A True People's Party

by Winston S. Churchill

$250 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

London: Conservative and Unionist Central Office, 1945. First edition, only printing. Pamphlet. This postwar pamphlet is the first edition only printing of Winston S. Churchill's 28 November 1945 speech to the Central Council of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations. Just four months before, on 26 July 1945, Churchill faced frustration of his postwar plans when his wartime government fell to Labour in a General Election landslide. Not until the General Election of October 1951 did the Conservatives regain their Parliamentary majority, returning Churchill to 10 Downing Street. In the interval, Churchill served as Leader of the Opposition. Churchill’s speech was obviously shadowed by the recent Conservative defeat. Churchill opened his comments with a characteristically masterful Churchillian rhetorical flourish. He owned the electoral defeat, but cast it in the still-greater shadow of the wartime victory and his role therein: “You give a generous welcome to one who has led you through one of the greatest political defeats in the history of the Tory Party. It may perhaps be that you give me some indulgence for leading you in some other matters which have not turned out so badly.” Churchill said that ‘such facilities as remain to me’ would be used to organize an opposition Front Bench in the House of Commons ‘of really able, competent, modern-minded men’, to carry forward the cause ‘of the greatness of Britain’, now threatened by a Socialism which, ‘if not

• Publisher: Conservative and Unionist Central Office
• Year: 1945
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: unknown

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