Wansteadium

The tale of Winston Churchill’s relationships with Wanstead and his wider constituency – as seen through Wansteadium’s reading of David A Thomas’s increasingly interesting Churchill the Member for Woodford - is getting to the heart of the matter… war.

Episode four

Churchill lost the India issue. So he went back to the US for another three-month visit, a book and speaking tour. If nothing else, he had to make back some of the cash he had lost in the Wall St Crash. He got knocked down by a motorbike on Fifth Avenue (Manhattan, not Walthamstow). He took a long time to recover and spent 1934 warning “Germany is arming”. His relationship with his constituency was at times troubled – not everyone liked his lack of support for the government. He wrote: “There’s some trouble in south Chingford. Loughton chilly. Woodford magnificent.” Wanstead supported him solidly. Buckhurst Hill opposed him, and this especially irritated him. “The worst place is Buckhurst Hill,” he wrote, which here is completely taken out of context for effect.*  Others praised him as the “the most high profile opponent of socialism”. In the 1935 election, he again toured every inch of the vast Epping constituency, and again warned  widely of the dangers of Germany. He won his largest ever majority – and was in the seat for the next 10 years (there was no general election between 1935 and 1945). Later, in 1936, as more people became aware of the nature of the threat of Hitler, he said: “I hope you will not forget the speeches I made two or three years ago when Germany began to rearm. But none outside Epping listened to me then.”

*The fuller quotation is” [M]uch perturbation has been caused to many of our best friends in our constituencies. Hawkey has been very worried about the Epping Division… Epping is disaffected… The worst place is Buckhurst Hill where the Branch Committee is thoroughly disgruntled…”

(<a href=”http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/071464143X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=071464143X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=wansteadium-21&amp;linkId=LGJOX5AWPUPHZTS2″>Though out of print, the book can be bought from Amazon here, in physical or electronic form.</a>)

Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo: “I was out the other evening and was really drawn by the effect of the street lights and the illumination spilling out of buildings.  I spotted the light glowing from these three windows, unusual because the building is the old Police station now closed and empty. So what were the lights all about ? The spirit of former policemen and villains ? Who knows but I’m sure I heard the clinking of cell keys….”

To mark the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death, Wansteadium is blogging its reading of Churchill: The Member For Woodford by David A Thomas. The first two episodes are here and here.

Episode three
After yesterday’s description of women as “flappers”, another Churchill phrase enters the debate – his description of himself “purring with delight”. Wansteadium seems to remember something similar in another context. Maybe someone knows their Churchill?

Something which Churchill was definitely not purring about though was the size of the available meeting halls in Wanstead in the run-up to the 1929 general election. Thomas tells us: “So small were the halls in Wanstead and Woodford that Churchill ordered two large marquees, each capable of accommodating five times the number of the largest halls.” A common frustration then as now – though since those days the new library has been built which does have a meeting room next to it (whatever it’s called).

His campaigning efforts paid off – he was re-elected OK, but the Tories were turfed out of office and he himself faced a decade in the wilderness. Thomas tells us this was “a period in which he increasingly alienated himself from almost everyone, assailed by friends, colleagues, opponents, some of his constituents and of course his enemies”. So he went on a big tour of the US and Canada. When he returned the big issue was Indian independence. “He spoke and wrote about it interminably,” says Thomas. But his constituents were in a “bright film of enthusiasm” in supporting him. Churchill was particularly suspicious of Gandhi, calling him “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir… a malignant, subversive fanatic”. Phew. (Much later, towards the end of the war, Gandhi wrote to Churchill saying that he had decided to take the fakir comment as a compliment.)

Anyway, the voters (including flappers this time) of Wanstead, Woodford, Epping and throughout this part of the world was ‘loving, ardent and unanimous’ – he won a majority of more than 20,000.

In the next instalment, just around the corner were the twin threats of mass unemployment and the rise of the Nazis.

It’s 50 years this month since Winston Churchill’s death, and Wansteadium is going the extra mile for the people of Wanstead by reading Churchill: The Member for Wanstead Woodford by David A Thomas which tells the story of his relationship with his constituency.

(Though out of print, the book can be bought from Amazon here, in physical or electronic form.)

Episode two.
Yesterday we left our hero returned to Parliament after repeated electoral defeats in various constituencies. He was on his way to becoming a fully fledged Conservative, having served as a Liberal cabinet minister several times. He was accepted by the Epping constituency, which was in those days massive, but then again only men were allowed to vote. But by the end of 1924, he was back in the Commons. That’s where we got to.

Stanley Baldwin was the new prime minister. Some in the party didn’t want to give Churchill a cabinet post. Churchill himself wasn’t sure if he would accept a minor role or should hold out for a biggie. In the end, Baldwin asked him: “Will you go to the Treasury?” Thomas reports: “Churchill records that he would have liked to have replied: ‘Will the bloody duck swim?’ Instead, upholding the formality and the importance of the occasion, he replied more appropriately, ‘I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid Office.’”

