ALL eyes were on Winston Churchill when he turned up in Glasgow on October 17, 1951, as part of his general election campaign.
He had arrived by train from Newcastle at Central Station and was mobbed by crowds in Gordon Street as he got into his car (above). He was driven to St Andrews Halls, where some 2,000 awaited him in Kent Road. Police officers who escorted him to the entrance were jostled and pushed; women tried to climb onto police cars so as to get a better view.
Inside, addressing an audience of 2,700 in the main hall, Churchill was in characteristically pugnacious form as he derided the record of the Labour administration. The speech was listened to in an overflow meeting at the venue’s Berkeley Hall. He made his way to the Berkeley which, like the main hall, was brimming with enthusiasm for Churchill. “I thought that, having listened so patiently and so long to speeches from another place,” he announced, “you would like for yourselves to have a look at the goods.”
By the time he left the venue, flashing his trademark V sign for the cameras, both audiences had joined the people waiting outside, who had listened to a relay of his speech. Some 6,000 people in all, and all of them focused intently on the elderly man in their midst.
Churchill won the election, and found himself back in power an Number 10 after a gap of six years.
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