In April 1995 Johnson, then a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, deplored the £12.5 million purchase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lottery-supported National Heritage Memorial Fund, said Johnson, was frittering away money on pointless projects and benefiting Tory grandees. Johnson added: “…seldom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”

The Memorial Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a national heirloom under threat of being sold outside the country. Johnson snorted that they had simply “run out of sporting and artistic projects to endow.” His “unsentimental approach to Churchill’s records may seem surprising given that in 2014 he published a eulogistic biography of the former Conservative premier,” wrote The Guardian. 

I remember the Great Churchill Papers Flap very well, having published articles about it back then. It is the same tempest in a teapot today that it was in 1995. Except that nowadays, Churchill and his memory are fair game to grunting mobs and virtue-signaling nannies. So the whole business is again somehow newsworthy.

A threat to Britain’s heritage

Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s foremost biographer, called the Churchill Papers “the largest single private repository of recent British history.” Their acquisition, he said, was “an imaginative stroke of national policy.” Among other triumphs, the Papers inform thirty-one volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the longest biography on the planet.

Scholars have long mined these fifteen tons of documents. Many individual items have been reproduced. It was the possibility that they might be sold to an overseas buyer, Gilbert explained, that focused concern on their physical future:

The first alarm involved certain specific documents, such as Churchill’s wartime speeches, which clearly constitute part of the national heritage. Photocopies and reproductions are all very well, but the actual pieces of paper are what matters. The originals alone convey the full sense of historical drama.

The idea that Churchill’s final draft of “we will fight on the beaches” would end up in a library overlooking a beach in the Pacific, or some other distant shore, was not attractive. As a result of the decision to use National Lottery money to secure the Churchill Papers, it is not only letters written by Churchill that are to be preserved in this country and guarded, as hitherto, in the specially designed archives of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Sir Martin explained that “Churchill’s Papers” are very much more than his own notes and monographs. Of course they include handwritten or typed manuscripts of books and speeches, if not copies of his own letters. He also kept every letter that he received. “These letters, written to him, constitute the real historical value of this collection.”

A great glory saved

Churchill’s original letters reside in 500 libraries and archives around the world. The Churchill Papers, however, represent the whole range British history. Sir Martin offered examples:

Here we have letters from David Lloyd George, setting out the most radical proposals for social reform before the First World War. Here we have Lord Kitchener’s letters during the early months of the First World War, including the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition. We see here the Irish leaders on both sides struggling for a compromise to end the civil war. Here, too are Labour leaders negotiating with Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to resolve the 1926 coal strike. Secretly, they visited him at a house in London to work out a compromise.

Throughout the 1930s the Churchill Papers abound in letters from civil servants, airmen and members of the intelligence community. They sent secret information, much of it from Nazi Germany, enabling Churchill to wage his campaign for greater rearmament. While his own letters consist in the main of carbon copies, it is the originals from other people that are the great glory of the papers saved for the nation.

A letter from his good friend Val Fleming (father of Ian) describes the slaughter on the Western Front. There is a letter from his brother Jack describing the first awful moments of the Dardanelles campaign. Letters from his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, are full of the political gossip of 1916. There are letters from Admiral “Jackie” Fisher urging Churchill to return from the trenches and break the government. Churchill did return, but his efforts to harm the government in debate were a dismal failure.

A rich seam of historical gold

“The Papers represent every twist and turn of British political debate,” Sir Martin continued. Every file contains gems. “Having read and edited them all, I can only conclude that the Churchill archive will provide in the future, as it is already doing, a rich seam of historical gold.”  It is the richest seam outside the Government’s own National Archives, which house Churchill’s voluminous war papers, and those of his four-year peacetime premiership.

Every VE-Day, the Churchill Papers are there to prompt remembrance of heroic times. A letter on VE-Day itself was sent to WSC from Anthony Eden: “All my thoughts are with you on this day which is so essentially your day. It is you who have led, uplifted and inspired us through the worst days. Without you this day could not have been.”

And among the hundreds of letters from Churchill’s children is one from his daughter Mary, written when he was an old man long parted from power or influence: “In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving generous father, I owe you what every Englishman, woman and child does, Liberty itself.” For this reason alone, Sir Martin concluded, “the assurance that the Churchill Papers are to remain in Britain is to be welcomed.”

Controversy and rebuttal

Remarkably in view their importance, some historians and media were outraged that one-fourth of the Churchill Papers’ value inured to private parties. They should have been donated, they said. On which, a few observations:

1) In later years, Churchill considered how he could provide for his family. Almost his only property of significant value was his papers. A typical Victorian, he willed them to his male heirs. However, as his daughter Mary told me, “all his dependents were provided for, and all were appreciative of what he did for them.”

2) Appraisals of the papers were £40 and £32.5 million respectively. The government took the lower estimate, subtracted £10 million for anything official and £10 million for tax. That left £12.5 million. J. Paul Getty II generously put up £1 million and the Heritage Lottery Fund £11.5 million—a fraction of their value on the open market.

3) Taxpayers did not provide the £11.5 million. Lottery profits go to various sports, arts, charities and Heritage materials. Almost always, Heritage items are in private hands, so their acquisition often benefits private parties.

