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

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Charles Stephenson

Churchill as Home Secretary: Suffragettes, Strikes, and Social Reform 1910-11 Kindle Edition

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There can be few statesmen whose lives and careers have received as much investigation and literary attention as Winston Churchill. 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.

The Liberal Government, of which he was a senior figure, had been elected in 1906 to put in place social and political reform. Though Churchill was at the forefront of these matters, 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. Even given that ‘Home Secretaries never do have an easy time’, his period in office was thus marked by a huge degree of political and social turbulence. The terms ‘Tonypandy’ and ‘Peter the Painter’ perhaps spring most readily to mind. Rather less known is his involvement in one of the burning issues of the time, female suffrage, and his portrayal as ‘the prisoners’ friend’ in terms of penal reform.

Aged 33 on appointment, and the youngest Home Secretary since 1830, he became empowered to wield the considerable executive authority inherent in the role of one of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, and he certainly did not shrink from doing so. There were of course commensurate responsibilities, and how he shouldered them is worth examination.

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About the Author

Charles Stephenson is a native of, and still lives in, north Wales. As an established author of military, naval, and political history his previous works for Pen & Sword encompass: The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 (2017); Stalin's War on Japan: The Red Army's Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation 1945 (2021); and The Eastern Fleet and the Indian Ocean, 1942-1944: The Fleet that Had to Hide (2021). --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BTKKKC7L
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pen and Sword History (22 Feb. 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 24929 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe

Best Sellers Rank: 1,261,959 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 2,681 in Biographies of Political Leaders
- 9,470 in 20th Century Britain History
- 11,376 in UK History

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Colin

"There were so many Winston Churchills"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2023

Charles Stephenson’s Churchill as Home Secretary is a perfect example of a good history book. Although the author states “[T]his book is in no way intended to be an academic work”, it still demonstrates academic rigour in its usage of sources. Stephenson picks two examples of diaries written by people who knew Churchill very well indeed and shows that anecdotes quoted in their autobiographies don’t appear in the diary entries for those dates. As Stephenson says, they “mis-remembered” several decades later – but their anecdotes have been quoted as primary sources in many other books since then, perpetuating two myths. Stephenson is highly diligent at recording his sources: there are 50 pages of notes and 22 of bibliography plus an index, together consuming about 30% of the book.

The author acknowledges he cannot address all the aspects of Churchill’s tenure as Home Secretary from 14 February 1910 to 25 October 1911, when he was the youngest Home Secretary since Robert Peel in 1822. He has chosen topics and chosen them well. We have chapters on :
- The Newport Dock Strike
- The miners’ strike at Tonypandy. Stephenson dwells upon the way Churchill put a military commander in charge of the situation. It has always been the case that the civil power (the Chief Constable and magistrates) can call for help from the military, but it is clear that the civilian power is responsible. In this case, Churchill’s appointment of Major General Macready ensured the maintenance of law and order. Chief Constable Lindsay would have over-reacted.
- Eugenics. Churchill was one of many people who were persuaded by this evil nonsense at the time. Fortunately, he seems to have forgotten all about it once he left the Home Office.
- Prison reform and capital punishment.
- Suffragettes
- The Sydney Stret Siege and the constitutional crisis with George V poised to create hundreds of new peers to end the impasse between the House of Commons and the House of Lords where the latter could veto any measures put forward by the Commons.
- The strikes of 1911, where Britain saw glimmerings of class warfare with riots in South Wales following the accidental discharge of a trooper’s rifle after the Riot Act had been read.
- The concern with German spies, planning for the next war and the birth of what became MI5 and MI6.
Stephenson’s conclusion is masterly. He quotes Rhodes James, “There were so many Winston Churchills.” His phenomenal capacity for work and his ability to immerse himself in a topic, seeking to really understand it, has meant his biographers can see many (often contradictory) aspects of Churchill.

I expected this book to be a dry history but it isn’t. Stephenson’s usage of so many sources, citing historians, politicians and contemporary newspapers made me see the Churchill of 1910-11 with fresh eyes. He acknowledges the myths and then gently shows the lack of evidence for them – it’s a really, really good book and I thoroughly recommend it.

#ChurchillasHomeSecretary #NetGalley

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T. P. Cross

Churchill as Home Secretary

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 January 2023

“There can be few statesmen whose lives and careers have received as much investigation and literary attention as Winston Churchill.”

Another book about Winston Churchill. This one focuses purely on his short time as Home Secretary in Asquith’s Liberal government, which has been discussed in other books about Churchill but has not been the focus of a singular study. Or none that I can think of. And although his time as Home Secretary was short it coincided with a number of important and disturbing events, some of which have been used as sticks to beat Churchill’s reputation with since: Tonypandy being the classic example.

Churchill is, of course, a politician who attracts strong opinions. That is partly, as Robert Rhodes says, in a quote this book uses:

“The quandary of Winston Churchill may be simply expressed: There were so many Winston Churchills. This baffled his contemporaries and often inspired their mistrust; it has caused historians and his biographers comparable problems.”

One of the strengths of Stephenson’s book is that he tackles Churchill without fear or favour. He focuses on various in Churchill’s time at the Home Office: Tonypandy; the Suffragettes; Eugenics; Prison reform; the Death Penalty; the Security Services; the Sidney Street siege; the major strikes of 1911* and, finally, the discussions about Britain’s potential role in the event of a German invasion of France. The latter was to be the catalyst for his move from the Home Office to the Admiralty.

Stephenson discusses each of these issues in their own chapters and talks you through the events and Churchill’s role in them. He strengthens his discussions with a raft of contemporary sources: both primary and secondary. It is a sign, perhaps, of this book’s strength that it comes with copious notes and a full bibliography so that you can see, as maths teachers are fond of saying, his workings. The conclusion is nuanced.

As Churchill’s successor Reginald McKenna said in 1913:

“If you want to ruin a man send him to the Home Office.”

After all if there is a job in government where events can sweep over you and blame can be easily delivered into your lap, deserved or not, it is Home Secretary. The responsibilities are broad and the areas they cover are all important. It is easy to be swept away. It is clear, as Stephenson says, that Churchill didn’t enjoy his time as Home Secretary. He found it a difficult job with unpleasant responsibilities. This is illustrated by the explanation of how the systems built around the death penalty works for a Home Secretary, which was one of the most powerful parts of the book for me.

Churchill certainly wasn’t the monster as mythology has him to be when serving as Home Secretary, but equally he was prone to pushing his authority and getting bees in his bonnets on particular issues. The section on eugenics is a good example of the latter, but what does come across is that Churchill had a strong belief in what society should be and, as Stephenson says when talking about Churchill’s reaction to the suffragettes – and by extension working class protest in general:

“Churchill was profoundly irked by suffragette activities and Addison’s point about him and the working class – that whilst he ‘saw it as the duty of his class, and hence of the state, to protect the weak and the poor. The strong and rebellious were an altogether different matter.”

So, whilst this might be another book about Winston Churchill it is a worthy addition to the…genre? Its narrow focus really helps Stephenson get into the nitty-gritty of Churchill’s time at the Home Office. It deals with Churchill not as myth but as the reality, which is important with a historical figure who comes with so much baggage.

* Which sounds horribly like the present day both in cause and result.

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