Authors: Winston Churchill
Never Give In! (7 page)
‘THE MERE WASHPOT OF PLUTOCRACY’
4 June 1904
Alexandra Palace, London
On 31 May 1904 Churchill ‘crossed the floor’ of the House of Commons to take his place among the Liberal party on the Opposition benches. He did so on the issue of Free Trade which, bowing to Protectionist cartels, the Conservative party had abandoned. A few days later, in the company of the Leaden of the Liberal Party, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George, he addressed a meeting to celebrate the centenary of Richard Cobden, the Liberal free-trader who founded the ‘Manchester School’ of economists.
And how is it with the Conservative party? They are not pleased with me. (
Laughter.
) They tell me I ought to join the Liberal party – (
Cheers.
) It is not a bad idea. (
Renewed cheers.
) I will consider it carefully. (
Laughter and cheers.
) I have a sincere respect for the Conservative party. They are an ancient party, and I believe that they will at intervals have a valuable and a useful function to fulfil in the government of the country. But the Conservative party has allowed itself to become the instrument of an ambitious man. It has allowed itself to advocate a reactionary and a dangerous policy. It has allowed itself to embark upon a gamble for another lease of power, a gamble with the food of the people. And in consequence the Conservative party will suffer, and will, I think, deservedly suffer, electoral defeat some day in a perhaps not too distant future. (
Cheers.
)
But a graver danger than defeat threatens the Conservative party. There are worse things than defeat – dishonour is worse. The Conservative party is threatened with a revolutionary change in its character and position, a change which will make it not a national party, not a constitutional party, not an Imperial party, not even an aristocratic party; it is in danger of becoming a capitalist party, (
Cheers.
) It is in great danger of becoming the mere washpot of the plutocracy, the engine of the tariff and the trust, and a hard confederation of interest and monopoly banded together to corrupt and to plunder the commonwealth. (
Loud cheers.
) That is the danger which many of the wisest men in the party are striving to save it from, and whatever our political opinions may be we must all hope that it may be preserved from that danger. What should we say of the statesman who is responsible for all this disturbance – Mr Chamberlain? How are the mighty fallen! (
Laughter.
) ‘But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world’ – now he has to sit next to Mr Chaplain. (
Laughter.
) Only a year ago Mr Chamberlain was going to sweep the country; now he dare not face a debate in the House of Commons. (
Cheers.
) Mr Chamberlain denies that he ran away from the debate in the House of Commons. I don’t accuse him of running away. I saw a phrase in the war report this morning which expresses the situation exactly. He did not run away, he executed a strategic movement to the rear. (
Much laughter.
) Mr Chamberlain is very angry because Lord Hugh Cecil – (
cheers
)
–
accused him of cowardice. I don’t accuse him of cowardice; I think he acted as a wise and prudent man – (
laughter
)
–
in shirking the debate, because the plain truth is that his supporters are so incompetent that his arguments are such rubbish, that his figures are such figures – (
laughter
)
–
that he dare not submit them to the free and unprejudiced debate of the House of Commons. (
Cheers.
) No, he will keep them for the meetings of the Tariff Reform League in the country, those meetings which are attended by carefully selected working men in dress clothes and unemployed who pay 15s. a piece for their tickets. (
Laughter.
)
We are here this afternoon to celebrate the centenary of Mr Cobden, and I am proud of the high and honourable duty which has been entrusted to me in moving this resolution. It is the fashion nowadays to speak with a great deal of contempt of the Manchester School, and no abuse seems to be bad enough for Mr Cobden. But I venture to think there will be some of you here who will believe it is very nearly time that the peaceful, philanthropic, socialising doctrines of Mr Bright and Mr Cobden were a little more considered by the statesmen who rule our land. (
Cheers.
) We do not pretend that everything Mr Cobden said was right, or that the political system of thought which he established was a complete and final revelation of worldly wisdom. But in the long stairway of human progress and achievement which the toil and sacrifice of generations are building it was Cobden’s work to lay a mighty stone. (
Cheers.
) Other stones had been laid upon that stone, stones of social standards and social reform, stones of Imperial responsibility, and you have only got to walk about the streets of London to see that there is plenty more work waiting to be done by a master mason. (
Cheers.
) But we believe that the work which Cobden did was done for ever; that the stone he laid shall never be transplanted, that the heights he gained shall never be abandoned. (
Cheers.
) We may differ among ourselves, we probably do, as to how far, how fast, or in what direction we shall move forward, but on one point we are all agreed – we are not going back one inch, (
Loud and prolonged cheers.
) We are not going back because the principles we defend are principles which endure from one generation to another. Men change, manners change, customs change, Governments and Prime Ministers change, even Colonial Secretaries change – (
laughter
)
–
sometimes they change their offices, sometimes they change their opinions. (
Laughter.
) But principles do not change. Whatever was scientifically true in the economic proportions which were established 60 years ago in the controversy of a far greater generation than our own is just as true in 1904 as it was in 1846, and it will still be true as long as men remain trading animals on the surface of the habitable globe.
16 June 1904
Cheetham Hill Manchester
By now Churchill had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the battle against Protectionism and on the side of Free Trade.
We are gathered here and I stand here with Liberal support as the Free Trade candidate for North-west Manchester because a distinguished politician has changed his mind. Many people change their minds in politics. Some people change their minds to avoid changing their party. – (
Laughter.
