Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was one of Britain’s top statesmen, being the man who led the nation in its fight against Nazi Germany during the Second World War.1
He joined the army as a young man, and served in India, the Sudan, South Africa (during the Second Boer War), and in France (during the First World War).2
Churchill’s commitment to his nation during the Second World War is legendary. As Prime Minister, he not only led the people in their time of war, but also acted as a beacon of hope, shoring up morale in the embattled nation.
Churchill was not only a soldier and politician, he was also an artist, author, and journalist. As a skillful amateur artist, he produced several hundred paintings. However, it was as a writer that he was most prolific; aside from writing an enormous number of newspaper articles, he also wrote autobiographical books, a novel, and many historical volumes (notably the six-volume The Second World War and the four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples). In 1953 he was given the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values”. He was also a bit of a poet, although his few works were not published during his lifetime; however, it has been said that on occasion he used poetical techniques in his speech-writing, as part of his mastery of the English language, so as to give his speeches some rhythmical delivery. He was a man of many talents.3
Whilst he famously served as a wartime Prime Minister during 1940 to 1945, he also had a second term in office, from 1951 to 1955.
During his second term of office as Prime Minister, Churchill expressed valid concerns over the rise in Third World immigration to the United Kingdom. When he was Prime Minister of the UK, he expressed opposition to the influx of coloured people into Britain, although he had problems with getting his Government Ministers to support him in his efforts.
The handwritten notes of the Conservative Party government’s Cabinet meeting, held on 3 February 1954, under the item “Coloured Workers”, recorded Churchill’s views: “Problems which will arise if many coloured people settle here. Are we to saddle ourselves with colour problems in the UK? Attracted by Welfare State. Public opinion in UK won’t tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits”.4
In October of that same year, Churchill warned Maxwell Fyfe during a Cabinet meeting that “the problems arising from the immigration of coloured people required urgent and serious consideration.”4
In 1955 Churchill complained to Ian Gilmour, owner and editor of The Spectator magazine, that immigration “is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice”.4
During Churchill’s Prime Ministership, Harold Macmillan (who was Minister of Defence at the time, and later Prime Minister) noted in his diary entry for 20 January 1955, “More discussion about the West Indian immigrants. A Bill is being drafted — but it’s not an easy problem. P.M. thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good slogan!”5
Churchill, in a speech given to the Royal Society of St. George address on 24 April 1933, warned about the anti-Western intellectuals who were beginning to affect Britain’s political and social culture. It was such academic activists who sapped much of the will of Great Britain, and the other Western nations, with their incessant promotion of anti-nationalism, White guilt, and the “Black Armband” view of history. Churchill said:
“The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large portion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias? Nothing will save England if she will not save herself.”6
It is ironic that whilst Churchill was Britain’s statesman-hero of the Second World War, it was the aftermath of that conflict which not only led to the end of the British Empire, but which also contributed to the anti-national state of affairs of modern times, including the large-scale demographic invasion of Britain.
See also:
Winston Churchill criticized Islam in his book, The River War
References:
1. Herbert G. Nicholas, “Sir Winston Churchill: Prime minister of United Kingdom”, Encyclopaedia Britannica
“Winston Churchill: Prime Minister, Journalist (1874–1965)”, Bio
Jennifer Rosenberg, “Sir Winston Churchill: A biography of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”, About.com
“Winston S. Churchill”, History.com
“Sir Winston Churchill: The greatest Briton?”, BBC
2. “Winston Churchill’s military career: An officer and a gentleman”, National Churchill Museum, Westminster College
“And what did you do in the Great War? Mr Churchill?”, The Western Front Association, 28 December 2008
Stephen Miles, “Winston the Warrior: Churchill on the Western Front 1915-1917” (Military History Monthly, November 2014, pp. 20-24), Academia.edu
“World War 1 History: Winston Churchill in the Trenches”, Hub Pages, 3 February 2013
3. “Winston Churchill – Biographical”, Nobelprize.org
“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953”, Nobelprize.org
Douglas J. Hall, “The Complete Poems of Sir Winston Churchill”, The Churchill Centre
Amelia Hill, “Winston Churchill manuscript reveals his poetic side”, The Guardian, 7 February 2013
“Revealed: The only known poem by an adult Winston Churchill”, The Telegraph, 6 February 2013
Paul Millward, “Winston Churchill’s Poetic Speeches of World War II”, Literary Traveler, 10 December 2010
4. “The prescience of Sir Winston Churchill”, Traditional Britain
5. David Hamilton, “Sir Winston Churchill – Keep England White”, David Hamilton, 23 March 2009
6. Winston S. Churchill (editor), “Never Give In! Winston Churchill’s Speeches”, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, p. 84
[For further reading, see the Wikipedia entries: “Winston Churchill”, “Winston Churchill as writer”, “Winston Churchill as historian”]
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