This is a good description of an aspect of Churchill's career which may not be known to a wide number of people.

To me, this shatters the myth of Churchill as a great leader who ruled for all the people in the way he behaved toward striking workers.

I have read several books on the suffragettes and Churchill comes up frequently as one of their main foes; for this reason, I wanted to read this to get his side of the story. The author clearly knows his stuff and this is packed with information, but I found it was too academic for me personally. I should have realised this as it is looking at a specific, and short time in his long career.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and Pen and Sword for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*

The youngest Home Secretary since Sir Robert Peel, Churchill certainly held the position at an extremely turbulent time, filled with strikes, riots and the rise of socialism and feminism. All these are what makes the Edwardian age so interesting! Charles Stephenson conducts a forensic examination of Churchill's time in office, restoring his reputation in some respects, such as at Tonypandy. His account is reasonably sympathetic, and probably won't make anyone think any less of the great man, although his belief in eugenics was strong, and it was just as well that he gave it up! (As women are actively encouraged not to have disabled babies now, even if they don't want to, can we afford to be judgmental, however?)

Churchill's time as Home Secretary is mostly remembered because of the Battle of Sydney Street. Although that is discussed here, his penal reforms, his role in sending troops to maintain order in riots and strikes, and his attitude to the Suffragettes are far more important. I found the chapters on the strikes a bit dry, and I was more interested in the Suffragettes. Churchill's position on these courageous women surprised me. He was sympathetic to the cause, apparently, but he just didn't see it as terribly important, and he didn't think that the majority of women supported it. This was in spite of his wife Clementine, who seems to have been far more likeable in some respects, appreciating its significance and being very angry with him about it!

This is a must-read for anyone interested in Sir Winston.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Winston Churchill famously had a very long political career. His spell as Home Secretary between 1910 and 1911 came fairly early on when he was still in his thirties, after he had defected from the Tories to the Liberals, but still around thirty years before his celebrated turn as Britain's wartime saviour during the Second World War.
He wasn't Home Secretary for long but as this thorough and well-researched book tells us, his time in office reveals much about the man - particularly his now controversial views on eugenics, women's suffrage, striking Welsh miners and prisons (as a former prisoner-of-war himself during the Boer War, he was very keen to reform them). We also learn a lot about the times he lived in: a period when the Liberal Government was battling the House of Lords, rioting was a serious problem and during which Britain was fast developing a complex spy network as the world slid inexorably towards the First World War.

Charles Stephenson’s Churchill as Home Secretary is a perfect example of a good history book. Although the author states “[T]his book is in no way intended to be an academic work”, it still demonstrates academic rigour in its usage of sources. Stephenson picks two examples of diaries written by people who knew Churchill very well indeed and shows that anecdotes quoted in their autobiographies don’t appear in the diary entries for those dates. As Stephenson says, they “mis-remembered” several decades later – but their anecdotes have been quoted as primary sources in many other books since then, perpetuating two myths. Stephenson is highly diligent at recording his sources: there are 50 pages of notes and 22 of bibliography plus an index, together consuming about 30% of the book.

The author acknowledges he cannot address all the aspects of Churchill’s tenure as Home Secretary from 14 February 1910 to 25 October 1911, when he was the youngest Home Secretary since Robert Peel in 1822. He has chosen topics and chosen them well. We have chapters on :
- The Newport Dock Strike
- The miners’ strike at Tonypandy. Stephenson dwells upon the way Churchill put a military commander in charge of the situation. It has always been the case that the civil power (the Chief Constable and magistrates) can call for help from the military, but it is clear that the civilian power is responsible. In this case, Churchill’s appointment of Major General Macready ensured the maintenance of law and order. Chief Constable Lindsay would have over-reacted.
- Eugenics. Churchill was one of many people who were persuaded by this evil nonsense at the time. Fortunately, he seems to have forgotten all about it once he left the Home Office.
- Prison reform and capital punishment.
- Suffragettes
- The Sydney Stret Siege and the constitutional crisis with George V poised to create hundreds of new peers to end the impasse between the House of Commons and the House of Lords where the latter could veto any measures put forward by the Commons.
- The strikes of 1911, where Britain saw glimmerings of class warfare with riots in South Wales following the accidental discharge of a trooper’s rifle after the Riot Act had been read.
- The concern with German spies, planning for the next war and the birth of what became MI5 and MI6.
Stephenson’s conclusion is masterly. He quotes Rhodes James, “There were so many Winston Churchills.” His phenomenal capacity for work and his ability to immerse himself in a topic, seeking to really understand it, has meant his biographers can see many (often contradictory) aspects of Churchill.

I expected this book to be a dry history but it isn’t. Stephenson’s usage of so many sources, citing historians, politicians and contemporary newspapers made me see the Churchill of 1910-11 with fresh eyes. He acknowledges the myths and then gently shows the lack of evidence for them – it’s a really, really good book and I thoroughly recommend it.

#ChurchillasHomeSecretary #NetGalley

As a book on Churchill, I thought this was a little mediocre. It felt more like a book on English politics in 1910-1911 and sometimes included Churchill as almost a sidenote. I hadn't known anything about his time as Home Secretary before reading this and still wasn't sure I felt like I knew a lot afterwards. It assumes you as the reader know a lot about British politics and political figures of the day, although it does then nicely give you a lot of background on things like what leads up to the strikes in Wales. That part probably made the most sense to me, while other parts, like the German spy scare, made no sense in the context of this book at all. I was hoping we would get any private writings or thoughts from Churchill to help fill in his feelings on the strikes of the suffragette actions, but he was so distant from everything I felt like I was reading about something that took place and he might be present, or not- especially the strikes. Whether this is on me or the book I don't know, but I didn't have much luck feeling like I learned more about this part of Churchill's life and politics here.

This book is excellent. It contains a huge amount of information I had no clue about and illuminated a period in Churchill’s life that is usually forgotten about.
The author is detailed and meticulous in his research and writing.
I will be recommending that we stock copies.

I was given an ARC copy of this book by NetGalley for purposes of review. All opinions are my own.