Finest Hour Third Quarter 2022

“It’s a long way to Tipperary, but a visit there is sometimes irresistible.” Thus Winston Churchill once wrote in preface to a description of his long and controversial involvement with the Emerald Isle. This issue is the third in our series studying Churchill’s relationship with each of the four regions that make up the United Kingdom. Uniquely, Ireland subdivided during Churchill’s career, and he had much to do with this. In order to begin addressing the topic, we invited the distinguished historian Paul Bew, now Lord Bew of Donegore, to serve as co-editor of this issue. In his opening piece, Lord Bew places his own life experience as the Ulster-born son of a Belfast Protestant and a Cork Catholic in the context of Churchill’s involvement with and legacy in Ireland. Michael McMenamin…

Email: info@winstonchurchill.org We Hold Ourselves Bound Following the death of Arthur Griffith from natural causes on 12 August 1922 and the assassination of Michael Collins ten days later—both men signatories and supporters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty—Winston Churchill wrote W. T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Committee of the Irish Free State on 24 August. LONDON—I take the earliest opportunity in this hour of tragedy for Ireland and of intense difficulty for the Irish Provisional Government of assuring you of the confidence which is felt by the British Government that the Treaty provision will be faithfully and resolutely maintained. The death of the two principal signatories, the retirement of another and the desertion of a fourth, in no way affect the validity and sanctity of the settlement entered into with the plenipotentiaries of the Irish…

Churchill Fellow and long-time member of the Board of Governors of the Association of Churchill Fellows Richard J. Mahoney has given the gift of words—Churchill’s words—and has completed his much-anticipated second edition of The Quotable Winston Churchill, published by America’s National Churchill Museum. From the man who mobilized the English language and took it to war—and peace—comes this collection of maxims. Edited by Richard J. Mahoney with Shera Dalin and Audrey Mahoney, this new hardback edition includes a remembrance by the late Margaret Thatcher. It is now available exclusively through America’s National Churchill Museum. Winston S. Churchill is best understood through his own observations, comments, anecdotes, and witty repartee. The quotes represent a modern sensibility set in an American context for contemporary readers. They include some of Sir Winston’s most famous utterances and…

Winston Churchill entered the world of Irish politics at a decisive moment: as a young MP he witnessed the final collapse of the project of legislative union as envisaged by the Act of Union (1801) and its replacement by an entirely different concept. The original idea had been to create “one people” across two islands. Edmund Burke, Irish-born, raised, and educated, but as a politician and writer totally locked into English politics, had been the creator of this notion. He convinced William Pitt, who loved to repeat Burke’s phrase: “It was impossible to speak as ‘a good Englishman without speaking as a good Irishman’ and impossible also to speak as a ‘good Irishman without speaking as a good Englishman.’” There was a strategic dimension, of course, in the age of…

Having twice changed political parties, Winston Churchill was especially sensitive to the charge that this displayed political inconsistency if not opportunism on his part. Indeed, his 1932 collection of essays Thoughts and Adventures contains an entire chapter on “Consistency in Politics.” In it he suggests, “A change of Party is usually considered a much more serious breach of consistency than a change of view.” Churchill disagreed. Consistency should be to principle, not party. He had been taught that from an early age in 1895 by his American mentor Bourke Cockran, a hard-money Democrat, who in 1896 opposed his party’s nominee for president, William Jennings Bryan, over the inflationary policy of free silver. Churchill illustrated his point by comparing himself with Joseph Chamberlain, who had supported free trade in the late nineteenth…

In a debate in the House of Commons a week after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Winston Churchill mused on the outsized importance of Ireland to British public life. Ireland was a “small, poor sparsely populated island” with little in the way of natural resources. Its island status made it vulnerable to attack. “It is a curious reflection to inquire why Ireland should bulk so largely in our lives. How is it that the great English parties are shaken to their foundations, and even shattered, almost every generation, by contact with Irish affairs?” he asked the House nine days after the signing of the Treaty.1 Churchill was an enthusiastic signatory to the Treaty. It was peace with honour, he believed, supported by “nineteentwentieths of the people of both countries.”2 This was…