April 17, 2015

Finest Hour 121, Winter 2003-04

Page 13


Q: I’ve been set what I thought was • an easy research question about Churchill, but despite looking at websites and books I’ve been unable to find out the exact dates he was Prime Minister.

A: Blow your teacher away by • reporting that he was technically Prime Minister three times. The extra one was when the wartime coalition broke up and he formed a “caretaker” government of Conservatives until the 1945 election. The exact dates are: Coalition Prime Minister, 10May 1940 to 23 May 1945; Conservative Prime Minister, 23 May 1945 to 26 July 1945; Conservative Prime Minister: 26 October 1951 to 5 April 1955. See also “Timelines” in FH 116.

Q: In its obituary of Lord , Shawcross, The Times of July 11th vehemently denied that, as attorney-general in the post-World War II government, he ever said, “We are the masters now.” I have always believed he did. Moreover, I understood that the then-Leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill, retorted, “Oh no you’re not. The people put you there and the people will put you out again.” Can anyone provide the definitive version? (Alistair Cooke has already corrected two factual errors in this same obituary.) —James Bell, Scotland

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A: Shawcross always defended • himself over this matter by saying that the famous quote was not complete and that what he said was: “We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.” I suspect that the Churchill comment is apocryphal. —PHC

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