Churchill's Grandmama

by Margaret E. Forster

  In the first three years of the Parliament, he not only established a commanding personal position but also contributed significantly to the development of policy. In particular, he was effective on the question of Home Rule for Ireland, his informed and enlightened opinion limiting the Liberal tendency to move headlong into Home Rule and revitalising the Conservative position, which was not really facing up to the problems in Ireland at all. He was also developing two initiatives which took the Conservative party into the future. The first was the concept of Tory democracy. His mother and her parents had shown a fine awareness all their lives of the need to protect the vulnerable. As a result of what he had seen in Ireland, Randolph too was sensitive to the condition of the working classes who, with the Labour party in Parliament still decades away, had no political representation. He was also aware that a party based on the landed classes was going to become less and less electable as the franchise broadened. His message of Tory democracy was rejected by the leadership well into the twentieth century, but its common sense and justice ultimately prevailed. One notable consequence was the priority his son Winston gave to measures of social justice – pensions, limits on the working day, arbitration, labour exchanges – in his early years in Parliament.

  Randolph’s second important contribution to the future was triggered by Disraeli, his admirer and supporter, who died in 1881. On the anniversary of his death, Sir Henry Wolff noticed how many Members were wearing primroses, Disraeli’s favourite flower, and suggested a Primrose League, an idea immediately adopted and promoted by Randolph. The League was hugely successful, developing as a political-social organisation where Conservatives of all classes met to discuss ideas and assist in elections. It soon had two million members and flourished into the 1990s, finally winding up in 2004; Winston Churchill was Grand Master from 1944 to 1965. It put women into politics with the formation of its Ladies Grand Council, which was given a very cautious welcome in some quarters. Lady Salisbury, however, was an enthusiastic member. When they were discussing election tactics and she was asked, ‘But is it not vulgar?’ ‘Vulgar?’ she replied robustly. ‘Of course it is. That is why we have got on so well!’

  Frances was the first President of the Ladies’ Grand Council. Jennie had also worked hard with Randolph, especially with the Fourth Party, frequently hosting the group in her home and travelling widely with her husband. But the now forceful Frances was clear about her own role with regard to her son, retorting brusquely to Cecil Spring-Rice, who enquired about Jennie’s influence on Randolph, that the only real influence on his career was herself. Certainly, after the Duke’s death she focused on Randolph’s career, frequently hosting Fourth Party meetings at Blenheim.

  Notes

  1. Vanity Fair, 1883.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  RANDOLPH ASCENDANT

  * * *

  These were good years for Frances, the only period she experienced that was free of anxiety about Randolph. With pleasure and pride, she saw him mature and become the political focal point of his time. John Winston’s death was hard to bear, but there was consolation in the flood of genuine tributes that poured in, reflecting the high esteem in which her husband had been held nationally. Stafford Northcote and William Gladstone led their parties in the avalanche of letters of condolence she received.

  Frances remained at Blenheim after her husband’s death because of her commitment to the care of yet another grandson in need, Blandford’s son Charles, now 12. Her pleasure increased when Randolph began to form a better relationship with his brother, and when, diminished a little by his father’s death, he returned with his family to Blenheim, she derived satisfaction at the comfort he found in its familiar walls and acres. He also visited her more frequently in her London home in Grosvenor Square.

  At last, in March 1883, the Prince of Wales came to dinner with Randolph and Jennie. The breach had finally been healed, and after several years in the social wilderness they were again welcome in fashionable society. One of Frances’ concerns had always been with her son’s impetuosity and rashness; now she would see a more mature Randolph. The Prince let it be known that Randolph Churchill’s manner ‘was just what it ought to have been’. Forgiveness for Randolph meant renewed contact for the Prince with Jennie, a cause for concern, and he was soon giving her presents of expensive jewellery.

