by Richard Toye
Churchill’s immediate response to Chamberlain’s démarche was sceptical. The Unionists should follow a policy of imperialism, he declared, ‘but not one of one-sided Imperialism’.18 However, his support for free trade was not of the knee-jerk variety. A year earlier, he had written privately that although his instinct was against an imperial customs union, he wanted to see the arguments for it ‘set out in black and white; for after all it is primarily a matter of profit and loss’. It might, he thought, be in Britain’s interests to give Empire countries tariff concessions ‘in return for some substantial accession of military strength – such as is undoubtedly in their power to confer’.19 He seems to have had his free-trade instincts confirmed by a book by Leo Chiozza Money, a radical journalist and future Liberal MP, in which it was argued that Britain could not afford to give preference to colonial goods, as her colonies simply could not produce enough food and raw materials to supply her in sufficient quantities.20 It took some months for his views to harden fully, but in November 1903, two months after Chamberlain had resigned from the Cabinet to pursue his campaign in the country, Churchill pulled out the stops in a speech made on Chamberlain’s home turf. The view of Empire he laid out was in clear contrast to the materialism of the tariff reformers. Drawing on his own experience, he ridiculed the idea that the loyalty of the Canadians and the Australians, who had given vital help during the Boer War, would melt away for ever unless it were purchased by a trifling preference on their exports.
I have seen enough in peace and war of the frontiers of our Empire to know that the British dominion all over the world could not endure for a year, perhaps not for a month, if it was founded upon a material basis. The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.21
He developed this theme further in the years that followed. In a key speech at the 1907 Colonial Conference, he expanded on his view that the Empire was a family and not a syndicate. There was no anti-colonial party in Britain, he noted, but forcing the House of Commons to consider each year, through its regulation of preferential tariffs, the narrow ‘profit-and-loss account’ of Britain’s relations with her dependencies and Dominions, would be guaranteed to create one. Furthermore, any meaningful system of preference would involve taxing food imports. (This was because the Empire countries mainly produced food and raw materials, and so Britain could not give their exports preferential treatment unless she put tariffs on non-Empire goods of the same class.) And the ‘imposition of duties upon the necessaries of life and of industry’ would cause popular resentment, breeding amongst the poor ‘a deep feeling of sullen hatred of the Colonies, and of Colonial affairs’. It followed that preferential tariffs ‘even if economically desirable, would prove an element of strain and discord in the structure and system of the British Empire’ (emphasis added).22 They would, as he later put it, make the Empire odious to the British working people.23 These arguments point forcefully to the lesson that the electorate, when it rejected imperial preference in the Liberal landslide of 1906, was not, as is sometimes asserted, showing its indifference to the Empire as a whole. Rather, it was rejecting one particular concept of it. Likewise, when critics such as Amery (an ardent Chamberlainite) later bemoaned Churchill’s supposed Little Englandism, they were in fact denying the legitimacy of his actual imperial vision. It is worth noting, though, that Churchill seemed to think that the non-material ties of affection that in his view bound the Empire together could be damaged remarkably easily by material concerns such as higher food prices.
II
Churchill was far from the sole ‘Imperialist Free Trader’ in the Conservative Party, but the opponents of Chamberlain were increasingly beleaguered.24 Churchill himself ran into trouble with his constituency party. In November 1903 he was refused a hearing at one of the Oldham Conservative Clubs, a hard comedown for one who had so recently been ‘the demi-god of the local Tories’.25 The following January, the Oldham Conservative Association passed a resolution declaring its lack of confidence in him. By this time, with no sign that a centre party would emerge, he had already decided to join the reunited and invigorated Liberals. On 31 May 1904 he formally crossed the floor of the House of Commons, having already been chosen as Liberal candidate for North-West Manchester at the next election. The process of adaptation was assisted by the fact that his new colleagues had put their differences over the Boer War behind them, but it was not without its challenges. Although the Liberal Party as a whole was by no means anti-imperialist, there were Radicals within its ranks who were sceptical about British expansion and who were often critical of the way that the Empire was run in practice. As a junior minister in the Colonial Office, responsible for defending its activities in the House of Commons, Churchill would have to take some account of the humanitarian (some would have said sentimental) preoccupations of Liberal backbenchers. One cannot say, however, that his imperial discourse underwent any dramatic shift as a result of his switch of parties. This was because he already belonged to a centre-ground consensus about the Empire in British politics, of which prominent Liberals such as Sir Edward Grey and H. H. Asquith were a part, and from which it could plausibly be claimed that the Tories, under Chamberlain’s inspiration, were moving away.
