Home Secretary: 1910–1911

I wanted to draw the attention of the country, by means of cases perfectly legitimate in themselves, to the evil by
which 7,000 lads of the poorer classes are sent to gaol every year for offences for which, if the noble Lord had
committed them at College, he would not have been subjected to the slightest degree of inconvenience.
—Winston Churchill in the House of Commons[180]

In February 1910, Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary, giving him control over the police
and prison services,[181] and he implemented a prison reform programme.[182] He introduced a
distinction between criminal and political prisoners, with prison rules for the latter being
relaxed.[183] He tried to establish libraries for prisoners,[184] and introduced a measure ensuring that
each prison must put on either a lecture or a concert for the entertainment of prisoners four times
a year.[185] He reduced the length of solitary confinement for first offenders to one month and for
recidivists to three months,[186] and spoke out against what he regarded as the excessively
lengthy sentences meted out to perpetrators of certain crimes.[187] He proposed the abolition of
automatic imprisonment of those who failed to pay fines,[188] and put a stop to the imprisonment of
those aged between 16 and 21 except in cases where they had committed the most serious
offences.[189] Of the 43 capital sentences passed while he was Home Secretary, he commuted 21
of them.[190]
One of the major domestic issues in Britain was that of women's suffrage. By this point, Churchill
supported giving women the vote, although would only back a bill to that effect if it had majority
support from the (male) electorate.[191] His proposed solution was a referendum on the issue, but
this found no favour with Asquith and women's suffrage remained unresolved until 1918.[192] Many
Suffragettes took Churchill for a committed opponent of women's suffrage,[193] and targeted his
meetings for protest.[192] In November 1910, the suffragist Hugh Franklin attacked Churchill with a
whip; Franklin was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks.[193]

Churchill photographed at the Siege of Sidney Street

In the summer of 1910, Churchill spent two months on de Forest's yacht in the
Mediterranean.[194] Back in Britain, he was tasked with dealing with the Tonypandy Riot, in
which coal miners in the Rhondda Valley violently protested against their working
conditions.[195]The Chief Constable of Glamorgan requested troops to help police quell the rioting.
Churchill, learning that the troops were already travelling, allowed them to go as far
as Swindon and Cardiff, but blocked their deployment; he was concerned that the use of troops
could lead to bloodshed. Instead he sent 270 London police—who were not equipped with
firearms—to assist their Welsh counterparts.[196] As the riots continued, he offered the protesters
an interview with the government's chief industrial arbitrator, which they accepted.[197] Privately,
Churchill regarded both the mine owners and striking miners as being "very
unreasonable".[193] The Times and other media outlets accused him of being too soft on the
rioters;[198] conversely, many in the Labour Party, which was linked to the trade unions, regarded
him as having been too heavy-handed.[199]
Asquith called a general election for December 1910, in which the Liberals were re-elected and
Churchill again secured his Dundee seat.[200] In January 1911, Churchill became involved with
the Siege of Sidney Street; three Latvian burglars had killed several police officers and hidden in
a house in London's East End, which was surrounded by police.[201] Churchill joined the police
although did not direct their operation.[202] After the house caught on fire, he told the fire brigade
not to proceed into the house because of the threat that the armed Latvians posed to them. After
the event, two of the burglars were found dead.[202] Although he faced criticism for his decision, he
stated that he "thought it better to let the house burn down rather than spend good British lives in
rescuing those ferocious rascals."[203]
In March 1911, he introduced the second reading of the Coal Mines Bill to parliament, which—
when implemented into law—introduced stricter safety standards to coal mines.[204] He also
formulated the Shops Bill to improve the working conditions of shop workers; it faced opposition
from shop owners and only passed into law in a much emasculated form.[205] To maintain
pressure on this issue, he became president of the Early Closing Association and remained in
that position until the early 1940s.[206] In April, Lloyd George introduced the first health and
unemployment insurance legislation, the National Insurance Act 1911; Churchill had been
instrumental in drafting it.[205] In May, his wife gave birth to their second child, Randolph, named
after Churchill's father.[207] In 1911, he was tasked with dealing with escalating civil strife, sending
troops into Liverpool to quell protesting dockers and rallying against a national railway
strike.[208] As the Agadir Crisis emerged, which threatened the outbreak of war between Germany
and France, Churchill suggested that—should negotiations fail—the UK should form an alliance
with France and Russia and safeguard the independence of Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Denmark in the face of possible German expansionism.[209] The Agadir Crisis had a dramatic
effect on Churchill and his views about the need for naval expansion.[210]