  A mixture of hard work, a phenomenal memory (passed on to his son Winston) and the extrovert, confident nature of his personality equipped Randolph to become the principal speaker in the House. As happened later with Winston, the chamber filled to hear him, and even today, over 120 years later, his speeches impress in their vigour, power and their expression. Caspar Weinberger, US Foreign Secretary, described Winston Churchill’s oratory as not prose but poetry; there was a poetic quality in Randolph’s delivery, too. A major element in his speeches was humour, but his first impressive speech at this time struck a serious note.

  He spoke persuasively and constructively on his concept of Tory democracy, pointing out that the Conservative party was still not heeding an important lesson: they would never exercise power without the confidence of the working classes, who were determined to govern themselves and would not be forced or tricked by other class interests. The way forward should be in trust, not opposition, he declared:

  The Conservative party will never exercise power until it has gained the confidence of the working classes; and the working classes are quite determined to govern themselves and will not be either driven or hoodwinked by any class or class interests. Our interests are perfectly safe if we trust them fully, frankly and freely; but if we oppose them and endeavour to drive them and hoodwink them, our interests, our Constitution and all we love and revere will go down. If you want to gain the confidence of the working class, let them have a share and a large share – a real share and not a sham share – in your Party councils and in your Party government.1

  By the time he spoke in Blackpool three months later he was developing the withering wit, the feigned disbelief and the skill with the telling image (‘[he] has studied politics about as much as Barnum’s new white elephant’) which became such a characteristic of his son. Gladstone had criticised Salisbury, the Conservative party leader who was a marquess, for representing a class ‘who toil not, neither do they spin’. Randolph demolished him mercilessly:

  Just look, however, at what Mr Chamberlain himself does. He goes to Newcastle and is entertained at a banquet there, and procures for the president of the feast a live earl, no less a person than the Earl of Durham. Now Lord Durham is a young gentleman who has just come of age, who is in the possession of immense hereditary estates, who is well known on Newmarket Heath and prominent among the gilded men who throng the corridors of the Gaiety Theatre, but who has studied politics about as much as Barnum’s white elephant, and upon whose ingenuous mind even the idea of rendering service to the State has not yet commenced to dawn. If by any means it is legitimate, and I hold that it is illegitimate, to stigmatise any individual as enjoying great riches for which he has neither toiled nor spun, such a case would be the case of the Earl of Durham; and yet it is under the patronage of the Earl of Durham and basking in the smiles of the Earl of Durham, that this stern patriot, this rigid moralist, this unbending censor the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, flaunts his Radical and levelling doctrines before the astounded democrats of Newcastle.2

  Here is the effective use of repetition (‘who …’), the disbelief (‘ingenuous’) and the final mounting climax (‘this stern … censor’) so familiar to modern ears.

  Randolph’s greatest delight, in which he showed considerable skill, was baiting Gladstone. His searing attacks were not personal, an attitude very much in harmony with his parents’ innate decency and integrity, as he actually had the highest personal regard for Gladstone: ‘the most worthy man I ever knew’, he once commented. On a memorable occasion he launched an attack on Gladstone, for self-advertisement, which calls to mind the contemporary vocabulary of ‘
spin’, ‘pretence’ and ‘dissimulation’; its message is as relevant to politicians today as the day he uttered it:

  Gentlemen, we live in an age of advertisement, the age of Holloway’s Pills, of Colman’s Mustard, and of Horniman’s Pure Tea; and the policy of lavish advertisement has been so successful in commerce that the Liberal party, with its usual enterprise, has adapted it to politics. The Prime Minister is the greatest living master of the art of personal political advertisement. Holloway, Colman and Horniman are nothing compared with him. Every act of his, whether it be for the purposes of health, or of recreation, or of religious devotion, is spread before the eyes of every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom on large and glaring placards. For the purposes of an autumn holiday a large transatlantic steamer is specially engaged, the Poet Laureate adorns the suite and receives a peerage as his reward, and the incidents of the voyage are luncheon with the Emperor of Russia and tea with the Queen of Denmark. For the purposes of recreation he has selected the felling of trees; and we may usefully remark that his amusements, like his politics, are essentially destructive. Every afternoon the whole world is invited to assist at the crashing fall of some beech or elm or oak. The forest laments, in order that Mr Gladstone may perspire.3

