The Churchillian heritage

Patrick Cosgrave

Earlier this year I published a -bonk on Churchill, the centenary of whose birth is now upon us. Mine was a strategic rather than a political study but, for a political correspondent, the work of preparing the book obviously raised an endless series of questions about whether the old man, if around now, would be of any use to us in our present plight and, indeed, whether there is any Churchillian philosophy like that of, say Gaullism which could be applied in our present discontents. A number of the review § of my book and notably that in the Spectator by Mr Enoch Powell touched on similar points; almost every one of the interviewers who spoke to me on a number of radio and television programmes posed the question directly; and, finally, numerous correspondents sought my views on the matter.

Fully to provide an answer would be impossible; even to approach it would require an extended and exceptionally tentative treatise of great length and erudition in political philosophy. Suffice it to say that, while one frequently comes across affectionately expressed memories of Churchill among the public, very little use indeed is made of anything that might be called a Churchill heritage by our politicians. True, there are still a number who offer personal reminiscences, and there are the ritual expressions of regard which the centenary will call forth in unexampled and embarrassing number and flatulence. But, on the whole, one does not find British politicians to whom Churchill is a living inspiration. Even those who might be expected by taste, temperament or capacity to draw on their understanding of him for sustenance or propaganda like, say Lord Hai[sham or Mr Powell rarely do so.

This is surely a strange state of affairs for a country which has prided itself on its historical sense, and its regard for the past. For Churchill was a very great Englishman, and a very great leader: only the mealy-mouthed and there are enough of those among historians, academic and amateur would deny him his place in the very front rank of our country's leaders, and anybody with the smallest real understanding of history would assign to him the first place. At no time in British history has so dire a threat as we faced in 1940 been met by so supreme a human being, but there is much, much more to• the man than that.

Over a political career of amazing duration Churchill touched, more often than not with wisdom, almost every major event of modern British history, and influenced in one way or another almost every major political development. He was in at the origins of the Welfare State, and early a protagonist in the Irish problem. His activities as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, for so long derided, are beginning to attract not unsympathetic attention from economic historians and even his last government, which for a long time he was thought to have presided over in near senility, now looks a monument of achievement compared with all that has followed, with Churchill, using his enormous experience where his physical strength was failing him, an indispensable sculptor of that movement. Well, indeed, did Mr Henry Fairlie, when he wrote this column, once end his weekly contribution with an invocation to replace Sir Anthony Eden as Prime Minister with the then retired war leader.

Of course it is said that the times have so changed that Churchillian grandeur would fit Britain only as a father's overcoat would cover an infant; or, alternatively, that Churchill, though indispensable as a war leader had, in fact, no enduring philosophy, no system of thought which could be passed on, turned over in subsequent minds, re-interpreted, acted upon. Indeed, I have seen many clever people in politics pondering Churchill as they would ponder, being weekend walkers, a very high mountain, and express their own inadequate comprehension of his greatness by observing that he was a man for his time, but had no body of thought that could still be regarded as alive.

This brings me near to my central theme: if inspiration and insight cannot now be gleaned by us from Churchill then the fault is ours not his. If our politicians genuinely feel that, whatever the direction of their will, they cannot find anything in Churchill, then so much the worse it is for them; and, of course, for us. The past, and especially the great past, is not there to be mocked or discarded or found too opaque by contemporary minnows: it is an essential part of what is now. The extreme radical revolutionaries, who are set on the destruction of such society as we have, understand this point very well, for it is a vital and declared part of their policy to eliminate history and, by killing our regard for, and our capacity to see in a just context, our past, to poison the very roots of our political being. A country dead to its past is dead indeed.

