Winston Churchill

16. Mahoney, Statesman as Thinker (13 August 2022)

by kurto

Holds up Cicero, Burke, Lincoln, Tocqueville, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Havel as exemplary statesmen, demonstrating excellence of vision and execution through contemporary turbulence. Courage, moderation (temperance and prudence), and magnamity (greatness of soul, according to classic or Christian ideals) in pursuit of justice are the essential attributes of those who would command practical reason in service of ordered liberty. Aristotle’s is the classic statement of a gentlemen-statesman, the opposite of Weber’s charismatic leader. Modern political thought and social science cannot discern the requisite qualities, believing in a false realism: in ascribing every action to naked power, the ability to assess motivation is forfeit and consequently to distinguish the statesman from the tyrant. The study of humanity includes legitimate uses of authority, Aron observed: Napoleon’s tyranny demonstrates greatness unchained from humility. The unbounded will seeks to reshape nature and society, but energy without wisdom is of little use.

Cicero: contending with Caesar, the Roman served as prototype in exemplifying foresight via reflection not ambition or will.

Burke: Reason is to be tested against practical modifications; theory alone will fail: prudence needs principle as much as principle prudence. ‘Ingratitude is the first of revolutionary virtues’ (p. 40)

Tocqueville: a deterministic fatalism (‘democratic history’) cannot illustrate the role of greats in history.

Churchill: Berlin’s Mr. Churchill in 1940 is the consummate statement.

De Gaulle: depreciated ‘Nietzschean disdain’ for the limits of human experience, common sense, law, seeing instead the need for balance, what is possible, and mesure. The Maginot line was morally corrupt – effete. Where Aristotle’s magnamity countenances hauteur, de Gaulle’s great man was Christian.

Havel: the Czech’s genius was to identify and surmount the ideological traits of post-totalitarian (post Leninist-Stalinist) regime, no longer dependent on mass violence yet still repressive.

Reagan and Thatcher receive honorable mentions as conviction politicians.