  The influence on Winston is clear: the amused tone which conceals a deadly seriousness, the ability to demolish an opponent by making him seem ludicrous or ridiculous, the biting irony, all became important weapons for Winston. Even the force gained by investing an inanimate object with human qualities is a trick Winston modelled on his father: ‘… the forest laments so that Mr Gladstone may perspire.’

  Winston seems to have echoed his father’s physical stance, too. The political cartoons reveal that Randolph had a slightly forward leaning posture, jacket open, hand on hip, not given to expansive gesture. Winston adopted all of these. In early days Randolph was thought not to have an attractive speaking voice, which was sometimes described as guttural. It became a trademark, distinguishing and identifying him in the way that Winston’s delivery did too.

  Following the example of Disraeli, he seized upon an occasion when Gladstone had recently received a deputation of working men at Hawarden to heap ridicule upon him:

  It has always appeared to me somewhat incongruous and inappropriate that the great chief of the Radical party should reside in a castle. But to proceed. One would have thought that the deputation would have been received in the house, in the study, in the drawing-room, or even in the dining-room. Not at all. That would have been out of harmony with the advertisement ‘boom’. Another scene had been arranged. The working-men were guided through the ornamental grounds, into the wide-spreading park, strewn with the wreckage and the ruin of the Prime Minister’s sport. All around them, we may suppose, lay the rotting trunks of once umbrageous trees; all around them, tossed by the winds, were boughs and bark and withered shoots. They come suddenly on the Prime Minister and Master Herbert, in scanty attire and profuse perspiration, engaged in the destruction of a gigantic oak, just giving its last dying groan. They are permitted to gaze and to worship and adore and, having conducted themselves with exemplary propriety, are each of them presented with a few chips as a memorial of that memorable scene.4

  The self-confidence which, in excess, had so marred Randolph’s early years now became one of his greatest assets, very much part of his ebullient style. Although Jennie was a regular visitor to the Commons Visitors’ Gallery, it was some years later before Frances was to hear her son speak in Parliament. Frances certainly heard Randolph speaking on the political platform outside Parliament, possibly encouraged by the Primrose League whose ladies were more overtly active politically.

  Randolph’s biographer, Robert Rhodes James, remarked on the broadness of Randolph’s appeal. Ordinary Tories wanted a leader who would be blunt and, if possible, rude about Gladstone and the Liberals, and in Randolph they found exactly what they wanted. In contrast to his restrained style in Parliament, in the country his style was dramatic and demonstrative, which was enjoyed coming as it did from the small, not particularly attractive, figure. He delighted partisan audiences by hurling abuse at the Liberal leaders until he was exhausted. They would urge him on: ‘Give it ‘em hot, Randy!’

  His speeches still make entertaining reading today. A speech on ‘laissez-faire’ and the need for tariff reform was a classic masterpiece, showing many of the skills of rhetoric that Winston was to master:

  Your iron industry is dead; dead as mutton. Your coal industries, which depend greatly on the iron industries, are languishing. Your silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Your woollen industry is ‘in articulo mortis’, gasping, struggling. Your cotton industry is seriously sick. The ship building industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eyes where you like, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease. The self-satisfied Radical philosophers will tell you it is nothing; they point to the great volume of British trade. Yes, the volume of British trade is still large, but it is a volume which is no longer profitable; it is working and struggling. So do the muscles and nerves of the body of a man who has been hanged twitch and work violently for a short time after the operation. But death is there all the same, life has utterly departed, and suddenly comes the rigor mortis … But what has produced this state of things? Free imports? I am not sure; I should like an inquiry; but I suspect free imports of the murder of our industries much in the same way as if I found a man standing over a corpse and plunging his knife into it I should suspect that man of homicide, and I should recommend a coroner’s inquest and a trial by jury.5

  The rhetorical skills came naturally to both father and son and were convincing; they never obtruded. Both used repetition, Randolph employing the word ‘your’ six times in the first six lines here. The withering irony in the last few lines is characteristic of both men.

