Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made
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Churchill’s position was weakened by the distrust with which some of his diehard allies viewed him on account of his Liberal past. Former Party Chairman J. C. C. Davidson recalled that ‘although the Tory opponents of the Government’s Indian policies welcomed Winston’s support, they always rather apologized for the fact that Winston was in their camp’.100 Viscount Wolmer (later the third Earl of Selborne) complained that Churchill discredited the campaign: ‘we are acting from conviction but everybody knows Winston has no convictions; he has only joined us for what he can get out of it’.101 By contrast, Henry Page Croft MP, an ardent tariff-reformer whose short-lived right-wing National Party had been reabsorbed by the Conservatives in 1921, was convinced that Churchill was sincere. After all, he argued in his memoirs, Churchill when Chancellor maintained his opposition to protectionism in spite of the damage this did him with the party. Had he been ‘the careerist which some tend to assert when discrediting his Indian views, he would surely have swum with the tide and dropped his old Free Trade faith, and so made a great bid to win the confidence of Conservatives’.102 Arguably, the real difference between Churchill and the right-wingers was not one of sincerity. Rather, he was so passionate about India that he was, unlike them, prepared to use the issue to ‘break the Government’.103 He doubtless hoped that this would be of advantage to him, but in fact he was reckless as to his own best interests. Baldwin once explained privately the reason he had excluded Churchill from the Cabinet: ‘he had gone about threatening to smash the Tory party on India, and I did not mean to be smashed’.104
Churchill told the Conservative MP Victor Cazalet that ‘he felt like cutting people and hating them as he had never hated before in his life. He and his friends were going to fight the White Paper scheme to the bitter end.’105 (Later, after Cazalet voted for the scheme himself, the formerly friendly Churchill would greet him with no more than a curt nod.)106 Churchill’s strength of emotion, leading him to imagine perhaps that others must feel the same way, may have caused him to overestimate his chances of success. J. C. C. Davidson recollected that on one occasion Churchill stopped him in the House of Commons Smoking Room, told him of his plans for mass agitation against the India Bill and predicted that the government would fall in a fortnight. In Davidson’s words:
He went on to say that the British Empire was a wonderful text to preach from especially if you wanted to preserve it, and I replied bluntly that he wouldn’t get a single vote. [. . .] I told him that I thought that the British public was much more interested in the size of their pay-packet on Friday than by great rhetorical appeals to their loyalty to the British Empire. I told him that they might cheer him, but they wouldn’t vote for him. He didn’t like it a bit.107
Churchill had to contend not only with the relative indifference of the British public but also with his own habit of repeatedly shooting himself in the foot. This he did from the very beginning of the debate on the White Paper. On 30 March 1933 he alleged in the Commons that promotion within the Indian Civil Service depended not on merit but on whether officials supported the government’s reform programme. When challenged, he failed to substantiate the charge and lost the sympathy of the House. Then, in April, he declined to join the joint select committee (drawn from both the Commons and Lords) that was to draw up detailed reform proposals as part of the White Paper process. He argued that the committee’s proposed membership was too heavily stacked on the government’s side or, as he put it, in favour of the abdication of British rule in India. He did not, he said, wish to share in responsibility for the ‘grievous events’ that were bound to follow from this policy.108 His decision was understandable but surely mistaken, as it made him look like a negative and destructive critic who was unable to present a positive alternative. It was grist to the mill of Hoare, who alleged privately and unfairly that Churchill was convinced ‘that England is going Fascist and that he, or someone like him, will eventually be able to rule India as Mussolini governs north Africa’.109
Churchill himself gave evidence to the committee over three days in October, remarking afterwards that it was ‘the most exhausting thing he had ever done’.110 He denied that he belonged to ‘the Diehard Party’, describing this as ‘an abusive term which is used by persons who are often found very ignorant of the real foundations of British power and strength’.111 (In 1922, though, he had blamed the fall of the Coalition on ‘the Diehards’, and in private he now proudly referred to himself as one.)112 He presented the committee’s members with a memorandum in which he outlined his own plans for reform, sticking fairly closely to the relatively modest proposals of the Simon Commission which had reported in 1930. He was reluctantly prepared to concede ‘Home Rule’ for the Indian provinces, attended by many safeguards, but there was to be no federation and the central government, over which the Viceroy presided, was to retain strong powers. There should then be no further change for a long period, and there certainly should not be a Dominion constitution for India ‘in any period which human beings ought to take into practical account’.113 This was all quite unrealistic. One India Office official commented: ‘It is almost childishly absurd to imagine that after the history of the last few years and declarations far in advance of Mr Churchill’s ideas that by any stretch of the imagination India could be got to settle down quietly for a long term of years under a constitution of this kind without further development in the near future.’114 The plan also drew criticism from the Times of India and the nationalist Bombay Chronicle, which regretted that Churchill’s high intelligence ‘should have prostituted its gifts to such base purpose and such an idiotic plan’.115
Churchill’s interrogation by the committee was notable because it was the one occasion on which he was forced to justify his views directly to Indians, a number of whom (including Ambedkar) were represented on it and asked some ‘rather acid questions’.116 He did not suffer any knock-out blows but, although he put on a good-humoured performance, he failed to show a firm grasp of detail. The Aga Khan (a major figure in Shi’a Islam) told him directly that ‘you have what I may call a cursory knowledge’ of Indian affairs.117 The Bombay Free Press Journal described Churchill’s evidence as a mixture of ‘intelligent stupidity and hypocritical sympathy for the India cause’.118 The London Times suggested that after Churchill’s deposition the committee would resume its work in the knowledge that the White Paper, ‘however susceptible of improvement, stands in its main essentials more invulnerable than ever before’.119
