Question 1
1 ‘Churchill was out of touch with British opinion on India in the 1930s.’
Use these four sources in their historical context to assess how far they support this view.
Source A: A letter to Churchill from a member of the Indian Empire Society.
Dear Mr Churchill,
Your kind letter about the Albert Hall Meeting has been sent to all members of the Committee of the Indian Empire society.
A Colonel Mansin writes to enquire if you would be so kind to speak at Bedford. His project has the support of the Mayor and they propose that Lord Ampthill should take the chair.
Will you permit me to congratulate you on the marked effect of your Manchester and Toxteth speeches?
It only shows that a Statesman of sincere patriotism can still have some influence on the country’s policy.
With all good wishes for the success of your patriotic efforts.
Yours very truly,
W. Ameer Ali
Indian Civil Service, Retired
W. Ameer Ali, letter to Churchill, 9 February, 1931
Source B: The former Chairman of the Conservative Party comments on support for Churchill within the Conservative Party.
Winston’s game, of course, has been obvious, as it always is. He is not the son of Randolph for nothing. How Stanley [Baldwin] must have chuckled when the door opened and the India Committee came in. There he saw the same faces that time and again during the last Parliament had come to beg him to get rid of Winston from the Government and who have recently been acclaiming him as the heaven‑born leader of the Party – on, of course, only one subject, namely India.
J.C.C. Davidson, letter to Lord Irwin, 6 March, 1931
Source C: Baldwin announces he is prepared to resign his safe Worcestershire seat and fight a by‑election and brings forward a critical Indian debate.
If there are those in our party who approach this subject in a niggling, grudging spirit, who would have had forced out of their reluctant hands one concession after another, if they be a majority, in God’s name let them choose a man to lead them. If they are in a minority, then let them at least refrain from throwing difficulties in the way of those who have undertaken an almost superhuman task, on the successful fulfilment of which depends the wellbeing, the prosperity and the duration of the whole British Empire.
S. Baldwin, speech to Parliament, 12 March 1931
Source D: Churchill speaks to the Indian Empire Society.
One would have thought that if there were one cause in the world which the Conservative Party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India. Unhappily all that influence, and it is an enormous influence, has been cast the other way. The Conservative leaders have decided that we are to work with the Socialists, and that we must make our action conform with theirs. We therefore have against us at the present time the official machinery of all the three great parties in the State. We meet under a ban. Every Member of Parliament or peer who comes here must face the displeasure of the party whips.
W. Churchill, speech at the Albert Hall, ‘Our duty to India’, 18 March 1931
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