CKNW Editorial
for December 23, 1999

More and more people and papers are calling for Winston Churchill to be the man of the 20^th Century. Even though there is a year to go in the century, I doubt if there will be any more candidates because of the year 2000 passing. Winston Churchill let it therefore be.

It will not surprise listeners to learn that I agree with that assessment. If Churchill did nothing else he saved the world in the summer of 1940. What I am surprised at, however, is how so many writers and commentators are acting as if Churchill would have passed unnoticed were it not for his superb courage in 1940. It is said and far too often unchallenged that he was a failure other than his wartime heroism.

Churchill was in public life for nearly 60 years and, being in the power structure or in the first line of attack upon that structure for the entire time unquestionably he made mistakes and from time to time failed. But in order to appreciate the impact of Churchill’s life it’s worth considering that his official biography runs to 8 volumes of approximately 1000 pages per volume and only 2 of those volumes are devoted to the Second World War.

Let us suppose Churchill had died in May 1940 instead of assuming the role of last defender against the Nazis, what would the obituaries have noted.

In no particular order, let’s deal with them.

He was a writer and journalist of considerable note winning the Nobel Prize for literature (admittedly his wartime memoirs) but more than that wrote a history of World War I, a superb biography of his ancestor the first Duke of Marlborough and a three volume History of the English Speaking Peoples. He wrote over 40 books including a novel.

He was, in his day, by far the highest paid journalist in Britain.

He was a warrior having served with Kitchener at the last great cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman and was as much a fighter as journalist in the Boer War, being captured, and having escaped with a price on his head. He also served on the Indian border and covered the Cuba revolution for the Morning Post. He served in the trenches as a colonel in World War I. He was a man of unflinching personal courage.

Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty at the beginning of both wars and in the first was credited with having the navy on oil, not coal and with having the Navy on full alert and at sea when War was declared.

Churchill would have been noted as a great reformer. As Home Secretary it was he who got rid of the Dickensian penal system and modernized it. He and David Lloyd George were, under the Asquith government in the early 1900s, the true authors of the Welfare state. He was seen by his friends as an enemy of his class because he believed so strongly in social welfare including workers insurance and decent pensions.

Churchill would have been remembered as a great free trader and enemy of the protectionists led by Joseph Chamberlain and it was this free trade which led to the prosperity that led up to World War I.

He would, of course, be remembered as the author of the failed Gallipoli endeavor in World War I but most historians are agreed that the failure was in the execution of a good scheme, an execution in which Churchill’s wishes were denied.

The there is Churchill the painter and he was excellent, winning a prize from the Royal Academy for an anonymous painting.

He was wrong on India but not entirely wrong. While he was an imperialist he also foretold with chilling accuracy the partition of the sub continent and the hundreds of thousands of deaths which would accompany independence.

I suppose, though, what Churchill would most have been remembered for, had he died in May of 1940 was his warning, starting even before Hitler took power, of what was to come. Again he foretold events with astonishing accuracy. His speech in the House of Commons on the Munich Agreement – which was accepted by all but a handful of MPs and most people and newspapers as a great deliverance – was a masterpiece of courage and deadly accurate clairvoyance.

Yes, Churchill’s courage when most around him were for a groveling peace is what makes his the man of the century. But if the rest of his life was that of a failure the world could use a lot more failures like him.