During Winston’s time in India, latent feelings of his distinct inferiority of education bubbled to the surface and spurred him to further his own education. He ‘resolved to read history, philosophy, economics, and things like that’. He asked his mother ‘for such books as I had heard of on these topics. She responded with alacrity, and every month the mail brought me a substantial package of what I thought were standard works.’ In My Early Life he described how he then ‘embarked on that splendid romance [his lifelong adoration of literature], and . . . voyaged with full sail in a strong wind’.
Over the course of November to May 1897, he read for four or five hours every day, devouring volumes of history, philosophy, poetry, essays, biographies and classic texts such as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Macaulay’s The History of England; Plato’s Republic; Socrates; the Politics of Aristotle; Schopenhauer on pessimism; Malthus on population; Darwin’s Origin of Species. Name it, he read it, steeping himself even in the twenty-seven-volume record of British parliamentary debate and legislative developments, the Annual Register. It was a marathon of self-education: an intellectual boot camp, and a conscious readying for the great role he was now beginning to imagine for himself: as a leader, a wise leader, steeped in the ideas of the greatest minds, intimate in his knowledge of the human species and its torments. In order to be influential – in other words – one must be willing to be influenced.
It was now the spring of 1897, and after two years in India Winston was restless once more. In letters to his mother he frequently referred to the possibility of becoming a Member of Parliament. He returned to London and to thoughts of politics, contacting the Conservative Party with a request to organize a few quick speaking engagements. On 26 June the 22-year-old Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill finally followed in the footsteps of his father, as he had wanted to for so many years, and gave his first political speech.
His performance was well received, but almost as soon as he had finished speaking, he was hotfooting it back to India, where a conflict had broken out between Afghan Pathan tribesmen and British and Indian forces. Winston secured commissions with the Daily Telegraph and Pioneer, and filed a number of reports.
At the end of 1897, after an exhausting few months on the front line of this very bloody conflict, Winston was able to take some much-needed rest. In typical Churchill fashion, he was not content with idleness and used this time to write not just his first book, a detailed account of the conflict entitled The Story of the Malakand Field Force, but also his first and only work of fiction, Savrola, a coolly received parody of London society set in a fictional capital run by a dictator, where the leading lady runs away from the dictator, her husband, into the arms of the story’s titular character, Savrola – surely a Winston self-portrait – who is tellingly described as someone who could ‘know rest only in action, contentment only in danger, and in confusion find their only peace . . . Ambition was the motive force, and he was powerless to resist it.’
The spectre of Lord Randolph’s early death at forty-five was always present. His father had been described as ‘a man in a hurry’, and his son was proving no different.
In 1898 Winston travelled to the Sudan to join Lord Kitchener’s regiment, which was fighting in the Mahdist War. There he continued his work as a war correspondent and took part in one of the last great cavalry charges in English history, personally boasting of having killed at least three ‘savages’.
He had already decided to enter into politics when he returned to England in March 1899. The death of the MP for Oldham, which forced a by-election in June that year, gave him his first opportunity. He fought a vigorous campaign but was unsuccessful. Not one to let a disappointment such as this hinder him in any way, Winston returned to front-line journalism and travelled to South Africa to report on a new conflict: the Boer War.
Churchill threw himself into the thick of the action and his bravery was widely reported. When the news broke in England that after just a few weeks he had been captured by the Boer, there was a public outcry. Though armed with his trusty Mauser pistol, he claimed ‘non-combatant’ status, but the Boers were having none of it. Rather than leaving his fate to be negotiated through diplomatic channels, our young adventurer pulled off a daring escape from his POW camp in Pretoria and walked for hours in the beating South African heat until he finally stumbled upon a railway line and hopped on a train to the Transvaal Highveld and freedom. With each one of the near-300 miles that Churchill travelled to safety, his legend grew; he would stay on for a further six months in South Africa, dining out on his fame, before returning to England in July 1900. He immediately set about reigniting his political career. His efforts, and fame, paid off and on 1 October 1900 Winston Churchill was finally elected a Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party. He was two months shy of his twenty-sixth birthday.
