As early as 1901, a few months after entering Parliament, he had flirted with the thought of switching parties. His motives then had been less than lofty. Lady Warwick held a long political discussion with him at Cecil Rhodes’s Scottish home on Loch Rannoch. She wrote that Winston “had just been on a visit to Lord Rosebery, and he said he was inclined to leave the leadership to Mr. Balfour and proclaim himself a Liberal. He wanted power and the Tory road to power was blocked by the Cecils and other brilliant young Conservatives, whereas the Liberal path was open. Cecil Rhodes was all in favour of his turning Liberal.” Winston had written his mother: “I am a Liberal in all but name.” He was corresponding with Bourke Cockran, who was campaigning against Republican tariffs in Washington, and he knew that Cockran, still one of his heroes, had left Tammany on a matter of principle in 1896 to support McKinley for President. His aunt Cornelia begged him to cross the floor: “Of one thing I think there is no doubt & that is that Balfour & Chamberlain are one, and that there is no future for Free Traders in the Conservative party. Why tarry?”24
He tarried because he wasn’t so sure about Balfour’s position. On this issue the man was a Hamlet. Thus far the duel had been between Churchill and Chamberlain, and in the House, Winston had more Conservative followers than Joe; when he launched his Free Food League on July 13, 1903, sixty Tory MPs signed up, while the rival Tariff Reform League enrolled only thirty. Outside Parliament, however, Chamberlain was much stronger among the party rank and file. He was a hero to the constituency committees, the men who got out the vote. That summer he crisscrossed the country, speaking fervently for imperial preference. Churchill, fighting it, made the same tour, matching him speech for speech. Both sides were still civil. Winston’s sharpest barb was: “Mr. Chamberlain loves the working man. He loves to see him work.” On July 26 Sir Edward Hamilton wrote in his diary: “W.C. is taking a very devoted line against C…. It is the fashion to run him down—but I think there is a great deal in him and that he is bound to win in the end.” On August 12 Churchill and another MP entertained several members of the party leadership, including the prime minister, at a dinner in the House. Afterward he wrote his mother, “A.B. was most amiable and very good humoured” even though “I had been very rude to him in the House of Commons in the afternoon.” Leaving the dinner he “ran straight into J.C. who gave me an extraordinary look of reproach as much as to say ‘How could you desert me’ and I confess I felt very sorry for him indeed…. I cannot help admiring Chamberlain’s courage. I do not believe he means to give way an inch, and I think he is quite prepared to sacrifice his whole political position… for the cause in which he is so wrapped up.” Yet Winston came to regard Joe as the turncoat, the subversive, the renegade. In early September the Pall Mall Gazette quoted Churchill as saying: “Some of us were born in the Tory Party and we are not going to let any aliens turn us out.” The Gazette reporter asked him about rumors that he would cross to the Opposition, and he replied: “Oh, absurd. I am a Tory and must always remain a Tory.” The article concluded: “He is a Tory by birth and inheritance. Toryism possesses him…. It is with him something of a religion.”25
It wasn’t, really. He was on the verge of sacrilege. The turning point came that month. On September 12, 1903, Chamberlain quit the cabinet to devote himself to his crusade. Momentarily it seemed that the prime minister might be able to ignore the issue. It was an illusion. The tension was still there, and it was growing. Two days after Joe had stepped down, Churchill wrote his mother: “I fancy a smash must come in a few days. Mr Balfour is coming to Balmoral on Saturday. Is he going to resign or reconstruct?… If he reconstructs—will it be a protectionist reconstruction of a cabinet wh does not contain the free trade Ministers, or a free trade reconstruction of a Cabinet from which J.C. has resigned? All these things are possible.” But there was no ministerial reshuffle. Two weeks later a second Conservative conference at Sheffield strongly reaffirmed imperial preference as a means of strengthening the Empire. In his speech to them, Balfour then tumbled off the fence and, with some characteristic reservations, declared himself to be on their side. This, to Winston, meant the time had come to take off his gloves. He wrote (but did not mail) a letter to Linky Cecil, declaring that “to proceed making perfervid protestations of loyalty to the ‘party’ & yet to trample on the dearest aspirations of the party & thwart its most popular champions is to court utter ruin.” He added, bitterly: “I am an English Liberal. I hate the Tory party, their men, their words & their methods.” Even so, he was not yet ready to make his change of heart public: “Nothing need happen until December at any rate, unless Oldham explodes.”26
