On Monday, August 5, 2013 4:33:09 PM UTC-4, Stan A. Orchard wrote: > > Ironically, Winston Churchill would have been widely regarded as something > akin to a "political terrorist" by the rank and file members, and certainly > by the executive, of his own Conservative Party during the abdication > crisis, appeasement, rearmament of Britain, and independence for India. He > also referred to Stanley Baldwin on his death as "that great turnip". Many > of these statements by Churchill are admirable and/or amusing in > retrospect, but they would have been seriously, and almost > unforgiveably, offensive to most Conservative loyalists at the time. > >
Not on Baldwin's death. If said at all (Kay Halle, the only source, provides no attribution), the "great turnip" line was in 1937, after Baldwin retired. Nor did anyone regard it as "political terrorism." Nor did they any of Churchill's other noisy campaigns, though they might have viewed him as a hopeless diehard. We tend to take Churchill's quips in debate more seriously now than they were taken, or meant, at the time. The difference between, say, Churchill/Baldwin and Matthews/Cruz is that, vituperative though they might be in debate, the former pair remained colleagues with mutual respect. Hence WSC's famous eulogy to Chamberlain in November 1940. Churchill’s views on terrorism (real terrorism) are little quoted, probably because it was not the problem in his time that it later became; but his views are not without relevance. A 1935 remark warning of the danger if terrorists were elected to the Bengal Assembly puts us in mind of the election of a Hamas government in Palestine in 2006.7 No countries are less prepared to deal with terrorism than Western democracies, he said in 1947. He also warned that “squalid warfare with terrorists” should be avoided: “and if a warfare with terrorists has broken out, every effort should be made – I exclude no reasonable proposal – to bring it to an end." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