2. Jenkins, Churchill (24 Jan 2023)

by kurto

Churchill was the greatest of Britain’s prime ministers, surmounting Gladstone and Lloyd George, despite substantial personal foibles.
More concerned with policy and (often social) legislation, government machinations (especially Parliamentary doings), and society doings and gossip than Roberts, Jenkins more fully portrays why you would dislike the aristocratic thruster. In seeking to show Churchill was out of step, however, he too often falls back on ‘the sense of the house’. He contends, against Roberts and unconvincingly, Churchill was a proto-Europeanist. Often he is more the reproving politician than a historian.
Churchill had the gift of insolence – memorably amusing, performing without fear. His many talents first evident as a junior officer in India, though Jenkins seems unduly critical of the autodidact making up for lost school time.
Upon crossing to the Liberal Party, Churchill was naturally inclined to imperialists Asquith, Grey, and Haldane but personally closer to the Little Englanders. Curiously, he trumpeted his father’s unionism though himself soon to oppose the Curragh mutiny and favor updated Home Rule. He accepted a role junior to Lloyd George, the pair of whom cast aside the Gladstonian tradition of embracing libertarian political issues (and ignoring social matters) in favor of ‘constructive radicalism. ‘[Lloyd George and Churchill] were the two British politicians of genius, using the word in the sense of exceptional and original powers transcending purely rational measurement, in the first half of the twentieth century. As a result they were the two outstanding prime ministers, although in terms of solid (peacetime) achievement Asquith runs at least equal, rather as Peel did with Gladstone and Disraeli in the Victorian age. Churchill was substantially the greater man both because of the wider range outside politics of his interests and accomplishments and because his central achievement in 1940 and 1941 was of a higher order than Lloyd George’s in 117 and 1918, brought off against heavier odds, and still more vital to the future of the world. Furthermore, on issues and people, he had more fixity of purpose and coherence of belief than did Lloyd George: ore principle and less opportunism would be another way of putting it. Yet Lloyd George was undoubtedly strung in a number of significant qualifies than was Churchill, and one, and perhaps the most remarkable of his strengths was the could long exercise and almost effortless authority Churchill.’ (p. 144)
Though in 1911 he had left the Board of Trade, passed through the Home Office, and already spent two months as First Lord of the Admiralty, National Insurance was very much Churchill’s, the details being fully worked out while there. Labour Exchange Boards and enforcement of sweated labor provisions were also to his credit. Unlike most ministers, Churchill drafted his own minutes – and sent them before queries could be lodged.
1919-20 was the least impressive phase of Churchill’s career. He himself considered the Conservative abandonment of unionist Ireland as the most dramatic u-turn in modern history, though it was Lloyd George’s decision and treaty. Churchill and Bonar Law had the least natural rapport of any two major UK politicians to 1950. Baldwin’s failed bid for a protectionist mandate catalyzed Labour’s rise; on Macdonald’s 1924 accession, Churchill had to go back to the Tories as the Liberals were clearly finished.
Churchill was right to return to the gold standard: the establishment’s ‘superior wisdom;’ bested rational argument and instinct. Save that the move turned out poorly!
Marlborough evinces Churchill’s dispute with Macaulay: he won but not without the Victorian’s scoring points. The principal reason Churchill wanted to retain India was economic, as rivals were catching up the UK. Opposing independence is presented in terms of Parliamentary machinations, not political thought: he was on the losing side so he must have been wrong. Too bad – a Labour historian in the 2000s could have taken an honest look at imperialism; no one could now do so.
Churchill’s vindicated wilderness years are qualified in ‘yes but’ chapter 25. Again he falls back on sense-of-the-house explications, without treating Churchill’s stated position. Only war could have brought him back, the author says. His opposition to Soviet communism, commencing in the 1930s and continuing during wartime, is shortchanged. Eden is given credit for wartime diplomatic successes.
The Norway inquest of May 1940 was the most dramatic, far-reaching Parliamentary debate of the 20th century. Almost everyone of note participated. Its rivals are the Don Pacifico affair of 1850, which proved of little consequence; 1831’s first Reform Bill, when the doomed rotten boroughs were named; and 1886’s first Home Rule bill. In this passage, the author’s deep personal experience shines through – elsewhere he is too eager to display his bona fides, as when Atlee received a telegram at Jenkins’ wedding (p. 776) – but the author says there is no doubt Halifax would not take the job, contra Roberts. Churchill was the right man for the nadir of 1940-41 by dint of his courage and self-confidence. His connection with Montgomery reflects both being ‘light casualty’ tacticians; his rapport with Roosevelt was never so deep as often considered. In nearing war’s end, Churchill felt sidelined. (NB: of all the Europeans, Poland least reveres Churchill for acceding to Stalin’s demands for Moscow-based Polish exiles.)
Churchill’s partisanship in opposition bears little relations to an ‘essentially moderate’ term in office over 1951-55. Accepting that Labour legislation was a ‘considerable success’, he played a ‘constructive role’, for the clock could not go back to the 1930s. He missed his chance to bring the UK into Europe because Eden was cool on the matter, Eden acting as a kind of junior PM. Jenkins essentially holds the UK should have abandoned its residual imperial interests to join the Steel and Coal pact. It would have been better had Churchill retired in 1953, that Eden’s didn’t move because of illness and Butler lacked ruthlessness.
For Churchill, duty’s most powerful ally was the desire to be at the center of events. He drew energy from constant change of scene and pattern. He returns again and again to alleged chronic depression, again contra Roberts.
Quotes:
‘Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. (P. 132)
‘Oligarchies were seldom destroyed and more frequently committed suicide’ (p. 165)
Clementine: ‘To be great one’s actions must be understood by simple people’ (p. 302)
Jenkins on democratic centralism: ‘All successful political meetings give both audience and the speaker a simultaneous sense of influencing events, with a residue of inspiration but not actually challenging the currents of politics. Whereas constituency militants are ‘almost inevitably a force against sense and statesmanship … The difficulty of sustaining enthusiasm without giving militants excessive power has been one of the perennial problems of democratic government’ (p. 531)

