May 31, 2013

Finest Hour 116, Autumn 2002

Page 12

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

125 Years Ago:

Autumn 1877 • Age 2

“Mad or Singularly Affected”

Winston’s father, Lord Randolph, is most often quoted on matters Irish with the words “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right,” predicting violent resistance to Irish Home Rule. Yet in autumn 1877, Lord Randolph gave a speech on Ireland where, as Winston wrote in his biography of his father, he “expressed his opinion…with unguarded freedom, much to the astonishment and displeasure of his family.”

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Lord Randolph sided with a small number of Irish MPs were using much criticized tactics to obstruct business in the House of Commons: “I have no hesitation in saying that it is inattention to Irish legislation that has produced obstruction. There are great and crying Irish questions which the Government have not attended to, do not seem to be inclined to attend to and perhaps do not intend to attend to.” Winston then paraphrases his father: “Truths, he said, were always unpalatable, and he who spoke them very seldom got much thanks; but that did not render them less true. England had years of wrong, years of crime, years of tyranny, years of oppression, years of general misgovernment to make amends for in Ireland….It was for these reasons that he should propose no extreme measures against Irish members, believing as he did that the cure for obstruction lay not in threats, not in hard words, but in conciliatory legislation.”

Lord Randolph’s father, the Duke of Marlborough (Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, where Randolph served as his private secretary) was astonished. In a letter to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, he wrote, “The only excuse I can find for Randolph is that he must either be mad or have been singularly affected with local Champagne or claret. I can only say that the sentiments he has indulged in are purely his own; and, more than this, I was as much amazed as you in reading them, and had no conception that he entertained such opinions.”

But Lord Randolph, his son writes, “by no means withdrew or modified what he had said” in the face of criticism. In a letter to the Morning Post, he wrote: “You remark, further, that what I called ‘unpalatable plain truths’ were certainly unpalatable, but were not true. Yet the misgovernment of Ireland before the Act of Union, and the methods used to pass that Act, are now matters of history. These were two of my ‘plain truths’; and the third, that the great questions on which Irish feeling is most deeply interested have been neglected during the last four years, is in my opinion equally undeniable.”

100 Years Ago:

Autumn 1902 • Age 27

“Mind you gush to him”

From Balmoral Castle, where he was on holiday with the King, Churchill wrote to his mother with helpful suggestions on how she should communicate to the King, when next they met, Churchill’s feelings about his visit with the King: “You will see the King on Weds when he comes to Invercauld; mind you gush to him about my having written to you saying how much etc etc I had enjoyed myself here.”

Later that autumn, Churchill wrote to a constituent elaborating upon his views on Free Trade, the issue over which he would leave the Conservative Party for the Liberal Party two years later: “[I]t would seem to me a fantastic policy to endeavour to shut the British Empire up in a ringed fence. It is very large, and there are a good many things which can be produced in it, but the world is larger & produces some better things than can be found in the British Empire. Why should we deny ourselves the good and varied merchandise which the traffic of the world offers, more especially since the more we trade with others, the more they must trade with us; for it is quite clear that we give them something else back for everything they give to us. Our planet is not a very big one compared with the other celestial bodies, and I see no particular reason why we should endeavour to make inside our planet a smaller planet called the British Empire, cut off by impassable space from everything else.”

75 Years Ago:

Autumn 1902 • Age 27

“The Finest Entertainment the House can Offer”

Churchill continued to push in the Cabinet for a massive tax cut as the centerpiece of his 1928 budget — “a vast reduction of rates upon producers.” He was aided in his endeavors by his popularity both at large and in the House of Commons. This was acknowledged by a Cabinet colleague, Neville Chamberlain, the Minister of Health, who opposed the tax cut, and wrote in a letter to Lord Irwin:

“Winston remains the figure most interesting to the general public. I think he has materially improved his position in the party, and it is admitted on all sides that he has no equal in the House. His manner with the opposition is so good-humoured that although they often interrupt him, they look forward to his speeches as the finest entertainment the House can offer.”

In September, Clementine went to Venice for six weeks on doctor’s orders to recuperate from an accident that summer where she had been hit by a bus while shopping. She wanted Winston to come with her; he journeyed first to Scotland in late September for four days of stag hunting and fishing before joining her in Venice on 6 October where, Martin Gilbert tells us, “For ten days he swam, painted and wrote more of his autobiography.”

