Secretarial autograph draft of telegram sent to the President of the Dundee Liberal Association.
$1,032 · Offered by Biblio
Signed
Colonial Office, Downing Street, 22 October, [1922]. A contemporary autograph draft of a telegram from Churchill ahead of the 1922 general election, to define his political platform. The telegram was handwritten by a secretary in the Colonial Office almost certainly at his dictation and has multiple corrections in the same hand. Three days prior, Lloyd George's coalition was dissolved, Churchill's role as secretary of state for the colonies (which he had held since February 1921) ended, and Churchill had to return to fight to keep his Dundee constituency in the 15 November general election. In the event, he lost to the Scottish Prohibition candidate. The telegram draft is noted at the head, "for publication in Monday's papers", and was published in numerous newspapers on 23 October. It is in effect a manifesto, touching on the extensive coalition-building that defined early 1920s politics. "I propose to stand as a Liberal and a Free Trader, but I shall ask the electors to authorise me to co-operate freely with soberminded and progressive Conservatives in defending the lasting and central interests of this Realm and its wide Empire against the very dangerous attacks about to be delivered upon them by the Socialist and Communist forces, as well as against the almost equally serious menace of downright reaction from the opposing corner... If they should once again honour me with the right to speak in their name in the new Parliament, country before party shall be my guiding rule
- Year: 1922
- Binding: unknown
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