Looking at an Actual By-God Conservative Of Old
Winston Churchill, his racial views, his days in Afghanistan
THEIR SUPERSTITION EXPOSES THEM TO TYRANNY OF PRIESTHOOD
This day I take a look at Winston Churchill and of accusations of racism,
Haven read his early writing on British warfare in Afghanistan,
Each paragraph I read indicated a man of unabashed white supremacy,
It appeared he was quite pro-imperial, a young man wanting to see war,
Really, I thought this was going to be an indictment; but not so it seems.
So it was quite apparent that he truly thought little of his savages,
Understand that historical study indicated he wasn’t as bad as reported,
Perhaps you may note that I’m straying away from Trump and MAGA now,
Every since long ago I wished to take an honest look at Churchill,
Realizing now there are probably more words on him than many others,
So perhaps this is not my standard dish to put out on the table,
To me this man represents a true conservative hence worthy of study,
In his conservatism one might expect a morsel of white supremacy,
To that he doesn’t disappoint; I’m trying to get his osmosis to our MAGA,
Ideologically if only a few might adopt a Churchill vibe maybe it’d help,
Oh no the obvious intellect of this man may only turn them all off,
Not that this man’s apparent genius would ever sway a Trump supporter.
Even though my motivation for this will only sooth my anxious heart,
Xenophobic was perhaps Churchill to some extent; but he could evolve,
People of the MAGA realm wear their xenophobia as a badge of honor,
Oh but I’d take Winston Churchill’s brand of logic any old day,
So trying to steer a Trump supporter to a dead Englishman might be,
Each ounce of effort in this probably is only wasted energy to deep space,
Something tells me this whole exercise is only silly but I’ll finish it.
Today we’ve gobs of people not realizing they’re down with neo-fascism,
Heavenward - Churchill is probably only shaking his head at all this,
Each moment he’d recognize the Nazism which has overtaken America,
Maybe this might be happening or maybe it’s only my wishful thinking.
The notion of a Republican being a Nobel Prize winning author is absurd,
Of having a thinker and not a schemer on that side is our unicorn.
To me to have an independent conservative would be only a luxury,
Yet it seems they are all pretty crazy or bought off in these dire times,
Really if we’re at the perfect storm or not now; I have not a foggy idea,
Authoritarian, Churchill made it known he despised Hitler and Mussolini,
Now we aren’t as lucky; our conservative Churchill definitely doesn’t exist,
Nothing will make him appear in this country; the right is too far gone,
Yes we must hope our democracy might just survive another four years.
Of religion Churchill definitely that bad words on Islam; with no doubt,
For in this respect he might understand the Christian Nationalists.
Preachers of the MAGA ilk can only be untrustworthy in these times,
Reality is that they are a great threat to our nation and it won’t change,
Indeed they are only the people carrying the Bible with their AR-15s,
Every power move they make they are deluded that it’s God’s only idea,
Something will have to give in their theocracy loving aggression,
Trump was only nicked in the ear; Lordy that’s a sign from their God, However we might survive their all-out assault might be our divinity,
Oh I feel better at this point; my therapy in my index finger and mind,
Oh yes it would be grand if Winston could reappear to guide the lost,
Doesn’t it seem that their degradation is only constant over time.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and 1951 to 1955. Apart from 1922 to 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
I found this writing by Churchill to be rather enlightening. He was a young man when he wrote this. A guy looking for adventure but I sense that the brutality was rather apparent to him.
THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE
AN EPISODE OF FRONTIER WAR
By Sir Winston S. Churchill
"They (Frontier Wars) are but the surf that marks the edge and the advance of the wave of civilisation."
LORD SALISBURY, Guildhall, 1892
[Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury KG GCVO PC FRS DL (3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), known as Lord Salisbury, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen years. He was also Foreign Secretary before and during most of his tenure. He avoided alignments or alliances, maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".]