Five days after his return from Venice, Churchill wrote to his wife about his problems persuading his Cabinet colleagues to accept the reductions in expenditures his tax cut would require. “I am almost certain that the Cabinet Committee and the Cabinet will endorse my views. There may be a very stiff tension before it is settled, and really I think I am bound to fight this pretty hard. It looks as if I am going to get through all right but this must not be proclaimed. I have to talk beggary and bankruptcy for the next few months. I have had some awful blows in expense, now from this quarter, now from that. Luckily however there are windfalls and what we lose on the swings we shall perhaps more than recover on the roundabouts.” Churchill then added, in what was undoubtedly an unnecessary comparison, given Clementine’s oft-expressed concern for the state of their household exchequer: “It is really very like our private affairs though on a larger scale….”

A strong opponent of Churchill’s tax cut was the Admiralty, owing to his proposed moratorium on building new ships until 1929. In November, he wrote to the Attorney General, Sir Douglas Hogg, opposing the immediate construction of a six-inch-gun cruiser when eight-inch-gun cruisers were becoming the new international standard. “Judged by the test of naval strength, it seems a very great pity to order a vessel definitely weaker than the contemporary type of other Powers’….It may be wrong to make weapons of war, but it is certainly stupid deliberately to make weapons which will be outmatched.”

Meanwhile, Churchill continued to attack the Socialists in public speeches. In Nottingham on 21 October, he said: “Freedom as we know it is incompatible with a Socialist State. I loathe the canting insincerity of the Socialists and their pretensions of superiority. They make out that they are a kind of beautiful, visionary, noble school of dreamers all living a life so much higher than any to which the ordinary man and woman can aspire, preaching fraternity and hating each other like poison [laughter], talking to us one moment in the terms of the Sermon on the Mount and the next in the terms of the disgusting blasphemies used in the Socialist Sunday Schools.”

50 Years Ago:

Autumn 1952 • Age 77

“I think this makes war much more probable”

When General Eisenhower was elected President in November, Churchill sent a warm cable of congratulations to his wartime colleague. “I look forward to a renewal of our comradeship and of our work together for the same causes of peace and freedom as in the past.” Privately, however, Churchill was concerned, telling his secretary, John Colville: “For your private ear, I am greatly disturbed. I think this makes war much more probable.”

In a live, televised speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall on 10 November, Churchill spoke of what was needed to preserve the peace: “NATO embraces all active, living movements toward the unity of the free nations of Europe, in which I have always felt the hopes of a lasting peace reside… Any man in Germany or France or Britain who tries to hamper or delay that healing process is guilty of undermining the foundations upon which the salvation of all mankind from war and tyranny depends. Every addition to the strength of NATO increases the deterrents against aggression on which our hopes and convictions
stand.”

Churchill had tried to make up for his distant relationship with his father by being close to his own son, Randolph. But after the war their relationship had deteriorated, as evidenced by a long letter Randolph sent his father 50 years ago: “…it has been a growing source of grief to me that ever since you first became Prime Minister you have repeatedly made it clear to me-& to others —that you no longer have that same desire for my company in private or in public which between 1923 & 1940 was the chief delight & pivot of my existence….I realize too that you regard me as a failure & that you cannot disguise this view entirely successfully from other people. Failure is of course a relative term & I should have thought that if you ever had time to cast an eye over the children of your political contemporaries you could scarcely regard my failure as absolute…..Can’t you understand the maladjustment, the frustration, yes even (recently) the jealously that urges the bile of resentment when one’s love is scorned as worthless & the person one loves scarcely troubles to hide from friend or foe the indifference or hostility which he feels? All this permeates the fabric of our relationship. Usually a father & son get on well; (it is an easier relationship than marriage) &, if their interests happen to lie in the same direction, the relationship is that of partners. (Before the war this was virtually achieved.) Now all is changed to a horrible degree….Except for money, over which you have always been supremely generous, I don’t think I have ever asked you for anything. I ask something now: that you should try to understand me as I am (and not as you imagine I am or think I ought to be): that you should try once more to show me the love & trust which you brought me up to expect value above all else….”