The Churchill Series – Mar. 8, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

In 1955 the historian A. L. Rowse spent a day at Chartwell with the then eighty year old Churchill. Rowse later said:

It was revealing to an historian how he spoke of party politics — he didn’t speak as a party-man at all: above all that. He spoke of the Conservative Party as "they"; it brought home how many years he had been a Liberal, and how loosely he sat to mere party, really a man of the centre, in many ways, who never saw things through party blinkers. (Chamberlain was the good party-man.)

Churchill spoke with no feeling whatever against the Labour Party; all that had drossed away. He wondered what would happen to them now they were finding out that nationalization wasn’t a solution. "You don’t create wealth by just taking it away from other people. There should be minimum standards for people, and beyond that —free run."

“Minimum standards for people, and beyond that – free run” IMO captures in a few words Churchill’s belief throughout his political career of the proper function of government social services within a largely free market economic system.

Rowse, who lived into his nineties, said his day with Churchill was: “Quite the most wonderful day l have spent in my life.”

You can read more about that day here.

A hat tip goes to the Churchill Centre for providing Rowse’s account of that “most wonderful day.”