The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved it's time we cancelled Winston Churchill

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

In 2002, Winston Churchill was voted the greatest Briton who ever lived, beating Darwin, Shakespeare and Elizabeth I to take the top spot. Just 18 years later, a statue of the former British Prime Minister was defaced in London, spray painted with the words “Churchill was a racist”. As the west reckons with the misdeeds of history’s heroes, Winston Churchill’s long-time critics are eager to shine a spotlight on his dark past. To them, he was a racist, imperialist warmonger whose bombastic speeches during World War II have overshadowed the atrocities he oversaw during his decades in government: from using excessive force to crush dissent at home, to carpet bombing German cities during the war, to his role in the 1943 Bengal famine that killed 3 million Indians, his disregard for the suffering of others and penchant for violence has left a dangerous legacy. An advocate for British colonial rule, a well-known racist, and an admirer of Mussolini did not deserve praise when he was alive, and he certainly does not now. Churchill’s supporters, meanwhile, regard him as a wartime hero whose bravery and leadership during Britain’s darkest hour saved the country and western civilization. Churchill’s powerful rhetoric inspired his countrymen to fight the Nazis when the rest of Europe had surrendered to Hitler’s army. Domestically, he reformed Britain’s prison system, introduced a minimum wage and improved social welfare systems. Like every hero in history, they argue, Churchill made mistakes. But his extraordinary leadership helped save western democracy, proving himself to be worthy of every accolade, every statue, and every memorial dedicated in his memory.  Arguing for the  motion is Geoffrey Wheatcroft, author Churchill's Shadow: An Astonishing Life and a Dangerous Legacy Arguing against the motion is Michael F. Bisho, writer, historian, and the former executive director of the International Churchill Society. Sources:  Dr. Shashi Tharoor Official, Politics and Prose, The international churchill society, Channel 4 News The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Reza Dahya Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Welcome to the monk debates. every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. It's time we cancelled Winston Churchill. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight on the landings. We shall fight.

in the fields and in the streets, which will fight in the hills, we shall never surrender. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. Well, Winston Churchill has long been viewed as one of the 20th century's great heroes, the defender of Western civilization against Nazi tyranny. Last year, however, a statue of the former British Prime Minister was defaced in London. Spray painted with the words, Churchill was a racist. Churchill's longtime critics are eager to shine a spotlight on his supposedly dark past. To them, he was a racist, an imperial warmonger whose bombastic speeches during World War II have overshadowed the atrocities. He oversaw during his decades in government, including the devastating Bengal famine in India.

Here's Indian MP Shashi Tauror. I certainly think Mr. Churchill needs very severe re-examination. He has as much blood on his hands as... Hitler does, and particularly the decisions that he personally signed off on during the so-called Great Bengal famine of 1943, 44, when 4.3 million people died because of decisions that he took or endorsed. Churchill's critics argued that as an advocate for British colonial rule, a well-known racist, an admirer of Mussolini, he does not deserve the praise he received when he was alive, and he certainly does not deserve our accolades now.

Churchill's supporters, meanwhile, regard him as a wartime hero whose bravery in leadership during Britain's darkest hour saved the country and Western civilization. Churchill's powerful rhetoric rallied the world to fight Nazism when much of the continent of Europe had been defeated by Hitler's armies. Domestically, he reformed Britain's prison system, introduced a minimum wage. wage and improved social welfare systems for a generation. Yes, he did get a lot wrong, but he got a lot right, too, by the way. He got a lot right to, in the First World War and indeed in the, before the First World War,

in his humanitarian, his progressive reforms of the penal system and many, many other things. He was absolutely, he was well ahead of his time, but he was fundamentally right in the late 30s. And he called it and he spotted it better. than anybody else. That was British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Like every hero in history, Churchill's supporters argue the man made mistakes, but his extraordinary leadership did help save this small thing called Western democracy, proving himself to be worthy of every accolade, every statue, at every memorial dedicated in his memory.

On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. it's time we cancelled Winston Churchill. Arguing for the motion is Jeffrey Wheatcroft, author of the new book Churchill's Shadow, an astonishing life and a dangerous legacy.

