May 9, 2013

RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMAS: FINEST HOUR 144, AUTUMN 2009

ABSTRACT
“What Good’s a Constitution?”

Q: By helping Lloyd George construct the Welfare State early in his career, Churchill put his foot in the door that opened to socialism; yet he said he opposed socialism. Was he not inconsistent?

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 A: One must consider that in the context. I think there are three points to ponder.

1. Churchill came into Parliament in 1900 under a Prime Minister who openly opposed the principle of consent of the governed and was a candid friend of aristocratic power, that is, power to the well-born. Churchill opposed that. It is dramatic how strongly he did it. He did it in the name of his father, but for other, larger reasons also.

2. Churchill identified, over and over, socialism to be the worst problem in British politics: the worst domestic danger, a form of the danger that overcame Russia and Germany. This he said early and late. He thought socialism unfit to be the Opposition in a free country. He thought Britain vulnerable to socialism because of its class system.

3. True enough, Churchill sought a middle way. But that cannot be understood as a compromise between two mutual exclusives, especially because he opposed both mutual exclusives. It is like trying to find a middle way on the question of slavery. As Lincoln said, trying to find a man half-slave and half-free is like trying to find a man who is neither living nor dead.

What was Churchill for, then? He was for some way of healing or bridging the class distinctions and providing security for the working class, so that they would not expropriate the wealth of the holders of capital; so they would have a fair chance for themselves.

Churchill’s essay about the Upton Sinclair novel in 19061 is interesting in this regard, as are similar things he said before that. It is implicit in his support of Free Trade over preferences, which was for him a political and a class matter much more than an economic matter. It can be read in his essay about Roosevelt in 19342 and his essay about constitutionalism in 1936.3 He sees the problem of bureaucracy, and of excess by the majority, very clearly from an early day. The problem is more mature now than it was in his time. That is why it is easy for some of Churchill’s solutions to look leftish from our modern vantage point. Churchill was a political thinker. He understood that the first division in politics is between the few rich and the many poor. He looked for a way to ameliorate that division, and to make the society stable. The United States provided a model for much of this.

Churchill was, then, pursuing justice, the arrangement of goods, offices, and honors according to the merit of those receiving them, and the interest of the State. He was profoundly for a liberal society, in which the economy is driven by private enterprise, and in which money is allowed to “fructify,” as he quoted John Morley, in the pockets of people. The modern world, the world that requires freedom of religion and limited government, can abide no other kind of politics. But this kind of politics is demonstrably vulnerable to war. It is also vulnerable domestically.

If a disaffected majority, necessarily made up of the many who are poor, or relatively poor, expropriate the wealth of the few, it is a tragedy that will destroy justice in the state—even if the poor have a grievance against the rich. Churchill was trying to prevent that. How? There one must understand what he meant by “Constitutionalism.” For Churchill, this is a very rich subject, rather like the writings of James Madison.

LARRY P. ARNN, PRESIDENT HILLSDALE COLLEGE, HILLSDALE, MICHIGAN

FOOTNOTES

Any reader desiring the text of these essays may email the editor. 1. “The Chicago Scandals” (a review of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle), P.T.O., 16 and 23 June 1906. Reprinted in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), vol. IV.

2. “While the World Watches,” Collier’s, 29 December 1934. Reprinted as “Roosevelt from Afar” in Great Contemporaries, extended edition, London: Thornton Butterworth, 1938.

3. “What Good’s a Constitution?” Collier’s, 22 August 1936. Reprinted in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), vol. II.

Q: Can you tell me who Churchill’s personal hero was?

A: It is very risky for someone who never knew him to venture ananswer to that, but on the strength of his own remarks I’d say it was his father, Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-1895). Napoleon was a favorite character out of history, but in 1947, when asked by his daughter Sarah who he would most like in an empty chair opposite, he said immediately, “Oh, my father, of course.” Later he wrote a short story about the imagined return of his father, and their ensuing conversation. Search our website for “The Dream.”

Q: Did Churchill ever visit Somalia? — Jeff Faulkner, Newsweek

A: We were certain he never did, but were wrong: He visited the port of Berbera, Somaliland, by ship on his 1907 African journey. Indeed his arrival at Mombasa, for the start of his travels in Africa, was delayed three days because of his diversion to Berbera.

To his mother from HMS Venus on 19 October 1907, Churchill wrote: “I have availed myself of this to include Berbera, Somaliland, in my tour. We shall reach Aden tonight and tomorrow we have to coal there. During the night of the 20th we shall cross the Gulf and I shall spend I think two days looking into the affairs of the Somaliland Protectorate upon which we spend £76,000 a year with uncommonly little return.”

In 1910 as Home Secretary he wrote the King: “The vote of £96,000 extra for the Somaliland Protectorate gave rise to a languid discussion. General Manning is seeking to execute [the withdrawal] from our advanced posts in the interior and holding the coastal towns of Berbera, Bulhar and Seila.”

All subsequent references to Somaliland occur in World War II.