Abaleful silence attends one of the most talked-about figures in British history. You may enthuse endlessly about Winston Churchill “single-handedly” defeating Hitler. But mention his views on race or his colonial policies, and you’ll be instantly drowned in ferocious and orchestrated vitriol.
Err, the general view – absent his grandson, Nicholas Soames – is that he was a man of his times. Or even, held views which even in them were more than a little archaic. Possibly not archaic enough for British India would almost certainly have been vastly better if the Memsahibs, the Fishing Fleet, had never been able to turn up and the Company Men had remained with their concubines.
But silence isn’t the right word to describe it all.
He played a massive part in saving Britain and defeating national SOCIALISM but because he had views that modern socialist shite pretend not to like he is evil on legs.
While those same socialist scum ignore the 150 million human beings butchered by the vile cult they endorse and come over sanctimonious on a daily basis.
The creature who wrote that Gladrag garbage needs a one way ticket back to the place she came from–even if she didn’t come from there. She’d be much happier away from wicked whitey.
How many books about Churchill have already appeared this century? 36 were written between his death in 1965 and 200. I would imagine that at least a dozen more have come along since, plus TV programmes and films. I read the article because the great gawd Spud endorsed it and could only wonder what stone she has been living under. I also asked Spud for his views on Churchill urging the creation of a Council of Europe and the Human Rights Convention. No answer is yet forthcoming. These mental midgets only ever allude to the Bengal famine – in the midst of that trivial problem WW2 – or things he is alleged to have said about Mesopotamia. So waycist!
If you allude to the views of Gopal, or the other ‘people of colour’ mentioned, especially their views on race and the immorality of people of colour NOT having already colonised the UK, you’ll certainly be drowned in ferocious and orchestrated vitriol.
It would be fair to say their views are very close indeed to those of Hitler. In fact I’d argue that National Socialism is the predominant political philosophy of the times. It’s just that it’s the white race that is the Untermensch.
tl;dr: Foreigner upset that Churchill told the truth about foreigners….
If the estimable Ms. Gopal is upset with White people, she can always self-deport.
Sidney Webb was a eugenicist, and Secretary of State for the Colonies. Maybe she should bring this to the attention of the Left…
I don’t actually think anyone has ever said that ‘Winston Churchill “single-handedly” defeat[ed] Hitler’.
This woman is a stain on our national life. I also think that she’s ushering in tyranny, though I don’t think she will like it very much when it arrives.
But mention his views on race or his colonial policies, and you’ll be instantly drowned in ferocious and orchestrated vitriol.
Eh? Churchill and Gandhi were right about race.
Ms Gopal certainly knows a thing or two about ferocious and orchestrated vitriol.
He was spot on about Islam:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
Churchill wasn’t a big fan of the Indians and if you judged them by bitter spoiled brat Gopal, you wouldn’t blame him.
For all the pearl-clutching about the evils of the Raj, Indians did more damage to each other in the first months of independence than Britain managed to do to them in the previous two hundred years.
I notice that Partition is now squarely blamed on Britain and this used to annoy me. Now however I reckon we ought to take the credit for it. Imagine the slaughter if the Muslim states hadn’t been able to separate!
Why is this silly woman in the Faculty of English when most of her burbling is about postcolonial politics and she hates the English anyway?
Well MC, perhaps we could also take the credit for giving the Jews a National Home.
Though I’m more inclined to give the credit to the rulers of the Ottoman empire. If they’d had the good sense to keep out of WW1, they’d now be the mightiest oil power of them all.
And needless to say, the woke would be howling to high heaven that we hadn’t long since freed the poor old Palestinians from the terrible yoke of the Turks.
Not really Bb, the Ottoman Empire would have collapsed in on itself a long time ago. It is just a question of when (1920s? 1930s?) and how the dominoes would have gathered after their fall.
The super-states that were built, such as Iraq, would have split into their constituent provinces ( eg Mosul, Baghdad and Basra) and the oil-greedy colonialists (not forgetting the Russians) would have muscled in and created puppet governments (the campaign in Mesopotamia in 1915 was initially driven by the Indian government) . The Ottomans held out until 1918 thanks to German weapons and expertise, but once the Allies decided to allocate real resources to the fight their middle-east empire’s fate was sealed.
