Churchill was the greatest of Britain’s prime ministers, surmounting Gladstone and Lloyd George, despite substantial personal foibles.
More concerned with policy and (often social) legislation, government machinations (especially Parliamentary doings), and society doings and gossip than Roberts, Jenkins more fully portrays why you would dislike the aristocratic thruster. In seeking to show Churchill was out of step, however, he too often falls back on ‘the sense of the house’. He contends, against Roberts and unconvincingly, Churchill was a proto-Europeanist. Often he is more the reproving politician than a historian.
Churchill had the gift of insolence – memorably amusing, performing without fear. His many talents first evident as a junior officer in India, though Jenkins seems unduly critical of the autodidact making up for lost school time.
Upon crossing to the Liberal Party, Churchill was naturally inclined to imperialists Asquith, Grey, and Haldane but personally closer to the Little Englanders. Curiously, he trumpeted his father’s unionism though himself soon to oppose the Curragh mutiny and favor updated Home Rule. He accepted a role junior to Lloyd George, the pair of whom cast aside the Gladstonian tradition of embracing libertarian political issues (and ignoring social matters) in favor of ‘constructive radicalism. ‘[Lloyd George and Churchill] were the two British politicians of genius, using the word in the sense of exceptional and original powers transcending purely rational measurement, in the first half of the twentieth century. As a result they were the two outstanding prime ministers, although in terms of solid (peacetime) achievement Asquith runs at least equal, rather as Peel did with Gladstone and Disraeli in the Victorian age. Churchill was substantially the greater man both because of the wider range outside politics of his interests and accomplishments and because his central achievement in 1940 and 1941 was of a higher order than Lloyd George’s in 117 and 1918, brought off against heavier odds, and still more vital to the future of the world. Furthermore, on issues and people, he had more fixity of purpose and coherence of belief than did Lloyd George: ore principle and less opportunism would be another way of putting it. Yet Lloyd George was undoubtedly strung in a number of significant qualifies than was Churchill, and one, and perhaps the most remarkable of his strengths was the could long exercise and almost effortless authority Churchill.’ (p. 144)
Though in 1911 he had left the Board of Trade, passed through the Home Office, and already spent two months as First Lord of the Admiralty, National Insurance was very much Churchill’s, the details being fully worked out while there. Labour Exchange Boards and enforcement of sweated labor provisions were also to his credit. Unlike most ministers, Churchill drafted his own minutes – and sent them before queries could be lodged.
1919-20 was the least impressive phase of Churchill’s career. He himself considered the Conservative abandonment of unionist Ireland as the most dramatic u-turn in modern history, though it was Lloyd George’s decision and treaty. Churchill and Bonar Law had the least natural rapport of any two major UK politicians to 1950. Baldwin’s failed bid for a protectionist mandate catalyzed Labour’s rise; on Macdonald’s 1924 accession, Churchill had to go back to the Tories as the Liberals were clearly finished.
Churchill was right to return to the gold standard: the establishment’s ‘superior wisdom;’ bested rational argument and instinct. Save that the move turned out poorly!
Marlborough evinces Churchill’s dispute with Macaulay: he won but not without the Victorian’s scoring points. The principal reason Churchill wanted to retain India was economic, as rivals were catching up the UK. Opposing independence is presented in terms of Parliamentary machinations, not political thought: he was on the losing side so he must have been wrong. Too bad – a Labour historian in the 2000s could have taken an honest look at imperialism; no one could now do so.
Churchill’s vindicated wilderness years are qualified in ‘yes but’ chapter 25. Again he falls back on sense-of-the-house explications, without treating Churchill’s stated position. Only war could have brought him back, the author says. His opposition to Soviet communism, commencing in the 1930s and continuing during wartime, is shortchanged. Eden is given credit for wartime diplomatic successes.
The Norway inquest of May 1940 was the most dramatic, far-reaching Parliamentary debate of the 20th century. Almost everyone of note participated. Its rivals are the Don Pacifico affair of 1850, which proved of little consequence; 1831’s first Reform Bill, when the doomed rotten boroughs were named; and 1886’s first Home Rule bill. In this passage, the author’s deep personal experience shines through – elsewhere he is too eager to display his bona fides, as when Atlee received a telegram at Jenkins’ wedding (p. 776) – but the author says there is no doubt Halifax would not take the job, contra Roberts. Churchill was the right man for the nadir of 1940-41 by dint of his courage and self-confidence. His connection with Montgomery reflects both being ‘light casualty’ tacticians; his rapport with Roosevelt was never so deep as often considered. In nearing war’s end, Churchill felt sidelined. (NB: of all the Europeans, Poland least reveres Churchill for acceding to Stalin’s demands for Moscow-based Polish exiles.)
Churchill’s partisanship in opposition bears little relations to an ‘essentially moderate’ term in office over 1951-55. Accepting that Labour legislation was a ‘considerable success’, he played a ‘constructive role’, for the clock could not go back to the 1930s. He missed his chance to bring the UK into Europe because Eden was cool on the matter, Eden acting as a kind of junior PM. Jenkins essentially holds the UK should have abandoned its residual imperial interests to join the Steel and Coal pact. It would have been better had Churchill retired in 1953, that Eden’s didn’t move because of illness and Butler lacked ruthlessness.
For Churchill, duty’s most powerful ally was the desire to be at the center of events. He drew energy from constant change of scene and pattern. He returns again and again to alleged chronic depression, again contra Roberts.
Quotes:
‘Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. (P. 132)
‘Oligarchies were seldom destroyed and more frequently committed suicide’ (p. 165)
Clementine: ‘To be great one’s actions must be understood by simple people’ (p. 302)
Jenkins on democratic centralism: ‘All successful political meetings give both audience and the speaker a simultaneous sense of influencing events, with a residue of inspiration but not actually challenging the currents of politics. Whereas constituency militants are ‘almost inevitably a force against sense and statesmanship … The difficulty of sustaining enthusiasm without giving militants excessive power has been one of the perennial problems of democratic government’ (p. 531)