Conservative

Winston Churchill

In 1900, Churchill became Conservative member of parliament for Oldham.
But he became disaffected with his party and in 1904 joined the Liberal Party. When the Liberals won the 1905 election, Churchill was appointed undersecretary at the Colonial Office.
In 1908 he entered the Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, becoming home secretary in 1910. The following year he became first lord of the Admiralty. He held this post in the first months of World War One but after the disastrous Dardanelles expedition, for which he was rightly blamed, he resigned.
He joined the army, serving for a time on the Western Front.
Winston worked with Lord Kitchener and decided to send soldiers to a port in Belgium called Antwerp. This however did not do any good, the troops were not trained very well and they were defeated by the Germans. Churchill made many strategic mistakes and the British Navy seemed to be losing against the Germans at sea.
In January, 1915, the British government became concerned about the advances being made by Turkish troops in southern Russia. Winston Churchill had the idea of forcing an army through the Dardanelles, a thin strait above Turkey and advancing into the capital city of Constantinople. This would be a dangerous operation because the Dardanelles was mined and there were many Turkish forts manned with guns protecting it. The operation went ahead and eight British and four French ships were brought in and on February 19th, 1915 they began shelling the forts and got through but the Turkish began to shoot back and the ships were forced to retreat.
Five weeks later they tried again but more heavy guns had been brought in from Germany and after six months the British gave up. Over 214,000 men were killed in the operation. Churchill was blamed for the losses and was removed from the Admiralty. Churchill now became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
In 1917, he was back in government as minister of munitions.
From 1919 to 1921 he was secretary of state for war and air, and from 1924-1929 was chancellor of the exchequer.
The next decade were his 'wilderness years', in which his opposition to Indian self-rule and his support for Edward VIII during the 'Abdication Crisis' made him unpopular, while his warnings about the rise of Nazi Germany and the need for British rearmament were ignored.
When war broke out in 1939, Churchill became first lord of the Admiralty.
In May 1940, Neville Chamberlain resigned as prime minister and Churchill took his place. His refusal to surrender to Nazi Germany inspired the country. He worked tirelessly throughout the war, building strong relations with US President Roosevelt while maintaining a sometimes difficult alliance with the Soviet Union.
Churchill lost power in the 1945 post-war election but remained leader of the opposition, voicing apprehensions about the Cold War (he popularised the term 'Iron Curtain') and encouraging European and trans-Atlantic unity. In 1951, he became prime minister again.
He resigned in 1955, but remained an MP until shortly before his death.
As well as his many political achievements, he left a legacy of an impressive number of publications and in 1953 won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Churchill died on 24 January 1965 and was given a state funeral.

The Real Churchill - interesting reading at this link!