Significant ALS signed “Winston S. Churchill,” one page, 7.25 x 9, January 1, 1906. Addressed from the “Colonial Office, Downing Street,” a handwritten letter from Churchill to an unknown politician, requesting his support in the upcoming general election, in full: “I am sending you a copy of my election address. I have tried to set forth in it, as clearly as I can, the questions which are to be decided at the general election now upon us. By your decision on this grave occasion in the history of our country you will be bound in the years that are to come; and if you care about the principles of Free Trade and Liberalism which I stand forward to defend, I ask you most earnestly to give me the effective assistance of your vote and influence.”
On May 31, 1904, Churchill left his father’s Conservative Party, crossing the aisle to become a Liberal and beginning a dynamic chapter in his political career that saw him champion progressive causes and branded a traitor to his class. On January 2, 1906, a day after writing this letter, Churchill published his two-volume biography of his father. Immediately thereafter, he campaigned for eight days in North-West Manchester, hoping to win his first election as a Liberal. Churchill’s party defection may have been on the minds of the voters, but his father’s history was much on his own. ‘I have changed my Party…I am proud of it. When I think of all…Lord Randolph Churchill gave to…the Conservative Party and the ungrateful way he was treated…I am delighted that circumstances have enabled me to break with them.’ Reverse of second integral page blindstamped with the 'Colonial Office' seal. In fine condition.
Manchester had been a Conservative Party stronghold for nearly 50 years, nevertheless, the Liberal Party would go on to win a landslide victory in the 1906 general election, which took place between January 12 and February 8, 1906. Churchill, at the age of 31, won the traditionally Conservative seat with 5,639 votes out of a total of 10,037 votes cast with 89 percent of the electorate voting. Not only did the Conservatives fall out of power, but they also lost more than half of their seats in Parliament, leaving them with the lowest number of seats seen in party history. In contrast, the Liberal victory led to Churchill's swift ascent to power; in 1911, he was made the First Lord of the Admiralty and he had established himself as one of the youngest politicians to hold such an influential position in the public eye.
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