Churchill, the Liberal Reformer

The Struggle for a Modern Home Office

Duncan Marlor

• Publisher: Pen and Sword History
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781399051361
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Winston Churchill is handed down the generations, reinvented in the process to suit current controversies. He has been many things: presently a talisman of the political right, a war-hero of conservative outlook who saved his country; on the left, he is a reactionary imperialist, a warmongering oppressor of the workers. Both sides would be surprised by a time trip to the sensation-filled years of 1910 and 1911. They would find a modernist progressive, cordially loathed by the Tories, carrying through programs of social reform and making the prison system more humane: declaring to Parliament that even convicted offenders have rights and that how a state treats them determines the level of its civilisation. A long-serving Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office reckoned that Churchill's policies (which his successors continued) halved the prison population. During the last third of the twentieth century and into the next, rehabilitation has gone into reverse. Prison numbers have soared, as the punitive approach has reasserted itself, now laced with political populism. This book looks at that story in the context of the paradoxical career of Churchill the Liberal Reformer.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Book Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Arrival
• Chapter 2 Prison at the Theatre
• Chapter 3 Minister’s Mercy
• Chapter 4 ‘A Very Curious Morning’
• Chapter 5 ‘The Noblest Utterance’
• Chapter 6 Bracelets and Hangmen
• Chapter 7 Curing Criminals?
• Chapter 8 Churchill and Eugenics
• Chapter 9 Infamy 1: Tonypandy
• Chapter 10 Infamy 2: Black Friday
• Chapter 11 Identity
• Chapter 12 The Significant Spectator
• Plates
• Chapter 13 Sentiment and Doubt
• Chapter 14 Aliens
• Chapter 15 The Dartmoor Shepherd
• Chapter 16 A Day in Court
• Chapter 17 Peasants and Pheasants
• Chapter 18 Reforming the Reformatories
• Chapter 19 Never to be Prime Minister?
• Chapter 20 Saving Mr Polly?
• Chapter 21 ‘Exactly Like Daisy Lord’
• Chapter 22 The Cad and the King
• Chapter 23 ‘Brilliant Lions’
• Chapter 24 Lorna Doone and a Cup of Tea
• Chapter 25 The Panther and the Mansion House
• Chapter 26 ‘The Modern Nero’
• Chapter 27 ‘The Brink of Civil War’
• Chapter 28 Saving the Jews
• Chapter 29 A Walk with Violet
• Chapter 30 Civilization?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back cover