Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (b. 30 Nov. 1874, d. 24 Jan. 1965). British Prime Minister 1940–5, 1951–5 Born in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife Jenny (née Jerome). He was educated at Harrow, where he did not do well, and his thirst for adventure led him first to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and then into a commission in the 4th Hussars in 1895. Churchill fought at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, and, having resigned his commission in 1899, became a renowned war correspondent during the South African (Boer) War. Captured by the Afrikaners, he escaped, and returned to the UK to stand as Conservative candidate for Oldham in 1900. He won the seat, yet joined the Liberal Party in 1904 in support of free trade, becoming Liberal MP for Manchester in 1906, and from 1908, for Dundee.

Churchill had also become convinced of the need for social reform, and put this into practice as a Liberal minister. He was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (1906–8), and then President of the Board of Trade (1908–10), when he introduced measures to improve working conditions, and established labour exchanges. As Home Secretary (1910–11) he was criticized for overreacting to events by calling in troops to combat industrial disputes, and for personally directing the police at the siege of Sidney Street. He was also criticized, unfairly, for the response to the Tonypandy Riots (1910). At the Admiralty from 1911 until 1915, he continued reforms begun by Admiral Fisher. He resigned after being blamed for the Gallipoli campaign, and served briefly on the Western Front with the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned from France in 1917 at Lloyd George's behest, and became Minister of Munitions. In 1918 he moved to the Ministry for War and Air, and was Colonial Secretary in 1921–2.

When the Lloyd George coalition fell in 1922, he began to drift back to the Conservative Party. He had been closely associated with Britain's intervention in the Russian Civil War, and was increasingly concerned that Bolshevism was a threat in Britain. His outspokenness against all socialists may have contributed to him losing his Dundee seat in 1922, which at least enabled him to begin writing his story of World War I in The World Crisis (1923–31). He was elected under the title ‘Constitutionalist’ as MP for Epping in 1924, which effectively marked his return to the Conservative Party. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government (1924–9), he was associated with the return to the Gold Standard, despite the tendency of an increasing number of countries to abandon it.

His prominent role in organizing the government's measures against trade unions in the 1926 General Strike earned him the enmity of the Labour Party and substantial sections of the working population. He also opposed many of the measures of expenditure that the Royal Navy claimed were necessary for it to be adequately prepared for war. He was out of office from 1929 until 1939, partly because he was seen as unreliable, hot-headed, and reactionary by many Conservative colleagues. These sentiments were confirmed for some when he vigorously opposed the measures of Indian self-government put forward by the National Government, and supported Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. His reputation partly explains why many people ignored his warnings in the 1930s about the need to rearm, and the dangers posed by Hitler's rise to power in Germany. His association with rearmament, though, made him the ideal choice as First Lord of the Admiralty, in Neville Chamberlain's wartime government, formed in September 1939.

In May 1940 he became Prime Minister and Defence Minister of a coalition government of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour members. As a war leader, Churchill was superb in maintaining popular morale, particularly at a time when Britain was alone in resisting German conquest, until the entry of the USSR and the USA into the war in 1941. He attached a high priority to close relations with the USA, but was often wanting in his consultation with the leaders of his Commonwealth allies, whose troops he liked to dispatch as he deemed necessary. In August 1941, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was instrumental in drawing up the Atlantic Charter. Wary of Soviet expansionism, he was concerned that the USA should not concede too many of Stalin's demands as the war drew to a close: he is often said now to have overestimated the extent to which Britain could influence America. Having won the war, many observers (including, perhaps, Churchill himself) were surprised that he lost the 1945 elections to the relatively bland Attlee. This was largely because of the popularity of the Beveridge Report, and the public sense of social change necessitated by the turbulence of the war, for which Labour seemed better equipped.

Although leader of the opposition (1945–51), he left much of the actual work to Eden. Instead, he travelled widely, and spoke on international affairs. He also wrote his six-volume The Second World War (1948–54), for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He returned as Prime Minister in 1951, by now with failing health. He devoted most of his attention to maintaining the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the USA, which granted him honorary US citizenship. Otherwise, he was detached from the day-to-day running of his office, leaving much of the foreign policy to Eden, and most domestic and economic policy to Butler, whom he disliked personally. He suffered a stroke in 1953 and resigned two years later. Critics have observed that, despite his rhetoric of glory, he in fact presided over the demise of Britain as a world power. It is difficult to see how he could have prevented this, given Britain's involvement in a war of such proportions. Ultimately, there is little doubt that his undogmatic, enthusiastic, and charismatic leadership in the face of extreme adversity made him perhaps the greatest Englishman of the twentieth century.