Such criticism, of course, was fairly predictable when it came from nationalist sources or even from the India Office or the Baldwin-supporting Times. But, notwithstanding the contents of Churchill’s own postbag, there was also much to suggest that he was out of kilter with the opinions of even the British in India. For example George Stanley, the Governor of Madras wrote, ‘It is amazing to me that people like Winston & Co. cannot realise that India has not stood still during the last few years any more than any other country has done so.’ The Daily Mail’s description of self-government as a policy of scuttle ‘means that the Viceroy and all the Governors of Provinces are “scuttling” because we are all agreed that the White Paper is on the right lines’.120 When Victor Cazalet visited India he reported to Baldwin: ‘I have not met a single individual in a responsible position who did not take the view that the White Paper proposals must go through. The hardest-headed conservative-minded political officer has no more use for Churchill than he has for Gandhi.’121
It is no surprise, then, that some officials in India saw Churchill’s next major assault on the government as ‘a dirty attack’ and a case of ‘Winston as usual’.122 The press there also reacted sceptically.123 Baldwin remarked that ‘Winston is fundamentally a blackguard’.124 However, Churchill’s allegations of a conspiracy to suppress evidence to the select committee did raise important issues about the lengths to which the government would go to defeat him and secure the passage of its bill. His claims, which he made public in April 1934, related to events of the
previous year. He had documentary proof, he said, that Hoare and Lord Derby (a Conservative peer and an influential figure in Lancashire) had put pressure on the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (MCC) to alter its evidence to the committee. As both Hoare and Derby were members of the committee, he alleged that this was a breach of parliamentary privilege and called for a Commons investigation. In order to understand what all the fuss was about, it is necessary to appreciate the continuing importance of the Lancashire cotton lobby. Although historians debate its strength and significance, it is undoubtedly true that Churchill, who liked to stress his former connection with Oldham, placed much importance upon it.125 One of his key arguments against increased Indian autonomy was that the higher tariffs that would follow would lead to the impoverishment of Lancashire. In its initial evidence, the MCC argued for restrictions on India’s ability to regulate its own trade, which was long established under the so-called fiscal autonomy convention. After Hoare and Derby pointed out that this was straining for the politically impossible, and would do more harm than good, it withdrew this submission and put in a new version, substantially toned down.
It was undoubtedly true that Hoare and Derby did make significant efforts to persuade the MCC. Two questions arise: a) were these efforts the cause of the MCC’s change of heart, and b) regardless of their effects, were those efforts improper, or rather, so improper as to constitute a breach of privilege? The Committee of Privileges appointed to investigate found that the answer to a) was ‘no’. In fact, the report suggested, advice received from an MCC mission to India had caused the change. The committee’s answer to b) was also ‘no’. As the joint select committee was not a judicial body there was nothing wrong with its members advising witnesses how to frame their evidence; Hoare and Derby had merely been giving Lancashire advice on how best to pursue its own interests.126 More recently, this analysis has been challenged, on the basis that important evidence was withheld from the committee. By this argument, Churchill was on the right lines, and might have been able to prove his case beyond doubt had all the facts been known.127 This is convincing only up to a point, however. Undoubtedly, evidence was suppressed, and the advice of the MCC’s India mission was certainly not the decisive factor. Thomas Barlow, a leading figure in the MCC who bore much responsibility for the decision to change its submission, must certainly have had Derby’s urgings in mind at the crucial moment. But although it would have been highly embarrassing for the government if Churchill had been able to demonstrate all this, the committee’s argument that there had been no breach of privilege may well have been right. Whether or not Hoare and Derby had acted reprehensibly, it is far from clear that, in their original dealings with the MCC, they had broken any formal rules. Moreover, the MCC leaders did not believe – or so they claimed – that they had been subject to improper pressure.128 And it was always going to be hard for Churchill to present himself as the great defender of Lancashire if he was opposed by Derby, the county’s uncrowned king. Churchill insisted on striding onto the pitch and defending someone else’s wicket when the team captains preferred to settle the match over tea in the pavilion.129
Churchill compounded his difficulties by his ungracious reception of his defeat. When the Privileges Committee’s report was debated in the Commons in June he did not accept its conclusions but instead launched into a diatribe. In response, Amery – who was also out of office at this time – made a speech that has become famous. He said that, in making his accusations, Churchill had been faithful to the motto fiat justitia ruat coelum. This means ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall’, but when Churchill made the mistake of asking for a translation, Amery offered, to loud laughter, ‘If I can trip up Sam [Hoare], the government’s bust.’130 Churchill was not in the House when it voted, without dissent, to accept the committee’s findings.131
In November 1934 the original joint select committee published its own report. This broadly endorsed the approach of the White Paper. In December the Conservative Party’s Central Council gave its approval to the policy, by 1,102 votes to 390. In the Commons, 75 Tory MPs rebelled, but this posed no real threat to the government’s majority. (The high-water mark of party rebellion had come, in Churchill’s absence, at the annual conference in October, with a victory for the leadership of only 543 votes to 520.) The government’s legislation still had to pass through Parliament, but it was clear that it would do so in due course. At the start of 1935 Churchill’s son Randolph thrust himself into the limelight by standing as an anti-India Bill candidate against an official Conservative at a by-election in Liverpool. Churchill, whose relationship with his son was turbulent, was not best pleased, but gave his reluctant backing. Randolph echoed his father’s themes – ‘what Lancashire suffers today Britain and the Empire will suffer tomorrow’132 – and attracted enough support to split the Tory vote and let in Labour. Some of Churchill’s Epping constituents started to grumble about his own attitude towards the government.
