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As Brodrick had forecast, during Churchill’s first four years in Parliament, the Member for Oldham not only made repeated contributions to the debates but also fearlessly criticized his own party Members whenever he felt—as he often did—that they were misguided. The ability, indeed the duty, of Members of Parliament to express independent views was a central theme of Churchill’s concept of parliamentary democracy. It did not sit well with the party managers—the Whips of both parties for which, in different decades, he was to take his seat—who tried, as was their duty, to turn him into a compliant party member.

During his first four years at Westminster, Churchill learned every skill and pitfall of the parliamentarian’s art. He first took his seat, on the Conservative benches, on 14 February 1901. Two weeks later, in his maiden speech, he criticized the attitude, prevalent in Conservative circles, of hostility to the British adversary in South Africa. “If I were a Boer,” he said, “I hope I should be fighting in the field,” and he went on to express his views of war—views that he was to hold throughout his life—which were not to the taste of many of his Conservative listeners in the Chamber. If there were those who “rejoiced in this war,” he said, “and went out with hopes of excitement or the lust of conflict, they have had enough, and more than enough, today.”

Parliamentary democracy depends on the quality and range of parliamentary debate. Churchill was seen at once to meet the highest standards, as the Daily Telegraph parliamentary correspondent wrote of him: “Perfectly at home, with lively gestures that pointed his sparkling sentences, he instantly caught the tone and ear of the House crowded in every part.”

Two weeks after his maiden speech, Churchill was warning his own party leaders, even when defending them against the demand for an inquiry into the dismissal of a general in South Africa: “I have noticed in the last three wars in which we have been engaged a tendency—arising partly from good nature towards their comrades, partly from dislike of public scrutiny—to hush everything up, to make everything look as fair as possible, to tell the official truth, to present a version of the truth which contains about seventy-five percent of the actual article.” From Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, and a friend of Churchill’s mother, came wise advice: “There is no more difficult position than being on the benches behind a Government. It is hard to strike the mean between independence & loyalty. The great thing is to impress the House with earnestness. They will forgive anything but flippancy.”

There was nothing flippant in Churchill’s sustained attack in the coming months, during several debates, on his own Government’s proposed increase in military expenditure. The chief target of his criticisms was the Secretary of State for War, St. John Brodrick. It was Churchill himself who tabled an amendment to Brodrick’s army scheme. On 13 May 1900, fewer than three months after his maiden speech, Churchill set out his criticisms in a speech of considerable power, skill and courage, a forerunner of speeches that he was to make, year in and year out, during more than half a century at Westminster. It was the cause of excessive government expenditure—the cause for which his father had resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1886—that Churchill put forward. He was “very glad,” he said, “that the House has allowed me, after an interval of fifteen years, to lift again the tattered flag of retrenchment and economy.”

Four months after taking his place on the Conservative benches, Churchill had become a dissident Conservative, opposed to what he regarded as their excessive spending plans for the army. His attack on what he called “Mr. Brodrick’s Army”—the title he gave to a pamphlet of his collected speeches on the topic—was sustained and uncompromising. “I have frequently been astonished,” he said in his speech of May 13, “with what composure and how glibly Members, and