Why Churchill’s legacy marks a fault line in British
politics
The wartime leader’s influence on the British
establishment’s psyche runs deep.
By CHARLIE
COOPER 2/14/19, 7:12 PM CET
Updated 2/14/19, 10:47 PM CET
Winston Churchill still has the power to set the U.K.
political agenda
LONDON — He has been dead more than half a century, but
Winston Churchill still has the power to set the U.K. political agenda.
Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell's decision to brand
the wartime leader a “villain” for his role in suppressing a strike in a Welsh
mining town more than a century ago merited responses from the prime minister’s
official spokesman, the leader of the House of Commons and the mayor of London.
It even briefly supplanted Brexit as the main topic of
national political conversation.
The whole episode, prompted by a two-word answer to a
quick-fire question at a POLITICO London Playbook event Wednesday evening, is
another reminder that Churchill is lodged deeply in the psyche of the British
establishment — and the Conservative Party in particular.
Revering his leadership of the country during World War II
is a matter of pride for some. For most it’s just sound history. His words and
deeds of that time are rarely contested. McDonnell himself, responding to the
storm he created, acknowledged Churchill was “obviously a hero” in the war
years.
“The British public will reach its own judgment on this
characterization of Churchill" — Theresa May's spokesman
The rest of his life and career is much more contentious.
But for someone who within months could be running Her
Majesty’s Treasury, McDonnell’s "villain" comment is still a
political risk — such is the esteem in which Churchill is held.
As Theresa May’s own spokesman was at pains to point out to
Westminster journalists on Thursday, at a daily press briefing, Churchill
topped a public poll of “Greatest Britons” in 2002.
“The British public will reach its own judgment on this
characterization of Churchill,” the spokesman added, before recalling that May
herself has “quoted and referenced Sir Winston Churchill on many occasions, and
acknowledged him as one of the great prime ministers of the 20th century.”
She even has a picture of him on the wall of her Downing
Street office, the spokesman said.
Clearly, to stand in Churchill’s shadow is still a mark of
honor for many politicians — and to condemn him is probably still an unwise
move for any party that wants to be electable.
'White supremacist'
But Churchill’s memory is not so sacred as to be beyond
reproach.
Critical assessments are now much more mainstream than they
were, even as recently as that public vote of 2002.
Responding to claims last month by a Green party member of
the Scottish parliament, Ross Greer, that Churchill was a “white supremacist”
and “mass murderer,” Tory peer Danny Finkelstein agreed in the Times earlier
this week that the first assessment, at least, was correct.
“Churchill justified British imperialism as being for the
good of the ‘primitive’ and ‘subject races’ … to call him a white supremacist
is nothing but the truth. And it is never a good idea to deny the truth,"
Finkelstein wrote. "To insist that for Churchill to be a great man he must
never have thought or done anything bad is to insist that the world is divided
into good and bad people and you can only be one or the other."
It may have been this that Labour's Sadiq Khan, the mayor of
London, was referring to when he said the former prime minister was "an
imperfect leader" and that "he did many things that I would disagree
with, with the benefit of hindsight."
“It is hard for one generation not to be irritated when its
ideas and assumptions are challenged by the new generation" — Danny
Finkelstein
McDonnell’s comment fit within a tradition of left-wing
resentment of Churchill for his role, as home secretary in 1910, in using the
army to crack down on striking coal miners in the south Wales mining town of
Tonypandy. One protester died and hundreds were injured, though Churchill's
responsibility for sending in the troops is contested by historians.
Greer’s critique, by contrast, reflected the extent to which
Churchill’s record is being reassessed by a new generation that is far more
queasy about adulating such a man — no matter what his achievements.
It is in the same vein as student protests at universities
across the U.K. that have forced colleges to remove statues and other tributes
to colonial era benefactors and alumni whose actions are deemed by a new
generation to be beyond the pale.
Finkelstein detected "something else at play, something
beyond Churchill” in the increasingly heated debate about his legacy.
“It is hard for one generation not to be irritated when its
ideas and assumptions are challenged by the new generation,” he wrote. “We
think we have done our best to reach an enlightened view of the world and it
can be annoying to have our heroes and values questioned.”
That is not to say some of Churchill's defenders won't fight
back hard. In an op-ed for the Telegraph, Former Foreign Secretary Boris
Johnson — who has written a biography of Churchill — accused McDonnell of
peddling "myths of the old hard left."
"Churchill was not only a man with a conspicuous social
conscience but probably the greatest leader this county has ever had. What on
earth has happened to Labour?" he wrote.
Churchill's grandson, Nicholas Soames, who is also a Tory
MP, condemned the shadow chancellor as a "Poundland Lenin" and
declared his remark a "very foolish and stupid thing to say."
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned Greer's intervention
last month, saying Churchill was the "greatest Briton who ever
lived."
"You only have the freedom to make stupid, ill-informed
comments because he fought for your freedom. Some irony?" he added.
The Brexit factor
While serving as a brief distraction from the daily
political grind of Brexit, the battle over Churchill's memory — and the wider
generational culture war it is part of — is intimately connected to Britain's
EU departure.
His name and support was invoked by both sides of the debate
during the referendum — an argument that for most was settled by Soames, who
said he thought he would have wanted to remain in the EU.
Yet at a private event late last year, Johnson — a leading
light in the Brexit campaign — recalled the “giant bet” his hero took in the
1930s by insisting the Nazi regime must be resisted at a time when that was by
no means a mainstream view. He cited the fact as evidence that “sometimes you
do need to do the difficult thing, and you do need to take a position that
everyone says is too fraught with risk.”