1. Roberts, Churchill (12 Jan 2023)

by kurto

Churchill, the first to spot the enormity of Nazism and Communism, was a restless, forward-thinking leader who learned from his mistakes (e.g., Dardanelles, Tonypandy, the gold standard) and triumphed in the end, preserving liberty in the 20th-century west and therefore the world. A fox not a hedgehog, he was a Burkean prejudiced on behalf of England and English-speaking peoples. ‘Man is spirit’, he said on resigning the premiership in 1955, meaning the possibility of success owes to willpower and hard work.
Though possessing a famous name, aristocratic schooling (beloved of the view that men make history) and excellent military training, Churchill felt he hadn’t long to make his mark – ironic given his late success. Also until late, he hadn’t outlived his reputation as a thruster. ‘No boy or girl should every be disheartened by lack of success in their youth, but should diligently and faithfully continue to persevere and make up for lost time.’
As a 20-something junior officer in the Sudan, Churchill confronted extremist sociopolitics. MacDonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain, appeasers all, never had; nor did they fight in World War I.
Imperialism, a civilizing mission, fit comfortably with reformism. Scandalized by treatment of the defeated Boers and opposing Balfour’s resistance to tariff reform, in the 1900s was he spoiled for a fight with the Tories, and readily crossed to the Liberals. On the 1910 passing of Edward VII, the consensual Tory Democrat in Churchill proposed a coalition government might reform Lords; implement Home Rule; introduce compulsory National Insurance, military service, and land reform.
Proposing in 1912 that the naval budget take a ship-building holiday if the opposition collaborated, Churchill was dismissed by the Germans as a warmonger; if he had died before 1939, his primary legacy would have been modernizing the navy in time for World War I. Obstinacy was a liability during the Dardanelles campaign (but invaluable in World War II). He learned to accede to unanimous military chiefs, and to form them into a coordinated conference subordinate to politicians. He was returned to Lloyd George’s cabinet because of his public voice, that is, his ability to mold and magnify public opinion.
From 1898 to 1939, he made some 1,700 speeches (traveling 80,000+ miles), far more than any other first-rank politician, and was therefore very good at judging an audience. Churchill recounted that he articulated British pride, but rather he inspired it. His wartime speechifying was prefigured in an 19th-century essay entitled the ‘Scaffolding of Rhetoric’: well-chosen words, carefully crafted sentences, accumulated argument, use of analogy, and deployment of extravagance. He often spoke of freedom, drawing on history, Magna Carta and the common law; and not much of Locke, Hume, or Mill. In the Commons, he mastered great flights of oratory with ‘sudden swoops of the intimate and conversational’.
Churchill’s biography of his father was invalid, more a posthumous exercise in justification and self-instruction. Whereas the 1933-38 publication of Marlborough’s biography marked the apex of his political education. As writing history was his professional and a corollary to governing (to making it), he possessed detachment from power which most professionals lack. His political models also included Pitt the younger and DLG, but Clemenceau was most a propos.
By his own sights, returning to the gold standard was his biggest mistake, a lesson in trusting unanimous experts against inner doubts. Other examples include Boer War strategy and World War I convoys. It was the source of his unyielding opposition to appeasement. In the same decade, while Chancellor, he was hostile to the rising United States, and converted to belief in the need for a larger navy.
Antipathy to Indian independence stemmed from his belief in civic mission, without which imperialism was simply dominance. He saw England as responsible for ending suttee, the ostracization of untouchables, and so on. This – not his opposition to appeasement – triggered his years in the wilderness. ‘Every prophet has to come from Civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then must serve periods of isolation and meditation. That is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.’ (p.351). But anti-communism blurred his judgment regarding Italy and Japan.
The Other Club established and maintained personal relations which exceeded partisanship: the UK’s ruling class was united as was no other power, and more than 20 served in wartime government. This the positive side of Foucault’s slippery power.
Contemporaneous accounts of Churchill’s assuming the premiership portray his grasping the prize from a vacillating Halifax – save for his own tellings. Described (on p. 616) as a coup, the entire establishment would have plumped for his more dignified rival. Up through 1942, it tolerated him for lack of a better alternative, and because of his public popularity (which hovered in the high 80s and low 90s to April 1945); it did not accept the losses thereto resulted from is failure to re-arm and appeasement. But, in addition to forecasting the totalitarians’ rise, he correctly predicted the course of the war (forecasting its end in 1944): defeat of Japan would not lead to defeat of Germany, but the converse applied.
The French army’s demoralization was the most dismaying of inherited problems, and his decision not to commit British air force to the French was among the most significant he made. Signing on to the Atlantic charter, especially the anti-imperial article 3, indicated his commitment to good relations with the US and Roosevelt (at least since the 1920s, he had favored Democrats); but his relationship with Marshall was problematic. He left a trail of criticism – later exercised from his memoirs – critical of Overlord (Normandy invasion) because of his previous amphibious failures. (Brooke was similarly critical of Churchill, forgetting the latter had championed buildup campaigns in Africa and Italy). After landing, he was (not consciously) sidelined by Eisenhower, who did not need the help of a politician-cum-2d Marlborough. (NB: the ‘second front’ indicates Soviet propaganda, for the UK was already fighting on 5 (France, Britain’s skies, the Atlantic Ocean, North Africa, and the Mediterranean). (NB: He acted swiftly to protect the Greeks from communist guerillas.)
In fall 1944, he decided against a khaki election that would he have won, but subsequent defeat was a blessing in disguise. India, de-colonization, financial austerity, retreat from the sterling area were not to his forte, as he himself recognized. Opposition allowed him to campaign against Soviet aggression. His later foreign policy objectives were the Commonwealth, the English-speaking peoples, and Europe. But England could not be subordinate to federal Europe (p. 926 – Jenkins et al are wrong on the point.) Roberts describes imperialism as evil rather than mistaken, perhaps the strongest of his not-infrequent condemnations. Simultaneously, having read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, Churchill began championing ‘property-owning democracy’, a late-life replacement for Tory paternalism (which became a party staple through Thatcher).
Quotes:
‘History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations: but with this shield, however the fate may play, we march always in the ranks of honour. (p. 617)
‘…When nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just they are often np longer strong.’ (p. 399)
‘Expert knowledge, however indispensable, is no substitute for a generous and comprehending outlook upon the human story, with all its sadness and with all its unquenchable hope’. (p. 893)

