Otto vs Details

Despite being a brave defender of the truth Otto English (né Andrew Scott) has some difficulty with basic details. The spelling of the Labour Party leader in 1945, for example

Fun fact: "Atlee's" name is actually spelled "Attlee".

Wiseacre

 In his Fake History, Otto English (né Andrew Scott) dismisses many of the books written about Churchill as full of “things [Churchill] never said”. He spends a good deal of his essay on Churchill debunking quotations and statements that have been misattributed to Churchill. This should be low-hanging fruit for English as there are plenty of quotations that have been misattributed to Churchill over the years. However even here English makes mistakes. Consider his take on what is arguably Churchill’s most famous retort.

In fact, we know Churchill made the “in the morning I will be sober” retort to Bessie Braddock because there was a witness.

Not original to Churchill, but world-famous and confirmed by Ronald Golding, a bodyguard present on the occasion, as WSC was leaving the House of Commons. Lady Soames, who said her father was always gallant to ladies, doubted the story – but Golding explained that WSC was not drunk, just tired and wobbly, which perhaps caused him to fire the full arsenal. However, he was relying on his photographic memory for this riposte: in the 1934 movie It’s a Gift W.C. Field’s character when told he is drunk, responds, “Yeah, and you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life" (Langworth, Churchill by Himself, p.550).

I have no idea where English got the idea that Churchill was averse to wisecracks. 

Bibliography

Langworth, Richard (ed.), Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations (Public Affairs, 2008)

Close but No Cigar

 One of the more amusing errors Otto English (né Andrew Scott) makes in his essay on Churchill concerns Churchill’s time in Cuba.

Otto is right to describe Churchill as an “observer”, but he drops the ball by saying that Churchill was “fighting for the [Spanish]” and was “awarded his first medal… for helping the Spanish suppress the [Cuban] revolt”. Churchill was, as Otto writes, an observer. That means he was a spectator, not a participant. D'Este outright calls him a “non-combatant” (D’Este, Warlord, p.46). He never even fired a shot at the rebels during his time in Cuba. Churchill did not receive the Cross of the Order of Military Merit for taking part in skirmishes with the Cuban insurgents, he got it as a courtesy (Russell, Soldier, p.130). 

The only narrative spoiled is the narrative that English has crafted about himself – that he is a careful and diligent writer who is “toppling fake history from the plinth” and raising up the truth in its place.

Bibliography

D'Este, Carlo, Warlord: A Life of Churchill at War 1874 - 1945 (Allen Lane, 2009)

Russell, Douglas S., Winston Churchill, Soldier: The Military Life of a Gentleman at War (Conway, 2005)

Reductio ad Hitlerum

Statements about Churchill made by his contemporaries occasionally get misinterpreted. These days, race is a hot-button topic, and assessments of Churchill’s alleged ‘racism’ by those who knew him attract attention in the media and online. Probably the most famous example is a comment that Churchill’s Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, made about Churchill’s attitude to Indians. The story goes that Amery was so appalled and disgusted by Churchill’s racialist views that he said that Churchill was no different from Hitler.

Detractors cite this story frequently:

His attitude to Indians, always hostile, took on even more intemperate form leading the Conservative secretary of state for India, Leo Amery, to remark: “on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane… I don’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”

Leopold Amery, Churchill's own Secretary of State for India, likened his boss's understanding of India's problems to King George III's apathy for the Americas. Amery vented in his private diaries, writing "on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane" and that he didn't "see much difference between [Churchill's] outlook and Hitler's."

Churchill was a bounder, a serial failure, terrible at small talk, deluded, depressive, drunken, deficient in judgement, and systematically racist enough to be compared by his Secretary of State for India to Adolf Hitler....Leo Amery, Churchill’s previously mentioned Secretary of State who was so appalled by his views that he compared him to Hitler...

This remark is often assumed to have been provoked by Churchill’s (allegedly indifferent) attitude to the Bengal famine. For example:

Churchill’s attitude towards India did not change when he became Prime Minister. He presided over – and actively prevented any efforts to alleviate – the catastrophic 1943 Bengal famine, which killed 3 million Indians. When Churchill’s India Secretary and childhood friend Leo Amery asked him to do something, Churchill laughed about the prospect of shrinking a population that bred “like rabbits.” A horrorstruck Amery wrote that when it came to India, there wasn’t “much difference between [Churchill’s] outlook and Hitler’s.”

Let’s examine the evidence.

What Amery Actually Thought of Churchill

The first thing that should be noted is that Amery and Churchill were friends. They respected each other. They had known each other since their school days, covered the Boer War as journalists, and had jointly opposed the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In spite of their mutual respect, they were on opposing sides of many political issues over the course of their careers.

Their most serious disagreement concerned India. During the Second World War Amery and Churchill had numerous bitter arguments about Indian policy. Despite this, the two remained on good terms. As Amery’s biographer, Wm. Roger Louis, said:

“[T]he negative aspects must not be allowed to overshadow the mutual respect. Amery believed that Churchill saved England in 1940-45 and that no one else could have done it. For his part, Churchill on Amery’s death in 1955 described him with heart-felt emotion as ‘a great patriot’” (Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.179).

If Amery had truly thought that Churchill was as bad as a murderous tyrant like Hitler, then how could he respect and admire Churchill? This should make readers skeptical of the seriousness of the comparison.

