Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (25 page)

The rejection of the Borden plan increased the pressure on Churchill at a time when he was casting around for ways to alleviate Britain’s financial burden. At the very end of 1913 Borden informed him that he would not try again to push the proposals through the Senate, claiming that ‘Imperial interests will be materially prejudiced by renewed rejection’.
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This came at a bad moment for Churchill, who was by now battling with Lloyd George over his large-scale spending plans for 1914. The Chancellor’s demands for economy were backed by a number of other ministers as well as by the Liberal press. C. P. Scott, editor of the
Manchester Guardian
, was one who believed that the ‘great change for the better in our relations with Germany’ had rendered the expenditure unnecessary.
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For a time, it looked as though either Churchill or Lloyd George might have to resign, but in the end the former got the bulk of what he wanted in return for some symbolic concessions. Churchill emerged from the fight politically strengthened, and it might have been thought, given his known enthusiasm for all things military, that the outbreak of war in August would have bolstered his position further. Yet in fact his career was to plunge into free fall within the space of months.

II

The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 triggered an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary to Serbia that soon resulted in world war. From his position at the Admiralty, Churchill, enthusiastic for the conflict, seemed poised to profit from it politically by enhancing his reputation as a man of action. This was not to be: the implosion of his political hopes was forever to be associated with the fiasco of Gallipoli.

The origins of the disaster were complex. On the Western Front, the rival armies quickly fought each other to a stalemate. By the start of 1915, British politicians and officials, Churchill included, had begun to look for ways to break the deadlock. The plan that emerged was for an attempt to drive a naval force through the Dardanelles – the narrow stretch of water that separates Asia from Europe – and thus, it was hoped, knock Turkey out of the war. It was not originally Churchill’s idea, nor, by any means, did he bear sole responsibility for the decision to put it into action. But he could not, in the end, evade the blame. In spite of his misgivings about the idea of a purely naval assault – and the initial failure to deploy the army on land in support was indeed a catastrophic error – he gave it the go-ahead. In March the naval action met severe setbacks and was suspended; it was decided, after all, to deploy troops on the Gallipoli peninsula (on the eastern side of the straits). They were to be commanded by Ian Hamilton, still in fine form at the age of sixty-two, but perhaps overconfident in the face of tough odds. When the landings did at last take place, on 25 April, they were botched. The French and British forces failed to displace the outnumbered Turks, and by the end of the first day they had barely established themselves on the fringes of the peninsula. Nor was there any major breakthrough over the next weeks, although Churchill heaped praise on ‘the brilliant and memorable achievement of the Australian and New Zealand troops at the Dardanelles’.
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The soldiers of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps – the ANZACs – were brave but poorly trained. Throughout the course of the campaign, the combined British forces suffered 36,000 dead or missing and the French around 11,000.
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Although it is the appalling ANZAC losses that dominate the popular memory, the sufferings of the rest, including Indian and Gurkha troops and men from the French Empire, should not be forgotten either.

The failure at Gallipoli – which was not yet apparent to the public – was not the immediate cause of Churchill’s downfall. In mid-May, Admiral Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord, suddenly resigned after falling out with Churchill over the question of naval reinforcements for the Dardanelles. It was the aged and highly eccentric Fisher who was unreasonable, but the crisis destroyed confidence in Churchill’s administration of the Admiralty. Indeed, Churchill himself had insisted on recalling Fisher from retirement in 1914. Asquith was simultaneously faced with press revelations about the shortage of shells faced by the army on the Western Front. The combination of pressures forced him to act to defuse Opposition criticism by forming a coalition government. For the Conservatives, an essential condition of joining was that Churchill be moved. When Asquith made clear to Churchill that he was to leave the Admiralty, he asked if he would prefer to stay in the government in a different post or to take a military command in France. At this point, Lloyd George came into the room and said, ‘Why do you not send him to the Colonial Office? There is great work to be done there.’ Churchill demurred, and we may deduce that he saw the job, in wartime, as a political backwater, and that he thought he could hold out for something better.
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Within days, though, he was reduced to pleading with the Prime Minister for ‘any office – the lowest if you like – that you care to offer me’.
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In the end he was given a junior Cabinet role as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a position lacking defined departmental responsibilities. He vented his anger by denouncing Lloyd George, whom he felt had not done enough to protect his position, but the latter denied this. He swore that he had ‘done all he possibly could – has proposed & supported Winston for Colonies, India [Office], & Viceroyalty of India all in turn and has loyally stood by him’.
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In terms of perceptions of Churchill at this time, it is telling that, even some years after he had moved on from the Colonial Office, Lloyd George’s proposed roles for him were all related to the Empire. Churchill’s own failure to show any interest in these suggestions may indicate that he was reluctant to be pigeonholed in this way.

