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Winston Churchill's propagation of the infamous "ten year rule" has led to charges that he created the deficiencies in Britain's defences that he denounced during the 1930s. This article shows that traditional explanations for Churchill's attacks on defence spending during his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-29) oversimplify his motives and exaggerate his authority. His policies were shaped by a complex and shifting combination of political, financial, strategic, and bureaucratic goals. Churchill was not the instigator of the ten year rule in 1919, and he cannot be held responsible for its effects after leaving office. Even during the 1920s, the impact of the ten year rule was more modest than historians have generally recognized.
Between 1919 and 1932, successive British governments instructed the armed services to frame their policies on the assumption that they would not face a major conflict for a period often years. The "ten year rule," as this guideline later became known, was long regarded by scholars as the basis of Treasury control over British service poUcies throughout this entire period. This view was corrected in the mid-1980s by John Ferris, who demonstrated that the significance of the ten year rule had been exaggerated and misunderstood. Through his examination of British strategic foreign policy during the years 1919 to 1926, Ferris revealed the fadacies of the then-orthodox view: the Treasury did not enjoy virtuady unfimited power to cut service estimates during these years; the ten year rule had little impact on service policies prior to 1924; and it did not begin to take on the characteristics typically ascribed to it until 1924 to 1926. l The subsequent history of the ten year rule has been less controversial.2 During the years 1925 to 1932, it operated largely as historians had always thought it did: as a means for the Treasury to strengthen its control over defence expenditure.
In the hands of Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwins second Conservative government (1924-29), the ten year rule became an important weapon in the ongoing struggle in Whitehall to dominate Britain's strategic policy-making. Churchill strengthened the Treasury's position in 1928 by securing a decision that the rule would apply at any given date until it was formally cancelled, thereby closing...