by Paul Johnson
He also loved his job, with its telegrams, king’s messengers in uniform, red leather dispatch boxes, and important visitors, black, yellow, and white, from all over the world. He was certainly conspicuous. His name came up in a conversation between Rudyard Kipling, the Orpheus of the empire, and one of its greatest builders, Cecil Rhodes—how one wishes a transcript had survived. Churchill paid an official visit to the East African colonies in 1907, traveling with his devoted secretary “Eddie” Marsh, a fixture in his official life for the next twenty-five years. Going up from the coast to the Ugandan plateau by the new railway, Churchill described it as “like travelling up the beanstalk into fairyland.” He made the most of the trip uphill by standing on the cowcatcher of the engine as it puffed its way through the jungle, a typical Churchill touch of vainglory which duly made its way into the newspapers and caused tut-tut-ting. In Uganda and Kenya he went on safari with Marsh and 350 porters. In India he had stuck wild pig but could not afford big game. Now he shot rhino, zebra, wildebeest, and gazelle, sending his trophies back to London to be stuffed and mounted by the leading taxidermist, Rowland Ward of Piccadilly. Oddly enough, through a characteristic piece of Churchillian expediency, to avoid criticism of misuse of public funds the trip had been paid for by the Strand Magazine, and in return he wrote articles which, extended to book form, became My African Journey. Like so many of his activities, this combination of office with journalism would be impossible now. Indeed, it raised eyebrows at the time.
Churchill had become a Privy Counsellor that year; and the next, when H. H. Asquith succeeded “C-B” as prime minister, he was brought into the cabinet. Going to the Colonial Office had been Churchill’s idea. He had originally been offered the plum job of financial secretary to the treasury, but he had preferred to work off his global ideas for the colonies (his book is full of schemes for industrializing Africa and harnessing the Nile). Now, however, he wanted to get his teeth into home politics and eagerly accepted Asquith’s invitation to succeed Lloyd George, who was promoted to chancellor of the exchequer, as president of the Board of Trade. It was dazzling to reach cabinet rank when only thirty-four, and the post also brought the opportunity to work with LG, with whom he forged a precarious friendship and a more solid policy alliance to bring about an English version of the “welfare state” Bismarck had introduced in Germany.
Churchill realized he was about to embark on his first major adventure in politics, and he wanted to put his private life in order. He had already (January 2, 1906) paid his debt to his family by publishing his magnificent Lord Randolph Churchill. As his cousin Ivor Guest put it, “Few fathers had done less for their sons. Few sons have done more for their fathers.” Now he wanted a family of his own. An eligible bachelor, he had dutifully fallen in love with various girls, or thought he had, and waltzed around Mayfair ballrooms. But he made little effort to dance in step: not his line. “I trod on the Prince of Wales’s toe,” he recorded complacently, “and heard him yelp.” In August 1908 he proposed to Clementine Hozier, daughter of the late Colonel Sir Henry Hozier, secretary of Lloyd’s. Other girls had set their caps at him, including Asquith’s daughter Violet, and some of them had substantial dots. But Clemmie suited him, and he loved her. He always put happiness before money. Anyway, he never had any doubt he could earn anything required. As he laid down, “Income should be expanded to meet expenditure.” They were quickly married, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, Parliament’s parish church, in September, and the event was not allowed to crowd out political activities. His best man was the fiercest of England’s political tribe, Lord Hugh Cecil, head of the Tory “ultra” pressure group known as the Hughligans, and in the vestry, while the registers were being signed, Churchill had time to have a plotting whisper with LG. He used the honeymoon to complete and dispatch to the printers his African book.
Among all the twentieth-century ruling elites, the Churchills must be judged to have had the most successful marriage. It can be said with reasonable certitude that each was totally faithful to the other. She devoted herself completely to her remarkable husband, gave him much good (usually liberal) advice, which was not always taken, comforted him in his many career mishaps, and calmed him down when he was triumphant. “He always insists I am by him,” she said, “and then promptly forgets my existence.” True, but he never looked at another woman. They had one son, Randolph, and four daughters, Diana, Sarah, Marigold (who died in infancy), and Mary.