One of the better things The Tel has been doing lately is continuing carrying stories from 100 years ago, even after the Great War ended. One had an account of a proposed dismembering of Ottoman Turkey that would have resulted in the USA owning Istanbul and a chunk of Anatolia. Obvs it didn’t happen. Did the Senate vote against? Did Ataturk put a stop to it? Anyone?
Dearieme, from Robert Gerwarth’s book “The Vanquished”, it looks as if Ataturk was waging war with a Greek army, which was encouraged by Lloyd George, in early 1921 in western Anatolia after a failed negotiation at the London Conference. Perhaps it was a proposal that the Turks rejected. He does not mention USA getting any territory
The standard claim that Churchill was in some way responsible for the Bengal famine that resulted from the Japanese invasion and occupation of Burma where the rice was grown.
Why? Because he was determined to fight Hitler. Presumably if he had surrendered the Japanese would not have invaded Malaya and Burma after Pearl Harbour …
Instead, they would have installed Gandhi as a puppet ruler on the lines of those in Manchuria and Korea and Ms Gopal would now be writing in Japanese for her village newspaper.
The original treaty with the Turks ( Sevres) was nullified by the Treaty of Lausanne. Ataturk was in a much stronger position after the defeat of the Greeks and the fall of Lloyd George.
Sevres split Turkey into zones of occupation, Italy, Greece, UK and France all being allocated areas. The USA was allotted Armenia as its occupation zone, but Congress refused to ratify the treaty.
Dear Mr Worstall
Does this mean they are running out of live white men to vilify, that they are digging up old ones?
DP
The Treaty of Sèvres was never agreed by Turkey. Ataturk kept fighting. So the fact that the US Senate did not ratify it is moot
it needs close reading. Anatolia and Armenia are not very closely linked
“it needs close reading. Anatolia and Armenia are not very closely linked”: nor are Constantinople and Armenia. I must see if I can find the Telegraph story.
Well yes, Diogenes, but Ataturk had to win the war against Greece first. One of the factors that led to Lloyd George’s downfall was the refusal of the British Army to become involved in the Turkish Greek War.
Multinational occupation forces in Constantinople, Smyrna etc involved US troops initially.
Fun pub quiz league fact: Armenia was the first nation to declare its Christian.
I’m fine with someone writing a biography of someone that uncovers a fuller picture of a man or woman, dark bits included. Hagiography is interesting too, mind. Delightful how they ignore or package or gloss over deep flaws as foibles, pecadilloes.. But what’s the opposite of hagiography – demonology? That’s a little tiresome.
Ottokring, this whole episode is very badly handled in English language sources. Did the US ever get compensation for their military outlays after their Senate rejected the mandate over Armenia?
That level of detail on matters Turkish I don’t know. I very much doubt it, these costs were all lost in the general wash.
In North Russia, for instance, the USA provided troops, specifically because they wanted to reclaim the millions of dollars worth of supplies that were strandedby the revolution at Murmansk and Archangel.
BTW, i liked Gerwarth’s book, I drone on endlessly that the Great War didn’t end with the Armistice, or even the Paris treaties, kept on going until 1923.
Agreed. Somehow the total chaos, destruction and mayhem in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor while the great and good debated stuff in Versailles and surrounding palaces is little known to British historians
Found! The USA was offered Constantinople and “a large tract of territory running from the Gulf of Alexandretta … to Trebizond on the Black Sea.” So, eastern Anatolia.
Is that the last time that the US spurned a chance for a bit of empire-building?
It would certainly have made things interesting in that part of the world
Right guys found it. It was rattling around in my head and I couldn’t remember what it was called:
The King Crane Report of August 1919.
In it these two appointees of Pres Wilson make suggestions of how the Mandate structure in the Middle East should be allocated. Not unsurprisingly they think that the USA is best suited to manage these mandates, including: Syria, Armenia and Constantinople. Their document formed the basis of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey in 1919.
https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_King-Crane_Report
What an amazing report! It does seem over-ambitious in its conclusions, though. It is curious that the USA has, in practice, come to appear to be the guarantor of Israel and the Arab states, and maybe Turkey to an extent.