But, in truth, it is not too difficult to draw some lessons from Churchill's career. Let me start with a very obvious one. There are very few politicians about now who, in their speeches, use the English language at all well:

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Spectator November 30, 1914 only Mr Powell can rise to an eloquence whichil could not unreasonably be compared with Churchill's own; and there are perhaps half dozen more, not all in the front rank of their party, who could put a long quotation fmrn Churchill into a speech without the comparison thus evoked making their own contributien seem too tawdry. Now, Churchill worked over his speeches with the most detailed care: even when he accepted advice, as any politician reasonably can, on their content or style, th,e, final version was unmistakably his own, afl said unmistakably what he believed, and uf n' he proposed to do, content and character being inextricably intertwined. Today, the rnainvr political speech is often the work of man Y1 and the final version a compromise "..a the worst and most inelegant sort. The prese-Leader of the Conservative Party hires flume; ous and often, expensive script writers (thoug not, admittedly, very good ones) and has be,end known to deliver a speech which he has it sight of only an hour or so before the event. Mr Peregrine Worsth orn e observed notlongete' few politicians today would care to face, t"ic ordeal of having their speeches printed in °°„:a form something which was a commonplan` generation ago. The products of politica( rhetoric nowadays are commonly vulga.. ungrammatical and cheap. The objection may be made that this is 31.e,ra leisured age: television and all the impediroe't of modern political life simply do not allow the spacious composition of a piece of o rhetoric and, anyhow, we have so ,declinee that nobody would be able to cornPns speeches like Churchill's. This is a verY confused argument. First, it should be und:el stood that I have emphasised the desirabill not of trying to create reproduction Churc13,1i, speeches, but of taking care over the cornP°' f Lion of one's own personal, detailed ea:reZ, the kind which shows that, as a PolitiTh-la one has reverence for the language as the channel of real communication. Then, as to L"se argument that it would be impossible, bena, tire of media pressure, Mr Powell's success a,n ot refutes the objection. True, journalists have„ntis normally been either intelligent or scruatli",e4 in analysing his speeches, but he has Mil)tte himself on the public in spite of thal' the politician too infrequently understanos or immense power he has over a televisioo to radio programme on which he ckoon„e:', to appear, once he is certain of what he

say, and once he understands it. of

What is true of language is likewise true 9 policy. It would be absurd to imagine t,TI,tds man who stayed in the front of the 119,rot affairs for as long as did Churchill di' or change or reverse policies in all that time, ta be so perfect a creature that he did not resorthe shifts and stratagems. But, if one looks at whole of his career, one can see a staggeress consistency, built around the single gre devotion to the integrity and independen of his country, to parliament as an expresn'-tribe that integrity, and to the unity of theArtion which he sought to represent as the conk.' 3 of that integrity. There is, of cournise distinction to be made between true and 100,5 patriotism: false patriotism is Mr Wata's

appeal to the spirit of Dunkirk or Mr to

unconvincing appeals to his count heir rally round him just after he has sold 1Pan birthright. True patriotism is base:k oe,$ unforced conviction of the valueof ,alc country and one's civilisationAt is a art to be put on and off with the season' ut of the living flesh of politics.and. rally round him just after he has sold 1Pan birthright. True patriotism is base:k unforced conviction of the valueof ,alc country and one's civilisationAt is a art to be put on and off with the season' ut of the living flesh of politics.and. Again, it is often said that patrioti sm ?icy indeed, nationalism is impossible as a P.ted today, because of those strangelY chae.e4 refereolo icvtes, is

conditions to which I have already r y.

course it is, for patriotism is not a if:if Patriotism, as Churchill understood it, be Would patriots could not be elected, they case IS ,he interested in standing. But, in any Would patriots could not be elected, they case IS ,he interested in standing. But, in any average political understanding of Paktric) rn_r,bY a corrupt one. I recall in 1972 being as

d intelligent friend from Conservative Central Office whether I thought, as a writer, that "a patriotic speech, a great patriotic speech, could