The marital fidelity of the Churchills was a remarkable fact, for the way the Commons works tends to erode vows on both sides. Then, too, both parties had promiscuous mothers. Lady Blanche Hozier, daughter of the Earl of Airlie, had many lovers while her husband was still alive, nine at one time, it was said. Clemmie was not Hozier’s daughter but there is no certainty who her father was. The most likely candidate was a flirtatious cavalry officer, “Bay” Middleton, but another possibility was Bertram Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale, Nancy Mitford’s grandfather. If so, it is curious to think that Mrs. Churchill was her aunt. Jennie Churchill also had a number of lovers while Lord Randolph was still alive, and they may even have included Middleton. After Lord Randolph’s death she had more, and then made two marriages to younger men, before having one of her falls, through wearing ultrahigh heels, which led to mortification, amputation of her leg, and death (in 1921). There is no doubt Churchill was the son of Lord Randolph. But it is a remarkable fact that the children of such persistent adulteresses should have made such a faithful couple. Given Churchill’s adventurous and reckless nature, and his appetite for sensation, his fidelity is notable. It may be that he put all his energy into his political life. Certainly, the marriage was spared many of the irritating rubs of close proximity, for Churchill’s hours—up late arguing with colleagues, rising at lunchtime after working in bed—meant that they led separate existences under the same roof: they each had their own bedroom, right from the start. Whatever the reason, fidelity was a godsend and an important contributing factor to Churchill’s success, for he was saved all the worry and emotional storm which adultery provokes.
Churchill delighted in his marriage. He was a happy man. Against this background, the years from 1908 proved the most fruitful of his life in terms of the legislation, on the whole highly successful, which he pushed through Parliament. These had the overriding aim of helping the poor, the unemployed, and the lower-paid working class. They included the Trade Boards Act (1909), ending “sweated labour”; the establishment of labor exchanges, to enable employees to fill jobs more quickly; the first National Insurance Act (1911), to provide unemployment pay; allowances for children to set against income tax; the Mines Act (1911), which transformed conditions in the chronically unhappy coal trade; and the Shops Act, which eventually helped shop assistants by requiring a tea break and imposing early closing. For the first time millions of lower-paid workers got a weekly half holiday. Churchill supervised every detail of this extremely complex program, defending it clause by clause in the Commons. He was impelled by a genuine passion for the least fortunate members of society, by a strong belief that society could be made both humane and more efficient, and by his feeling that revolution, of which there were rumblings all over the world at this time, could only be averted by judicious reforms. Other countries were introducing changes, but for a comparable achievement one has to look to the domestic program of Woodrow Wilson in the United States. Churchill’s reforms were not his work alone. For the first time he demonstrated his wonderful ability to galvanize civil servants into furious activity and dramatic innovations, and his equal skill in bringing to Whitehall brilliant outsiders, such as William Beveridge, who ran the new labor exchanges and who was later to produce the famous Beveridge Report (1943), the plan on which Britain’s welfare state was completed.
Of course, the political giant behind the reforms was the chancellor of the exchequer, Lloyd George, who provided the money. The introduction of old-age pensions in particular—which struck people at the time as the most sensation
al of the novelties—was his achievement. But Churchill supported him passionately, having the case of Mrs. Everest in his mind: he was always most strongly motivated by personal experience and individual cases. The two worked together to bring the great fleet of measures into harbor, wafted by the winds of their oratory. As speakers they were very different. Churchill had always prepared his set speeches carefully but not word for word. In 1904, however, he had the horrible experience of “drying up” in the Commons, when apparently in full flow. Thereafter he learned everything by heart, rehearsed and timed himself, and left nothing to chance. The Commons was, as a rule, a rapt audience. Lloyd George was an inspirational leader on the Welsh preacher model. He thought and spoke on his feet, and expected the House to interrupt, to participate, and so to inspire sallies, jokes, splashes of venom, and apothegms. He created dramatic pauses and raised hubbubs. So his speaking rate was slower measured in words delivered per minute—85 to Churchill’s 111, with Gladstone’s 100 as the standard. But the excitement of a Lloyd George speech was intense: you did not know what he would say, and often it came as a surprise, even to the speaker. Later in his life Churchill had to compete for the title of best Commons orator with another Welshman, Aneurin Bevan, who like LG often thought on his feet and was capable of devastating impromptus, especially to interrupters. When I heard both men in the 1950s, I rated Bevan more highly; and Sir Robert Boothby, who was Churchill’s parliamentary private secretary in the twenties, close to Lloyd George, and a friend and drinking companion of Bevan’s, told me that LG was the best of the three at actually moving the House and changing opinions. However, Churchill’s method was right for him and proved invaluable when, in due course, he addressed vast audiences, worldwide, in solemn settings. Moreover, while LG’s speeches do not read particularly well (nor do Bevan’s), Churchill’s orations, in print, usually carry all the resonance of his voice with them: they are magnificent prose, too.
