The Works of WSC
A guide to the Churchill canon
The CanonBetween 1901 and 1903 Churchill had waged rhetorical warfare against the Secretary of State for War, St John Brodrick, and his plans to expand the British army. The resultant speeches were published in 1903 in Mr. Brodrick's Army. His second major political campaign followed shortly behind after Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary in Balfour's government, threw the Conservative party into disarray in 1903 by declaring support for a fundamentally protectionist policy of 'fair trade'.
Churchill, again leaping to the defence of principles deeply held by his father, joined battle on the side of free trade and in the course of the following months found himself increasingly estranged from the Conservatives. Finally, on May 31st 1904, Churchill made his entrance into the House of Commons, bowed to the Speaker and then calmly took a seat on the Liberal benches, next to David Lloyd George.
The hatred and distrust that this was to engender within the Conservative party would haunt Churchill for much of the next thirty years, long after he had, in his own words, "re-ratted" and rejoined the Conservative party. Indeed it did much to complicate his assumption of the premiership in May 1940, when he was very far from being the unequivocal choice of his party.
But in 1904 all this was far in the future. In 1906 Churchill was elected Liberal member for North-west Manchester in the landslide that swept the Conservatives from power and installed the last of the Liberal governments. His career in office was launched and his elevation to the cabinet was less than two years away.
As with Mr. Brodrick's Army, Churchill's speeches on the subject were collected and published by Arthur Humphreys of Piccadilly. The red card cover binding was uniform with Brodrick and priced at one shilling. The fact that the rear cover of For Free Trade advertises Brodrick three years after its publication may lend some insight into how slowly the latter volume sold in reality and why it is so rare today.
In his introduction to the volume, cognisant of the ephemeral nature of politics, Churchill nonetheless was far from reticent about the victory of his cause.
"In twenty years the battle of 1906 will be only a dim memory... one fact alone will gleam out from a fading background - vivid, definite, unmistakeable - that in the year 1906, after sixty years of fighting hostile tariffs by free imports, and in spite of the contentious contrary practice of the world, Great Britain was true to her ancient faith and publicly reaffirmed, without qualification or compromise, the economic doctrines of Cobden and Bright and Peel".
Prior to 1974, For Free Trade existed only in the 1906 edition. While reputedly commoner than its Brodrick counterpart it is believed that there are probably less that twenty copies remaining extant. It is exceptionally rare to see one come up for sale. I have not personally noted any in the last seven years or so. As with Mr. Brodrick's Army the work was, to all intents and purposes, almost entirely unavailable until it was included in the Collected Works edition of 1974 - itself far beyond the reach of most collectors. Finally, in 1977, Dalton Newfield and The Churchilliana Company issued a facsimile edition, uniform with their Brodrick, encased in hard covers and including a new preface by Manfred Weidhorn.
For Free Trade has never been issued in translation.
