Lord Randolph Churchill

Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) was a British aristocrat and politician. He was a Tory radical who coined the term "Tory democracy" and participated in the creation of the "National Union of the Conservative Party".

Churchill first came to public attention in 1878 as an outspoken exponent of independent Conservatism criticising the old guard and the Conservative front bench. By 1885, he had formulated the policy of progressive Conservatism which was known as "Tory Democracy". In 1884, at the conference of the National Union of Conservative Associations, he was nominated chairman, despite the opposition of parliamentary leaders. He built up Tory Democracy in towns and the Conservatives won the majority of English boroughs in 1885, strengthened by the part he played in events immediately preceding the fall of the Liberal government.

In 1885, he was appointed Secretary of State for India in the Salisbury government. Despite entering office with a reputation for progressive views on India, his tenure was 'traditionally reactionary', many of his policies focused on exploiting India and his attitude towards the native Indians was similarly illiberal. However, he was most known during that time for his unilateral decision to invade and annex Burma in the very costly Third Anglo-Burmese War.

In 1886, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. As Chancellor, he attracted both admiration and criticism. He became relatively isolated in the cabinet and tried to use his public support to impose his positions on his colleagues. After proposing a budget that surprised and annoyed his colleagues, he threatened to resign in order to secure his position on armed forces expenditure. To his surprise, the Prime Minister accepted his resignation – effectively ending his career. For the next few years there was some speculation that he might return to frontline politics, but this did not materialise. His health declined in the 1890s, and he died in early 1895, leaving behind a large personal estate. The elder of his two sons, Winston Churchill, was British Prime Minister during the Second World War.

Early life

150px|thumb|left|Churchill in the 1860s

Randolph was born at 3 Wilton Terrace, Belgravia, London, the third son of John Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, and his wife the Marchioness of Blandford (née Lady Frances Vane). As a younger son of a marquess, Randolph had the courtesy title "lord"; as a commoner, he could sit in the House of Commons. His parents became the (seventh) Duke and Duchess of Marlborough upon the death of Randolph's grandfather in 1857.

Churchill attended Tabor's Preparatory School, Cheam, then from 1863 Eton College, where he remained until 1865. Randolph was frequently in trouble with the university authorities for drunkenness, smoking in academic dress, and smashing windows at the Randolph Hotel. His rowdy behaviour was infectious, rubbing off on friends and contemporaries; he gained a reputation as an enfant terrible. He had a liking for hunting, but was also a well-read historian. He took a second in jurisprudence and modern history in 1870. He never regretted being an early friend and admirer of the Disraelis. His behaviour was, however, the later cause of dissension in his relations with a colder, more aloof, disciplinarian Salisbury. In 1871, Churchill and his elder brother George were initiated into the rites of Freemasonry, as later his son Winston would be.

At the general election of 1874 Churchill was elected to Parliament as Conservative member for Woodstock, near the family seat of Blenheim Palace, defeating George Brodrick, a Fellow of Merton. His maiden speech, delivered in his first session, prompted compliments from William Harcourt and Benjamin Disraeli, who wrote to the Queen of Churchill's "energy and natural flow".

Personal life and medical condition

thumb|right|Randolph and Jennie Churchill in Paris (1874). Photo by [[Georges Penabert.]]

Churchill was married at the British Embassy in Paris on 15 April 1874 to Jennie Jerome, daughter of Leonard Jerome, an American businessman. The couple had two sons: Winston and Jack.

In January 1875, weeks after Winston's birth, Churchill made repeated visits to Dr Oscar Clayton. He had twenty years to live, but suffered from debilitating illness, particularly in his last decade. Quinault, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, theorises that Churchill was probably passing through the stages of secondary syphilis and then tertiary syphilis, but mentions a brain tumour and multiple sclerosis as other possible causes. Clayton was a society doctor and specialist in the treatment of syphilis who worked from his practice at 5 Harley Street. Additionally, author Richard M. Langworth claims that Roose never actually identified the disease that Randolph was suffering from as syphilis, instead using the term "general paralysis", which in that period "suggested not only syphilis but nervous exhaustion". Langworth also states that there is "no evidence that Roose or Buzzard treated Lord Randolph with mercury or potassium iodide", arguing that "their toxic effects, such as a distinctive grey pallor, would have been evident."

