Authors: Winston Churchill
Never Give In! (8 page)
14 December 1905
City Liberal Club. Manchester
On 4 December Arthur Balfour’s Conservative Government resigned, hoping to exploit divisions in the ranks of the Liberal party, which had been out of office for twenty years. However the prospect of office proved a firm stimulant to unity and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman formed a Liberal administration in which Winston Churchill was offered his first ministerial post as Undersecretary to the Colonies, In the General Election which followed he won the Manchester North-West seat by a majority of 1,241 votes.
Mr Balfour at Manchester said that his resignation was received ungracefully by those who had so long demanded it. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had no reason to be grateful to Mr Balfour. It was not out of any consideration for him that Mr Balfour resigned. Nothing but the bluntest compulsion procured his retirement. (
Cheers.
)
In what condition has he left the public estate? The property is heavily mortgaged, the banking account overdrawn, the annual charges are vastly increased, and national credit has been gravely impaired. The philanthropy of the late government made Consols cheap enough to be within the range of the comparatively poor people. (
Laughter.
) Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman came to the counsels of a Sovereign who was deserted at an awkward moment in the interests of a party manoeuvre. He will find nothing in the condition of the public business, legislative, administration, Parliamentary, or financial, to make him indebted to his predecessor. (
Cheers.
) Indeed the change of Government that has just taken place is less like an ordinary transfer of power from one great party to another than the winding up of an insolvent concern which had been conducted by questionable and even shady methods to a ruinous conclusion. (
Cheers.
) The firm Balfour, Balfour, and Co. has stopped payment. The managing director, a Birmingham man of large views and unusual versatility, absconded two years ago, leaving heavy outstanding liabilities, and he is believed to have since devoted himself mainly to missionary work. (
Loud laughter.
) Ever since, the business has been going downhill; it is now in liquidation. (
Cheers.
) Its paper is no longer accepted in the City and it has been ‘hammered’ on Change. (
Cheers and laughter.
) No more sinecures for guinea pigs, no more garters for dukes, no more peerages for the faithful press – (
laughter
);
–
the crash has come at last. Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman presented himself in the capacity of the official receiver, to secure the rights of the creditors and safeguard the interests of the shareholders, according to the regular law of the land.
31 July 1906
House of Commons
Five years after Britain’s decisive, but costly, victory over the Boers in South Africa it fell to Churchill to draw up the constitution giving them self-government. The measure of his success was to be shown by the fact that, in two World Wars, the Boers overwhelmingly sided with Britain. In this speech, Churchill makes a vain plea to the Conservatives to support the government and make the Transvaal constitution not the gift of a party, but ‘the gift of England’.
I have now finished laying before the House the constitutional settlement, and I should like to say that our proposals are interdependent. They must be considered as a whole; they must be accepted or rejected as a whole. I say this in no spirit of disrespect to the Committee, because evidently it is a matter which the Executive Government should decide on its own responsibility, and if the policy which we declare were changed new instruments would have to be found to carry out another plan. We are prepared to make this settlement in the name of the Liberal Party. That is sufficient authority for us; but there is a higher authority which we should earnestly desire to obtain.
I make no appeal, but I address myself particularly to the right hon. Gentlemen who sit opposite, who are long versed in public affairs, and not able to escape all their lives from a heavy South African responsibility. They are the accepted guides of a Party which, though in a minority in this House, nevertheless embodies nearly half the nation. I will ask them seriously whether they will not pause before they commit themselves to violent or rash denunciations of this great arrangement. I will ask them, further, whether they will not consider if they cannot join with us to invest the grant of a free Constitution to the Transvaal with something of a national sanction. With all our majority we can only make it the gift of a party; they can make it the gift of England. And if that were so, I am quite sure that all those inestimable blessings which we confidently hope will flow from this decision will be gained more surely and much more speedily; and the first real step taken to withdraw South African affairs from the arena of British party politics, in which they have inflicted injury on both political parties and in which they have suffered grievous injury themselves. I ask that that may be considered; but in any case we are prepared to go forward alone, and Letters Patent will be issued in strict conformity with the settlement I have explained this afternoon if we should continue to enjoy the support of a Parliamentary majority.
‘THE CAUSE OF THE LEFT-OUT MILLIONS’
11 October 1906
St Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow
Though born the grandson of a duke, the young Churchill had a keen social conscience and was deeply shocked by the very real poverty which afflicted many millions of the population. This prompted him to espouse what, at the time, was regarded as radical causes, such as unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, and better working conditions, especially for those who laboured in the mines.
The cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the left-out millions; and because we believe that there is in all the world no other instrument of equal potency and efficacy available at the present time for the purposes of social amelioration, we are bound in duty and in honour to guard it from all attacks, whether they arise from violence or from reaction.
There is no necessity tonight to plunge into a discussion of the philosophical divergencies between Socialism and Liberalism. It is not possible to draw a hard-and-fast line between individualism and collectivism. You cannot draw it either in theory or in practice. That is where the Socialist makes a mistake. Let us not imitate that mistake. No man can be a collectivist alone or an individualist alone. He must be both an individualist and a collectivist. The nature of man is a dual nature. The character of the organisation of human society is dual. Man is at once a unique being and a gregarious animal. For some purposes he must be collectivist, for others he is, and he will for all time remain, an individualist. Collectively we have an Army and a Navy and a Civil Service; collectively we have a Post Office, and a police, and a government; collectively we light our streets and supply ourselves with water; collectively we indulge increasingly in all the necessities of communication. But we do not make love collectively, and the ladies do not marry us collectively, and we do not eat collectively, and we do not die collectively, and it is not collectively that we face the sorrows and the hopes, the winnings and the losings of this world of accident and storm. . . .
