The campaign to Leave is heating up. Take Grassroots Out, a “combined operation” supporting Brexit—the campaign for Great Britain to exit the European Union. G-O fielded a broad spectrum of speakers in London February 19th. Along with UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage were Conservative Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, economist Ruth Lea, and a London cab driver.

The most unexpected Leave speaker was the far-left former Labour MP and head of the socialist Respect Party. Mr. George Galloway was immediately queried about his new colleagues.

“We are not pals,” Galloway replied. “We are allies in one cause. Like Churchill and Stalin.” He did not say which was which. We report, you decide.

Leave colleagues? Mr. Farage offered Churchillian collegiality. “I don’t suspect there’s a single domestic policy, in many cases foreign policy, of which George Galloway and I would agree. But, look, sometimes in life an issue comes along which is bigger than traditional difference.” (See “The New Happy Warrior.”)

Boris = Lord Randolph?

The Leave campaign received more support February 21st. London’s then-mayor and Churchill biographer Boris Johnson announced he would campaign for Brexit, invoking his admiration for Sir Winston.

Anti-Leave Conservative MP Sir Keith Simpson retorted that Johnson’s decision was “more reminiscent of [Lord] Randolph [Churchill] than Winston. “Randolph was a more extrovert character. [He] made the political weather then catastrophically offered his resignation when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. [It] was accepted by the then-Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.”

Lord Randolph more extroverted than Winston? YGTBK, as they say on Twitter.

Johnson’s principled decision to support Brexit, defying his prime minister, is far more reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s resignation from the shadow cabinet in 1931. Churchill left over differences on the India Act. That cost Churchill eight years in the political wilderness. This might be Johnson’s fate if Prime Minister Cameron survives the June 23 referendum.

Lord Randolph’s 1886 resignation, by contrast, was thought to be less decisive. He quit over a trivial issue, expecting to be asked back with more power. Lord Salisbury made no such offer, destroying him politically. “Have you ever heard of a man who, having had a carbuncle removed from his neck, asking that it be put back?” Salisbury quipped.

Leave Pied Piper: The True Churchillian

… in this kerfuffle is Mr. Farage—not for representing Churchill’s view of European unity (a complicated subject), but for expressing Churchill’s attitude toward political opponents. (See also: “What Would Winston Do?“)

Mr. Farage invited Mr. Galloway to speak. He introduced Galloway as “one of the greatest orators in this country…a towering figure on the left,”  adding that they would work together in the Brexit battle:

On that night, yes, the Respect Party was on the platform, so was the Conservative Party [and the Labour Party]. The point about Grassroots Out is, we’re bringing people together from across the spectrum….[Mr. Galloway] said some very disabling things about me but, look, sometimes…etc.

Farage was displaying Churchill’s famous collegiality—a rare commodity among politicians today. Churchill based this on his belief that everyone in public office deserved respect for serving the country, regardless of how violently he disagreed with their politics.

Churchill and Bevan

Instead of Churchill and Stalin, Mr. Galloway might like to compare Mr. Farage and himself to Churchill and Bevan.

Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), socialist MP for Ebbw Vale, was a Welsh firebrand with whom Churchill frequently clashed. Bevan would label Churchill a servant of plutocrat oppressors of the workers. Churchill would call Bevan, founder of the National Health Service, “the Minister of Disease.”

Hearing that Bevan had died, Churchill launched into a soliloquy: “A great man, the founder of the National Health Service, a tremendous advocate for socialism and his party….”

Then he paused in mid-sentence. “Er, are you sure he’s dead?”*

_________

* Quotation from Churchill by Himself, 326.

The question we are asked to consider is whether World War II was really a “good war.” War is hell, which is why western democracies like Britain and France spent six years trying to avoid it. Once it had begun, the (barely) surviving partner (Britain) had a choice between barbarians, one of whom hadn’t (yet) expanded beyond his borders. Easy choice—especially without the benefit of hindsight.

Kirsch quotes Norman Davies’ No Simple Victory (which mirrors Stanley Baldwin’s logic 75 years ago): “If one finds two gangsters fighting each other, it is no valid approach at all to round on one and to lay off the other.” Maybe—if one of the two isn’t trying to eradicate your country.

Mr. Kirsch is certainly thorough, industriously Hoovering every far-out Churchill critique, all of which he represents uncritically: Gordon Corrigan’s Blood, Sweat and Arrogance, Richard Toye’s Churchill’s Empire, Christopher Catherwood’s Churchill’s Folly, Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke, and Pat Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. This must be the first time a New Republic editor has nodded respectfully toward Pat Buchanan.*

Just when I was thinking he had overlooked the most virulent myth of all, that Churchill somehow encouraged and abetted the 1943 Bengal Famine, in the book Churchill’s Secret War), Kirsch dredges it up on the third page of this lengthy treatise. Churchill, that sly old imperialist, “refused to divert resources from feeding Britain to feeding India.”

Leave aside that this isn’t true. Are we to conclude that it was better to starve one of the three major protagonists against Hitler than to starve India—whose 1943 famine was exacerbated by Japan, with the help of  corrupt local officials?

To say Churchill “was fighting to preserve imperialism as well as democracy” is a bad reading of history. India’s independence was on track by 1935, that of the Dominions was assured by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Churchill was fighting to preserve institutions like The West, Inc., which allow people like Mr. Kirsch the freedom to wring their hands over the dreadful things we inflicted on Hitler’s Germans. That the bombing of Dresden was requested by the Soviets goes unremarked.

Finally, presumably in a gesture toward equal time, Mr. Kirsch considers Michael Burleigh’s Moral Combat:

Burleigh fulminates, “Wars are not conducted according to the desiccated deliberations of a philosophy seminar full of purse-lipped old maids.” This is crude and bad-tempered, but Burleigh’s defensive impulse is understandable.

I’m so pleased that Mr Kirsch finds Burleigh’s fulminations understandable that I will offer him another, my favorite on the whole subject, from Lady Soames: “My father would have done anything to win the war, and I daresay he had to do some pretty rough things. But they didn’t unman him.”

✷✷✷✷✷

* All these books received appropriate responses by qualified reviewers, to which I can direct any interested reader. I have not provided links to Amazon, because we read them for you, so you don’t have to.