WINSTON CHURCHILL

See Also: ANARCHISM The Siege of Sidney Street; CATS The Jocks; CHAMPAGNE Winston Churchill; CIGARS An Untimely Report; THE DOCKS Funereal Respect; MENTAL HEALTH Black Dog; THE SECOND WORLD WAR; THE SECOND WORLD WAR The Scientists, Lindemann and Tizard

As a domestic politician Winston Churchill made numerous errors during the course of his career. He was distrusted by many Conservative M.P.s because in 1900 he had started his Parliamentary life as one of their number, but in 1904 he became a Liberal, and in 1924 he had reverted to being a Tory; he is reputed to have remarked Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat. As the President of the Board of Trade, Churchill's solid early achievements were the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909 and the Trade Boards Act of 1909. These measures did much to improve the working conditions of ordinary people. However, the following year, as Home Secretary, he earned the lasting hatred of large portions of the working class; he was regarded as having authorised the use of the Army against striking miners at Tonypandy in South Wales (the troops arrived after members of the Metropolitan Police had virtually dispersed a crowd of strikers). As Chancellor of the Exchequer he withdrew Britain from the gold standard and was widely blamed for the economic events that followed. His handling of the General Strike of 1926 was poor. In 1935 he opposed the Government of India Act. The following year he managed to back King Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis

Britain entered the Second World War in September 1939. Churchill was appointed to serve as First Lord of the Admiralty. As such, he visited Scapa Flow, where he inspected some dummy warships. He recognised that there was something wrong. He realised that there were no seagulls. As a result, refuse was placed in the water in order to attract the birds and so create a greater degree of authenticity. In April 1940 a military expedition was mounted to try to assist Norway. The Commons debated the venture. Many Conservatives voted against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in order to try to scare the government. These M.P.s did not anticipate that the premier would resign and they certainly did not want to see him replaced by a man whom they regarded as being a political adventurer. Chamberlain left office on 10 May and the First Lord succeeded him. As a result, the new Prime Minister found that large sections of his own party were hostile towards him. Halifax and a group of other ministers favoured a negotiated peace with the Nazis. Churchill discussed the proposal. He did this in order not to appear intransigent to appeasers and thereby risk the possibility of alienating them. However, privately, he was committed to the armed struggle. From the evacuation of Dunkirk (May 1940) until the victory at El Alamein (November 1942) Britain experienced a 30-month-long run of defeats. Churchill's contribution to the victory included his capacity to inspire the nation and its armed forces through his use of language.

Until 1940 Private Offices had existed within the Service Departments but not at No. 10 Downing Street. At the Admiralty Churchill had had one. When he became Prime Minister, he took it with him to guard against the possibility that his actions might be undermined by some of the Downing Street civil servants who might have felt that they had a greater loyalty to the previous premier than they had to him.

Chamberlain was appointed as Lord President of the Council. During the summer of 1940 he supported Churchill loyally. Had he not done so the new premier might not have survived in office. This was because of the dislike with which the latter was viewed by many of his fellow Tories.

Churchill had previously served as the First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915. During the First World War he had been the moving force behind the strategy that had sought to remove Turkey from the war. This had involved the landing of a body of Allied troops upon the Dardanelles. The Turkish Army had repulsed the expedition. The episode had been a disaster for the Allies. It had instilled in Churchill a sincere belief that the Chiefs of Staff should never be overridden in the execution of strategy. During the Second World War he never did so. This prompted a generation of historians to downplay his role in determining how the war was conducted. It has been argued¹ that the reason why he never overruled the Chiefs was because they concurred with the overall approach that he had set in place. It was he who held back from opening the Western Front until the Germans had been worn down upon the Eastern one and had overcommitted themselves to the Mediterranean theatre of war.

At the conflict's end, Churchill commented on the contribution that German migr's made to the war effort, The reason why we won the war was that our Germans were better than their Germans.

Location: 33 Eccleston Square, SW1V 1PB. Churchill sold the property to the Labour Party, which used the building for offices. (orange, red)

Website: https://archives/chu.cam.ac.uk

¹. By Carlo d'Este.

The Cabinet War Rooms

The Cabinet War Rooms were a shallow bunker from which Winston Churchill oversaw the British and Imperial war effort. The complex's construction had been started by the Chamberlain government in 1938 from a set of basement storage rooms below the Treasury. The facility was officially opened four days before Britain became involved in the conflict. The burrow was continuously enlarged. By the end of the war it extended below several acres. It had steel roofs and lay beneath ten feet of reinforced concrete. However, it would probably not have been able to withstand a direct hit by an aerial bomb. In addition, there was always a strong risk that it might be flooded from below.

Churchill delivered some of his B.B.C. broadcasts to the nation Room 60. Despite the Rooms purpose, he was by no means given to cowering in the complex. Atavistic urges caused the premier to be enthralled by air raids. Often during them, he would wander through St James's Park bellowing out challenges to the Luftwaffe bombers overhead. He preferred to sleep above ground. Upon one occasion, he went to his bedroom in the Cabinet War Rooms (Room 65A), changed into his nightclothes, and climbed into his bed. He then stated to the detective who was his bodyguard that he had fulfilled the undertaking that he had made to his wife and that he was going to get up and go upstairs in order to slumber.

