The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (130 page)

H
is political resurrection was to be delayed again and again. But Margot had been right: this was a good time to be publicly invisible. Two years later he would write in the
Weekly Dispatch
that when the coalition government was dismembered “it was already perfectly clear to many of us that a period of political chaos would ensue. To the best of my ability, I warned the public of what was in store. But nobody would listen. Everyone was delighted to get back to party politics. Dear to the hearts of all the small politicians were the party flags, the party platforms, the party catchwords. How gleefully they clapped their hands and sang aloud for joy that the good pre-war days of faction had returned!” He was glad to be out of it. In February 1923 he wrote: “The weather here has been indifferent, but I am getting much better in myself.” His friends in the House missed him. One advised him the following month: “Don’t lie low too long. Things are in the ‘melting pot.’ L.G. is playing what
looks
like a good game but it isn’t. Nobody trusts him…. There can only be
two
parties. That is the line of country to ride. There are hundreds of thousands who won’t vote at all at present. They have
no
party. But they are anti-labour…. The passivity of the present Govt is beyond belief. They
settle
nothing.”
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Bonar Law, who had waited so long for power, was proving inept at No. 10. He had become prime minister, Philip Guedalla wrote caustically, “for the simple and satisfying reason that he was not Mr. Lloyd George. At an open competition in the somewhat negative exercise of not being Lloyd George that was held in November 1922, Mr. Law was found to be more indubitably not Mr. Lloyd George than any of the other competitors; and in consequence, by the mysterious operation of the British Constitution, he reigned in his stead.” Ill, he resigned after less than six months in office. After the fall of Austen Chamberlain, Curzon had been the favorite to succeed Law, but Baldwin, who was emerging as a master of intrigue, outmaneuvered Curzon’s supporters and moved into Downing Street in May 1923. The country’s chief domestic problem was a million jobless Englishmen. The solution, Baldwin believed, was Joe Chamberlain’s old nostrum—high tariffs. Law, however, had campaigned against them; his pledge could not be dishonored. Therefore Baldwin dissolved Parliament and went to the country again in November. Free Trade was the one issue which could reconcile the two wings of the Liberal party. It also brought Churchill back into public life.
The Times
had observed that he “has latterly become more conservative, less from conviction than from a hardening of his political arteries. His early Liberal velleities have dried up, the generous impulses of youth throb more slowly, and apart from some intellectual gristle his only connections with Liberalism are personal.” That was close to the mark, but for Churchill a call for Free Trade was a summons to the colors, to the blazing idealism of his early years in the House. In a statement to the press he called it “vital to the British people and indispensable to the recovery of their prosperity.” The future of a reunited party, he said, would know “no limits.” On November 19 he accepted an invitation from the West Leicester Liberal Association to run as their candidate. The National Liberal Club removed his portrait from its cellar, dusted it off, and restored it to its place of prominence upstairs.
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West Leicester, east of Birmingham, was known for its manufacture of hosiery, boots, and shoes, and his Labour opponent, F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, was formidable. Pethick-Lawrence had proposed a “Capital Levy,” a surtax on all Britons worth more than £5,000. Workmen thought it an excellent idea. Clementine was anxious; Winston had been offered several safe seats and—unwisely, she thought—had turned them down. Equally unwise, in her opinion, was any affiliation with Lloyd George. Churchill had accepted an invitation to dine with George at Beaverbrook’s home. On the morning of the dinner she left a note on his dresser: “I want to appeal to you again before you go to Max’s this evening. Ll. G. is not in the same position as you—He is in not out & he shares or practically shares the throne with Asquith.” Word might get around, she wrote, that Winston was working toward a new coalition. She also wished he weren’t running against a Labour aspirant. It would be much better, in her view, “to be beaten by a Tory (which would rouse Liberal sympathy) than by a Socialist. My Darling it is important—I shall say
nothing
if you go, but consider the imprudence of losing the offer of a good Wee Free Seat (as opposed to extinct Nat[ional] Liberal) for the sake of a pleasant evening.” He went. Also, to his subsequent sorrow, he lunched with Beaverbrook at London’s Embassy Club, where he wagered that Labour would not reach power within a year and that Asquith would move back into No. 10. The club menu survives, with their handwriting: “I bet £5 against Winston’s £4 that Labour forms a government in 1924. M.B.” and “I bet £15 against Winston’s £5 that Asquith is
NOT
P.M. in 1924. W. Churchill. M.B.”