But Oldham did explode. Despite promises to jump to the Tory whip, he endorsed the Liberal candidate in a Ludlow by-election on the ground that “Free Traders of all parties should form one line of battle,” and at a Free Trade rally in Halifax he cried: “Thank God we have a Liberal Party.” On December 23 Oldham’s Tory executive committee resolved that he had “forfeited” their confidence and could not expect their support in the next election. The resolution would be laid before the full body on January 8, 1904. In a spirited defense, Churchill wrote them that he was responding to a higher loyalty: “When Mr Balfour succeeded Lord Salisbury, he solemnly pledged himself at the Carlton Club that the policy of the party should be unchanged. And yet at Sheffield, only a year afterwards, he declared for a ‘fundamental reversal of the policy of the last fifty years.’ Therefore it is not against me that any charge of breaking pledges can be preferred.” He said he meant to continue representing the thirteen thousand men who had voted for him, doing his best “to oppose all protectionist manoeuvres in Parliament and to explain to the electors of Oldham how closely Free Trade and cheap food are interwoven with the welfare of the Lancashire artisan.” The committee was unconvinced. The resolution carried with but one dissent. He offered to resign, which was crafty of him; in a by-election he would either split the vote with their candidate or win as a Liberal—a Tory loss either way. So his original Oldham sponsors fumed, impotent, while he continued to sit on the Conservative side of the House, savaging his leaders day after day.27
Not even the oldest MPs could remember a more brilliant, more acrimonious performance. The Daily Mail commented that since Sheffield “his speeches have been almost without exception directed against the policy of the Government. They have been clever, severe, biting in their sarcasm, full of sneers and scorn for Mr Balfour and his Ministers.” The Conservative party, Churchill said, had become “the slave of great interests.” The Tory flaw was “a yearning for mediocrity.” The party’s members were “ready to make great sacrifices for their opinions, but they have no opinions. They are ready to die for the truth, if only they knew what the truth is.” He cried: “To keep in office for a few more weeks and months there is no principle which the Government is not prepared to abandon, and no quantity of dust and filth they are not prepared to eat.” Balfour was guilty of “gross, unpardonable ignorance” and a “slipshod, slapdash, haphazard manner of doing business.” Winston said that “the dignity of a Prime Minister, like a lady’s virtue, is not susceptible of partial diminution.” Balfour, however, had “flouted the traditions of Parliament and dishonoured the service of the Crown.” When one of the prime minister’s supporters protested this outrageous language, Churchill wrote The Times, accusing the man of trying to gag him, and adding: “While Mr Balfour silences his followers in the House of Commons Mr Chamberlain is busy with their constituencies” disseminating “protectionist propaganda.” The prime minister was only a puppet, a fool; the real Tory leader was Chamberlain, and Winston described Joe’s vision of the party: “Over all, like a red robe flung about the shoulders of a sturdy beggar, an extravagant and aggressive militarism, and at the top, installed in splendour, a party leader, half German Chancellor, half American boss.” Chamberlain’s insistence that tariffs would enrich Britain was “a downright lie.” When another Free Trader resigned from the party, Tory MPs hissed his speech exp
laining why. Churchill shouted: “Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am quite unable to hear what my honourable friend is saying owing to the vulgar clamour of the Conservative Party.” Sir Trout Bartley, a Balfour supporter, leapt up, pointed at Churchill, and shrieked: “The vulgarest expression came from this honourable gentleman!”28
