Finest Hour 176, Spring 2017 Page 28 By Randolph Churchill My father, the younger Winston, like his father Randolph, was born during a tumultuous world war He loved the fact that he...

In the twinkling of an eye, I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.

In politics when you are in doubt what to do, do nothing … when you are in doubt what to say, say what you really think.

Finest Hour 176, Spring 2017 Page 47 Review by Warren Dockter Jonathan Asbury, Secrets of Churchill’s War Rooms, Imperial War Museum, 2016, 224 pages, £30/$45 ISBN: 978–1904897491 Visiting the Churchill War Rooms...

One would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India … Our fight is hard. It will also be long … But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open.

Churchill rapidly established himself as a prominent New Liberal, combining a commitment to free trade with support for a programme of social reform and was one of the main architects of Britain’s incipient welfare state. To those Tories he’d ‘betrayed’ by ‘crossing the floor’, he was now betraying their class, too. By April 1908, however, his ‘star’ seemed to be shining clearer and clearer (see prophecy), as he achieved cabinet rank, as President of the Board of Trade in Herbert Asquith’s new government, at the age of only thirty three. In this role he introduced a number of initiatives (not all of which were adopted during his tenure but were later).

In 1951, Churchill finally avenged that devastating defeat of 1945 and was back in Downing Street. He was nearly seventy seven. During this second period as Prime Minister, what he later referred to as ‘several years of quiet steady administration’, Churchill devoted much of his energy to foreign affairs; to Cold War issues, strengthening Anglo-American relations (that ‘special relationship’) and to retaining Britain’s position as a global power. He didn’t do much in the way of domestic policy-making – stating once that the government’s priorities were ‘houses and meat and not being scuppered’ (John Colville, 22–23 March 1952). The world stage was a much more exciting one. The Korean War was in staggering on, there were problems in Iran under the revolutionary regime of Mussadiq, and there were ongoing arguments over the agreed withdrawal from the Suez base in Egypt. And the simmering tensions of the Cold War were ever-present. Churchill’s last great quest was, as Eisenhower later referred to it, ‘a long quest for peace’.

Notes for Churchill’s speech at Fulton (5 March 1946) copyright: Churchill Archives Centre...

copyright: Churchill Archive Papers...