On cancelling Winston

Mary Ellen Synon is a feisty Irish journalist who doesn’t mind taking a contrarian’s position on popular orthodoxies. Writing to oppose the latest uproar over Winston Churchill, she first explains that she’s entitled to be offended by him: “If you think Churchill was heavy on Indians, Muslims and Africans, brace yourself for what he said about the Irish.” In a scrappy polemic, she alleges that he called them “savages, rascals and rapscallions.” But then she writes all that off as irrelevant:

I am an Irish patriot. Yet if you want to know what I think about all that, I think: “So what?”….I know what Churchill did besides being insulting about Muslims and the rest of us. If I put him in the scales of virtue against the German and Japanese war machines, Churchill wins, always, and in such an overwhelming way that I must forgive his earlier sins. I say that because the Irish still have a lot of sins that need forgiveness, so I am in no position to say Churchill must be cancelled.

Those “Irish” Rapscallions

What interests us here is not the cancel-Churchill movement. What matters is that some Churchill defenders still manage to get so much about him wrong.

When Churchill spoke about rascals and rapscallions (“savages” isn’t there but he might have used it elsewhere), he was not talking about the Irish people. He was citing the Bolsheviks and the movements they were supporting, including the Sinn Fein campaign of murder and destruction.

As so often happens, context is lacking. I respectfully supply the complete passage, from 24 November 1921 when Churchill was asking why Lenin in Russia was bankrolling rebellions in Egypt, India and Ireland:

We will not allow ourselves to be pulled down and have our Empire disrupted by a malevolent and subversive force, the rascals and rapscallions of mankind who are now on the move against us. [Britain] was strong enough to break the Hindenburg Line, it will be strong enough to defend the main interests of the British people, to carry us through these stormy times into calmer and brighter days.

“Human leopards”

Synon continues: “As Ireland struggled for its independence 100 years ago, Churchill told the Commons that allowing a nation across the Irish Sea to become a republic was akin to offering a country up to a miserable gang of human leopards in West Africa.”

No. Actually Churchill (1920) was opposing making all of Ireland a republic under Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army:

Because a murder campaign has been started we cannot allow a starting point for attacking our safety on this island to be created on the other side of the St. George’s Channel, desert hopelessly to their fate the Protestants of Ulster, and withdraw in shame and failure from all responsibility for Ireland. We cannot adopt a policy of scuttling in regard to Ireland. It is absurd to suppose that we will escape from the Irish problem and Irish difficulties by mere flight. Those difficulties would pursue us in an aggravated form…. Surrender to a miserable gang of cowardly assassins like the human leopards of West Africa would undoubtedly be followed by a passionate repentance and a fearful atonement.

Judge for yourself: whom did he mean by “human leopards”?

“Quit murdering and start talking”

All his life in civil disturbances, Churchill consistently favored negotiations over violence. Two weeks before his speech above, he made this clear in a letter to his pro-Irish cousin, Shane Leslie:

You asked me what advice I would give to the Sinn Feiners, and I replied, “Quit murdering and start arguing.” This is in no sense an offer of negotiation and could not be represented as such; but I am quite sure that the moment the murders cease the Irish question will enter upon a new phase, and I shall not be behindhand in doing my utmost to secure a good settlement. (Emphasis this writer’s.)

Could there be clearer evidence of prudent statesmanship?

It is true that Churchill too long supported the Black and Tans constabulary, as Synon writes: “They butchered at will, committing atrocities.” Here he was definitely wrong. He didn’t create the Black and Tans, but he stubbornly defended them.⁶Perhaps the cancel movement should turn to Prime Minister Lloyd George, much more censorious about the Irish than Churchill: “This time it is the Sinn Feiners. Last week it was the Ulsterites. They are both the sons of Belial!”

Not a daughter but a parent

Synon says Churchill called Ireland “a small poor, sparsely populated island, lapped about by British sea power.” That is true. But he said this in support of the Irish Free State Constitution Act—a document he had helped to draft. Taken in context, his words form a powerful plea to end centuries of violence through magnanimity and reconciliation:

Whence does this mysterious power of Ireland come? It is a small, poor, sparsely populated island, lapped about by British sea power… How is it that she sways our councils, shakes our parties, and infects us with her bitterness, convulses our passions, and deranges our action? How is it she has forced generation after generation to stop the whole traffic of the British Empire, in order to debate her domestic affairs? Ireland is not a daughter State. She is a parent nation….

