It may seem unfair to start an article with a question that the author has no intention of fully answering, but that's exactly what I'm going to do. The question is: Did the experience of being Liberal MP for Dundee turn Churchill into a Tory again? Winston was the Liberal member of parliament for the burgh from 1908 to 1922 and did not enjoy a uniformly smooth time during his representation. After defeat in Dundee, Churchill returned to his former political home with the Tories. As he said: 'Any fool can rat on a political party. It takes a genius to rerat.' Churchill's disenchantment with Liberal policy, domestic and foreign, was the major part in his political about face, but the unceremonious end to his Scottish representation played a part too.
Most biographers - from Roy Jenkins to Boris Johnson - gloss over the great man's time in Dundee, but there is interesting object lessons to be learnt by having a look at this period. Was it an extended season of ignominy which paved the way for his Wilderness Years and gave him the necessary life lessons which prepared him for his great leadership in World War II?
Churchill was almost gifted Dundee's parliamentary seat after he lost his previous seat in North-west Manchester, where he lost to the Tories, partly because local Jewish voters disliked his stance on the Aliens Act. This lack of savvy about local matters was to be repeated north of the border, though the storm was a slow brewing one. What attracted him to Dundee was that it was staunchly Liberal and a seat which many would have thought was guaranteed to be held for an entire political career. He was Minister of the Board of Trade and a rising star in his mid 30's when he came north. The Liberal incumbent in the seat was Edmund Robertson, who was elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Lochee. In the event he received 7,079 votes, 44% of the vote, while the opposing Tory and Labour candidates mustered 8,384 votes between them. He was MP for Dundee for over 14 years. A Labour candidate, Alexander Wilkie (first elected for Dundee in 1906), won the other half of Dundee. (His first re-election in 1910 ran counter to a a wave of reaction against the Liberal party nationally.)
The downside, of course, was that it was over 400 miles from London; no good if you were a cabinet member, and Churchill was president of the Board of Trade and then first lord of the Admiralty. His physical absence from Dundee might have been alleviated by some gestures towards the sensibilities and concerns of Dundonians, but these were apparently few and far between. When he did turn up in Dundee it was noted with distaste that he was conspicuously lavish with his spending on himself; not an endearing trait in a place gripped by widespread poverty. One piece of research states that he spent the modern equivalent of £1000 in one three day visit, of which a sizeable amount was on alcohol. Some of his remarks on Dundee were jocular, but they were also dark, such as the following contained in a letter to his wife:
But one of the first elements which caused him trouble was a national one: the fight for women's votes.
Though far from alone in his opposition to the emancipation of women, Churchill hardly helped himself with his outspoken comments on the subject. He once notoriously stated there was no need for women to have the vote because they were 'well represented by their fathers, brother and husbands'. The tide for suffrage was against him and he was targeted by militant women from an early date. While he was campaigning for the Dundee seat he was prevented from delivering a speech, as this newspaper report states:
Four years later, in 1912, he had a better general reception at Dundee:
But in the previous month there was trouble for Churchill in his constituency:
That same month a suffragette from Nairnshire with a genius for publicity managed to have herself posted to Mr Churchill, after a debate among postal staff about the legitimacy of accepting this human parcel. As it happened, Churchill was absent when she was delivered and his outraged secretary refused to accept her.
Dundee's population of course contained a far greater than average percentage of working women who toiled in the factories within the burgh and increasingly they were insulted by their representative's facile attitude towards their rights.
Churchill poorly misjudged his opponents and made unsavoury remarks which showed he was out of sync with the changing nature of British society. (And, to be fair, the Liberal party was out of favour with its previous supporters in the whole of Scotland.) He was also out of touch not only with common voters, but powerful local opinion makers, such as the Tory head of Dundee publishing group D. C. Thomson. One of his opponents, the Labour man E. D. Morel had been a conscientious objector, and a noted campaigner against Belgian atrocities in the Congo. Churchill chose to berate him because of his French ancestry. (he was born in France of an English mother and a French father.) 'No foreigner should be in the British parliament,' he announced. He also termed socialists 'reptiles'. It was his distrust of the Liberals' alliance with Labour that led him to jumping back in bed with the Tories in 1925, three years after his Scottish defeat. His reward was a lengthy exile, the Wilderness Years, when he was trusted by neither Conservatives nor Liberals. Disillusion at defeat in Dundee, surely a shock, may have had some part in him switching political sides. His previous majority in Dundee was 15,000, in 1918, so the fall from grace in 1922 was absolute and humiliating. His share of the vote in 1922 was 33%; in 1918 it was exactly double this, 66%.