Arguing against the motion is Michael F. Bishop. He's a writer, historian, and former executive director of the International Churchill Society. Jeffrey, Michael, welcome to the monk debates. Good day. Very good to be here.

Hello, it's glad you to join you. Very much looking forward to this debate. You know, Churchill is just an iconic figure in our culture here in Canada, but really around the English-speaking world. We are in that same English-speaking world having a kind of reckoning with history, with how we perceive and venerate or not supposed great men and great women in our past and what their events, the lives that they lived, how they. reflect on this moment now and how we should interpret their contributions to our society today. So the opportunity to go deep on Winston Churchill and his legacy with both of you and how we should be interpreting Churchill is going to afford all of us the opportunity for a fascinating conversation. Our motion today, simple to the point, be it resolved. It's time we canceled Winston Churchill.

Jeffrey, you're arguing in favor of the motion. So I'm going to put a couple minutes on our show clock. turn the program over to you? There are two Winston Churchill's, the man and the myth. In the myth, which is believed in by Americans especially, Churchill was a superhuman hero, surpassing all others, not least all American presidents, in his greatness and goodness. The noblest of all war leaders,

a strategical genius, but above all, a far-seeing profit, although sadly a profit without honour for too long, as well as a brilliant writer, a new Caesar who not only made history but wrote it. Then there's the real man, a remarkable enough creature of boundless energy who had an active political career for 40 years. Even then, had he died in 1939,

that is to say, after 40 years in politics, and in his own 65th year, he would be seen today as a remarkable failure. In 1940, at one unique, unprecedented and unrepeatable moment, he was born aloft and had greatness thrust upon him before a sad decline in his post-war career. This real Churchill had many grave and displeasing flaws. He was politically fickle, he was financially rapacious,

he never understood properly modern war. And he was regarded before 1940 with very many people, with dislike and especially distrust. It's the mythical figure, which has been the object of the extravagant Churchill cult. But it's also the myth, which, when it's been invoked, has led to so many disasters.

And it is the myth which now needs to be cancelled and replaced with the real man. Thank you, Jeffrey. A terrific opening statement, setting out clearly your perspective in favor of our resolution today. Be it resolved, it's time we canceled, Winston Churchill.

Michael, you're up next, your opportunity here for an opening statement to set out your key arguments in this debate. Take us away. During one of the darkest hours of the 20th century, Churchill rallied his nation in the world to resist Nazi tyranny. He was a hero to million,

during World War II and remains so today. And we must remember the context. The U.S. was officially neutral for the first 27 months of the war, and Stalin's USSR was an ally of Hitler for nearly two years of the war. Britain might not have been alone, but it was certainly lonely. But more than that, he was simply an extraordinary individual and one worthy of admiration. He was physically courageous and fearlessly put himself in a harm's way all over the world as a young man. He never asked soldiers to do anything he was unwilling

to do himself. And he had great moral courage, too. It's important to remember that appeasement was popular and supported by the most prominent and respectable members of elite society, rather like the present-day embrace of woke politics by corporate and academic leaders. He had titanic energy and a dazzling historical imagination, which poured out of him in a torrent of millions of words. in the form of brilliant books and speeches, and he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. He helped to found the modern welfare state, helping to shield the people of Britain

from the excesses of the modern industrial age. But more generally, I think the denigration of the past or cancel culture to make up for the perceived shortcomings of the present is shabby and harmful, and it's time that we stop it. The world would be an immeasurably poorer place a place where he'd be canceled. People would lose the foremost example of political greatness of the 20th century. And can anyone really look back on the last few years and seriously suggest that we

suffer from an excessive veneration of historical heroes? No, we must not cancel, Winston Churchill. Thank you. Michael, another succinct to the point opening statement. We're off to a terrific debate here. Now, an opportunity for rebuttals, Jeffrey, your chance here to react to Michael's opening statement? What key issues or ideas do you want to take exception with? We have indeed, in recent years, been coming to terms with the past, and there has been a wave of attempts to delete the past, which I do not myself support at all. I'm not even particularly in favor of removing statues, even of people like Cecil Rhodes in Oxford, for a man whom I came to dislike intensely when I wrote a book about the South African mining magnets,