) Some people change their party to avoid changing their mind. – (
Renewed laughter.
) There have been all sorts of changes in English politics, but I think that Mr Chamberlain’s change is much the most remarkable of any that history records. – (
Hear, hear.
) When you think that the man who broke up or was breaking up the Liberal Government of 1885 by being more Radical than Mr Gladstone, and was driving the Duke of Devonshire out of the Liberal party and Liberal Government in 1885, is the man who is now breaking up the Conservative Government in 1904 by being more Tory and more reactionary than any Conservative in that government, I think you will agree with me that it is a world’s record – (
laughter and cheers
),
–
that it is less like an ordinary political manoeuvre than like one of those acrobatic feats which are so popular in circuses and hippodromes. There is one particular feat of which I am forcibly reminded tonight – the novel and exciting spectacle of ‘looping the loop’. – (
Laughter.
) It is a very dangerous and a very difficult performance. I don’t know whether you have ever seen it. Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. When it succeeds great applause is accorded to the performer. When it fails he is usually carried away on a shutter. – (
Laughter.
) But whether it succeeds or whether it fails the performance always commands the attention and the interest of the audience. . . .
I hope in the autumn to lay before the electors a statement upon these subjects at greater length. When the election comes, it is on these points that I will ask for your support, and I will put on my bills –
Vote for Churchill, Cheap Food, Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform.
The Protectionists have failed to prove that this country is not prosperous; they have failed to prove that they have a remedy which will make us prosperous; and they have failed to prove that their remedy can be effectively applied. As the world goes, we are undoubtedly a prosperous nation, and, man for man, the most prosperous nation. But even if we were not prosperous, Protection would only accelerate our decline and exacerbate our misfortunes. Is it a strange thing that there has been some disorganisation of our commerce after the close of a great and costly war? Mr Chamberlain told a Birmingham audience two years ago that England was rich enough to fight just such another war. Ah! the Birmingham barrel – organ is playing a different tune today – (
Laughter.
) England is now bleeding to death, and we are told that the colonies will leave us unless Canadian loyalty is purchased at 25. a quarter and Australian allegiance at a penny a pound, – (
Laughter.
)
Mr Chamberlain’s motives no doubt are pure enough, but what about some of those who were supporting him – those rich landlords and wealthy manufacturers who jostled one another on his platforms? Was it all for the unity of the Empire; was it all for the good of the Empire? – (
Laughter.
) I will show by quotations that the working men of Spain, France, and Germany are more discontented than the English working men, and that a Free Trade movement is in progress both in Germany and America. I do not look upon foreign peoples as if they are our enemies. – (
Loud cheers.
) The King has gone from one European capital to another endeavouring to spread goodwill among the nations. What is the good of that if we have another lot of people with a distinguished man at their head going about appealing to every narrow, bigoted, insular prejudice, representing every foreigner as an enemy, spreading ill-will and dissension among the nations of the earth? – (
Cheers.
) The union of the Anglo-Saxon race is a great ideal, and if ever it is to be achieved it will be by increasing and not diminishing the friendly intercourse of trade between this country and the United States. Against such wanton folly as a tariff war with the United States, Free-traders appeal with confidence to Lancashire, and we hope that, as in years gone by, Lancashire will point the path of honour and wisdom to the people of the British islands. – (
Loud cheers.
)
‘DEAR FOOD FOR THE MILLIONS: CHEAP LABOUR FOR THE MILLIONAIRE’
13 May 1905
Manchester
As Churchill’s son and biographer, Randolph
(
the editor’s father
)
observed: “While Churchill reserved his invective largely for the public platform, he gave the House of Commons the best fruit of his thoughts and the most reasoned arguments in his power.’ Here he castigates the Conservative party, which he rebrands the ‘Protectionist’ party, together with its leader Arthur Balfour, who was still Prime Minister.
The great leader of the Protectionist party, whatever else you may or may not think about him, has at any rate left me in no doubt as to what use he will make of his victory if he should win it. We know perfectly well what to expect – a party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a party machine; sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer, the open door at the public-house, dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire.
9 October 1905
Cheetham Hill, Manchester
By now Churchill had firmly moved his political attentions to North-West Manchester in England’s industrial North, where he was to stand with Liberal support as the Free Trade candidate in the General Election three months later.
If the Unemployment Bill was a sham, the Aliens Bill was a sham with lunacy superimposed upon it. (
Laughter.
) I am not going to argue the merits of legislation against the admission of aliens into the country. But the Act as it was forced through the House of Commons by the closure contains absurdities which would make a deaf mute roar with laughter. The object of the bill was to keep out undesirables, but any undesirable, whether he was a thief, or a diseased man, or an idiot, might come in if he came in as a third-class passenger and not by steerage. A poverty line was drawn for the first time; a few shillings made the difference between desirability and undesirability. Moreover, the alien who chose to travel in a ship where there were not more than nineteen other aliens might come in freely. The Act will not in any degree alter the situation in England. On the other hand, it may inflict hardship and vexation upon many deserving people who seek a refuge on our shores, and it violates that tradition of British hospitality of which we have been proud and from the practice of which we have at more than one period reaped marked and permanent advantage. (
Cheers.
)