So Churchill’s alliance with the Liberals, although undeniably helpful to his career, was no mere marriage of convenience. Aside from the crucial issue of trade, there was a growing congruence between his ideas and those of so-called New Liberals sympathetic to greater state involvement in social welfare. His interest in social reform was longstanding, and had been stimulated in part by imperial concerns. In The Story of the Malakand Field Force he had decried the state’s failure to take adequate care of discharged wounded soldiers.26 In 1901 he was shocked by the revelations in Seebohm Rowntree’s famous study of poverty in York. In an unpublished review of the book he wrote, with no small tinge of irony:
Let it be granted that nations exist and peoples labour to produce armies with which they conquer other nations, and the nation best qualified to do this is of course the most highly civilised and the most deserving of honour. But supposing the common people shall be so stunted and deformed in body as to be unfit to fill the ranks the army corps may lack. And thus – strange as it may seem, eccentric almost incredible to write – our Imperial reputation is actually involved in their condition.27
He wrote privately at this time that he could ‘see little glory in an Empire which can rule the waves and is unable to flush its sewers’.28 The Conservative Party was not innately hostile to social reform, but it had failed to deliver much of substance.29 Churchill did not have a clear set of plans – as late as the election of 1906 he argued for voluntary as opposed to state action to help the poor – but then neither, at this stage, did the Liberal Party.30 To ask if he was motivated by compassion, or by concern for the health of the Empire, is to miss the point. He was motivated by both these things; in his mind there was no tension between targeting help at the less well off for altruistic reasons and using social reform to increase ‘National Efficiency’, as the current slogan had it. From Churchill’s perspective, a strong Empire would itself benefit the working class, and a healthy working class would strengthen the Empire.
The Tory government staggered on, racked by its divisions over trade, until Balfour at last resigned in December 1905. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was called upon to form a new Liberal administration. Churchill did not get a Cabinet post, but was offered a junior ministerial role as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Rather than accept this, he held out successfully for a job at the Colonial Office. As this was considered a less senior position, it seems clear that he was seriously committed to tackling imperial issues at this time. He may also have hoped that with the new Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Elgin, sitting in the House of Lords, his own position in the Commons would allow him the kind of dominance on colonial questions previously achieved by Cham
berlain; but if so it was wishful thinking.31 The congratulations rolled in, including from J. E. C. Welldon, his old headmaster, but not everyone was pleased.32 W. L. Mackenzie King (now the top official in the Canadian Ministry of Labour) wrote in his diary that it was ‘a bad & dangerous appointment from [the] imperial point of view’.33 Of more immediate significance was the reaction in South Africa, where the view of the Cape Colony press was that Churchill had only a scanty knowledge of the opinions, aspirations and difficulties of the colonies.34
Elgin, the departmental boss, was later described by Edward Marsh, Churchill’s new private secretary, as ‘a rugged old thane of antique virtue and simplicity’.35 He was in fact only fifty-six, although his manner may have seemed to belie this. The grandson of the better known Seventh Earl, of Elgin Marbles fame, he has deservedly been rescued by a leading scholar from the condescension of posterity; his personal reticence and unwillingness to defend himself against critics disguised his considerable administrative (if not political) ability.36 From 1894 to 1899 he achieved a generally sound record as Viceroy of India. He was not a notable enthusiast for the forward policy; at the time of the frontier wars, Churchill wrote that he was a member of ‘that party in the State which has clung passionately, vainly, and often unwisely to a policy of peace and retrenchment’. But the younger man did not doubt his future chief’s earnestness.37 Marsh’s description of their relationship is telling, if a little guarded. Churchill, he wrote, regarded Elgin ‘with impatient respect, recognizing his four-square stability and his canniness, but desiderating initiative and dash. What Elgin thought of Winston was his own secret, but I imagine that their qualified esteem was mutual.’38