One could argue his election was an early example of celebrity politics, but as the eminent Churchill biographer Roy Jenkins described it in Churchill: A Life, Winston ‘believed in his “star”. And his star hovered over Oldham.’ As ever with Winston, one career wasn’t enough. He continued writing, and embarked on a speaking tour of the UK, United States and Canada, where he was paid vast sums of money to regale audiences with his tales of derring-do in South Africa. On 22 January 1901, however, he received news that Queen Victoria had died; the dawn of a new era was upon the nation. On the day of her funeral, he returned to England and finally took his seat in the House of Commons. Jenkins, again, wrote in his biography that Churchill, ‘who was for much of his later career regarded as the last Victorian left in British politics, had by his eagerness for lecture fees forgone the opportunity to take the parliamentary oath of allegiance to the Queen. When he was first admitted, on 14 February, it was to King Edward VII that he swore his fealty.’ But admitted he was, and he made his maiden speech to the House on 18 February.
Perhaps sensibly considering his somewhat vainglorious reputation, Winston’s first four years in Parliament were on the whole quiet. As he did during his period in India, he took this time to observe and analyse what he heard from his fellow Conservatives and from the Opposition parties, and began to conclude that his seat on the Government back benches was not where he wanted to be. He wanted to be deciding the fate of the nation. It would be nearly forty more years before he would get the chance to do so.
He would not be quiet for long. Soon he was making speeches that challenged the views of his own party on the matter of increased government spending on the armed forces. In My Early Life he recalled:
I was all for fighting the [Boer] war, which had now flared up again in a desultory manner, to a victorious conclusion; and for that purpose I would have used far larger numbers, and also have organized troops of a higher quality than were actually employed. I would have used Indian troops . . . I thought we should finish the war by force and generosity, and then make haste to return to paths of peace, retrenchment and reform.
The end of the Boer War in 1902 did nothing to align Churchill’s opinions with those of senior Tories, and his support of Free Trade, in opposition to his own party, would see him, on 31 May 1904, defect to the Liberal party, shocking the House. His close friend Violet Bonham-Carter described how Winston ‘put in an appearance. Standing at the bar, he glanced at his accustomed place below the Ministerial gangway, made a rapid survey of the corresponding bench on the Opposition side, marched a few paces up the floor, bowed to the [Speaker’s] Chair, swerved suddenly to the right, and took his seat among the Liberals.’ He deliberately placed himself next to fellow Joseph Chamberlain antagonist David Lloyd George.
Churchill’s political displays in his first four years in Parliament ensured he was now leading the Liberal efforts to discredit the Conservatives, and to proclaim the glories of Liberalism. Thanks in part to the powerhouse combination of the young turncoat and his dogged Welsh mentor, Lloyd George, the Liberals eventually took office in December 1905 when Arthur Balfour resigned as Prime Mi
nister. Churchill was offered the role of Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. It was an unremarkable position which suited him well thanks to his first-hand experience of India and South Africa, and he navigated it proficiently. By April 1908 he was able to achieve his next ambition: a position in the Cabinet as the President of the Board of Trade.
As significant as taking a seat at the Cabinet table was, this would dim in cosmic significance compared to the seat he was about to take at the dinner table of one Lady St Helier.
As ‘lucky fourteenth’ to avoid seating thirteen, Churchill turned to the young guest next to him and found the eyes of a pretty woman who would, in six short months, become the wife he would spend the rest of his life with. She was Clementine Hozier.
Clementine was twenty-three, the daughter of Lady Blanche Hozier, and her father was . . . well, either Henry Montague Hozier or Captain William ‘Bay’ Middleton, or Lady Blanche’s sister’s husband, Algernon Freeman-Mitford, or someone else entirely . . . for Lady Blanche was known for having taken and discarded several lovers.
A graduate of the Sorbonne, Clementine was herself much pursued as a debutante, and was twice engaged to Sir Sidney Peel, engagements she broke off.
