Churchill had assumed that his service at the Home Office would prove more rewarding and less complicated than a stormy spell at the Irish Office. But it placed him at the very heart of the growing domestic unrest and consumed his days with a steady flow of angry people complaining about prison conditions, police conduct, court sentences, industrial disputes, or threats from spies, revolutionaries, and anarchists. He liked the subject of prison reform and introduced many improvements to the system during his time in office, and he enjoyed helping the newly formed Secret Service Bureau root out foreigners suspected of espionage. But everything else was a trial to his spirit and wore him down. Near the end of his political career he would say of the job, “There is no post that I have occupied in Governments which I was more glad to leave.”2
The episode that gave him the most trouble began one day in the autumn of 1910 when a chief constable in South Wales sent him an urgent telegram. It began with the news that striking miners were rioting in the area of Tonypandy—a compact town of thirty-four thousand surrounded by collieries and smokestacks. There were “many casualties,” and troops were desperately needed to restore order, reported the police official. It ended with the words “Position grave. Will wire again. Lindsay, Chief Constable of Glamorgan.”3
A former officer with the British Army in Egypt, Lionel Lindsay was an old-fashioned, tough-minded military man who had little tolerance for lawbreakers. To put down the riot, he had requested a force that included two hundred cavalrymen and two infantry companies. Churchill must have shuddered when he read the telegram because it indicated that the troops were already on their way to the mining district. The last thing the Liberal government needed was a battle between enraged Welsh miners and a large military contingent. Yet the riot was a threat to innocent civilians, with attacks on shops that resulted in broken windows and looting.
For decades afterward, however, Churchill’s critics pointed to this incident as one of his worst moments, claiming that he broke up the strike by allowing troops to go into Tonypandy and attack the miners. In 1978 the Labour prime minister James Callaghan started a verbal brawl in the House of Commons when he said that Churchill had pursued a “vendetta . . . against the miners at Tonypandy.” He was urged to withdraw the charge (“a cheap and totally unnecessary slur,” one member called it), but he stuck to his words, claiming, “The actions of the late Sir Winston Churchill in Tonypandy are a matter of historical dispute. I take one side of the quarrel.”4
But, in fact, the event is well documented, and the evidence shows that Churchill acted to keep the military from confronting the miners, and that only policemen armed with truncheons were used in the conflict. In the thick of the dispute the main criticism of Churchill came not from the miners, but from the owners of the coal mines and the advocates of law and order. On November 8, the second day of rioting, a reporter for the Times in Tonypandy was so frightened by the mobs in the streets that he couldn’t believe the authorities in London weren’t supplying Chief Constable Lindsay with the requested military reinforcements.
In his article “A State of Siege,” the reporter complained, “The troops which have been detailed for duty here have not arrived, although they have been anxiously expected all day. Apparently orders were received which caused them to halt at Cardiff. The vacillation shown by those who are responsible for the absence of troops in the present crisis cannot easily be excused.”5
It was at Churchill’s request that the troops stopped at Cardiff. The military would not be available, he wired Chief Constable Lindsay, “unless it is clear that the police reinforcements are unable to cope with the situation.”
No one in Tonypandy was shot or trampled by charging cavalry. The troops were kept in reserve by their commander, General Nevil Macready, who was placed under Churchill’s command and worked tirelessly to make sure his men remained at a distance and didn’t aggravate the conflict. Meanwhile, hundreds of police battled with the strikers in the November chill, with many bandaged heads on both sides.
Much to the distress of the colliery owners, Churchill sent a conciliatory message to the miners offering to do his best “to get them fair treatment” and informing them, “We are holding back the soldiers for the present and sending only police.” The owners reacted to this message by condemning Churchill as hopelessly biased toward the miners. The managing director of the Cambrian Coal Trust told the Times, “Mr. Churchill has put himself entirely out of court as a mediator by his telegram to the workmen’s representatives, in which he prejudged the questions at issue and implied that the Cambrian men were not receiving fair play.”6
But Churchill soon found that he couldn’t please either side. For reasons of his own, the leader of the Labour Party—the grizzled former miner Keir Hardie—decided that Churchill would make a better villain than hero. No doubt it was easier to rally support for more industrial unrest if the Home Secretary was portrayed not as a moderate, but as a strikebreaker conspiring with the army to repress the miners. Hardie issued a dark warning: “Troops are let loose upon the people to shoot down if need be whilst they are fighting for their legitimate rights.” In the House of Commons on November 28, after the crisis had passed, Hardie told Churchill, “There is no love lost between us.” He claimed that at Tonypandy “99 per cent of the people would have preserved order without either the constabulary or the military.”7
His claim may have sounded brave to his supporters and heightened their resentment of Churchill. But the Labour leader was holding back an important fact. While he was stirring up fears about the army during the disturbances, he was also meeting with General Nevil Macready and being treated with the utmost courtesy.
