Centrepiece
Wanting a Winston
Colin Welch
T praise the firm restraint with which 'Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, writes. Yet, unlike the poor South African novelists mocked by Roy Campbell, Professor Howard has not only a snaffle and a curb but a bloody horse as well. This powerful and well-schooled animal recently carried him round the stiff course presented by the English-Speaking Union's Churchill lec- ture. Part of it was printed in the Times, under the titles, 'Needed: one nation again. Should we wish that Winston Chur- chill was alive to lead us today?' The Professor faced up to and effortlessly cleared the obstacles presented by all the difficulties which bedevil and divide our nation today. A clear round, I thought, till the very last fence, where he came to pose and answer the question in the title. At this point I thought I heard a rattle of displaced poles: too much curb or snaffle, too soon?
Should we wish for a Churchill to lead us today? 'Frankly, I don't think so,' the Professor answers. 'After all, the Churchill of 1940 was also the Churchill of 1911 and indeed of 1926. He was a warrior whose joy in the battle often overrode any desire for conciliation and who itched for the opportunity, as he once phrased it, "to put these grave matters to the proof'. I suspect that the present crisis would find him making speeches which delighted a part of the population as much as they infuriated the rest.' Such speeches would, in the Professor's view, further divide a nation already divided and further jeopardise that national unity which he values above all. Perhaps he had in mind such speeches as the Gestapo 'outburst' during the 1945 election, to which an absurd myth attri- butes the Tory defeat. In fact support rallied to the Tories whenever the old bird gave tongue.
The nation is in fact divided at present twice over. There is as usual the benign dialectic division between those who, all valuing the nation and its unity, strive to promote that unity by sharply contrasted means, by more collectivism or less, by more egalitarianism or less. And there is a further, malign division between all these and those who value collectivism or egali- tarianism above everything else, and are eager to destroy the nation and its institu- tions to achieve their ends. So long as they are of this mind, such people cannot by conciliation, compassion or political skill alone be brought back into the national comity. They constitute a foreign body, a sort of cancer. In their own interests, as also in the interests of those of their betters who have been unwarrantably impressed by their supposed strength and grievances and real intransigence, they must simply be defeated, cut out, scattered, rendered im- potent. And this is where a Churchill figure, making speeches which delighted all the unifiers and infuriated the des- troyers, would be invaluable.
For a distinguished military historian, the Professor seems strangely neglectful of morale. The healthy majority views with horror mounting violence everywhere, especially that of the pickets, culminating in the murder it has long risked, flourishing unchecked and unpunished save for rare and belated wrist-slaps. It reads with baf- fled incredulity about smaller things, straws in a foul wind, of provocative demos and 'funerals' in Ulster, of meetings spon- sored by Red Ken at which terrorist support for the miners is expressed by representatives of Sinn Fein and the PLO. It begins to despair. Can nothing be done to arrest this bloodstained farce?
Well this majority knows that concilia- tion will not reconcile the irreconcilable, and that the tolerant society it cherishes cannot indefinitely or unconditionally tolerate what seeks to destroy it. It sees here 'grave matters', and longs to see them 'put to the proof'.
It was not conciliation that finished Hitler off, nor compassion and political skill, nor intelligence, patience and invincible good humour, though some of these qual- ities, esteemed by the Professor (by me too), might with advantage have played a bigger part. But more important still were courage and resolution, two other qualities the Professor values. Hitler was taught a lesson, that brute force doesn't pay; and it was superior force which taught him.
I said above that the utter defeat of the destroyers, prayed for by everyone else, would also be in their own interest. Well, Germany is now reconciled, a respected member of the European comity. Thought- ful decent Germans must thank Churchill who, by whatever he did to defeat Hitler, delivered them from an emotional, intel- lectual and physical thraldom which could only have dragged them into further mis- eries, crimes and -disgrace. In the same way, the destroyers of our society will never be reconciled to it till their own defeat reveals to them its true strength, majesty and — yes — mercifulness, and clears their minds of the evil delusions which now infest them.
Should we then wish for a Churchill? Frankly, I think we should: why not? 'In war, resolution; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill,' Churchill said. As usual, he had things in the right order. Asocial climber, returning from the Levant, asked if she had seen the Dardanelles, replied, 'They were away'. New to me, I must confess, when it appeared in the Spectator. I live in a world of my own, and am fortunate to do so, in which St Petersburg is still St Petersburg (last week I even inadvertently called Moscow St Petersburg: I'm sorry). Any- way, the Dardanelles made me laugh, though not, it seems, poor Mr Montgomery-Massingberd. He cited it as one of a 'farrago of feeble old stories' rehearsed in Peter Coats's Of Kings and Cabbages (Weidenfeld, f12.95). In his very amusing if wounding review, Mr M-M exhibited one or two other samples, includ- ing the 'one about Edward VII apologising for an equine fart to the Kaiser, who replied, "Don't mention it . . . I really thought it was one of the horses": Now this one I have long cherished, being a modest collector of Kaiser stories, not all to his disadvantage. Who was it said that there was nothing much wrong with the Kaiser except that he wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral?
At every performance of Beethoven's Fifth, someone is hearing it for the first time. Similarly, whenever the horse farts, while some yawn, for others it is like a first look into Chapman's Homer or the setting- up of one's first whoopee-cushion. For many of our children and grand-children, the horse. has not yet farted.
Like mankind, jokes live and die and are endlessly reborn. They have to be recalled, recirculated, passed on. This useful task is entrusted to unself-conscious joke-dealers like Mr Coats, who risks the sighs of his contemporaries to shake a laugh from the young. I had a sad vision of him slinking off shamefaced, disheartened by the mockery of the Massingberd, to remove a few well-loved quips from the next instalment. Tread softly, Mr M-M; you are treading on posterity's jokes.
We are all very defensive about jokes, normally prefacing our own with depreca- tory words like 'awful', 'hoary' or 'silly'. Alan Watkins recently told one about Ian MacGregor and his coal board staff retiring from a tough morning's negotiation with the miners to a restaurant for lunch.
have a steak,' said MacGregor. 'And what about the vegetables?' the waiter asked. 'Oh, I guess they'll have steak too.' From this marvellous jest, Alan felt compelled to distance himself by calling it 'bad'. A filmcritic once used another self distancing technique. She was reveiwing a film in which the late lamented Arthur Haynes, wounded in hospital, was visited by a top surgeon, who asked, 'Where were you hit, my man?"Well, guy, it's a bit embarrassing. I was hit in the, er, in the . . ."Rectum?"Well, I can tell you, It didn't do 'em much good.' 'If this is the sort of joke you like,' the critic primly commented, 'then this is the sort of film you'll like.' I wish I'd seen it.
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