Churchill made his telephone calls to President Roosevelt from a cubicle-sized room that had a lock that could be switched to read either engaged or vacant .

Had the Nazis swept into Britain then it is improbable that Churchill would have allowed himself to be hunted down in his bunker. Physically, he was a brave man. He intended to make his last stand from a pill-box in Parliament Square that had been camouflaged to look like a W.H. Smith bookstall.

By the end of the conflict 115 Cabinet meetings had been held in the Rooms.

The Rooms were opened to the public in 1984.

Location: The Clive Steps, King Charles Street, SW1A 3AQ (blue, purple)

See Also: MUSEUMS The Imperial War Museum; PERIOD PROPERTIES; SUBTERRANEAN; UNDERGROUND STATIONS Ghost Stations, Down Street

Website: www.iwm.org.uk/visits/churchill-war-rooms

Ditchley

Because Chequers the prime ministerial country house was a known site that was within the Luftwaffe's bombing range, Churchill often used to invite himself to stay at Ditchley, the Oxfordshire home of Ronald Tree and Nancy Lancaster.¹ Not all of the Tree family took pleasure in the premier's capacity to give forth of his opinions at great length irrespective of the desire of those in his presence to retire for the night...or what was left of it.

Location: Ditchley Park, Chipping Norton, OX7 4ER

Website: www.ditchley.com

¹. Ditchley is a few miles north of Blenheim Palace, which had been Churchill s birthplace.

The Domestic Politician

Some once said of him, For Churchill to consult his party would be like a chauffeur to consult his motor car .

Family

Clementine Churchill

Both of Churchill and Clementine were the children of unstable marriages. Their own was often fiery. He described her as being like a jaguar dropping out of a tree when she was angry with him. Whenever she was furious with him she was given to donning a pair of white gloves.

She espoused the suffragist cause. She shared his political ambition for him. She had a gift for giving good counsel whenever he was having to live the results of one of his poor decisions. Following the Dardanelles, she advised him to go to the Western Front. Ultimately, his success was dependent upon her support.

Many of Clementine's contemporaries were dismissive of her. She was termed a bore and fool. She was not the best of mothers. That her children Randolph, Sarah, and Diana's had dysfunctional lives was in part the result of her inadequate parenting.

Churchill did not consult his wife about the purchase of Chartwell. The expense of its upkeep distorted the family's finances and enforced him to earn money through writing. Clementine always detested the house.

The Sutherland Portrait

Clementine did not have a good widowhood. Following her death in 1977, it emerged that a Graham Sutherland portrait of Churchill had been destroyed in a bonfire by Grace Hamblin, who was Lady Churchill s private secretary. The artist had been selected by all-party Parliamentary Committee in 1954. As the body's chairperson, the Labour politician Jennie Lee, oversaw the process. Her husband was the South Walian Labour M.P Aneurin Bevan, who detested Churchill because of the way that he had handled the Tonypandy Riots of 1910-1.

Location: 67 Chester Row, SW1W 8JL. Baroness Lee s home. (orange, purple)

7 Princes Gate, SW7 1QL. Lady Churchill's widowhood home. (orange, red)

Churchill's Daughters

Diana was born in 1909, Sarah in 1914, and Marigold in in 1918. In 1921 Marigold was left with an inexperienced nanny who proved to be unable to identify sepsis. The child died. Mary was born the following year. The Churchill sisters were mutually supportive. Sarah and Diana inherited the depressive aspect of their father's character. Both became alcoholics. In 1963 Diana committed suicide

Mary s parents treated with far more care than they had ever given to her sibs. Mary and her father shared a love of animals with her father. The pair were close. In 1947 Mary married Christopher Soames, who was then the military attach at the British Embassy in Paris. It soon became apparent that Churchill had developed a preference for the couple's company over his son's. Mary developed a career as a successful writer.

Pamela Harriman

Pamela Harriman married Churchill's eldest son, Randolph, in October 1939. The marriage started poorly. Randolph insisted upon reading aloud from the works of Edward Gibbon during their honeymoon. Her personal vitality and her capacity for adultery did much to foster the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War. Both of her parents-in-law colluded about her adultery. She was able to help persuade a number of President Roosevelt's senior emissaries that there was plenty of fighting spirit left in Britain. (Subsequently, she moved to the United States, became an American citizen, and involved herself in Democratic Party politics. She served the Clinton Administration as a diplomat.)

Randolph Churchill

Randolph was Churchill's eldest child. He allowed the boy to act how he wished to. He developed into being an inexperienced and under-educated child. He was without self-awareness. Yet, his father allowed him to talk to adults as he wished and almost never punished him when he was rude. The unpleasant child became a toxic adult. He had a temper, a reckless streak, and a talent for self-sabotage. He never developed his father's work ethic

Father and son had bitter fallings-out but proved to be always to reconcile themselves to one another. Churchill often confided his fears to Randolph. With regard to some of his conduct, Churchill set a poor example for his son. He was unpunctual, financially irresponsible, and inconsiderate about the impact of his personal conduct upon the people who had to deal with him. Randolph not only replicated all of these failings but magnified them as well. Churchill once remarked to Randolph that he believed his own career had flourished because his own father had died young and thus not overshadowed him.