As well as a house in Westminster, Churchill occupied a country house, Banstead Manor, at Cheveley near Newmarket, which he first rented in 1890. In 1891, he had horses in training with J. Ryan at Green Lodge, Newmarket. His wife and sons lived at Banstead while Churchill was away in South Africa during that year.

Career

The "Fourth Party"

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It was not until 1878 that he came to public notice as the exponent of independent Conservatism. He made a series of furious attacks on Sir Stafford Northcote, R. A. Cross, and other prominent members of the "old gang". George Sclater-Booth (afterwards 1st Baron Basing), President of the Local Government Board, was a specific target, and the minister's County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the "crowning dishonour to Tory principles", and the "supreme violation of political honesty".

In the new parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more notable role. Along with Henry Drummond Wolff, John Gorst and occasionally Arthur Balfour, he made himself known as the audacious opponent of the Liberal administration and the unsparing critic of the Conservative front bench. The "fourth party", as it was nicknamed, at first did little damage to the government, but awakened the opposition from its apathy; Churchill roused the Conservatives by leading resistance to Charles Bradlaugh, the member for Northampton, who as an avowed atheist or agnostic was prepared to take the parliamentary oath only under protest. Stafford Northcote, the Conservative leader in the Lower House, was forced to take a strong line on this difficult question by the energy of the fourth party. He declared that the Conservatives ought to adopt, rather than oppose, popular reforms, and to challenge the claims of the Liberals to pose as champions of the masses. His views were largely accepted by the official Conservative leaders in the treatment of the Gladstonian Representation of the People Act 1884. Churchill insisted that the principle of the bill should be accepted by the opposition, and that resistance should be focused on the refusal of the government to combine with it a scheme of redistribution. The prominent, and on the whole judicious and successful, part he played in the debates on these questions, still further increased his influence with the rank and file of the Conservatives in the constituencies. As the price of entry he demanded that Sir Stafford Northcote be removed from the Commons, despite being the Conservative leader there. Salisbury was more than willing to concede this, and Northcote went to the Lords as the Earl of Iddlesleigh.

Despite entering office with a reputation for progressive views on India, Churchill's tenure was, in the words of the historian and biographer R. F. Foster, 'traditionally reactionary', and many of his policies focused on exploiting, not developing India. He enthusiastically supported a trade policy which favoured British imports over Indian goods; increased spending on the Indian Army at the expense of public works such as railways, roads and irrigation (all sharply reduced under his secretaryship); and re-directed money which had been set aside for future famine relief to help balance his budget. His attitude towards the native Indians was similarly illiberal. He refused to allow reforms which would have increased Indian representation within the civil service and army, and, in a public speech at Birmingham, he infamously described a deputation to Britain by three Indian politicians, led by N. G. Chandavarkar, as the 'three Bengalee baboos'.

However, Churchill's most well-known act during his time at the India Office was his role in the invasion and annexation of Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War. Siding with British commercial (especially cotton) and military interests, and hoping to boost Conservative fortunes in the upcoming general election, Churchill directed the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, to invade Upper Burma in November 1885. With little discussion, Churchill then decided to annex the Burmese kingdom, adding it as a new province of the Indian Raj as a "New Year present" for Queen Victoria on New Year's Day 1886. Not only is the war itself widely regarded as a piece of blatant imperialism, but the continuing guerrilla war lasted into the later 1880s and cost the Indian taxpayer ten times Churchill's original financial estimates.

