Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Politics & Current Affairs => Topic started by: Steve H on August 02, 2018, 01:37:29 PM
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I'm currently reading his 'The Second World War', and am about two-thirds of the way through the first volume(of six). It's very readable, though it isn't an objective, general history of the war; rather it's his personal memoirs.
I know he was an old-fashioned imperialist, and could be a ruthless bastard, and I also know that as a peacetime prime minister in the early 50s he was something of a failure (he was increasingly senile, and day-to-day government was increasingly in the hands of the rest of the cabinet, but no-one had the courage to tell him it was time to go, because - well, he was Churchill), and of course he was a Tory (though a very liberal one on domestic social issues), but in the end, despite all that - what a bloke! He was the person we needed, with all his many flaws, in 1940.
My favourite anecdote about him: his grandson, also called Winston (and later a Tory MP with all his grandfather's flaws but none of his virtues), and aged about four at the time, wandered into the grest man's study while he was working, and said "Grandpa, is it true that you're the greatest man in the world?". "Yes, it is", replied Sir Winston. "Now bugger off."
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an old-fashioned imperialist
a ruthless bastard
as a peacetime prime minister in the early 50s he was something of a failure (he was increasingly senile
of course he was a Tory
Pretty much sums him up. The would-be cutesy anecdote from his grandson just makes him sound like an egotistical arse ... which is no coincidence as he was.
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If he was so egotistical it probably gave him an insight into the minds of Hitler and Stalin and had the strength of character to enable him to foster resistance without the benefits of dictatorship.
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The thread title intrigued me: What do we think of Churchill?
'We' all have different opinions.
'I' don't think of Churchill at all except as a historical character - mixture of good and bad like everyone else.
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Dangerous, anti worker, racist shite. Maybe what was needed in WW2 but not convinced.
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Dangerous, anti worker, racist shite. Maybe what was needed in WW2 but not convinced.
Try mentioning his name in South Wales today, especially in and around Tonypandy.
I'll be sure to bring grapes and Lucozade.
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Dangerous, anti worker, racist shite. Maybe what was needed in WW2 but not convinced.
As a WWI and aftermath cabinet home secretary, racist, xenophobic, heavy handed. As a constituencty MP between the wars?
The only MP in history who made way for a member of the Temperance party to take his seat....no mean feet in Dundee!
As a PM on matters other than war?
a hypocrite in his manifesto of 1945, none of which he delivered in his second administration.
Good points and bad points.
And a Tory.
So more bad points.
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Racist and xenophobic by today's standards; perhaps less so by the standards of his day. Also homophobic by today's standards - earlier in the book, he said that Ernst Rohm, head of the SA murdered in the night of the long knives, was a "sexual pervert". Rohm was undoubtedly an evil bastard, but the fact that he was homosexual doesn't count against him. However, once again, he must be judged by the standards of his day. He wasn't necessarily seriously homophobic by that standard.
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Yes indeed, he was typical.
I don't know why this thread was moved as you started it to discuss the book you're reading, 'The Second World War', written by Churchill, which is literature. I've known people who had to read Churchill as part of A level Eng Lit.
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Yes indeed, he was typical.
I don't know why this thread was moved as you started it to discuss the book you're reading, 'The Second World War', written by Churchill, which is literature. I've known people who had to read Churchill as part of A level Eng Lit.
That indeed is why I started it there, but it is about Churchill generally, so I understand why it's been moved.
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Alright, forget the book and the fact he was a writer then.
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Churchill was the person required to lead this country during WW2. He wasn't a good peacetime PM by all accounts. I gather he wasn't a particularly pleasant man.
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Churchill was the person required to lead this country during WW2.
There weren't very many other serious options, Chamberlain having had the temerity, nay, the audacity to have been dying of bowel cancer when war broke out.
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Try mentioning his name in South Wales today, especially in and around Tonypandy.
I'll be sure to bring grapes and Lucozade.
The "Sunday Post" - not my favourite Sunday rag,apart from the Broons and Oor Wullie (It's a Scottish thing....) is published by D.C. Thompson in Dundee.
Thompson despised the treatment Churchill gave his Dundonian constituants so much that he refused to have the man's name mentioned in the paper....awkward when Churchill was put into Number 10 in 1940.
For the duration, though, the paper simply mentioned "the prime minister" without once printing the name 'Churchill"!
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There weren't very many other serious options, Chamberlain having had the temerity, nay, the audacity to have been dying of bowel cancer when war broke out.
Love him or hate him, Churchill did the business during the war.
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Love him or hate him, Churchill did the business during the war.
