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Racial views of Winston Churchill

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Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill, two-time British Prime Minister (both 1940–1945 and 1951–1955), made numerous explicit statements on race throughout his life, which have been considered to have contributed to his decisions and actions in British politics and in office. From the late 20th century onwards, increasing awareness of these attitudes resulted in the reappraisal of both his life achievements and his work by both British historians and the British public, and the reappraisal of his status as one of Britain's most celebrated leaders.[1]

Criticism began mounting in 2005, 40 years after his death. Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, said his attitude toward Blacks was racist and patronising. That complaint was shared by critics such as Clive Ponting. Historian Roland Quinault states that, "Even some historians otherwise sympathetic to Churchill have concluded that he was blind to the problems of black people."[2]

His views

Churchill, author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, was of the view that British domination – in particular through the British Empire – was a result of social Darwinism.[1] Like many of his contemporaries he held a hierarchical perspective of race, believing white people were most superior and black people the least.[3][4][1]

Churchill advocated against black or indigenous self-rule in Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, the Americas and India, believing that British imperialism in its colonies was for the good of the "primitive" and "subject races".[4][5]

In 1902 Churchill stated that the "great barbaric nations" would "menace civilised nations", and that "The Aryan stock is bound to triumph".[6] In 1899 his Boer jailer asked: “…is it right that a dirty Kaffir should walk on the pavement?… That’s what they do in your British Colonies.” Churchill called this the root of Boer discontent:

“British government is associated in the Boer farmer’s mind with violent social revolution. Black is to be proclaimed the same as white…. nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect.”[7]

By the 1940s, Churchill still cherished the ideals of imperialism that he had followed since the 1890s, whilst the rest of British opinion had abandoned them. Colonialism was now seen as a crude device for the oppression of the weak by the strong. After the great war against Nazi racism old arguments about racial superiority were no longer acceptable. The British public rejected the Churchillian notion of an imperial race predestined by moral character to rule and refashion the world in the British image. Among younger Britons, especially in academic circles, criticism grew sharper. Indeed the empire itself was rapidly disintegrating, starting with India in 1947, and finishing up with all the African colonies in the 1950s.[8]

Africa and Asia

According to historian Roland Quinault:

His reservations about black majority rule [in Africa after 1950] were based on considerations of class, education and culture, rather than race and colour. In that respect, Churchill's attitude resembled that of the mid-Victorians to the working classes – they should be cautiously and gradually admitted into the body politic.[9]

Though he held particular contempt for the Arabic people.[10] Churchill was supportive of Ibn Saud, insofar as Saud would support the policy for a Jewish state in Palestine that Churchill had driven personally in the 1920s.[11] Churchill met Saud personally in February 1945 to discuss issues surrounding Palestine,[12][13] though the meeting was reported by Saudis at the time as being widely unproductive, in great contrast to the meeting Saud had held with American President Franklin D. Roosevelt just days earlier.[13]

Black responses

After 1945 many and perhaps most black intellectuals and activists in the United States became convinced that Churchill's racism was a major factor in what they saw as his cynical attempt to buttress an exploitative overseas empire that Britain could no longer afford. They charged he was suppressing the democratic aspirations of people of colour.[14]

During the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom in June 2020, a statue of Churchill in Parliament Square was spray-painted with the words "was a racist", raising further public discussion of his views.[15] At the same protest, the statue of his rival Mahatma Gandhi, was also sprayed with the word "racist".[16]

Judaism

Though wary of communist Jews, Churchill strongly supported Zionism and described Jews as "the most formidable and the most remarkable race", whose "first loyalty will always be towards [Jews]".[1][17]

Churchill had some sympathy for the "Jewish Bolshevism" conspiracy theory, and stated in his 1920 article "Zionism versus Bolshevism" that communism, which he considered a "worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality",[18] had been established in Russia by Jews:

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews; it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders.

