Charles Stephenson - Churchill as Home Secretary: Suffragettes, Strikes, and Social Reform 1910-11

Churchill as

Home Secretary

With loving memories of

Anthony Charles Tony Evans (ACE)

8 October 1942 (Higher Bebington, Wirral)

to 9 October 2018 (Christchurch, New Zealand)

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing

Churchill as

Home Secretary

Suffragettes, Strikes and

Social Reform, 19101911

Charles Stephenson

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by

PEN & SWORD HISTORY

an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Charles Stephenson, 2023

ISBN 978-1-39906-261-9

ePUB ISBN 978-1-39906-263-3

Mobi ISBN 978-1-39906-263-3

The right of Charles Stephenson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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It has been, consistently, my experience that there is no more flawed source for recalling the events of yesterday than human recollection.

* * *

There can be few statesmen whose lives and careers have received as much investigation and literary attention as Winston Churchill. The centrepiece of this vast body of work is undoubtedly the eight-volume official biography (plus multitudinous companion volumes) by Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert. Thus huge endeavour, to steal a line from John Charmley, constitutes a quarry from which much of the stone for any other monument must be taken. In addition there have been innumerable biographies, and other works that have focused on specific aspects of the long Churchillian career.

Relatively little, however, has appeared which deals specifically or holistically with his first senior ministerial role: that of Secretary of State for the Home Office. This may be due to the fact that, of the three Great Offices of State which he was to occupy over the course of his long political life, his tenure as Home Secretary was the briefest: aged 35, he was appointed by Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith on 14 February 1910, relinquishing the position on 25 October 1911. Apart from his sinecure as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (MayNovember 1915) and his stewardship of the Colonial Office under Lloyd George (February 1921October 1922), it was his shortest ministerial appointment and the one he liked least of all.

As one of his successors as Prime Minister has put it, Home Secretaries never do have an easy time, and Churchills tenure was certainly marked by a huge degree of political and social turbulence. The Liberal Government elected in 1906 was bent on social and political reform, which was viewed by many conservatives as heralding the death of a once great society. This perception was encapsulated in a 1909 poem by Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass: a fiercely patriotic defence of Britains age-old values and traditions and a denunciation of their potential destruction by the tax-raising, social-reforming Liberal government. Indeed, even Churchills son and biographer noted, with respect to House of Lords reform, that The proposed swamping of the Upper House was to appear even to many objective people as an act of constitutional indecency.

Though Churchill was one of those at the forefront of the push for constitutional change, his responsibility for domestic affairs led to him facing other, major, challenges departmentally. This was a time of substantial commotion on the social front, with widespread industrial and civil strife. Not only that but he had a plethora of other matters to absorb his energies; as Sir Edward Troup, permanent secretary throughout Churchills tenure, was to describe it: the Home Office was responsible for all matters of domestic administration not specifically assigned to any other department.

It is, though, not proposed to delve into each and every matter with which Home Secretary Churchill involved himself or had to deal, such as, for example, the 1911 Shops Act, which improved conditions for retail workers, and his connection with attempts to achieve Welsh Disestablishment. These and similar matters are, it is submitted, of mainly academic interest and this book is in no way intended to be an academic work. Rather it is an attempt at narrative history, which is targeted at the general reader rather than the professional historian or, indeed, the Churchill aficionado; there is very little to be found here which hasnt already been covered somewhere else, though not necessarily all in one place.

In writing it I have, however, chosen to transgress one of the truisms enunciated by the subject: chronology is the key to narrative. My doing so is justified, I would argue, and even supported by his qualification of the point: Yet where a throng of events are marching abreast, it is inevitable that their progress should be modified by selection and classification. During the period in question there were indeed a throng of events marching abreast, and so several chapters are mainly thematic with consequent disruption to chronology. I have also taken some space to place the various matters discussed into their contexts, and can only hope all this will meet with the general approval of the reader. If not, then mea culpa.

A word needs to be said concerning sources. Churchills political career had several peaks and troughs with, of course, his 19401945 premiership elevating him to international recognition and worldwide renown as the man who led Britain to victory. One consequence is that post-1945 memories of him, because they are recollected or viewed through a distorting lens suffused with the golden glow (see below) of his wartime apotheosis, risk being warped. An example concerns the 1965 book published by Violet Bonham-Carter ne Asquith, Winston Churchill as I Knew Him. She certainly knew him very well, and did so for several decades: I have had the supreme good fortune to know Winston Churchill for the best part of my life.

Her account of their first meeting in the early summer of 1906 is often quoted as being an excellent example of how he regarded himself and was seen by her at that time. This was the occasion when, she recalled, he spoke in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible, concluding with the wonderful aphorism the words I shall always remember that: We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm. Her account continues: