John Ivison in Canada’s National Post makes the point: “Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill, and the comparison is ludicrous.” He refers to a June 3rd statement by the President’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. (She compared Trump’s appearance at St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House to Churchill visiting the blitzed East End in 1940.)

I think from a purely historical point of view we can all agree with him. In 1940, Churchill wrote, “There was a white glow, over-powering, sublime, which ran through our Island from end to end.” The scene in Washington the week of June 1st was anything but a white glow.

This was an egregious example, but many have deplored Trump-Churchill comparisons. I too have made my contribution. (Personally, I’d settle for Trump being more like Ronald Reagan. It is possible to implement a conservative agenda without driving the opposition into apoplexy. Remember President Reagan’s relationship with his Speaker of the House? How adroitly Reagan rid himself of Michael Deaver? When sacking subordinates, there is no need to “embalm, cremate and bury,” to use a Churchill phrase.)

Unfortunately, Mr. Ivison also found it necessary to assert that Churchill himself “was massively flawed,” a drive-by shooting in the onward march of invincible ignorance. A good journalist, he did some homework—just not enough.

Gassing the Indians

Mr. Ivison quoted journalist Murad Hemmadi for saying Churchill advocated gassing Indians rebelling against the British Raj in 1919. Ivison says “it was closer to tear gas than mustard gas.” It wasn’t “closer.” It was tear gas. Churchill specifically stated it be non-lethal. The facts are readily available. They require only elementary research.

More notably, Churchill excoriated the British general who reacted to the 1919 rebellion with the Amritsar Massacre: “Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British pharmacopoeia.” (Amritsar” only ever refers to 1919, writes Andrew Roberts, “rather than the Indian massacre of ten times the number of people there in 1984.”)

Mr. Ivison quotes someone that “Churchill ‘signed off’ on terms at Yalta that consigned tens of millions to Soviet rule.” This is an interesting juxtaposition of charges, but Churchill is fair game for the Right as well as the Left. Whatever one’s politics, it’s an empty accusation. Terry Reardon rebutted it in Churchill Society of Canada’s reply to National Post: “Soviet troops occupied almost the whole of Eastern Europe and the only alternative for Churchill would have been to start a Third World War.” (In Moscow, 1944, Churchill did work out a “deal” keeping Greece out of Stalin’s clutches. Naturally he was roundly condemned for that, too.)

Starving the Bengalis

Indians nevertheless have grievances, Mr. Ivison continued. “Churchill was prime minister at the time of the Bengal famine in 1943, when an estimated three million people died and the sub-continent was still exporting rice to the rest of the British Empire.” Churchill’s “only possible defence was that he was pre-occupied by the war in Europe.”

True, a little matter of the Second World War did tend to distract Churchill. Mr. Ivison fails, however, to acknowledge all Churchill did to alleviate the famine. Mr. Reardon again: “The fact is that on 8 October 1943, Churchill sent an order to Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India. [He ordered that] every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes to deal with local shortages.”

That is only part of the story. Arthur Herman, author of Gandhi and Churchill, wrote the definitive reply to the famine canard. If one discusses this, it would seem elementary to refer to a Pulitzer-nominated scholar. “Absent Churchill,” wrote Arthur Herman, “the Bengal Famine would have been worse.”

Amidst the cacophony of ignorance surrounding this Churchill myth rises the truth, via Indian historian Tirthankar Roy: Large supplies of rice were stockpiled in Bengal by grain merchants, in the hope of higher prices. “The War Cabinet did not divert enough ships from the theatres of war to Bengal or order India to divert army rations to feeding people because the Cabinet believed what the Bengalis told it: there was no shortage of food in Bengal.” (How British Rule Changed India’s Economy, 130.)

Gandhi: whilst on the subject

“Churchill considered Gandhi ‘a bad man and an enemy of the Empire,’” Ivison wrote. “He was widely blamed for the Dardanelles disaster in the First World War, which saw him demoted as First Lord of the Admiralty and consigned to the trenches on the Western Front.” He wasn’t “consigned,” he volunteered. But on the Dardanelles, no argument. Churchill himself recognized this as one of his cardinal errors. That was a big one—maybe his biggest.

On Gandhi, the subject is nuanced, for there was more to the Gandhi-Churchill relationship than the 1935 India Act. The “bad man” quote does not apply to all of their relationship (1906-45). Also, it is hearsay—from the memoirs General Sir John Kennedy (The Business of War, 1957, 288; Kennedy was Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 1943-45.) It appears only in that book. Whether Churchill said it or not, a modicum of fairness would be to stipulate that the quote is from someone else.

