The Will of the People_ Winston Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy - Martin Gilbert [6]
Three months after his failure to be elected to Parliament, Churchill left Britain for South Africa as a war correspondent. Two days before embarking on the journey there, by ship from Southampton, he went to Oldham, where, at a public meeting, he promised to come back and win the seat at the General Election—whenever that might be.
Two weeks after reaching South Africa, while travelling as a journalist on a British military armoured train, Churchill was captured by the Boers. After a month as a prisoner of war, he escaped and made his way back to British-held territory. Reaching Durban at a time of continual British setbacks on the battlefield, he found that his escape had made him a popular hero, celebrated in songs and cartoons. He rejoined the army and returned to the battlefield, both to fight and to continue as a war correspondent, sending regular dispatches to the Morning Post in London. “Ah, horrible war,” he wrote in a war report in mid-January 1900, “amazing medley of the glorious and squalid, the pitiful and the sublime; if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.”
Churchill fought bravely in a dozen battles. When he received a request from the Conservative electors of Southport—a Lancashire constituency—to be their candidate at the next General Election, he declined. He wanted to see the war to a conclusion. But his thoughts never strayed far from the parliamentary battles that lay ahead. After describing the relief of the siege of Ladysmith, he wrote of his conviction that, once the war was won, “the people of England must devote themselves to stimulating and sustaining the spirit of the people by measures of social improvement and reform.”
Churchill remained in South Africa, mainly in the fighting line, until the summer of 1900. While he was in action, several constituencies asked him to stand for them at the next General Election. Oldham was among the supplicants. “They have implored me not to desert them,” he explained to his mother, nor did he. On 7 July 1900 Churchill left South Africa. While he was on the ship returning to Britain, a sketch writer in Vanity Fair wrote that the returning soldier had “hankered after politics since he was a small boy, and it is probable that his every effort, military or literary, has been made with political bent.” The writer went on to say with prescience, “he can hardly be the slave of any Party.”
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The Parliamentary Arena
The essence of parliamentary democracy is the range of political opinions that seek to work within an electoral and democratic framework. Churchill was to understand and accept that mix from the outset of his parliamentary career. That career began with an upsurge of activity and acceptance. Five days after his ship docked at Southampton, he went to Oldham, where he was adopted as the prospective Conservative candidate. Returning to London, a member of the Conservative Government invited him to the House of Commons, where he was entertained on the terrace “and all sorts of members,” including Joseph Chamberlain, “came up and generally gave me a very flattering reception.”
Campaigning at Oldham began on 19 November 1900. In an election where polling was spread over three weeks, the Oldham result was one of the first to be announced. In an exceptionally close result, in which his fellow Conservative challenger was defeated, Churchill was elected. On the eve of his twenty-sixth birthday, his parliamentary career had begun.
Before Churchill could return to London, Arthur Balfour, the Conservative leader and Lord Salisbury’s successor as Prime Minister, asked him to help out in constituencies that had not yet polled, including Balfour’s own. “No man who ever got into Parliament,” St. John Brodrick, the new Secretary of State for War, wrote to Churchill, “has done more than you have done in the last two years to enable him to represent a constituency.” His “only regret,” Brodrick added—with what was to prove unerring perspicacity—” is that to all appearances you will now be in Opposition,