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In West Leicester, Churchill again faced a hostile press and wild, disorderly meetings. At one of them, the
Leicester Mail
reported, Winston and Clementine were “greeted by groans and hoots, not a single cheer being heard in the building.” A gang of hecklers accompanied him wherever he went; he christened them the “Socialist travelling circus.” One of Churchill’s recent acquaintances, young, redheaded Brendan Bracken, scouted halls in advance and told him what to expect. The expectations were almost always the same—more trouble. Cecil Roberts, the prolific writer, afterward remembered how “hatred of him [Churchill] was aflame. No insults were too gross to hurl at him. One, of course, the Dardanelles fiasco, regarded as his particular crime, was always brought up.” Toward the end of a frustrating evening he shouted back: “What do you know about that? The Dardanelles might have saved millions of lives. Don’t imagine I am running away from the Dardanelles. I glory in it.” Douglas Jerrold, the official historian of the Royal Naval Division, arrived in Leicester on his own initiative to confirm him. Jerrold told a mocking mob: “I venture to say that had the campaign been prosecuted as it should have been, with enthusiasm, courage, and energy, in the same spirit in which it was begun by Mr Churchill, the war would have ended in 1917.” Few listened; fewer believed him. It seemed Winston would wear that albatross around his neck for the rest of his life. An American publicist wrote that it was “doubtful if even Great Britain could survive another world war and another Churchill,” and an English critic declared: “The ghosts of the Gallipoli dead will always rise up to damn him anew in time of national emergency. Neither official historians, nor military hack writers, will explain away or wipe out the memories of the Dardanelles.”
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New bullyraggers appeared when he spoke in London. As he left one rally, a newspaperman reported, a “vast crowd closed round the car hooting and jeering. Despite the vigilance of the police, one man broke through and smashed one of the windows of Mr Churchill’s car. The police took him into custody. When this fact became known more booing ensued, and many people spat upon the car as it drove away.” At another meeting, in Walthamstow, “What about the Dardanelles?” was joined by “What about Antwerp?” A youth eluded mounted police and threw a brick at Winston. Others stood shaking their fists in impotent rage. Winston told an
Evening News
reporter that the Walthamstow mob was “the worst crowd I have ever seen in twenty-five years of public life. They were more like Russian wolves than British workmen—howling, foaming and spitting, and generally behaving in a way absolutely foreign to the British working classes.” Meanwhile, Clementine, keeping the flame alight in West Leicester, answered a pest who shouted that her husband was unqualified to represent workmen. Except for Lloyd George, she said, Churchill had done more “for the benefit of the working classes than any other statesman,” and she cited his Shop Hours Act, Coal Mines Regulation Act, Unemployment Insurance Act, and Sweated Industries Act. She added for good measure: “A great many people think he is essentially a military man, but I know him very well, and I know he is not like that at all. In fact one of his greatest talents is the talent of peacemaking.”
¹³⁸

In his final Leicester speech he damned tariffs and the capital levy. Churchill, never comfortable on the defensive, kept trying to make the issue, not himself, but Tory protectionism and Baldwin’s claim that he had called this election to avoid breaking Bonar Law’s election promise. Winston cried: “Who is Mr Baldwin to acclaim himself such a singularly honest man? He is a man whom we only know in the last few months through the eulogies of the newspapers. He has no achievements to his record. He is an unknown man.” Unfortunately Labour, too, was against tariffs. And Labour now had a firm grip on this constituency. Pethick-Lawrence trounced Churchill, 13,634 to 9,236; the Tory, running third, polled 7,696. In Parliament the balance had shifted once more; Baldwin’s Conservative strength had been reduced by 87 seats. The Tories now held 258, as against Labour’s 191 and the Liberals’ 158. Lloyd George deferred to Asquith, who declared that under no circumstances would he unite with the Tories to exclude Ramsay MacDonald, Labour’s leader, from office. Alarmed, Churchill wrote Violet Asquith that her father’s position meant that there was “no possibility of averting the great misfortune of a Socialist Government being formed.” On January 17, 1924, he issued a statement predicting that “strife and tumults, deepening and darkening, will be the only consequence of minority Socialist rule.”
¹³⁹
That was hardly fair, since Labour’s chief objective at the time, the defense of Free Trade, was also his. His warning was unheeded anyhow; four days later, when Baldwin lost a motion of confidence, Asquith threw his support to MacDonald, who thereby rode off to the palace to become Labour’s first prime minister. Beaverbrook had been right. The alliance was too unstable to last, but Winston felt betrayed by his party. Resuming his rightward march, he resigned from it, and the National Liberal Club put his portrait back in its basement.