4) Comparisons to the post-1945 papers left to Churchill College are irrelevant. Lady Churchill bequeathed them late in life, knowing her children had been provided for. Had she been younger she could have sold them, and would have had every right to do so.

5) While the copyright was retained (to documents originated by WSC), this should be kept in perspective. Until Hillsdale College took them on, no publisher would underwrite the final document volumes. Academic publications, non-profit institutions, even hostile biographers, have used the material without charge.

Why the uproar?

The reason for the flap has nothing to do with the rights of ownership, and everything to do with making political hay and sowing scorn. Such activities have vastly multiplied in the last quarter century. The biographer William Manchester was well aware of this when he memorably wrote The Times in 1995:

The controversy over the sale of the Churchill Papers to the British nation, with proceeds going to members of his family, is bewildering. One British historian in a U.S. newspaper labeled the transaction “just tacky.” One wonders why it is even newsworthy.

When out of office, Churchill, a professional writer, supported his household with his pen. His literary estate was his property. He had every reason, both moral and legal, to expect that title to it would pass on to his survivors through the trust fund which he established before his death. The sum of £12.5 million, however raised, seems hardly excessive. The collection would sell for far more than that in the United States. But that would have raised a genuine storm, which would have been justifiable.

Some critics believe that the Papers should have been donated to the country. That has a familiar ring. Authors are forever being told that they should give their work to society—that to expect money in return is, well, tacky. The origin of this presumption lies in a misapprehension of the word “gifted.” Many believe that talent is literally a gift, which the writer should pass along. The fact is that writing is very hard work, and that here, as elsewhere, the laborer is worthy of his hire. Surely any working person should be able to understand that.

Whether invented by the President or his scriptwriters, some of Trump’s nicknames were very effective. “Low-energy Jeb” torpedoed Governor Bush‘s 2016 presidential campaign better than any debate gaffe. “Mini-Mike” didn’t help Mayor Bloomberg‘s in 2020. But except in extreme cases like Hitler, Churchill’s name-calling was more effective and less wounding. Especially when he rather admired certain qualities in opponents. (He called Lloyd George a “cad” in his youth, but ever after praised the “Welsh Wizard.”)

* Asterisks indicate nicknames not used in a public setting. Churchill, after all, had some discretion. But I leave them in for fun. 

Nicknames: Admiral Row-Back to Can’t Tellopolus

Admiral Row-Back: Admiral Sir John Roebuck (1862-1928), Royal Navy officer. Commanded the initial Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles in 1915. Having nearly succeeded, he turned back after losses to mines, incurring Churchill’s permanent loathing and censure and an appropriate nickname.

*Block: Herbert H. Asquith (1852-1928), Liberal Prime Minister, 1908-16. He let Churchill dangle in the Dardanelles/Gallipoli debacle, which sent WSC packing as First Lord of the Admiralty. This was a private nickname between Churchill and his wife. It may refer to Asquith’s frequent role as a block to Churchill’s proposals.

Bloodthirsty Guttersnipe: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German Chancellor and Führer, 1933-45. First publicly declared in a broadcast after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. It wasn’t the first Churchillian jab, nor by any means the last.. There is no shortage of insulting nicknames in Hitler’s case; but this is as good an example as any. (See also “Corporal Schicklgrüber,” in comments below.)

Boneless Wonder: James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Prime Minister, 1924, 1929-35. A devastating comparison to a circus attraction, applied in 1931. Churchill was ridiculing Ramsay Mac’s lack of principle and wavering domestic policies. In private he considered MacDonald a servant of Crown and Parliament. But only in private.

Canting Bus Driver: Frank Pick (1878-1941), headed London Passenger Transport Board 1933-40. “Never let me see that-that-that canting bus driver again.” Churchill wrote this in red ink on a memorandum from Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper when Pick resigned.

*Can’t Tellopolus: Panagiotis Kannelopoulos (1902-1986), Minister of Defense, Greek exile government in Cairo, 1942-45. Churchill was impatient with his indecision about Greek resistance to the occupying Germans. Alexander Cadogan, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, heard these “mutterings from Churchill’s bathroom, between the splashings and gurgles.”

Chattering Cad – Green-Eyed Radical

*Chattering Little Cad: David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Liberal Prime Minister 1916-22. Said in 1901, when Churchill was still a Conservative. After he switched to the Liberals in 1904, his attitude changed. He rarely spoke ill of Lloyd George afterward, despite many provocations. WSC’s wife regarded LG as treacherous. He duly refused to join the Churchill coalition in 1940.

*Coroner: Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). Conservative Prime Minister, 1937-40. Originally coined by Brendan Bracken (also “Ironmonger” for Baldwin), this remained in the family lexicon. In 1961, Lady Diana Cooper introduced young Martin Gilbert to Randolph Churchill by saying “he hates the Coroner.” (A bit strong—he surely didn’t hate Chamberlain).

*Dull, Duller, Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, 1952-60. After Stalin’s death, Churchill argued for a “settlement” of the Cold War, but Dulles (and Eisenhower) were obdurate. “Ten years ago I could have dealt with him. Even as it is I have not been defeated by this bastard. I have been humiliated by my own decay.” —Churchill at the Bermuda Conference, December 1953.

