He was deeply perturbed by the military vacuum emerging in Western Europe. On the home front he accused Labour of perpetuating shortages and failing to address the chronic lack of housing. Rab Butler was tasked with developing new policy lines for the Conservatives to try on the electorate, though Churchill was not keen on presenting too many hostages to fortune; not having fixed policies was, to his mind, one of the benefits of being in opposition. On 11 January 1950 Attlee announced the dissolution of Parliament and the prospect of a general election brought Churchill home from a holiday in Madeira. His campaign speeches and broadcasts were more listened to than those of Prime Minister Attlee, demonstrating his political and personal celebrity despite age and opposition. But although the Conservatives performed much better than in the election of 1945, their recovery was not sufficient to achieve power, though enough to ensure that Attlee’s second Labour government could be nowhere near as radical as the first. Churchill’s attacks on Labour often lacked resonance with the wider electorate, even if they titillated the converted. Addressing the Scottish Unionist Conference in Perth, he said “we are oppressed by a deadly fallacy. Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”17 Another election soon followed, and this time the Labour government was ousted.
Prime Minister Again
Having won the 1951 general election, Churchill was back in 10 Downing Street, his London abode at Hyde Park Gate rented out to the Cuban ambassador. The change of government did not lead to a great deal of political flux, Churchill’s administration basking in the light of a recovering economic position that permitted Britain to become independent of Marshall Aid in 1951. Churchill relished the job, the bustle associated with purposeful activity, and the exercise of power. Advisers, secretaries, and red boxes came and went, though his desire to avoid complicated domestic issues or lengthy papers, tendencies that had become noticeable during his previous stint as prime minister, remained. Churchill enunciated his reasons for staying in office and for not, as he put it, taking the easy course of “retiring in an odour of civic freedoms,” a course of action that “had crossed my mind frequently some months ago”:18
If I remain in public life at this juncture it is because, rightly or wrongly, but sincerely, I believe that I may be able to make an important contribution to the prevention of a third world war and to bringing nearer that lasting peace settlement which the masses of the people in every race and in every land fervently desire. I pray indeed that I may have this opportunity. It is the last prize I seek to win.19
Despite his having frequently inveighed against “socialism” and its alleged erosion of the incentive to work and to excel, there was no chance of the Conservatives turning the clock back on the legislative achievements of the Attlee government. This was an era of broad agreement between the two major parties on most domestic and international issues. Denationalization was not a central policy plank of the new Conservative government, and the architecture of the National Health Service was left alone. Collectivism and nationalization were in vogue, and even the Conservatives did not entirely abstain. The new era of the managerial and welfare state was to be a bipartisan endeavor. It was also one that Churchill had already been involved with, as it was under his wartime leadership that state intervention in people’s lives, and state ownership, had advanced to an unprecedented degree. The Labour government had created a broad network of social services to protect people and brought about 20 percent of the country’s productive capacity under public ownership. Unemployment remained a problem throughout the period of Attlee’s government, and food rationing lingered depressingly. The Conservatives were pledged to major social reforms, including the construction of 300,000 new homes a year. Furthermore, the love affair between sections of British society and the Soviet Union was beginning to cool as the chill of the Cold War set in. The “Uncle Joe” image of Russia was being replaced by a more sinister picture of a brutal state. Freedom, once again, was juxtaposed with totalitarianism, the state versus the individual.
In appointing his new government, Churchill ignored the claims of the Tory party and appointed wartime colleagues and men from outside of politics. General Ismay became secretary of state for Commonwealth Affairs, General Alexander (from March 1952) served as Minister of Defense. Eden returned to the Foreign Office, and Harold Macmillan was tasked with delivering the manifesto’s housing pledge. At seventy-seven, Churchill relished the task but was less capable than he had been. He was going deaf, domestic affairs often bored him, and he did not have the appetite for working nights that he once had had and never regained the discipline required to keep on top of voluminous paperwork. But he still had fight; as he said in May 1952 in the Commons, “The spectacle of a number of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me.”20 He dominated his Cabinet and clearly viewed many of his colleagues as rather unimportant necessities. Chancellor Adenauer opined that if he were recreating the world, he would “put a limit on man’s intelligence without putting a limit on man’s stupidity.” “That would not do,” Churchill replied, “because it would deprive me of many of my Cabinet members.”21 In 1953, he agreed that a minister be relieved of office but not be granted a peerage. “No, but perhaps a disappearage” was his comment.22
