Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes

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ii) there is a cult of Churchill in Britain and his supporters / admiring biographers are tying themselves in knots to ignore or deny the facts and repercussions of WC’s policies and imperialism. iii) the British Labour Party has a rotten history of defending / supporting imperialism. Defenders of WC are often outraged at the racism charge against him but it isn’t a complicated matter ─ If you talk about a “higher grade race'' and are referring to white Europeans, or defend those who do, you are being racist ─ simples. Even most of the political class hated his guts, especially because his career was spent opportunistically switching between the conservatives and liberals, whenever it suited his purpose. Leo Amery, his old friend, said of him, “On the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane … I don’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s” (p. 261). Lindsey German welcomes Tariq Ali’s dismantling of the myth of the imperialist warmonger Churchill in Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes Tariq Ali, Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes (Verso 2022), 448pp. The book is described as "A coruscating portrait of Britain’s greatest imperialist." [1] Reception [ edit ]

There is overwhelming evidence for the above. Churchill suggested “that the Tory election slogan for the 1955 general election should be “Keep Britain White” (p. 401). This seems to be, in essence, a hatchet job much like Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire - both these books are collections of selected stories (and in a number of instances are not even fact based) which are then invariably taken out of context. Perhaps in this post fact world, salaciousness sells better than reality and is certainly easier to churn out than proper scholarship. Essentially this is History at its worst.

Ali’s book is a much needed challenge and/or corrective to over saturation of Churchill hagiography books that seem to come out every single month. Ali’s focus is on the destruction of peoples that one can lay at the foot of Churchill.

Churchill was a man of his time and was also able to change his thinking across many issues - sadly this, and his intellect and character generally, are not captured in this book. The record of Churchill as war leader needs some careful deconstructing. When war broke out in 1939, Britain was ruled by appeasers, who did not want war with Germany and who were both unwilling and ineffective in preparing for war. Less than a year previously, Chamberlain had allowed Hitler to take over part of Czechoslovakia at the time of Munich. In May 1940, when Britain had been defeated in Norway and defeat in France loomed, Chamberlain was forced out and Churchill replaced him as prime minister. He was not the first choice of the ruling class: the king and many Tories wanted the appeaser Halifax. When Churchill rose in his first speech as prime minister his own side was largely silent, while the Labour benches applauded. He governed in coalition with Labour during the war. What is not a is a biography of Churchill. It is more a look of his policies/political actions and the effects of them. His crimes" are driven by Churchill's attempt to shore up the British Empire against the Bolshevik threat,which is repeated over and over as the spoils of empire are divided up or partitioned. Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes is a 2022 book by British-Pakistani writer, journalist, political activist and historian Tariq Ali. In it, Ali discusses Winston Churchill's racial and imperialist views.Far from being a fierce anti-fascist, as has been presented in popular media. Churchill was an advocate and strong supporter of both Mussolini and Franco. He believed that supporting Fascism during the interwar period was the only way for Britain to maintain its empire, or so Ali argues. One of Ali’s strengths is his ability to distill and explain complicated historical events and ideas in a digestible and comprehensible manner. Namely, that fascism rose as a reaction to the socialist and Communist movements and political parties of the 1910s and 1920s. That and the Soviet army as well as the Greek and former Yugoslav resistance and partisan forces don’t get proper credit and/or attention for defeating the Fascist Nazi army of WWII. So, Churchill was enlisted to promote and propagandize the neoliberal counterrevolution sweeping the UK and US.