still less do we want to remove Churchill's statue in Parliament Square. What we need is not, although I have said that we should cancel Churchill, that was part of our debate, but what we need is not so much canceling as what the Germans call Fegangenheits Beveltegung, which means making a reckoning with the past. and it means trying to understand the past on its own terms, but at the same time, no longer making excuses for the uglier side of the past. If we can come to terms with his magnificent leadership in 1940, and I entirely agree with Michael about that,

but at the same time, no longer making excuses and far too many excuses have been made for the darker side of his character, for his racism, which was notable not by today's standards, but by the standards of his own time. Thank you. Now another rebuttal, Michael. Let's hear your response to Jeffrey's opening statement or what you've just heard now. Well, I'd like to say first about the Churchill cult that he mentioned. It's a phrase that one hears. And I do find it a bit excessive. There's no doubt that Churchill is widely admired around the world. And perhaps, particularly admired by Americans, but I don't think it's the kind of mindless adoration that

Jeffrey seems to suggest. And I think there might be some other reasons for it as well. Not only was he an extraordinary figure, but he was half American. He was half one of us, you could say. And there might be other factors in play as well. Some of the American veneration for Churchill may stem from a kind of residual guilt over the fact that the United States did remain neutral for so long for more than two years during the Blitz and afterward. And then finally, I think, you know, knowing Jeffrey's work very well and having read a great deal of it, I just find it a bit problematic to blame Churchill for some of the later political decisions with which he so vehemently disagrees. It may well.

be the case that both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, for example, admire Churchill or expressed admiration for Churchill at one time or another. But I don't think that you can blame Churchill for their decisions regarding the Iraq war, for example. And I think that, you know, we need to really kind of keep all of this in perspective and remember that if Churchill is widely admired, it's because he deserves to be. Thank you, Michael. Well, let me now join this. debate and think of some questions that are top of mind for our listeners. And Jeffrey, let me come back to you and you mentioned in your opening statement, Michael's reference to appeasement in Churchill's remarkable stance against public opinion and public pressure to oppose Nazi aggression

in Europe. And just the self-evidence that he was on the right side of history at that critical moment in the 20th century. Why, in your view, Jeffrey, does that not absolve many, if not all of his crimes of omissions and commission that you've detailed in your best-selling book, Churchill's Shadow? Well, first of all, he very successfully turned appeasement into a term of abuse. It was originally an expression used by those for a policy they favoured. That is to say, it was generally believed, and we had been told for 20 years after the Great War ended in 1918,

that Germany had subsequently suffered a very great injustice in the form of the Treaty of Versailles and other things besides. And against that background, the government, that Baldwin and Chamberlain, believed that they could satisfy or appease those German grievances. Churchill didn't, to begin with, but don't forget that in the first half of the 1930s, Churchill had devoted all his energies to fighting against appeasement in the form of the appeasement of Indian nationalism.

And he had done himself enormous damage by the intransigence of his hostility to Gandhi and frankly his racist contempt for the Indian people. Ladies and gentlemen, are you following the Indian situation with the attention it demands? Things are going from bad to worse. Great mismanagement and weakness are causing unrest and disturbance through 300 million primitive people.

That, of course, had weakened his position and damaged his reputation before he took up another and worthier cause, which was against the appeasement of Germany and in favour of rearmament. And yet, when one looks harder at what Churchill actually said in the four years before 1939, he was either stating the obvious or he was simply wrong. I mean, by stating the obvious, he said that there was a resurgent and, newly aggressive Germany. But everyone knew that. And there was a question of how that was to be dealt with. Churchill's claim which he made ever after that the war could easily have been avoided is

obviously impossible to prove, but is very dubious in my view. And then, by the way, when Churchill made any specific statements about military matters in that period when he was attacking appeasement, He was simply wrong in the most dramatic way. He said that capital warships would be able to defend themselves against air attack. He said the submarine was no longer a danger. He said that tanks would no longer be used in land warfare. And again and again, he made these rather two self-confident predictions, which he himself lived to see to be proved wrong. So let me come back to Michael on this.