Tell that to the soldiers killed in Norway, or Crete...and the 51st Highlanders left behind at Dunkirk.
And don't forget his disasterous Dardanelles campaign in WW1, by the way.
Many of his commanders in WWII dreaded his intervention..interferance...and tried to circumvent his actions at every opportunity.
He was a great orator and morale booster, though.
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Love him or hate him, Churchill did the business during the war.
Which war are we talking about? Because the Gallipoli campaign over which he had enormous influence was a butcher's shop clusterfuck of epic proportions.
ETA: Anchorman beat me to it. He's right; Churchill's legacy was as a rhetorician and morale-booster rather than a truly genius-stricken military strategist in the way that, for example (in WWII alone) Alanbrooke and Rommel were. The gambler's delusion applies particularly strongly here; all the miscalculations and misjudgements and frank cock-ups are conveniently overlooked because they don't fit the national narrative of Saint Winston.
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Which war are we talking about? Because the Gallipoli campaign over which he had enormous influence was a butcher's shop clusterfuck of epic proportions.
ETA: Anchorman beat me to it. He's right; Churchill's legacy was as a rhetorician and morale-booster rather than a truly genius-stricken military strategist in the way that, for example (in WWII alone) Alanbrooke and Rommel were. The gambler's delusion applies particularly strongly here; all the miscalculations and misjudgements and frank cock-ups are conveniently overlooked because they don't fit the national narrative of Saint Winston.
I think this is the crucial point. He venerated because we 'won'. It's impossible to say if the contribution was actually significant.
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He was an orator, and he stood firm and made people think that the war could be won. I don't know enough to say whether or not we would have caved without his presence. I think he made a difference, but how much is debatable and whether it was worth his cock-ups is another question. Were there others who could carry the public spirit as well as him? Given that the Germans had Hitler we needed a similarly charismatic figure, I think.
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Pretty much sums him up. The would-be cutesy anecdote from his grandson just makes him sound like an egotistical arse ... which is no coincidence as he was.
And he knew it.
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And don't forget his disasterous Dardanelles campaign in WW1, by the way.
That it was such a tragic failure wasn't entirely his fault. He conceived it as a simple naval operation. The Galipoli part of the operation was never part of his plan.
Many of his commanders in WWII dreaded his intervention..interferance...and tried to circumvent his actions at every opportunity.
Who's to say they were right and he was wrong? Frequently military commanders fail to see the "bigger picture".
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And a Tory.
So more bad points.
It's kind of sad that politics has descended to the point t that somebody is automatically labelled as bad just because of the political party they were in.
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Interesting to see negative comments, on the left there are notorious reports of him, e.g. threatening to gas Iraquis, but I thought this had got smoothed away by MSM. Obviously not. Some reports of chemical weapons used in Russia, unconfirmed.
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It's kind of sad that politics has descended to the point t that somebody is automatically labelled as bad just because of the political party they were in.
Being a Tory is pretty inexcusable. It's not like having a go at someone because of their skin colour or nationality - toryism is a choice. I admire Churchill, in so far as I do, despite his toryism. Generally speaking, tories are bastards.
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Being a Tory is pretty inexcusable. It's not like having a go at someone because of their skin colour or nationality - toryism is a choice. I admire Churchill, in so far as I do, despite his toryism. Generally speaking, tories are bastards.
Dehumanising bollocks.
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A ridiculous thing to say Genial. Not all Tories are bastards, there are degrees of 'Toryism' anyway and some are good people trying to do their best for their constituents. Not your thing nor mine but I don't go around writing off swathes of people on the grounds of their politics. A Tory is an individual - your admiration of Churchill despite his being a Tory illustrates that.
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Being a Tory is pretty inexcusable. It's not like having a go at someone because of their skin colour or nationality - toryism is a choice. I admire Churchill, in so far as I do, despite his toryism. Generally speaking, tories are bastards.
Being a Christian is pretty inexcusable, It’s not like having a go at someone because of the skin colour or nationality - Christianity is a choice. I admire Cliff Richard in so far as I do despite his Christianity. Generally speaking Christians are fuckwits.
It isn’t true of course but neither is it true of Tory voters or even party members generally, especially not those of previous eras when we used to argue the issues instead of writing people off as evil just because of the party or religion they are in.
