The statue of Sir Winston Churchill on Woodford Green commemorates that he was an Essex MP from 1924 through to his retirement from politics in 1964, a period that equates to more than half his public life. He originally came to the county to represent the seat of West Essex or Epping, but in 1945 it was decided to split the constituency in two, and Churchill had to choose between Epping and Woodford and Wanstead. He chose Woodford. Yet for twenty years he was the Member for Epping—years that included not only his holding the two highest offices of state, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, but also one of his lowest periods of political fortune, often now referred to as his “Wilderness Years.”
Others have looked at Churchill’s role in the constituency. There is an excellent short book by David Thomas called Churchill: The Member for Woodford, and Sir Martin Gilbert’s magisterial official biography includes many references to Churchill’s political base in the area. What I hope to do is what all good archivists should seek to do: let some of the documents in Churchill’s own papers speak for themselves. There is a whole section or class of constituency correspondence relating to Epping from which I have been able to draw, as well as speech notes, newspaper articles, and personal letters.
At first glance Churchill and Epping seem natural political bedfellows. He was a child of the establishment: a grandson of the Duke of Marlborough, born at Blenheim Palace, educated at Ascot, Harrow, and Sandhurst, and then commissioned into the British cavalry, serving as an officer in India, Sudan, South Africa, and, ultimately, Belgium (in 1916). His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had been a charismatic and controversial Conservative politician who had risen to become Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Salisbury and who had famously championed taking Conservatism to the masses under the banner of “Tory Democracy.” Indeed, it was Lord Randolph’s early death in 1895, aged just forty-five, that had a profound effect on his oldest son, acting as the catalyst for the launch of Winston’s own career and helping to propel him into Parliament as the Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900. The young Winston Churchill was just twenty-five when he was elected, though he had turned twenty-six by the time he took up his seat in 1901. By any measure this was a meteoric rise, and it seemed clear that Winston was destined to assume his father’s mantle and that his prospects were bright within the Conservative ranks.
The constituency of Epping enjoyed an equally strong Conservative pedigree. For Epping, of course, has nearly always been a Conservative stronghold. This is true to the current day. There have been short-lived occupations by Labour candidates in 1945 and 1964, but for the eighty-nine years of the life of the old Epping constituency (from 1885 until the boundary changes of 1974) it was held by the Conservatives for all but a dozen years. Additionally, since 1974, the new Epping Forest constituency has always been Tory. When Churchill was elected as its MP in 1924, the constituency was often still referred to as West Essex and had never been anything but a Conservative seat, which is why it is perhaps surprising to note that the first non-Conservative Member of Parliament for the seat of West Essex or Epping was none other than Winston Churchill.
Strictly speaking, Churchill in 1924 was not a Conservative. Although once more a Tory in all but name, he did not formally rejoin the party until after his return to Parliament, following a two-year hiatus that started in 1922 when he had been defeated as the Liberal incumbent for Dundee. In the 1924 general election, Churchill stood in Epping as the “Constitutionalist” candidate. Why? While it is true that Churchill began his political career as a Conservative, it is often now forgotten that much of his early public career was spent as a prominent member of the Liberal party. In 1904 the young MP for Oldham dramatically crossed the floor of the House of Commons, deserting the Tory Government ranks to take a seat next to David Lloyd George on the Liberal opposition benches. The Liberals were then the main opposition party, with
