Text of assembly: Monday 26 January 2015
Good morning. Last Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the death
of Sir Winston Churchill who was British Prime Minister during the
Second World War from 1940 to ‘45. Over the past few days, the media
has been full of reflections on his life and memories of the events
surrounding his death and subsequent funeral.
On news of Churchill’s death in 1965, the Queen gave permission for a
full state funeral to be held. Hundreds of thousands of people filed
passed his coffin as it lay in state in Westminster Hall. Even more lined
the streets of London as Churchill’s coffin was drawn on a gun carriage
to St Paul’s Cathedral. Unlike Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, two of
Britain’s greatest heroes, Churchill chose not to be buried in St Paul’s
but in the churchyard at Blaydon in Oxfordshire, near to Blenheim
Palace where he had been born. After the funeral service the coffin was
taken aboard the launch Havengore for a short journey down the
Thames as far to near Waterloo Station. Fifty years ago, London was
still one of the world’s great ports – as the Havengore passed the docks
on the south bank of the Thames, the dockers lowered their cranes as a
salute to the great wartime leader. At Waterloo the coffin was loaded
onto a train for Churchill’s last journey to Blaydon.
In 2002, Winston Churchill was voted by the public as the greatest ever
Briton. But for most of his life he was considered to be more of a rash
and impulsive adventurer than a great Briton. Born in 1874, Churchill
went to Harrow – where he did precious little work. After school he
enrolled at Sandhurst and subsequently served as a cavalry officer in
India and the Sudan where he took part in the British army’s last great
cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman. He resigned from the army in
1899 but this did not prevent him travelling to South Africa as a
correspondent to report on the Boer War. Whilst covering the fighting,
Churchill was captured and became a prisoner of war; as an aside, he
escaped from his prisoner of war camp, travelling 300 miles to freedom.
In 1900 Churchill was elected to Parliament as MP for Oldham. There
was much about Churchill over the course of the coming years which
made him a less than appealing individual. As home secretary in 1910,
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he sent troops to Tonypandy in Wales to deal with a coalminers’ strike.
From 1911 to 1916, he served in government as First Lord of the
Admiralty, arguing in 1914 that Britain should join the First World War.
The disastrous Gallipoli campaign of 1915 was his idea. By today’s
standards Churchill was racist in his attitudes. He was a staunch
supporter of Empire and a bitter opponent of Indian independence. In
1919, he argued for the use of bombing and chemical weapons against
Iraqis and in Afghanistan – here you see the RAF in action. From 192429 he served in government as a not especially effective Chancellor of
the Exchequer. A biography written about Churchill covering these years
of his life sits on my book case at home. It has the title; Churchill 19001939 - A Study in Failure.
Throughout the 1930s Churchill was in the political wilderness. At times,
he was a near lone voice in his bitter and persistent criticism of the
German dictator Adolf Hitler and, from 1933, the rule of Hitler’s Nazis in
Germany. In 1939 Britain went to war against Germany and in May 1940
Churchill became Prime Minister in the gravest of military circumstances.
And very soon matters were to get much worse. On 10 May 1940
German armies invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg
without warning. With extraordinary effectiveness, they raced across the
French border and drove deep into northern France. British and French
armies were in complete disarray. To the dismay of their French allies,
the British army fell back on the coastal town of Dunkirk with the German
tanks in close pursuit. The British their allies were facing certain and
total defeat in France. Britain would be on her own.
The question facing the British was this; should they continue to fight or
should they negotiate with Germany? Churchill had hoped to stir support
from the American President Roosevelt but it was not forthcoming. The
Americans, as did most others, believed the British to be finished. The
British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax – here shown on the right suggested that the British and French should attempt to negotiate a
peace with Hitler through an intermediary. The War Cabinet discussed
this suggestion from 26 to 28 May against the backdrop of the worst
possible news from France – the German airforce had started pounding
the allied soldiers on the beaches at Dunkirk. The call had gone out for
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all ships and boats in England to sail for France to rescue allied troops
but the position could not have been bleaker.
The discussions which took place – primarily amongst these five men were to change the course of history. Halifax proposed to the Cabinet
that negotiations with Hitler might be the best way of securing British
independence. Such negotiations may lead to peace and the avoidance
of further bloodshed. Of course Hitler’s price for peace would be high.
But Halifax argued that it might be a price worth paying. Churchill led the
arguments in dismissing the idea– whilst it was clear that France would
fall and Britain would be alone, he argued that would be preferable for
Britain to go down fighting rather than negotiate with Hitler and the
Nazis. After three days of debate in Cabinet, Churchill won the argument
– there would be no negotiations and no surrender. It was a momentous
turning point.
A few days, news broke of the miracle which had taken place in the
English Channel. The hundreds of boats which had set sail for France
had managed to rescue a large number of those stranded at Dunkirk. By
4 June 1940, 224,301 British and 111,172 French and Belgian troops
had made it back to England. The British had suffered a terrible defeat.
Most of their weapons had been left the other side of the Channel,
France was about to fall a German invasion of England was seemingly
imminent. Yet, somehow, even this dreadful defeat was turned by
Churchill into a triumph. Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 June
in the light of Dunkirk, he gave one of his most famous speeches ending
with the stirring promise: “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall
fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”.
Of course, it is impossible to know what would have happened if Britain
had entered into negotiations with Hitler in May 1940. But it is likely that,
once news of negotiations had been made public, the will to fight on
would have ebbed away. Churchill and his Cabinet would probably have
been replaced by a government chosen by the Germans. Britain would
have lost her independence. The royal family, the navy and government
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ministers may well have successfully made their way to Canada – but
Britain’s war would have been over. The Nazis would most likely have
had long-term mastery over Britain and most of Europe; a new and
terrible dark age.
What long-term Nazi rule in Britain and Europe would have looked like is
not too difficult to fathom. Churchill’s death 50 years on Saturday is not
the only significant anniversary this week. Tomorrow marks the 70th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the most infamous of the
Nazi’s concentration camps. Racially motivated genocide, oppression
and enslavement of millions were part of the Nazis’ new world order. So,
back to Winston Churchill. Whilst he was a deeply flawed politician; in
May 1940 cometh the hour, cometh the man. By insisting that, despite
calamitous defeat in France, Britain would never at any point negotiate
with Adolf Hitler, he gave hope to those in Europe who lived under the
tyranny of Nazi rule. He also sowed the seeds of the eventual defeat of
the Nazi regime and its murderous ideology. May 1940 was Churchill’s
finest hour and his death 50 years ago last Saturday was, rightly, deeply
mourned across the world by all those who treasure freedom.
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