As Home Office documents have revealed, Hardie agreed to help the general correct a popular misconception of the army’s mission. On November 13, Macready’s report from Wales to the Home Office included the following information: “Mr. Keir Hardie lunched at the hotel and I afterwards asked him to have a talk with me. We had a very friendly conversation and he agreed to contradict the rumours which had been spread about that the military were here for an ornament and would in no case take any action.”8
As Hardie was well aware, Macready was determined to avoid any bloodshed and wanted to make sure the miners understood his position—that his troops would fight if provoked, but that “in no case should soldiers come in direct contact with rioters unless and until action had been taken by the police. In the event of the police being overpowered . . . military force would come into play.” The general had also made it clear that his job was to be an impartial guardian of the peace, declaring that his soldiers were not “the blind agents of the employer class,” and forbidding the usual practice of billeting officers with colliery managers.9
But such efforts didn’t stop Hardie and others from maligning Churchill as the villain in the dispute. This treatment was especially disheartening to Winston because only two years earlier he had received a rapturous welcome from an annual gathering of miners in South Wales. Thanks in no small part to his efforts, a bill giving the miners an eight-hour day became law at the end of 1908, and he was welcomed as one of their champions. He had passionately defended their demands for shorter hours, dismissing complaints from other industries that the measure would decrease coal production and increase prices. At their meeting in Swansea in August 1908 he had received “thrice-prolonged applause,” as one of the miners quaintly put it.10
The man who had encouraged Winston to visit Wales during that summer was David Lloyd George. But now, with the coalfields in turmoil, he was conspicuously absent from any of the dealings with the miners in Tonypandy. Struggling to keep the riots from spreading, Winston pleaded for his help and emphasized the good he could do “with your influence in Wales and your knowledge of the Welsh language.” Yet Lloyd George carefully kept his distance, avoiding any direct involvement in the affair. If things took a turn for the worse, he had everything to lose. His whole career was built on his high standing in Wales, and it
was dangerous to risk making enemies there if he could avoid it.11
It was Winston’s bad luck, however, to emerge from this crisis with a whole new set of enemies on the right and left blaming him for doing the wrong thing—one side saying he was too tough, the other that he wasn’t tough enough. His idealism was taking a beating. Before he entered the Cabinet and began to exercise real power, he had imagined that his good intentions and high purpose would help him overcome most obstacles. But now he was learning that some political problems were merely deep pits of quicksand perfect for swallowing up the overeager Cabinet minister who failed to tread carefully.
It didn’t cause him to lose faith in his own powers. But it hardened him, making him less willing to be conciliatory, less trusting in the good faith of others, and more interested in striking the first blow against opponents with raised fists. The boy wonder of British politics was maturing fast.
* * *
Like Lloyd George, Asquith was content to let the Home Secretary carry the burden of dealing with the Welsh miners. Many years earlier, in 1893, Asquith’s own political career had been damaged when he mishandled a mining dispute, sending troops to restore order who overreacted and shot two civilians at the Featherstone colliery in Yorkshire. Ever since, he had been taunted by protestors who would disrupt his public appearances with cries of “murder” and “Featherstone.” He didn’t want to risk adding “Tonypandy” to those cries.
In any case, at the very same time that Winston was trying to avoid a disaster among the unhappy miners of South Wales, the prime minister was confronting an even greater crisis involving his relationship with the new king. It was time to bring the battle with the House of Lords to a conclusion, and Asquith needed the king’s help. But the well-educated lawyer and politician didn’t have much in common with George V, who had little interest in serious books or any kind of demanding intellectual activity. He didn’t like to travel or entertain or vary his daily routine, which included faithfully checking a barometer twice a day for any change in the weather. If he could have avoided becoming king, he would have happily spent his life as a simple country gentleman.
Short and stiff, he wasn’t an imposing figure. His best feature was his neatly trimmed beard, which—more than anything else—made him look regal. It helped to hide a poor complexion. He was a nervous, often irritable man with a wary, haunted gaze, but he liked uniforms and wearing fancy dress on court occasions and always tried to look his best. His great passions were stamp collecting, shooting, and smoking. “The King is a very jolly chap,” said Lloyd George privately, “but thank God there’s not much in his head.”12
The Liberal leaders may have assumed that a monarch of limited intellect would be easier to manage. But Asquith found that it wasn’t easy to explain a political plan to a man who couldn’t easily understand the politics or the plan. Two long meetings in November 1910 were needed for the prime minister to secure a firm but confidential promise from the king to do what Edward VII had hesitated to do—create the necessary number of peers to reform the House of Lords. Asquith also wanted another general election, after which he planned to reveal the king’s promise at an opportune time and use it to overwhelm the opposition.
None of this was too clear to King George, but he knew it didn’t sound very sporting. Incredibly, he asked if he could discuss the plan with Balfour, the Tory leader, first. Asquith had to explain that such a discussion would rather spoil his political surprise.
Though he later complained to courtiers that Asquith had “bullied” him into making this secret deal, the new king wasn’t in a position to refuse. When he asked the prime minister what would happen if didn’t go along with the plan, Asquith answered, “I should immediately resign and at the next election should make the cry ‘The King and the Peers against the people.’ ” Swallowing his pride, King George let Asquith have everything he wanted.
