The following is my foreword only to an analysis of the recent Churchill College panel, by Zewditu Gebreyohanes and Andrew Roberts. They followed a maxim of Randolph Churchill in the official biography: “I am interested only in the truth.” Every Churchill scholar is in their debt.

Foreword

Eighty-eight years ago Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and the Oxford Union passed a resolution: “That this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King and Country.” A week later Winston Churchill said: “We have all seen with a sense of nausea the abject, squalid, shameless avowal made in the Oxford Union. We are told that we ought not to treat it seriously. The Times talked of ‘the Children’s Hour.’ I disagree. It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom.”

Eight decades later Churchill himself is the target of disquieting and disgusting symptoms. Last year the Oxford Union resolved: “This House believes the British Empire is a national disgrace.”Three speakers argued the affirmative. The lone aberrant was the historian Zareer Masani. “I single-handedly contested a blatantly partisan motion and was constantly heckled,” he writes, “with no attempt by the chair or secretary to maintain order.” (Dr. Masani’s doughty riposte can be seen here.)

This year on 11 February, Cambridge, Oxford’s sometime rival, chimed in with a panel, “The Racial Consequences of Mr. Churchill.” The title spins off John Maynard Keynes’s 1925 critique, The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill. The difference was that Keynes, a scholar, offered a serious intellectual argument.

The racial imaginarium

Unlike Oxford, Cambridge, didn’t bother to hold an alleged debate. No panelists were historians. One confused Ernest Bevin with Aneurin Bevan. All three, and the moderator, agreed. Sir Winston was a racist basking in the wartime legend he created. The British Empire was worse than the Third Reich.

Herewith two fastidious seekers of truth, Andrew Roberts and Zewditu Gebreyohanes, respond to the Cambridge panel, point by point.

As in 1933, there are those who tell us not to take this seriously. Trimmers who profess admiration for Churchill excuse it by saying that, after all, it’s only free speech. A better description would be flagrant injustice. We can argue all day about the pros and cons of Winston Churchill or the British Empire or the American Founding. If we do it seriously, with respect and intellectual curiosity, we advance our ability to draw our own conclusions.

But “a seat of learning,” as Charles Moore wrote in the Daily Telegraph, “must uphold learning.” To salt a panel with prejudiced speakers, presenting only the negatives, allowing no contrary opinion, is not serious academic enquiry. It is blindness by those who never hear the other side, don’t want to hear it, and don’t want others to hear. It’s character assassination. Or at least, confession of the weakness of the argument.

“If all you have is a hammer…”

The reaction to Roberts/Gebreyohanes was not long in coming. Instead of engaging on any single one of their points, it consisted of pejoratives. They produced “a dishonest and racist paper.” They want “academics of colour who challenge the Empire shut down.” In other words: disagree with us and you’re a racist.

An old saying provides the answer to that: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Click here to read Roberts/Gebreyohanes.

Attlee was the first prime minister of a socialist government with an outright majority (1945-51). In 1940-45, he had served Churchill’s wartime coalition government, chiefly as deputy prime minister. Attlee presided over the cabinet whenever Churchill was abroad (which was a lot). In early 1945, it was he who gave the fateful order, later much regretted, for firebombing Dresden. In May 1945, on behalf of his party, Attlee told Churchill that Labour was withdrawing from the coalition. Churchill, who wanted it to last until the Japanese surrender and end of World War II, was deeply distressed. In the ensuing election of July 1945, Churchill’s Conservatives were routed, and Attlee took over as the head of British government.

Churchill regarded his wartime Labour associates with gratitude and admiration. In the dark days of 1940, when he thought it might come to some grim last stand against the onrushing Germans, he said he had thought to fight it out with a triumvirate of Lord Beaverbrook and another Labour colleague, Ernest Bevin.

Domestically, Attlee and Churchill agreed on nothing significant. But both had fought as soldiers in the deadliest war in history. And both had governed together in the worst war in history. The respect and collegiality they shared is a model for our time. Or any time.

The supposed Attlee gags—”an empty cab drew up and Mr. Attlee got out”; “He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing”—do not track to Churchill. He did say, when President Truman said that Attlee seemed a modest man, “he has much to be modest about.” But that was a private remark, which someone on Truman’s staff overheard and repeated. When confronted with the other Attlee barbs, Churchill would vehemently deny them. Sometimes he would say, “Mr. Attlee is a gallant and faithful servant of the Crown and I would never say such a thing about him”—or words to that effect.

No wonder, then, that Mr. Cohen and I appreciate what Attlee said. He was truly, in the words of the old song, one of the Giants of Old. It why so many, Churchill friends and opponents alike, found Attlee’s speech deeply moving.

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Attlee

My Lords, as an old opponent and a colleague, but always a friend, of Sir Winston Churchill, I should like to say a few words in addition to what has already been so eloquently said.

My mind goes back to many years ago. I recall Sir Winston as a rising hope of the Conservative Party at the end of the 19th century. I looked upon him and Lord Hugh Cecil as the two rising hopes of the Conservative Party. Then, with courage, he crossed the House—not easy for any man. You might say of Sir Winston that to whatever Party he belonged, he did not really change his ideas. He was always Winston.

The first time I saw him was at the siege of Sidney Street, when he took over command there, and I happened to be a local resident. I did not meet him again until he came into the House of Commons in 1924. The extraordinary thing, when one thinks of it, is that by that time he had done more than the average Member of Parliament, and more than the average minister, in the way of a Parliamentary career. We thought at that time that he was finished.

