Out of Parliament, 1922–4

Abstract

The decisive events of October 19th 1922 — the meeting at the Carlton Club, and Lloyd George’s visit to Buckingham Palace to resign the Premiership — took place while Churchill lay on a sickbed. He had fallen ill on the 15th, and on the 16th it was announced that he had ‘acute gastro-enteritis’.¹ But the diagnosis soon changed to acute appendicitis, and an operation for the removal of the appendix was performed on October 18th. Bonar Law did not formally become Prime Minister until five days later, when he had been elected Leader of the Conservative Party; but Churchill, expecting an immediate general election, had already dictated a statement about his own position in politics. He would stand, he said, ‘as a Liberal and a Free Trader, but I shall ask the electors to authorise me to co-operate freely with sober-minded and progressive Conservatives’.²