As had been the case during the war, Churchill was happy to allow others to look after domestic matters. As long as they kept things steady, he preferred to concentrate on foreign policy. His overwhelming focus in this period was on restoring Britain’s world position, the menace of the Cold War, and the proper restoration (as he saw it) of the “special relationship” with America. It was against a backdrop of Britain’s declining place in the world that Churchill had to act. “We are resolved to make this Island solvent, able to earn its living and pay its way . . . we have no assurance that anyone else is going to keep the British Lion as a pet.”23 As he wrote on July 11, 1952, “It is a very bleak outlook—with all our might, majesty, dominion & power imperiled by having to pay the crashing Bill each week. I have never seen things so tangled & tiresome. But we must persevere.”24 Ten days later, he described his government’s labors: “Inside our circle we toil continuously at plans to pay our way. The problems are baffling & bewildering because of their number & relationship. What to cut, & all the hideous consequences of the choice. . . . Indeed we were left a dismal inheritance! Beneath all the party malice there is a realization of the facts. But the nation is divided into 2 party-machines grinding away at one another with tireless vigor,” he said, giving voice to his lifelong dislike of the party system. The decisions he was required to take, he said, were worse than those of the war years. Yet humor and fun remained part of Churchill’s makeup. In 1952, considering the merits of British or American rifles, Field Marshal Slim had said: “I suppose we shall end up with some mongrel weapon, half British and half American.” “Pray, moderate your language, Field Marshal,” Churchill said. “That’s an exact description of me.”25 Opposing a proposal to fly forty MPs to Italy in a single plane, Alan Lennox-Boyd said, “You don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket.” The reply: “On the contrary, I don’t want all those baskets in one egg.”26
Churchill’s overriding concern about the Cold War and his undiminished faith in face-to-face diplomacy meant more summits (including four transatlantic visits during his second tenure as prime minister). In January 1952, he went to see President Truman and visited Canada. A year later, he was in Washington to see President Eisenhower, his wartime friend, followed by a holiday in Jamaica. In December 1953, there was a conference in Bermuda, and in June 1954, Churchill was a guest in the White House and again visited Ottawa. Churchill believed that peace in the face of the Soviet threat could only be preserved through rock-solid Anglo-American unity and resolve. He was, however, often disappointed by the response of the Americans, which in part reflected the extent to which Washington had supplanted London as the capital of the Western a
lliance and the extent to which America preferred a unilateral approach to Moscow as opposed to the united approach advocated by Churchill. President Truman did not see an alliance with the British empire-Commonwealth as desirable. For many Americans, alliance with an “empire” about which they had historical reservations was problematic. For his part, Churchill was disturbed by Eisenhower’s apparent inability to see just how dangerous the atomic bomb was.
The early months of Churchill’s second administration brought echoes of both the old and the new. When in 1952, for the third time in his life, he addressed both houses of Congress, a congressman’s wife remarked: “I felt that the British Empire was walking into the room.”27 Churchill remained committed to the empire, despite the loss of Burma, Ceylon, India, Palestine, and Pakistan under the Labour government, though he left general policy matters to his subordinates and presided over negotiations to end Britain’s base rights in Egypt, even though he regretted having to do so, largely at the insistence of Eden and the Foreign Office. Though Labour derided his apparent “scuttle” and Churchill hated bearing “the odium” of “Anthony’s policy,” the strategic sense of quitting Egypt was as undeniable as its reflection of changing power balances in the world. His Commons speech elegantly disarmed the critics by casting the withdrawal against the nightmare background of “the incredible calamities of a war of annihilation.”28 As he put it to the Commons in July 1954, “the strategic value of Egypt and the Canal has been enormously reduced by modern developments of warfare.”29 As regards the British empire beyond the Middle East and South Asia, there was not much going on in terms of the next wave of decolonization, which occurred after Churchill had left office (the Sudan gained independence in 1956, Ghana and Malaysia in 1957). “The Empire I believed in has gone,” he said, though he did all he could to preserve Britain’s position in the world.
Another key area Churchill focused upon was Europe, where, despite his advocacy of closer unity, he disliked French proposals for a European Defence Community, seeing in it the potential for military inefficiency and weakened national control. This signaled the parting of the ways between Britain and the early advocates of European integration, as the six major players (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany) decided they would have to go forward alone. Thus the Coal and Steel Community came into being in August 1952, and then the six founders, through the Treaty of Rome in 1957, went on to found the European Economic Community. Signifying at this time Britain’s belief in a continued independent world role despite commitments and constraints emanating from America and Europe, in October 1952, the first British nuclear tests took place in the Montebello Islands off North West Australia, making Britain the third power to possess the bomb. This was central to a defense policy, advocated by both Churchill and many others in the main political parties, based upon deterrence. It meant a declining focus on conventional forces and an increase in capabilities able to support the deterrence policy, such as V bombers to carry the atomic bombs to the Soviet Union in the event of war. But the economy remained a worrying threat to Britain’s ability to perform the functions of a Great Power. As Churchill wrote in October 1952, “It seems hard indeed that we shd get no credit for saving the country from Bankruptcy.”
