The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History by Boris Johnson Page A

twenty-nine, pink in the cheek, with a downy corona of gingery-brown hair still adhering to his head. He almost bursts with brio. This year alone he has spoken dozens of times, yo-yoing up and down to catch the eye of the Speaker on debates ranging from the Army Estimates to the Brussels Sugar Convention to Chinese Indentured Labour; and he is starting to get a bit of a name.
    His portrait has been regularly published in the papers, complete with admiring captions. He is seen pounding his fist into his palm, or with hands on hips, or making his famous double-handed chopping motion—and with his impudent attacks on his own party, and with the Tories seemingly swirling towards the electoral oubliette, he is aman on the up. The Liberals are about to find him a seat; he scents the prospect of office . . .
    So he slashes away at the Tories on the benches in front of him—as an energetic rambler might thwack a row of thistles gone to seed. The Tories are a ‘sham’, he says. They have forgotten the precepts of Tory Democracy, he tells Balfour, who has already spoken in the debate—and one can imagine Balfour listening and looking inscrutable from beneath his vulturine eyelids.
    Around him the Tories are hissing and scratching and fitfully trying to put him off his stroke. It is the Labour benches which are cheering him—and not surprisingly, in view of the kind of thing he is saying.
    This isn’t anything a Tory would today recognise as Conservatism. It would send Margaret Thatcher wild. In fact there isn’t even a modern Labour government that would agree to the kind of thing that Churchill seems to be advocating. He is making a case to allow big groups of striking workers to go to the homes of those who are not on strike—and effectively to bully them into joining in. He wants unions to be protected from legal action, so that they can’t be fined even if their members break the law in the course of their agitations.
    It’s not so much socialism as neo-anarcho-syndicalism—though before any of today’s Tories get too upset, they should remember the context: Churchill was speaking when poverty was far deeper, and when the working man could still suffer oppression at the hands of the bosses, of a kind that is unknown today. Churchill has been going for forty-five minutes, and going well.
    He comes to the climax of his remarks, and lambasts the entire House of Commons for its flagrant lack of proper class representation. Where are the working men? demands this scion of Blenheim. Look at the influence of the company directors, the learned professions, the service members, the railway, landed and liquor interests,he says—and we can imagine his ducal arm sweeping round to take in the balefully staring Tories.
    It must be admitted, he says, that the influence of the labouring classes is ludicrously small. ‘And it rests with those who . . .’ he says; and then he stops.
    A few eyes turn enquiringly his way. With whom does it rest? What is it that rests? What rests on whom? The House waits.
    A whole second elapses. Churchill tries again. ‘It rests with those who . . .’ But by now it is clear that something is up.
    It seems he is the victim, ironically, of some kind of mental sabotage—a sudden wildcat industrial action in his memory.
    In the vast cargo hold of his brain the baggage handlers have gone on strike. The conveyor belt of his tongue flaps vacantly. No words come out. He tries again, but it is no use. He can’t for the life of him remember what he was going to say next.
    For three whole minutes he stands there, while the Tories cachinnate, and the opposition benches try to make noises of sympathy. Three minutes! The House of Commons at the best of times is an unforgiving ecosystem: lose your way for just a few seconds, and you will feel the scorn of the Chamber. By now Churchill has been unable to pronounce a word for longer than you have been reading this chapter.
    This is disaster, a living death.