The prime minister tut-tutted and looked away. Most of the time he ignored Churchill, but sometimes he was drawn. What galled him most was the knowledge that while the wounding slurs of other MPs arose from the heat of battle, Churchill coldly honed and barbed his insults each evening in Mount Street. It was premeditated, ungentlemanly. Once he deeply angered Balfour. In tones dripping with malice Churchill said, “We have been told ad nauseam of the sacrifices which the Prime Minister makes. I do not deny there have been sacrifices. The House ought not to underrate or deny those sacrifices.” He ticked them off: “sacrifices of leisure,” “sacrifices of dignity,” “the sacrifice of reputation.” He quoted the prime minister’s supporters as saying that he stood “between pride and duty.” Winston sarcastically commented: “Pride says ‘go’ but duty says ‘stay.’ The Right Honourable Gentleman always observes the maxim of a certain writer that whenever an Englishman takes or keeps anything he wants, it is always from a high sense of duty.” AJB rose, shaking, and accused him of poor taste. He said: “It is not, on the whole, desirable to come down to this House with invective which is both prepared and violent. The House will tolerate, and very rightly tolerate, almost anything within the rule of order which evidently springs from genuine indignation aroused by the collision of debate; but to come down with these prepared phrases is not usually successful, and at all events, I do not think it was very successful on the present occasion. If there is preparation there should be more finish, and if there is so much violence there should certainly be more veracity of feeling.”29
Churchill did not hang his head. “I fear I am still in disgrace,” he cheerfully wrote Jennie, and, in a letter to Cockran, predicted more “stormy times ahead.” Margot Asquith thought his problem was a lack of empathy, that he tended “to ignore the need to feel his way about other minds,” but he didn’t think he had a problem at all. He was releasing his inner aggression and enjoying it enormously. He later said: “I did not exactly, either by my movement or my manner, invite any great continuing affection.” He didn’t want it. Earl Winterton recalled: “Churchill made no attempt to dispel the suspicion and dislike with which he was regarded by the majority of the House of Commons. He seemed to enjoy causing resentment. He appeared to have, in modern parlance, a ‘chip on his shoulder,’ when in the Chamber itself or in the Lobbies.” Winston jovially told a reporter, “Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous.” The newsman asked, “Even with the new rifle?” Churchill replied, “Well, in war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.”30
Though he was to prove that repeatedly, expressions of his unpopularity in the spring of 1904 were uglier and more strident than anything his father had endured. Shouted down by his own party, he was called “wickedly hypocritical,” the “Blenheim Rat,” and a “Blackleg Blueblood.” In a rare affront, the Hurlingham Polo Club blackballed his application for membership. He seemed unrepentant. And he offended men who might have befriended him. One contemporary noted in his diary on March 5: “Went to the Speaker’s Levée… Winston Churchill was there in a cavalry uniform with a long row of medals. He is a most astounding person. His speeches in the House this session have been very fine.” But in a fortnight the diarist changed his mind; Churchill, he had decided, was “a most infernal nuisance.” Punch reported: “His special enmity for Chamberlain and all his works is hereditary…. Winston is a convinced Free Trader. But he enters with lighter, more fully gladdened heart into the conflict, since Protection is championed by his father’s ancient adversary.” Earl Winterton thought him “too eager to hunt down his father’s old enemies.” MacCallum Scott, another contemporary, wrote that “the followers of Mr Chamberlain repaid his [Winston’s] hostility with a passionate personal hatred over which they vainly endeavoured to throw a mask of contempt. There was no better hated man in the House of Commons.” He was shunned. Only Tories who felt absolutely secure dared be seen with him. On Good Friday, Linky Cecil suggested that “the town council of Oldham give Winston Churchill the freedom of the borough as a mark of his independence and public spirit. As he is not going to stand for Oldham again it could not be mixed up with local party politics and it would be a fitting rebuke to ill-mannered persons in the House. He is I think being abominably treated. For he is very honest and very good-hearted.” But Linky was Lord Salisbury’s son. Had this come from an MP less well connected, it could have been a note of political suicide.31
The beginning of the end came on March 29, 1904. At 5:00 P.M. Churchill rose to follow Lloyd George in debate. At that point Balfour left his seat and met Austen Chamberlain, Joe’s son and chancellor of the Exchequer, beyond the glass door behind the Speaker’s chair. Winston, offended, objected to the prime minister’s departure just as he was about to speak; he called it an astonishing “lack of deference and respect.” At that, the cabinet rose from the Treasury Bench and walked out to the smoking room, followed by almost all the back-benchers, who paused at the door to jeer and count the number of Tories left. There were fewer than a dozen, all Free Traders. One, Sir John Gorst, who had belonged to Randolph’s Fourth Party, denounced his fellow Conservatives for treating