The Governor of Uganda, Sir Hesketh Bell, wrote that Churchill “is a difficult fellow to handle, but I can’t help liking him. . . . He sees things en grand and appreciates adequately the great possibilities of industrial development that are latent in this remarkable country.”31 Churchill was blithely confident in the ability of industrial society to tame these “wild” places and harness them, for Britain’s benefit and also that of the native inhabitants. He was much impressed by the railway, with “its trim little stations, with their water tanks, signals, ticket-offices, and flower-beds complete and all of a pattern, backed by impenetrable bush. In brief one slender thread of scientific civilization, of order, authority, and arrangement, drawn across the primeval chaos of the world.” While Churchill was clever enough to see some of the real problems inherent in the racial composition of the nascent protectorate, the reports he wrote smack of the chancing journalist, long on opinion but short on detailed knowledge. He was an “expert” on the affairs of the Baganda after only a couple of days in their midst. Here, for example, he expatiates on Britain’s task among the people of Uganda:
What an obligation, what a sacred duty is imposed upon Great Britain to enter the lists in person and to shield this trustful, docile, intelligent Baganda race from dangers which, whatever their cause, have synchronized with our arrival in their midst! And, meanwhile, let us be sure that order and science will conquer, and that in the end John Bull will really be master in his curious garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade.32
In 1908, such sentiments were common. Churchill’s visit was not without purpose, and he was only trying to act on the world as it was presented to him and exercising his innate capacity for trying to put the world to rights. In Uganda, he deduced “the need for machinery and cheap power to replace cheap labor and transform Africa—on this we talked—or at least I talked—while we scrambled across the stumps of fallen trees or waded in an emerald twilight from one sunbeam to another across the creeper flood.”
Marriage and a Seat in Cabinet
Returning to England, Churchill was going to stay at the Ritz, but Lord and Lady Ridley placed at his disposal a flat in Carlton House Terrace. Churchill had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the affairs of the Colonial Office, though he was not one to settle for long while the metronome of his ambition marked time, and he displayed what was becoming a trademark propensity to concern himself with the affairs of departments of state other than his own. During his time at the Colonial Office, he maintained his interest in social reform, reading books, holding discussions, and writing memoranda to his colleagues as he looked to the future prospects of both himself and the government in which he served. In this first decade of the twentieth century, new class antagonisms, new political parties, and new socialist doctrines were entering the mainstream of British politics as never before. Political leaders, therefore, had to consider and deal with issues alien to their predecessors.
It is a measure of Churchill’s political convictions and his ambition that in this period he became nationally acknowledged as one of the two most significant social reformers in high office. He espoused the need for a minimum standard of living and work for all, regardless of class and wealth. By 1907, his mind ranged busily on the subject of his next promotion, for which he pressed regularly. The moment came in 1908, following a stroke that rendered the prime minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, incapable, forcing him to resign in favor of Herbert Asquith. After having turned down tentative offers of the Local Government Board or the Admiralty, in April 1908 Churchill was offered the presidency of the Board of Trade, a promotion to full ministerial status at the young age of thirty-four. April turned into a busy month: not only did he have to fight a special election because convention required new Cabinet ministers to seek reelection to Parliament, he also became engaged to Clementine Hozier. The wedding proposal went better than the election, which he lost. Defeated in Manchester, he had quickly to find another constituency, which turned out to be in Dundee.
Churchill’s private life in this period was of secondary importance to his political life, but he clearly wanted to marry. He had had something approaching an “understanding” with a young lady called Pamela Plowden, though apparently she also had “understandings” elsewhere and plumped for the hand of the Earl of Lytton. In a backhanded compliment that probably says a lot about why they didn’t marry, Plowden commented that “the first time you meet Winston you see all his faults, and the rest of your life you spend discovering his virtues.”33 Churchill’s public image was dominated by his energy, devotion to politics, self-publicity, and conceit. He was variously considered charming, forgivable, or infuriating, depending on where you stood. But as a romantic, he was unusually tongue-tied, as well as being tender and gentle. He had plenty of affection to give, even if it was often delivered by telegram rather than in person, as his politics took him away from house parties and dinner parties and even, later, from the marital home.
In 1904. Churchill had insisted his mother introduce him to Clementine Hozier at a ball at Crewe House, so impressed was he by her beauty. Their respective mothers knew each other and were able to effect the introduction. Once it had been done, Churchill stood speechless and stared, until Clementine was rescued by a more forward admirer. According to his son, “All his life Churchill was always apt to be gauche when he met women for the first time. He had no small talk. He greatly preferred talking about himself.”34 Throughout his life, Churchill admired and was impressed by female beauty, hardly an unusual male trait. Churchill soon met Clementine again at the home of Clementine’s aunt, Lady St. Helier, where they sat next to each other at dinner, and then in April 1908, on the weekend when Asquith was announcing his new Cabinet, Lady Randolph invited her and her mother, Lady Blanche, to Salisbury Hall at her son’s request. It was on the weekend of this house party that Churchill became president of the Board of Trade. Soon after, he was off to fight for his seat in Manchester, and a couple of days later, Clementine left for Germany. Thus began an exchange of letters that was to last for over half a century. On April 27, Churchill ended a scrawl with the words “Write to me again—I am a solitary creature in the midst of crowds,” a hint of melodrama and self-regard creeping into the words of an important young man, ardent and in love.