How much have we suffered in all these generations from this continued hostility? If we can free ourselves from it, if we can to some extent reconcile the spirit of the Irish nation to the British Empire in the same way as Scotland and Wales have been reconciled, then indeed we shall have secured advantages which may well repay the trouble and the uncertainties of the present time.⁹

Today in this enterprise, which also is full of uncertainty, but full of hope, we can undoubtedly count upon the active and energetic support of all the three great parties in the State, who are resolved to take what steps are necessary to bring, if possible, this Irish peace to its consummation, to carry it out in the spirit and in the letter, and to stand firmly against all efforts to overthrow it. whether they be in Parliament or out of doors.

“An adult who has read history”

A sidelight of interest: In her youth, Mary Ellen Synon applied for a Churchill Fellowship. This was reviewed by a panel including Sir Winston’s daughter. In full disclosure, she felt obliged to admit she was Irish, not British, thus possibly ineligible:

Lady Soames smiled sweetly. “We count them as British,” she said. I paused. I could have stood up and walked out, saying I was insulted by such a neo-colonialist outlook…. We did not remain some branch of Britain. That is what race-hunters, searching across history for reasons to be “offended,” would have done. But I didn’t. I just smiled back at Lady Soames. I won my fellowship. Because I am an adult who has read history.

That revives many splendid memories of Mary Soames. One hopes that Ms. Synon, Irish patriot, runs across Mary’s father’s words in their full context. She will then feel less burdened in her defense of him. For on the larger matters, she is exactly right: “The woke-warriors need to park their adolescent outrage and understand that. Otherwise, in 100 years’ time, they themselves will be considered nothing better than a 21st century version of the witch-hunters of Salem.”

This is the Ireland portion of my lecture on the 2019 Hillsdale College Round-Britain cruise. Hillsdale cruises with “lectures at sea” are regular events. My book Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality considers tall tales, exaggerations, lies, myths, rumors and distortions about Churchill over the years. Nowadays, the old adage that you don’t speak ill of the dead is obsolete. It seems more important now to deconstruct history and puncture heroes. The tool is the Internet. Without straying from your keyboard, you can anonymously spout whatever nonsense occurs to you. The late Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and critic, nicely described this phenomenon: “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community….It’s the invasion of the idiots.”

The right of reply

Churchill, who won a Nobel Prize, and did a few other things, cannot reply. He lies at Bladon in English earth, “which in his finest hour he held inviolate.” He’d love the controversy he stirs today, on media he never dreamed of. He once said the vision “of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me.”

N.B. Also covered in this talk were the myths that Churchill led the war party in 1914, that his negligence contributed to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and that he purposely directed the Lusitania into the path of a German U-boat in 1915. These subjects may be found by clicking the links above.

Our cruise around Britain related to many interesting Churchill myths. On a map I’ve labeled every place around the British Isles with a Churchill connection. If any suggest a question, please ask. For example, what does Churchill have to do with the Isle of Jura in the Hebrides (upper right)? No one has come up with it.

Dublin, Waterford and Redmond

Monday 10 June brought us to Dublin, where Winston Churchill had his first childhood memories. The next day was Waterford. Most came there for the crystal, but we hoped to see where John Redmond was sworn in. Redmond represented Waterford for the Irish Parliamentary Party for nearly thirty years, and his son after him. Waterford was one of the few constituencies outside Ulster not won by Sinn Féin in the 1918 election.

In the debate over Irish Home Rule Redmond, like Churchill, favored moderation, conciliation and Irish autonomy. Many years later in the Commons, Churchill said:

I always bear in my memory, with regard, John Redmond…of the old Irish Parliamentary Party, which fought us for so many years in this House, pleading the cause of Ireland, with great eloquence and Parliamentary renown…making these speeches of absolute support and unity with this country until everybody said everywhere, “The brightest spot in the world is Ireland.”

“The Minstrel Boy”

Here is a rather rude cartoon, in Punch, 1910, of the Liberal lions, Asquith, Churchill and Lloyd George, each with John Redmond “in the bag.” Churchill is “the Ministerial Boy with his wild harp slung behind him.” In a more literate age, everyone recognized the words. They are from “The Minstrel Boy,” Thomas Moore’s lovely, haunting song of the 1798 Irish rebellion…

The Minstrel fell but the foeman’s chain
Could not bring his proud soul under
The harp he loved ne’er spoke again
For his tore its chords asunder….
Thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slav’ry.

“Thy songs were made for the pure and free … They shall never sound in slav’ry.” Surely, ladies and gentlemen, those words would apply to Churchill himself, thirty years later. Punch didn’t know how prescient they were.