However, according to one of his biographers Andrew Roberts, Churchill rejected antisemitism for virtually all his life. Roberts also describes Churchill as an "active Zionist" and philosemitic at a time when "clubland antisemitism... was a social glue for much of the Respectable Tendency".[19] In the same article, Churchill wrote; "Some people like the Jews and some do not, but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race that has ever appeared in the world." He further pointed out that the Bolsheviks were "repudiated vehemently by the great mass of the Jewish race", and concluded:

We owe to the Jews a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together.[20]

He also described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation" than the Jews whom he treated a "higher grade race" compared to the "great hordes of Islam".[21]

In the lead-up to the Second World War, Churchill expressed disgust at Nazi antisemitism; Clement Attlee recalled that Churchill openly wept when recounting to him the humiliations inflicted upon Jews by the SA during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933.[22] In August 1932 while in Munich, Churchill was snubbed for a meeting by Adolf Hitler when the two happened to be sharing the same hotel. Churchill expressed to Hitler's confidante Ernst Hanfstaengl, "Why is your chief so violent about the Jews?... what is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?"[23]

Palestine

See also: Mandatory Palestine

In 1937, during the midst of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Churchill spoke at length during Parliamentary debates on the British policy in Palestine. Churchill insisted that the British government not renege on its 1917 promise to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, opposing the idea of granting Palestine self-rule due to the necessary Arab majority that would rule in Britain's place. Churchill held the belief that an eventual Jewish state within Palestine would advance the prosperity of the country, asking rhetorically before the Peel Commission:

Why is there injustice done if people come in and make a livelihood for more and make the desert into palm groves and orange groves?

Churchill's first-hand experience with Arab culture, both as a soldier and an MP, had "not impressed him", in the words of historian Martin Gilbert; an Arab majority, Churchill maintained, would have resulted in both cultural and material stagnation.[24] Churchill rejected the Arab wish to stop Jewish migration to Palestine:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'American continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here'. They had not the right, nor had they the power."[25]

At the same time, Churchill believed that British policy should not result in what he called "harsh injustice" to the Arab majority, and that the Arab people would not be displaced by the Jewish influx. He further emphasised the British responsibility to ensure that Palestine's Jews would not discriminate economically against their Arab neighbours, stating that such discrimination would result in the future restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Churchill summarised his views before the Peel Commission bluntly: "It is a question of which civilisation you prefer."[24]

Ireland

In 1904, eight years before the Home Rule movement began. Churchill said about Irish Home Rule: "I remain of the opinion that a separate parliament for Ireland would be dangerous and impractical." He held an imperialist view that Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom and under British rule. However in 1912, during a speech in Belfast, he surprisingly supported the creation of an Irish parliament ruled from Dublin, a decision that upset loyalists. These comments were seen as a retract from his comments from 1904. He said: "History and poetry, justice and good sense, alike demand that this race, gifted, virtuous and brave, which has lived so long and endured so much should not, in view of her passionate desire, be shut out of the family of nations and should not be lost forever among indiscriminate multitudes of men." He wanted a new relationship between Great Britain and Ireland to foster a "federation of English speaking peoples all over the world".[26]

In March 1920, as Secretary of State for War, Churchill ordered the British army (known in Ireland as Black and Tans), into Ireland as an attempt to put an end to Irish republicanism. They were temporary recruits to assist the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in maintaining control over the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence.[27]

India

Churchill often made disparaging comments about Indians, particularly in private conversation. At one point, he explicitly told his Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, that he "hated Indians" and considered them "a beastly people with a beastly religion".[18] During World War II, he prioritised the stockpiling of food for Britain over feeding Indian subjects during the Bengal famine of 1943,[28][29] against the pleas made by India secretary Leo Amery and the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, but eventually eased the famine by shipment of grains from Australia.[citation needed]

