Churchill

  5

  Home and Colonial: New Nations, Strikes, and Gold

  As the general election of December 1918 took place, the Churchill family spent Christmas at Blenheim. It had been a good year for Churchill. After restoring his political fortunes following the Gallipoli debacle and rejoining the Cabinet’s inner sanctum, over a decade of continual high office opened up before him. It was to see Churchill grapple with the thorniest problems of imperial rule and national economic policy as nationalism became a clamant call around the world and as postwar economic trends pointed toward the “great depression.” This was to be a remarkable period for Churchill, during which he continued his post-Gallipoli restoration and again—incredibly—managed to switch political party without emasculating his ministerial career, though inevitably swelling the ranks of those who found him intolerable. He also sustained his position as a distinguished writer and journalist able to command terms as lucrative as any writer of the day.

  Lloyd George’s coalition won a massive electoral victory. Churchill, like many others, had chosen to cling to the coalition after the war had ended. Bonar Law, the Tory leader, was the mainstay of the coalition while the prime minister busied himself concluding the various peace treaties, requiring his absence from London for long periods. Churchill remained a prominent member of the government. In his mid-forties, he was remarkably young to have enjoyed such political longevity and attained such seniority. He had already proved himself the greatest political survivor of the twentieth century, and this was long before either his “finest hour” or his last hurrah as prime minister in the 1950s. Yet the political landscape in which he had been immersed since childhood was shifting all around. Social developments at home were unprecedented; Britain’s position as primus inter pares overseas was increasingly challenged by the rising power of America and Japan; and from below, the peoples of the world’s greatest empire sought either to shake off the imperial yoke or to renegotiate their position within an increasingly egalitarian Commonwealth. With regard to the various peace treaties that formalized the cessation of hostilities in Europe, Churchill advocated magnanimity toward the vanquished, putting him at odds with the majority of his colleagues and his constituents. Even while it was in progress, he believed that the peacemaking was being poorly handled and that Versailles contained within it the seeds of future conflict, indeed that it represented a mere break in what would transpire to be a thirty-year war. During the interwar years, he came increasingly to believe that the British political elite was throwing away the victory won so notably by the British Army and its allies in 1918 and progressively losing the will to lead and to defy wicked regimes.

  As Churchill journeyed from London to Blenheim in late December 1918, he had pondered Lloyd George’s offer of government office. His reply favored a return to the Admiralty, but by that time, things had already moved on in the prime minister’s mind. Thus Churchill was given the War Office with the new Air Ministry attached, his seventh (and eighth) office of state. Predictably, sections of the press deplored the appointment. The Morning Post said this “brilliant and erratic” man “would make a mess of anything he undertook. Character is destiny; there is some tragic flaw in Mr. Churchill which determines him on every occasion in the wrong course.”1 The work of both ministries, given the recent cessation of hostilities, revolved around demobilizing the swollen ranks of the military and managing its return to peacetime duties. Mutinies were in the offing, morale plummeting as men waited impatiently to go home. Churchill had to convince the prime minister, absorbed with the peacemaking in Paris, that the government faced an emergency situation. A new army demobilization plan was in place within two weeks of Churchill’s assuming office on January 10, 1919, based upon the length of a man’s service, his age, and the number of times he had been wounded. It was widely perceived to be fair, and morale improved. Churchill was then able to get on with the business of returning Britain’s military establishment to its peacetime shape, reducing an army of 3.5 million to a volunteer force of around 200,000 men and organizing several armies of occupation amounting to a million or more men. It was a delicate balancing act, because, as Churchill knew, if the army was run down too much, European security would suffer; while colleagues might demand a “peace dividend,” the security of Britain’s global interests in an unsettled world remained the paramount duty of government.

  Winston and the Bolsheviks

  Throughout the 1920s, Churchill excelled at handling political emergencies. A major focus of Churchill’s activities in the early postwar period was British intervention in the Russian civil war, and it dominated his time at the War Office. He was determined to block the prospect of a Bolshevik future for the empire so recently deprived of its monarchy and forced into a humiliating peace with Germany. In fact, he wanted “to strangle Bolshevism at birth,” as he put it, and sought to do so by supporting the “White” Russian forces against the “Reds.” As early as November 10, 1918, he told the War Cabinet that it was necessary to build up the German army “for fear of the spread of Bolshevism”2 (presaging his concerns in spring 1945 that it might soon be necessary to rearm the Germans to meet the emerging Soviet menace). His stance on Bolshevism was unequivocal: “In Russia a man is called a reactionary if he objects to having his property stolen, and his wife and children murdered.”3 As he said on April 11, 1919, “Of all the tyrannies in history the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, and the most degrading. It is sheer humbug to pretend that it is not far worse than German militarism. . . . The atrocities by Lenin and Trotsky are incomparably more hideous, on a larger scale, and more numerous than any for which the kaiser himself is responsible.”4 This was a theme he returned to three decades later. Speaking in January 1949, he told the Commons: “I think the day will come when it will be recognized without doubt, not only on one side of the House but throughout the civilized world, that the strangling of Bolshevism at birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race.”5

  British forces had been engaged within Russia’s borders since before the end of the war. On the subject of Bolshevism and Russia (as on numerous other subjects), Churchill could sound like a stuck record, more likely to turn listeners off than on. But this is an unavoidable pitfall for politicians of longevity, and at least Churchill had the power of his convictions to keep banging away at issues he held in passionate regard, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to say that on most of the big issues, Churchill had it right—including his verdict on the nature of the regime born in Russia in 1917 and taken to new levels of inhumanity under Stalin. Churchill thought that the British public might change its mind if it was made clear that the Bolsheviks were conducting mass atrocities.

