January 1, 1970

In 1909, when the House of Lords rejected Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’, Churchill responded by attacking the peers for their pursuit of class interests. He became president of the Budget League and became an evangelist for the free trade cause, overseeing a massive free trade campaign which included lectures, exhibitions and, more unusually, a series of meetings at popular seaside resorts.

?His speeches, made between 3 and 11 December 1909, collected (and slightly adapted) in The People’s Rights, show him at his most radical. Part of a trilogy, with Lloyd George’s The People’s Budget and The People’s Insurance, this was published in 1910, setting out the case for the Liberal Party Agenda. Copies are now very rare, even though a new edition was published in 1970.

For copies, see:

Chartwell Booksellers

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Churchill was despised by the Conservatives for ‘betraying’ his party. (Liberals, however, could never forget that Churchill was born an aristocrat and had begun his career in the cavalry and as a Tory.)