Churchill earnestly desired an equal partnership with America on atomic weapons, though America reneged on wartime agreements and the postwar Labour government had been unable to protect them. Churchill’s belief in Anglo-American partnership had always tended toward the wishful, especially as the special relationship became an unequal one. On this front, Churchill displayed a naive ignorance of American politics. The McMahon Act of 1946 prevented America from sharing atomic information with any other power, and writing to Truman was not going to change this. When Churchill returned to power, he found Eisenhower impressively stubborn on relations with Russia and resistant to his campaign of personal diplomacy.
In April 1953, the Order of the Garter was conferred on Churchill. Founded by Edward III, the order represented Britain’s highest honor, in the personal gift of the sovereign and consisting of only twenty-five knights. On his investiture, Churchill wore the insignia that his forebear the 1st Duke of Marlborough had worn when admitted to the order in 1702. The summer of 1953 brought the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Churchill was resolved to play his part, and the determination to assist the new monarch strengthened his appetite for staying in office, further delaying Anthony Eden’s anticipated accession. Churchill presided over five plenary sessions of the Commonwealth conference and entertained the Dominions’ leaders, now including the leaders of independent South Asia, at 10 Downing Street. He attended the Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead, but his health let him down on June 23, 1953, when, while entertaining the Italian prime minister at Downing Street, he suffered a severe stroke. The stroke came when Churchill felt he was “at the peak of my opportunities” regarding world affairs and his quest to establish better relations with Russia and its allies.30 Though his recovery over the rest of the summer was remarkable, and secrecy surrounded the extent of his illness, this was a hammer blow from which Churchill never fully recovered. Many have suggested that it was the God-appointed time for him to have left office. But he soldiered on, because he believed he could “save the world,” and because he feared that only death awaited him once he retired. Medically, his recovery was astounding; amphetamines (“majors,” “minors,” “dwarfs,” “babies,” and “Morans”) regulated his sleep, and meticulous preparation, including a reversion to rehearsing set-piece speeches (such as to the Tory conference in Margate in October 1953) in the “Looking-Glass,” helped the performance. Winston “seems to a doctor’s eye,” Moran wrote, “to be designed on lines quite different from the rest of mankind.”31
The Tory party and the government carried on without him, and without Eden, too, who was also ill. Rab Butler deputized as acting prime minister, and Churchill did not appear in the House of Commons again until October. He went to the Riviera in September to aid his recovery though still did not believe it was time for him to leave office, focused as he was upon the need for a summit with the Russians. A meeting with Eisenhower, scheduled to take place in Bermuda in July but delayed because of his illness, finally took place in December 1953. In this period, Churchill was in conversation with himself about whether he should stay or go. Sometimes, feeling like “a specimen, a kind of survival” or a physical “hulk, eating and excreting,” he thought he should give the job up to Eden. The next moment, however, he would defiantly claim that Eden wasn’t up to the job and that only he could secure a brightening of relations between West and East. This was “the one consuming purpose,” shaded, too, by the fear of retirement and the loss of power. Lord Moran kept a regular eye on his health, and his son-in-law Christopher Soames and his long-standing secretaries kept an eye on his work and the opinions of colleagues and the Tory party. Those around him noted a new serenity, as well as a loss of tenacity and a tendency to be a lazy prime minister. He was hurt by press suggestions that his time was up and particularly by Harold Macmillan’s efforts to get him to go in January 1955.
Clementine thought her husband should not have returned to office, partly because he had so much to lose in terms of reputation and partly because of the strain upon his health and home life. Surely now card games, writing, and painting were the appropriate pursuits of a man of international renown, a time to reap the rewards of unparalleled status. But Churchill loved being before the public and loved power. More important, he felt that he could do a job as an international statesman that no other British politician could. He pursued the holy grail of a top-level meeting with the Russian leader that would reduce the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon that threatened the planet. As it was, he was able to some extent to combine a semiretirement from politics with his manifold other pursuits: bezique became a passion, and he read more novels than he’d done since his youth, C. S. Forester’s Death to the French being observed in his hand as he flew f
rom Gander in Newfoundland to Bermuda in late 1953. He read Wuthering Heights, Quentin Durward, and Trollope. He was a laissez-faire leader of the Conservative Party and now only an occasional parliamentary performer.
Churchill sought unity with America while that country sought, among other things, to supplant Britain’s international position. Perhaps America was only responding to the logical impulse of power—to subordinate weaker peers and potential competitors until they became at best junior allies and, at worst, proxies. The British, during their days of pomp, had done the same to the Portuguese and the Dutch. Churchill has been accused of neglecting Europe in favor of the white rabbit of the “special relationship,” even though it was clear in the spheres of trade, foreign policy, and nuclear technology that the Americans were not prepared to welcome Britain and were in some cases hostile toward it. Truman did not share Churchill’s vision of a postwar world in which a still imperial Britain walked hand in hand with America as a leader of the “free world.” His successor, Eisenhower, thought Churchill’s conception of international realpolitik too sentimental by half and had stubborn opinions on the evils of communism that had little time for summitry as a major tool.
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