Randolph s relationship with his mother was poor. It deteriorated to a point that prompted her to instruct her staff never to leave him alone with him. In 1939 Pamela Digby married Randolph. His mother was appalled that her daughter-in-law should have chosen to involve herself with her son. By the time the couple's son Winston was born it was patent that the marriage was a poor one.

In 1947 Randolph's sister Mary married Christopher Soames, who was then the military attach at the British Embassy in Paris. It soon became apparent that Churchill had developed a preference for the couple s company over his son's.

In 1964 Randolph underwent surgery for suspected lung cancer. The tumour proved to be benign. The novelist Evelyn Waugh, who had served with him during the Second World War, commented It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it.

Randolph had good relationships with his own children Winston and Arabella. He proved to be well-liked by the young scholars who worked on his father's biography.

Gonging Trousers

Tim Clarke spent most of his working life as a ceramics specialist at Sotheby's the auction house. During the Second World War, he won a medal for removing a Frenchman's trousers. After the fall of France, the political situation in the Middle East became fluid and it was uncertain as to whether the French authorities in the region would ally themselves to the Free French or to Vichy France. Clarke's military duties in Syria brought him into contact with a French officer whose loyalties were unclear. The auctioneer felt that the situation was of sufficient seriousness to warrant his detaining the man. He did this by debagging the fellow. When General de Gaulle heard of the incident he wanted Clarke to be court-martialled. However, at that particular juncture, Churchill was finding the French commander particularly irksome and so had Clarke gonged with a military M.B.E..

Location: 4 Carlton Gardens, SW1Y 5AD. De Gaulle s headquarters. (blue, orange)

34-35 New Bond Street, W1A 2AA. Sotheby's. (orange, turquoise)

See Also: THE CHEVALIER D'ÉON; REPEATED INSPIRATION

Historiography

The first wave of Churchill scholarship was dominated by Martin Gilbert's biography of the man. This was published over the years 1966-1988. During the 1990s John Charnley and Clive Ponting produced revisionist studies. In the 2000s a third wave of books appeared. These admired the politician.

See Also: BIOGRAPHY

The War's Western Strategy

Alan Brooke was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. He and Churchill had a fractious working relationship, however, a mutual respect underlay their interactions. Temperamentally, Roosevelt was disinclined to inform his left hand of what his right hand was doing. He did not inform George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, of what he was communicating to the British. As a result, the general had to learn things from Sir John Dill, Churchill's representative in Washington. Marshall and Brooke tended to rope in Churchill's wilder schemes, while Roosevelt tended to act as the final arbitrator.¹ The four men, who planned the Allies western strategy, met together seven times over the years 1942-5.

The Americans and British had a long disagreement about when D-Day should take place. The Americans, and Marshall in particular, pressed for an early date. In May 1942 Roosevelt told Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, that France would be invaded before the year's end. That the invasion did not occur until 1944 was to leave Stalin with a distinct sense of betrayal that was to inform the post-war era.

Location: Old Bond Street, W1S 1RT (blue, pink)

¹. In contrast, the relationship between Hitler and his generals was one-sided.

1945 Electoral Defeat

There was not an immediate need for a general election and Churchill was reluctant to call one. However, he allowed himself to be persuaded to do so. Labour set out a programme that proposed major social changes and the nationalisation of a large proportion of the economy. This had considerable purchase on working people who remembered the large-scale unemployment of the 1930s that the Conservatives had presided over. The full employment during the war had contrasted with it strongly.

In his first electoral broadcast, the premier made a major blunder by declaring that such Socialism could only be implemented by a Gestapo. He had shown this speech to his wife Clementine before making it. She declared that the declaration was too extreme but had chosen to ignore her advice. The mistake turned him from being a statesman back into a party politician. Churchill made a series of tours in open top cars. The roads often lined by deep crowds. In the first two or three rows of these, the people cheered him enthusiastically. However, Clementine came to notice that behind them were quiet, sullen people with resentful eyes who had come to look at the famous man rather than to support him.

As the election day progressed it became clear how large the landslide was going to be. At lunch Clementine commented that, It might be a blessing in disguise. If so, it is extremely well-disguised he replied. Upon appreciating his defeat, he is reputed to have commented, I guess that what was what we were fighting for.

It was soon understood that the majority of servicemen had voted Labour. Churchill ascribed this in large part to the activities of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs.

Churchill took his loss of the 1945 general election very hard. When his wife Clementine felt able to do so, she commented that the result might prove to be a blessing in disguise. The former premier replied, From where I am sitting it seems to be remarkably well-disguised.

The Labour politician Clement Atlee became prime minister. During the war he had been supportive towards Churchill. His assessment of the man was Fifty per cent fool, fifty per cent genius.

David Backhouse 2024