Conservative1?! written for" and he named a senior ; politician. I replied that such a thing was impossible, first because such a sPeech, though it could be written, could not be written for somebody; and second because it .,_Ivould not truly reflect the character of the Pulicies which the Conservative government Ws then pursuing. My friend rebuked me, rYirlg that I was so hostile to those policies that

naturally denied them the appellation patriotic. But his accusation was false, and its

lsehood lay in the nature of the thing. The ‘-onservative Party did not then lack men of ability and skill with words, anxious to sound a Patriotic note in defence of the policies they Were pursuing, but they could not do it, for they cold not, without meeting derision, adapt the sacred rhetoric of patriotism to their purposes. TO return to the matter of Churchill's consistency in policy. There were times in his career whenhe was forced out of office, because a, declared policy too strenously pursued and .,ti3earing to fail gained opprobrium for him. 4nre were times when he refused office, and "iere were times when he resigned either office °T.,,,a,Party whip. It falls to no man to be always ri,:6"1, but every man has it within his power ho▪ nourably to acknowledge when he is wrong. Churchill would, by and large, have :.7• aPed the strictures which Mr Powell has not without justice, heaped on the heads of members of Mr Heath's last government, ,.nrie of whom, whatever their disagreements Alth what was being done, however deep their regret, saw fit to make a personal sacrifice in --Interests of consistency. Churchill, though, appears to have been littad_e of feebler clay than Mr Powell. He writes "ThanklY in his memoirs of the second world war

at he would have accepted office from

Chamberlain before 1939, -and blesses his guardian angel that he was not offered it. When he joined the antipathetic Chamberlain in government once the war began he made a personal resolution never to quarrel with his leader and, though he came close to destruction in April 1940 as a result of this resolution, he never wavered in fidelity to it. He understood what Mr Powell seems to have forgotten, the exceptional desirability not always, and not in every dire strait the absolute necessity, but the desirability of what Mr Fairlie has taken to calling amicitia, the ability to work with colleagues in a common party effort. Churchill's conception of national unity, as he showed when he formed his 1940 government, did encompass many whose views differed from his own, and he used his newly acquired position of enormous power and prestige to halt the attacks being made by his own supporters on the blindness and nigh criminal stupidity of the appeasers, in order that all might pull together in the great struggle that lay ahead. It would be wrong to suppose that an apt parallel could be drawn between 1940 and 1974 in the matter of constructing a national government, for the truth is that socialist and Conservative methods of tackling our present difficulties are at variance with one another in a way quite foreign to the basic agreement existing in Churchill's government. But there is, perhaps, a lesson of 1940 for Tories. A great deal of all this, of course, would seem obvious if it were not that there is never anything very obvious in politics. Democratic politics, in particular, is a very inspirational business, and its affairs proceed far more by emulation and inspiration than by logic or reason. Much of what Churchill had to assert throughout his career, and particularly at its height in 1940, was truistic; but eternal verities have nonetheless to be re-stated. We shall never get very far by eternally repeating and

insisting that politicians should take personal care over their speeches, or remain true to their policies even to the point of resignation: we might hope to get somewhere by rousing in them some sense of admiration or shame when they are confronted with someone in their own profession truly great.

Only if one suggested circumstance be true may we forget Chuch ill. If Britain has truly lost her capacity to be herself, and to rise to hbr own appreciation of herself, will Churchill have nothing to say to us. Even if we are prepared to listen, however, we must beware that there are two strands to the nationalism that was vital and eternal to him. The first is the defiant, the strand that showed itself most prominently in 1940. The second is equally important: it is the grand.

Churchill's conception of his country was not merely of a nation that was determined to live, as any rat in a corner might be determined. It was a conception of a country that was great, not just because of what it had done, for itself and the world, but because of what it was in itself. When we look at our_shattered politics and our shattered nerves today, that is perhaps the most important of all things to remember that Churchill could not conceive of Britain without conceiving of her as great. Greatness

• does not, in this sense, mean holding an empire, or giving Europe a lead in technology, or having heads of foreign states receiving our leaders with respect even if they giggle behind their hands. lt means being what we are, and proud of it. The entanglements, the follies, the lies, the fractured political grammar of recent years will pass away when we grasp the sense of our own worth, of which a most important part is a sense of our past. Then, with wisdom and generosity not with the mean-mindedness that marks little Englandism can we, in Churchill's words, "arise, and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time."