LONDON — To dare to criticize Winston Churchill in 21st century Britain is to risk the ire and outrage of the collective power of the media, the public and ministers of state. For to do so is to challenge the greatest sacred cow of them all — the myth of “Britain’s finest hour.”
U.K. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell found this out the hard way, when he sparked outrage by calling the wartime prime minister — and Britain’s greatest icon — a “villain” for using excessive force to crush a picket line in the Welsh town of Tonypandy in 1910.
Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames chimed in first, branding McDonnell a “Poundland Lenin.” Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson took to Twitter to trot out a not-very-accurate history lesson. Thousands of enraged voices predictably followed.
That a jab at Churchill would provoke such an outpouring of furious patriotism was perhaps inevitable.
The man changed political parties twice and held often starkly contradictory views; some of the things he did were heroic, others quite the opposite. But if truth was the first casualty of the Brexit civil war, then nuance perished in the shockwaves that followed.
The British people put up with rationing and the Blitz not because there was something indomitable and unique in their character but because they had little alternative.
You see, the U.K. has a chronic and potentially fatal illness. And while Brexit is the most obvious symptom, it is not the sickness itself.
Britain’s acute case of “the wars,” reinforced by an unending diet of books, TV programs, films and documentaries, goes something like this: In the early 20th century, the peace of a contented and prosperous nation was rudely interrupted by humorless continental ruffians in spiky helmets who didn’t know one end of a cricket bat from another. For four long years, noble Tommys single-handedly took on Germany while the French sat around playing accordions and eating moules, before our cousins from America turned up and helped us finish the job.
Having taught Germany a “jolly good lesson,” the sons of the first wave of soldiers had to go out and do it all over again. In 1940, Britain stood alone against the full might of Nazi Germany while her allies capitulated.
Having dusted ourselves down from Dunkirk, we survived the Battle of Britain, cracked the Enigma code, cheerfully put up with a bit of heavy bombing and then led the charge back again — defeating the Germans once and for all in 1945 (while the Americans took our women).
Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has caused a stir with his comment about Winston Churchill | Jack Taylor/Getty Images
There are walk-on roles for the Soviet Union and Australia, sure, but the overarching narrative is one of a proud and indomitable island nation winning against the odds — as surely as David defeated Goliath.
It’s nonsense of course.
In 1940 Great Britain was a superpower. The Indian army alone had 2.5 million men. We were out-producing the German aircraft war machine by two to one, and had the first integrated and fully coordinated air defense system in the world. Britain was not held together by bits of string. The British people put up with rationing and the Blitz not because there was something indomitable and unique in their character but because they had little alternative.
Most British people are wholly ignorant of the fact that the war left far greater devastation in Europe than was ever visited on Britain. And where Germany and the defeated axis powers were forced to come to terms with events, Britain continued to repeat the tropes of propaganda.
Growing up in the post-war era, a whole generation of children were fed a diet of wartime films that armor-plated the folklores and myths of our part in saving the world.
The war is ours; our sacrifice, our victory, our sacred relic. It’s a simplistic version of events that reduces the vast complexity of war into a navel gazing exercise of good versus evil. It’s a story in which we are always good and the dark and foreboding Continent is a source of malevolence and threat.
Nigel Farage and his UKIP party continually invoked World War II during the Brexit referendum campaign | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
For some, that deep-held belief means we won the war but lost the peace. In their eyes, the European Union is Germany’s plot to finish what it started with those spiky-headed Huns in August 1914.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, therefore, that the Brexit referendum to “take back control” was laced with the iconography of World War II, embarrassing and unforgivable as it was.
Nigel Farage and his UKIP party were forever invoking it, calling Brexit the next “Battle for Britain” and piping music from “The Great Escape” from the campaign bus. It practically became a religion.
As Brexit D-Day approaches, the big guns of the Leave campaign have come out time and time again to remind us if “we” won the war — and “we” put up with rationing and bombing and sacrifice and could handle that — then “we” can handle a no-deal Brexit. Who do these Europeans think they are?
What Britain needs more than ever is less “Churchill history” and more actual history.
Of course, none of these Brexiteers were actually there. They grew up in a prosperous and peaceful world born out of the cost of those who put up with the misery of that devastating war, and who voted for us to be part of the European Economic Community in 1975 — in part so that it might not happen again.
What Britain needs more than ever is less “Churchill history” and more actual history.
Perhaps a good place to start is in questioning the unassailable reputation of a man who was broadly disliked enough by many Britons during the war that they rejected him at the first post-war election.
“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes,” wrote Bertolt Brecht. To which we might add, “and unnecessary referendums as well.”
Otto English is a writer and playwright based in London. He has contributed to the Independent, New Statesman and Byline Times.