1951: Churchill’s silver gift takes shape in Glasgow

GLASGOW Chamber of Commerce wanted to present something special to Winston Churchill, and what better gift than a silver model of one of the city’s oldest landmarks?

Jeweller Peter Campbell is shown here working on the model of the Tolbooth Steeple, in 1951, the same year in which Churchill had been returned to Number 10. In May 1952 it was presented to him in the Cabinet Room, by a Chamber delegation. The miniature steeple contained a parchment that testified to the fact he had become only the seventh person to be awarded honorary membership of the Chamber. He thanked them for “presenting me with such an agreeable and charming memento in this casket, which I shall always treasure”.

Churchill was 76 when he won in 1951. It was a remarkable achievement, Edward Heath would later record, but “by immediately creating himself Minister of Defence as well as Prime Minister, he indicated his mind was still in the pattern of his triumphant war years rather than being attuned to the requirements of a post-war society”.

The official Number 10 website says that by the time of his re-election, “Churchill was, in the words of Roy Jenkins, ‘gloriously unfit for office’. Ageing and increasingly unwell, he often conducted business from his bedside, and while his powerful personality and oratory ability endured, [his] leadership was less decisive than during the war”.

Churchill was knighted in 1953 and resigned as PM in April 1955.

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