By a mere quirk of superstitious etiquette, then, Churchill was given the chance to make an impression on the woman who would help him wrestle not just with his own doubts but the doubts of others; who would believe in him but also rebuke him for bad behaviour; who would remain fiercely loyal to him and be regarded as a formidable force in his life; who, though not a politician, possessed skills and charm to rival those of the finest members of the House of Commons; and who would nurse him through the infamous ‘black dog’ of depression while suffering from her own demons. But, above all, she would always put his interests – and thus the interests of her country – before her own.
Winston and Clementine were a devoted couple. He affectionately nicknamed her ‘Kat’; she called him ‘Pug’ or ‘Pig’. Frequent periods apart meant they corresponded a great deal throughout their lives, often signing their letters with little drawings of their respective animals. For Clementine, marriage required more than the usual adjustments; she had become the wife of an MP, and one very much in the public eye. Within a few months of the wedding she was pregnant with their first child. Her parents’ various infidelities had led to their separation when she was just six years old, so she was determined to create a stable home environment for her own family, including Winston himself.
Clementine gave birth to a girl, whom they named Diana, on 11 July 1909. However strong her desire for an idyllic domestic life, she found childbirth and motherhood traumatic. Winston, anxious about his wife’s condition, supported her need for a break just a few weeks after Diana’s birth, and Clemmie retreated to the countryside to stay with her sister, leaving the newborn baby at home with a wet-nurse. Recuperating alone eased her anxieties, and soon she felt confident enough to be reunited with her baby before eventually returning to London.
She found her husband deeply distracted, for almost as soon as Winston had secured the role of President of the Board of Trade, he lost the by-election for Manchester North West, suffering a humiliating defeat by the Conservatives. He was down but not out, and his relentless determination saw him immediately jump on a train to Scotland and stand for election in Dundee just over two weeks later – and win while he was at it. Relieved to have secured what most considered a very safe seat, he could now focus on implementing his radical plans for social reform, and successfully pushed for the principle of a minimum wage for the low-paid and the right of workers to a break for meals and refreshment. Initiatives to create unemployment insurance and labour exchanges soon followed. Churchill’s political reputation had never been healthier, and neither had his relationships with fellow party members.
The Liberal Party only narrowly won the 1910 General Election. As predicted, Churchill was comfortably re-elected in his Dundee constituency, and was then offered the prestigious post of Home Secretary, but when the House of Lords (packed with Conservative peers) blocked the passage of the Liberals’ Budget (packed with social reforms, many championed by Winston), Britain’s new king, George V, stepped in and granted the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, permission to dissolve the Government and call the second General Election of 1910. Asquith hoped that the popularity of his party’s proposed reforms would win it a larger majority in the House and enable it to pass the Parliament Act, which would thenceforth limit the power of the Lords. This was good news for the Liberals but terrible timing for Churchill, who was embroiled in the first of several major career crises from which he would not emerge unscathed.
Thousands of coal miners from the small village of Tonypandy, deep in the Welsh valleys, had gone on strike over working conditions. The situation had deteriorated rapidly and riots had broken out. The press denounced the Home Secretary for not sending in the military as soon as they were requested, and the Labour Party leapt on stories of police brutality, saying Churchill’s response had been too heavy-handed. The story would remain an albatross around his neck for the rest of the twentieth century.
Things were no better for Winston back in London. In January 1911 a robbery-gone-wrong had resulted in the fatal shooting of three policemen by a gang of Russian criminals, who were now holed up in London’s East End, firing indiscriminately from the windows of the house they had barricaded themselves into on Sidney Street. The Scots Guards were drafted in to aid the police effort, and a telegram was sent to the Home Secretary. As soon as he was informed of the situation he rushed to join the fun. Pushing his way through the crowds of East End residents, Churchill, dressed in his top hat and fur-trimmed overcoat, made for a striking and conspicuous sight. When some of the first news footage ever recorded of the Metropolitan Police was screened in cinemas around the country to ‘jeers’ and ‘boos’. It showed the brave force hard at work during the ‘Siege of Sidney Street’, while a bewildered-looking Home Secretary, looking more than a little incongruous, peeked around the corner of a building.