If Churchill and LG carried through a peaceful revolution together, they were not equals. To LG, the radical by birth, upbringing, race, emotional instinct, and voracious appetite for change, to thrust down the mighty from their seats and exalt the poor was his religion and his delight. Both he and Churchill opposed the over-ambitious race with Germany to build the most battleships. But only LG could, and did, say, “Dukes are more expensive than Dreadnoughts, and often more dangerous! ”
Churchill was carried forward by intellectual conviction, but his reverence for tradition acted as a brake, and LG delighted in taunting him about his burden of “strawberry leaves and Blenheim.” Inverting the usual hierarchy, he had a superior social position to Churchill, which reinforced his seniority in years, parliamentary experience, and honed political skills. So he was by far the senior partner. Churchill saw it in even more ignominious terms, especially in retrospect. In the mid-1920s, when Churchill was riding high as chancellor of the exchequer, and LG was out of office, for good as it turned out, Boothby sought to heal the breach between the two men—they had scarcely spoken since LG’s government broke up in 1922—by bringing the Welshman to Churchill’s private room at the Commons for a private chat. After LG slipped away, Boothby went in and found Churchill slumped in somber thought. “Well, how did it go?” “Oh, very well. Within five minutes we were right back in our old relationship.” “What was that?” “Master and servant.”
At the time Churchill was too busy and excited to worry about his subservience, for his horizons continued to expand. In 1910 he was promoted to home secretary. This gave added weight to his role in the reform program but also allowed him to take direct action. All his life he refused to be bound to a desk. He insisted on seeing for himself. His imprisonment by the Boers had given him a horror of confinement, so he visited prisons, conferred with wardens, talked to prisoners alone—probably the first home secretary to do so—and introduced administrative changes, such as regular supplies of books and entertainment. He began the process whereby the incarceration of children was ended. His approach aroused irritation among the possessing classes. Among his duties as home secretary was to send a daily written report to the king when Parliament was sitting. Edward VII had always enjoyed Churchill’s jokes and often irreverent approach to politics. George V, who succeeded him in 1910, was less sure of himself, had a much cruder sense of humor, and never could quite see the point of Churchill. His racy letters often appeared improper to the new king. In November 1911 the home secretary wrote that his office was considering labor colonies to deal with “tramps and wastrels.” He added: “It must not, however, be forgotten that there are idlers and wastrels at both ends of the social scale.” This produced an explosion of anger in the king, who accused the author of “very socialistic views.” But Churchill, who was never content to be silent or inactive when the opportunity to say or do something interesting presented itself, got into trouble with the Socialists and their trade union allies, too. A miners’ strike at Tonypandy in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales threatened to be beyond the powers of the local police to control. Churchill ordered troops to the area as a deterrent. This was a bold thing to do, bound to arouse resentment among both militant trade unionists and Tory armchair critics who disliked Churchillian “theatricals” as they called them—two excellent reasons, in his view, why he should do it. In fact it succeeded. The police were able to disperse the miners by using their rolled-up mackintoshes—they did not even need to draw their truncheons. The general on the spot, Neville Macready, testified: “It was entirely due to Mr. Churchill’s forethought that bloodshed was avoided.” But the accusation was made and persisted—it still does among trade unionists—that Churchill ordered the army to fire on the miners. “Remember Tonypandy” was a bitter hustings cry used against Churchill at every election thereafter.
