Winston Churchill was deeply devoted to his father, although he was
treated by him in a manner that can only be described as heartless, even
cruel. There is a terrible letter from
Lord Randolph to his son when the 18-year-old boy had been accepted in 1893 for
the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and had enthusiastically told his father
of his – admittedly very marginal – success.
‘Always behind-hand ... social wastrel ... degenerate into a shabby,
unhappy and futile existence.’ It can
only be excused because physical and mental deterioration was already clouding
Lord Randolph’s mind.
The
paternal rejection was deeply felt, but Winston did not reject his father. Far from it.
Much of his life was motivated by the challenge to make the mark in
public life that a hero-worshipped father had never achieved. He found himself, at the age of 20, head of
the family in precarious financial circumstances. He meant to forge a career, but he felt no
great love for the Conservative Party.
Its stuffy conformism had destroyed his father – or so he believed. He would not at once abandon the Churchill
family tradition. He would begin as a
Conservative, but the allegiance lay lightly on him from the start. In 1900 under the Spy cartoon of him in
Vanity Fair ,these words appear; ‘He is ambitious; he means to get on,
and he loves his country. But he can
hardly be regarded as the slave of any Party.’
He had
made enough money by 1900 through lecturing and journalism to risk the career
– in those days totally unpaid – of a
Member of Parliament. In October, he was
duly elected as Conservative Member for Oldham in Lancashire, though by a very
narrow margin. He, thus, commenced on a
long love-hate relationship with the Conservative Party. It was reciprocal. Plenty of Conservatives felt as much doubt
about him as he did about them. The
General Election of 1900 was a conclusive Conservative victory, based largely on
patriotic emotions generated by the South African War. One could perhaps compare the part played by
the Falklands War in the election of 1983.
A big majority gave scope for backbenchers to go ahead on their own, make
their names by making trouble, and generally behave in an undisciplined manner –
easier in those days when party pressure was far weaker than it has become
since.