Green-eyed Antipodean Radical: David Low (1891-1963), New Zealand cartoonist. Churchill had a certain affinity for the left-wing cartoonist whose attacks he admired. He called Low the greatest of modern cartoonists. There was mutual respect despite political differences, and Low drew a beautiful cartoon tribute on WSC’s 80th birthday.

Half-Naked Fakir – Llama

Half-Naked Fakir: Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian independence leader. The worst sobriquet attached to the Great Mahatma, when Churchill thought Gandhi an upperclass Brahman posing as a champion of the downtrodden. Yet they both nursed a private respect for each other and, in the end, were more forgiving. See “Welcome, Mr. Gandhi” herein.

Holy Fox: Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax (1881-1959, Foreign Minister, 1938-40, Ambassador to Washington, 1940-46. Verified by Halifax biographer Andrew Roberts, who writes: “It was a Churchill family nickname, of course a reference to his High Church beliefs as well as his love of hunting. And a certain amount of political foxiness….”

*Home Sweet Home: Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel (1903-1995), British Prime Minister 1963-64. Neville Chamberlain’s “eyes and ears” in Parliament, he always maintained that the Munich deal had saved Britain by giving it an extra year to prepare for war, ignoring the fact that it also gave Hitler an extra year, and he prepared far more rapidly. (His name was pronounced “Hume,” but that didn’t stop Churchill.)

*Llama: Charles de Gaulle ( 1890-1970 ), French General and President. Lord Moran wrote: “Was it true, [Lady Limerick] asked, that he had likened de Gaulle to a female llama who had been surprised in her bath? Winston pouted, smiled and shook his head. But his way of disavowing the remark convinced me that he was in fact responsible for this indiscretion…”

Limpet to Prince Palsy

Lion-hearted Limpet Leader: Clement Attlee (1883-1967), Labour Prime Minister 1945-51. Many disparaging cracks about Attlee (arriving in an “empty taxi”) are apocryphal. But this was an April 1951 jibe at Attlee and Labour MPs clinging to power. Churchill and the Conservatives turned them out in a general election the following October.

Minister of Disease: Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Labour Minister of Health 1945-51, founder of the National Health Service. One of the rougher nicknames, applied in the Commons, 1948. “…is not morbid hatred a form of mental disease, and indeed a highly infectious form?” Churchill asked. He also called Bevan a “squalid nuisance.”

Old Grey Tabby: Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Conservative Prime Ministers, 1902-05. After he succeeded Churchill at the Admiralty in 1915, WSC feared the “Old Grey Tabby” would dissolve the Royal Naval Division. (Balfour did resemble a tabby cat in old age, but Churchill continued to admire him, and memorialized him in Great Contemporaries.)

Pink Pansies: Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) and his friends. Member of Parliament, 1935-45. I am aware this violates P.C. decorum and will no doubt be added to Churchill’s “sins.” True, Nicolson was bisexual, but a) Churchill was emphatically not homophobic, and b), the reference (Parliament, late 1945) was to non-combative young Tory MPs.

Prince Palsy: Paul of Yugoslavia (1893-1976), Prince Regent of Yugoslavia, 1934-41. His palsied hand signed a treaty with Hitler. This  assured German occupation, the end of his Regency, and Churchill’s disdain. Exiled in Kenya, he appealed for refuge in Britain, but Churchill considered him a traitor and war criminal.

Scheming Prelate to Turnip

Scheming Prelate: Damaskinos Papandreou (1891-1949), Archbishop of Athens, 1945-49. Churchill, mediating the Greek civil war in late 1944, allegedly asked if he was “a man of God or a scheming Mediterranean prelate?” Assured that he was the latter, Churchill supposedly said, “Good, he’s just our man.” (Not verified)

Snub-nosed Radical: Liberal heckler, 1887. Aged only twelve, young Winston was attending a pantomime where he heard a man hissing a portrait of his father. He burst into tears, then turned on the perpetrator: “Stop that row, you snub-nosed radical!” This may be Churchill’s first political zinger.

Spurlos Versenkt (Sunk without a Trace): Sir Benjamin Smith (1879-1964), Labour Minister of Food, 1944-46. After he resigned from Parliament, Churchill searched “for the burly ‘and engaging form of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman. He has departed ‘spurlos versenkt,’ as the German expression says—sunk without leaving a trace behind.”

Turnip: Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), Conservative Prime Minister, 1925-29, 1935-37. Baldwin made Churchill Chancellor in 1925, but later kept him out of the Cabinet. After his final resignation, “S.B.” appeared in the House of Commons smoking room. Churchill quipped, “Well, the light is at last out of that old turnip.”

Useless Percy to Wuthering Height

*Useless Percy: Eustace Percy, First Baron of Newcastle (1887-1958). Board of Education President, 1924-29. At the Exchequer 1924-29, Churchill tried to lower the defense budget. Percy and Minister of Health Chamberlain  were opposed. “Neville is costing £2 millions more and Lord Useless Percy the same,” WSC wrote his wife on 30 September 1927.  “…these civil departments browse onwards like a horde of injurious locusts.”