They, when they fight among themselves, bear little malice, and the combatants not infrequently make friends over the corpses of their comrades or suspend operations for a festival or a horse race. At the end of the contest cordial relations are at once re-established. And yet so full of contradictions is their character, that all this is without prejudice to what has been written of their family vendettas and private blood feuds. Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honour so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind. I have been told that if a white man could grasp it fully, and were to understand their mental impulses—if he knew, when it was their honour to stand by him, and when it was their honour to betray him; when they were bound to protect and when to kill him—he might, by judging his times and opportunities, pass safely from one end of the mountains to the other. But a civilised European is as little able to accomplish this, as to appreciate the feelings of those strange creatures, which, when a drop of water is examined under a microscope, are revealed amiably gobbling each other up, and being themselves complacently devoured.
I remark with pleasure, as an agreeable trait in the character of the Pathans,* the immunity, dictated by a rude spirit of chivalry, which in their ceaseless brawling, their women enjoy. Many forts are built at some distance from any pool or spring. When these are besieged, the women are allowed by the assailants to carry water to the foot of the walls by night. In the morning the defenders come out and fetch it—of course under fire—and are enabled to continue their resistance. But passing from the military to the social aspect of their lives, the picture assumes an even darker shade, and is unrelieved by any redeeming virtue. We see them in their squalid, loopholed hovels, amid dirt and ignorance, as degraded a race as any on the fringe of humanity: fierce as the tiger, but less cleanly; as dangerous, not so graceful. Those simple family virtues, which idealists usually ascribe to primitive peoples, are conspicuously absent. Their wives and their womenkind generally, have no position but that of animals. They are freely bought and sold, and are not infrequently bartered for rifles. Truth is unknown among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field boundary, it is customary for both claimants to walk round the boundary he claims, with a Koran in his hand, swearing that all the time he is walking on his own land. To meet the difficulty of a false oath, while he is walking over his neighbor's land, he puts a little dust from his own field into his shoes. As both sides are acquainted with the trick, the dismal farce of swearing is usually soon abandoned, in favor of an appeal to force.
*Pashtuns (also known as Pakhtuns, or Pathans) are a nomadic, pastoral, Eastern Iranic ethnic group primarily residing in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. They historically were also referred to as Afghans.
All are held in the grip of miserable superstition. The power of the ziarat,** or sacred tomb, is wonderful. Sick children are carried on the backs of buffaloes, sometimes sixty or seventy miles, to be deposited in front of such a shrine, after which they are carried back—if they survive the journey—in the same way. It is painful even to think of what the wretched child suffers in being thus jolted over the cattle tracks. But the tribesmen consider the treatment much more efficacious than any infidel prescription. To go to a ziarat and put a stick in the ground is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of a wish. To sit swinging a stone or coloured glass ball, suspended by a string from a tree, and tied there by some fakir, is a sure method of securing a fine male heir. To make a cow give good milk, a little should be plastered on some favorite stone near the tomb of a holy man. These are but a few instances; but they may suffice to reveal a state of mental development at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.
**ziarat - In Islam it refers to pious visitation, pilgrimage to a holy place, tomb or shrine.
Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood—"Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs,"—and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms,*** who correspond with the theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur,"**** and no man's wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley's plays, "they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters." They are "safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach."
***a seeker after knowledge, a student of science or knowledge, a student.
****Droit du seigneur (‘right of the lord'), also known as jus primae noctis (‘right of the first night'), sometimes referred to as prima nocta, was a supposed legal right in medival Europe, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with any female subject, particularly on her wedding night.
