Not every Prime Minister has been a Freemason. Winston Churchill KG was an exception. Building on his army career, Churchill blossomed as a war- correspondent in the Boer War, during which conflict he was captured and imprisoned. Executing a daring escape, he emerged from captivity a national hero. Young Winston entered Parliament as the Unionist representative for Oldham in 1900, but soon fell in with a dissident group of young Tories, whose members included Ian Malcolm, Lord Percy, Edward Stanley (later the seventh Earl Derby), all centred upon Lord Hugh Cecil, a younger son of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. Critics dubbed them the Hughligans, or Hooligans. It was during this first spell in the Commons that Churchill joined the Craft (his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had been a member for some years). Edward Stanley, a fellow Hooligan, was also a mason, having acted as private secretary to another brother, Lord Roberts, during the Boer War. Stanley belonged to the Studholme Lodge (No. 1591) London. On 24 May 1901, a 27 year old Churchill was initiated into the same lodge. Two months later (19 July), Oldham’s MP was passed to the degree of fellow-craft and raised to the level of master mason on 25 March, 1902. It appears that for the next few years he was a regular attender of his mother lodge, but never actually accepted any office. His apron and regalia case are today kept in the museum of the United Grand Lodge of England.
    Joining the Liberal benches in 1904, Churchill quickly rose in the ranks to work with Lloyd George, introducing an historic bill to insure against unemployment. Churchill became Home Secretary in 1910. A letter preserved in the Grand Lodge archives, dated 18 June of that year, was sent by Churchill to the Home Office, thanking the order for the pledge of loyalty and support to the new King George V :

“His Majesty is well aware that King Edward [VII], first as Grand Master and afterwards as Protector of the Order, watched over the interests of Freemasonry for more than thirty-six years, and he is touched by the assurance of the Fraternity’s affectionate and enduring gratitude. I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant, Winston Churchill.”

He resigned from his mother lodge in 1912 due to pressure of work. He was now First Lord of the Admiralty, preoccupied with urgent measures to ensure the Fleet’s war-readiness. This was not the end of Churchill’s masonic life, however.
    During the Great War, Churchill was blamed for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign. Depressed, he left politics and returned to soldiery, commanding the sixth battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in France. His return to political life soon landed him the job of Minister of Munitions in 1917, and for the next three years he acted as Secretary for War. Significantly, a large number of Freemasons had been brought together in this newly-created Ministry, and they endeavoured to form a new lodge. After an initial meeting on the 7th. November 1917, a petition was sent to Grand Lodge seeking permission to found the ‘Ministry of Munitions Lodge’, a document signed by Churchill, Sir Laming Worthington-Evans (Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry), and 95 other brethren connected with it. In the event, the petition was unsuccessful due to its potential membership being restricted to members of one department of the civil service. A second attempt however, did gain the approval of Grand Lodge, and Armaments Lodge was born in 1919, but this time, without Churchill. As far as is known, he only attended a lodge on one further occasion, that being on the 10th December, 1928, when he visited the Royal Naval Lodge No.59 as a guest of the reigning master, whilst serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    Churchill spent most of the 1930’s (`the wilderness years’) writing from his home, Chartwell, in Kent. We can only speculate about what he may have thought of developments regarding the brotherhood both at home and abroad.
    In Italy, Mussolini had moved against Freemasonry, imprisoning the Grand Master. Similar persecutions followed in Nazi Germany after 1933. The Nazi official organ, the Volkischer Beobachter vented their hatred of Jews and Freemasons, fantasising on the theme of world conspiracy. Churchill was himself depicted in a cartoon walking arm-in-arm with a Jewish financier and a mason (see illustration).
    During World War Two, Churchill worked closely with prominent Freemasons, including King George VI, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his successor President Harry Truman, the two exiled chiefs of the Czech Government in Exile in London, Eduard Benes and Jan Masaryk, and later the man who lent his name to the Marshal Plan for the rebuilding of Europe, American Secretary of State, George C.Marshal.
    Churchill’s feelings as a lapsed member, knowing of the particularly hostile stance adopted by fascist powers, are difficult to determine, but perhaps one move of which he was probably conscious at the end of the long struggle, was the decision to issue the official Royal Mail Victory stamps with masonic symbols adorning the design. Perhaps the inclusion of these symbols was a sign that the values for which Britain and her allies had fought so long to achieve, closely mirrored those of Freemasonry, namely : tolerance, liberty of conscience, and the brotherhood of mankind. According to Martin Gilbert’s concise biography of Churchill, his parting words on leaving Number 10 for the last time as Prime Minister were simply : “Man is spirit.”