Grumpy Old Men

The Cabinet meeting in which Amery compared Churchill to Hitler took place at 15:00 on the 4^th of August 1944. The Bengal Famine, and the related question of food imports to India, were not discussed at the meeting. Here’s a picture of the items covered:

These might seem like an odd list of topics to provoke a resort to a reductio ad Hitlerum argument. Turning to Amery’s diary, he also doesn’t mention the Bengal Famine being discussed at this meeting. It wasn’t Churchill’s attitude to the famine which provoked the Hitler comparison. So, what did?

The only two matters discussed relating to India were the draft of a response from the Viceroy to Gandhi’s letter on the 27^th of July, and the growth of India’s sterling balances (essentially Britain’s growing indebtedness to India). Both of these topics brought out Churchill at his most intemperate. On the issue of the sterling balances, as early as September 1942, an exasperated Amery wrote in his diary that ‘I confess I find myself getting very impatient when he [Churchill] talks really ignorant nonsense’ (quoted in Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p. 164). Amery also wrote

“Winston…is making a fool of himself. Winston cannot see beyond such phrases as ‘Are we to incur hundreds of millions of debt defending India in order to be kicked out by the Indians afterwards? This may be an ill-contrived world but not so ill contrived as all that.’” (quoted in Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.165).

By mid-1943 whenever the sterling balances were brought up there would be a “Winstonian volcano” in the Cabinet - at one meeting he exploded into a rage for twenty minutes and continued rumbling on the subject for two hours (Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.166).

Regarding the meeting on the 4^th of August 1944, Amery wrote the following in his diary:

“Winston [let loose] in a state of great exultation describing how after the war he was going to go back on all the shameful story of the last twenty years of surrender, how once we had won the war there was no obligation to honour promises made at a time of difficulty, and not taken up by Indians, and carry out a great regeneration of India based on extinguishing landlords and oppressive industrialists and uplift the peasant and untouchable, probably by collectivization on Russian lines. It might be necessary to get rid of wretched sentimentalists like Wavell [the Viceroy] and most of the English officials in India, who were more Indian than the Indians, and send out new men. What was all my professed patriotism worth if I did not stand up for my own countrymen against Indian money-lenders? Naturally I lost patience and couldn’t help telling him that I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s which annoyed him no little. I am by no means sure whether on this subject of India he is really quite sane” (Barnes & Nicholson, Empire at Bay, pp.992-993).

No mention of the Bengal Famine. Churchill speaks of uplifting the class most affected by hunger –landless agricultural labourers, who were mostly low caste or untouchables. According to Amery, Churchill added that he would ditch all promises claiming to advance India to self-government; abandon the policy of laissez-faire and institute greater state intervention in the Indian economy; neuter the landlords, money-lenders, and “oppressive” industrialists; and probably sack most of the British officials in India. He also attacked Amery personally – criticizing his patriotism and accusing him of doing the bidding of - or perhaps appeasing - Indian money-lenders. Amery admits he was annoyed at the insults and so retaliated by insulting Churchill back. It is clear from Amery’s account that the Hitler comparison was borne of frustration on Amery’s part.

We don’t know what Churchill said upon being compared to Hitler. Amery says that it annoyed him "no little" which is probably understating it. News of the conflagration reached the Viceroy of India, who wrote that Amery received a "first-class rocket" (Moon, Wavell, p.89) from Churchill. Given their friendship Amery must have known before making the comment how it would have been received. It is quite likely that Amery’s intention was to wind Churchill up. As historian Peter Harmsen puts it:

Much has been made in recent writings of Churchill’s alleged dislike of Indians, but some of it seems based on hyperbole and a distortion of historical sources. American did not make the comparison with the German dictator in “private”, but to Churchill’s face in a state of great emotion while the two were involved in a heated argument, and therefore should probably not be taken at face value (Harmsen, War in the Pacific, p.181 fn.72).

After the argument, Amery returned to his office and drafted a satirical document summarizing Churchill’s future plans for India. A piece of Swiftian satire clearly written as a way for Amery to let off some steam. Notwithstanding the fact that Amery wrote on the document that it was a skit, writer Madhusree Mukherjee took it seriously and used it to argue that Churchill would have implemented a Generalplan Ost in India if he had won the election in 1945. Presumably, she takes articles she reads in The Onion at face value too.

Killing Congress With Kindness

For all the vituperation directed at Churchill for his attitude to India, India was rarely a particularly high priority for him during the war – it was mainly an irritation. Amery complained about Churchill’s lack of interest in India:

“It really is terrible to think that in nearly five years, apart from incidental talks about appointments etc he has never once discussed either the Indian situation generally or this sterling balance question with me, but has only indulged in wild and indeed scarcely sane tirades in the Cabinet” (quoted in Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.175).

If Churchill had a plan to commit genocide you would have expected Amery to have noticed it and written about it in more detail than parodying it once. And if Churchill did have a plan for genocide, why did Amery complain about Churchill engaging in “wild and indeed scarcely sane tirades” instead of having a thought-through Indian policy?

Churchill made other statements on what he would like to happen in postwar India. As with anything, his statements need to be understood in their proper context. While Madhusree Mukerjee suggests that Churchill was under the influence of Hitler and Stalin when devising his views on postwar India, his main influence was much closer to home – the Labour party. In September 1942 Labour politician Stafford Cripps produced a note on India. As his biographer, Peter Clarke, described it:

[Cripps] crossed Marx with Machiavelli. [His argument] was to bypass communal conflicts by instigating economic reforms, thus furthering the interests of the masses against ‘the Indian millowners, landlords and money lenders, many of whom are the financial backers of the [Indian National] Congress’. In this way, ‘the struggle in India would no longer be between Indian and British upon the nationalist basis, but between the classes in India upon an economic basis’…. The Prime Minister seized on this aspect of Cripps’s analysis and asked that ‘these points should not be excluded from any statements that may have to be made on Indian policy’ (Clarke, The Cripps Version, p.351).