A more sensational episode followed. The British were used to Irish “outrages” but in the years before the wars they had to put up with a new menace, international terrorists termed anarchists. The phenomenon is well treated in Conrad’s novel Under Western Eyes. Among those ranked as anarchists were a gang of Latvian immi grants under a man called Peter the Painter. They had already killed three policemen while tunneling into a jeweler’s shop, and in January 1911 they were holed up in a house in Sidney Street in London’s East End. Churchill was advised to send a party of Scots Guards from the Tower of London to help the police. He was delighted to agree, and went also in person to see the “siege,” dragging with him Eddie Marsh, the poetry lover and art collector out of office hours, who was terrified. Photographers were present and the newspapers showed the home secretary, apparently directing police and soldiers, wearing a top hat and a beautiful coat with fur lining and astrakhan collar. When a fire broke out in the besieged house he certainly gave orders to the fire brigade: “Let it burn.” Two charred bodies were later found in the ruins. Balfour, who never did anything active if he could help it (except to play golf), asked maliciously in the Commons, “I understand what the photographer was doing. But what was the Right Honourable Gentleman doing?” This episode became another weighty item in the anti-Churchill dossier, and the photo of Churchill at the siege was reproduced thousands of times, and still is. Hard to see, today, what he did wrong. A minister with direct experience of how violent crime is handled is of more use than one who merely reads reports. Besides, Churchill enjoyed it: he assured his colleague Charles Masterman, “It was such fun.” When a fuss was made about corporal punishment of criminals, and various specially designed rods and birches were produced, Churchill and Eddie Marsh flogged themselves with them in the home secretary’s office. That was fun, too. As such it was in contrast to his general experience as home secretary, which he found grim: “Of all the offices I have held,” he told a newspaper in the midthirties, “this was the one I liked least.” He particularly disliked exercising the power of the home secretary to confirm death sentences or commute them to life imprisonment. Of the forty-three cases that came before him, he commuted twenty-one. Churchill was never a supporter
of abolition of capital punishment. He thought long incarceration much more horrible. But the night before a hanging he brooded on the condemned man’s fate: it was one of the very few worries which ever robbed him of his sleep.
All the same, Churchill later admitted that he relished the years before the First World War more than any other period of his career. We tend to think of them as a halcyon age of peace, prosperity, and pleasure, the last in English history. In fact it was an age of turbulence, and that is one reason Churchill enjoyed it so much. It was not the world war which ended the ancien régime but the years before it: the war was merely one of the symptoms of the change. There is a remarkable book, The Strange Death of Liberal England, in which George Dangerfield presents the epoch in this light, a time of frenzy, extremism, and incipient violence, banishing the old Liberal slogan of “Peace, Prosperity and Reform,” and with it all tranquillity in public life. The unions were active as never before, taking full advantage of their virtual immunity to actions for damages caused by strikes, which the Liberals had unwisely conferred on them in 1906. The suffragettes were turning from protest to direct action, were being brutally arrested, sent to prison, and forcibly fed when they resorted to hunger strikes. In 1909, to pay for the welfare state, Lloyd George introduced a budget which taxed land values, so hitting hard the aristocracy, and increased taxation generally. Breaking a long tradition under which the House of Lords automatically passed finance bills agreed by the Commons, the Lords rejected it, the Tories using their overwhelming built-in majority there. Asquith had either to withdraw or tone down the budget, to create peers to enable it to be passed—which King George initially declined to do—or to go to the country. But two elections in 1910 failed to decide the matter, though they robbed the Liberals of their huge majority over all parties, forcing Asquith to rely on Irish support in order to go on governing. That in turn forced him to buy the Irish MPs by giving them a Home Rule bill, which further angered the Tories and their Ulster Protestant allies, who threatened violence and began to arm themselves.