Churchill and Irish independence

No enemy of Ireland, Churchill was always seeking to placate old antagonisms among Catholics and Protestants. Along the way he made a mistake—more of which anon. Against that, he must be credited with a leading role in forging Ireland’s independence.

Before the First World War, with Redmond’s support, Churchill campaigned for the Liberals’ Third Home Rule bill. Edward Carson’s Ulster Unionists, who dominated the six counties of what is now Northern Ireland, wanted no part of that.

In early 1912, Churchill and Redmond took their campaign to Belfast, which we also visited. Here in 1886 Churchill’s father Lord Randolph had denounced the First Home Rule bill, declaring: “Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right!” To Churchill’s blithe unconcern, unionist protestors jostled his car, pelting it with missiles. There was a heavy police and army presence. Carson said he couldn’t predict what would happen.

Churchill spoke to 7000 Ulster folk, promising Home Rule within the Empire—no Irish secession. He assured them of protection for minorities and fiscal oversight.

Think of the courage Churchill displayed. He could have played to their sentiments, as his father had. Indifferent himself to danger, he was cut from a different cloth. He always told people not what they wanted to hear, but what he thought they should hear.

War and rebellion

The outbreak of war temporarily eclipsed Home Rule, but the 1916 “Easter Rising” was the most serious revolt since the one in 1798, which inspired “The Minstrel Boy.”

Following the 1918 Armistice, Sinn Féin became the dominant Irish party, boycotting London and setting up a Dublin parliament, the Dáil. Prime Minister Lloyd George dissolved the Dáil and set about quelling the rebellion by force.

Legend has it that in January 1919 Churchill, now War Secretary, created the “Black and Tans,” a temporary constabulary, named for their uniforms. Most were English, some Irish. Their methods of suppression were so violent that they provoked a lasting antipathy to Churchill which still exists today. I’m going to end with a story about this.

In fact Churchill played no part in creating the Black and Tans. But he defended them despite atrocities that exceeded their remit. That was his mistake, for many of their outrages were indefensible.

The Irish Treaty

By June 1921 civil war was in the air, and an Anglo-Irish conference was set for October, with Churchill among the British delegates. The Irish delegation was headed by Michael Collins, president of the Republican Brotherhood and Adjutant General of the Irish Republican Army.

Doggedly, Churchill pursued the prize. He and Collins were much alike, William Manchester wrote, “fearless, charismatic, fiercely patriotic, ready to sacrifice everything for principle. Both had cherubic features but bulldog expressions, and they shared a ready wit.”

Collins complained that the British had put a price on his head. Churchill showed him his framed copy of the ersatz Boer wanted poster from 1899: “At any rate it was a good price—£5000,” he said.  “Look at me—£25 dead or alive. How would you like that?” Collins broke out laughing. The ice was broken.

Michael Collins signed the Irish Treaty, and with it, he predicted, his death warrant. He was too right—shot by an assassin in 1922. His last message to Churchill, was: “Tell Winston we could never have done anything without him.”

Churchill’s defense of the Irish Treaty

Churchill said the deal was good for all. The twenty-six southern counties would form a Free State within the Empire. The Dáil would control domestic affairs. The six counties of Northern Ireland would not be coerced to join, and remained, as they do to this day, part of the United Kingdom.

Collins and Griffiths headed a provisional government, but the diehards under Eamon de Valera rejected subordination of Ireland to the Crown, which for Churchill and Lloyd George was key.

In power during World War II, De Valera proclaimed neutrality, but in fact there was considerable cooperation between the intelligence agencies, and many Irish volunteers fought with the Allies. Ireland remained in the Commonwealth, though it behaved like a republic, and finally declared itself one in 1948. By then, of course, Churchill’s role was over.

In retrospect…

Reading Churchill’s book The Aftermath, the historian Paul Addison pointed out something I hadn’t noticed: “The admiration Churchill expresses for the Irish of all kinds. He must have detested de Valera for undoing the Irish Free State, in which he clearly took a paternal pride.”

Ireland excited Churchill’s passion, but mostly in a positive way, for he always respected Irish patriotism and heroism. In World War II, Paddy Finucane, one of many Irish who volunteered to fight for Britain, destroyed thirty-two German aircraft before being shot down and killed. “If ever I feel a bitter feeling rising in me in my heart about the Irish,” he said in 1948, “the hands of heroes like Finucane seem to stretch out to soothe it away.” Churchill had proven himself an ally, not an enemy, in Ireland’s quest for peace and freedom.

