The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (69 page)

Manchester voted on January 13; the results were announced two days later. All nine Liberals had won. Balfour was among the losers. Winston, whose margin of victory was over 1,200 votes, took Hands to supper at the hotel. The reporter called it “a grand slam in doubled no trumps.”
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Churchill agreed. Bridge was never his game, but this time he was on the money; he sensed the mood of the entire country. When the last votes were counted it was clear that the Liberals had won a historic landslide. They had swept 377 seats; of the Tories, who had gone into the fight 400 strong, only 157 survived. In addition, there were 83 Irish Nationalists, and—portentous, though few noted their significance—53 Labour members. Campbell-Bannerman and his men could alter the face of England. Churchill confronted a personal challenge. He had been a formidable critic; now, holding office in a secure government, he must be constructive. But political tempers are slow to change. Men long in opposition cannot easily break habits of cavil, particularly when they have mastered the art, nor are they adept at the compromises and jugglery which are the plain handmaidens of responsibility. Winston was now answerable to the House for the administration of the King’s colonies, and the first issue he faced would have taxed a seasoned veteran of the Treasury Bench, which he, at this time, clearly was not.

It was an ugly business. Sir Alfred Milner, last seen in this narrative being interviewed by Churchill in Cape Town, had been elevated to the peerage, and the month after the Liberal sweep he made his maiden speech in the House of Lords. A lot of men wanted to question Milner. As high commissioner in South Africa he had imported some fifty thousand Chinese coolies to work the Rand gold mines. Their contracts ran for three years; they were not permitted to bring their families, they were penned in camps, and reportedly they were subjected to corporal punishment. In one of his first acts as prime minister, Campbell-Bannerman had announced that the leasing of Chinese would be discontinued. Licenses for fourteen thousand more coolies had already been issued the previous November, however, and the matter of their treatment in the past was therefore a burning question. Documents acquired by the new government revealed that mine bosses had been meting out punishments without trial, flogging the Chinese indiscriminately. This was a gross violation of London’s instructions to the high commissioner and of Whitehall’s assurances to authorities in China. A fellow lord asked Milner if he had sanctioned this. Milner confessed that he had, adding, “I think, in the light of subsequent events, that I was wrong.”
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The Liberal press, led by Massingham and the
Guardian,
was in full cry. Radical Liberals demanded Milner’s head. Churchill agreed that his conduct had been reprehensible and said: “I should not put myself to any undue or excessive exertion to defend Lord Milner from any attacks which might be made upon him.” At Question Time, replying to Hilaire Belloc, a new Liberal MP, he added: “Lord Milner committed a grave dereliction of public duty and at the same time an undoubted infringement of the law.” Belloc and others drafted a motion of censure. Chamberlain, whose man Milner had been, protested that it was “despicable” to “persecute him for a single error of judgment in a long course of public service.” Winston accused Joe of abusing the Boers, and then Free Trade. The only difference between the two, he said, was that “whereas the first enterprise of the right honourable gentleman has had the effect of nearly ruining South Africa, the second enterprise has had the effect of politically ruining himself.” Chamberlain hotly replied that it was Churchill’s duty, as “head of a department,” to “defend the servants of the department.” At this point senior Liberals decided to put out the fire. Milner had a large following in the country; making a martyr out of him would be both pointless and risky. Churchill had to tell the House that in the interests of peace and conciliation, he would oppose the censure motion. He was uncomfortable in this position, however, and his defense of it was deplorable. “Lord Milner,” he said, “has gone from South Africa, probably for ever. The public service knows him no more. Having exercised great authority he now exerts none. Having held high employment he now has no employment…. He is today a retired Civil Servant, without pension or gratuity of any kind whatever. It is not worth while to pursue him any further.”
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The Conservatives were outraged, the Liberals embarrassed. Margot Asquith called the speech “ungenerous, patronising, and tactless.” Even Eddie Marsh, who had thought it impressive in rehearsal, now concluded that his new employer “appeared to be taunting a discredited statesman.” A Tory MP moved to reduce Winston’s salary for “embittered and empoisoned language” on coolie labor and above all for insulting Milner, “a man whom so many of us esteem, honour, and love.” Kipling, an admirer of Milner, never forgave Winston. Sir William Anson, the warden of All Souls, Oxford, wrote that Churchill had seemed “both pompous and impertinent. It is terrible to think what harm that young jackanapes may do with a big majority behind him and an incompetent Prime Minister to look after him.” The House of Lords passed, 170 to 35, a resolution expressing its gratitude to Milner for his service in South Africa. The King wrote the Liberal Marquess of Crewe: “It is a pity that Lord Elgin does not seem to be able to control the violent and objectionable language of his Parliamentary Under-Secretary.” To Lady Londonderry, a kinswoman of Churchill’s, he remarked that “the conduct of a certain relation of yours is simply scandalous. It is indeed hard on Lord Milner to be treated in such a manner.”
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T
his was hard on Elgin. The secretary of state for colonies could hardly be expected to control events in the House of Commons when, as a peer, he could not even be admitted to the chamber. A shy man, bereft of social graces—Marsh described him as “a rugged old thane of antique virtue and simplicity”—he nevertheless possessed administrative abilities and had acquitted himself well as viceroy of India. Later he wrote: “When I accepted Churchill as my Under Secy I knew I should have no easy task.” He had decided to show Winston all documents, let him join all policy discussions, always give him the benefit of the doubt, “but to keep control.” Austen Chamberlain, in
Politics from Inside,
tells the story that Churchill submitted a long memorandum to his minister, ending, “These are my views,” and Elgin sent it back with the notation, “But not mine.” No doubt the under secretary tried the secretary’s patience at times. He also bemused him. To his wife, Elgin wrote, “Winston is a curious impulsive creature.” He described how, when he mildly criticized a paper, Churchill apologized profusely, “seized the paper and tore it up.” It was Elgin who coined the phrase “Winston’s latest
volte face
.” The fighter of Boers had become the champion of Boers. The critic of military budgets would soon become the most ardent advocate of rearmament. The arch-Tory was now a passionate Liberal. In each instance the shift could be supported by argument, and no one ever argued more persuasively than Churchill, but those who thought him mercurial had a case.
