‘In the trenches, among the Scots accents and the Glengarries, he began to recover’
Andrew Liddle’s book Cheers, Mr Churchill! details the years Britain’s wartime leader spent as MP in Dundee. Here is how the preface begins.
Scotland had a profound impact on Churchill – practically, politically, and personally. Practically, it provided him with a constituency for almost 15 years, five election victories and a platform from which he could launch his Cabinet career. Crucially, the voters of Dundee backed Churchill during some of his most difficult moments. Without victory in Dundee in 1908, Churchill’s political career would have been in serious jeopardy. Equally, when voters in Dundee chose to endorse Churchill in 1917, they helped cast off the aspersion that he was a political liability in the wake of the failure of the Allied Dardanelles campaign in 1915. These were two crucial endorsements but the strength of his support was clearly apparent at every election he contested in Dundee until 1922. Even then, as the city voted him out, he received more than 20,000 votes.
Politically and, perhaps most importantly, serving in Scotland changed Churchill’s Liberal perspective from one concerned solely with economics to one that also embraced progressive social reform. Churchill had left the Conservative Party for the Liberal Party in 1904 because of his belief in free trade, and his alignment with the Liberal Party until 1908 was fundamentally due to economic policy. It was support for free trade that won Churchill the Manchester North West constituency in 1906, and it was international affairs that dominated his ministerial career between then and 1908. It was only once he became MP for Dundee – and came to more fully understand poverty, slums and ill-health – that his political priorities evolved and he became a champion of social, as well as economic, progress.
Personally, and most prosaically, Scotland also had a profound social and private influence on Churchill’s life. His wife, Clementine, hailed from Angus and Churchill retained many lifelong friends from Dundee and wider Scotland. His holidays in places such as Aberdeenshire and East Lothian provided muchneeded respite from the trials and tribulation of high office. Most importantly, it was a Scottish regiment that helped Churchill recover when, in 1916, his career was at its lowest ebb. With his mental health under strain, Churchill took command of the 6th Battallion, Royal Scots Fusiliers, and it was in the trenches, among the Scottish accents and Glengarries, that he began his recovery.