  In the immediate post–First World War years, however, an exhausted Britain cared little about Russia and had no stomach for such an endeavor. This determined Britain’s role, which proceeded to be both inglorious and ineffective, though no great damage was done to Churchill’s reputation. Indeed, it did quite a lot to resurrect it in right-wing circles while arousing the hostility of many on the left, perpetuating the myth of Churchill as the hammer of the working class. The Morning Post, for so long a withering critic, swung back in Churchill’s favor, while the left-wing press regurgitated his past crimes, and the Labour Party’s distrust increased. Churchill’s Russian policy was based squarely upon the belief that Russia under the Bolsheviks was a greater threat to world peace than the kaiser’s Germany had ever been and that it threatened revolution throughout Europe. He railed against the “foul baboonery” of Bolshevism and the chasm separating communist rhetoric from actual practice. Churchill’s revulsion stemmed in part from his dislike of change and his regret that the world in which he had grown up had been fundamentally altered. “What a disappointment the Twentieth Century has been,” he wrote.6

  But employing large British forces to help smash Bolshevism was simply not practical politics at the time. The public and the army were hostile to the pr
ospect of large-scale intervention in Russia. Though Churchill might see in Bolshevism a threat far greater than almost anyone imagined, for most people it was a cloud not even descried on the horizon. Added to this was the popular idea that Bolshevism was an ideology that could uplift the workers, seen by many as a paragon of hope to be nurtured rather than charged down by British bayonets. Though Churchill urged robust intervention, the Americans opposed it, but he did manage to garner support for an inter-Allied war scheme that even had President Wilson’s tepid assent. Churchill’s success in drumming up this inter-Allied support both surprised and irritated Lloyd George. The prime minister deplored the fact that Churchill was “mad for operations in Russia.” “The problem with Winston,” he wrote, “is that he’s always taking action. He will insist on getting out his maps.” The prime minister had thought Churchill would be safe at the War Office, “but was he? Before I could look around, he’s got out his maps of Russia and we are making fools of ourselves in the Civil War.”7 Bonar Law referred testily to “Winston’s nonsense” about Russia, and this summed up the attitude of the prime minister and most of his colleagues. Lloyd George was compelled amid the postwar ruins to give priority to the way the world was rather than the way that it should be. From this point of view, having a senior and very vocal Cabinet colleague arguing for leniency in dealing with the Germans while warning of the menace of Russia was unhelpful.

  Politically, Lloyd George and Churchill were drifting apart—Lloyd George toward a rock on which he would be marooned without political support, Churchill toward a tempestuous reunion with the Conservatives that would lead him toward the two highest offices of state. Winston’s “carry on regardless” policy toward Russia was largely based upon a disregard, or misunderstanding, of the level of support that existed for the Bolsheviks. There was no public appetite for Churchill’s policy of backing General Denikin and the White Russians, and the public feared another major international conflict. This would eventually lead Lloyd George to conclude that Churchill was best away from the War Office. Thus, in February 1921, Winston would be shunted sideways to the Colonial Office, where the responsibilities were again global, but confined to parts of the world painted red on the map.

  Air Minister

  While serving as secretary of state for war from January 1919 until February 1921 (and as colonial secretary from February until April 1921), Churchill was also in charge of the fledgling Air Ministry. This was not to everyone’s liking, and Clementine wrote on March 9, 1919: “Do you not think it would be better to give up the Air. . . . It would be a sign of real strength to do so, & people would admire you very much. It is weak to hang on to 2 offices. . . . After all, you want to be a Statesman, not a juggler.” The undersecretary for air went so far as to complain to the prime minister that the infant Royal Air Force (RAF) suffered because of the many calls upon Churchill’s time. Churchill firmly rebuffed such claims, retorting that it was important to have a combative figure with proven military credentials at the helm. He had been an apostle of air power since its inception and now enthusiastically took up the arguments of Sir Hugh Trenchard, the chief of the Air Staff, proclaiming the RAF’s fitness for “sky policing” imperial troublespots at a fraction of the cost of the army. The RAF had demonstrated its potential in this direction by providing Britain’s presence in Somaliland and the new imperial acquisition of Iraq. Together Churchill and Trenchard argued the case for the continuation of an independent air force, and success in imperial policing gave them concrete examples of efficiency and cost-effectiveness on which to build their case and keep the RAF out of the clutches of the two established services.

