January 1, 1970

Introduced by Richard M. Langworth

Most politicians accept the system they are born in; Churchill thought more deeply about democracy and proposed reforms to make it better. In 1908, speaking for the Liberal reform government, he makes the case for a ‘Minimum Standard’ that is the underpinning of today’s Welfare State: ‘Science, physical and political alike, revolts at the disorganisation which glares at us in so many aspects of modern life … It is false and base to say that these evils, and others like them … are inherent in the nature of things’. Proposing reforms we take for granted today, Churchill argued that ‘the nation, which is greater than either party, will crown with confidence and honour any party which has the strength and wisdom necessary for that noble crusade’.

Published in The Nation, this article was never subsequently reprinted, not even in the Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill. A century later, Churchill’s bibliographer, Ronald Cohen, who listed it as a ‘letter to the editor’ (Cohen G109), laboriously provided the exact original text.

Read the full article here: ‘Untrodden Field in Politics’, Finest Hour 137 Winter 2007-08, scroll to page 58.