One can only guess what modern day parallel he had in mind.
Churchill was chosen by a panel of experts to be among four
“leaders” in the running — but lost out in the public vote to a much more
forward-looking figure: Nelson Mandela.
With the future so uncertain, and the odds — in the view of
many observers — stacked against success, it is perhaps no wonder that British
politicians cling so tightly to a national hero who, despite being wrong about
so much, ended up being right at the most important moment.
As for the wider British population, while still holding
Churchill dear, they may be wondering what all the fuss is about.
May’s spokesman declined to mention that in a more recent
BBC TV poll, earlier this year, to find the 20th century’s greatest global
icon, Churchill was chosen by a panel of experts to be among four “leaders” in
the running — but lost out in the public vote to a much more forward-looking
figure: Nelson Mandela.
In the final itself, the public picked a contemporary of
Churchill's, and also a war hero: computing pioneer Alan Turing.
Westminster might still obsess about Churchill. But those
Britons who considered a black South African leader and a gay scientist more
iconic than their wartime leader appear to be moving on.
Beware the Churchill hero-worshippers
Very few politicians have ever been saints and Britain’s
wartime leader is no exception.
By CHRIS
BRYANT 2/15/19, 4:01 AM CET Updated
2/15/19, 8:22 AM CET
LONDON — Warning: if you are only interested in political
history written in black and white, stop reading now.
And if you think every historical figure can be sorted into
heroes and villains, jog on. After all, old chestnuts don’t come much hoarier
than the perennial debate about Winston Churchill — hero or villain?
It's a question that's been asked again and again since John
McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, responded to it with just two words:
"Tonypandy. Villain."
Reams upon reams have been written about Churchill,
including several thousand words by the man himself, who, unlike David
Copperfield, had few doubts about whether he was the hero of his own story.
Indeed, he didn’t just write to pay off the Champagne bills. He knew that those
who write history tend to get the best write-ups.
So let’s be clear. Every child in the Rhondda learns the
story that Churchill, as Liberal Home Secretary, sent in the troops to put down
the Tonypandy Riots in 1910. It’s one of the reasons the Rhondda was the only
constituency in Britain where Churchill wasn’t welcome after the war. And
although some of the allegations about Churchill’s direct involvement are
heavily contested, I agree with John McDonnell: It was wrong to send troops
down to South Wales during the miners strike, it inflamed the situation and
contributed to the gross and excessive use of force by the police. There was a
better way to settle the dispute.
Striking miners in Tonypandy, 1910 | Topical Press
Agency/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
There are lots of other things Churchill got wrong. Most
historians — professional or amateur — have their own personal list of his
failings. In World War I there was the disaster of Gallipoli, in the second the
chaos of Norway. He was an ardent supporter of Franco and retained a
fascination for Mussolini until late in the day. My particular beef, apart from
Tonypandy, is his overly imperialistic attitude to India, which contributed to
the dangerous delay in securing independence.
And before some wild-eyed Churchill fanatic lays into me, I
would just point out that large numbers of Tory MPs in the 1930s also thought
he was mildly deranged over this issue. He had other faults, of course. He was
a bit of a misogynist, as revealed by his comment that Lady Astor’s arrival in
the Commons made him feel like he was lying naked in the bath with nothing to
protect him but a loofah.
But here’s the thing no sane person can ignore. Churchill
was not alone in warning about Hitler and demanding that Britain rearm, but
when Neville Chamberlain repeatedly sneered at Labour and picked unnecessary
fights with the opposition, Churchill reached out to Labour and the unions.
Many hated or distrusted him, but he united the nation in its hour of need.
When Tory MPs, many of whom like Ronnie Cartland, Jack
Macnamara and Victor Cazalet were gay, opposed appeasement because they knew
their gay and Jewish friends were being imprisoned and killed in Germany,
Chamberlain tapped their phones and threatened them with deselection, but
Churchill encouraged them. He held firm when others in the Cabinet continued to
argue for appeasement even once the war had started; and in Downing Street he
galvanized the English language into a potent force. Of course he didn’t win
the war single-handed. Millions made sacrifices — on the battlefield and in the
mines. Russia lost more sons than Britain. But it really is no exaggeration to
say that we owe our liberty to him and those he led.
Let’s get over this nonsense about heroes and villains.
Besides, very few politicians have ever been saints.
Sometimes the saintliest have been the least effective. George Lansbury was by
all accounts a lovely man, but when he bravely decided to stand down to fight a
by-election over women’s suffrage, he not only lost but found himself out of
parliament for a decade, thereby denying the campaign for women’s votes another
voice in parliament.
Even the geniuses who were far ahead of their time were
conditioned by the world around them. Some, for instance, have criticized
Churchill for supposedly flirting with the abhorrent concept of eugenics. But
it is worth bearing in mind that when Major Archibald Church, the Labour MP for
Wandsworth, introduced a bill "for the compulsory sterilisation of the
unfit" in 1931, Churchill did not vote, but the radical Labour firebrand
Ellen Wilkinson did — in favor.
So let’s get over this nonsense about heroes and villains.
Many years ago a bishop asked a young girl whom he was about to confirm whether
she was good or bad. She replied "streaky." That’s the truth about
every single politician I have ever met or read about. Pretending otherwise
leads to people believing in their own destiny, their own immaculate
conception. Beware the unmitigated hero-worshippers.
Chris Bryant is Labour MP for Rhondda.
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