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In the Colonial Office he seemed to be a combination of Pitt and Puck. Inexhaustible, frequently carried away by his own soaring rhetoric, exaggerating his importance, he was criticized by colleagues for his heavy, “ministerial” manner. Sometimes he seemed to make work for himself and others. It is a definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important. The results can be hilarious. An African, one Sekgoma, had proclaimed himself chief of Batawana in Ngamiland, Bechuanaland. He was unpopular, and he was not the legal heir. When the legitimate chief came of age, the tribe crowned the youth. Sekgoma objected and was jailed. Civil servants responsible for the colony decided that the best solution was to deport Sekgoma to the Seychelles. Indeed, they seemed to have no choice. But their under secretary fiercely disagreed. To imprison or deport the deposed chief, he wrote, would be a “flat violation of every principle of British justice.” In fact, he could not even begin to defend the lawless treatment of an innocent man upon “an informal
lettre de cachet
.” He asked: “If we are going to embark upon this sort of law-breaking and autocratic action, where are we going to stop? What kind of injustice is there that would not be covered by precedents of this kind?” Indeed, if men who had committed no crime could be deprived of trial by jury, exiled, and condemned to lives of penal servitude, “why stop there? Why not poison Sekgoma by some painless drug?” Since medieval practices were to be revived, “at least let us show medieval courage and thoroughness. Think of the expense that would be saved. A dose of laudanum, costing at the outside five shillings, is all that would be required. There would be no cost of maintenance, no charges for transportation, no legal difficulties, no need to apply to the Portuguese, no fear of the habeas corpus.” Having made his point, and believing it safe from refutation, he ended grandly: “If however as I apprehend, Secretary of State would be averse to this procedure, the next best thing would be to obey the law, and to act with ordinary morality, however inconvenient.”
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Elgin was nettled. He replied shirtily that he had no intention of sending to the chemist for a five-shilling dose of laudanum. The file on Sekgoma was clear: “This man is a savage—and is said to be contemplating proceedings in defiance of all law to disturb the peace.” In fact, he had been plotting to behead his successor. If he were released, blood would be shed, including, probably, his own. His Majesty’s government could hardly encourage that. However, the minister agreed that deportation was troublesome and objectionable in principle; another African home would be found for the dethroned chief. As an episode in the history of the British Empire, this approaches the far reaches of trivia, but it is also vintage Churchill—his memo was impudent, witty, and superbly written. Ronald Hyam commented that “Churchill exaggerated the importance of everything he touched. Every speck on the horizon, he assumed, would turn out to be a Cunarder, not a cockleshell.”
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If others wondered at Elgin’s patience with him, they did not realize how grateful the colonial secretary was to have such a lieutenant. Tirelessly drafting answers to parliamentary questions, a gifted writer of arresting minutes, he defended colonial policy in the House with a sharpening wit; to Andrew Bonar Law, a Tory who accused him of twisting the meaning of a Tory document, he replied: “The words which you now tell me you employed and which purport to be a paraphrase, if not an actual quotation, are separated by a small degree of inaccuracy and misrepresentation from the inaccuracy and misrepresentation of the condensed report.” He also carried a burden of day-to-day decision which was immense because of the Empire’s immensity. He negotiated with Cypriots over pledges of financial assistance, spoke up for Jewish immigrants embittered by what he regarded as a “very harsh and quite indefensible measure,” recommended reductions of naturalization fees, advocated help for Zulu tribes mistreated by the Natal government, urged Campbell-Bannerman to invite all six of Australia’s state premiers to a colonial conference, and mediated a dispute in India between Curzon, the viceroy, and Kitchener, commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces there. (He sided with Curzon, but Kitchener won.) Most of the matters brought before him were insignificant even then, but two weren’t. The South African mining magnates were persuaded to repatriate their Chinese workers. And the Boers, at last, were given a just political settlement.
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Churchill played an active role in drafting the provisions for the Transvaal constitution, and later that of the Orange River Colony, and piloted them through the House. The former republics were to be granted self-government with universal manhood suffrage, an approach to the “one vote, one value” principle which even England lacked. The revered name “Orange Free State” was then restored and a limited ban on the Afrikaans language lifted; members of both Boer parliaments could address their colleagues in either English or Afrikaans. Indeed, British colonial officials posted there would be expected to master Dutch dialects, “for,” Winston wrote, “if the people like to talk to him in Volapuk, he must learn Volapuk. If they have a weakness for Sanskott, it must become his study. By humouring them, and understanding them, he will be able very often to make their wishes and their welfare coincide.” “We are prepared,” he told the House, “to make this settlement in the name of the Liberal Party. This is sufficient authority for us; but there is a higher authority which we should earnestly desire to obtain.” He asked the Tories to “join with us to invest the grant of a free Constitution to the Transvaal with something of a national sanction. With all our majority we can only make it the gift of a Party. They can make it the gift of England.” But Balfour, who had found another seat in a by-election, wanted no part of it. He called the bill “a dangerous, audacious and reckless experiment.” Milner condemned it in the Lords.
The Times
prophesied the doom of the Empire, and the
Daily Mail
ran the headlines:
ANOTHER MAJUBA—TRANSVAAL GIVEN BACK TO THE BOERS—FRUITLESS SACRIFICES OF THE WAR—22,000 LIVES AND £250,000,000 FOR NOTHING
.
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