Historian John Charmley has argued that Churchill's denigration of Mahatma Gandhi in the early 1930s contributed to fellow British Conservatives' dismissal of his early warnings about the rise of Adolf Hitler. Churchill's comments on Indians – as well as his views on race as a whole – were judged by his contemporaries within the Conservative Party to be extreme.[1] Churchill's personal doctor, Lord Moran, commented at one point that, in regards to other races, "Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin."[17] In 1955, Churchill expressed his support for the slogan "Keep England White" in regards to immigration from the West Indies.[30] Alternatively, he is also recorded as saying "The old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go. We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada or a great Australia."[31]

According to Leo Amery, during the Bengal famine of 1943, Churchill stated that any potential relief efforts sent to India would accomplish little to nothing, as Indians "bred like rabbits". His War Cabinet rejected Canadian proposals to send food aid to India, asking the US and Australia to send aid in their stead; according to historian Arthur Herman, Churchill's overarching concern was the ongoing Second World War, leading to his decisions to divert food supplies from India to Allied military campaigns.[32]

However, Churchill exported the excess grain to Europe instead of to the British troops on the front line, adding to the buffer stocks being created against the possibility of future second front invasions in both Greece and Yugoslavia.[33] Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India and Burma and a contemporary of Churchill, likened his understanding of India's problems to King George III's apathy for the Americas. In his private diaries, Amery wrote "on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane" and that he did not "see much difference between [Churchill's] outlook and Hitler's".[34][35]

China

In 1902 Churchill called China a "barbaric nation" and advocated for the "partition of China". He wrote:

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China – I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.[36]

In May 1954, Violet Bonham-Carter asked Churchill's opinion about a Labour party visit to China. Winston Churchill replied:

I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails. I don't like the look of them or the smell of them – but I suppose it does no great harm to have a look at them.[37]

Chemical weapons in Iraq

See also: Alleged British use of chemical weapons in Mesopotamia in 1920

After 1920 Iraqi revolt against the British, Churchill advocated the use of tear gas against "uncivilized tribes"[a] instead of bombing as it would disperse rebels without loss of life or having to resort to lethal force:

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory [tear] gas.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.[39]

Churchill also defended the use of chemical weapons against Germans in World War I.[40]