In the end, Churchill finished in a dismal fourth place in the poles and he joked that defeat at Dundee left him without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix'. The victor in the hustings was local councillor Edwin Scrymgeour, who had stood against him at every election since 1908. He could hardly have believed his luck, and in retrospect it seems almost like a mass protest vote which saw him elected. Scrymgeour was the only candidate ever to become a member of cabinet on a prohibitionist mandate. 'Vote as you pray' was his campaign war cry. It is doubtful whether Dundee's underclass gave his philosophy of banning alcohol any credence whatever. Yet 'Neddy' Scrymgeour, despite the eccentric outer credentials, was a legitimate man of the people (a socialist and one time member of the Independent Labour Party) and got re-elected in the seat several times. It is noted that he was a firm supporter of Irish Home Rule.
The full result was as follows:
(Willie Gallacher, the Communist who had toured Bolshevik Russia and had an audience with Lenin).
Most biographers - from Roy Jenkins to Boris Johnson - gloss over the great man's time in Dundee, but there is interesting object lessons to be learnt by having a look at this period. Was it an extended season of ignominy which paved the way for his Wilderness Years and gave him the necessary life lessons which prepared him for his great leadership in World War II?
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| The 1908 election result in Dundee. Note the name of the famous explorer Shackleton as an unsuccessful candidate in the previous general election of 1906. |
The Road and the Miles to Dundee
The downside, of course, was that it was over 400 miles from London; no good if you were a cabinet member, and Churchill was president of the Board of Trade and then first lord of the Admiralty. His physical absence from Dundee might have been alleviated by some gestures towards the sensibilities and concerns of Dundonians, but these were apparently few and far between. When he did turn up in Dundee it was noted with distaste that he was conspicuously lavish with his spending on himself; not an endearing trait in a place gripped by widespread poverty. One piece of research states that he spent the modern equivalent of £1000 in one three day visit, of which a sizeable amount was on alcohol. Some of his remarks on Dundee were jocular, but they were also dark, such as the following contained in a letter to his wife:
This city will kill me. Halfway through my kipper this morning an enormous maggot crawled out and flashed his teeth at me. Such are the penalties which great men pay in the service of their country.
But one of the first elements which caused him trouble was a national one: the fight for women's votes.
Trouble With The Suffragettes
Though far from alone in his opposition to the emancipation of women, Churchill hardly helped himself with his outspoken comments on the subject. He once notoriously stated there was no need for women to have the vote because they were 'well represented by their fathers, brother and husbands'. The tide for suffrage was against him and he was targeted by militant women from an early date. While he was campaigning for the Dundee seat he was prevented from delivering a speech, as this newspaper report states:
Four years later, in 1912, he had a better general reception at Dundee:
But in the previous month there was trouble for Churchill in his constituency:
That same month a suffragette from Nairnshire with a genius for publicity managed to have herself posted to Mr Churchill, after a debate among postal staff about the legitimacy of accepting this human parcel. As it happened, Churchill was absent when she was delivered and his outraged secretary refused to accept her.
Dundee's population of course contained a far greater than average percentage of working women who toiled in the factories within the burgh and increasingly they were insulted by their representative's facile attitude towards their rights.
Antagonising the Dundee Irish, later Years in Dundee and Defeat
Churchill's sending in troops to defeat a miner's strike in Wales in 1910 might have causes ripples of discontent among sympathetic people in Dundee, but the feeling was nothing compared to the outrage when, in March 1920 as Secretary of State for War, he sent the black and tan auxiliaries over to Ireland to quell the incipient stirrings of the independence movement. William Walker notes that Churchill, in 1908:
His actions in sending in the troops in 1920 was likely the straw which broke the back of Churchill's credibility in Dundee. The Irish organisations in the town turned against the MP, as did the 'Dundee Catholic Herald'. His end in the city was not long after this event. It is strange that this fact had tainted his reputation for a large segment of his voters, for he supported Asquith's Home Rule Bill for Ireland in 1910 and had foreseen a progressive path for all parts of the UK, with this progressive comment, whose furtherance was blown away by World War I:
wooed the city's estimated 1,500 Irish voters with great seriousness and found time to address the Dundee branch of the United Irish League. Received by the audience with the 'utmost enthusiasm', Churchill explained that it would be wrong for the Liberal party to 'ban out' Home Rule. Churchill went on to declare: 'My defeat at Manchester was, in a measure, a defeat for Ireland. Let my victory in Dundee be, in a measure, a victory for Ireland.' ('Dundee's Disenchantment with Churchill,' The Scottish Historical Review, 49, 1970, pp. 85-108, f. p. 92.)