Michael, you know, a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. So, I mean, are we giving Churchill too much in terms of a pass on, yeah, on a whole number of less than attractive features of, yes, a life of engagement with some of the big political and geopolitical challenges of the 20th century? Well, I think that's a very good question, and the fact is that some of the mistakes of which Churchill is accused of making are not really mistakes when you look a little bit closer, or a lot of it has to do with your own political perspective and point of view. That's one thing. But regarding his position on India, he was very much an outlier. It did cost him a great deal of political support. He did find himself driven further into what he called his wilderness years because of that stance. But we have to remember, history is full of ironies. And the people who were most eager to loosen the imperial bonds with India and to appease, as Jeffrey put it, India turned out to be the same political characters who were the most staunch supporters of appeasement in the late 1930s and even after the war began. So if Churchill hadn't been so intransigent about the one issue. He may not have been as intransigent about the

importance of resisting Nazi tyranny both before and after he became prime minister. Jeffrey, do you want to come back on that? Yes, I think that's a highly sophisticated and ingenious argument to say that because Churchill was stubborn in error, as he certainly was over India, it might have strengthened his stubbornness when he seemed to be right. I'd like also to take up something else that Michael mentioned, and that is the reason for the growth of the Churchill cult in the United States. I am not the first person, by the way, to use this expression. One of my critics has been Andrew Roberts, who wrote a biography,

and it is fair to say, an admiring or even hero-worshipping biography of Churchill. three years ago, and it's a formidable and fluent book, but it is uncritical. And he said that I had accused me, in effect, of having invented the concept of, quote, a Churchill cult, unquote. But this has been discussed for 50 years. There were jokes about the Churchill cult in private eye, the satirical magazine back in the 1960s, and the late Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay called the Churchill cult more than 30 years ago. Whether Churchill can be blamed for what was done by people who admired him is, I think I take that point.

I think that's fair, but it is a curious fact, a striking fact, that whenever Churchill's name, whenever his mantle has been donned, and whenever dreadful warnings have been uttered against, again, about the awful danger of appeasement, it has been. has every single time led to disaster in the Suez Escapade of 1956. In Vietnam, when President Johnson said he didn't want to be a chamberlain flourishing an umbrella. And so increased the American engagement in Vietnam, which ended in a lamentable defeat. And so all the way through to Iraq, when the fact is that President Bush, the younger, in 2003, like to stand in front of the bust of Churchill

in the Oval Office of the White House and quote Churchill, while taking us into that unhappy enterprise. I am a big admirer of Winston Churchill to the point where in the Oval Office I had his bust, loaned by Tony Blair. And so I looked at Churchill on a daily basis

and often thought about his courage, his humor. You know, it's an amazing period to think about England battling Adolf Hitler and the United States tepid to engage. It's kind of a reminder

of why isolationism is dangerous for the world. So although Churchill can't be blamed because he has been dead for 56 years, at the same time, there must be something amiss with this veneration of church. Churchill and the continual execration of appeasement, which is a matter of fact, as Churchill himself later said in 1952, I think, appeasement can be a wise policy on the right occasion.

Yeah, let's have Michael reflect on this because it's an interesting direction to take this debate, which is onto the legacy side as opposed to the life lived. And Mike, I want to hear a bit more from you as to why Churchill isn't in Jeffrey's view a kind of an exemplar of a kind of hagiography of warmongering that we turn to different features and figures in our history to justify actions in our present. And isn't there some truth in what Jeffrey's saying that, that in fact, Churchill in some ways is abused. He's used as a foil, as a tool to close out options for peace or for reconciliation and to facilitate the agendas of those who would see war as, you know, the primary instrument of statecraft. I mean, I just don't believe that anybody who even remotely understands Churchill's record and legacy would believe those things. He believed in prosecuting wars harshly and swiftly, but he also believed in ending them as soon as possible and treating those who were defeated with magnanimity. So it's a complex story, much more complex than some perhaps of his more uncritical admirers, you know, would admit. But I just believe that you could take church.

