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Tuesday, October 1, 2002
12:12 a.m.
Winston Churchill - first the neocons' fantasies, now the pinkos'
As a man who 'contain[ed] multitudes', Churchill would find neither surprising nor shameful the travestying of his opinions and actions for current political gain.
In the recent past, the highly selective and imaginative interpretations have tended to come from the War Party, the anti-appeaser of 1938 and Bulldog of 1940 standing for the unconditional, monomaniacal desire for war against Saddam (and resistance to the 'quislings' - from Colin Powell leftwards - who presume to enter caveats or ask questions) - I've dealt previously with their manipulation of history here, here and here.
[They flatly ignore, for example, the fact that it was Churchill, as a Chancellor of the Exchequer characterised by beliefs not so much pre-Keynesian as pig-ignorant, who decided in 1928 that the Ten Year Rule - that Britain's defence budget would assume no UK involvement in a great war for the next ten years - should be rolled over every year.]
Piqued, no doubt, by all this adulation towards a pet villain of theirs, what passes for the Left seems to be fighting back with Churchill fantasies of their own. (For the benefit of the curious, I should point out that the author is, I'm fairly certain, a gentleman of colour.)
Of course, as with all this sort of 'history lesson', Anachronism Rules OK.
So, for example
As president of the air council in 1919, he wrote: "I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes."
The essential context is that, in the Great War ended just a year before, the UK used poison gas on the Western Front against the Germans. To invite, without supplying that context, readers to judge the statement by the present-day horror of gas (fostered by endless Eng Lit lessons in school reading Wilfred Owen and his pals) is not a little mendacious (and therefore good journalism, no doubt).
Again, he trots out the old
half-naked fakir
gag. As I have pointed out before, Churchill was making the very opposite point to that which is assumed - that Gandhi was an upper-middle class professional man play-acting as a pauper mystic.
Not content with his manipulations of British history, he goes on to suggest that
....it is unlikely Russians would put [Stalin] at the top of their 100 greatest.
Really? Evidence? I'd be surprised if the Russians aren't able to 'compartmentalise' (in the Clinton sense) on Uncle Joe (victor in the Patriotic War) quite as much folk from right and left seem happy to do with Churchill.
Is there polling data on the point? I think we should be told.
Then he widens the muzzle of his blunderbuss even further (if that be possible) to include
.....Sir Henry Havelock, who distinguished himself by leading the massacre of thousands of Indians....
An Eichmann before his time? Scarcely - Havelock was one of those generals responsible for resisting and putting down the Indian Mutiny in 1857. Doubtless, kid gloves were dispensed with on account of the Cawnpore Massacre of women and children by the mutineers. Neither side was exactly following the Geneva Convention for the very good reason that there was none.
[1857 was also the year of, inter alia, the Dred Scott decision in the US Supreme Court, practically an encomium in honour of the Slavepower - autres temps, autres moeurs all over the place, in fact.]
And he drags in that more recent icon of history-as-fantasy, Rosa Parks who (contrary to the image sedulously created by those with a political axe to grind) was so very far from being
- the first Negro to sit 'in the front of the bus' as a protest;
- the cause of the first anti-segregation bus boycott; or
- an ordinary citizen who made a spur of the moment decision to rebel
as to bring into question the good faith of those image-makers.
The moral of the story is, as ever, caveat lector; History is Bunk in at least one other sense than that intended by Henry Ford.
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