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A ridiculous thing to say Genial. Not all Tories are bastards
It's a self-selecting requirement. As Charlie Brooker puts it:
If there was an election tomorrow, and the only two choices were the Nazis or the Tories, I'd vote Tory with an extremely heavy heart. In descending order of vehemence, my objections to the Tory species stem from a) everything they do, b) everything they say, c) everything they stand for, d) how they look, e) their stupid names and f) the noises I imagine they make in bed ... The Conservative party is an eternally irritating force for wrong that appeals exclusively to bigots, toffs, money-minded machine men, faded entertainers and selfish, grasping simpletons who were born with some essential part of their soul missing. None of history's truly historical figures has been a Tory, apart from the ones that were, and they only did it by mistake. To reach a more advanced stage of intellectual evolution, humankind must first eradicate the "Tory instinct" from the brain - which is why mother nature is gradually making them less sexy with each passing generation. The final Tory is doomed to spend his or her life masturbating alone on a hillside, which, let's face it, is the way things were supposed to be all along.
And a far greater man (Nye Bevan) said much the same, without the wit but more succinctly:
... no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
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It's kind of sad that politics has descended to the point t that somebody is automatically labelled as bad just because of the political party they were in.
Kind of sad like this, you mean?
UKIP has only one MP and problems selecting a competent leader. Plus they are a bunch of racist twats.
UKIP is finished. It was only ever Nigel Farage and a load of frothing at the mouth useless racists at the best of times.
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Oops - hoisted by your own petard Jeremyp ( as a side note I got to wondering how that phrase originated - I thought that it was something nautical but had also assumed it was to do with sailing ships and the rigging etc - wrong a petard is a small bomb that was used by armed forces, well I never, as I have already said recently learning every day!).
Anyway, I'm with Charlie Brooker, Genial and Shaker on the Tories. I will accept that some people who vote for them are being wildly misled and that some on the moderate wing of the party are sometimes well meaning, but fuck that they still enable the Rees Mogg's & Boris's of this world.
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Oops - hoisted by your own petard Jeremyp ( as a side note I got to wondering how that phrase originated - I thought that it was something nautical but had also assumed it was to do with sailing ships and the rigging etc - wrong a petard is a small bomb that was used by armed forces, well I never, as I have already said recently learning every day!).
Anyway, I'm with Charlie Brooker, Genial and Shaker on the Tories. I will accept that some people who vote for them are being wildly misled and that some on the moderate wing of the party are sometimes well meaning, but fuck that they still enable the Rees Mogg's & Boris's of this world.
Don't you ever watch QI?
'Cos the petard thing came up yoks ago...oh, by the way, in my reference books, can I recommend the QI book of General Ignorance, whilst I'm at it?
The last private owner of Number 10 was, and I kid you not, Mr Chicken.
I'll leave it there, then........
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Oops - hoisted by your own petard Jeremyp ( as a side note I got to wondering how that phrase originated - I thought that it was something nautical but had also assumed it was to do with sailing ships and the rigging etc - wrong a petard is a small bomb that was used by armed forces, well I never, as I have already said recently learning every day!).
Anyway, I'm with Charlie Brooker, Genial and Shaker on the Tories. I will accept that some people who vote for them are being wildly misled and that some on the moderate wing of the party are sometimes well meaning, but fuck that they still enable the Rees Mogg's & Boris's of this world.
Well-meaning cunts and bastards?
It's this othering that the far right use to stoke fear and to control. Is it acceptable when aimed at the powerful or does it just make the othering of those without power more likely?
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Oops - hoisted by your own petard Jeremyp ( as a side note I got to wondering how that phrase originated - I thought that it was something nautical but had also assumed it was to do with sailing ships and the rigging etc - wrong a petard is a small bomb that was used by armed forces, well I never, as I have already said recently learning every day!).
Anyway, I'm with Charlie Brooker, Genial and Shaker on the Tories. I will accept that some people who vote for them are being wildly misled and that some on the moderate wing of the party are sometimes well meaning, but fuck that they still enable the Rees Mogg's & Boris's of this world.
Isn't that true of all political parties in some sense?
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Kind of sad like this, you mean?
Yep. Exactly like that. We all seem to be guilty of it.
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Don't you ever watch QI?
'Cos the petard thing came up yoks ago...oh, by the way, in my reference books, can I recommend the QI book of General Ignorance, whilst I'm at it?
The last private owner of Number 10 was, and I kid you not, Mr Chicken.
I'll leave it there, then........
I don't know what QI has to say on the subject, but thus Wikipedia:Pétardiers were deployed during sieges of castles or fortified cities. The pétard, a rather primitive and exceedingly dangerous explosive device, comprised a brass or iron bell-shaped device filled with gunpowder and affixed to a wooden base called a madrier. This was attached to a wall or gate using hooks and rings, the fuse lit and, if successful, the resulting explosive force, concentrated at the target point, would blow a hole in the obstruction, allowing assault troops to enter.