History doesn’t repeat, but it sometimes rhymes, someone said (not Churchill). A modern extension to the Anglo-Irish relationship is Brexit and the so-called Irish Backstop. I’ll happily chat later about how the EU negotiators were very aware of the bad blood between Britain and Ireland in framing their Brexit demands. Just ask.

But I don’t want to wear out my welcome, so let me put up my map of our cruise with its Churchill venues, end with a story, and then answer any questions.

Eddie’s Shannon experience

Back when transatlantic flights stopped to refuel in Shannon, Ireland, the Churchills were aboard a Pan Am Clipper, headed west. Detective-Sergeant Edmund Murray, Sir Winston’s bodyguard from 1950 to his death, was with them as usual. Eddie later told me of that flight, and an amusing story about the lingering Irish antipathy toward his boss.

While the plane stood refuelling, Sgt. Murray left to buy a case of Jameson’s for his Secret Service pals in Washington. “What name shall I put on it, sir?” asked the clerk at the Duty-Free. “Murray,” Eddie told him.

Arriving back to pick up the case, the clerk was cordial but curious. “Will ye just tell me one thing? What’s a man by the name of Murray doing guarding that old bastard Churchill?”

Back on board, Eddie related the story to the boss, knowing he would enjoy it. Churchill roared with laughter, but his wife remained silent.

About a minute passed. And then Clementine Churchill spoke up, in the high pitched voice she adopted at times of high emotion: “He was wrong, Winston, he was quite wrong,” she exclaimed. “You do know who your father was.”

Walter Henry Thompson 

…was Winston Churchill’s protection officer and detective, on and off between 1921 and 1945. They had many adventures together, and Thompson wrote four books about his experiences. The first, Guard from the Yard (1938, now very rare) involved Churchill and others whom Thompson protected.

After World War II, Thompson published I Was Churchill’s Shadow (1951), Sixty Minutes with Winston Churchill (1953), and Assignment: Churchill (1956). He promoted them enthusiastically, with many book signings. As a Churchill bookseller, I used to describe a pristine copy of Sixty Minutes as “the rare unsigned edition.”

In 2005, Sixty Minutes was recently republished as Beside the Bulldog. Simultaneously there appeared Churchill’s Bodyguard: The Authorised Biography, which intersperses some new material with a large number of factual errors. The earlier works are pure Thompson and therefore worth seeking out.

Thompson’s Epic 

Thompson’s first Churchill assignment was the statesman’s Cairo Conference of 1921. Around the same time he was seconded to Churchill during negotiation of the Irish Treaty. When Churchill set out on a North American lecture tour in December 1931, Thompson was again assigned. The detective was resting after twenty-six-hours’ duty on December 13th, when Churchill was struck and nearly killed by a car on Fifth Avenue. Thompson always regretted that he had not been present, and perhaps able to prevent the accident.

Walter Thompson’s tall, angular features are frequently seen on Churchill photos during World War II. From 1939, when recalled to guard duty, he was rarely absent on the Prime Minister’s travels. Along the way, he accidentally shot himself while cleaning a weapon, and lost son in the RAF. He did however romance and later marry Mary Shearburn, one of the PM’s secretaries.

The Bodyguard Mini-series

I approached this production with doubt. The Authorised Biography contained so many howlers that I feared they would reappear in the video. But the episodes avoid this—and any hindsight moralizing, thought so necessary by producers today. It is, in the main, straight reporting from Thompson’s memoirs. Though I disliked Thompson’s steady references to the boss as “Winston,” I found no serious errors. Please advise if the episodes I didn’t watch contain some awful clanger!

The series does speculate in places. One such involves the actor Leslie Howard, “Ashley Wilkes” in one of Churchill’s favorite films, Gone with the Wind. The story goes that Howard and his bodyguard—shot down by the Luftwaffe in the belief they were Churchill and Thompson—were intentional decoys. This is of course nonsense.

The great strength of Churchill’s Bodyguard is its visuals. Some photos aren’t chronologically accurate, but most are little-known and fascinating. The producers cleverly applied the right poses to go with the dialogue, presenting what is almost a motion picture.

The synopses suggest that Thompson saved Churchill’s life in every episode. But I have no doubt that many potential threats did preoccupy him. And to his credit, he disregarded no possibility.

Churchill’s Bodyguard Synopsis (IMdb)

Sadly, all but three of these videos have been deleted from YouTube. Links to the other three (below) were still active in mid-2019.

Introductions. Here we learn how two very different characters met, and how Thompson, born in the East End, saves his boss from an IRA assassination attempt. Ten years earlier, they had both been present, unknowingly, at the Siege of Sidney Street.