Not a bit of it. He started again another career, and then, after some years, it seemed again that he had faded. He became a lone wolf, outside any party; and yet, somehow or other, the time was coming which would be for him his supreme moment, and for the country its supreme moment. It seems as if everything led up to that time in 1940, when he became prime minister of this country at the time of its greatest peril.

* * *

Throughout all that period he might make opponents, he might make friends; but no one could ever disregard him. Here was a man of genius, a man of action, a man who could also speak and write superbly. I recall through all those years many occasions when his characteristics stood out most forcibly.

Not everybody always recognised how tender-hearted he was. I can recall him with the tears rolling down his cheeks, talking of the horrible things perpetrated by the Nazis in Germany. I can recall, too, during the war his emotion on seeing a simple little English home wrecked by a bomb. Yes, my Lords, sympathy—and more than that: he went back, and immediately devised the War Damage Act. How characteristic: Sympathy did not stop with emotion; it turned into action.

Then I recall the long days through the war—the long days and long nights—in which his spirit never failed; and how often he lightened our labours by that vivid humour, those wonderful remarks he would make which absolutely dissolved us all in laughter, however tired we were. I recall his eternal friendship for France and for America; and I recall, too, as the most reverend Primate has said already, that when once the enemy were beaten he had full sympathy for them. He showed that after the Boer War, and he showed it again after the First World War. He had sympathy, an incredibly wide sympathy, for ordinary people all over the world.

* * *

I think of him also as supremely conscious of history. His mind went back not only to his great ancestor Marlborough but through the years of English history. He saw himself and he saw our nation at that time playing a part not unworthy of our ancestors, not unworthy of the men who defeated the Armada, and not unworthy of the men who defeated Napoleon.

He saw himself there as an instrument. As an instrument for what? For freedom, for human life against tyranny. None of us can ever forget how, through all those long years, he now and again spoke exactly the phrase that crystallised the feelings of the nation.

My Lords, we have lost the greatest Englishman of our time—I think the greatest citizen of the world of our time. In the course of a long, long life, he has played many parts. We may all be proud to have lived with him and, above all, to have worked with him; and we shall all send to his widow and family our sympathy in their great loss.

A: It had nothing to do with his role. It was characteristic of his attention to detail, and willingness to stray outside his limits.

“Utmost Fish”

Hillsdale College’s “The Churchill Documents,” Vol. 14, for September 1939-May 1940, carries a recollection by Sir Geoffrey Shakespeare. Shakespeare (1893-1980) was a Liberal MP, 1923-45. He served Churchill as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs from 1940 to 1942. This note is from his diary for 18 October 1939 in his book, “Let Candles Be Brought In,” pages 230-2):

One morning I found on my desk a pink tab with a memo to this effect: “I am concerned about the shortage of fish. Parliamentary Secretary will immediately take up the matter with the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff and the head of the Mine Sweeping Division to see if any trawlers can be released for fishing. We must have a policy of “utmost fish.” Parliamentary Secretary will report to me by midnight with his proposals. WSC.

*****

This was indeed a poser. I had no knowledge of, or responsibility for, the fishing industry. That question came within the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. I got busy, however, and arranged with the Ministry of Agriculture to call a conference of trawler owners from Hull, Grimsby and elsewhere, and Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff—Rear-Admiral Harold Burrough, whose name later in the war was brilliantly associated with the Malta convoys—came to the rescue by releasing a few trawlers.

After many hours of intensive study of the problem, I dictated a comprehensive memorandum on the essential facts of the industry, the number of trawlers and drifters still used for fishing and the numbers taken over by the Admiralty, daily catches, difficulties of protecting fishing fleets from aircraft and mines, and I concluded by suggesting the formation of a new Fishing Promotion Council, composed of representatives of the Admiralty, Ministry of Agriculture, trawler and drifter owners, and of the trades unions concerned.

I completed the memorandum just after midnight and took it into the presence. Churchill read it, asked numerous questions and concurred in the formation of the new council and instructed me to constitute it forthwith. He also asked me to approach Ernest Bevin [Minister of Labour]  to secure his interest….So a policy of “utmost fish” was fostered by the Admiralty in wartime.

Churchill Trolls for Answers

As a result of his enquiries, Churchill convened a meeting. (Churchill papers, 19/3) 18 October 1939

I have asked the Minister of Agriculture to bring Mr. Ernest Bevin and his deputation to the Admiralty at 4.15 o’clock tomorrow after they have explored the ground among themselves….I will preside myself.

Meanwhile Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff, Director of the Trade Division and Controller or Deputy-Controller should together with Financial Secretary meet together this evening to work out a plan, the object of which is the Utmost Fish, subject to Naval necessity. The immediate loss arising from our requisition should be shared between ports… the fact that a port has built the best kind of trawlers must not lead to its being the worst sufferer.

Side by side with this equalisation process a type of trawler which can be built as quickly as possible, and will serve its purpose,​ ​should be given facilities in the ship-yards. As soon as these trawlers flow in, they can either be added to the various ports, or else be given to the ports from whom the chief requisition has been made, the equalising trawlers being restored after temporary use – this is for local opinion to decide. It is vital to keep the fish trade going, and we must fight for this part of our food supply as hard as we do against the U-boats.

​No Carping Around

Norman Rose in Churchill: An Unruly Life, 254, is rather good on this:

Of course, not all were happy with Churchill’s forays into spheres beyond his immediate domain. His “Utmost Fish” order—intended to resolve the shortage of fresh fish—being a case in point. This carping did not deter him.

Professor Rose was not floundering around when he wrote that.

Of course it wasn’t his sole point. But the story is no old cod, for sure.