Tuesday 22 June 2010

Battles long ago


People mindful of Winston Churchill’s later reputation might be surprised to learn that he was not a figure who inspired a great deal of confidence within the Conservative Party in the 1930s. He was not, if I can put in these terms, 'one of us', having a reputation of changing parties to suit his mood, which meant that his power base was relatively weak. More than that, he had a reputation of being a maverick and a lover of unorthodox schemes; a man whose judgment was not entirely 'sound'.

Even his skill as a speaker could not make up for the lack of confidence in him, widely shared among the Parliamentary Party. His rhetoric, often of a 'maximalist' nature, full of exaggeration and alarm, only served to increase the distrust in which he was held. For example, in March 1933 Herbert Samuel observed;

Churchill makes many brilliant speeches on all subjects, but that is no reason why we should necessarily accept his political judgment. On the contrary, the brilliance of his speeches only makes the errors of his judgment the more conspicuous...I feel inclined to say of him what Bagehot wrote of another very distinguished Parliamentarian [Disraeli]: 'His chaff is excellent, but the wheat is poor stuff.

It did not help his standing among his Parliamentary colleagues that he fell out with Stanley Baldwin, the Tory leader, over the issue of Dominion status for India. His hostility to any concession to the movement for Indian independence occupied his energies for a good bit of the early 1930s, just as his warnings over German rearmament were to do in the later part of the decade; and he dealt with both issues with equal degrees of rhetorical fire; equally unrestrained and equally alarmist. He dismissed the Indian Nationalist leaders as "evil and malignant Brahmins", with their "itching fingers stretching and scratching at the vast pillage of a derelict Empire." Striking Phrases, yes; but all this exaggeration and hyperbole over an Act that went nowhere near meeting the demands of Gandhi and the Congress Party. Quite frankly, by the time the Act was passed in 1935, people were bored with Churchill and his unrestrained alarmism.

So, given this background, it comes as no great surprise that when the siren started to call out over Germany he was largely ignored. On this greater issue people simply did not want to listen because few in the mid-1930s wished to entertain the possibility of another world war. Almost everyone- on the left and the right -wanted to reach some accommodation with Germany, to meet the country's just and reasonable demands, a policy later condemned by the label of appeasement. But at the time it was immensely popular.

Besides, Churchill's warnings were not about the danger to peace offered by the growth of Fascism; they were, rather, a nationalist warning about the possible revival of German power, a quite different thing altogether.

You see, Churchill, in the shape of Cassandra, seemed not just unnecessarily alarmist but so terribly old-fashioned, representing the mindset of a different age. Leo Amery talked of him as a 'mid-Victorian', but I would go one step further, taking him right back to the eighteenth century, to the age of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, or William Pitt the Elder. As they saw France so Churchill saw Germany. It was this that people could not take seriously, especially when you consider his views on the aggressions perpetrated by Germany's present and future partners.

If Churchill’s warning about the new forms of imperialist aggression had been comprehensive they might have commanded greater moral authority. But they were not. He effectively condoned Japanese aggression in Manchuria; he approved of Mussolini, and his view of Italian aggression in Abyssinia was far from heroic. His position on these issues served to divorce him from those who were beginning to see in the world situation a clash not of power, but of ideologies. This was something beyond Churchill's comprehension, allowing him to praise Mussolini as a 'great man' as late as October 1937, by which time he and Hitler had created the Axis.

So, given all this, it is really no great surprise he was not taken seriously. In the end history proved him to be right in one respect at least; and that is really only because Hitler decided to wear the wig of Louis XIV.

16 comments:

  1. Oh and by the way, on a blog I've done contrasting Powell to Heath in my place, I've a clip of Powell talking about voices in the wilderness...one of my favourites for obvious reasons.

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  4. Thanks, Adam. Argus has a hundred eyes, a suitably cryptic note upon which to take my leave. :-)

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  6. Ana, I agree with Adam in that Churchill's opinions had everything to do with what was best for Britain and its security.

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  7. "Ana, I agree with Adam in that Churchill's opinions had everything to do with what was best for Britain and its security."

    Yep.
    Germany was a threat, Italy wasnt, no one expected Japan to be, well, we expected Japan to keep America busy, we didnt expect them to attack us.

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  8. Thanks, Nobby and Dominic. Actually looking at Italy's position in the Med, and Japan's position in the Far East, both had the potential to be major strategic threats to the security of the Empire, more immediate, it might even be argued, than Germany prior to 1940. And that is my last word on the subject!

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  9. Italy alone wasnt a threat, we just had an overwhelming advantage. Its possible they could have grown into one, but their only space for expansion was the Balkans, Greece, and Africa, right through the middle from the top down.
    Which is why they were so willing to ally with Germany, its the only way they could have taken anyone elses Mediteranean coasts.
    Had France not buckled in a month, the French Navy with a dozen English Ships would have ran them ragged in a month or two.


    Japan, well, the Japanese were racialy inferior heathens who couldnt stand against a European Power. Quite how that position survived Japans repeated trouncing of Russia I'll never know, but it did.

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  10. Ana, There was ongoing tension at the time between America and Japan. America had placed an oil embargo on Japan although I might be wrong. Nevertheless, Churchill probably felt that Britain had a priority of concerns closer to home. Perhaps Italy would have been one these concerns if anyone had been convinced of an effective hostile Italian military.

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  11. Dominic, yes, not Italy alone but with British eyes on Germany the Italian fleet was strong enough to be a serious worry, or should have been, to any strategic planner, especially given the Imperial life-line through the Suez Canal.

    You might be interested to know that my grandfather served in the Far-East during the Second World War, latterly with the Fourteenth Army in India and Burma. Prior to that he had been in the Malay States when the Japanese invaded. That was the story he was given, that the Japanese were poor soldiers, all with bad eyesight.

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  12. Nobby, Singapore might be said to be the buckle on the belt holding the Empire together. Japanese expansion into China and to the vicinity of Hong Kong should have been a cause of concern.

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  15. Ana, Churchill thought Singapore well defended and never expected an attack through Malaysia as well as not expecting to here that no defences existed because the jungle was thought to be inpenetrable. But it was a buckle - if it was not for minds being centered on survival at home I am sure this Far East 'buckle' would not so easily have been undone.

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