Middle East, 1921. Walter Thompson gets the challenge of keeping his boss alive during a visit to the Middle East. A leading British politician is the natural target for assassins, and on several critical occasions, Thompson is helped by the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia.

The 1920s; travels in the New World 1929-32. Churchill buys cars and a house. In 1929 ceases to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Thompson’s duties end. Within two years, Churchill’s outspoken views gain him new and deadly enemies, and Thompson is recalled.

North American Lecture Tour 1932. Thompson keeps Churchill safe during his lecture tour, but then leaves the police force. It seems that Churchill’s career is over, too. But a sinister new force is rising which sees him as an implacable enemy. Threats to his life bring the two men together again.

* * *

From Wilderness to War 1932-40. Despite being out of office, Churchill’s enemies prove dangerous. With war imminent, French Intelligence hears of a German assassination plot. Thompson returns from retirement. Britain goes to war in September 1939, and Churchill is back at the Admiralty.

Dangerous Travels and the Fall of France 1940. Sent to the Admiralty in September 1939, Churchill becomes Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, as Hitler invades the Low Countries. He embarks on a campaign of personal diplomacy, with travels including six trips to France. To Thompson’s concern, they are often within range of Luftwaffe fighters.

Surviving the Blitz, 1940-41. The early days of the war prove difficult and dangerous. The Luftwaffe bombs London. The Prime Minister walks the streets among the people, watches air raids from rooftops, and visits anti-aircraft batteries. Often only Thompson is with him.

Meetings with FDR, 1941-42. Running a gauntlet of U-boats in the North Atlantic, Churchill sets out for meetings with President Franklin Roosevelt. On one return journey, as the PM prepares to board a flying boat for the trip home, a gunman lurks nearby.

* * *

Turning Point, 1942-43. A precarious trip to Moscow to visit Stalin is followed by victory for the Eighth Army in North Africa. Aware that Churchill is traveling, the Germans at least twice try to shoot down his plane.

Teheran, 1943. After two Atlantic crossings and two trips across the Mediterranean, Churchill grows increasingly frustrated with Allied planners and suspicious of Stalin. When the Big Three meet in Tehran in 1943, the Germans launch Operation Longjump, in which commandoes plan to parachute into the city.

The Kiss of Life, 1943. Returning from the Tehran Conference, a sick and exhausted Churchill survives a dangerous illness, Thompson keeping vigil at his bedside.

Athens, 1944. Flying to Greece to forestall a civil war, Churchill plans to stay at a hotel where communist guerrillas had placed dynamite. He changes quarters to HMS Ajax in Piraeus harbor, while guerrillas fire at the ship.

Victory in Europe, 1945. Churchill and Thompson make several journeys through jubilant crowds. Churchill wants to walk among them. Instead Thompson pulls him onto the roof of his car,  accidentally breaking a woman’s arm in the process.

Written for a colleague who asked various contributors for 300 words on the qualities of Winston Churchill they most admire.

Leadership

Few great leaders are also great writers; none who were both compare with Winston Churchill. In 1940 he saved civilization by keeping Britain in the fight until those “who hitherto had been half blind were half ready.” His historical and biographical eloquence won a Nobel Prize. Uniquely for a politician, he thought and wrote deeply about the nature of man. He hated and tried to prevent war. He fought to preserve constitutional liberty.

Judgment

Laboring forty years in the vineyard of his words, I was struck by his judgment. An eminent historian recently wrote me: “The more I learn about him, the more I think what good judgment he had, especially in the 1920s.” The 1920s? Yes. Two decades before his finest hour, Churchill helped ensure Irish independence, made some sense of the Middle East, settled war debts, took both sides in the General Strike, and wrote tax-cutting budgets.

True, he sometimes judged wrong. Yet as William Manchester wrote, “he always had second and third thoughts, and they usually improved as he went along. It was part of his pattern of response to any political issue that, while his early reactions were often emotional, and even unworthy of him, they were usually succeeded by reason and generosity.”

Sir Martin Gilbert, his chief biographer, who knew more about him than anyone, said: “I never felt that he was going to spring an unpleasant surprise on me. I might find that he was adopting views with which I disagreed. But I always knew that there would be nothing to cause me to think: ‘How shocking, how appalling.’”

Humanity

Withal Churchill carried with him a joyous humanity. Asked what he admired most in him, Marshal Tito, a most perceptive man, instantly replied: “His humanity. He is so human.” I certainly agree on at least one thing with Marshal Tito.