A shining beacon
Winston Churchill in the news - in 2006
By Bob Brehl
Volume
18 Issue 1 Spring 2006
Judging by media exposure, there is no
doubt Winston Churchill, and his ideas, words and deeds, remain relevant
in the 21st century.
In the last six months alone, the words
"Winston Churchill" were mentioned in 5,700 articles in
newspapers around the globe, from Canberra to Coventry, New York to
Nairobi.
In the past two years, you'll find 24,211
articles with "Winston Churchill", compared to 11,540 with the
words "Franklin Roosevelt", the wartime U.S. president.
In the end, what is perhaps most
astounding is the breadth of topics in which Winston Churchill remains
part of the story at the beginning of this new century.
And the topics are not just parliamentary
democracy and war, although he is mentioned prominently in both. But
Churchill is also at the fore in media topics as diverse as depression
(in which he battled and called the 'Black Dog'), ageism, cartoons about
Mohammed, smoking bans in pubs, stuttering, race relations, dealing with
Russian business partners, the sale of his funeral barge, the Year of
The Dog in the Chinese calendar and more.
Churchill also made headlines around the
world recently when secret wartime British cabinet documents were
declassified and revealed a harder edge to his personality.
Here is a taste of some of the news he is
still making today.
From the Wall Street Journal, "No
one knows how Winston Churchill would have fought the war on terror or
what he might have thought of the U.S. practice of holding members of al
Qaeda at Guantanamo or secret CIA prisons in Eastern
Europe. But in newly declassified records
of the British Bulldog's War Cabinet meetings, Churchill offers some
posthumous insights on wartime leadership.
"In 1942, the Cabinet discussed the options were Hitler to fall
into British hands. 'All sorts of complications ensue as soon as you
admit a fair trial,' Churchill said, according to notes taken by the
deputy cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook. To avoid such a 'farce,'
which he thought would distract from the war effort, Churchill favored
swifter means of dealing with Hitler. 'This man is the mainspring of
evil. Instrument -- electric chair, for gangsters.'
"Churchill called other Nazi leaders 'outlaws' and argued that
those who fell into British hands should be executed rather than put on
trial. (There is no record of his views on water-boarding.)
"Churchill might wonder at today's attitudes toward fighting
terrorists, about American 'torture' of prisoners, and about the U.S.
President who's often derided in London as a 'cowboy.' The British Prime
Minister's clarity about the Nazi threat in World War II got his nation
and the world successfully through that conflict."
In Australia, the Manly Daily celebrated
the beginning the Chinese New Year on January 29, 2006, with a story
noting that the year Churchill was born in 1874 was also The Year of the
Dog.
Would anyone dispute that Churchill's personality was spot-on for
someone born in the Year of the Dog?
"Apparently people born in that year are loyal, honest,
trustworthy, good at keeping secrets and generous - but they are
stubborn and selfish," the newspaper noted.
In his later years, Churchill drew up
plans for what he called "Operation Hope Not" - his funeral.
Part of the plans included a barge to carry his coffin up the Thames
before going to its final resting place.
The Evening Standard in the U.K. wonders if the current owner's recent
price cut on the barge is a sign that interest in Churchill memorabilia
is waning.
"Has the market for Churchilliana peaked?," the newspaper
reported early this year.
"The small wooden boat that carried Winston Churchill's coffin up
the Thames in 1965 is for sale again - having failed to reach its £1
million reserve at a Sotheby's auction last month. It's now gone back on
the market for around £780,000. 'You're not going to turn it into a
party boat, I hope,' Churchill's daughter, Lady Soames, once said to the
owners."
If it sells for £780,000, that works out to about $1.6 million for the
little boat. That doesn't sound like anything is waning.
Churchill will always be a lighting rod
for conspiracy theorists on many fronts. Recently, a wartime scholar
shot down speculation Churchill knew the Germans were going to bomb
Coventry before it happened.
Conspiracy theorists have long believed Churchill did nothing to protect
Coventry because otherwise it would have alerted the Germans that
British boffins had cracked the top-secret Ultra code.
But Professor Richard Holmes, author and well known for his BBC2
television series War Walks, dismisses the idea that Churchill knew
beforehand about the devastating raid on November 14, 1940, according to
the Coventry Evening Telegraph.
"Prof Holmes said: 'Churchill was a controversial figure but I do
not think there is enough evidence to suggest that Coventry was one of
his mistakes.'
"Relatively few people were cleared to see the Ultra code - often
called the enigma code - which had been brought to Britain thanks to the
bravery of some Poles and cracked by the mixture of Oxbridge dons,
mathematicians, misfits and crossword puzzle experts based at Bletchley
Park.
"'I believe there are a lot more accidents than conspiracies in
history and I honestly do not believe Britain could have won the war
without Churchill,' he said."
Churchill continues to attract controversy on other delicate issues,
such as race relations. It should be noted that attitudes have changed
dramatically on this issue over the past 65 years since World War II.
Apparently, after an agonizing debate within cabinet, Churchill ordered
British troops to show respect for the U.S. army's racial segregation
practices by being "particularly reserved" with blacks
stationed in the U.K. during the Second World War.
At the time, hundreds of thousands of black troops - most from colonial
outposts - were treated equally in the British army, but white U.S.
soldiers ate and slept separately from their comrades, reported the
Birmingham Post in January 2006.
British leaders "were unwilling to cause friction among British
troops by adopting such practices in their own barracks and canteens. In
October 1942, Churchill told the Cabinet that the views of the U.S.
'must be considered'," the newspaper reported.
As a former journalist, Churchill once remarked that he preferred making
the news to reporting on it. It is a testament to his greatness that
Churchill is still making so much news so long after his death.
Bob Brehl
Robert Brehl is a member of the Society's
board of directors and a former journalist with the Globe and Mail and
the Toronto Star.