But the prime minister didn’t have much of a choice in the matter himself. As Winston never tired of reminding him, “Until the Veto is out of the way there can be no peace between parties and no demonstration of national unity. The quicker & the more firmly this business is put through, the better for all.” The Liberals now believed that only fast action could help them catch the Conservatives off guard. Two days after getting the king’s promise, Asquith announced that Parliament would dissolve at the end of November 1910 and that the general election would be held in the first two weeks of December.13
Fighting two elections in one year was hard on everyone, but once again the Liberals thought they had the people on their side and would earn a great victory. And once again they were wrong. The result was no better than the previous one—in fact, it was worse. Liberals and Tories emerged from the election with exactly the same number of seats, 272. And once more Asquith was able to keep his government in power only because of the support of the Irish, with 84 seats, and to a lesser extent with the increasingly unreliable support of Labour, with 42 seats.
The result would certainly have been worse if Churchill had not skillfully managed to contain the violence in South Wales. Just one shot fired by mistake could have turned a regional fight into a national cause and given both the Conservatives and Labour a rallying cry. The strain of the crisis on Winston was considerable. He seemed to be juggling more than one man could handle, and not getting any rest. As soon as he had successfully defended his own seat in Dundee, he did take a brief break to enjoy a country house party in Yorkshire. But Clemmie had to warn him to go easier on himself.
“Dearest you work so hard,” she wrote him, “& have so little fun in your life.” Of course, she was only partly right. Hard work in exciting times was Winston’s idea of fun.14
* * *
Perhaps at Clemmie’s urging, Winston was spending a relaxing morning at home in Eccleston Square on January 3, 1911—soaking in his bath—when the Home Office telephoned with shocking news. A gun battle had broken out in the East End between police and a heavily armed Russian gang of anarchists. One constable had already been wounded and the rate of fire from the gang, who were barricaded on the upper floors of a run-down house in Sidney Street, was so intense that a policeman had rushed to the Tower of London seeking help, and had just returned with twenty riflemen of the Scots Guards.
Winston was asked to approve this use of the military. He gave his consent while he stood at the telephone wrapped in a towel. An hour later he was standing beside the police and soldiers, peering at the action from a side street as the shoot-out continued to rage. Bullets were flying everywhere, slamming into the surrounding brick buildings and whizzing past the heads of the many onlookers. For the most part, the hastily armed police—who normally didn’t carry guns—were ineffectual. Their revolvers and shotguns couldn’t match the firepower coming from the gang’s hideout. As for the soldiers, they were hampered by the difficulty of getting a clear shot. The house was in the middle of the block, and the soldiers were pinned down at either end, shooting at an angle.
“Nothing of this sort had ever been seen within living memory in quiet, law-abiding, comfortable England,” said Churchill afterward.15
As the police suspected, the gang had armed themselves with a rapid-firing weapon then known as the Mauser “magazine pistol.” The handle could be attached to a stock and used like a rifle, making it easier for the shooter to fire in all directions from a concealed space, where he could quickly empty one magazine—usually holding ten cartridges—and replace it with another. Manufactured in Germany, it was a relatively new weapon and was almost unknown in Britain except among army officers. As it happened, there was one high-ranking official on the scene who knew the pistol well and had used it effectively in combat. That was Winston Churchill.
When the weapon was brand-new in 1898, he had purchased two and had used one in the cavalry charge at Omdurman, emptying his magazine as he killed several attackers, including one “at less than a yard” who was about to spear him. The semiautomatic Mauser was a pistol that had saved his
life, and because he knew from experience how deadly it could be, he was able to save more lives at Sidney Street during the long shootout. When several armed constables wanted to rush the besieged building, it was Churchill who talked them out of it, knowing they would be cut to pieces. A reporter on the spot put it more politely: “The Home Secretary, fearing that this might endanger lives unnecessarily, prevented any such proceeding.”16
Innocence of the danger was so great that Churchill also had to forbid the fire brigade from approaching the building as smoke began to rise from its upper windows. He was unable, however, to prevent an insanely dutiful postman from delivering letters to the house next to the hideout while shots rang out overhead. It was all he could do to restrain a fire brigade officer who insisted that his duty was to put out fires regardless of the risk. After a “heated” argument Churchill said that he would take full responsibility if the house burned down, and the officer reluctantly stood by and watched while the flames did indeed consume much of the structure.
The anarchists died in the blaze, but the “gang” apparently consisted of only two men, whose badly burned bodies were found in the rubble, along with two Mauser pistols. They had so much ammunition—and the weapons fired so quickly—that they had been able to fool everyone into thinking the house was defended by several desperate anarchists. It was true, however, that they belonged to a larger gang. They had a history of committing strong-arm robberies with the help of other exiles, presumably to raise money for their revolutionary cause back in Russia.
For the past two weeks the authorities had been searching for five Russians who had used Mausers to kill three policemen during a botched burglary of a jewelry shop on December 16, 1910. It soon became known as “the worst day in the history of the British police force.” More than twenty bullets had been fired, with eight hitting just one of the unarmed policemen. Two more officers were hit and survived, but they were left paralyzed. No one had been prepared to deal with that kind of firepower. The lead detective investigating the murders was desperate to track down the gang before another unarmed policeman came face-to-face with the Mauser.
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