The India Office wasn’t impressed with Cripps’s note, but the idea of splitting the Indian masses from the Congress seems to have been on Churchill’s mind when he ranted about uplifting the peasants and abolishing the landlords and moneylenders on the 4^th of August 1944. According to Amery, in a Cabinet meeting in April 1945 Churchill returned to the same theme: ‘As usual [Churchill] poured contempt on Wavell [the Viceroy] and talked rubbish about abolishing landlords and money-lenders’ (Louis, ‘In The Name of God Go’, p.177). 

Given Churchill’s well-known hostility to communism, it may seem surprising that he thought socialism might be beneficial for India. It is worth bearing in mind though that Churchill was perhaps prone to tunnel vision, so he might have been willing to tolerate more socialism in India than he would under ordinary circumstances if it advanced the cause of the British Empire. In 1917 Lord Esher said about Churchill:

He handles great subjects in rhymical language, and becomes quickly enslaved by his own phrases. He deceives himself into the belief that he takes broad views, when his mind is fixed upon one comparatively small aspect of the question (quoted in James, ‘The Politician’, p.70).

However, we probably shouldn’t take Churchill’s comments that seriously. As the eminent historian, Sarvepalli Gopal, wrote:

“[Churchill] sought to divert attention from problems of constitutional change by a vigorous policy of social reform or the creation of large collectivized farms on the Soviet model to replace the existing system of fragmented land tenure. It would really pay the British to take up the cause of the poor peasant, to confiscate the lands of rich Congressmen and divide them up. But Churchill did not follow up these ideas and probably did not take them seriously, knowing that, in spite of him, the British might well, in his own phrase, chatter themselves out of India. At the time of the Cripps mission he cabled to Mackenzie King in Canada: ‘We have resigned ourselves to fighting our utmost to defend India in order, if successful, to be turned out.’ Later, just before the detention of Gandhi, he amazed the King by informing him that his colleagues and both, or all three, parties in Parliament were quite prepared to give up India to Indians after the war. Cripps, the press, and American opinion had all contributed to reaching the conclusion that British rule in India was wrong and had always been wrong for India and British political parties had already been talked into giving up India…. Some months later [Churchill] expressed to Amery his conviction that the Indian army was only waiting to shoot the British in the back. Out of this effervescing, confused welter of comments and suggestions what emerges is that, while Churchill would have liked to maintain the Empire in India, or even hold on to a bit of the country, he was not hopeful of it” (Gopal, ‘Churchill and India’, p.466; emphasis added).

Churchill was not the only one who thought that socialism was the future for India. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also believed that India required ‘reform from the bottom, somewhat on the Soviet line’ (FRUS: Tehran, Doc. 358)

Plenty of nationalist Indians would have found much of what Churchill remarked to be reasonable as far as the economics was concerned. As the economic historian BR Tomlinson wrote, "Congress radicals had been proposing a strong attack on private property rights in land since the early 1930s. The established leaders of the national movement were careful never to commit themselves to this policy unequivocally, but such ideas had some influence within the party in the 1930s and 1940s" (Tomlinson, Economy of Modern India, p.188). After independence Indian planners sought (and received) Soviet advice on their development strategy (Mehrotra, India and the Soviet Union, p.11). Some Indian nationalists were far more effusive in their praise of communism than Churchill ever was. For instance, in 1936 Nehru said:

I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the world’s problem and of India’s problem lies in socialism…. This involves vast and revolutionary changes in our political and social structure, the ending of vested interests in land and industry, as well as the feudal and autocratic Indian states system. This means the ending of private property, except in a restricted sense, and the replacement of the present profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service. In short, it means a new civilization, radically different from the present capitalist order. Some glimpse we can have of this new civilization in the territories of the USSR… If the future is full of hope it is largely because of Soviet Russia… this new civilization will spread to other lands and put an end to the wars and conflicts which capitalism feeds on.

Nehru had no desire to copy & paste the Soviet system onto India, and he said that much happened in the USSR which pained him greatly (Gopal, A Biography, pp.207-208). The fact remains, however, that he found aspects of that regime praiseworthy, and he never criticized the Soviets to anything like the same degree that he criticized western transgressions. By Madhusree Mukerjee’s logic, Nehru and Roosevelt must have secretly desired to commit a class-based genocide in India.

Conclusion

The truth is that Amery had great respect for Churchill. He wasn’t morally appalled by Churchill’s racial views so much as he was frustrated by them. During a heated argument between the two men, and after a personal attack on his character, Amery angered Churchill by comparing him to Hitler. Amery would have known that this would annoy Churchill, and he likely made the comparison for that reason. It ought not to be taken at face value, as an objective assessment of Churchill’s racial views. For one thing, Hitler isn’t exactly known for his desire to improve the conditions of the Indian peasantry! The notion that Amery would think of Churchill as a murderer and a tyrant and still admire him contradicts the view that Amery was a humane man who supposedly shows how out-of-step Churchill’s imperialism was back in the 1940s.