In the autumn election of 1885 he contested Birmingham Central against John Bright, and though defeated here, was at the same time returned by a very large majority for South Paddington. For the next few years there was some speculation about a return to front-line politics, but Churchill's own career was over. Even so, his economising ideas survived yet in the "Dartford Programme" of September 1886.

After the Chancellorship

Churchill continued to sit in Parliament, but his health was in serious decline throughout the 1890s. He was an ardent patron of horse racing; in 1889, his horse, L'Abbesse de Jouarre, won The Oaks. In 1891 he went to South Africa, in search both of health and relaxation. He travelled for some months through Cape Colony, the Transvaal and Rhodesia, making notes on the politics and economics of the countries, shooting lions, and recording his impressions in letters to a London newspaper, which were afterwards republished under the title of Men, Mines and Animals in South Africa. He attacked Gladstone's Second Home Rule Bill for Ireland with energy, Referring to the possibility of a Home Rule Bill, Churchill stated that: "...if Gladstone introduced a Home Rule Bill, I should not hesitate, if other circumstances were favourable, to agitate Ulster even to resistance beyond constitutional limits..." During this time he coined the phrase "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right", echoing his earlier remark that in opposing Irish Home Rule "the Orange card would be the one to play".

It was soon apparent that Churchill's powers had been undermined by the illness which was to take his life at the age of 45. As the session of 1893 wore on, his speeches lost their old effectiveness. His last speech in the House was delivered in the debate on the East African Scheme in June 1894, and was a painful failure.

He attempted a round-the-world journey in the autumn of 1894, accompanied by his wife, but his health soon became so feeble that he was brought back hurriedly from Cairo. He reached England shortly before Christmas, and died in Westminster the next month. The gross value of his personal estate was entered in the Probate Registry at £75,971 (). He is buried near his wife and sons at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

His widow, Lady Randolph Churchill, married George Cornwallis-West in 1900, when she became known as Mrs George Cornwallis-West. After that marriage was dissolved, she resumed by deed poll her prior married name, Lady Randolph Churchill. (Lord Randolph was her husband's courtesy title as the younger son of a duke, and in English law does not qualify as a noble title in its own right). Churchill's son, Winston, died on 24 January 1965, aged 90, exactly 70 years after the death of his father, having lived twice as long.

Personality and reputation

thumb|Marker at Lord Churchill's former home

Rosebery described his old friend and political opponent, after his death, thus: "his nervous system was always tense and highly strung; ...he seems to have had no knowledge of men, no consideration of their feelings, no give and take." But he continued, "in congenial society, his conversation was wholly delightful. He would then display his mastery of pleasant irony and banter; for with those playthings he was at his best."

Biographer Roy Jenkins, pointing to his brash and slightly vulgar charisma, asked, "Was he ever near to being a serious statesman?":

<blockquote>Undoubtedly, he had some high political talents. He had a gift for mordant, wounding, sometimes very funny phrases. And, having thought up the most outrageous attack he had the nerve to deliver it, without fear of offending taste or friends or damaging his own repute....He was strong on insolence. He also had other attributes necessary to make his words resound, and his fame increase: a mnemonic name, an idiosyncratic appearance, and good delivery, whether on the platform or in the House of Commons. In addition he had sporadic charm, although intermingled with offensive and often pointless rudeness.</blockquote>

Jenkins compares his youth to that of William Pitt the Younger: "Pitt was Prime Minister for 19 of his 46 years. Churchill had 11 months in office and was without rival in attracting so much attention and achieving so little".

In his biography of Winston Churchill, Jenkins mentions the comment by Lord Salisbury that Randolph Churchill was "the antithesis of Muhammad Ahmad". Salisbury said: "The Mahdi pretends to be half mad, and is very sane in reality".

Notes

References

==Further reading==

James, Robert Rhodes. "Lord Randolph Churchill" History Today (Mar 1955) 5#3 pp 145–153, short biography.

External links

Our Infant Hercules – Westminster Victorian Cartoonists – UK Parliament Living Heritage