Naturally, society tongues wagged about the marriage prospects and the position of eligible youngsters. Churchill, in his mid-thirties, fell squarely into this category. Winston’s mother wanted him to find a mate, realizing that her son was brilliant, but very hard to suit. One of the period’s great gossips, Violet Asquith, commented that Churchill “did not wish for—though he needs it badly—a critical reformatory wife who would stop up the lacunas in his taste etc. & hold him back from blunders.”35 Clementine Hozier, although she did not bring a fortune, certainly brought those things. Though, from the very outset, politics was to be an indefatigable competitor for Churchill’s devotion, she offered him a highly successful life partnership. Jennie was delighted. “She will be the perfect wife for him. You see my Winston is not easy; he is very difficult indeed and she is just right.” Lady Blanche also approved and had a shrewd opinion of the young suitor, writing to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt that he had some of Lord Randolph’s faults and all of his qualities: “He is gentle and tender, and affectionate to those he loves, much hated by those who have not come under his personal charm.”36
Fittingly, the summit meeting took place at Blenheim Palace, as has been seen. Churchill caused Clementine to be invited to join a house party there, and wrote on August 8 to say that he would collect her from Oxford station. She hesitated, but, although down to her last cotton frock and without a maid, she made the journey, and as Ann Leslie remarked, “Her dryad beauty, her glowing red hair and huge blue eyes were off-set by not being over-ironed.”37 In persuading her to come, Winston had emphasized the charms of the estate: “It has many glories in the fullness of summer. Pools of water, gardens of roses, a noble lake shrouded by giant trees; tapestries, p
ictures, and monuments within.”38 The party gathered at the palace on August 10, and Churchill’s hesitant proposal in the Temple of Diana soon followed.
Fruit and vegetable mongers in pearly suits danced outside of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, where they were wed. Though their wedding in September 1908 was out of season, Churchill and Clementine still mustered over thirteen hundred guests at their reception at the Portland Place home of Lady St. Helier. Here an array of wedding presents was displayed, including a gold-capped Malacca cane bearing the Marlborough insignia from the king and a silver tray engraved with the autographs of all Churchill’s Cabinet colleagues. A brief honeymoon was spent at Blenheim, Lake Maggiore in Lombardy, and Venice. It was a hurried trip because Churchill needed to be back in London to attend to his new ministry. Politics came at a price for marriage and personal life, and even at this early stage, Clementine found herself unwelcome in the houses of certain Tory “friends” because of the man she had married.
The newlyweds’ early life was spent “squatting” around London—a little house in Bolton Street near Green Park, which had been Churchill’s bachelor pad, then the lease of a house in Eccleston Square in Pimlico from March 1909. Winston was a caring husband and most attentive during Clementine’s first pregnancy. Churchill described the newborn to Charles Masterman, Lloyd George’s secretary, as “the prettiest child ever seen.” “Like her mother, I suppose,” Masterman replied. “No,” was his reply. “She is exactly like me.” Winston’s endearing, childlike qualities suited him for family life. He was observed at his birthday on November 30, 1909, with “a birthday cake with 35 candles. And crackers. He sat all evening with a paper cap, from a cracker, on his head. A queer sight . . . He and she sat on the same sofa, and he holds her hand. I never saw two people more in love.”39 The Churchills were to become known for their open expressions of tenderness and affection. Churchill was also gaining a middle-aged spread, not helped by his appetite and a general lack of exercise at this time—the occasional day’s shooting, or a round of golf (a game he was not very good at because he talked too much) being about the limit.
Churchill’s marriage was of fundamental importance to his subsequent career. It was, to modern eyes, a marriage not without its oddities, though perhaps more “normal” when viewed in its proper aristocratic setting. Devotedly in love they may have been, but their dissimilarities were pronounced, and as the grand total of at least seventeen hundred letters, notes, and telegrams exchanged between them during fifty-seven years of wedlock indicates, they were often apart. Their tastes in people differed markedly—Clementine disapproved of many of Churchill’s intimates, describing them memorably as being like “dogs around a lamppost.” Their daily routines also differed, as did their preferences for leisure and holiday venues.40 In fact, they often lived quite separate lives, though overlapping sufficiently to form a rock-solid marriage. It was not without its trials: Clementine was highly strung and often suffered from bouts of depression and overanxiety, though little is known about Churchill’s private reactions to this. Clementine’s “impression of serenity,” according to her daughter, was an artifact “of a long lifetime of self-control.”41 Churchill, for his part, was a loving husband, “and he always wanted Clementine to ‘be there’; but his self-centeredness, combined with his total commitment to politics, did not make him a very companionable one.”42 Reading their correspondence, one is struck by how very often he was absent, even at significant moments, and how often his undoubtedly heartfelt words of love and adoration were expressed by the written, rather than the spoken, word.