Bibliography

Barnes, John & Nicholson, David (eds.), The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries, 1929 – 1949 (Hutchinson, 1988)

Clarke, Peter, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps, 1889 – 1952 (Allen Lane 2002)

Franklin, William and Gerber, William (eds.), Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (USGPO, 1961)

Gopal, Sarvepalli, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume One, 1889, 1947 (Oxford University Press, 1976)

Gopal, Sarvepalli, ‘Churchill and India’ in Robert Blame and W.M. Roger Louis, Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War (Clarendon Press, 1996), pp.457-471

Harmsen, Peter, War in the Pacific: Volume 2: Formidable Foe – 1942-1943 (Kindle edition, 2022)

James, Robert Rhodes, ‘The Politician’, in Taylor, A.J.P. (ed) Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (Allen Lane, 1969), pp.54-115

Louis, Wm. Roger, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill (W.W. Norton & Co, 1992)

Mehrotra, Santosh, India and the Soviet Union: Trade and Technology Transfer (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Moon, Penderel (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (Oxford University Press, 1973)

Tomlinson, B.R., The Economy of Modern India, 1860 – 1970 (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Besieging Fake History

 Otto English’s description of the Siege of Sidney Street is laughably bad:

In a footnote he adds the following description of the event: 

Where to start with this?

Problem #1: English Confuses Two Separate Incidents

The gunfight on Sidney Street in January 1911 did not result in the deaths of three policemen. No policemen were killed during the Siege of Sidney Street. One policeman was seriously wounded in the gunfight – Sergeant Ben Leeson – and had to retire. He published his memoirs, Lost London, in 1934.

Three policemen - Sergeants Tucker and Bentley and Constable Choate – were murdered by the criminal gang but not during the Siege of Sidney Street. Their killings took place a month earlier, in December, in Houndsditch. 

Not to be confused with the Siege of Sidney St

Problem #2: English is Wrong About the Number of Gangsters Killed

Only two gangsters were killed in the gunfight, not three. Their names were Fritz Svaars and Joseph Sokoloff. One was killed by bullets and the other suffocated in the smoke. Another member of the gang – George Gardstein – had been killed by police during the earlier Houndsditch incident.

Problem #3: English is Wrong About Churchill's Initial Reaction

Churchill did not “hot foot” it down to Stepney when he heard about the gunfight. He was first notified of the battle when he was in his London home – 33 Eccleston Square. Churchill “hot footed it” to the Home Office. However, there were no additional updates there. It was only then that he decided to go see events for himself. 

Problem #4: Churchill Didn't Take a Photographer With Him

At one point English mentions the work of Churchill's greatest biographer -  Martin Gilbert. It seems that English didn't bother to read Gilbert's work though. If he had he wouldn't have made this mistake. Churchill did not take a photographer with him to Sidney Street. Churchill himself mocked the suggestion that he did:

I am sure he [Alfred Lyttelton] does not suppose there is a branch of the Home Office to organise the movements of photographers. It is the misfortune of a good many Members to encourter in our daily walks an increasing number of persons armed with cameras to take pictures for the illustrated Press which is so rapidly developing. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that his own Leader (Mr A.J. Balfour), when he risked his valuable life in a flying machine was the victim of similar publicity, but I certain should not go so far as to imitate the right hon. Gentleman (mr Lyttelton) by suggesting that he was himself concerned in procuring the attendance of a photographer to witness his daring feat in the way of aerial experience (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p.229)

Problem #5: Churchill Didn't Take Charge of the Police Operation

Churchill did not make a "show" of taking charge of events. To quote an eyewitness to the event, Sydney Holland:

The only possible excuse for anyone saying that [Churchill] gave orders is that [he] did once and very rightly go forward and wave back the crowd at the end of the road.... and you did also give orders that [he] and I were not to be shot in our hindquarters by a policeman who was standing with a 12-bore behind [us]” (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, pp.223-224).

  Churchill also was approached by a junior firefighter and asked to overrule a police command for the fire brigade to stay back. Churchill declined to do so (or rather, he instructed the Fire Brigade to wait) because of the danger from gunfire. But this hardly amounted to him taking command of the police operations. Donald Rumbelow, a former curator of the City of London’s Police Museum, wrote that:

"[Churchill] had no wish to take personal control but his position of authority inevitably attracted to itself direct responsibility. He saw that he would have done much better to have remained in his office but it was impossible to get into his car and drive away while matters were so uncertain and – he wrote later – so ‘extremely interesting’" (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136; emphasis added).

Problem #6: English Gets the Cause of the Fire Wrong

English's attribution of the cause of the blaze to artillery shot is contradicted by two eyewitness accounts. According to firefighter Cyril Morris, the opinion of the fire brigade was that the fire was caused by a bullet hitting a gas pipe:

We found two charred bodies in the debris, one of them had been shot through the head and the other had apparently died of suffocation. At the inquest a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned. Much discussion took place afterward as to what caused the fire. Did the anarchists deliberately set the building alight, thus creating a diversion to enable them to escape? The view of the London Fire Brigade at the time was that a gas pipe was punctured on one of the upper floors, and that the gas was lighted either at the time of the bullet piercing it or perhaps afterwards by a bullet causing a spark which ignited the escaping gas (Morris, Fire!, p.39).

Journalist Philip Gibbs, who witnessed the event from a nearby pub, wrote that the fire was actually caused by the criminals themselves:

In the top-floor room of the anarchists' house we observed a gas jet burning, and presently some of us noticed the white ash of burnt paper fluttering out of a chimney pot.

"They're burning documents," said one of my friends.

