Churchill: His Radical Decade

by Malcolm Hill

Winston Churchill was a rare figure both in war and peace. Yet in much of peacetime, he was by his own standards, unremarkable. But in the first decade of this century, his finest in peace, he led from the forefront of the Cabinet, the campaign to eradicate poverty through the reform of taxation. At the some time he embraced state mitigation of poverty. He stood at a cross-roads and attempoted to go in opposite directions. throughout this century poverty has outpaced mitigation. What cannot be achieved by expenditure of a hundred billon pounds annually, could be secured by justice without state expenditure of one penny.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1999

Reviews

[Bill38silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully produced slim volume of 140 pages although there are a few minor blips in the text such as double words (e.g. to to) that made it through the final edit.

The account of Churchill's first decade in the House of Commons is a surprising expose ( to me) of how radical Churchill's views were in his early political years. For Liberal read Labour/Socialist. The key issue of the early 1900's (the inequality between rich and poor, often based on land/property ) is as relevant today but is less vocal now.

The book is most interesting when unravelling Churchill's beliefs and actions, less interesting when it meanders too far from the man into the depths of political theory.