The Will of the People_ Winston Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy - Martin Gilbert [5]
Churchill, still not at Westminster, had found the way, through preparation as well as personality, to hold and enthuse an audience. Two years later an army acquaintance wrote to him, explaining why he believed Churchill would one day be Prime Minister: “You possess the two necessary qualifications, genius and plod. Combined, I believe nothing can keep them back.” These two qualities were to mark him out as a great parliamentarian, long before he became Prime Minister, and even when he was unpopular politically.
Within two weeks of his Bradford speech, Churchill was on his way to the Sudan, where he took part in the Battle of Omdurman. There he led a troop of cavalrymen and narrowly escaped death. Within two months he returned to Britain and plunged back into political speeches—and the search for a constituency. In November 1898, just before his twenty-fourth birthday, the magazine World stated that he was about to leave the British Army and “come into Parliament as soon as he can.” The magazine welcomed this move: “He is sure to do well; he has great ambition, great aplomb, and an unlimited amount of energy; and he has a great deal of his father’s ability, besides being a good speaker.” But it was to India that, as a soldier, he had to return. It was his last tour of duty.
Churchill left India in March 1899. Within two few weeks of his return to Britain—despite the family mourning period for his Marlborough grandmother—he had spoken at two potential constituencies, Paddington and Oldham. At a private dinner in London, two future Prime Ministers, Balfour and Asquith, were, he wrote to his mother, “markedly civil to me, I thought.” They “agreed with and paid great attention to everything I said.”
Six weeks after this dinner, one of the two Conservative MPs for Oldham—a two-member constituency—died unexpectedly, and Churchill was asked to stand in the by-election. Six days later he issued his election address. In his manifesto he declared himself both a Conservative and a Tory Democrat. “I regard the improvement of the condition of the British people,” he wrote, “as the main end of modern government.” If elected, he would promote legislation that, “without impairing the tremendous energy of production on which the wealth of our nation and the good of our people depend, may yet raise the standard of comfort and happiness in English homes.” Through legislation, he would seek better conditions for the “aged poor as wide and generous as possible.”
Churchill embarked with zeal on his first election campaign. “I am getting on well,” he wrote to a cousin, “and scoring off all the people who ask me questions.” As the campaign entered its final week, he spoke up to eight times a day. To his girlfriend, Pamela Plowden, later Countess of Lytton, he wrote: “I shall never forget the succession of great halls packed with excited people until there was not room for one single person more—speech after speech—meeting after meeting—three even four in one night—intermittent flashes of Heat & Light & enthusiasm—with cold air and the rattle of a carriage in between.” He was also pleased to report to her: “I have hardly repeated myself at all. And at each meeting I am conscious of growing powers—and facilities of speech.”
Churchill was unsuccessful. He and his fellow Conservative candidate were defeated by the two Liberal candidates by narrow margins. Churchill lost by only 1,500 votes out of 24,300. His efforts were watched with approval at the highest level. “Winston made a splendid fight,” the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, wrote to Churchill’s mother. Asquith, a future Liberal Prime Minister in whose Cabinet Churchill would serve, wrote to her: “Winston’s good fight at Oldham gives him his spurs.” Churchill wrote to a friend: “I speak now quite easily without preparation, which is a new weapon that will not wear out.”