Whipped Jackal: Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian Prime Minister, 1922-43, Duce of Fascism, 1943-45. Churchill praised him briefly before the war, but after joining Hitler he became a “whipped jackal… frisking up at the side of the German tiger with yelpings not only of appetite—that can be understood—but even of triumph!”

Wincing Marquess: Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (1845-1927), House of Lords, 1886-1927. Churchill, 1909: “he claimed no right…to mince the Budget, [only] the right to wince when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim…. If his Party are satisfied with the Wincing Marquess, we have no reason to protest.”

*Wuthering Height: John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith (1889-1971),  BBC Director General, 1923-38. The towering Reith was briefly in the wartime Coalition Cabinet. But he’d kept Churchill off the air in the 1930s, and no love was lost between them. WSC rejoiced to have seen “the last of that Wuthering Height” around 1940.

In our electronic Speaker’s Corner (the Internet), Winston Churchill is beset by haters. Their knee-jerk spouts are laced with out-of-context quotes and preconceived notions. Call it Churchill Derangement Syndrome. Where is the truth? Perhaps we need a Derangement Index. Click on “A” for Aryan Supremacy, “B” for the Bengal Famine, etc. A handy reference to every derangement you can access with a couple of clicks.

An e-zine called This is Local London, describing its offerings as “quality local journalism,” is a standard example. Well, maybe not so standard. “The Problem with Glorying Winston Churchill” was written not by a historian or researcher, but a student at Wallington County Grammar School. If this what they’re teaching in British grammar schools, the Prime Minister has a bigger problem than Brexit.

It’s a tongue-lashing for the ages. “Blind worship and romanticisation [sic] of Churchill…is dangerous to our understandings of race and understanding” [sic]. Especially given “the harrowing reality.” What is that? Why, you doofus, it’s Churchill’s “virulent racism, sympathy for fascist and extremist ideology.” Yet—can you believe it?—we still airbrush his “horrible actions and distasteful racist, xenophobic venom.” Why do we glorify “this self-identified white supremacist as a figure worthy of acclaim?”

Derangement Primer

Herein we encapsulate this episode of Churchill Derangement in alphabetical order. Young Reporter’s accusations are in italics. Incorrect, unsourced, inaccurate or otherwise false quotes are marked with curly brackets {like this}. They are not worthy of quotemarks.

“A” is for Aryans

Churchill’s conviction of the {superiority of the Aryan race} “is starkly reminiscent of Hitler’s.” Churchill said whites were ‘a stronger race, a higher grade race.’ ” Churchill’s “almost Nazi belief that ‘the Aryan stock is bound to triumph’…compelled him to engage in a number of imperial conquests.”

First, question: What imperial conquests?  Churchill said “The Aryan stock is bound to triumph” in 1901 when he was 27, the Empire long established. He spoke of “a higher grade race” to the Peel Commission on Palestine in 1937. Hardly reminiscent of Hitler and his plan for genocide. (N.B.: Unfortunately for him 100 years later, Churchill often said “race” when he meant “nation.” Just as he said “poison gas” when he meant tear gas—in retrospect, a bad gaffe.)

In “today’s political climate” such words sound bad. But saying “everybody thought that way in 1901 or 1937” is a poor defense of Churchill. The real defense does exist.  Anybody can read it. Perhaps “Young Reporter” should read it:

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…. You can quote Abraham Lincoln in precisely the same sense. 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.

“B” is for Bengal Famine

“Churchill orchestrated the Bengal famine, exporting grain and being responsible for the unnecessary deaths of four million Indians.”

This vicious, tired, and hackneyed accusation has been a routine derangement since an ill-researched book made the claim a decade ago. That book was reviewed by the distinguished Gandhi biographer Arthur Herman: “Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine would have been Worse.” How so? All you have to do is read.

“D” is for Dung Eaters

Churchill also likened the Palestinians to {barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung}, Young Reporter writes..

This derangement is based on hearsay, though I wouldn’t dispute the context. Michael Makovsky, in his excellent work Churchill’s Promised Land, credited Malcolm MacDonald, then colonial secretary: “He told me I was crazy to help the Arabs, because they were a backward people who ate nothing but camel dung.” Makovsky wrote: “While these might not have been Churchill’s exact words the gist of the comment jibed with what he had thought of the Palestinian Arabs at least since encountering them in the early 1920s.” So Churchill had his prejudices—which didn’t stop him from urging fair treatment of Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

“E” is for Eugenics

Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other than the British and a tiny clique of supposedly superior races and warned the Prime Minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin, not to appoint him to Cabinet as his views on race and eugenics were so thoroughly antiquated and morally reprehensible.

Not much derangement here. Yes, circa 1912, young Churchill had a fling with Eugenics. He abandoned it within two years. Deciding it was an affront to civil liberties, he never spoke of it again. Churchill never warned Baldwin not to appoint him—from the mid-1930s he desperately wanted to be appointed. Baldwin excluded Churchill for his incessant rearmament demands. My book, Churchill and the Avoidable War, spends several chapters on all this. I would be happy to make a gift of it to Young Reporter—provided he promised to read it. By all accounts Baldwin was more of a white supremacist than Churchill.

