Winston Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 May 1940 to 26 July 1945, succeeding Neville Chamberlain and preceding Clement Attlee, and again from 26 October 1951 to 6 April 1955, succeeding Attlee and preceding Anthony Eden.
Biography[]
Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England, the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife Jenny. He was educated at Harrow, where he did not do well, and his thirst for adventure led him first to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and then into a commission in the 4th Hussars in 1895. He fought at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and, having resigned his commission in 1899, became a renowned war correspondent during the Second Boer War. He was captured by the Afrikaners, and he escaped before returning to the United Kingdom to stand s the Conservative Party candidate for Oldham in 1900. He won the seat, but he joined the Liberal Party in 1904 in support of free trade, becoming Liberal MP for Manchester in 1906 and for Dundee in 1908.
Liberal minister[]
Churchill in 1919
Churchill was also convinced of the need for social reform, and he put this into practice as a Liberal minister. He was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1906 to 1908 and then President of the Board of Trade from 1908 to 1910, introducing measures to improve working conditions, and established labor exchanges. As Home Secretary from 1910 to 1911, he was criticized for overreacting to events by calling in troops to combat industrial disputes, and for personally directing the police at the siege of Sidney Street. He was also criticized for his response to the Tonypandy Riots. He also served in the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915, continuing reforms begun by John Fisher. He resigned after being blamed for the Gallipoli campaign, and he served briefly during World War I with the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned from France in 1917 at David Lloyd George's behest, and he became Minister of Munitions. In 1918, he moved to the Ministry for War and Air, and he served as Colonial Secretary in 1921-1922.
Return to the Conservatives[]
Churchill in 1921
When the Lloyd George coalition fell in 1922, he began to drift back to the Conservative Party. He had been closely associated with Britain's intervention in the Russian Civil War, and he was increasingly concerned that communism was a threat in Britain. His outspokenness against all socialists may have contributed to him losing his Dundee seat in 1922, which enabled him to begin writing his story of World War I in The World Crisis, written from 1923 to 1931. He was elected under the title "Constitutionalist" as MP for Epping in 1924, which effectively marked his return to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government from 1924 to 1929, and he was associated with the return to the Gold Standard, despite the tendency of an increasing number of countries to abandon it.
Rise to the Premiership, 1940-1945[]
Churchill in May 1940
His prominent role in organizing the government's measures against trade unions in the 1926 general strike earned him the enmity of the Labor Party and substantial sections of the working population. He also opposed many of the measures of expenditure that the Royal Navy claimed were necessary for it to be adequately prepared for war. He was out of office from 1929 to 1939, partly becaus he was seen as unreliable, hot-headed, and reactionary by many Conservative colleagues. These sentiments were confirmed when he vigorously opposed the measures of Indian self-government put forward by the National Government, and he suppored King Edward VIII of Britain during the abdication crisis. People ignored his warnings in the 1930s about the need to rearm, but his association with rearmament made him the ideal choice as First Lord of the Admiralty in Neville Chamberlain's wartime government, formed in September 1939. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister and Defense Minister in a coalition government of Conservative, Liberal, and Labor Party members. As a war leader, Churchill was superb in maintaining popular morale, particularly at a time when Britain was alone in resisting German conquest, until the entry of the Soviet Union and the United States into the war in 1941. He attached a high priority to close relations with the USA, but was often warming in his consultation with the leaders of his Commonwealth allies, whose troops he liked to dispatch as he deemed necessary. In August 1941, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was instrumental in drawing up the Atlantic Charter.
Cold War[]
Churchill in 1952
Having won the war, many observers were surprised that he lost the 1945 elections to the relatively bland Clement Attlee. This was largely because of the popularity of William Beveridge's report, and the public sense of social change necessitated by the turbulence of the war, for which Labor seemed better equipped. As leader of the opposition from 1945 to 1951, he left much of the actual work to Anthony Eden. He travelled widely and spoke on international affairs, and he wrote his six-volume The Second World War from 1948 to 1954, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He returned as Prime Minister in 1951, by now with failing health. He devoted most of his attention to maintaining the "special relationship" between Britain and the USA, which granted him honorary US citizenship. Churchill left much of the foreign policy to Eden, and most domestic and economic policy to Rab Butler, whom he disliked personally. He suffered a stroke in 1953 and resigned two years later, having presided over the demise of Britain as a world power. However, his undogmatic, enthusiastic, and charismatic leadership in the face of extreme adversity made him perhaps the greatest Englishman of the twentieth century.
| Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Neville Chamberlain |
1940 - 1945 | Succeeded by: Clement Attlee |
| Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Clement Attlee |
1951 - 1955 | Succeeded by: Anthony Eden |
Gallery[]