Now a fully fledged member of the Cabinet, Churchill entered the Board of Trade with a radical manifesto in mind. He did so at a time when the working class was becoming more militant and politically powerful, and when the issue of Irish Home Rule (and a simmering feud between the Liberal government and the Tory establishment) was coming to a head. The depression of 1907–8 made the new government more prepared to be adventurous in tackling social and economic problems, and Churchill took a radical position on all issues: he advocated the nationalization of railways and canals and discovered that the Board of Trade could be an instrument for unprecedented experiment in social welfare. Since the start of 1908, he had been studying employment exchanges and unemployment insurance, especially in Germany (in 1909 he was invited by the kaiser to attend the German army’s maneuvers and found time to visit labor exchanges in Strasbourg and Frankfurt am Main). As he wrote to Asquith, “Dimly across gulfs of ignorance I see the outline of a policy which I call the Minimum Standard.”43 The Board of Trade, in Churchill’s own words, was “a great apparatus of beneficent government organization, a great accumulation of knowledge.” Working with both employers and unions, its “three great principles were ‘Confer, Conciliate and Compromise.’”44 The board’s responsibilities included import and excise duties, conciliation in industrial disputes, and labor conditions, and it had an important role in disbursing central government revenue.
Despite his department’s extensive responsibilities, no sooner was Churchill in the Cabinet than he was attacking the army estimates prepared by his colleague and circulating detailed proposals for the reform of other departments. Churchill and Lloyd George began a period of constructive cooperation as they sought to push through a legislative program characterized by social radicalism. Clement Attlee was of the opinion that “Winston felt himself superior to anyone he had ever met, with one exception: Lloyd George.”
Churchill had been attracted to the Board of Trade because of the potential it offered to make a mark as a social reformer. He was deeply interested in social reform, though his significant achievements in this field are usually drowned out amid the clamor surrounding his war record. Churchill recruited William Beveridge to devise a nationwide scheme of labor exchanges and kept in close and friendly touch with Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the noted social thinkers. He was attempting to deal with increasing unemployment in 1907–8 and, inspired in part by the Webbs and the example of German and Australian legislation, pioneered labor exchanges. Beatrice Webb offered the following assessment of Churchill at this stage of his career: “Bound to be unpopular, [he is] too unpleasant a flavour with his restless self-regarding personality and lack of moral or intellectual refinement. . . . But his pluck, courage, resourcefulness and great tradition may carry him far, unless he knocks himself to pieces like his father.”45
Work frequently kept Churchill away from the family home, and the affectionate correspondence between husband and wife blossomed. His letters demonstrated the manner in which Clementine became the lodestar, the rock upon which his ambition and talent could build: “I have missed you a great deal,” he wrote a year after their marriage. “Your room is very empty. The poor pug pules disconsolate.” In their letters and notes, Churchill was Clementine’s Pug, Pig, or Amber Dog; she his Cat, Kat, or Pussy Bird. Their pet names were often illustrated with little sketches of cats or pugs. “Your sweetness & beauty have cast a glory upon my life,” Churchill wrote in November 1909.46 Over the course of the next six decades, Clementine was never left in any doubt as to how much she meant to him. She kept the show on the road, and since she “was primarily interested in Winston and so was Winston, their relationship to each other was always closer than that with their five children.”47
The alliance between Churchill and Lloyd George attained its fullest bloom in the years 1908 to 1910. Known as the “terrible twins,” together they were responsible for a barrage of radical legislation that changed the relationship between the people and the state for good, signaling the end of the laissez-faire politics of the nineteenth century and heralding the dawn of the managerial and interventionist state, of social security and greater government centralization. They fought side by side in these years against a phalanx of the British elite over the issue of the “People’s Budget” and the reform of the Tory-dominated House of Lords that refused to pass it into law.
The issue arose when Lloyd George sought to r
aise money to fight poverty and to fund the old-age pensions scheme, as well as new naval construction. To do so, he proposed to tax the better-off, particularly property owners, introducing wealth redistribution into the tax systems. A minority in the Commons, the Conservatives sought to thwart the budget in the Lords. Churchill’s involvement in this gigantic prewar political battle came as a result of his keenness for social reform. His Cabinet colleagues did not generally share his aggressive stance toward the Lords. But Churchill was angry with the upper chamber because it had rejected the Licensing Bill, aimed at reducing the number of pubs in order to curb working-class drunkenness. Lucy Masterman recalls an infuriated Churchill saying that “we shall send them up a budget in June as shall terrify them. They have started the class war, they had better be careful.”48
Churchill Page 12