 “G” is for Gallipoli

“Churchill was also at the helm of the diabolical Gallipoli campaign during World War II, in which tens of thousands of British civilians died unnecessarily as a result of Churchill’s needless competence.”

Yes, Young Reporter did say “World War II” and “needless competence.” He means World War I and needless incompetence. But Churchill’s diabolical helmsmanship was over the Dardanelles, not Gallipoli. He neither planned nor directed the disastrous Gallipoli landings. Also, he learned from his mistakes. After World War II he wrote of the Dardanelles: “…a supreme enterprise was cast away, through my trying to carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a subordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures. This lesson had sunk into my nature.” Some derangement.

“H” is for Hitler

Churchill’s “sympathy for fascist ideology” begins with Hitler. In 1935, he wrote: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

Churchill wrote that in the Evening Standard on 17 September 1937, after he had been attacked by the Nazi press as an enemy of Germany. He said he’d been wronged, mentioning all his overtures to Germany after World War I. These included shipping food to blockaded Hamburg, repatriating prisoners, opposing France’s invasion of the Ruhr, and so on.

Before the sentence quoted, he wrote: “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement.” At the time, Churchill was walking on eggs. His article had to clear the Foreign Office, anxious not to insult dear old Adolf. Even so, there is nothing that suggests “sympathy for fascist ideology.” In fact, Churchill had Hitler’s number from the get-go. You can look it up.

“I” is for Indians

“Churchill openly admitted his visceral hatred of Indians, referring to them as ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion,’ and that it was their fault for dying in the famine because they ‘bred like rabbits’ and because they were ‘the beastliest people in the world, next to the Germans….’ Leo Amery, British Secretary of State for India, said Churchill ‘didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s’ {regarding race and eugenics}. “But, whilst there is mostly a general consensus that Hitler is a white supremacist, authoritarian mass murdering [expletive deleted], this tag is similarly applicable to Churchill.”

Churchill Derangement has a feast of words here. WSC did make those outbursts, frustrated with disputatious demands from Delhi in the midst of all-out war. William F. Buckley put them in context: “I don’t doubt that the famous gleam came to his eyes when he said this, with mischievous glee—an offense, in modem convention, of genocidal magnitude.” Indeed so.

Amery did say that to Churchill, “which annoyed him no little.” It was Amery’s job to plead India’s case—and Churchill’s to set priorities in a war to the death. Yet in the end, Arthur Herman explained: “Even Amery admitted…the ‘unassailable’ case against diverting vital war shipping to India.” Churchill’s appointment of Field Marshal Wavell as Viceroy ultimately eased India’s famine. “Far from a racist conspiracy to break the country, the Viceroy noted that ‘all the Dominion Governments are doing their best to help.’”

This is the same Churchill who wrote of the 2.5 million-volunteer Indian Army: “the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.” Was that derangement?

“K” is for Kurds

Churchill “was a man who advocated gassing the Kurds and who declared himself ‘strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.’”

This Golden Oldie has been around longer even than the Bengal famine nonsense. The quote is easy trap for the gullible—if they don’t read the surrounding words…

It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected. [Italics mine.]

For those of you in Rio Linda, or Wallington County Grammar School, “lachrymatory gas” is tear gas. 

“L” is for Landslide (1945)

“It is telling that as soon as those incredibly brave soldiers returned home, they helped to vote Winston Churchill out of office in large numbers, in what was a landslide victory for the most radically left-wing Labour government in history.”

It is telling, but not in that way. In 1945, Britons voted massively for the Labour opposition (hardly the most radical in history). Not because of Churchill, who was handily reelected. Voters rejected the Conservative Party, which who had brought them a decade of appeasement and war. And for Labour, which promised a grand future. “I wouldn’t call it [ingratitude],” Churchill said. “They have had a very hard time.”

“M” is for Mussolini 

Churchill was “a raving supporter of Mussolini.” He said {fascism has rendered a service to the entire world}. And: “If I were Italian, I am sure I should have been wholeheartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”

My book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, devotes a chapter to “Mussolini, Law-Giver and Jackal.” Churchill did praise Musso twice. The first time (correctly quoted above), was in 1927, when WSC was Chancellor of the Exchequer. His aim was to get Il Duce to cough up the Italian war debt. (He did get some of it.) The second was in 1940 when he tossed a few bouquets at the Italian, hoping he wouldn’t join the war with Hitler. He failed. For Churchill, Mussolini then became the “whipped jackal” yelping at the side of “the German tiger.” Early on, of course, lots of people who feared Leninism were praising Mussolini. But Churchill and the Italians delivered the final verdict. They must have suffered from Mussolini Derangement.

“N” is for Nuking the Soviets

“Churchill wanted to inflict nuclear holocaust on Soviet Union in peacetime,” Young Reporter breathlessly asserts.

The truth is less spectacular. Shortly after the war, Churchill speculated privately about taking out the Soviets in a nuclear strike. He said as much to Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and New Hampshire Senator Styles Bridges. Often he voiced apocalyptic scenarios to visitors to gauge their reaction. He never formally proposed to bomb Moscow to American presidents or ambassadors.

