A Churchill Treasury PDF Download

The Treasury papers contain correspondence, minutes, tables, printed reports, and other papers which were created or accumulated as a result of WSC's activities as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position held from November 1924 to June 1929. The papers have been divided into general correspondence, WSC's outgoing minutes, and subject-based files and are arranged chronologically. The Treasury material covers WSC's ministerial duties as Chancellor, including the annual production of the budget, as well as specific initiatives from his term in the office: the return to the Gold Standard, widows' and old age insurance, the betting tax and totalisator, rating relief, and the liquid fuel tax; as well as his attempts to reduce government spending, particularly on the navy and army. Specific issues of the period are also covered, including inter-allied debt from World War I, the General Strike, and rising unemployment. The material contains correspondence with WSC's ministerial colleagues and with many Treasury officials, including from the Boards of Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue. It contains much addressed to and dealt with by WSC's Principal Private Secretary, James Grigg. The practice of distinguishing between Cabinet material and departmental Cabinet material has not been followed in the case of the Treasury for two reasons: the Cabinet papers for this period were on the whole carefully preserved together, and it would have been undesirable to disturb this original arrangement, and, secondly, the Treasury is closely involved in the work of all departments, which makes it very difficult to distinguish between WSC the Chancellor and WSC the Cabinet Minister. The series of numbered Cabinet and Cabinet Committee papers, including papers relating to Treasury work have been assigned en bloc to the Cabinet class. Various subject files of this period have been allocated between Treasury and Cabinet according to the tendency of each file as a whole without attempting to break up the individual files, so that in a few cases Cabinet papers and other documents with a Cabinet bearing are to be found in the Treasury class and vice versa. In some difficult cases there is material on one subject in both classes. The carbon copies of correspondence and minutes in the Treasury class are an original series of which some would otherwise belong to the Official: Cabinet (CHAR 22), Public and Political: General (CHAR 2), or even Personal (CHAR 1), classes.