Less than five weeks after MacDonald moved into No. 10, Churchill dined with Beaverbrook and Rothermere, Britain’s two greatest press lords. They offered him, as he wrote Clementine the following day, their “full support” should he contest an imminent by-election in the Abbey division of Westminster. Westminster, the Conservatives’ choicest preserve, included the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the homes of at least a hundred MPs, the greatest concentration of celebrities in England, and, as he reminded her, Pall Mall, the Victoria Palace, “Drury Lane theatre & Covent Garden!” There was a distinct possibility that the Conservative Association might endorse him. His wife, again wary, wrote back: “Do not… let the Tories get you too cheap. They have treated you so badly in the past & they ought to be made to pay.” It seemed unlikely. After his Leicester defeat Austen Chamberlain had written him: “I am very sorry you are still out of Parl,” but welcoming him back into the Conservative party was another matter; according to Beaverbrook, Austen was now “very frigid and said he would not support Churchill for Westminster until he repented in sackcloth and ashes for his Liberal past, and joined the Tories openly as a penitent convert.” That, of course, was even unlikelier. In the end the association backed Captain Otho Nicholson, a nephew of the previous member. The
Evening Standard
found strong sentiment in the district for Winston to run as an independent, however, and on March 4 he announced that he would do just that, though he expanded his label to “independent Anti-Socialist.” Significantly, he declared: “My candidature is in no way hostile to the Conservative Party and its leaders. On the contrary, I recognize that the party must now become the main rallying ground for opponents of the Socialist Party.” Sir Philip Sassoon wrote him: “I am so glad you are standing. You are
BOUND
to get in.” Others were less pleased. Leo Amery declared: “The menace of Socialism is not to be fought by negatives, however brilliantly phrased.” And Labour could not be counted out, even here. Its candidate charged that as war minister “Mr Churchill did all he could to maintain militarism in Europe and to march armies against Russia. He wasted £100,000,000 of the taxpayers’ money of this country—money sorely needed to deal with unemployment, housing etc—in mad, stupid, wicked and suicidal adventures.”
¹⁴⁰

A wealthy friend, James Rankin, converted his London home into Churchill’s headquarters, and presently eminent canvassers were seen hurrying in and out: Sir Philip, Lord Darling, Sir Eric Geddes, Lord Rothermere’s sole surviving son—the other two had been killed in France—and Winston’s cousin the duke. Sunny went into Westminster’s shabbier neighborhoods, unselfconsciously tapping on dilapidated doors with his gold-headed stick. Bracken solicited support in nightclubs and brokers’ offices, and even recruited campaigners among the girls at the Gaiety. Presently, as Churchill recalled afterward, “I began to receive all kinds of support. Dukes, jockeys, prize-fighters, courtiers, actors and businessmen, all developed a keen partisanship. The chorus girls of Daly’s Theatre sat up all night addressing the envelopes and despatching the election address.” Arthur Balfour told Baldwin (who remained sphinxlike throughout the campaign) that he thought Amery’s intervention had been unsportsmanlike. Balfour himself was seriously considering an endorsement of Churchill. H. A. Gwynne of the
Morning Post,
still Winston’s sworn enemy, heard of this and rushed to Baldwin, urging him to forbid support of Churchill by ex-ministers—to be “strong and ruthless, if necessary.” That enraged Balfour, who promptly wrote Winston an open letter expressing his “strong desire” to see him win and use his “brilliant gifts” in Parliament. “Your absence from the House of Commons,” he concluded, “is greatly to be deplored.” Two dozen other Tories then declared for Winston. Inevitably, all this drew fire from the socialists, with the odd result that the Tory favorite in a Tory district was largely ignored. Fenner Brockway, the Labour aspirant, concentrated all his fire on Churchill, who, he said, had “previously charged Labour with setting class against class. It is he who is now the chief exponent of a class war. He raised the bogy of Socialism, and seeks to combine all the selfish and vested interests who fear the onward march of Labour…. Of all the politicians Mr Churchill has shown himself most unfit for the responsibility of government. His forte is to be a disturber of the peace, whether at home or abroad. He is a political adventurer, with a genius for acts of mischievous irresponsibility. He is militant to his finger-tips…. Mr Churchill’s record shows him to be a public danger and a menace to the peace of the world.” But as a polemicist Brockway was no match for Winston, who scorned Ramsay MacDonald’s indifference toward the Dominions, particularly his proposal to abandon Singapore, which Australia and New Zealand regarded as essential to their defense, while dealing generously with the Russians. Churchill cried: “Our bread for the Bolshevik serpent; our aid for foreigners of every country; our favours for Socialists all over the world who have no country; but for our own daughter States across the oceans, on whom the future of the British island and nation depends, only the cold stones of indifference, aversion, and neglect. That is the policy with which the Socialist Government confronts us, and against that policy we will strive to marshal the unconquerable might of Britain.”
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