Yet the life even of these barbarous people is not without moments when the lover of the picturesque might sympathise with their hopes and fears. In the cool of the evening, when the sun has sunk behind the mountains of Afghanistan, and the valleys are filled with a delicious twilight, the elders of the village lead the way to the chenar [The oriental plane tree, Platanus orientalis, native from SE Europe to N Iran] trees by the water's side, and there, while the men are cleaning their rifles, or smoking their hookas, and the women are making rude ornaments from beads, and cloves, and nuts, the Mullah drones the evening prayer. Few white men have seen, and returned to tell the tale. But we may imagine the conversation passing from the prices of arms and cattle, the prospects of the harvest, or the village gossip, to the great Power, that lies to the southward, and comes nearer year by year. Perhaps some former Sepoy,***** of Beluchis or Pathans, will recount his adventures in the bazaars of Peshawar, or tell of the white officers he has followed and fought for in the past. He will speak of their careless bravery and their strange sports; of the far-reaching power of the Government, that never forgets to send his pension regularly as the months pass by; and he may even predict to the listening circle the day when their valleys will be involved in the comprehensive grasp of that great machine, and judges, collectors and commissioners shall ride to sessions at Ambeyla,****** or value the land tax on the soil of Nawagai. Then the Mullah will raise his voice and remind them of other days when the sons of the prophet drove the infidel from the plains of India, and ruled at Delhi, as wide an Empire as the Kafir******* holds to-day: when the true religion strode proudly through the earth and scorned to lie hidden and neglected among the hills: when mighty princes ruled in Bagdad, and all men knew that there was one God, and Mahomet was His prophet. And the young men hearing these things will grip their Martinis, and pray to Allah, that one day He will bring some Sahib—********best prize of all—across their line of sight at seven hundred yards so that, at least, they may strike a blow for insulted and threatened Islam.
*****an Indian soldier serving under British or other European orders.
******The Ambela campaign (also called Umbeyla, Umbeylah, and Ambeyla) of 1863 was one of many expeditions in the border area between the Emirate of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier of British India against the 'fanatics' at Malka, a colony of malcontents or bigoted muslims in the Yusufzai country.
*******Kafir is often translated as 'infidel', 'pagan', 'rejector', 'denier', 'disbeliever', 'unbeliever', 'nonbeliever', and 'non-Muslim'.
******** Agha meaning "Great lord; Nobleman; Commander" and Sahib meaning "Friend, Sir"
The general aspect of the country and character of its inhabitants have thus been briefly described. At this stage it is not necessary or desirable to descend to detail. As the account proceeds the reader may derive a more lively impression of the sombre mountains, and of the peoples who dwell beneath their shadow.
The following paper was intended to truly look at Churchill’s inclinations on race from a very in-depth look at his entire writings and writings on him through many years. I had a question about this aspect of Churchill after limited exposer to his writings and biography.
Churchill and Language: Hearsay Doesn’t Count: The Truth About Churchill’s “Racist” Epithets
10/11/2022 by Richard M. Langworth
Written by Richard M. Langworth
@rmlangeorth British historian
[Media frenzy -Immediately, a score of news outlets crowed that DeSantis had misquoted Churchill. It is encouraging that the half-lifetime some of us have spent correcting fake Churchill quotes has its effect. I suspect, however, that the kerfuffle had more to do with piling on the Governor than advancing truth about Churchill. — Richard Langworth January of 2024.]
Winston Churchill has lately become a target of ignorance. Some historians claim he used all the racist epithets we despise. Careful examination of his language shows that it is the paucity of racial epithets in his own speech that is noteworthy. Rather than excoriate him as a racist, we should praise Churchill for resisting the tides of a less tolerant era with eloquence and courage.
Epithet: An offensive or derogatory expression used of a person; an abusive term; a profanity.” —Oxford English Dictionary.
Churchill is often the subject of false or exaggerated allegations. But in truth, he said enough horrifying things that there is no need to invent more. He said that he hated people with “slit eyes and pig tails.” To him, people from India were “the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans.” He admitted that he “did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people.”
The first Churchill quote above refers to an article which ascribes to Churchill’s youth something he said when he was 80. Still, he did say it. The second is not a Churchill quote but what Leopold Amery said he said. The third is an alleged quotation, neither all nor parts of which can be found in the Churchill canon. (I would welcome learning the source, if there is one.)