Yet even if so, his public rhetoric retained a strong imperial dimension. In a major speech in his Dundee constituency in June he said that the Allies were only a few miles from victory at the Dardanelles, ‘a victory such as the war had not yet seen’. He spoke boldly and optimistically of the Empire’s role in the war:

The loyalty of our Dominions and Colonies vindicates our civilization, and the hate of our enemies proves the effectiveness of our warfare. (Cheers.) [. . .] See Australia and New Zealand smiting down in the last and finest crusade the combined barbarism of Prussia and Turkey. (Cheers.) General Louis Botha holding South Africa for the King. (Cheers.) See Canada defending to the death the last few miles of shattered Belgium. Look further, and, across the smoke and carnage of the immense battlefield, look forward to the vision of a united British Empire on the calm background of a liberated Europe.
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If the speech was read by any of the soldiers at Gallipoli it may have rung rather hollow. The journalist H. W. Nevinson, who arrived there in July, found ‘depression and loss of heart, bitter criticism of G.H.Q. [General Headquarters], and savage rage against Mr Winston Churchill, who “ought to be publicly hanged” for having suggested the campaign’.
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In private, Churchill admitted some culpability. When Wilfrid Scawen Blunt visited him in August he found him painting – a new hobby which helped alleviate his gloom. ‘There is more blood than paint upon these hands’, Churchill said, at the same time making ‘a queer little tragic gesture pointing to his hands which he had smeared with his colours’.
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Two years later Blunt recorded that ‘Winston said I had been right when I told him Providence had punished him for his wickedness and performed a miracle by enabling the Turks to defeat the whole power of the British Empire by sea and land.’
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In the autumn of 1915 the true state of affairs at Gallipoli started to filter back to the British and Empire publics. In September the London representative of the Sydney
Sun
wrote that Churchill, in his predictions of victory, had been ‘talking hot air. The ferment of his own imagination betrayed him into gross and inexcusable exaggeration.’
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In October, as the extent of the failure became clear, Hamilton was recalled from his command; he never again saw active service, although he lived on until 1947. In November Churchill discovered that he himself was to be excluded from the government’s new War Committee. As he would now have no part to play in the higher direction of the war, he determined to resign. Amongst the gleeful comments in the German press was the suggestion that the King reward his services by making him Earl of Gallipoli.
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A few days after his resignation statement the Cabinet decided to withdraw British forces there. There was a final irony: after all the disasters, the evacuation, completed in January 1916, was carried out brilliantly.

What was Churchill to do next? At first he sought the command of the British forces battling the Germans in East Africa.
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When this idea came to nothing he joined the army in France, crossing the Channel on 18 November. He soon acclimatized himself to trench warfare, showing himself ‘very keen and very enthusiastic’ in spite of the cold, the dirt, the discomfort, and the unpalatable rations.
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Soon he was appointed to the command of a battalion which in January 1916 took up position at Ploegsteert (‘Plug Street’), in Belgium. He acquitted himself well, winning the respect of his men, but he was soon hankering to return to politics. After he visited London briefly on leave, Lloyd George noted: ‘He is anxious to come back. Sick of the trenches. He ought never to have gone there.’
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Churchill hoped that the Cabinet’s divisions over conscription would facilitate his emergence as a leading critic of the government, but Asquith, as so often, avoided a major split through adroit manoeuvring. Although the opportunity Churchill hoped for did not arise, he decided to go back to Westminster anyhow, leaving his battalion for the last time in May.

