American sense. In a small d.
Exactly. We should all make our own minds up about all of these things. And all I’m trying to do is to introduce you to a person that I find endlessly fascinating. Endlessly fascinating.
I agree, and certainly did learn from adversity, as you said. Oh my goodness. So, on that note, I just wanted to remind everybody that Judy Batalion is going to be talking about “The Light of Days,” women fighters of the resistance, in 15 minutes for those of you who want to join us. And for those of you who don’t, enjoy the rest of your day, afternoon and evening. And William, I hope that you can go swimming tomorrow again. I hope it’s another beautiful day in England.
Thank you. Thank you.
And thank you for a fantastic presentation.