The news reporters mocked his action at Sidney Street, and the cartoonists of Fleet Street, aware that he would be a mainstay of their profession, refined their lampoons: Winston as Punch, Winston as Buffoon, Winston as Napoleon, Winston as Vagrant. His once good name was increasingly associated with missteps and blunders and miscalculations. Despite this, through some inbuilt over-confidence, he remained unfailingly certain of his own abilities.
Churchill, promoted to the role of First Lord of the Admiralty for his commendable response to a crisis in Morocco in mid-1911, was the man Asquith wanted to shake up the Navy. It was no mean task, and the new First Lord understood this more than most: ‘I thought of the peril of Britain, peace-loving, unthinking, little prepared, of her power and virtue, and of her mission of good sense and fairplay. I thought of mighty Germany, towering up in the splendour of her Imperial State and delving down in her profound, cold, patient, ruthless calculations.’ The Navy had to be strengthened in preparation for the now credible threat of ‘attack by Germany as if it might come next day’.
This new post came with lavish perks like the Admiralty yacht, Enchantress, and grand accommodation at Admiralty House on The Mall, especially useful space when, on 28 May 1911, after another difficult and exhausting pregnancy for Clementine, the Churchills welcomed a son to continue the family name. They called him Randolph.
Beginning by creating a War Staff akin to the Army’s War Office, Churchill sought advice from past First Lords, admirals and other senior naval personnel regarding the best possible practices and where people thought the weaknesses lay. He brought through a change in fuel from coal to oil to increase the speed of Britain’s battleships. In total, he increased naval expenditure from £39m to over £50m, his main intention being to show ‘the Germans that, whatever they built, Britain would build more’. Europe was now in the grip of a very public arms race that would see military spending increase by 50 per cent in the years precedin
g the First World War.
Churchill’s Cabinet colleagues were aware of the rapid expansion of the German armed forces, but ministers were instead more focused on the easy ride they believed he was receiving from his old friend Lloyd George, now Chancellor of the Exchequer. According to Roy Jenkins, Winston’s ‘foremost enemy’ was none other than the Attorney-General, Sir John Simon, who immediately began suggesting to Asquith that the loss of Churchill, though regrettable, would not split the party, and, what’s more, might even strengthen it by reassuring its anti-war and budget-minded factions.
Winston also met resistance from the public, and while he gave speeches hammering home the dangers posed by German naval expansion, the threat still seemed far off. As Michael Shelden writes in Young Titan: ‘For many in Britain, the idea of these two highly civilised nations staging a naval Armageddon, with one group of dreadnoughts blasting away at the other, was almost unthinkable.’ As confidence in the First Lord began to dwindle, the Liberals slowly started to retreat to their traditional anti-war stance. Even Lloyd George was now talking of Germany as a peace-loving nation. Winston found himself a lone sabre-rattler on the beach as the tide washed up a sudden sea of pacifists. But his resolve was unshaken, and when that fateful shot was fired in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, he was listening, and he was ready.
‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’ These words were spoken by the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, the evening before Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914.
The Navy suffered huge casualties in those first war months, with more than 5,500 lives lost. Churchill’s handling of the initial stages was criticized heavily in both the press and the House of Commons. As during the Siege of Sidney Street, Britons were left confused by Winston’s decision, at the Cabinet’s request, to personally travel to the besieged port of Antwerp in Belgium with some fanciful belief he could rescue the city. After just over a day in the field, he telegrammed Asquith suggesting that he resign as First Lord ‘and undertake command of relieving and defensive forces assigned to Antwerp’. Perhaps it was his experience of cavalry charges with the Army or the excitement he’d felt dodging bullets as a front-line journalist. Whatever the cause, Winston seemed incapable of not meddling in areas outside his remit. His offer of commanding the troops in Belgium was declined by the Prime Minister, who ordered him to return to England at once. Winston, believing that he was the only person capable of holding the fort, stayed for a further three days, avoiding all thought of abandoning his position as head of the Admiralty. He eventually arrived back in England on 7 October, just in time to have witnessed the fall of Antwerp, but missing the birth of his daughter Sarah, who had arrived the same morning.
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