Notes

  1. ^ "Uncivilised tribe" was the then-accepted official term for a stateless opponent: the British Manual of Military Law stated that the law of war applied only to conflict "between civilized nations." Already in the Manual of 1914, it was clearly stated that "they do not apply in wars with uncivilized States and tribes"; instead the British commander should observe "the rules of justice and humanity" according to his own individual discretion[38]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Heyden, Tom. "The 10 greatest controversies of Winston Churchill's career". bbc.co.uk. BBC News. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  2. ^ Roland Quinault, "Churchill and Black Africa" History Today (2005) 55#6 p. 31.
  3. ^ Toye, Richard. "Churchill's Empire [excerpt]". nytimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved 22 June 2020. He [Churchill] was old-fashioned, [Churchill] said, and 'did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people'.
  4. ^ a b Attar, Samar (2010). Debunking the Myths of Colonization: The Arabs and Europe. Maryland: University Press of America. p. 9. ISBN 978-0761850380. Retrieved 22 June 2020. In his testimony to the Palestine Royal Commission...[(Churchill) tells the commissioner:] "I do not admit...for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race...has come in and taken their place."
  5. ^ Duffield, Charlie. "Was Winston Churchill racist? Why some people have accused the wartime PM of racism after his London statue was defaced". inews.co.uk. The i. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  6. ^ Gustavus A. Ohlinger (1966). WSC: A Midnight Interview, 1902 Finest Hour 159, Summer 2013 Page 33. International Churchill Society. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  7. ^ "Was Churchill a White Supremacist?". The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College. 2019-05-07. Retrieved 2020-10-31.
  8. ^ Lawrence James, Churchill and Empire: Portrait of an imperialist (2013) pp 387–390.
  9. ^ Roland Quinault, "Churchill and Black Africa" History Today (2005) 55#6 p. 36.
  10. ^ Cohen, Michael J (2014). Britain's Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives, 1917–1948. London: Routledge. p. 311. ISBN 978-0415729857. Retrieved 22 June 2020. ...[The prediction that the Yishuv should be armed following the departure of the British Middle East Command] rested in part on Churchill's contempt for the Arabs. Malcolm MacDonald reported one unguarded outburst in the late 1930s: "the Arabs were barbaric hordes who at little but camel dung".
  11. ^ Riedel, Bruce (2018). Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR (PDF). Washington: Brookings Institution Press. pp. 10–11. ISBN 9780815731375. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  12. ^ White, Michael. "What would Winston Churchill have made of King Abdullah's death?". theguardian.com/uk. The Guardian. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  13. ^ a b "Ibn Saud meets British Prime Minister Winston Churchill". King Abdulaziz Information Resource. Archived from the original on 22 July 2013. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  14. ^ Clive Webb, "Reluctant partners: African Americans and the origins of the special relationship" Journal of Transatlantic Studies (2016) 14#4 pp 350–364
  15. ^ Hockaday, James (8 June 2020). Black Lives Matter protesters spray ‘racist’ on Winston Churchill statue. Metro. Retrieved 2020-06-08.
  16. ^ "From Gandhi, Churchill to Columbus: Why Black Lives Matter activists are angry with statues". India Today. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  17. ^ a b Hari, Johann. "The dark side of Winston Churchill". independent.co.uk. The Independent. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  18. ^ a b "The darker side of Britain's most iconic wartime hero". The Independent. 30 January 2015. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  19. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking With Destiny. London: Allen Lane. p. 981. ISBN 9780241205648.
  20. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking With Destiny. London: Allen Lane. p. 278. ISBN 9780241205648.
  21. ^ Mark Curtis – Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam
  22. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking With Destiny. London: Allen Lane. p. 367. ISBN 9780241205648.
  23. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking With Destiny. London: Allen Lane. pp. 363–64. ISBN 9780241205648.
  24. ^ a b Gilbert, Martin (2007). Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship. Henry Holt and Company. pp. 108–19. ISBN 978-0805078800.
  25. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking With Destiny. London: Allen Lane. pp. 414–15. ISBN 9780241205648.
  26. ^ https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/what-did-churchill-really-think-about-ireland-1.459557?mode=amp. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  27. ^ https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/ireland-winston-churchill. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  28. ^ Tonkin, Boyd. "We'll never see the like of Churchill again. Is that so bad?". independent.co.uk. The Independent. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  29. ^ J. Mukherjee 2015, pp. 141–142; Mukerjee 2010, pp. 191–218.
  30. ^ Addison, Paul (2005). Churchill: The Unexpected Hero. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0199297436. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  31. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking with Destiny. p. 402. ISBN 9780241205631.
  32. ^ "Without Churchill, India's Famine Would Have Been Worse". The International Churchill Society. 13 September 2010. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
  33. ^ Tharoor, Shashi (2017). An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India. C. Hurst & Co.
  34. ^ Amery, Leonard (1987). barnes, John; Nicholson, David (eds.). The Empire at Bay. The Leo Amery Diaries. 1929–1945. Hutchinson.
  35. ^ Mishra, Pankaj (6 August 2007). "Exit Wounds:The legacy of Indian partition". The New Yorker.
  36. ^ "WSC: A Midnight Interview, 1902". The International Churchill Society. 2013-06-01. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  37. ^ Churchill: The Unexpected Hero, p. 233, Addison, Paul
  38. ^ HMSO, 1914, p. 235
  39. ^ Roberts, Andrew (2018). Churchill: Walking With Destiny. London: Allen Lane. pp. 272–73. ISBN 9780241205648.
  40. ^ Tolliver, Sandy (15 June 2020). "Winston Churchill was many things — but 'racist' was not one of them". TheHill. Retrieved 23 June 2020.

Further reading

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