Four Reasons that Winston Churchill was a Terrible Person
On hearing the name “Winston Churchill”, most of you will conjure up heroic images of a defiant Prime Minister vowing to “never surrender” to the might of the Nazi war machine. Churchill has been lionised in the public consciousness and painted as the man who saved Europe, nay the world, from the Third Reich. But even the smallest peek behind the surface reveals a far darker picture, and it is unfortunate that little space is given to the more negative aspects of Churchill. Read on to find some of the reasons why the cult of personality around the wartime PM is so flawed.
- He was a horrific racist
Churchill did little to hide his disdain for most of the races on the planet. In his view, the white British people were at the top of the racial hierarchy above all others. He referred to Arabs as “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung”, of the Chinese he said he “(hated) people with slit eyes” and while referring to immigration to Britain he desired to “Keep England White”. However it was Indians who he particularly objected to, referring to them as a “beastly people” and saying “I hate Indians”. While these views would have been quite common in the Victorian era, when Churchill was born, he himself held these beliefs even when they were abhorrent to contemporaries. As an example, his above comments on Indians came when Mahatma Gandhi was leading his people in resistance against colonial rule, in the 1940s! Many may try to hand wave away Churchill’s racist views as the norm during the time, but this simply isn’t the case.
2. He unleashed the Black and Tans on Ireland
In the later years of the 1910s, and the start of the 1920s, Ireland was embroiled in a bitter Independence War against crown forces. The IRA (only tangentially related to the later group) primarily engaged in guerrilla actions against the police force, the RIC, as well as British soldiers. RIC barracks were a particular target of the IRA and in many parts of the country the police force’s power had been completely broken. The RIC needed reinforcements badly, and Winston Churchill, in his capacity as Minister of War, believed he had the solution. The First World War had recently ended and Churchill decided to hire veterans and send them to Ireland to fight the IRA. This force would go down in history under the nickname “The Black and Tans” owing to their uniforms consisting partially of khaki and partially of black. Churchill also sent another group to Ireland, consisting of former officers, known as The Auxiliaries. Both of these groups would go on to unleash a brutal terror on the ordinary people of Ireland. It would be difficult to list all of the atrocities committed by the Black and Tans but to get some idea of it I will say that they are most well known for open firing on a crowd watching a Gaelic football match in what would become known as Bloody Sunday (one of many Bloody Sundays in Ireland). The victims of Bloody Sunday were not armed rebels, but ordinary Irish civilians. And this would become a pattern during the war, the IRA would carry out an attack on police, army, British intelligence etc. and the Black and Tans would then carry our random atrocities on the civilian population as reprisals. The Auxiliaries, for their part, were no better than The Black and Tans, and are probably most well known for burning the city centre of Cork. For his part, Churchill wanted to use planes to “disperse (the IRA) with machine gun fire and bombs”.
3. The Bengal Famine
Churchill’s low opinion of Indians has already been mentioned, and perhaps it is this which caused his actions during the Bengal Famine. Man-made famine is a term which, fairly or not, is usually often applied to Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China, but there is a strong case to be made that the Bengal Famine of 1943 was man-made and caused by Churchill and his government. India was no stranger to famine in the first half of the 20th century, usually caused by drought, however in 1943 3 million Indians would perish as a result of starvation during a year where rainfall was higher than average. The problem was that food produced in India was being shipped out of the country for the war effort, and Churchill’s cabinet was repeatedly warned that this could cause disaster. It also was not the case that these supplies were of absolute necessity to the war effort, as some of them were used to “top-up European stockpiles” which would be used to feed the Greeks and Yugoslavians, who had not even yet been liberated! In other words, the food was simply being stored for those who did not need it. In addition, the Indian administration was forbidden from importing grain. While there may have been underlying problems, as is the case in almost every famine, there is no doubt that Churchill and his government hugely exacerbated the Bengal Famine. When told of this famine, Churchill responded by saying that it was the fault of the Indians themselves for “breeding like rabbits”
4. He betrayed Greek resistance fighters to Nazi collaborators
The Nazis were thrown out of Greece by a colossal effort on the part of the Greek partisans. The largest group in the resistance movement was know as ELAS, and was mostly made up of left wing partisans. With the Nazi presence in Greece crumbling fast, the various resistance groups, including ELAS, expected to form a government together. Churchill, however, had other plans, and was adamant that the Greek monarchy should be restored. This was not popular with the people of Greece, as the monarchy had, prior to the war, allowed the fascist dictator, Metaxas, rule the country. ELAS agreed to submit to the authority of a British governor appointed to oversee Greece after liberation. ELAS, and the political wing behind them, EAM, attempted to negotiate with Britain as part of a coalition government that would be formed. Unfortunately for the EAM, those who had collaborated with the Nazis would not be punished by Churchill’s government. In fact they maintained their positions in the police force and army. Following the breakdown of negotiations, and after a demonstration was fired upon by the Nazi collaborators within the police, Churchill sent the army to crush ELAS and EAM. Alongside those who had collaborated with Nazis, Churchill killed those who had thrown them out of Greece. Of course, Churchill had feared the influence of any left wing presence in Greece, but to arm and ally with those who aided the Nazi occupation really shows the character of this awful man.
References:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/greece-world-war-two-winston-churchill-communism