Not everyone was happy though, even in the constituency. He tried charming people – even going to the Cowslip Road Branch annual general meeting in the Latchett Hall (a tin hut which was the forerunner to the Latchett Evangelical Church just off George Lane in South Woodford). Cowslip Road had its own branch! In his first Budget he restored the Gold Standard (pegging the pound sterling to the value of gold with the aim of retaining London’s financial dominance). Then came the National Strike, and Churchill turned his hand to being a newspaperman, producing a daily news sheet called The British Gazette. This is while he was also being chancellor of the exchequer. In Wanstead, as in other places, the paper was distributed by volunteers.

There were no winners from the National Strike, really, and Churchill said the year was ‘harassing, worrying and disappointing’ when he spoke to constituents in what Thomas describes as “the dingy Drummond Rooms in Wanstead close by Christ Church Green”. Any Wansteadium readers know where the Drummond Rooms were? It was at this time that women over 21 were given the vote. Any guesses as to how our greatest leader referred to this landmark in British democracy? “The flappers’ vote.” (In his defence, he does not seem to have been alone in using this term.)

And so this second instalment ends with Churchill in 1928 addressing the Aldersbrook Branch of the party in 1928 when he delivered the following speech warning about disarmament. Thomas refers to it as The Aldersbrook Fable, and the Churchill Centre’s archives report it as follows:

Once upon a time all the animals in the Zoo decided that they would disarm, and they arranged to have a conference to arrange the matter. So the Rhinoceros said when he opened the proceedings that the use of teeth was barbarous and horrible and ought to be strictly prohibited by general consent. Horns, which were mainly defensive weapons, would, of course, have to be allowed. The Buffalo, the Stag, the Porcupine, and even the little Hedgehog all said they would vote with the Rhino, but the Lion and the Tiger took a different view. They defended teeth and even claws, which they described as honourable weapons of immemorial antiquity. The Panther, the Leopard, the Puma, and the whole tribe of small cats all supported the Lion and the Tiger.

Then the Bear spoke. He proposed that both teeth and horns should be banned and never used again for fighting by any animal. It would be quite enough if animals were allowed to give each other a good hug when they quarreled. No one could object to that. It was so fraternal, and that would be a great step towards peace. However, all the other animals were very offended with the Bear, and the Turkey fell into a perfect panic.

The discussion got so hot and angry, and all those animals began thinking so much about horns and teeth and hugging when they argued about the peaceful intentions that had brought them together that they began to look at one another in a very nasty way. Luckily the keepers were able to calm them down and persuade them to go back quietly to their cages, and they began to feel quite friendly with one another again.

In tomorrow’s riveting instalment, Churchill has strong views about Gandhi, socialism, Nazis, and the size of meeting halls in Wanstead.

Later this month is the 50th anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill. The bust outside Manor House marks the building’s past as the location of the Conservative Club. But beyond that, many Wanstead residents will not know much about his association with Wanstead. So in one of our occasional bursts of public service, Wansteadium is proudly reading Churchill: The member for Woodford, written by David A Thomas in 1994, and over the next few days will be sharing choice snippets.

(Though out of print, the book can be bought from Amazon here, in physical or electronic form.)

Episode One. The book starts with Churchill having been a Liberal MP for more than 20 years, having had five Cabinet posts, but now without a seat. He had lost Dundee in 1922 (even though he addressed 4,000 voters soon after having appendicitis and had to be ‘propped up, half-lying on a sort of sedan chair’). He then lost West Leicester in 1923. He lost again in January 1924. There were a lot of general elections then. He began to look for a safe London Tory seat – and was encouraged to eye up Epping. Women weren’t allowed to vote then. Also the constituencies were enormous. Epping started at Aldersbrook and stretched beyond Harlow. He knew Aldersbrook because his nurse – ‘that dear and excellent woman Mrs Everest’ – was buried in the City of London cemetery and he mourned there as a boy. He got selected as the candidate for Epping, though some in the local party had reservations. Him having been a Liberal for 20 years, that kind of thing. For Churchill, one of the attractions was that the new constituency was close to home. Thomas writes: “Churchill added contentedly that he made the journey from Woodford to Chartwell via the Blackwall Tunnel in only one hour and 20 minutes.” Beats driving to Dundee. After being selected as candidate, he went for a drink at the Manor House Conservative Club on Wanstead High Street. “What a fine club,” he wrote. He worked hard on giving speeches around the constituency and meeting thousands of voters (all men, naturally), and in 1924, aged 49, became MP for Epping. Which included Wanstead.

In tomorrow’s exciting installment, the new prime minister asks Winston if he will go to the Treasury. He nearly swears at him. But he does it and is faced with the National Strike, when he turns newspaperman. He does, however, have to visit a dingy room in Wanstead…

Soundtrack from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly echoing down Snaresbrook CC corridors. Special entrance for a defendant?

— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) January 12, 2015