The Triumph of Treasury Control and the Ten-Year Rule, 1925–26

Abstract

Although historians have criticised Churchill for harming the services as Chancellor, they have examined neither his actions nor the reasons why he gained his objectives.¹ His challenge to the services was legitimate and often progressive, as in pressing the army to replace cavalry with mechanised units.² He reduced service estimates between 1925 and 1929 far less than his predecessors had done either in 1921–22 or 1922–24 or his successors would do between 1929 and 1932, while he cut only some of the services’ proposed programmes rather than their existing strength. Churchill also offered to reduce the Treasury’s means of financial control over the services.