Sunday, October 25, 2009

Would Churchill have supported the BNP?

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum." (1919 War Office memo)

"If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." [To Benito Mussolini in a press conference in Rome (January 1927), as quoted in Churchill : A Life (1992) by Martin Gilbert]

"One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations." ["Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)]

"We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation." ["Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)]

In 1937, Brigadier Packenham Walsh reported that 'Winston says at heart he is for Franco'.

Two years after the infamous Nuremberg Laws, in 1937, Churchill said that “he hoped Great Britain would have a man like Hitler in times of peril” (quoted in the Times obituary of Leni Riefenstahl, 11 September)

On Hitler's coming to power: 'The story of that struggle, cannot be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy conciliate or overcome, all the authority of resistances which barred his path', said Churchill. Asked about Germany's anti-Jewish laws in 1938, Churchill thought 'it was a hindrance and an irritation, but probably not an obstacle to a working agreement'.

Churchill saw the Soviet Union was a 'tyrannic government of these Jew Commisars', a 'worldwide communistic state under Jewish domination', 'the international Soviet of the Russian and Polish Jew', or just 'these Semitic conspirators'.

On race: Churchill said 'the Indians in East Africa are mainly of a very low class of coolies, and the idea that they should be put on an equality with the Europeans is revolting to every white man throughout British Africa'.

In February 1954, he told the cabinet 'the continuing increase in the number of coloured people coming to this country and their presence here would sooner or later come to be resented by large sections of the British people'.

And from the 'Churchill in perspective' article (Socialist Standard, March 1965):

"..It was he [Churchill] who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C....In 1927 he was "charmed,..., by Signor Mussolini's gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of many burdens and dangers."

By way of conclusion, from the same article:

"Churchill was a member of the British capitalist class and he served his class well. He maintained a constant anti-working class attitude throughout his life....In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit - religious, political, press and radio - have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in doing to pay homage to future leaders and the principle of leadership...Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences - not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, is it a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears. And it will remain so, until the same workers who are deluded into hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally."

Some of these statements and others by Churchill can be found here.

2 comments:

Darrell said...

As the Weekly Worker recently observed, Winston Churchill was too right-wing for the BNP who no longer tolerate open anti-semitism.

hallblithe said...

Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University, responded to the claim made in The Independent (http://tinyurl.com/ygt8xxe)that Churchill would belong to the BNP. More recently he took the opportunity to comment specifically on the contents of this SOYMB post:

"..I am grateful for the opportunity of expanding on my position.

Let me preface my remarks with a couple of observations:

(1) I did make the point in my response to The Independent, which they edited, that it is very problematic to do as Nick Griffin has tried to do and use Churchill out of his specific historical and political context. Churchill was a child of the Victorian era. He was a lifelong proponent of the British Empire, and a die hard opponent of communism (and socialism) from the Bolshevik revolution onwards. Yet he was also very liberal on many social issues, serving as a Liberal Minister in Asquith's pre war government and championing free trade, rudimentary unemployment insurance and prison reform. He was also a believer in the superiority and sovereignty of the British Parliamentary system. It is true that you cannot separate him from Victorian views on race and Empire, but he was more liberal than many of his contemporaries in how he interpreted these views, and had a strong, romantic view of history that led him to believe that Britain should be a tolerant society and a force for good in the world.

(2) With such a long political career, it is very easy to find quotations from Churchill to illustrate a whole range of contemporary view points and positions. These always need to be analysed within the context in which they were originally made.


Thus, while he preached non intervention in the Spanish Civil War, arguing that involvement was against British national interests, he would have favoured Franco over the Republican regime. Similarly, he initially saw Mussolini as a bulwark against communism. His comments about Hitler show that he was prepared to accept him as the leader of a revived Germany, while deploring his methods, but he juxtaposes this early praise for Hitler with warnings that the German dictator has the potential to plunge the whole of Europe into a new catastrophe. You can argue therefore that one of Churchill's great achievements was to see beyond Hitler's anti communism and to realise that he was the greater danger to the peace and stability of Europe. It was a leap that may of his contemporaries failed to make.

Churchill was a believer in nation states, and opposed to British interference in the internal workings of the other European powers. I am sure that he believed that British Parliamentary democracy was a better system than that being used in Italy, Germany or Russia, but that did not give us the right to interfere until those countries threatened our interests. In contrast, the Empire was our sphere of influence, and, while he was prepared to use force to maintain it, he also - rightly or wrongly - saw it as a vehicle for advancing the legal and political inheritance which he documented in his multi volume 'History of the English-Speaking Peoples'.

I see his actions as consistent with a Victorian paternalist, and as such I stand by my view that he would have had no place in the BNP."