Churchill’s formal statements took a different tack, as Graham Farmelo correctly wrote: “He soon softened his line. In the House of Commons he went no further than the words he used after British relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated again, in January 1948: the best chance of avoiding war was ‘to bring matters to a head with the Soviet Government…to arrive at a lasting settlement.’” He sought that settlement through 1955. When it continued to elude him, he retired as prime minister.

“O” is for Ordinary People

“Churchill just didn’t have the interests of ordinary working classes, or indeed anyone, other than a narrow circle of middle-class straight white men at heart.”

Granted, it was pretty hard to spot non-white folks in 1904 Britain, when Churchill began being called a “traitor to his class.” (Speaking of derangement.) Why? Because Churchill, and Lloyd George, instituted the most sweeping anti-poverty legislation in British history. Taxation, old age pensions, unemployment benefits, widows and orphans support—all initiatives of the great reforming Liberal governments. Churchill was in the vanguard. He shared an understanding of the actual causes of poverty, wrote Malcolm Hill: He did not believe the state should take all responsibility for retirement, education, health and welfare. But he showed “unusual stature” in his efforts to mitigate poverty.

Ordinary people? Churchill said in 1944: “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.” Game, set and match.

“P” is for Prejudice

“Churchill’s rampant racial prejudice was considered backwards [sic], even by Victorian standards,” writes Young Reporter. “Indeed, even at the time, Churchill was seen as extremist in his ideology and at the most brutal and racist end of the British imperialist spectrum.”

By whom? Is this the same Winston Churchill who in 1899 argued with his Boer jailer in Pretoria about equal rights for black Africans? Or the Churchill remembered kindly by Gandhi for his efforts to ease inequalities for Indians in South Africa? The Churchill who, during WW2, said Americans could segregate their black soldiers if they liked, but not the British. Read the evidence. If you still want to call Churchill a racist, by all means do. But first “dig a little deeper.”

“S” is for Savages

Churchill referred to also Egyptians as “degraded savages.” He believed Pakistanis were “deranged jihadists” whose violence was explained by a {strong aboriginal propensity to kill}.

Ah, the wonders of the partial quote. By “degraded savages” Churchill was referring to a Cairo crowd which attacked the BOAC offices in January 1952. (Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, 214.) In The Story of the Malakand Field Force Churchill wrote (3): “The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour.” So… Some Egyptians are savages, but not all savages are Egyptians. Some Pakistanis have an aboriginal propensity to kill, but not all killers are Pakistanis. Do I have this right? Duh!

“T” is for Tonypandy

“Churchill sent soldiers to brutally crush the strikes of hundreds of innocent, oppressed Welsh miners in Tonypandy protesting for better rights, saying, and these were his own words: {If the Welsh are striking over hunger, then we must fill their bellies with lead.}”

This derangement has been around for 100 years. Neither the quote nor the assertion are correct. Churchill specifically forbade the use of troops unless demanded by police. The last Welsh strike leader alive, Will Mainwaring, spoke to the BBC in 1960: “We never thought that Winston Churchill had exceeded his natural responsibility as Home Secretary. The military did not commit one single act that allows the slightest resentment by the strikers. On the contrary, we regarded the military as having come in the form of friends to modify the otherwise ruthless attitude of the police forces.”

“W” is for White Supremacy

In the 1955 general election, Churchill wanted the Conservatives to promote white supremacy: “The Tories should campaign on a platform of preventing {degenerate} ‘coloured’ immigration from the West Indies, along with his suggested campaign slogan for the Tories’ 1955 General election, ‘Keep England White.’”

Right in the narrow sense, wrong in the broad. Here is the reality. “Keep England White” is hearsay. It was a diary entry by Harold Macmillan after January 1955 cabinet meeting, Macmillan wrote: “The P.M. thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good campaign slogan!”

Macmillan was not given to exaggeration, but the context matters. “The P.M. thinks…” is not a quote, nor did the words ever appear in public. Macmillan followed it with an exclamation mark, which could mean that Churchill was wise-cracking. Ask yourself: Would any astute politician, even then, seriously propose “Keep England White” as a campaign slogan?

Out of context, the words seem stark. In context, Churchill was arguing for limits on Caribbean immigration. He did not discuss other black or brown people. Is this racist? We report, you decide.

“X” is for X-Rated (No attribution or off the wall)

“Churchill claimed that China was a {barbaric nation that required British partition} to bring it into civilization.” There is no attribution for this statement in his published canon.

“This was a man, who let’s not forget… force-fed the suffragettes.” Churchill force-fed nobody, opposed female suffrage only once in Parliament (when he thought more women would vote Conservative). The rest of the time he was pro-suffrage.

Truth at last!

Churchill said of Baldwin: “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.” In the end, happily, Young Reporter stumbles over the truth:

“It would be reductive to merely credit [defeating the Nazis] to Churchill and not the role of ordinary British citizens, our allies, the 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died during that war, the Americans, the French Resistance and how their blood, strength, tears and sacrifice was pivotal….”

End of unreality, welcome to reality. Churchill himself said it was the British people around the world who had the lion heart. “I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.” Or as Charles Krauthammer put it:

Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies [and] the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Young Reporter is an earnest fellow and, like many older practitioners, convinced he’s right. He “firmly rejects” Churchill’s “overstated role,” but not his overstated sins, like “the deaths of millions” in Gallipoli. But hey, he’s very young.  Perhaps by the time he reaches A-levels he’ll have developed the curiosity, and integrity, to read a bit more widely.