Winston Churchill has lately become a target of ignorance. “Racist,” read the spray-painted label of the mob on his London statue. He should be knocked from perch, plinth and prominence, they added. Some historians claim he used all the racist epithets we despise, from the n-word to nationalities: “As the great tribal leader of 1940, his glorious speeches were peppered with references to the British race.” The last is literally true: By “race” he meant “nation,” not skin color.
Routine Racist?
Did Winston Churchill routinely label people with epithets we deem unfit in civilized conversation? Many authorities have so written: “He would refer scornfully to ‘blackamoors’”…. “His language in private about coloured and foreign people generally was of the casual, unthinkingly demeaning character commonplace in his class and kind… ‘blackamoors,’ ‘wogs,’ ‘chinks,’ ‘eyeties’ and so on (but not, in his unusual case, ‘jewboys’ or ‘yids’).”
Are they right? We didn’t know. So, with some trepidation, we searched for every racist epithet in the Churchill Project’s 80 million-word canon. This includes Churchill’s 20 million published words: nearly sixty books, 2000 articles, thousands of speeches, private letters and papers; plus 60 million words about Sir Winston by biographers and memoir writers. Diligently over the years, numerous contributors have helped us render all these words into a massive digital archive, in which the most obscure phrase can be found quickly, if it exists at all.
We were not sure what we would find. From the way they are flung about by his critics, one would think racial slurs were Churchill’s daily vernacular. We found that they are extremely infrequent. Some are entirely nonexistent, or at least unattributable to Churchill. Of those that do occur, most come from memoirs or diaries of colleagues—which makes them hearsay at best. Those thus reported have to be evaluated as a function of the reliability of the witness.
The Hearsay of Leo Amery
Among those colleagues, by far the greatest claimant is Leopold Amery, a friend and colleague from their Harrow School days. Absent Amery’s diaries (1880-88), critics would have no source at all for many of Churchill’s alleged racial outbursts.
Amery himself wrote in his diary that Ulstermen were “no more Irish than they are Chinese and with not much more use for ‘Papishes’ [Catholics] than they have for ‘Chinks’ or [n-word]” more slurs than Churchill ever strung together. So, when Amery writes in his diary, “Winston said…” it is reasonable to ask: Were those Winston’s words, or Amery’s routine expressions, representing what he believed Winston said?
Leo Amery was a decent and honorable man. One should not label him a racist because what he wrote or said on occasion privately is not wholly dispositive. His sympathy for the plight of Indians when he served as Secretary of State for India in the Second World War was profound. He abhorred Appeasement, and gave a speech that helped propel Churchill into office in 1940. Certainly, however, he was far freer with racial slurs than Churchill. Indeed, compared to that of most contemporaries, Churchill’s language was among the least offensive.
The point is this: Churchill is the mostly widely recorded and quoted political personage of the 20th century. If each of us had our every word so widely disseminated and recorded—including what others thought were our words—would we stand up to scrutiny? “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”
Racist Epithets: A Survey
Africans
The word “blackamoors,” a word associated with colored races to which Churchill supposedly “referred scornfully,” appears twice (in the words of others) in his Life of Marlborough, once about jailing Gandhi (“what did it matter if a few blackamoors resigned?” and six times in the diaries of Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor. Moran’s only assertion of Churchill using the word was on 8 April 1955: “Someone asked Winston if he had seen a film Carmen Jones…. He replied that he didn’t like ‘blackamoors,’ and had walked out early in the proceedings.”
“Hottentots,” originally the pastoral nomads of South Africa, evolved to an offensive term for Africans in general. Churchill used it twice: to President Eisenhower in 1954 (“I am a bit skeptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet”); and in passing, geographically, twice in 1910.
In our digital resource of works by and about Churchill, there are 14 occurrences of the most offensive epithet for black folk. Five are by British soldiers or African settlers. Three are by Admiral Fisher, Churchill’s First Sea Lord in 1914-15; one each is by Lady Randolph Churchill, her third husband Montagu Porch, the civil servant Maurice Hankey, a German biographer, and Bishop Thomas Birley of Zanzibar. Most of the usages involve woodpiles and work. The fourteenth is by William Manchester, which we find interesting:
I never heard him insult Jews or blacks…nor was [the n-word] in his vocabulary…. It is true that his attitude toward them was paternalistic. It is equally true that it would have been extremely difficult to find more than a few [other residents] at that time including black [residents] who would have found that paternalism objectionable.