Winston “with the most marked discourtesy which I think I have ever seen.” That merely put Gorst, too, in Coventry. The morning edition of the Daily Mail carried the headlines: CHILLING REBUKE. UNIONISTS REFUSE TO HEAR MR CHURCHILL. STRANGE SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. The Mail reported: “The merry jest, the sparkling epigram and the ironical sally departed… from Mr Churchill’s oration. He never speaks unless there is a full house. The full house had melted away under his spell. It was a chilling rebuke, crushing, unanswerable. He complained bitterly at the slight, and murmured some phrases about shifty policy and evasion. There were only the crowded benches of the Liberals to cheer. Behind him was silence and desolation.” He was not yet the Winston Churchill of the 1930s; the strain of his solitary struggle had begun to tell; he was vulnerable to sudden, uncontrollable attacks of depression and had not yet learned to hide them until alone. Next day the Pall Mall Gazette told its readers that “in appearance there is nothing of ‘the Boy’ left in the white, nervous, washed-out face of the Member for Oldham. He walks with a stoop, his head thrust forward. His mouth expresses bitterness, the light eyes strained watchfulness. It is a tired face, white, worn, harassed…. There is, indeed, little of youth left to the Member for Oldham.” He was going through the political equivalent of a divorce suit, and approaching the brink of a breakdown.32
On Friday, April 22, he went over the brink. He had read Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree’s Poverty: A Study of Town Life on Morley’s recommendation. The book impressed him immensely, and marked the beginning of his radical period. Trade unions, he decided, must be recognized and their rights defined. This message—“Radicalism of the reddest type,” the Daily Mail called it—was the burden of his remarks for forty-five minutes that Friday, and he was approaching his peroration when calamity struck. He was speaking with his customary fire, and was about to strike his right fist into his left palm, clinching his argument, when his mind went completely blank. He had just said: “It lies with the Government to satisfy the working classes that there is no justification…” His voice trailed off. He groped. The studied phrases, laboriously composed and learned by heart, had fled from his memory. He began again: “It lies with them…. What?” he asked, as though someone had suggested a cue. He hesitated, frowned, looked confused, and fumbled in the pockets of his frock coat, as though looking for notes. There were none; until now he hadn’t carried any. The MP beside him picked some paper scraps from the floor; there was nothing on them. Winston made one more try: “It lies with them to satisfy the electors…” S
ome members cheered encouragingly, but it was no good. He sat down abruptly, buried his face in his hands, and muttered: “I thank honourable members for having listened to me.” The next day a headline read: MR CHURCHILL BREAKS DOWN, DRAMATIC SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.33
One name was on the lips of upper-class London: Lord Randolph. Less than ten years earlier Winston’s father, occupying the same seat, had broken down in the same way, signaling his slide down into oblivion and death. To his family and friends the parallel was appalling. The next day Shane Leslie called at Mount Street and found his cousin huddling with his brother, Jack, and Sir Alfred Harmsworth. Winston asked Leslie to make inquiries about Pelmanism, the memory training system. It was unnecessary. His memory had been, and would again be, phenomenal; he had merely suffered a temporary lapse. In the future he would seldom speak without a text, but he rarely seemed to glance at it. Over the weekend his spirits, and his confidence, rebounded. He had passed the crisis of party renunciation. A correspondent in the Press Gallery noted the return of his “unmistakably schoolboy grin” in House shouting matches, “not the assumed smile so often seen in Parliament, but the real grin of one who is alive to all the fun of things.” On May 16 he delivered his last speech as a Tory, envisioning the fall of the Conservative government: “Extravagant finance was written on the head of their indictment, and it will be written on the head of their tombstone.” The Boer War had been an “immense public disaster.” He was partly to blame, “tarred” in a small way “with responsibility,” but the heavier guilt fell upon Chamberlain and his “New Imperialism… that bastard Imperialism which was ground out by a party machine and was convenient for placing a particular set of gentlemen in power.” The Manchester Guardian reported that “his neighbours melted away till scarcely a Protectionist was left in the House.” This time he beamed at their retreating backs.34