Churchill, Lord Randolph

Churchill, Lord Randolph (1849–95). An MP from 1874, Churchill was secretary to his father, the 7th duke of Marlborough, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland. After the Conservative defeat of 1880 he led a small ginger group known as the Fourth Party undermining the party leadership of Northcote. Contemptuous of the passivity and ‘respectability’ of the ‘Old Gang’, Churchill exploited the discontents of the neglected provincial associations in the National Union and claimed to speak for a ‘Tory Democracy’ derived from Disraeli: ‘Trust the people.’ Audacious in language and style, compulsively self-publicizing, Churchill was a young man in a hurry, perhaps knowing that syphilis would shorten his career. His deal with Salisbury in 1884, abandoning the National Union in return for admittance into the collective leadership, ended Northcote's chances of the premiership. Secretary for India in Salisbury's 1885 government, Churchill had Burma annexed. Though he flirted with Parnell's nationalists and pursued conciliation in Ireland, once Gladstone had proposed Home Rule Churchill hoisted unionist colours: ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.’ Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Commons in 1886, he soon became impatient with cabinet colleagues and, seeking tactical alliance with Chamberlain's wing of the Liberal Unionists, he began to challenge Salisbury's leadership. When Churchill, frustrated over cutting the services estimates, offered a tactical resignation, Salisbury called his bluff and accepted. Though he said he had ‘forgotten Goschen’ (who took the Exchequer), rather he had underestimated the desire of those who mattered to rid themselves of a disruptive presence. Harassed by health and financial worries, Churchill never recovered politically. His marriage to New York heiress Jennie Jerome appeared, at least in public, to be a glamorous success. The biography published in 1908 by his son Winston, then a Liberal, celebrated Randolph as the frustrated hero of a democratic and radical Toryism: later historians have seen consistency in little but driving ambition.

Bruce Coleman