  The status and admiration Randolph had acquired, though not in all quarters, made it virtually certain he would be given office in a Conservative government. He could still be troublesome but Salisbury’s view was that it would be safer to have him in the party than outside it. Probably in anticipation of the office he would be given, Randolph made a four-month trip to India, taking in Egypt on the way. So, when he addressed the Primrose League at their banquet in April 1885, he spoke on India with some knowledge and authority. He had come a long way from the ignorance of foreign affairs with which he had begun his Commons career ten years earlier. Frances, as President of the Ladies Grand Council, was there to enjoy a truly dignified speech in the tradition of the best of Victorian statesmen, principled, articulate and sensitive:

  My lords and gentlemen, our task of governing India, which we have been carrying on now for more than a hundred years, is a task of great difficulty and danger, the difficulties and dangers of which do not diminish as time goes on. Our rule in India is, as it were, a sheet of oil spread over the surface of, and keeping calm and quiet and unruffled by storms, an immense and profound ocean of humanity. Underneath that rule lie hidden all the memories of fallen dynasties, all the traditions of vanquished races, all the pride of insulted creeds; and it is our task, our most difficult business, to give peace, individual security, and general prosperity to the two hundred and fifty millions of people who are affected by those powerful forces; to bind them and to weld them by the influence of our knowledge, our law, and our higher civilisation, in process of time, into one great, united people; and to offer to all the nations of the west the advantages of tranquillity and progress in the east. That is our task for India. That is our raison d’etre in India. That is our title to India.6

  There are premonitions of Winston here: the considered pace, the repetition of key words and phrases, the short sentences as he approaches his climax and particularly the apt image of ‘sheet of oil’. The responsibility to give peace, security and unity to India, and in time to bring back to the West the advantages that India would then enjoy, indicate
his imperial attitude.

  By April 1885, in spite of its huge majority, Gladstone’s government was in a perilous state. There was trouble in Ireland, in the Sudan, and on the Afghan border. Randolph’s return from India was looked forward to by the press and the Conservative party’s confidence was growing substantially. Randolph had a firm grip on the House of Commons and indeed on the country, as witnessed by the political cartoons that appeared everywhere, showing him with large moustache and bulging eyes. The texts of his speeches, whether in the House of Commons or in public, were familiar throughout the country. Parnell came to Connaught Place, Randolph and Jennie’s home, to inquire after Tory attitudes towards Ireland if they came into power, and promised him the Irish vote at the election. On the adverse side, Arthur Balfour had withdrawn from the Fourth Party and was in the habit of keeping his uncle, Lord Salisbury, informed of what was happening. Salisbury, however, was warmer towards Randolph than formerly and the letters between them suggest a more cordial relationship.

  In June 1885 the Liberals were defeated on a Budget issue and Queen Victoria asked Salisbury, not Northcote, to form a government. Randolph then began a period of intense bargaining, refusing to serve with Northcote. The self-destructive determination to have his own way, which had dogged his past, now almost lost him his political future. Frances wrote him a long, sensible letter, to no effect. He was saved only by Salisbury, the experienced and skilful politician, who reconciled conflicting interests and ambitions among those involved. Northcote agreed to go to the Lords and on 16 July 1885 Randolph became Secretary of State for India, a worthwhile first post for a rising politician. At last he had achieved something worthwhile; after all the anxiety and effort Frances could at last see her own and John Winston’s hopes fulfilled. His later admission that he had acted foolishly gave some indication of maturity.