They were burning more than that. They were setting fire to the house, upstairs and downstairs. The window curtains were first to catch alight, then volumes of black smoke, through which little tongues of flame licked up, poured through the empty window frames. They must have used paraffin to help the progress of the fire, for the whole house was burning with amazing rapidity (Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, p.67).

In fact, it would have been extremely difficult for the Royal Artillery to cause the fire because they didn't shell the street. The fire started around 1 PM (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136), and the artillery did not arrive until c.2:40 PM, around the same time Churchill left the scene. Martin Gilbert records Churchill's denial that he ever called up the artillery (Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p.224).

Churchill's testimony at the inquest. Note the artillery arrived after the fire had already started

Conclusion: Fake History

In the span of several sentences, English managed to make six incorrect assertions. Had he just looked at the Wikipedia page he could have avoided this. A poor effort for someone claiming to debunk “fake history”.  

Bibliography

Gibbs, Philip, Adventures in Journalism (Harper & Brothers, 1923)

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (Pimlico, 2000)

Morris, Cyril Clarke Boville, Fire! (Blackie and Son Ltd, 1939)

Rumbelow, Donald, The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street (The History Press, 2009)

The Neo-Confederate Gambit

 You know the expression “never meet your heroes”? Well, I think there needs to be an addendum to that advice – never follow your heroes on twitter. Readers may be familiar with Professor Phillips O’Brien but for those who are not, he is Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews. He’s also an extremely capable historian who has written one of the best books on the Second World War in recent years. If you haven’t read How the War Was Won go and buy a copy. It is revisionist history at its finest.

Buy this book

Alas, an expertise on logistics and machinery doesn’t translate into expertise in other areas. At the height of the summer of Floyd in 2020 Professor O’Brien wrote a series of tweets about the issues of race and the historian’s fallacy.

O’Brien starts with summarising the two main opposite opinions – on the one hand we shouldn’t judge Churchill’s antiquated views on race because “racist views were dominant” during his life, in O’Brien’s words. On the other hand, Churchill was an “out and out racist” and basically no better than Hitler.  O'Brien doesn't agree with the latter view but spends no time debunking it. Instead he mainly criticises the former viewpoint. He says that “no era was simply racist – there was always a range of opinion and it’s important to look at the individual within the context of that range”. This is missing the point. No one has ever claimed that there was 100% unanimous consensus pre-1965 that white Europeans were superior to black Africans or brown Asians. Such a degree of unanimity on any issue at any time has probably never existed. It doesn’t mean though that the 19^th century or the first half of the 20^th century were not eras in which a preponderance of white people likely held racist views.

For an analogy, there were unquestionably atheists in France in the 14^th century. Does it follow that 14^th century France was not therefore a very religious society compared to 21^st century France? Of course not.

It borders on negationism to suggest otherwise. Yes, there were a number of white people in the 19^th century who held egalitarian views on race, comparable to mainstream attitudes today. But in how many places in the 19^th century did whites and blacks live as political, legal or social equals? I’m not going to enumerate them all but the answer will be somewhere between no where and very few places.

Suppose a pollster could travel back to the 1870s and ask random white people in Europe, the United States or any European settler colony for their opinion on racial issues. It is likely that the comments they would have recorded would have included something on the lines of:

• Race is a biological phenomenon. 

• Differences in attainment reflected largely inherent differences in race or ethnicity.

• Civilised societies were a product of characteristics which, if not unique to white Europeans, were found in far greater number among those of European stock compared to those of Sub-Saharan African stock.

• It was not unreasonable for white societies to protect themselves by controlling either the numbers of people of colour, or limiting their rights and freedoms.

O’Brien’s example – white society in the United States in the Civil War – doesn’t prove his point at all. In fact, it shows just how widespread racist ideals were in the mid-19^th century. O’Brien highlights radical abolitionists like Thaddeus Stevens as evidence that there was a “huge variety of views on race”. But according to the leading historian of the period, Eric Foner, Thaddeus Stevens represented a minority opinion. Stevens’s biographer, Bruce Levine, goes further and describes radical abolitionists like Stevens as a “widely despised handful”. Ironically, many people at the time thought that Stevens himself was a bigot against other white folks – white Southerners. Not only that, but Steven’s reputation plummeted after his death. For about 70 years white Americans regarded him as the worst person their nation had ever produced, with the possible exception of Benedict Arnold!

On the other hand, the reputation of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate General, soared even in the north. So much so that by the middle of the 20th century a US president of Pennsylvanian Dutch origin who grew up in Kansas considered him one of the four greatest Americans of all time. The fact that Lee was a slaveholder was unimportant. 

In his age, Thaddeus Stevens was an extreme outlier. In selecting him to downplay racism in white-American society during the 1860s, Professor O’Brien sounds like a Neo-Confederate. The type who cherry pick examples of African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy to pretend the Confederacy was not fighting to sustain slavery. Or who cherry pick one or two quotes by Robert E. Lee to portray him as an abolitionist. It isn’t convincing.

Professor O’Brien then moves on to Abraham Lincoln, and credits him as an example of someone who “evolve[d] in interesting and enlightening ways”. This apparently proves that his age wasn't simply a racist one. However, O'Brien is silent on what exactly Lincoln’s evolution involved. Lincoln, for most of his life, was an extreme racist by our standards who would make someone like Richard Spencer look tame. In 1858 in the debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln famously said:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

In 1862 he told a delegation of African Americans visiting the White House that it would be better if African Americans packed their bags and left:

“You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side.”