25. Menzies, Afternoon Light (10 Dec 2022)

by kurto

Essays in postwar government by Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, showing a pragmatic, legalistic bent. The politician ought neither trust in emotion nor be a cynic, but demonstrate pragmatism. Menzies sketches leading contemporaries, notably Churchill and Queen Elizabeth as well as his predecessors. In portraying diplomatic efforts to persuade Nasser to negotiate over the Suez Canal, the author asserts Eisenhower undermined efforts. The Australian and American constitutions are compared, the latter charter being more subject to political considerations, and the relationship of Australian government to the British metropole considered. Menzies criticizes the Commonwealth’s automatic admission of newly formed republics as well as treatment of South Africa and Rhodesia. The object of Commonwealth meetings is not to issue resolutions but to exchange ideas.

19. Johnson, Churchill (21 Oct 2015)

by kurto

A brisk treatment of the 20th century’s greatest statesman, written with Johnson’s characteristic flair. In a most interesting passage, the author assets five conclusions we can draw from Churchill’s life: 1) always aim high, 2) there is no substitute for hard work, 3) mistakes shall not get you down, 4) don’t waste time on low, mean thoughts, and 5) be joyful.

On pursuing the low but solid

by kurto

Larry Arnn on Churchill’s conclusions of the Anglo-Sudanese River War, and foreseeable consequences beyond:

In reaction to this gruesome spectacle, Churchill understood something that he remembered and developed the rest of his life. War, he saw, was becoming a “matter of machinery.” Soon he speculated on the disaster of two such armies meeting. Soon he predicted the cataclysms of any general war in Europe of this new and mechanized type. Soon he expanded this thesis to explain the movements of domestic politics that marked the twentieth century and now the twenty-first. Tyranny has given way to totalitarianism, more comprehensive, cruel, and sustained. Politics has given way to the administrative state. War has given way to total war. As men make things bigger, they become themselves smaller, dominated by the science they have discovered and the machines they have made.

