The five years which followed the First World War were to be of mixed fortune for Churchill, both professionally and personally. He would enjoy a colourful ministerial career in Lloyd George’s post-war coalition, to be followed by defeat. At home, there was personal tragedy but also an increased sense of stability. In tandem with these developments his philosophy was changing. Or, as he might have preferred to put it, the British political parties were changing, and so must he. By the end of the period he would be back on the Conservative benches.
This was a time when socialism was emerging as a popular outlook across much of Europe. In Britain, it manifested mostly in the Labour Party, while Russia was now torn apart by civil war between Communists and ‘Whites’. Churchill, now in his mid-forties, was very clear that both versions of left-wing ideology were an illiberal menace. As such, he found it difficult to make any accommodation with the Labour Party and he was ill at ease with any such inclinations in Lloyd George’s Liberal Party. That party was split, with a separate rump remaining outside the coalition which had won the general election of 1918. He despaired for the Liberals, yet retained important views which would be anathema to most Conservatives. He was a paternalist, concerned that the state should be an active player in protecting its more vulnerable citizens. Despite this, he favoured the current capitalist model: he thought socialism was utopian nonsense. He also retained a romantic and old-fashioned attachment to the empire; and he remained devoutly committed to the notion of free trade. In the early 1920s, such an amalgam of views meant that Churchill did not sit easily within any of the major parties.
The 1918 government
On the back of its war victory, Lloyd George’s Liberal-Conservative coalition secured a landslide in 1918. Churchill had brought some of his trademark radicalism to the campaign, calling for devolution for Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as a standard forty-hour working week. As was the case with the Boer War, he absolutely refused to indulge in triumphalism at the expense of former enemies, even though this was a major campaigning plank for the rest of the government.
Hoping for one of the big offices of state, Churchill was disappointed to be given the twin ministries of War and the Air. These were certainly within his scope of interest, but they were not on a par with Home Secretary. Lloyd George needed to take care. Churchill was still despised by many in the Conservative Party and could not be given too much prominence. Irrespective of this, while talented, he could be a dangerous maverick. The radical twins would never be as close as they had been ten years earlier.
One of his early responsibilities was the management of Britain’s disarmament. The situation was becoming highly charged, with hundreds of thousands of conscripts desperate to return to their families. His straightforward ‘first in, first out’ policy deftly defused it. In the field of foreign affairs, he worked hard to maintain Western support for the White Russians. His deep mistrust of the Soviets was to be vindicated by events, but he did not win the debate at the time. Britain pulled its troops out of Russia. In March 1921, it signed an Anglo-Russian trade deal with the Communist government. Churchill was disgusted, and threatened to resign.
As Air Minister he became increasingly entangled in the politics of the Middle East. This involvement was to deepen when he was made Secretary of State for the Colonies in February 1921. Against the backdrop of steep defence cuts, the army and air force argued over strategies for garrisoning Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Churchill sided with the air force, agreeing that a few aircraft could substitute for thousands of troops. What he did not do was endorse the gassing of civilians. As recently as the 2003 Iraq War, Churchill has been compared to Saddam Hussein, who notoriously used deadly nerve gas against the Kurdish population. What Churchill advocated was the use of non-lethal tear gas against rebellious tribesmen. When he learnt it had been used against women and children, he was apoplectic. Nevertheless, many such myths surrounding Churchill remain in circulation.
Foreign policy: Ireland and the Middle East
The two political issues which were to dominate this period for Churchill were Ireland and the Middle East. Once given the colonial brief, he immersed himself in the complexity of reordering what had been the Ottoman Empire. The tensions and differences in that region were as deep-seated then as they are now. Sympathetic to the notion of a Jewish homeland, Churchill recognized that a series of compromises were the best he could expect to achieve. Much of the political landscape agreed at the conference he chaired in Cairo in 1921 remains: Jordan, Iraq, the Lebanon. Despite the conflicts that persist to this day, this was a masterful diplomatic performance under the circumstances.
His record with Ireland was less impressive. In June 1920, he had been given chairmanship of the Cabinet committee looking at Irish issues – a subject he had long taken an interest in. At the time, the Irish Republican Army was challenging British rule. Churchill’s response was one of brutal repression, through the deployment of the notorious ‘Black and Tans’. This paramilitary force, many of them ex-convicts, was given free rein to wipe out the IRA at any cost. The result was widespread suffering, human rights abuses, and increased support for the IRA and independence. To an extent, he was to redeem himself: the experiment was short-lived, and he went on to build a constructive relationship with Michael Collins, the IRA leader. Collins was later to claim that the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 would have been impossible without Churchill’s diplomatic skills. But to this day, his name ranks alongside that of Cromwell in many parts of Ireland.
Personal life – and a break from Parliament
This was a difficult period for Churchill at home. His fourth child, Marigold, had been born in November 1918, days after the end of the war. In August 1921 she contracted septicaemia, dying at the age of two. Earlier that year Clementine’s brother had shot himself, and Churchill’s mother had died in June. The family weathered the storm through the strength of both Clementine and Winston. Indeed, by early 1922 Clementine was pregnant again. Their fifth child, Mary, was born in September. For the first time, they acquired their own home, with the purchase of Chartwell House, in Kent.
Chartwell was to prove as important to Churchill as his painting. It was a bolt-hole, a place where he could divert his energies into matters other than politics. He took a keen interest in improvement projects, learning bricklaying and gardening. Clementine was initially ambivalent about the house but soon recognized it as a useful distraction for her husband.
Meanwhile, time was now running out for the great Liberal-Conservative coalition which had won the war. In 1922 the Liberals, still a divided party, were hammered during the general election which had followed the Conservative withdrawal from the government. Churchill had been ill with appendicitis for much of the campaign, with the doughty Clementine standing in for him, and even making public speeches on his behalf. It was not enough – in the reaction against the Liberals, he lost his Dundee seat.
Despondent, Churchill left for the south of France with his paints and easel. He also took his writing materials, and began work on his famous multi-volume history of the First World War. The project was to take him until 1931, when the fifth and final volume was published. Within the year, though, he would be back in the political fray.
The Conservatives won the 1922 election under Andrew Bonar Law, but his early retirement and replacement by Stanley Baldwin precipitated another general election in 1923. Churchill stood as a ‘Free Trade Liberal’ in Leicester, and again failed to win a seat. It would be the last time he stood for public office under the Liberal banner. In March 1924 he fought a by-election, this time as an ‘Independent anti-socialist’. Again, he was beaten; but Churchill was determined to get back into Parliament.
The minority Labour government collapsed in 1924 and Churchill again sought election. This time, he accepted an offer to run for the safe Conservative seat of Epping, as a ‘Constitutionalist’. It meant Conservative – and he had the backing of the local party. By now, Baldwin had moved the Conservative Party away from protectionism and back to a more traditional free-trade stance. This was an important factor for Churchill. He had also had enough of the factionalism of the Liberal Party and detested its support for Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour government. Perhaps as well, he simply deduced that his likeliest route back into power lay with the Conservatives.
Winston Churchill won his Epping seat with ease. In 1945 the constituency was split into Chingford and Woodford. He was to hold Epping and then Woodford for the next twenty years. What surprised him more was the offer made to him by Prime Minister Baldwin: the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer – as his father had been before him.