Shakespeare's phrase, "hoist with his own petard," is an idiom that means "to be harmed by one's own plan to harm someone else" or "to fall into one's own trap", implying that one could be lifted (blown) upward by one's own bomb, or in other words, be foiled by one's own plan.
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Oops - hoisted by your own petard Jeremyp ( as a side note I got to wondering how that phrase originated - I thought that it was something nautical but had also assumed it was to do with sailing ships and the rigging etc - wrong a petard is a small bomb that was used by armed forces, well I never, as I have already said recently learning every day!).
Anyway, I'm with Charlie Brooker, Genial and Shaker on the Tories. I will accept that some people who vote for them are being wildly misled and that some on the moderate wing of the party are sometimes well meaning, but fuck that they still enable the Rees Mogg's & Boris's of this world.
Don't understand why any working class person would vote Tory.
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Don't understand why any working class person would vote Tory.
oh, I agree, ad_O.
However, in my neck of the woods, the disease of Orangeism - spread from Northern Ireland - seems to curdle folks' brains.
Many 'Orangeists here will vote Tory as the principle Unionist party...even when they either reject, or don't know, Tory policies.
When asked the reasonable question, "Why don't you vote Labour as an alternative unionist party?"
They answer...
"Labour is supported by Catholics and the IRA."
I kid you not.
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Anyway, I'm with Charlie Brooker, Genial and Shaker on the Tories. I will accept that some people who vote for them are being wildly misled and that some on the moderate wing of the party are sometimes well meaning, but fuck that they still enable the Rees Mogg's & Boris's of this world.
But if you are a Tory then the alternative to Boris is Corbyn. There's no middle ground to aim for any more (let's not pretend the Lib Dems are anything at all). I'm sure that many Tories find Boris and Rees Mogg repellant, but they will also find JC utterly terrifying, and will stick with what they know.
I'm not convinced that politics is a choice any more than religion is, or isn't. It is so much to do with upbringing. circumstances, those we meet along the way, the influences that we have, all wrapped up in a bit of blind faith in ideologies and personalities
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But if you are a Tory then the alternative to Boris is Corbyn. There's no middle ground to aim for any more (let's not pretend the Lib Dems are anything at all). I'm sure that many Tories find Boris and Rees Mogg repellant, but they will also find JC utterly terrifying, and will stick with what they know.
I'm not convinced that politics is a choice any more than religion is, or isn't. It is so much to do with upbringing. circumstances, those we meet along the way, the influences that we have, all wrapped up in a bit of blind faith in ideologies and personalities
How, then, do you explain the current Earl Attlee, grandson of St Clement of Attlee, who is a Tory,ffs?
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How, then, do you explain the current Earl Attlee, grandson of St Clement of Attlee, who is a Tory,ffs?
Is that true?
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How, then, do you explain the current Earl Attlee, grandson of St Clement of Attlee, who is a Tory,ffs?
People very often don't want to be like their forebears. They see it as a way of 'being their own person', if not outright rebellion. Plenty have done it the other way leaving their Tory roots for socialism and communism.
Put it this way, my mother is a monarchy-loving, Brexit voting, Christian with right wing leanings. Which of those apply to me?
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Don't you ever watch QI?
No.
I found Fry insufferable.
And Toksvig ineffectual.
Ooh - think I'm grumpy this evening.
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Is that true?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Attlee,_3rd_Earl_Attlee
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Disgraceful.
The apple fell a long way from the tree there :(
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Love him or hate him, Churchill did the business during the war.
Let's get back to Winston Churchill.
I have been thinking about this comment of yours, LR, in connection with your home island of Guernsey.
One of the saddest aspects of the latter part of WW2 was the decision to leave the Channel Islands under German occupation while the rest of Europe was being freed. It is ironic that a few months after D-Day that the whole of France had effectively been liberated but no attempt was made to relieve the situation in these tiny pockets of British life.
Chruchill's policy appears to have been to starve the occupying Germans into submission. The only method of access remaining to the Germans was by U-boat. The occupying forces could probably have been quickly overcome by a series of focused attacks. But instead women, children and old men (the young and fit men had left to join the armed forces) were increasingly having to allow the German occupiers to plunder their food stores. Eventually, there were Red Cross supplies delivered by the SS Vega.
Eventually, the Channel Islands were liberated. But liberation did not take place until after WW2 in Europe had ended. The day after, in fact. Germany had signed the articles of surrendered but was still occupying Jersey, Guernsey and the other islands.
And what appears to be even more bizarre, following liberation some German soldiers were drafted into the islands' police forces as temporary policemen until returning demobilised islanders could take over.