In March 1906 Flora Lugard, the formidable wife of Sir Frederick, High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria, wrote of ‘how Lord Elgin is keeping that wild Winston in check within the office’.39 Harry Verney, one of Elgin’s private secretaries, later recalled one of the ways in which this was achieved. There were two main doors to Elgin’s office, one from the private secretaries’ room and one from the corridor. Churchill wanted constant access to Elgin and liked to barge in on him without warning from the corridor entrance. Elgin wanted him curbed and, without confronting him directly, gave instructions that he was only to enter via the anteroom. In Verney’s recollection, ‘Churchill’s room was on the floor below Lord Elgin’s, and as soon as Churchill had set off to invade his Chief, Marsh telephoned me and all hands were summoned to block the way from the passage and persuade a surprised Under Secretary that the only access was through our room if and when the Secretary of State was disengaged. It worked.’40 In such ways the two ministers avoided serious acrimony. This, in the face of Churchill’s opinionated hyperactivity, was no small tribute to Elgin’s tact. But there was an underlying uneasiness. Churchill repeatedly thanked Elgin for his indulgence and for what he had learnt from him about the conduct of official business; Elgin felt some admiration for this ‘curious and impulsive creature’, yet often found his subordinate’s behaviour profoundly trying.41 ‘Qualified esteem’ was just about right.
The advent of the new government triggered a general election, held in January and February 1906. While battle raged on the hustings, Churchill and Elgin had to start dealing straight away with Colonial Office problems that were themselves controversial. The key issue for them was South Africa and, immediately, the question of the workers from China who had been imported into the Transvaal in order to meet the labour shortage there. Many Liberals attacked this as ‘Chinese Slavery’. On the one hand, there was genuine concern about the pay and conditions of the indentured labourers on the Rand, and on the other there was an appeal to baser instincts: the fear that Chinese workers were taking white men’s jobs. There was also a generalized hostility to the capitalist mine-owners who benefited from the system. Yet that system could not be ended merely by the stroke of a pen. Nearly fifteen thousand new Chinese were due to arrive in South Africa under contracts agreed before the Tories fell from office, and to halt their arrival might involve the government in expensive compensation claims. At the risk of alienating Radical MPs, the Cabinet took the pragmatic decision to allow these workers to come.42
Churchill claimed to ‘hate Chinese Labour as much as I honour the Flag’.43 Aware of its complexities, though, he did not make this a central issue in his own election campaign in Manchester. Afterwards, Chamberlain was forced to withdraw the false allegation that gangs of Liberals dressed up as Chinamen had paraded through the streets of the constituency ‘accompanied by an agent got up as a slave-driver’.44 Churchill did refer in public to ‘the battle of white labour against the whole force of the capitalist interest in South Africa’, but the slogans used on his posters were innocuous: ‘Churchill and Free Trade’, ‘Cheap Food’, and ‘A United Empire’.45 His election address promised that the government would ‘restrict’ the system of Chinese Labour and ‘put down its abuses’ but – on Elgin’s advice – he did not make any firm pledge to end it.46
He won the seat by a substantial margin, part of a crushing Liberal victory nationwide. In February, during one of Churchill’s early appearances at the despatch box, he made it clear that, undesirable as the current state of affairs might be, the government would not take instant action to deport the Chinese. To laughter, he declared that as the labourers had entered their contracts voluntarily and for a limited period, and were paid wages they found adequate, the system could not ‘in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude’.47 The Liverpool Daily Courier printed a cartoon of Churchill hoisting himself into the Colonial Office with the aid of a Chinaman’s pigtail. The legend ran: ‘Mr Winston Churchill’s autobiography will describe the thrilling story of how he climbed into office with the aid of his patent terminological inexactitude.’48 Such anger was understandable, given the language that had been used by other Liberals, but it was unfair to Churchill personally. During the election he had made clear to the voters that the conditions of the Chinese, although ‘servile and improper’, did not constitute slavery.49
