The Will of the People_ Winston Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy - Martin Gilbert [14]
Churchill believed that the House of Commons had the right to know, and to accept, the principles that lay behind actions by the executive. During unrest at Tonypandy, a coal-mining town in South Wales, the War Office sent armed soldiers from London to restore order. As soon as he was told, Churchill ordered the troop train to be halted, and the troops returned to London. In their place he sent London policemen—unarmed. In the House of Commons the Conservatives denounced him for softness and timidity. He defended his recall of the troops when he spoke in the House of Commons: “It must be the object of public policy,” he said, “to avoid collisions between troops and people engaged in industrial disputes.” The Conservatives rejected this principle; the Liberals, with their tiny majority, accepted it. Churchill’s action, commented the Manchester Guardian, “in all probability saved many lives.” Yet, in a cruel irony of history, Churchill was to be accused by generations of Labour politicians (among them a future Leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock) of using troops at Tonypandy.
Churchill continued to be at the forefront of social legislation. His Coal Mines Act created stricter safety standards, sought to eliminate cruelty to pit ponies, and instituted pithead baths for the miners. His Shops Act created one early closing day a week and compulsory intervals for shop assistants’ meals. Other proposals in the Bill, including a reduction of regular hours of work from eighty to sixty a week and the strict regulation of overtime (for which Churchill had fought), were rejected by the House. Nine years were to elapse before they, too, were put on the Statute Book.
Churchill took a particularly strong line in Parliament against judges who, he declared, were acting unfairly against the Trade Unions. It was his intention, he told the House, “to relieve Trade Unions from the harassing litigation to which they have been exposed and set them free to develop their work without the perpetual check and uncertainty of frequent interruption, and without being brought constantly into contact with the courts.” For Churchill—whose attitude was denounced by the Conservatives as “deeply deplorable” and “mischievous”—judges could not be allowed to avoid the scrutiny of Parliament.
It was the breadth of his prison reforms that most impressed Churchill’s parliamentary colleagues. He persuaded the House of Commons to reduce drastically the number of people in prison, to curtail the time spent in solitary confinement, and to abolish automatic imprisonment for non-payment of fines—a rule whereby many suffragettes had been sent to prison. Within five years of Churchill’s new rule, the number of those imprisoned for short periods or for being unable or unwilling to pay their fines (many of which were for drunkenness) dropped from 62,000 to 5,000. The number of young offenders being sent to Borstal was likewise reduced. An upper limit in sentencing was created for specific offences, and, for the first time, libraries were established in prison, and lectures and concerts arranged.
Also for the first time, as a result of Churchill’s reforms, a distinction was made in the treatment of criminal and political prisoners. Prison rules, Churchill told the House of Commons, which were “suitable for criminals jailed for dishonesty or cruelty or other crimes implying moral turpitude, should not be applied inflexibly to those whose general character is good and whose offences, however reprehensible, do not involve personal dishonour.”
When Churchill became Home Secretary in 1910,