Manchester was not describing Churchill, but H.L. Mencken, though the description fits Churchill well. In sum, we found not one instance of Winston Churchill using the n-word, or even being quoted using it. Will the historians who consistently accuse him of doing so revise their screed? We’re waiting.
Indians
It is written that for Churchill, “Indians were ‘babus’ (a contemptuous term for clerks)…. Rab Butler recorded how Churchill ‘launched into a most horrible attack on the babus.’” First, those are Butler’s words, not Churchill’s. Second, “babu” is normally defined as “a respectful Indian title or form of address for a man, especially an educated one.” Our digital Churchill resource ascribes “babus” to Disraeli, Lord and Lady Randolph, and various civil servants, but only once to Winston Churchill—on 22 March 1898. Angered by typos in his first book, he wrote his mother: “…last but not least this atrocity ‘Babri’ for babu, meaning an Indian clerk.”
This is nothing compared to what Amery said Churchill said about Indians in 1942—during negotiations with separatists in Delhi. On 9 September: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” On 12 November: “Winston went off the deep end in a state of frantic passion on the whole subject of the humiliation of being kicked out of India by the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans….”
As usual, these epithets are Amery’s. It isn’t hard, though, to believe Churchill might have said something like that in the circumstances. He clearly loved to prod the excitable Amery—which he’d done since they were classmates at Harrow School. William F. Buckley, Jr. remarked: “Churchill could express frustration in searing vernacular…. I don’t doubt that the famous gleam came to his eyes when he said this, with mischievous glee—an offense, in modern convention, of genocidal magnitude.” Mr. Buckley said that in 1995. Little did he know the genocidal magnitude those quotes would touch off 25 years later.
To address Churchill’s 1942 remarks about Indians with reason, consider the view of Indian historian Dr. Tirthankar Roy:
Churchill’s reactionary views on the Empire notwithstanding, the context for almost everything he said about Indians and the Empire was related to the Indian nationalist movement. Negotiating with Indian nationalists during the war could be pointless and dangerous because the moderate nationalists were demoralized by dissensions and the radical nationalists wanted the Axis powers to win on the Eastern Front. No prime minister would be willing to fight a war and negotiate with the nationalists at the same time.
Against this, we may wish to consider what Churchill said about “the glorious heroism and martial qualities” of Indian soldiers, “both Moslem and Hindu,” in the Second World War:
Upwards of two and a half million Indians volunteered to serve in the forces, and by 1942 an Indian Army of one million was in being, and volunteers were coming in at the monthly rate of fifty thousand…. the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.
This hardly sounds like a racist who considered all Indians hateful people with a beastly religion. (The singular “religion” underscores Dr. Roy’s analysis above. India has three major religions and a dozen minor ones. Which religion was Churchill referring to? Clearly Hinduism—the religion of the upper-caste Delhi nationalists.)
Other Asians
Amery records that on 13 June 1944 “Winston muttered and growled and mumbled for a quarter of an hour or more in order to ventilate his emotions of disgust at anything that could extend self-government to brown people [in Ceylon].” As usual, this is Amery writing, not Churchill.
In January 1952, an Egyptian mob attacked the BOAC offices in Cairo. Churchill described them as “lower than the most degraded savages now known….” He added: “When you learn to think of a race as inferior beings, it is difficult to get rid of that way of thinking.” Egypt, however, is not a race. “I wanted to bring in radical reforms in Egypt, to tax the Pashas and make life worthwhile for the fellaheen [peasants],” he added. “If we had done that we might be there now.” Here is another example of his belief in fair play for all classes. With Egyptians as well as Indians, Churchill’s invective seems reserved for the elite ruling classes.