I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit. I do not think that Liberalism in any circumstances can cut itself off from this fertile field of social effort, and I would recommend you not to be scared in discussing any of these proposals, just because some old woman comes along and tells you they are Socialistic. If you take my advice, you will judge each case on its merits. Where you find that State enterprise is likely to be ineffective, then utilise private enterprises, and do not grudge them their profits.
The existing organisation of society is driven by one mainspring – competitive selection. It may be a very imperfect organisation of society, but it is all we have got between us and barbarism. It is all we have been able to create through unnumbered centuries of effort and sacrifice. It is the whole treasure which past generations have been able to secure, and which they have been able to bequeath; and great and numerous as are the evils of the existing condition of society in this country, the advantages and achievements of the social system are greater still. Moreover, that system is one which offers an almost indefinite capacity for improvement. We may progressively eliminate the evils; we may progressively augment the goods which it contains. I do not want to see impaired the vigour of competition, but we can do much to mitigate the consequences of failure. We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labour, yet above which they may compete with all the strength of their manhood. We want to have free competition upwards; we decline to allow free competition to run downwards. We do not want to pull down the structures of science and civilisation: but to spread a net over the abyss; and I am sure that if the vision of a fair Utopia which cheers the hearts and lights the imagination of the toiling multitudes should ever break into reality it will be by developments through, and modifications in, and by improvements out of, the existing competitive organisation of society; and I believe that Liberalism mobilised, and active as it is today, will be a principal and indispensable factor in that noble evolution.
I have been for nearly six years, in rather a short life, trained as a soldier, and I will use a military metaphor. There is no operation in war more dangerous or more important than the conduct of a rearguard action and the extrication of a rear-guard from difficult and broken ground. In the long war which humanity wages with the elements of nature the main body of the army has won its victory. It has moved out into the open plain, into a pleasant camping ground by the water springs and in the sunshine, amid fair cities and fertile fields. But the rear-guard is entangled in the defiles, the rear-guard is still struggling in mountainous country, attacked and assailed on every side by the onslaughts of a pitiless enemy. The rear-guard is encumbered with wounded, obstructed by all the broken vehicles that have fallen back from the main line of the march, with all the stragglers and weaklings that have fallen by the way and can struggle forward no farther. It is to the rear-guard of the army that attention should be directed. There is the place for the bravest soldiers and the most trusted generals. It is there that all the resources of military science and its heaviest artillery should be employed to extricate the rear-guard – not to bring the main army back from good positions which it occupies, not to throw away the victory which it has won over the brute forces of nature – but to bring the rear-guard in, to bring them into the level plain, so that they too may dwell in a land of peace and plenty.
That is the aim of the Liberal Party, and if we work together we will do something for its definite accomplishment.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: ‘A VOLCANO’
22 October 1906
Free Trade Hall, Manchester
The Socialist-leaning playwright and author was not Churchill’s most favourite person, but here he indulges in some light-hearted banter at his expense.
We had yesterday in Manchester Mr George Bernard Shaw, who has been favouring us with his views on methods of human and social regeneration, Mr Bernard Shaw is rather like a volcano. There is a great deal of smoke; there are large clouds of highly inflammable gas. There are here and there brilliant electrical flashes; there are huge volumes of scalding water, and mud and ashes cast up in all directions. Among the mud and ashes of extravagance and nonsense there is from time to time a piece of pure gold cut up, ready smelted from the central fires of truth. I do not myself dislike this volcano. It is not a very large volcano, though it is in a continual state of eruption. What is his remedy for the evil conditions which we see before us. It is very simple and drastic – he proposes to cut off the Lord Mayor’s head. – (
Laughter.
) I have had the pleasure of meeting the Lord Mayor several times during his tenure of office, and although I do not doubt that a capital sentence hanging over his head would stimulate him to even greater exertions, yet I am inclined to think the work you have done deserves some better reward.
18 January 1908
National Liberal Club, London
Relishing his position as Colonial Under-Secretary, Churchill used the Parliamentary recess as the opportunity to visit Britain’s colonies in East Africa. He had returned just the day before and was filled with enthusiasm for all he had seen.
If you ask what is my prevailing impression – my prepondering impression – in the journey I have taken, I would say frankly it is one of astonishment. It is not the first time I have travelled abroad. I have had the opportunity of examining Africa from both ends – from the Sudan and from the South, – and I have travelled very widely over India. But I confess I have never seen countries so fertile and so beautiful outside Europe as those to which I have travelled on the journey from which you welcome me back tonight. There are parts of the East African Protectorate which in their beauty, in the coolness of the air, in the richness of the soil, in their verdure, in the abundance of running water, in their fertility – parts which absolutely surpass any of the countries which I have mentioned, and challenge comparison with the fairest regions of England, France, or Italy. (
Cheers.
) I have seen in Uganda a country which from end to end is a garden – inexhaustible, irrepressible, and exuberant fertility upon every side – and I cannot doubt that the great system of lakes and waterways, which you cannot fail to observe if you look at the large map of Africa, must one day become the great centre of tropical production, and play a most important part in the economic development of the whole world.