The article appeared in southwest Australia’s Sun Coast Daily on April 26th. Not exactly The Times, and if you don’t subscribe to Google Alerts you missed it. For the fun of shooting fish in a barrel, however, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

Critique 1: Self-Interest

“Churchill had a long and varied career in politics, managing to swap parties as his career needs required.”

Churchill swapped parties in 1904 over principle (Free Trade), risking rather than enhancing his career. (He lucked out when his new party won the next election.) He switched again in the 1920s after that party fell out from under him, which didn’t help his career much either (he was out of Parliament for over two years). Fortunately for him, a Conservative prime minister offered him a job. It seemed like the right thing to do. Wouldn’t you?

Critique 2: Military Catastrophes

“He managed while in government to produce two military catastrophes: first the awful Dardanelles campaign of the First World War cost him his job, then in the Second World War he master-minded the awful Norwegian campaign which cost Chamberlain his job and catapulted Churchill into the PM’s office.”

Churchill did not conceive of either operation and to say he “produced” them is a “terminological inexactitude.” While it is true that he loyally tried to advance them, the failures were the work of many. On the Dardanelles, he later admitted “trying to carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a subordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures. This lesson had sunk into my nature.” For an eminently balanced account of the follies of the Dardanelles, I recommend Christopher M. Bell’s Churchill and the Dardanelles.

Critique 3: Cheesy on Defense

“While it’s true he did speak out for rearmament late in the 1930s, readers may not realise that while treasurer in conservative governments between the wars he presided over an austerity program including a huge decline in military spending, leaving the navy, for example, running a string of mostly clapped-out First World War era battleships.”

The state of the Royal Navy in 1939 can hardly be blamed on someone who’d been out of office for the previous ten years. But in the 1920s, you couldn’t find a member of any Tory or Labour government in favor of spending money on armaments. Yet Churchill, when times had changed, was among the leading supporters of the government’s decision to renew capital warship production in 1936.

Critique 4: Singapore

“Churchill, the military genius and austerity merchant, left Singapore incompletely and poorly defended. He sent two battleships, completely lacking air cover, to deal with the Japanese threat. Both were sunk by Japanese planes while steaming away from the Japanese landings in Malaya.” 

In 1924-25, Churchill questioned the decision to defend Singapore by shore based guns, and recommended submarines and air power. Granted, he was mainly trying to avoid heavy defense expenditures at a time when no one foresaw the need for them. (The guns fired, ineffectually, at land-based attackers in 1941.)

In October 1941, before Japan attacked, Churchill sent the two warships to Singapore, hoping they would serve as a deterrent. When the deterrent failed, his first impulse was to send them to join the remnants of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. He should have. But it was Vice Admiral Tom Phillips, not Churchill, who opted to sortie from Singapore without air cover, hoping to disrupt Japanese landings, and he was sailing toward them, not away from them. Yet throughout the war, very few capital ships were sunk by air power alone, except when caught in harbor.

The historians Robin Brodhurst and Christopher Bell explain these little-known corrections to popular belief shortly on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website, which I will link when published.

Critique 5: Unions

“Churchill notoriously urged the government to machine-gun striking unionists in the 1926 General Strike.”

While hostile to socialism, Churchill warmly accepted trade unions. For him, wrote the historian Chris Wrigley, “they were elements of Victorian individualism.” In dealing with unions, including over the General Strike, his impulse was first to win the argument, then to address their grievances. There is no evidence whatsoever that he urged the gunning-down of strikers.

Critique 6: India

“Churchill was also deeply racist, regarding the idea of Indian independence and Gandhi with deep horror.”

What Churchill regarded with “deep horror” in India was more Brahmin domination than Indians governing themselves, which they were largely doing long before the Raj ended. When the India Bill passed in 1935 he encougraged Gandhi, who replied: “’I have got a good recollection of Mr. Churchill when he was in the Colonial Office and somehow or other since then I have held the opinion that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill.”

Some racist. See “Churchill and Racism: Think a Little Deeper” and “Welcome Mr. Gandhi—Winston Churchill.”

Critique 7: He “ran the show”

“During the war he presided over a national all-party government which meant in effect that he ran the show. Once an election was held in 1945 the British people dumped him and the Conservative Party unceremoniously.”

It is the tendency in both national and party governments for the prime minister to “run the show.” Given what he learned from the Dardanelles (see #2 above), what else would we expect of him in 1940?

I must admit this is the first time I’ve heard Churchill criticized for presiding over a coalition government. It was a coalition because all three parties and Mr. Chamberlain agreed in May 1940 that a coalition was the only way to fight Hitler. Churchill was the only candidate both available and willing, whom all three parties would agree to support.

Winston Churchill was on the political scene over half a century, and his mistakes like his virtues were on a grand scale. But the latter considerably outweighed the former. Would-be critics need to do better research before proclaiming his feet of clay.

Per the previous post, I append for reader comment the contents of my next book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What Churchill Stood For.