Which is not to deny any of the insulting things Churchill said about Gandhi before they resumed exchanging pleasantries. It is only to suggest a more complicated relationship than one out-of-context quote suggests. In the end, they respected each other. There is abundant proof.

“Racial hierarchies and Eugenics”

Churchill, Mr. Ivison continued, “has been roundly criticized for his views on racial hierarchies and Eugenics…. His views were not exceptional in his time.” Again this is both right and wrong. Churchill briefly favored Eugenics—segregating or confining the “feeble minded” to avoid lowering the intelligence of the populace. This lasted for about eighteen months in his mid-thirties. The story is well known. “Churchill’s intentions were benign,” wrote historian Paul Addison, “but he was blundering into sensitive areas of civil liberty.” Addison was not however totally censorious: “It is rare to discover in the archives the reflections of a politician on the nature of man.”

Churchill “was born a Victorian aristocrat,” Ivision continued, “and his attitudes on race, class and Empire were entirely typical of the era.” This is wide of the mark, although it’s an excuse often trotted out by Churchill’s defenders. To describe his views as typical of his time is unlearned and wrong.

In fact, young Churchill’s attitudes toward race marked him as a dangerous radical in the minds of the British establishment. One has only to consider his wrangles with the Boers in South Africa to appreciate this. In 1900 he wrote of their “abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man.” This was not what contemporary Englishmen expected from the scion of a ducal family.

True, Churchill spoke betimes in ungenerous terms about non-whites. “And,” says a leading scholar of them both, “you can quote Abraham Lincoln in precisely the same sense.” You can similarly quote America’s founders (who abolished slavery in two-thirds of the Union during their lifetimes). “That is not the singular feature.”

The remarkable thing…

…is not that Churchill or Lincoln had the standard view of racial questions: “The remarkable thing is that Lincoln, for the slaves, and Churchill, for the Empire, believed that people of all colors should enjoy the same rights, and that it was the mission of their country to protect those rights. Therefore, to say that Winston Churchill was ‘a man of his time,’ or that ‘everyone back then was a racist,’ is to miss the singular feature….

We spend a lot of time arguing that Churchill was remarkable. Then when something comes along that we do not like, we excuse it or explain it as typical of the age. I do not think Churchill was typical of the age on this question, if the age was racist. Another thing to remember was that Lincoln and Churchill were political men. Also they were democratic men. They needed, and thought it was right that they needed, the votes of a majority. If they lived in an age of prejudice (and every age is that) then of course they would be careful how they offended those prejudices.*

_________

*These remarks will be quoted more fully in Part 2 of my piece on Churchill and South Africa for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Lionized villain or necessary hero?

Murad Hammadi described Churchill as a “lionized villain.” This is not, he wrote, simply to throw “great men down George Orwell’s memory hole.” It is, rather, to dredge the “misdeeds and crimes” of those leaders up out of it.

What crimes, exactly? Criticism is fine, provided it’s legitimate. I’ve written much of it myself. Massively flawed? Churchill’s flaws like his virtues were on a grand scale, but the latter vastly outweighed the former.

One can’t help feeling that Mr. Ivison agrees, despite his scattershot catalogue of sins. “Some people,” he writes, “would like to promote an alternative version of history that portrays the values and events they hold dear. But the historical record should not be re-written to suit political ends.” I think that might be true! He views with alarm the possible removal of Churchill’s name from schools, or vandalizing memorials—in London his statue was recently defaced twice. He is certainly right. On balance, Winston Churchill remains a hero, and these words of John Ivison are worth remembering:

As the plaque on his likeness at Toronto City Hall proclaims: “His faith and leadership inspired free men to fight in every quarter of the globe for the triumph of justice and liberty.” My father recalled sitting around the radio with his family in Scotland listening to Churchill’s wireless addresses, and well remembered their power. Churchill was the necessary hero at the most troubled moment in modern history.

Alas we live in a time of madness, if we define madness as the absence of reason.

Most popular by far: On both the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website and this one, more reader comment is engendered over Churchill’s role in the 1943 Bengal Famine than any other subject. A lot of it, pro and con, is by Indians themselves. This is understandable. The food shortage that ravaged Bengal in 1943-44 was the greatest humanitarian crisis in India’s history. Up to three million people died—5% of the province’s population. Proportionally, think 16 million Americans.

The book that started the controversy, Churchill’s Secret War, is now eight years old. Despite vast evidence to the contrary, notably in Hillsdale’s The Churchill Documents, Winston Churchill continues to be blamed by the ignorant who haven’t done their homework. The critics don’t say he caused the famine. They say he did nothing to help, and even hindered the help that was offered.