That episode is well known; but it was small beer compared to the (now strangely forgotten) row that broke out the following month. By this time the government had arrived at a moderate policy. It had decided not to end the existing labour contracts, although no more would be issued; to modify the rules so as to prevent abuses; to repatriate all Chinese workers who wished to go home; and to allow the Transvaal itself, once it had gained self-government, to decide whether the system should continue into the future. This last point was subject to the proviso that the government in London would, if necessary, exercise its right to veto any legislation that a future Transvaal parliament might pass regarding Chinese labour, and Churchill made this clear in the Commons in February.50 During a debate in March, he was stung by Chamberlain into repeating the point in a more provocative way. No matter how well a proposal from the Transvaal was supported by public opinion there, he said, the home government would not shrink from vetoing anything that offended the principles of liberty and decency.51
Traditionally, the use of the Crown’s right of veto of colonial governments’ decisions was restricted to matters affecting the rights of British subjects elsewhere or Britain’s relations with foreign powers. It now seemed as though Churchill was claiming a general right to interfere in the business of any self-governing colony that offended Liberal ministers’ sense of right and wrong. South African shares fell on the Stock Exchange, which Churchill unconvincingly tried to blame on ‘the lugubrious and pessimistic orations’ of Balfour and Chamberlain.52 British South Africans were outraged by the speech. ‘The Cabinet must not forget it is dealing with its own flesh and blood’, declared the Rand Mail: ‘We will not forgo the birthright of freedom we have inherited.’ Another South African paper, the Star, thought the speech ‘a gratuitous insult to every self-governing colony’. There was even discussion of ‘cutting the painter’ tyi
ng South Africa to the motherland, although no paper openly advocated this.53 One New Zealand paper claimed that Churchill’s ‘deplorable indiscretion’ had ‘aroused a keen resentment far beyond the limits of South Africa’.54
In Britain, the Pall Mall Gazette derisively labelled Churchill ‘The Blenheim Pup’.55 Chamberlain said – with considerable chutzpah, given that he was an ex-Liberal himself – that Churchill’s speech was ‘inconsistent with declared Liberal principles’. By these he meant the ideal of self-government, but he might better have said that Liberal principles were inconsistent.56 For Churchill had come up hard against a central dilemma of Liberal colonial policy. One could intervene to protect the indigenous population (and non-natives such as the Chinese) and thus stand accused of stripping white minorities of their hereditary freedoms. Or one could do nothing, which would lead to charges at home of permitting abuses under the British flag. Churchill had a very clear sense that the more opportunistic of his opponents would adopt and adapt these alternative lines of attack exactly as they saw fit.57 Within the Empire, he won some support from Liberal opinion. The Toronto Daily Star ridiculed the idea that colonial self-government as a whole was in danger, and pointed out that the South African colonies were a special case. ‘If they were treated as Canada or Australia is treated, they would complain loudly of neglect, and it would be said that the “Little Englanders’ ” Government was neglecting Imperial interests.’58
A week later, in a much better-known incident, Churchill provoked further upset. It had been revealed that Lord Milner, during his now-expired term as High Commissioner for South Africa, had sanctioned the unlawful flogging of Chinese workers. A Liberal backbencher, William Byles, moved a motion deploring Milner’s conduct. From the government’s point of view it was unhelpful to stir up bad feeling against a widely admired figure, especially given that ‘our excitable British friends’ in South Africa would resent the criticism. So with the consent of his colleagues Churchill moved an amendment, condemning the flogging but deprecating the censure of individuals in the interests of peace and reconciliation.59 But even though the amendment was carried, the attempt to smooth things over misfired. His speech, which in rehearsal had seemed full of generosity of spirit towards the now-eclipsed Milner, came across in performance, Edward Marsh recalled, as the ‘taunting [of] a discredited statesman with the evil days on which he had fallen’.60 It also went down badly with the British South Africans, both as a slight on Milner (whose racial views were at any rate thought by them to be dangerously progressive) and as an interference with ‘the native problem’, which the local whites felt was theirs alone to deal with.61 The Cape Times, observing that a few years earlier Churchill had shared Milner’s ideas, described the speech as nauseous, hypocritical and unprincipled.62 Churchill, however, defended himself, telling Selborne that ‘no other course but the one adopted by me, would have prevented Lord Milner from being censured formally by the House of Commons. We interfered to parry the blow – & did parry it, much to the disgust of many of our own supporters.’63