I have written on most of these matters in the past; the book recasts it afresh. I also acknowledge and cross-reference the work of experts who know far more than I, particularly in the fields of genealogy and medicine. I would be glad to hear your thoughts; please use the “contact” page.

The historian David Stafford wrote: “Myth only develops and takes hold when the time is right, and the climate has long been ripe for the emergence of myths about a wartime hero who stood firm against a totalitarian foe and smote an evil empire.”

Churchill myth is born both of exaggeration and criticism, created either to glorify the record or to belabor it. The former I suppose is somewhat less harmful, born of ignorance. The latter obfuscate the record and distract us from the truth, sometimes intentionally.

Paul Addison wrote, “Paradoxically, I have always thought it diminishes Churchill to regard him as superhuman,” Yet Professor Addison has no doubt about Churchill’s greatness. The most memorable words on that subject were by Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert:

In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil. Many of those dangers are our dangers today. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for the generations now reaching adulthood.

The aim of this book is to skewer the most popular allegations about Churchill, to offer readers what he really thought and did, sometimes about matters that are still on our minds today—for as Twain wrote, history never repeats; but sometimes it rhymes.

Youth: Lady Randolph’s indiscretions…The parentage of Jack Churchill…The Menace of Education….The death of Lord Randolph…Women’s Suffrage.

Young Parliamentarian: The loss of  the Titanic…The unpleasantness on Sidney Street…”The sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy“…Irish independence.

World War I: Warmonger image, peacemaker reality…Defense of Antwerp…Dardanelles and Gallipoli…Sinking the Lusitania…Chemical warfare...America’s involvement in the Great War.

Between the World Wars: “Taking more out of alcohol”…“The foul baboonery of Bolshevism”…Trial by Jewry…”Half-Naked Fakir“…”The Truth About Hitler.”

World War II: Broadcasting the war speeches…Refugees and enemy aliens…Torture as tool or terror…Bombing of Coventry…Pearl Harbor…The Holocaust…Famine in Bengal…Destruction of Monte Cassino…Overtures to Mussolini…Feeding occupied Europe…Firebombing Dresden.

Postwar Years: The fate of Eastern Europe…Nuking the Soviets…The Conservative Party…”Only to have accomplished nothing in the end.”

Appendix: “Things That Go Bump in the Night” (so far-fetched that they defy categorizing). Converting to Islam…A life twice-saved by Alexander Fleming...Engineering the Wall Street Crash…The myths of the Black Dog and an unhappy marriage.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Professor Andrew J. Bacevich considered the war in Afghanistan against Churchill’s experience in World War I. Churchill, he says, looked for alternatives to “sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders.” Just so. And we should be looking for alternatives to chewing dust in Afghanistan.

Bacevich describes Churchill’s alternative as “an amphibious assault against the Dardanelles.” (That is a physical impossibility.) Churchill championed a naval attack on the Dardanelles, followed by an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula). Bacevich adds that Churchill wished to “support the infantry with tanks.” (I presume he means supporting the infantry on the Western Front with tanks, since they were not a factor on Gallipoli.)

But the Dardanelles/Gallipoli strategy, Bacevich continues

only prolonged the war and drove up its cost. Churchill and his Cabinet colleagues had spent four years dodging fundamental questions. Fixated with tactical and operational concerns, they ignored matters of strategy and politics. Britain’s true interest lay in ending the war, not in blindly seeing it through to the bitter end. This, few British leaders possessed the imagination to see. A comparable failure of imagination besets present-day Washington.

Why comparisons are inapt

Professor Bacevich writes thoughtfully. At minimum, a people that opt for war should pay the bills. They should not foist the debt onto their grandchildren. But the Churchill examples are not entirely appropriate.

1. To compare the butchery of World War I trench warfare with the casualties of Iraq/Afghanistan is silly. Every village in Britain, Alistair Cooke once reminded us, has its memorial to the fallen in the Great War. To say soldiers were decimated is perhaps an understatement. At many times, tragically, the losses were greater than one in ten.

2. Churchill’s Dardanelles adventure was an attempt to end the stalemate and slaughter on the Western Front. A success would have powerfully contributed to the Allied war effort. The premise was that the Fleet would sail through the Dardanelles and appear off Constantinople (Istanbul). This would force Turkey’s surrender and relieve the bottled-up Russians. That meant redoubling the forces deployed against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Churchill’s fault (as he later admitted) was trying to drive a cardinal operation without authority to direct every aspect of it. It was something he avoided in World War II.

3. The tank (which Bacevich rightly identifies as a Churchill concept) was never a factor early in World War I. Tanks were not used significantly until 1917, and then only briefly. They did ease the horrific carnage of “over the top” charges against entrenched artillery. That was salient feature that made World War I much worse in terms of human losses than World War II.

A better source of Churchill comparisons

Churchill drew many appropriate lessons applicable to the present war in Afghanistan much earlier. He wrote about the features of the terrain and the determination of the enemy in his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He also wrote presciently about the nature of Islam. No people, he concluded, were braver in battle, nor more easily misled by religious fanatics. The Middle East, he remarked in 1921, was

unduly stocked with peppery, pugnacious, proud politicians and theologians, who happen to be at the same time extremely well armed and extremely hard up.