“Chink” appears eighty-three times in the canon, nearly all referring to an opening or a noise. We finally found one reference which qualifies as a slur on the Chinese. Churchill asked his Colonial Secretary. Alan Lennox-Boyd MP, whether “a British sailor was birched by order of a Chink.” There is no footnote, but this is from Lennox-Boyd, not Churchill. But fair enough, accept it as likely. That is the only instance.
The term “wog” (“worthy oriental gentleman”) has no appearance among Churchill’s words. The word “pigtails” appears twice. Prior to the Korean War, WSC was warned about the size of the Chinese Army. “Four million pigtails don’t make an army,” he replied disparagingly. In 1954, writing about a Labour Party visit to China, he said, “I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails.” Total slurs on other Easterners: three.
Italians
The term “Eye-ties” for “Italians” seems mild, though it’s often included with epithets Churchill is accused of. Yet the term is not among Churchill’s words. John Charmley’s excellent biography of Duff Cooper notes a “piece of ‘Eyetie-bashing.’” Duff told WSC, “We can never fail to defeat them soundly on the field of battle.” Whether the word is Charmley’s or Duff’s is uncertain, but it is not Churchill’s.
By contrast, “wop” is one pejorative Churchill did use. It derives from guapo, Spanish for a “dashing braggart”; and vappa, Latin for flat wine. In January 1941, Churchill telegraphed General Smuts, “25,000 Wops in net” and allegedly spoke of the Japanese as “Wops of the Pacific.” (One of Churchill’s blind spots was his undervaluing Japanese and Chinese fighting prowess.) A month later, the PM was anxious for the safety of Anthony Eden and General Dill in the Middle East, “having regard to nasty habits of Wops and Huns.” This last quotation really tells the story. The terms may be offensive to Italians or Germans. But since neither Italy nor Germany is a race, they are not racial epithets.
Wholesale Hearsay
Churchill’s alleged racism was often ascribed by people quarreling with him. A distant second to Amery in derogatory hearsay is Desmond Morton, WSC’s 1930s advisor on German rearmament, who felt ignored and rejected after the war. In Sir Winston’s view, he wrote, “all Germans were Nazees, all Italians organ-grinders.” Inexplicably, Morton thought Churchill romanticized Arabs:
[He] really and truly believed these twopence coloured and highly erroneous images. The superlatively courageous, courteous, urbane, masculine Arab, terrible in his wrath, living an ascetic life in company with Allah, a camel, a spear and rifle…like a medieval knight of chivalry. This he really believed and nothing could persuade him that en masse the Bedu is a dirty, cowardly cut-throat, with very primitive passions indeed and about as trustworthy as a King Cobra.”
It is a sad commentary on what passes for discourse today that what Morton said Churchill believed about Bedouins has disappeared, and what Morton saidsubstituted, to stand as proof of Churchill’s hatred for Arabs.
On American Segregation
Another critique claims Churchill did nothing to discourage racial segregation among U.S. forces in Britain. A black official from the Colonial Office was barred from his favorite restaurant because it was patronized by white American officers. Churchill allegedly remarked, “That’s alright: if he takes a banjo with him they’ll think he’s one of the band.” Again this is hearsay, from the diaries of civil servant Alexander Cadogan. But assume it is true. How important is it, next to Churchill’s War Cabinet decision of 13 October 1942?:
…we need not, and should not, object to the Americans [segregating] their coloured troops. But they must not expect our authorities, civil or military, to assist them…. So far as concerned admission to canteens, public houses, theatres, cinemas, and so forth, there would, and must, be no restriction of the facilities hitherto extended to coloured persons as a result of the arrival of United States troops in this country.
Writing from Africa in 1908, Churchill declared: “No man has a right to be idle,” adding, “and I do not exempt the African.” Is this offensive? Four years later he told the King George V: “It must not however be forgotten that there are idlers and wastrels at both ends of the social scale.” This certainly offended the King, who considered this “quite superfluous” and “very socialistic.” Indeed, the establishment of his day often regarded Churchill as a dangerous radical.
