Exiled Churchill plotted in trenches to oust Asquith
WINSTON CHURCHILL plotted from the trenches to oust Herbert Asquith, the Liberal prime minister, during the First World War, unpublished letters have revealed.
The future British premier served as an officer in the Army in 1916 after he was frozen out of government following the fiasco of the Gallipoli campaign he had spearheaded. While on the Western Front in France, he sent a series of letters to a prominent minister urging Mr Asquith’s removal and replacement. The intrigues worked and paved the way for the premiership of David Lloyd George and Churchill’s return to government.
The unpublished correspondence from Britain’s wartime leader to Sir Edward Carson, the Irish Unionist minister and power-broker, is to be sold – for an estimated £60,000 – by Peter Harrington Rare Books in New York.
In one of the letters sent in 1916, Churchill complains of the “ill-starred coalition” governing the country and managing the war, adding: “Shall we ever make a comprehensive plan? Asquith’s failure is not lack of decision, but lack of design. On that all turns, and the helplessness of gallant effort at the front is pathetic.”
He insisted, foreshadowing his own determination during the Second World War, that Britain needed a government ready to win the war at “any expense”, and urged the removal of Asquith. In one letter, he writes: “Any arrangement [that] succeeded the Asquith regime must be between you & Lloyd George. I trust you will keep in touch with me.”
Churchill had resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty after the Gallipoli campaign and sought to atone by joining the ranks on the Western Front.
He was given command of a battalion of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers and often ventured into no man’s land wearing his preferred French-issue helmet. It was then that he corresponded with Sir Edward, whose Unionists were the effective opposition during Asquith’s wartime coalition.
His efforts at the end of 1916, the year in which he wrote to Churchill, helped to topple Asquith and bring about the leadership of Lloyd George, who promptly brought him and Churchill back into government.
Along with largely unpublished letters, the writing desk Churchill used to pen his memoir of the Second World War and his Nobel Prize-winning History of the English-speaking Peoples, is being offered for sale. Experts have noted what they believe are cigar burns on its leather surface.