Never Give In! Read Free Page B

shape of post-war Europe with the Soviet Red Army at its heart.
    Despite his rejection by the British electorate in the hour of victory in the summer of 1945, he launched new campaigns at Fulton, Missouri (5 March 1946), to warn America and the world to the mortal danger posed to the nations of Europe by the Russian Army occupying central and eastern Europe in the guise of liberators, but in reality with the intent of enslaving; and also to crusade for the building of a United Europe out of the ashes and ruins of the Second World War as he proclaimed at Zurich (19 September 1946), when he boldly declared:
I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the recreation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important.
    Amazingly, after six years as Leader of the Opposition, having rebuilt his political position and, through his labours as an author, rebuilt his financial fortunes, at the age of 76 he became Prime Minister for the second time. For four more years he laboured to try to secure a relaxation of tension between the heirs of Stalin and the Western Powers, in an attempt to avoid disaster in what became known as the ‘Cold War’.
    I conclude this work with Winston Churchill’s speech, in which he accepted with pride the Honorary Citizenship conferred upon him by President John F. Kennedy and the Congress of the United States. My grandfather, already 88 years of age, and too frail to make the journey to Washington himself, asked his only son, Randolph, to deliver on his behalf what was to be his final speech. I accompanied my father on that memorable and proud occasion, as on 9 April 1963, President Kennedy, in a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House, proclaimed Winston Churchill an Honorary Citizen of the United States. Churchill’s message concluded:
In this century of storm and tragedy I contemplate with high satisfaction the constant factor of the interwoven and upward progress of our peoples. Our comradeship and our brotherhood in war were unexampled. We stood together, and because of that fact the free world now stands.
    Winston S. Churchill
    30 November 2002

Chapter 1
    Young Statesman 1899–1915
    When his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, died in 1895 at the early age of 46, Winston determined to quit the Army at the earliest opportunity in favour of a career in politics. He burned to vindicate the memory of his father, whom he hero-worshipped, despite the fact that he had treated him with so much coldness and disdain. Churchill’s capture by the Boers in South Africa in November 1899, during the Anglo-Boer War, and his dramatic escape from captivity, catapulted him into the headlines and provided him with the basis, impecunious as he was, to launch his career in politics. Thus in October 1900, at the age of 25, he was elected Member of Parliament for Oldham in Lancashire and – with one brief interruption – was to serve in Parliament, under six sovereigns, until October 1964.
    It was not long before Churchill found himself out of sympathy with the Conservative Party, most especially on the issue of Protection, to which he was strongly opposed and, in May 1904, he ‘crossed the floor’ to join the Opposition Liberals. Fortuitously the move was well timed: within two years the Conservatives had gone down to a landslide defeat and, soon afterwards, he was offered ministerial office as Under-Secretary for the Colonies in the Liberal Government of Herbert Asquith. Thereafter he enjoyed a meteoric rise to the front ranks of politics, becoming in quick succession President of the Board of Trade in 1908, Home Secretary in 1910 and First