Eminently Not “A Man of His Time”
After the Second World War, writing to South Africa’s racist Prime Minister D.F. Malan, Churchill jokingly proposed to say: “My dear Mr. President, Alles sal reg kom [Everything will be all right]. Keep on skelping the kaffirs!” (The last was a term for blacks with a variety of meanings, but Churchill did not use it disparagingly.) In this case it is hearsay again. The comment was repeated by a private secretary, David Hunt.
Churchill richly despised Malan, who had defeated his friend Jan Smuts on a platform of Apartheid. In 1954, Malan renewed South Africa’s perennial demand to annex three black-governed British protectorates inside its borders. Churchill responded:
There can be no question of Her Majesty’s Government agreeing at the present time to the transfer of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland to the Union of South Africa. We are pledged, since the South Africa Act of 1909, not to transfer these Territories until their inhabitants have been consulted [and] wished it. [South Africa should] not needlessly press an issue on which we could not fall in with their views without failing in our trust.
Britain never did turn over those Protectorates, and granted them independence in the heyday of Apartheid. Today Botswana (née Bechuanaland) is one of Africa’s most prosperous democracies.
The racial epithets we directly trace to Churchill’s writings, speeches and private correspondence number in the handful. Nor does his everyday language contain blatant racism. Here he is in My African Journey, 1908—a time when Gandhi was hoping South Africa would “remain white,” saying its blacks “live like animals.” Touring British East Africa, Churchill wrote:
For my own part I rejoice that the physical conditions of the country are such as to prevent the growth in the heart of happy Uganda of a petty white community, with the harsh and selfish ideas which mark the jealous contact of races and the exploitation of the weaker. Let it remain a “planters’ land.” Let the planters, instead of being the agents of excited syndicates with minds absorbed in the profits of shareholders thousands of miles away, be either Europeans of substance and character who have given proofs of their knowledge of natives and their ability to deal skilfully and justly with them, or better still—say I—let them be the disinterested officers of the Government, directing the development of the country neither in their own, nor any other pecuniary interest, but for the general good of its people and of the Empire of which it forms a part.
Such words in 1908 must have struck some of Churchill’s contemporaries as revolutionary. But as Dr. Larry Arnn has said, most great leaders have been rebels.
Churchill’s defenders should stop using the empty excuse that he was “just a man of his time.” He was far more than that. Examples of his belief in equal rights range from age 25 to 80. The paucity of racial epithets in his own speech meshes with that belief. Rather than excoriate him as a racist, we should praise Churchill for resisting the tides of a less tolerant era with eloquence and courage.
So that was a look at Winston Churchill that I am assuming is an accurate one, although far from complete most certainly. I do wish that his brand of what I label as true conservatism would quickly permeate within Trump world, but that is probably only from a guy with much fear hoping for the impossible. I will end with a pseudo-sonnet trying to clumsily wrap it all up in a package.
Our Nation Has Lost Its Epoxy Glue
Winston Churchill - man to appear in these times,
Far from perfect but infinity much better,
Are we destined to become a nation of bedwetters,
A nation which may become one of more high level crimes,
Our slippery mountain is defying our safe climbs,
Of Trump with the IQ of an Irish setter,
Of true conservatism in all its forgetters,
Of a future of fear - a nation of mimes.
Optimism I try to always, always gain,
But it’s nearly impossible to really do,
Our nation has lost its epoxy glue,
Sunshine overshadowed by torrential rain,
Okay knock it off Curry you’re bringing us down,
But on many a face there is only a twisted frown.
“So that’s the way it is”. At least in so as much as I can relay with all my 68 year old faculties. Pining about one’s past is about all one is capable of in these times. Of a father screaming at the TV when Ronald Reagan was wooing the masses. Winston Churchill was probably the best one could expect from conservatism. Today we are seeing only the worst. Thanks for reading.
195th Posting, July 17, 2024.