journal of the churchill center and societies - Winston Churchill

appraisal of the economy with a warning
accusing Cook and the miners of
being influenced by the Communists:
"All the brighter prospects will be shattered
and overclouded if next spring we
are exposed to a serious industrial convulsion
in the coalfield or on the railways,
but we are still hopeful that we
will be able to carry our tray of crockery
until we have safely placed it on the national
table."
Churchill's anti-labor reputation
stems, quite unfairly, from this period
where the unions were seeking to use
the strike weapon not to secure higher
wages or better working conditions but
rather to force a general election and a
hoped-for Socialist victory and the nationalization
of coal mines. Churchill
saw Socialism as a threat to prosperity
and its cousin, Communism, as a threat
to liberty. As he said in a speech at the
Opera House in Tunbridge Wells near
his home in Chartwell on 28 November,
"The Socialist in his folly, and the
Communist in his malice, would undermine
and fatally wreck the pillars of
our national prosperity.... the Communist
thinks he can smash his way
through by violence, and the Socialist
believes he can do it by humbug....The
British Socialists are well known to be
the dullest in the world. They have
never contributed anything even to the
building up of the Socialist philosophy.
They have merely gulped down what
Karl Marx and Lenin have handed over
to them."
Fifty years ago:
Autumn 1950 • Age 76
"My dearest Pamela...I cherish
yr signal across the years..."
In October Churchill celebrated the
fiftieth anniversary of his election to
the House of Commons. That same
month, in a felicitous coincidence, the
House of Commons returned to its prewar
Chamber in Westminster, which
had been destroyed ten years earlier by
Nazi bombs and was now rebuilt, at
Churchill's direction, to its identical, albeit
cramped, configuration. Churchill
remarked: "I am a child of the House of
Commons and have been here, I believe,
longer than anyone. I was much
upset when I was violently thrown out
of my collective cradle. I certainly
wanted to get back to it as soon as possible....It
excites world wonder in the
parliamentary countries that we should
build a Chamber, starting afresh, which
can only seat two-thirds of its Members.
It is difficult to explain this to
those who do not know our ways. They
cannot easily be made to understand
why we consider that the intensity, passion,
intimacy, informality and spontaneity
of our Debates constitute the
personality of the House of Commons
and endow it at once with its focus and
its strength."
In October Pamela Plowden, his
first love, now Lady Lytton, wrote to
him reminding him that fifty years earlier
he had, unsuccessfully, proposed
marriage. His gracious reply is still affecting
today: "My dearest Pamela...it is
not till now that I can tell you how
much I cherish yr signal across the
years, from the days when I was [not
only] a freak—always that—but much
hated & ruled out, but there was one
who saw some qualities, & it is to you
that I am most deeply grateful. Do let
us meet again soon. The Parl. will be
sitting in November & perhaps you wd
come & Lunch one day. Clemmie will
telephone a plan. Fifty years!—how
stunning! but after all it is better than a
hundred. Then there wd not be memory.
With my deepest thoughts & love.
From Winston."
For his birthday on 30 November,
Churchill addressed the House of Commons
on the differences between the aftermaths
of the two world wars: "After
the First War, when the victors had disarmed
the Germans and their allies, no
powerful organised army remained
upon the scene except the French Army.
After this war, the armed might of Russia
emerged steadily year by year, almost
month by month, as a rock shows more
and more above an ebbing tide. The
second difference, which arose out of
the realization of the first, was that the
United States, instead of retiring into
isolation, instead of demanding full and
prompt repayment of debts and disinteresting
herself in Europe...has come
forward step by step as die knowledge
of the situation has dawned upon her
and has made the great counterpoise
upon which the freedom and the future
of our civilization depends."
Twenty-five years ago:
Autumn 1975
"Everybody is in the front line"
In November, Winston Churchill,
MP for Stretford, Lines., appealed for
a £100,000 reward for information
leading to conviction of IRA terrorists
who had killed a Stretford soldier, one
of three, in South Armagh. Asked
whether his suggestion made him an
IRA target, Winston Churchill replied,
"Everyone is in the front line. Who
knows where the IRA will strike as we
go about our daily business"
Myth-shattering was in vogue as J.
H. McCarthy, senior lecturer in History
at the University of South Wales, suggested
that Churchill worried during
the war that Australian PM Menzies
was after his job—a view reflected
much later in a book by another Australian
critic, David Day. Meanwhile
John Bartlett, headmaster of one of
Churchill's old schools, proclaimed that
WSC was not the dunce he had proclaimed
himself: "In his last year he was
top of the class in every subject except
geography." Churchill's famous failure
in his Latin exam at Harrow, Bartlett
said, was owed simply to "a very bad attack
of exam nerves. It's common...has
nothing to do with merit." $
FINEST HOUR 108 /19