  The association of Churchill’s name with the use of poison gas dates from his time at the Air Ministry. Gas had been widely used by both sides in the war and was seen as an efficient tool in imperial policing. Its use by the postwar air force is sometimes held up as an example of Churchill’s supposed callousness. But, notwithstanding changing attitudes, his position needs to be more clearly stated. The gas he was interested in for colonial policing was tear gas, not mustard gas intended to kill and maim. Contrary to some interpretations, in colonial policing, Churchill evinced sensitivity to the rights and wrongs of the use of force, even among so-called subject peoples. There always had to be discrimination and legality in the use of force, he claimed, and he advocated courts-martial for any RAF personnel alleged to have fired on women and children in Iraq. His views were relatively enlightened for his time, though of course problematic when considered from the distance of a hundred years. He believed in the rule of law as a protection to individuals’ rights and as a foundation of Western civilization. He also believed in Britain’s role as a great nation and in the importance of its empire for British security and for the benefit of its inhabitants. At this time, he spoke out strongly against the events and decisions that led to the Amritsar massacre, believing that the episode had a deleterious effect on British rule.

  Churchill’s performance as air minister has been criticized because of his lack of sustained focus on the job. This is particularly true in the realm of civil aviation, where not enough nurturing took place, especially given the desire of the Treasury for retrenchment in this period. Churchill’s attitude toward civil aviation stemmed from the common dislike of state intervention in private enterprise and a desire to let an industry that had been forced to grow up by war find its own way. As far as Churchill was concerned, beyond legislating and helping to finance infrastructure, there should be no subsidies to airline companies. “Civil aviation,” as he put it, “must fly by itself, the Government cannot possibly hold it up in the air.” But this starved a fledgling industry of necessary support, according to one historian, and “for two crucial years after the war, Churchill’s parsimony, negligence and disinterest meant that British aviation lost opportunities close to home and in the Empire . . . and lost forever its one chance to lead the world in air transport development.”8

  Colonial Affairs: The Middle East and Ireland

  The Middle East was a region of pressing importance for Britain, given its new territorial responsibilities there and the area’s continuing strategic significance. Up until this time, a hodgepodge of “British” institutions had been involved in the region’s affairs. The India Office, signifying the subcontinent’s role as the leading “British” agency in the Tigris valley, had overseen the affairs of Iraq and relations with Persia; Palestine, with its delicate racial dynamics, was a preserve of the Foreign Office, while the other Arab territories newly conquered from the Turks came under the wing of the Colonial Office. Churchill suggested that all should now come under the Colonial Office. Lloyd George agreed and promptly asked him, on New Year’s Day 1921, to take over that office (retaining also the Air Ministry). This was just the kind of opportunity that appealed to Churchill, as Lloyd George well knew. It gave him a chance to play kingmaker and to enter his name in the annals of history at a time when new kingdoms were in the making.

  Churchill’s change of job meant a return to the buildings of the Colonial Office in Downing Street (opposite Numbers 10 and 11) where he had served under Lord Elgin in his first government appointment. Churchill’s new office allowed his fertile imagination to wander over Britain’s vast imperial estate once again. Writing from his bed in Cannes in December 1921, he pictured Clementine far away, and “far beyond that again in outer circles of darkness ranges the wide colonial Empire and the Emerald Isle.” On February 3, 1922, he wrote that “these tasks & the Arabs & the Kenya folk & the Ishmaelis for Iraq & Palestine have kept me busy.”9 This was Britain’s “moment in the Middle East,” the beginning of the brief period in which Britain was master in this strategically vital region. Churchill fully appreciated the significance of this moment and was very interested in supervising this latest phase of British imperial expansion. The Middle East was one of the most difficult regions of the world in which to formulate imperial policy, and many contested Britain’s right to be there in the first place. C
hurchill’s instinct was to streamline the various strands of British Middle Eastern policy, and one of his conditions when accepting the Colonial Office was the creation of a Middle East Department within it. Naturally, this change irritated some, the Foreign Office seeing it as a bid by Churchill to make himself “an Asiatic Foreign Secretary.”10

  The Middle East was central to British world power, the “swing door” of imperial communications and the defense of India, source of the oil on which the Royal Navy and the British economy rested, and a location from which to influence and pressure rivals. After centuries of British growth in the region, it supported a hodgepodge of competing imperial interests. Though all allegedly on the same “side,” the India Office, the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the War Office, the Admiralty, and more recently, the Air Ministry all had a say in Middle Eastern policy and usually had their own distinct agendas to pursue. In these early postwar years, Middle Eastern affairs were more fluid and complicated than ever before, because Britain’s stake in the region, and its territorial footprint, had undergone a remarkable growth owing to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its erstwhile domains. As the primary Allied power in the region, operating from its Egyptian stronghold, Britain emerged with the lion’s share of the spoils—Iraq, Palestine, and Trans-Jordan—and the political headaches that went with them.