Take Me to the River

3. Millard, Hero of the Empire (19 Jan 2018)

by kurto

Narrates Winston Churchill’s Boer War capture and escape, which launched the immodestly ambitious young man into his Parliamentary career. Following an election loss, Churchill secured a journalism commission but acted as a (very brave) combatant during a Natal reconnaissance mission. Held in Pretoria, his escape from the Transvaal countryside turned on the good fortune of seeking help from an English-born mining manager and smuggled transport in the rail car of a compatriot wool exporter. Although generalizations weigh down the outset, the main tale is well told and the book holds some insight into Churchill’s personality. However, the attempt to connect every thread is too ambitious – and Jan Smuts is left out!

4. Keegan, Winston Churchill (23 March 2022)

by kurto

Sketches the life of Britain’s foremost 20th-century statesman, whose wartime leadership merely punctuated his vision and achievements as a journalist and in office. Despite little formal schooling, Churchill mastered English rhetoric and consequently a romantic telling of British history, centering on a patriotism borne of personal freedom, the sanctity of (common law) justice, and limited government. Such principles colored his political leadership. A solder and student of warfare, he never forgot its consequences for the common man. An aristocrat who held to Tory democracy, he is little appreciated for championing the early welfare state (Lloyd George wrongly getting the credit for the People’s Budget). An imperialist, he sympathized with the Boers and Michael Collins’ Ireland but not Gandhi’s India – for the latter did not lead a warrior caste. In the 1930s, Gallipoli, opposition to Indian self-rule and support for Edward VIII, and obnoxious habits kept him from office and influence. Yet rightly seeing the perils of airborne war and Nazi Germany, he set the agenda for World War II and the subsequently the anti-communist Cold War.

11. Clarke, Mr. Churchill’s Profession (26 Jun 2021)

by kurto

Narrates the interplay of Winston Churchill’s profession as amateur historian and Parliament pursuits, focusing on the writing of the History of English–speaking Peoples (HESP). Taking to journalism and authorship as cheaper than the military and yet sufficient to finance his aristocratic lifestyle, Churchill sought for fame to improve his negotiating power. At the outset, he was unconcerned with scholarly treatment of Anglo-Saxons contra Normans and the broader questions English-speaking nationalities, favoring family biographies or expected best-sellers. He composed all of his material; his stylistic influences Gibbon, Johnson, Burke, and Macaulay (ironic in the latter’s opposition to the Duke of Marlborough); but he belonged to no historiographic school. One effect of writing of his father’s biography was to persuade himself of abandoning the family Tory connection. In the interwar cabinet, moreover, he was anti-American. Out of office, he turned to HESP but often took on interim projects for revenue. Clarke recurs to the peculiarities of contemporary taxation and Churchill’s accounting. HESP was largely written, with the assistance of a committee of professionals, in 1938-39, save for volume 4 (which treats of the white dominions), completed in the 1950s. Yet its themes were manifest in wartime rhetoric: men who fight tyranny and barbarism deserve history’s plaudits; freedom and law, individual rights, and the subordination of government to society are the characteristic qualifies of English-speaking nationalities. HESP’s judgements often reveal Churchill’s contemporary politics: Clarke accuses Churchill of Whiggish history, not considering the conservative statemen’s preference for tradition. But he is diligent enough to quote Isaiah Berlin: ‘the single, central, organizing principle of his moral and intellectual universe’ was ‘an historical imagination so strong, so comprehensive, as to encase the whole of the present and the whole of the future in a framework of a rich and multi-coloured past’. (See Mr Churchill in 1940.) Chatham is Churchill’s hero; Clarke wonders why the dictatorial Cromwell doesn’t get the same adulation?! There is a persistent tone of professional jealously, and little recognition of Churchill’s statesmanship.