User talk:Backnumber1662/Sandbox

During the first half of the 1930s, outspoken opposition towards the granting of Dominion status to India (see Simon Commission and Government of India Act 1935) became Churchill's major political focus. .

Churchill was one of the founders of the India Defence League, a group dedicated to the preservation of British power in India. In speeches and press articles in this period he forecast widespread British unemployment and civil strife in India should independence be granted to India. . The Viceroy Lord Irwin who had been appointed by the prior Conservative Government engaged in the Round Table Conference in early 1931 and then announced the Government's policy that India should be granted Dominion Status. In this the Government was supported by the Liberal Party and, officially at least, by the Conservative Party.

This support as Churchill later wrote "brought about my breaking point with Mr Baldwin". Churchill denounced the Round Table Conference. He spoke at a public meetings at Manchester and Liverpool in January and  February 1931 respectively. At both he forecast widespread unemployment into the millions and other social and economic problems in England if India became self governing. . Though he would come to respect Mahatma Gandhi, especially after Gandhi "stood up for the untouchables",  at a meeting of the  West Essex Conservative Association specially convened so Churchill could explain his position he said, "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle-Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace...to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor." . He called the Congress leaders "Brahims who mouth and patter principles of Western Liberalism."

In Parliament on 26th January 1931 he attacked the Government's policy saying that the Round Table Conference "was a frightful prospect" and that he would support "effective and real organisms of provisional and local government in the provinces." . He returned to the Parliamentary attack on 13th March. Baldwin answered him by quoting Churchill's own speech in winding up the debate for the Lloyd George Coalition government on Amritsar massacre in which Churchill defended the cashiering of General Reginald Dyer. Baldwin continued by challenging Churchill and his other critics to depose him as leader of the Conservative Party.

Perhaps the incident that damaged Churchill's reputation within the Conservative Party the most was his speech on the eve of the St George by-election. In this normally very safe Conservative seat, the official Conservative candidate Duff Cooper was opposed by an independent Conservative supported byLord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook and their respective newspapers. Both Press Barons had tried to urge specific policies on the Conservative Party - Rothermere opposed Indian home rule, Beaverbrook pressed for Tariff Reform under the slogan Empire Free Trade. Churchill's speech at the Albert Hall had been arranged before the date of the by election had been set. But he made no attempt to change the date and his speech was seen as a part of the Press Baron's campaign against Baldwin. This was reinforced by Churchill's personal friendship with both but especially with Beaverbrook who wrote "The primary issue of the by-election will be the leadership of the Conservative Party. If..(the independent candidate wins) Baldwin must go". Baldwin's position was strengthened when Duff Cooper won and when the civil disobedience campaign in India ceased with the Gandhi-Irwin Pact

Churchill's break with Baldwin was permanent. He never held any office while Baldwin was in Parliament. In 1947 Churchill said "I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better had he never lived." In the index to the Gathering Storm Churchill's first volume of his History of World War Two he  records  Baldwin "admitting to putting party before country" for his alleged admission that he would not have won the 1935 Election if he had pursued a more aggressive policy of rearmament. Churchill selectively quotes a speech in the Commons by Baldwin and gives the false impression that Baldwin is speaking of the general election when he was speaking of a by election in 1933 and omits altogether Baldwin's actual comments about the 1935 election "we got from the country, a mandate for doing a thing [a substantial rearmament programme] that no one, twelve months before, would have believed possible". This canard had been first put forward in the first edition of Guilty Men but in subsequent editions (including those before Churchill wrote the Gathering Storm) had been corrected.

Churchill continued his campaign against any further transfer of power to Indians. He continued to predict bloodshed in India and mass unemployment at home. His speeches often quoted nineteenth century politicians and his own policy was to maintain the existing Raj. Some historians see his basic attitude to India as being set out in his My Early Life which was published in 1930 ..................

This is a long entry but I hope it is npov, complete and I believe it is important for it sets out not only Churchill's views on both India and Baldwin (an important issue in itself though it may be better in another section) but also why and how Churchill compromised his position -both by supporting the wrong policy and by being seen as attacking his own party.

I would appreciate comments. My own are that perhaps some of the material about the by election could be moved to that topic and (as above) perhaps the material about Baldwin needs a separate section. Backnumber1662 10:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)