In reality, Churchill and the British War Cabinet did their level best to alleviate Bengal’s plight. They considered Canada, Iraq, Australia and the USA, with varying options, for shipments of wheat and even barley. Australia proved the largest source. In the end they eased the tragedy, thanks to Field Marshal Wavell, the Indian Viceroy Churchill had appointed.

Historical discussion by calm voices is always welcome, though increasingly scarce. Here is one such that makes some new points, pro and con. It is a 2018 comment on the 2015 Churchill Project article, “Did Churchill Cause the Bengal Famine?”

This is not a rehash of the whole story, or facts already established. For that, please refer to the links at the bottom of this article.

Latest Case Against

The article,  “Did Churchill Cause the Bengal Famine?,” an Indian reader writes, “implies that Winston Churchill was a savior (again), in that he completely and truly believed that Indians were worth saving. If this was case please tell me why the Denial Policy existed….

Don’t use the reason that he wanted to allow the Japanese to not have food supplies. If you checked the colonization of Indonesia by the Dutch, you’ll find that their scorched earth policy did nothing to frustrate the Japanese slightly and make the denizens of Indonesia a living hell.

To all the posts showing the benefits that India gained of the colonial rule from the British, well that is no better than saying that torture induces pain tolerance. The idea of India, although primitive, did exist at the time. The unification of the provinces would likely have occurred naturally in a changing world. Our own constitution learned and improvised on other people’s democracy to create a better democracy for India in general.

Indians are very forgiving of the past atrocities that occurred: famines (not just 1943), Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar Massacre) the Rowlett Act, the 1857 mutiny. ‘Scientific Forestry’ caused a major change and problems for forest villages Education: the current education system in India focuses majorly on rote memorization instead of concept learning. This technique is only useful for few but is applied to all. This system was introduced first by the British.

The only way I feel that the British helped in any way are the removal of slavery and of Sati; and helping to remove of the caste system by letting Dalits, such as the great B.R Ambedkar, have an enemy to focus on, allowing him become a major influence on the creation of the constitution of India.

Response

If all the British did was remove slavery and Sati, and diminish the caste system, those were pretty big things.

But the article did not say Churchill was a savior. It said he did not willfully exacerbate the crisis and moved every means available to him to alleviate the Bengal famine. Ironically, it was ultimately ended by the Viceroy he had appointed.

If by “unification” the reader means a united India emerging after independence, he greatly underrated the vast divides among the many religions and nationalities. In 1926, over two decades before independence, Churchill wrote his wife:

Reading about India has depressed me for I see such ugly storms looming up…. Meanwhile we are holding on to this vast Empire, from which we get nothing, amid the increasing abuse and criticism of the world, and our own people, and increasing hatred of the Indian population, who receive constant and deadly propaganda to which we can make no reply.…only a Muslim-majority state in the northern part of the Indian sub-continent would protect Muslim minority rights if and when the British left.

It is fair to mention the British Raj’s abolition of slavery and Sati. (“The ladies went to their deaths with dignity, in the manner of a celebration,” reads one account of the latter.) And Britain tried to break down the caste system. Yes, there were atrocities. Churchill railed against them, like Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar) in 1919, demanding the perpetrators be punished. His early objections to Gandhi were over fear of Brahmin domination, particularly over the Dalits. Yet in 1935 he said Gandhi “has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.”

Case for the Defense

In 1944 Churchill told Sir Arcot Ramasamay Mudaliar, India’s representative to the War Cabinet that “the old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go.” Specifically he said: “We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada or a great Australia.” **

These are not the remarks of a white supremacist, but a man who exalted above all, despite his imperialist upbringing, the rule of law under a just constitution—inspired in India’s case by Britain’s. That was another good thing the old Raj left in its wake.

It is true that the “Denial Policy” (denying rice and sea transport to Japanese invaders of Burma). was a factor in the Bengal famine. But the destructive weather and subsequent hoarding were much greater problems. It should be obvious to any fair-minded person that the invading Japanese had far less benign intentions for a conquered India than the old British Raj. War is hell—which is why nations spend so much of their effort trying to avoid it.

** Duff Hart-Davis, ed., King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War: the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 173.

Further Reading

Please see and consider the facts of the matter, and the truth:

“Chastising Churchill,” by the Indian scholar Zareer Masani.

“Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine Would Have Been Worse,” by Arthur Herman, author of Gandhi and Churchill.

“Indians are Getting Post-Truth History,” by Andrew Roberts at the Jaipur Literary Festival.