This sounds extreme to us, but it is worth bearing in mind that when most American abolitionists called for the end of slavery, they did not have in mind that slave owners and former slaves would sit down together at the table of brotherhood. They wanted to deport (or "repatriate") all African-Americans from the United States to Africa. They didn’t like slavery, but the idea of racial equality was no less revolting to them as it was to an antebellum slaveholder away down south in Dixie. 

Now it is true that Lincoln didn’t remain of that view forever. As Professor O’Brien says, he “evolved”. But this evolution only went so far as one speech made in 1865 saying that some (not all) African-Americans should be given the vote. In other words, he remained a virulent racist by our standards.

The point I am trying to make is not that I think Lincoln was an awful human being. It is that, while he was maybe enlightened and progressive by the standards of the 1860s, he falls very short of the standards of the 2020s. 

Another example O’Brien cites is FDR, who was “not just a creature of his time”. While he concedes that FDR was “racist in [his] own way” he credits him with using “his power to try and do some good”. I also admire FDR, but there is no getting around the fact that he rounded up an entire ethnic group and detained them in internment camps on the basis of little evidence. Is this an example of “some good” he tried to do? Why does FDR get a pass?

With that out of the way, let’s move onto Churchill. O’Brien characterises him as “pretty terrible” by the standards of his era, who was “consistently one of the more aggressive and oppressive racists” of his age, who tolerated war crimes in South Africa and Sudan and believed in a racial hierarchy with Anglo-Saxons at the top.

This is just plain wrong. I don’t understand how O’Brien can bring up Churchill’s experience in Sudan and completely omit the fact that Churchill was appalled by British atrocities against wounded Dervishes. He ignores Churchill’s experience at the Colonial Office and how he was a consistent opponent of brutality against colonised subjects. O'Brien brings up the Irish, but Churchill didn't really harbour any  strong prejudice against the Irish and came around to support Home Rule and even the unification of Ireland. 

More curiously though is O’Brien’s total omission of Churchill’s attitude to Jews. Jews were among the biggest victims of racism during Churchill’s lifetime so you’d think they would merit a mention. There were many single massacres of Jews in WW2 in which more Jews were murdered than Irish people (both armed Republicans and civilians) died during the entire Anglo-Irish War. Churchill, as is well known, was a consistent opponent of anti-Semitic discrimination and supporter of Zionism. So much so that it struck his contemporaries as unusual (“Winston had one fault. He was too fond of Jews”, as one of them said to Sir Martin Gilbert). 

Churchill’s opposition to Indian independence was not unique at all, although the manner of his opposition set him apart from the Conservative party. Concessions to India in the 1930s (which Churchill opposed) were not seriously intended to advance India to independence but instead represented a bait and switch to keep India in the Empire for years. This has been known since Carl Bridge published Holding India to the Empire in 1986.

O’Brien then writes that we shouldn’t look at historical figures as though we were putting together a “balance sheet”. The thing with balance sheets though is that they have to provide a true and fair view of the financial position of an organisation. If you were to use that analogy for historical figures, you have to accurately reflect what those figures said a did and you have to mention the positive things Churchill did and thought along with the negative. You also need to provide appropriate weighting for them. It matters more that Churchill criticised the Amritsar massacre than it does that he made a joke at a dinner party about Gandhi being trampled to death by elephants, for example. 

In summary, to suggest that the period of 1874 – 1965 wasn’t extremely racist by today’s standards borders is absurd and borders on denialism. It is not unreasonable to deplore Churchill’s attitudes on race (or other subjects) but to ignore the milieu in which they developed is ahistorical. To claim that Churchill was an extremist in his own time is simply wrong.

Colonial Hooliganism

In his review of Richard Toye’s book Churchill’s Empire, Johann Hari portrayed Churchill as a brutal thug. According to Hari, Churchill thought natives rebelled against British rule only out of a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill”. Hari wrote that Churchill bragged about personally killing non-white people. Hari adds that Churchill was seen by his contemporaries as “at the most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum”.

Hari’s review is one of the worst book reviews that I’ve ever read, on any subject. He misinterprets the book he is reviewing, attributing to Toye a thesis (that Churchill was nothing more than a brutal thug) that Toye categorically does not make. As I’ve described before, the examples that Hari cites of Churchill’s colonial brutality are not particularly convincing.

Hari also ignores clear instances where Churchill opposed colonial violence. In other words, evidence that Churchill was not on the “most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum”. This post will discuss examples of this from three colonies that took place while Churchill was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (1905-1908). It is not my goal to provide a detail history of everything significant that happened during Churchill’s time in that office. I merely wish to highlight certain important events that shed light on Churchill’s attitude to colonial violence.

Natal

In February 1906 a rebellion broke out in the colony of Natal (today called KwaZulu-Natal) in South Africa. The rebellion started as a protest against a recently imposed poll tax on adult males. On the 8^th of February two white police officers – Inspector Hunt and Trooper Armstrong - were killed. The following day the Governor, Sir Henry McCallum, proclaimed martial law, and mobilised roughly 1,000 local troops to put down the rebellion. He also brought in censorship while the rebellion was on-going. On the 15^th of February two Africans were executed after a “hastily convened court martial” found them guilty of the murder of the two police officers. In the days that followed a further 24 Africans were arrested for the murders, of whom 12 were sentenced to death.

Sir Henry McCallum

Based on how Hari describes him, one might think that Churchill was a supporter of hitting the rebels as hard as possible, and backed the Natal government to the hilt. In fact, the exact opposite happened.

