Parker Lee wrote: I saw the new movie, A United Kingdom, and it also tries to paint Churchill as a bad guy. It's the story of Seretse Khama, a member of the Bechuanaland royal family and heir to the throne. After studying in England, he meets and marries a British woman, Ruth Williams. The South African government, which was adopting Apartheid, was very much troubled by the interracial marriage and pressed the Attlee government to exile Khama, which they did. Churchill is not a character in the film, but we are told that he supports Khama and will restore him if Churchill's party wins the 1951 election. Churchill does return as PM, but now we are told he will not return Khama as promised. The movie as usual compresses history and tells us at best a version of the truth. I am wondering if the Churchill part of the story is accurate.
______ Parker: I heard about this and bounced it off others, as I'm a bit busy fending off nonsense about Churchill in "The Viceroy's House," "The Crown," and other Dramas that Go Bump in the Night. One wrote: *"It's broadly true. The Labour government exiled Khama in 1951, when he returned to England where he had been a Law student. In 1956 he was allowed to go home as a private citizen before entering politics in 1961. As for the charge of racism, you can't compare today with the 1950s; it was a different world."* Another Churchill scholar, author of a recent book on Churchill's thought, challenged even the "different world" excuse by responding as follows. I thanked him and said I'd mull it over--as I invite anyone reading this to do!..... *"Of course, and you can quote Abraham Lincoln in precisely the same sense, and also most of America's founders (who abolished slavery in 60% of the union during their lifetimes). The remarkable thing is not that any of them or Churchill had the standard view of questions like intermarriage. There was almost no experience with that and the prejudice against it was universal or nearly so. The remarkable thing is that Lincoln for the slaves, and Churchill for the Empire, believed that people of all colors should enjoy the same rights, and that it was the mission of their country to protect those rights.* *"Therefore to say that Winston Churchill was 'a man of his time,' and 'everyone back then was a racist,' is to miss the singular feature. We spend a lot of time arguing that Churchill was remarkable. Then when something comes along that we do not like, we excuse it or explain it as typical of the age. I do not think he was typical of the age on this question, if the age was racist.* *"Another thing to remember was that Lincoln and Churchill were political men. Also they were Democratic men. They needed, and thought it was right that they needed, the votes of a majority. If they lived in an age of prejudice (and every age is that) then of course they would be careful how they offended those prejudices."* *-* -- 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 churchillchat+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to churchillchat@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