His actions in sending in the troops in 1920 was likely the straw which broke the back of Churchill's credibility in Dundee. The Irish organisations in the town turned against the MP, as did the 'Dundee Catholic Herald'. His end in the city was not long after this event. It is strange that this fact had tainted his reputation for a large segment of his voters, for he supported Asquith's Home Rule Bill for Ireland in 1910 and had foreseen a progressive path for all parts of the UK, with this progressive comment, whose furtherance was blown away by World War I:
I will run the risk of prophecy and tell you that the day will most certainly come - many of you will live to see it - when a federal system will be established in these Islands which will give Wales and Scotland the control within proper limits of their own Welsh and Scottish affairs.
The progressive young Churchill of the prewar years was gone and he moved inexorably towards the right, which was to cost him dearly on a personal level.
There were elements of farce and rich irony in the woeful campaign which unseated Winston Churchill in November 1922. He was struck down by appendicitis, but battled on bravely at the hustings. He did not arrive in Dundee until three days before the vote. When he was carried into the first meeting in the Caird Hall it became known he had paid the men £1 to bear him in. Some caustic wit offered the bearers £2 if they would let him fall down. The audience were muted rather than hostile. The second meeting in Drill Hall was noticeably more antagonistic towards him. Churchill stated:I was struck by the looks of passionate hatred on the faces of some of the younger men and women. Indeed, but for my helpless condition, I am sure they would have attacked me.
Churchill poorly misjudged his opponents and made unsavoury remarks which showed he was out of sync with the changing nature of British society. (And, to be fair, the Liberal party was out of favour with its previous supporters in the whole of Scotland.) He was also out of touch not only with common voters, but powerful local opinion makers, such as the Tory head of Dundee publishing group D. C. Thomson. One of his opponents, the Labour man E. D. Morel had been a conscientious objector, and a noted campaigner against Belgian atrocities in the Congo. Churchill chose to berate him because of his French ancestry. (he was born in France of an English mother and a French father.) 'No foreigner should be in the British parliament,' he announced. He also termed socialists 'reptiles'. It was his distrust of the Liberals' alliance with Labour that led him to jumping back in bed with the Tories in 1925, three years after his Scottish defeat. His reward was a lengthy exile, the Wilderness Years, when he was trusted by neither Conservatives nor Liberals. Disillusion at defeat in Dundee, surely a shock, may have had some part in him switching political sides. His previous majority in Dundee was 15,000, in 1918, so the fall from grace in 1922 was absolute and humiliating. His share of the vote in 1922 was 33%; in 1918 it was exactly double this, 66%.
In the end, Churchill finished in a dismal fourth place in the poles and he joked that defeat at Dundee left him without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix'. The victor in the hustings was local councillor Edwin Scrymgeour, who had stood against him at every election since 1908. He could hardly have believed his luck, and in retrospect it seems almost like a mass protest vote which saw him elected. Scrymgeour was the only candidate ever to become a member of cabinet on a prohibitionist mandate. 'Vote as you pray' was his campaign war cry. It is doubtful whether Dundee's underclass gave his philosophy of banning alcohol any credence whatever. Yet 'Neddy' Scrymgeour, despite the eccentric outer credentials, was a legitimate man of the people (a socialist and one time member of the Independent Labour Party) and got re-elected in the seat several times. It is noted that he was a firm supporter of Irish Home Rule.
The full result was as follows:
Edwin Scrymgeour, 32,578
E. D. Morel (Labour), 30,292
D. J. Macdonald (Liberal), 22,244
W. S. Churchill (Liberal and Free Trader), 20,466
R. R. Pilkington (Asquith Liberal), 6,681
William Gallacher (Communist), 5,906
(Willie Gallacher, the Communist who had toured Bolshevik Russia and had an audience with Lenin).
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| Neddy Scrymgeour |
After the Defeat: Dundee Forgives; Churchill Does Not Forget
In 1942 Churchill told an audience in Edinburgh that he remembered his time representing Dundee with a degree of fondness. Yet the feeling might have been weaker than he cared to admit, for when Dundee offered him the freedom of the city - a vote which was passed by councillors by just one vote -in the following year he pointedly refused to accept it after ten days' consideration. There is no statue to the great man in the burgh, just a plaque unveiled by his daughter in 2008, celebrating the centenary of his election win, which is affixed to the Queen's Hotel.
'History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.' –Winston Churchill
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