Churchill had a realistic sense of what caused the rebellion. He didn’t think it was caused by the innate violence of aboriginals or anything like that. He blamed the poll tax (Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.239). Churchill also considered the imposition of censorship to be an overreaction. He wrote in a minute that:

“The action of the governor and ministers is preposterous. The proclamation of martial law over the whole colony, causing dislocation and infinite annoyance to everyone, because two white men have been killed, is in itself an act which appears to be pervaded by an exaggerated excitability. The censorship exploits descends to the category of pure folly” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.240).

Churchill was also sceptical that the proposed executions were justified. He wrote to the Natal government requesting more information, impliedly threatening to block the executions if they were unjust:

 “Continued executions under martial law certain to excite strong criticism here, and as H.M.G. are retaining troops in Colony, and will be asked to assent to Act of Indemnity, necessary to regularize the action taken, trial of these murder cases by civil course greatly to be preferred. I must impress upon you necessity of utmost caution in this matter, and you should suspend executions until I have had opportunity of considering your further observations” (quoted Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.241).

This telegram caused an outrage. Settlers across the Empire regarded the idea that the Colonial Office in London might interfere with the treatment the settler could mete out to natives to be unconscionable. The Prime Minister of Natal, C.J. Smythe, and the rest of his Cabinet resigned en masse in protest. Protestation against Churchill’s action came from elsewhere too. For example, the Governor-General of Australia messaged London:

“Since an intervention of H.M. ministers… with the administration of the self-governing colonial of Natal would tend to establish, even in regard to prerogative of pardon, a dangerous precedent affecting all states within the empire, your excellency’s advisers desire most respectfully to appeal to H.M. ministers for reconsideration of the resolution at which they are reported to have arrived in this subject” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.241).

The Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Elgin, and other officials, telegraphed their Natal counterparts to assuage their hurt feelings and assure them that London did not mean to step on their toes. This apparently satisfied them as they all withdrew their resignations. The Africans were duly executed on the 2^nd of April (Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.242).

Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin

By the end of 1906, the Natal government had imprisoned 4,000 Africans, and didn’t know what to do with them all. They asked the British government to assist in deporting the ring-leaders of the revolt. Churchill was against this in principle, but he wanted to use it as leverage to force Natal to provide better treatment for the imprisoned. As he put it:

“We cannot help unless we also mitigate” (quoted in Hyman, Elgin and Churchill, p.247).

Churchill continued to be appalled by what had happened in Natal, and it coloured his impression of the colony in the future. The following year he referred to the rebellion as the “disgusting butchery of the natives”. In June 1907, when he received reports that the Natal authorities had inflicted unlawful punishments on a native for offences under the pass law, he advocated London intervening again, describing Natal as a “wretched colony – the hooligan of the British Empire” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.251).

Churchill insisted on reviewing the diet provided to the deported ringleaders to ensure it was adequate. When the inspection reported its findings to him, he denounced the diet as being “more suited to the lowest of animals than men” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.251).

Here’s what Professor Toye makes of the events:

“[Churchill] was, in fact, consistently infuriated by the behaviour of the Natal government and made serious efforts to improve the welfare of Zulu prisoners. In 1907 he wrote a striking minute condemning ‘the disgusting butchery of natives’ which to him demonstrated ‘the kind of tyranny against which these unfortunate Zulus have been struggling’. Elgin was less inclined to intervention than Churchill, which reflected both the older man’s innate caution and his perhaps more realistic appreciation of the powers of the Colonial Office, which were in practice quite limited. It was hard to control territories thousands of miles away using telegrams or written despatches; it was easy for those on the spot to use their supposedly superior knowledge of local conditions as an excuse for circumventing the wishes of Whitehall. Deferring to such knowledge was at any rate a standard tenet of imperial administration. As the battle over the execution of the twelve rebels showed, it was easier to put up with the criticism of a few Radicals at home than it was to hold British colonial governments to account” (Toye, Churchill’s Empire, p.102).

Kenya

Churchill’s opposition to wanton violence against colonial subjects was also apparent with regards to Kenya. In March 1907, Ewart S. Grogan, the President of the Colonists’ Association, dragged three Kikuyu employees – who had allegedly been disrespectful to his sister and another white woman - to the court-house in Nairobi and flogged them in the street. A medical official reported that two had suffered “simple hurt” while another had been severely hurt (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33). The colonial authorities charged Grogan with unlawful assembly (and also assault, but for some reason that charge was dropped). This incident outraged the Kenyan settlers – not the assault, but the fact that the authorities prosecuted a white man for attacking black men. One settler, W. Russell Bowker, said bluntly:

“It has always been a first principle with me to flog a n***er [asterisks my own] who insults a white woman” (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33).

Churchill was outraged, but not for the same reason as the settlers. He was appalled by their cruelty. He wrote the following in a minute:

“We must not let these few ruffians steal out beautiful and promising protectorate away from us, after all we have spent upon it – under some shabby pretence of being a ‘responsibly governed colony’. This House of Commons will never allow us to abdicate our duties towards the natives – as peaceful, industrious, law-abiding folk as can be found anywhere” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.410).

The rest of the Colonial Office agreed with Churchill and they backed the Kenyan Government in prosecuting Grogan. A cruiser was sent to Mombasa to deter the settler community from causing any trouble (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33).