Churchill described the massive and highly complex Government of India Bill as ‘a monstrous monument of sham built by the pygmies’.133 (He was reported as having used the word ‘shame’, but he insisted that he had not; his choice of ‘sham’ suggests he wanted to emphasize that the bill was unworkable, rather than that it was morally reprehensible.)134 He fought a tough rearguard action against its passage, but it was impossible for him to muster the votes to defeat it. In June, as it reached its final Commons stage, he declared himself unreconciled to it, in a speech that sounded like ‘the last despairing cry of a man who has been ignored and who sees nothing but desolation and ruin in consequence’.135 Just at the point when Indians required ‘a far higher measure of disinterested and enlightened autocracy’, Churchill argued, they were being offered ‘the faded flowers of Victorian Liberalism’. In conclusion he warned that the passing of the bill might sound the death knell of the British Empire in the East.136 Amery, who spoke next, provided a rejoinder: ‘Here endeth the last chapter of the book of the Prophet Jeremiah.’ He deplored Churchill’s lack of constructive suggestion, and his failure to show any measure of sympathy or understanding towards the aspirations of the Indians.137 His points were well made and signified important differences with Churchill that were to re-emerge dramatically during World War II. Amery, for his part, was much clearer sighted on India than in his grandiose visions for the Empire as a whole.
In fact, the Act never came fully into force. Although elections for the provincial assemblies took place in due course (resulting in major Congress victories), federation remained a dead letter because of the opposition of the Princes. In the aftermath of his defeat, Churchill made some efforts to appear magnanimous. In August 1935 he was visited at Chartwell, his house in Kent, by the industrialist G. D. Birla, one of Gandhi’s big financial backers. (As someone once said, ‘it costs a great deal of money to keep Gandhiji living in poverty’.)138 Birla reported to Gandhi that he had found his host to be ‘no fire-eater’. Although ‘badly informed about India’, Churchill praised Gandhi’s work for the Untouchables and said that he hoped the reforms would work: ‘you have got the things now; make it a success and if you do I will advocate you getting much more’.139 Yet if on this occasion he demonstrated the sympathy which Amery accused him of lacking, he would in the next years revert to the bitter tone that had characterized his campaign as a whole.
IV
The later 1930s saw Churchill focus more intensively on foreign policy. When MacDonald retired in 1935, Baldwin became Prime Minister again. ‘Winston is rapidly transferring his interest from India to Air!’ he wrote – although in fact Churchill had been pressing the government over the problem of air defence for some time.140 In November Baldwin won another general election, but there was still no place for Churchill in the government; nor did this change when Neville Chamberlain succeeded to the premiership in 1937. In spite of these frustrations, Churchill was not as consistently oppositional as legend would suggest. Nevertheless, his overall stance against the appeas
ement of Germany and Italy was robust, and this was recognized in some apparently unlikely quarters. Nehru, after a visit to Britain, remarked: ‘Irrespective of his politics, Mr Churchill is the ablest politician in England today. [. . .] I am astonished at the foreign policy of His Majesty’s Government.’141 (A few months earlier, when Nehru visited China, Churchill had sent him a goodwill message via a mutual friend.)142 Churchill alienated some in the Dominions through his misguided support for Edward VIII at the time of the abdication crisis in 1936. The Governor General of Canada, Lord Tweedsmuir, reported to Baldwin that ‘Winston has pretty well taken the place of Beaverbrook as Public Enemy No. 1’.143 By 1939, though, Churchill’s popularity at home had soared, as his warnings about the dangers of appeasement increasingly appeared vindicated. There are some signs that he was transcending his image as ‘the personification of Empire do-or-die’ in the USA as well. In July, Time magazine described him as ‘An imperialist of the Rudyard Kipling school’ and a ‘reactionary’ on domestic issues. ‘But on the one subject of German aggression, now uppermost in British minds, he has followed such a straight, consistent line that in an emergency Winston Churchill might well become Britain’s “Man of the Hour.” ’144