Winston Churchill – The Wilderness Years
In 1928, Winston Churchill was at the height of his career. Chancellor of the Exchequer and a powerful and popular orator, leadership of the Conservative Party seemed within his grasp. A year later, all had changed. The Conservatives were defeated and, when a National Goverment was formed in 1931, Churchill was not asked to join it. Though he was a lone figure from this point, his acute political sense, foresight and courage were undiminshed. Fed with secret inside information, Churchill consistently warned of the Nazi danger, even before the rise of Hitler. The British government, led by Stanley Baldwin and later Neville Chamberlain, fought him at every turn, even refusing him the right to broadcast.
Below is Martin Gilbert's new introduction for his book Winston Churchill – The Wilderness Years, which charts this difficult, yet crucial, period in Churchill's career.
Winston Churchill’s political career spanned sixty years. Of those, ten were spent without political office, as a Member of Parliament voicing unpopular policies, first towards British India and then, from 1933, towards Nazi Germany. Churchill’s ability to swim against the tide was remarkable. He had few allies and many opponents.
These were a difficult, frustrating and at times bruising ten years for Churchill. Yet, when he was finally brought into the War Cabinet on 3 September 1939, the first day of the Second World War – and emerged as Prime Minister eight and a half months later, on 10 May 1940 – he bore no vindictiveness. When Colin Thornton-Kemsley wrote to him six weeks after the outbreak of war to apologise for the efforts he had made to try to have Churchill removed from Parliament, Churchill replied to the young Member of Parliament: ‘I certainly think that Englishmen ought to start fair with one another from the outset in so grievous a struggle, and as far as I am concerned the past is dead.’
Another Conservative Member of Parliament, David Margesson, had repeatedly used his authority as Chief Government Whip to belittle Churchill’s judgement. Churchill was urged by his son Randolph to remove Margesson. Not only did he keep Margesson on as Chief Whip after 10 May 1940, but in December 1940 appointed him Secretary of State for War, explaining to his son: ‘The fault alleged against him which tells the most is that he has done his duty only too well. I do not think there is anyone who could advise me better about all those elements in the Tory Party who were so hostile to us in recent years, I have to think of unity, and I need all the help I can get.’
On 18 June 1940, Churchill explained to the House of Commons why unity, not division, was essential at this testing time for Britain:
There are many, who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments – and of Parliaments, for they are in it, too – during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process…. Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future…. It is absolutely necessary at a time like this that every Minister who tries each day to do his duty shall be respected, and their subordinates must know that their chiefs are not threatened men, men who are here today and gone tomorrow, but that their directions must be punctually and faithfully obeyed. Without this concentrated power we cannot face what lies before us.
Most conciliatory of all, in his obituary tribute to Neville Chamberlain, Churchill sought to draw the line under the continuing deep divisions between the Men of Munich and the anti-appeasers, telling the House of Commons:
It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart – the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.
Churchill’s efforts during the Wilderness Years had shown the importance of independent voices in a highly controlled political environment. They were also a tribute to the power of an individual to persevere against high odds, and reflected a growing public mood and public concerns that otherwise had far less chance of being heard. ■
Sir Martin Gilbert is Winston Churchill’s official biographer, and a leading historian of the modern world. He is the author of more than eighty books, including Churchill: A Life and his acclaimed two-volume work on World War I and World War II. He is an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. From 2009 to 2012 he served as a member of the British Government’s Iraq Inquiry.