Ewart Grogan

The Grogan incident reflected, according to the Acting Governor, a growing tendency by white settlers to “deny the native any rights whatever” and to treat Africans “not as a labourer but a helot, not a servant but a slave” (quoted in Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33). A.C. Hollis, head of the Native Affairs Department, campaigned for improved working conditions for Africans, to the consternation of many settlers. According to historians Anthony Clayton and Donald Savage, the department:

“received massive on-the-spot- support from Churchill…. Churchill… had on arrival [in Kenya] seen at first hand a shocking example of bad labour conditions. He had found a large party of some 300 labourers walking back from a site over 150 miles away and demanded an explanation; he wrote of them later as ‘skinny scarecrows crawling back to their tribe after a few weeks contact with Christian civilization’. Hollis ascertained that the men had originally been recruited for work on a farm not far from their homes near Nairobi, but the farmer had transferred them to a railway ballast contractor who did not have the money to feed or house them. At the end of the contract the contractor had been unable to pay the men off, telling them to wait, without food, for five days until a train with the money arrived. But the labourers had had enough and had begun to walk home. The contractor, a European, was prosecuted, no doubt at Churchill’s instigation, and ordered to pay immediately or face imprisonment” (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.34).

Nigeria

In Nigeria, Churchill was also opposed to indiscriminate violence against natives. He put his opposition to punitive expeditions on the record:

“Of course, if the peace and order of [Nigeria] depends on a vigorous offensive we must support him with all our hearts. But the chronic bloodshed which stains the West African seasons is odious and disquieting. Moreover the whole enterprise is liable to be misrepresented by persons unacquainted with Imperial terminology as the murdering of natives and stealing of their lands…. I do not think we ought to enter upon these expeditions lightly or as a matter of course” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.208).

In late-January 1906 the Colonial Office sent a telegram to Lugard opposing the dispatch of a large punitive expedition. Frederick Lugard, the High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, was furious with this interference. Elgin and Churchill eventually relented, but only on condition that the expedition should be carried no further than “the immediate object rendered necessary”. In March there was a one-sided battle (or massacre) of Nigerians in Satiru. According to Lugard’s biographer, Margery Perham, Lugard did not order a massacre and, when he heard of it, he put a stop to it (Perham, Lugard, p.199). Nonetheless, Churchill was appalled and criticized the action:

“How does the extermination of an almost unarmed rabble…compare with the execution of 12 k****** in Natal after trial?... I confess I do not at all understand what our position is, or with what face we can put pressure on the government of Natal while these sorts of things are done under our direct authority” (quoted in Pakenham, Scramble for Africa, p.652; asterisks my own).

According to Ricard Toye, Churchill’s views of Nigeria struck some connected to the empire project as dangerous and radical. He quotes the wife of Lord Lugard – then the High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate – as writing to her husband:

“[Churchill] repeated all the foolish things you have ever heard about having gone too fast and added to them the extreme radical rubbish about holding innocent peoples tight in the grip of a military despotism. To abolish the [West African Frontier Force], to give up the greater part of Nigeria ‘which is much too big for us to hold’, put an end to the whole system of punitive expeditions and to be content with the peaceful administration of one small corner of the whole were the principal suggestions which he had to make” (Toye, Churchill’s Empire, p.113 emphasis added).

Lugard and his wife

Conclusion

Some assume that as all empires were built on violence and war, anyone who was explicitly pro-Empire must have been pro-violence against the subjugated populations. However, in the case of Churchill it just isn’t that clear cut. Churchill was definitely committed to the cause of Empire, but he was quite willing to criticize atrocities carried out in its name. To quote Toye:

“Defenders of Churchill’s racial attitudes correctly point out that throughout his career he often spoke up for the welfare of indigenous peoples. His humanitarianism did not imply a belief in racial equality, though, but rather accompanied a conviction that ‘degraded’ races were susceptible to improvement over the very long run” (Toye, Churchill's Empire, pp.58-59).

Another historian, Ronald Hyam, makes a similar point:

"[Churchill] had a generous and sensitive, if highly paternalistic, sympathy for subject peoples, and a determination to see that justice was done to humble individuals throughout the empire. He had this sympathy to a degree that was rather rare among British administrators, and even politicians, at this time. [Emphasis added] Human juices must be injected into Olympian mandarins. By vigilant reading of routine official files he frequently uncovered what he thought were ‘flat’ or ‘shocking’ violations of the elementary principles of law and justice. He insisted that the principles of justice, and the safeguards of judicial procedure, should be ‘rigidly, punctiliously and pedantically’ followed.

He insisted, too, on questioning the Colonial Office assumption that officials were always in the right when complaints were made against government by Africans or, as was more probable, by Asians. He campaigned for an earnest effort to understand the feelings of subject peoples in being ruled by alien administrators, ‘to try to measure the weight of the burden they bear’. The business of a public officer, he maintained, was to serve the people he ruled. The officer must not forget that he was as much their servant, however imposing his title, as any manufacturer or tradesman was the servant of his customers" (Hyam, "Winston Churchill’s First Years", p.306).

Bibliography

Clayton, Anthony and Savage, Daniel Cockfield, Government and Labour in Kenya 1895 – 1963 (Routledge, 1974)

Hyman, Ronald, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905-1908: The Watershed of the Empire-Commonwealth (Macmillan, 1968)

Hyam, Ronald, "Winston Churchill's First Years in Ministerial Office, 1905-1911" in Ronald Hyam, Understanding the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.299-318

Pakenham, Thomas, The Scramble for Africa (Abacus, 1992)

Perham, Margery, Lugard: The Years of Authority 1898–1945 (Collins, 1960)

Toye, Richard, Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (MacMillan, 2010)