BLENHEIM PROPOSAL
Clementine as a granddaughter of an earl, was on par with Churchill socially. Her father had deserted her mother to bring up three daughter in basic poverty. So Clementine knew what it was like as a "normal" person, or an ordinary life. She was though well educated, for she knew she'd have to earn her own living. In August 1908 Churchill invited Clementine to Blenheim Palace, his birthplace. He was unable to drum up the courage to ask her to marry him. On the third day, his cousin Sunny, Duke of Marlborough went to his room, pulled him out of bed, and told him to "get with it."
Churchill took Clementine for a walk in the palace gardens. In this romantic setting, he finally "popped the question" and Clementine accepted.
"I got married," wrote Churchill later, "and lived happily ever afterwards."
Churchill was difficult to live with and they had their share of quarrels, but nothing damaging. Churchill was always in need of excitement, and Clementine was kinda the opposite, and so needed absences from her husband to gain respite from the roller-coaster ride of life with Winston. But nevertheless they were true soul-mates. She soon became his closest friend and confidante and their marriage lasted 56 years.
Once the honeymoon was over Churchill was bad into the fray of political life. In 1909 Winston's "social initiatives" went through the parliamentary process that would make them law. They included old age pensions, national insurance against unemployment and ill-health, and minimum wage for the low paid and labor exchanges. The house of Lords protested. The main debate was on the "Peoples Budget", which included proposals to pay for old age pensions by introducing heavy taxes on landed estates. And the House of Lords opposed these measure, which they considered "socialistic" and defeated the new budget outright by 375 votes to 75.
COMMONS AGAINST LORDS
Winston went into high gear, and gave a scathing attack on the House of Lords, employing his full force of English rhetoric. They were he said, "....a played out, obsolete, anachronistic assembly, a survival of a feudal arrangement utterly passed out of its original meaning, a force long since passed away."
Ah Churchill was quite the political fighter, as he had been when in the army, a full steam ahead type of warrior. The Government confronted the House of Lords with a Parliament Act, which banned them from vetoing any money bills and prevented them from delaying any bill for more than two years. When the Lords resisted the King stepped in - George the V, and agreed to create up to 500 new Liberal peers to get the legislation passed. The Lords were faced with the threat of being permanently swamped by a Liberal majority.....they caved in, and on August 10th, 1911, they passed both the Parliament Act and the People's Budget.
PRISON REFORM
WINSTON WAS ALREADY ON TO NEW CHALLENGES.....In 1910 he was appointed as Home Secretary. One of his first priorities was to tackle the prison system which he thought was very retributive, so ineffective that three-quarters of prisoners released at the end of their sentences, re-offended within a year.
Winston had never forgotten his own prison stay by the Boers in 1899, and was able to understand from a prisoner's point of view. He wanted to reduce sentences for less serious crimes, provide better care for prisoners, reduce the number of young people in jail, and to furnish prisons with libraries and entertainments.
He was the first Home Secretary to note and draw a distinction between criminal and political prisoners, and between hardened criminals and occasional offenders. He was also meticulous in examining capital cases to see if there was any justification to reprieve the death sentence. Winston was very much "up front" in everything, even criticizing judges for imposing punishment he thought unjust. As examples: one person had been given 7 years for stealing lime juice. and another had been given 7 years for stealing apples.
We can see how Winston was way ahead of his age, how he used logic, and how he could see very easily where injustice was being given out for petty crimes. Many today only know that Winston Churchill led the British against Hitler's army and war machine; they have no idea about his earlier life, and how a great politician and humanitarian he was; how many laws we have today in the British Commonwealth and the USA, are there because of Winston Churchill.
Yes he was accused of going "soft on crime" and undermining the independence of judges. He just dismissed them with a response as kind of a response that would come from people rooted in an age which had not understood the difference between justice and revenge.
Still it was a hard fight. And old pressures and forms would not be put done so easily.
It was a depressing going, and later he admitted, "...there's no post I have occupied in government that I was so glad to leave."
The basics behind prison reform were many, but put in simple terms was in Winston's words, "When proper food to maintain health and strength has been given, when the doctors, chaplains and prison visitors have come and gone, the convict stands deprived over everything that a free man calls life."
Today it may be claimed, with some truth, that it is now the other way around - the world has trouble keeping a balance and the right justice to fit the crime.
CHURCHILL CRITICIZES THE HOUSE OF LORDS. DECEMBER 17TH 1909
"The claim of the House of Lords is not that the electors, like the sons of the distinguished men, may have legislative functions entrusted to them; it is that, whether they like it or not, the sons of the grandsons and the great-grandsons, and so on till the end of time, of distinguished men shall have legislative functions entrusted to them. The claim resolves itself into this, that we should maintain in our country a superior class, with law-giving functions inherit in their blood, transmissible by them to the remotest posterity and that these functions should be exercised irrespective of the character, the intelligence or the experience of the tenant for the time being and utterly independent of the public need and the public will."
TONYPANDY
One depressing event for Churchill was the violent confrontation in the Rhondda Valley in Wales, in a town called Tonypandy. It was a bitter dispute between mine-owners and mine-workers, over pay, in November 1910.
The dispute needed the police, but they could not bring the rioting under control, hence the Chief Constable of Glamorgan appealed to the army to send in 400 infantry and cavalry troops. Winston put a stop to the army moving in, and said, "It must be the object of public policy to avoid collisions between troops and people engaged in industrial disputes."
But the mild way Churchill wanted to solve the problem, even sending in an arbitrator did not work. On the 21st of November the violence escalated. Churchill was eventually forced to send in the troops, to remain for several weeks. The strikers were forced back to work on the mine-owners' terms almost a year later, in October 1911.
AFTERMATH OF THE RIOTS
The event at Tonypandy inflamed Labor and trades union resentments towards Churchill. His initiatives aimed at improving the life of the poor and underprivileged were soon forgotten. Churchill became popularly dubbed the "oppressor of the working classes."
More troubles for Winston erupted in Llanelli, Wales; when in August 1911, striking railwaymen attacked a train, manhandled the engine driver, looted the trucks and mobbed the police. Winston sent in the troops. In the following mele, shots were fired and two civilians died.
For many years afterwards all this was attached to Churchill, and he was demonized with cries "Remember Tonypandy."
He was glad that his tenure as Home Secretary was brief. On October 24th 1911, it was announced in Parliament that he had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Winston's long held belief that Britain was best protected from outside attack was a strong Royal Navy was about to be put into practice.
..........,
To be continued
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