Asquith, in spite of his short-term astuteness in political tactics, was facing growing concern about deficiencies in the conduct of the war. At the end of 1916 the long-suppressed tensions erupted into a first-rate crisis. This resulted in Lloyd George’s emergence as Prime Minister of a new coalition, at the cost of a fatal schism in the Liberal Party between his followers and Asquith’s. Churchill had hoped, even expected, to be in the new government; but his hopes were dashed owing to Tory opposition. Over the next months right-wing hostility to Churchill did not die away – the
Sunday Times
declared that his appointment to the Cabinet would be ‘a grave danger to the Administration and to the Empire as a whole’ – but Lloyd George’s political strength was growing.
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In March 1917 J. C. Smuts arrived in Britain to represent South Africa at the Imperial War Conference, having previously held the command in East Africa that had been denied to Churchill. Smuts’s transition from Boer rebel to British imperial statesman was now complete. He became such a trusted adviser to the government that, in June, he was elevated to the Imperial War Cabinet. Shortly before that he wrote to Lloyd George advising him to ignore the (highly vocal) critics and give Churchill a job as head of the Air Board: ‘In spite of the strong party opposition to this appointment, I think you will do the country a real service by appointing a man of his calibre to this department’. Smuts – who had clearly overcome the scepticism he had himself felt in 1906 – also met with Churchill and urged him to accept the post if it was offered to him.
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In July, Lloyd George did give Churchill a job, as Minister of Munitions, albeit without a seat in the War Cabinet. There were howls of Tory protest, but they died down without causing much damage. Smuts wrote to Churchill with some wise, tactfully phrased advice about the importance of not making enemies amongst his colleagues: ‘Now that you are well in the saddle [. . .] you must not ride too far ahead of your more slow-going friends.’
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Churchill’s aunt, Lady Cornelia Wimborne, was rather more direct: ‘My advice is stick to munitions & don’t try and run the Govt!’
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Although Churchill was never exactly an easy colleague, it must be said that he largely took the point on board. When introduced to his new officials by his predecessor, Christopher Addison, he tackled their suspicions of him head on. He stood for a moment surveying their distrustful faces. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Dr Addison has said that whatever the Minister of Munitions may do he can never be popular. In that respect at least I start from scratch.’
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This unexpected self-deprecation quickly won the civil servants over, and during the next year and a half he built on this, proving himself an effective minister. Because he was focused on the technical task of turning out supplies of weapons and ammunition, he had little opportunity to influence grand questions of national or imperial policy. His public speeches did, however, give him the opportunity to discourse on the issue of Britain’s future place in a world that had been thrown into upheaval by catastrophic war. The entry of the United States into the conflict in 1917 was a factor likely to have profound consequences for the British Empire. Before the war, in the kind of language that others had also used, Churchill had predicted the future ‘unity of the English-speaking races’.
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Now he stressed that the longer that Britain and America fought together in a common cause, the more closely would ‘these two branches of the Anglo-Saxon world’ be drawn together; this, he claimed, was the logical climax of all previous English history. The resulting ‘comradeship and reconciliation’ of the USA with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand was to form ‘the mainstay of the future world when the war is over’.
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This can be read both as an attempt to reconcile his audience to the realities of growing US power and as an implicit acknowledgement that the British Empire could not long survive in the absence of America’s blessing. In the years ahead – especially from the 1930s onwards – he often deployed the concept of ‘the unity of the English-speaking peoples’, to American audiences as well as British ones, in the hope of securing that survival by winning them over to this ambitious geopolitical project.