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

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

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

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

Gassing the Indians

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

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

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

Starving the Bengalis

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

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

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

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

Gandhi: whilst on the subject

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

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

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

“Racial hierarchies and Eugenics”

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

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

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

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

The remarkable thing…

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

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

_________

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

Lionized villain or necessary hero?

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

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

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

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

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

“It is only when plans for uniting Europe take a federal form that we ourselves cannot take part, because we cannot subordinate ourselves or the control of British policy to federal authorities.” This quote is a red herring —not Churchill.

Hoist on my own petard! Alan Ingram, a kind reader, has helped me correct several attributions (four of them mine) of this quote to Churchill. The remark, excluding Britain from a federal Europe, belongs to his then-foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. I plead…

Guilty with an explanation:

My error and others’ occurred by misreading successive quotes in John Charmley’s Churchill’s Grand Alliance (1995). This is a critique of the one-sided postwar “special relationship.” On page 250, Charmley quotes Churchill’s telling cabinet note of 29 November 1951:

Our attitude towards further economic developments on the Schuman lines resembles that which we adopt about the European Army. We help, we dedicate, we play a part, but we are not merged with and do not forfeit our insular or commonwealth character. Our first object is the unity and consolidation of the British Commonwealth….Our second, “the fraternal association” of the English-speaking world; and third, United Europe, to which we are a separate closely- and specially-related ally and friend. (National Archives, CAB129/48C [51] 32)

Dr. Charmley follows this with ellipses and Eden’s words about Britain not taking part in a federal Europe. He correctly provides a separate footnote, citing Eden’s memorandum to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, 6 December 1951.

Of course, Eden was reflecting Churchill’s own opinion on the Europe Unite movement. A week later Churchill himself wrote: “the Americans would like us to fall into the general line of European pensioners which we have no intention of doing.”

On  11 May 1953, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons: “We are not members of the European Defence Community, nor do we intend to be merged in a federal European system. We feel we have a special relationship to both.” Clearly, at that time, Churchill and Eden were as one on the issue.

For a fuller account of Churchill’s statements on united Europe, please see “EU and Churchill’s Views.” (That post is revised with the correct attribution, and other quotations.)

“Keep England White”

Here is another supposed quote with current connotations. The Hillsdale College Churchill Project was asked to confirm Churchill’s alleged proposal of “Keep England White” as a Conservative slogan in the 1955 election. Is this misunderstood or misattributed? Both.

This was neither a public nor a confirmed private statement. It is not in official minutes, or The Churchill Documents, Volume 23 (2019). Its origin is a diary entry by Harold Macmillan. After a 20 January 1955 Cabinet meeting, Macmillan wrote: “The P.M. thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good campaign slogan!”

I found the Macmillan reference on a website called Traditional Britain. You will quickly grasp their political stance, but in fairness, they do link two negative references to this remark. The first is from The Guardian, to cite Churchill’s “true views” on immigration.” The second is a 1993 uproar involving Sir Winston’s grandson, Winston Churchill (1940-2010). He called immigration “the no-go area of British politics.” He stated: “If we are to curb the scourge of racism we must first and foremost stop adding to the problem.”

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

Out of context, the three words seem pretty stark. In context, Churchill was supporting limits on Caribbean immigration. He did not discuss other black or brown people at that meeting. Of course, it is well established that Churchill in the 1950s resisted unlimited immigration. Is this racist? We report, you decide.

Ideals that today’s educated people take for granted — equal rights, free speech, and the primacy of human life over tradition, tribal loyalty and intuitions about purity — are radical breaks with the sensibilities of the past. These too are gifts of a widening application of reason.

Fair enough, but to contrast what educated people were like in the bad old days, Prof. Pinker offers this:

Heroes like Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson avowed racist beliefs that today would make people’s flesh crawl.

“Generational Chauvinism”

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson may have defenders to speak for them, but I’ll take this up on behalf of Churchill. Professor Pinker is exhibiting what William Manchester called “Generational Chauvinism”—judging people of the past by the accepted better standards of today.

If he means that Churchill used words like “blackamoors” and said that certain non-white races have “a high rate of reproduction,” nolo contendere. Of course, when Churchill grew up—in the late Victorian and Edwardian era—every Briton from the Sovereign to a Covent Garden grocer said the same things about other races, and nobody’s skin crawled because all of them believed it. That may be shocking to today’s ears—but that’s the way it was.

But simply to declare that Churchill was a man of his time is to miss a feature that distinguishes him. For example, this is the same Winston Churchill who in 1899 argued for equal rights for black South Africans in a debate with his Boer jailer in Pretoria, In 1906, as Undersecretary for the Colonies, he endeared himself to Gandhi by defending the rights of Indians in South Africa. The same Churchill endorsed the concept of a Jewish national home, and praised the contributions of Jews to civilization in 1920. Churchill opposed Indian self-government in the 1930s and, when he lost, sent encouragement to Gandhi; who admired Nehru; who would admire the Indian democracy today.

He Can’t be Pigeonholed

Winston Churchill was by no means a saint, and it does him a disservice to pretend he was without faults. But he is too complex a figure to pigeonhole. We must take into account the full picture. As Manchester wrote in the first volume of his biography, The Last Lion (p. 844):

Churchill, however, 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.