Seminars meet each weekday morning, with afternoons free for course-related field trips, individual study, or exploring the many places of interest in and around the city.
Monday
Churchill’s upbringing, character, and adventures as a soldier and journalist contributed to his political outlook. The wider background was the ideology on which Britain’s prosperity and prestige as a global power was founded in the 19th century. Churchill became a Liberal in 1903 shortly after entering Parliament through clinging to the ‘Liberal State’, when the Conservatives veered away after Chamberlain’s alternative vision of Britain as an Empire state. We will look at Churchill’s imperialist beliefs and racial attitudes, and his rapid rise as a ‘New Liberal’ in British politics, laying the foundations of social security within the ‘Liberal State’ before the First World War.
Tuesday
Churchill’s attitude to war. At the Admiralty he developed an idea of ‘Liberal militarism’, pursuing military strategies which minimised the effect of war on Britain’s economy and society. This continued in his work as Minister of Munitions interested in new weapons. At the Colonial Office he was responsible for the chaos arising from the collapse of empires around the world, also addressing rising challenges from mass nationalism in India and Ireland. After the war, Churchill found himself defending the ‘Liberal State’ not as a Liberal but as a Conservative. At the Treasury, 1923-28, he held protectionism at bay, restored Britain to the gold standard and tried to rejuvenate Britain’s export industries, while enhancing social provision. But the world depression in 1929 forced him to accept that the ‘Liberal State’ no longer worked. What should replace it?
Wednesday
Churchill was profoundly out of sympathy with the political ideologies of right and left which emerged out of the First World War. Out of office in the 1930s, he reconsidered his Liberalism, working it into a broadly-based defensive idea addressing the rise of dictatorship. He identified Communism and Fascism as equally deadly opponents of Liberal democracy long before most others did so, and he led the Parliamentary opposition to appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. As wartime leader, he emerged as Liberalism’s armed champion. The Labour Party played a key part in his wartime coalition government, and he built a global coalition opposed to Fascism, which included the Soviet Union. We will look at the approach he took to fighting another global war, relating it back to his earlier liberalism. We will also explore some of the myths surrounding his wartime leadership, often created by Churchill himself.
Thursday
The visit to Chartwell in Kent, the home Churchill built for his family, is at the heart of the course. We see where the transformation of his ideas in the 1930s took place, and explore the contribution the place itself made to it. The house and the estate, developed under his personal direction with the earnings of his writings, was an expression of his personality, talents, and political ideas, and of the contribution made by his marriage to Clementine Hozier.
Friday
At the end of the war, Churchill turned again to the defence of Liberalism, addressing Stalinist totalitarianism on the world stage and the Labour Party at home. Why was Churchill, the great victorious war leader, rejected by British voters in 1945? How did ideas of economic planning and social welfare influence the Conservative Party which Churchill continued to lead in the post-war period. He wrote a magisterial multi-volume chronicle of his own times, The Second World War, and returned as Prime Minister at the age of 77 in 1951. He pushed ideas of détente between East and West, and peace in industrial relations at home, while continuing to champion the British Empire. The decisive turn away from imperialism came quickly after he finally retired from politics in his early eighties in 1955. We will conclude by looking back over his legacy and his particular contributions to ‘The Age of Winston Churchill’.
Field Trip
Destination: Chartwell, Kent
Website: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell
Excursion Rating: Moderate - up to two hours' walk on even ground or up to an hour's walk on rough and/or steep ground or up lots of stairs and steps.