I would never want to do it, but you could take Churchill and make him somehow disappear. from history, and a lot of these foreign policy disasters to which Jeffrey has alluded would still happen anyway. Nations and their leaders act out of their own perception of their interests, and whether they have a bust of Churchill or someone else, I just don't think is really the point. And all historical figures are open to this. I mean, we have, in this country, of course, people have used the legacy of, and the example of Abraham Lincoln for all kinds of causes, some of them wildly divergent. I'd just like to return to something interesting that Michael raised, which is the reason

for the particular American veneration of Churchill. Churchill not only led his country to victory in 1945, but in the years after 1945, he wrote his, or more accurately, he supervises the writing of his monumental six volumes of the Second World War, much of which is highly enjoyable as literature, really, but is by no means a reliable historical account. It should have been called war memoirs, or as I saw it, rather than just called the Second World War. And Churchill has very much helped to distort the picture of that war, which we all received. I certainly did growing up in the years after the war.

And the idea not that he ever used the expression of the good war. When we talk about the war, the Second World War, there was really more than one war. And both of them, the really important wars in military terms, were to say the least, morally dubious. That is to say the vast land war between Germany and Soviet Russia. which ended with the defeat of Germany, and we all admire Churchill for having advocated that in the first place, but it also ended with half of Europe in Stalin's hands, which was very much not the outcome Churchill himself wanted. And the other war, the other great war was the war between Japan and the United States. And that, whatever is said about it, did not have the high moral character that the war against the Third Reich had.

And Churchill, because of his extraordinary historical moment from the summer of 1940 to the summer of 1941, as Michael has said, and I have said, it is not true that England stood alone. But nevertheless, he's quite right as well to say that we were lonely then. And first of all, by stressing that particular moment, Churchill was able to give the entire war a high and noble character. to which it doesn't necessarily deserve, given its outcome. Number one, regarding the changing nature of the war and the overwhelming importance of the eventual American involvement and Soviet involvement and the rather ambiguous result of the war, I have no argument with any of those things except to say

that were it not for Churchill's actions in 1940, none of those other contributions, those later contributions, would have meant anything. The war would probably have been lost by them, and it would have been too late for American or Soviet intervention to do much good. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly

newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world, and you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. Jeffrey, what I do want to spend just a moment on, because it's critical to our resolution and the cultural moment that we're in now, be it resolved as time we canceled Winston Churchill, and you've made it clear that you're not someone who believes that statues should be torn down for the sake of doing so. But I think it would be interesting for the audience to hear a little bit more about the claim that you're making in your book, Churchill's Shadow, that he was a racist.

I mean, that's a powerful statement in our culture today, to say the least. And I think it would be important for us to hear you make that argument now. Well, I won't make it. I will instead quote Andrew Roberts, or rather I'll quote him twice over. In his biography of Churchill three years ago, he quoted one of more Churchill's more egregious statements, which was that he saw nothing wrong with the way that the American Indians and the Australian Aborigines had been subjugated and largely extirpated because it was merely the advance of history when a backward people were overwhelmed by what he called a higher-grade race. and Mr. Roberts has a footnote at this point saying that this might seem shocking today, but it was perfectly orthodox thinking at the time. But it wasn't.

Michael, would you like to come back on this? Well, I mean, Churchill was certainly a man of the Victorian age, and certainly many of the things that he said at various times during his life would be considered unacceptable today. It's up to people to decide whether that makes, him, you know, someone who should be canceled, I certainly don't think so. He said a great many things about a great many subjects. He used to chide Americans by reminding them that the population growth of Indians in India was extraordinary and growing versus the population of the American

Indian, for example. So, I mean, it's a difficult subject. It's not something that can be swept away, and I don't think anybody would like to, but in the end, it doesn't really change the fact that his contribution to, you know, to liberty and freedom around the world is really what counts. And Jeffrey, let's talk about his contribution outside of the persecution, the prosecution of the war and the war effort. I mean, this was, as you say, someone who had a multi-decade career in politics. people attribute to him important reforms of the penal system in Britain, the introduction of the minimum wage, an improved social welfare system. I mean, doesn't that all suggest, Jeffrey, a man with a, you know, a conscience, a social conscience that may in fact have been ahead of his time. Maybe on some issues he was behind his time, but on others, maybe could we say that he was ahead, that he had a progressive,

view of some really important things that British society and the modern world needed to be a better place. That is certainly true of Churchill. He was, but of course he changed his political parties twice and he evolved politically in the most remarkable way. What could say of Churchill that at one time or another he had held every possible position on every known subject. he was at one moment a reactionary and another moment a radical.

Before the Great War, there was a period when he was president of the Board of Trade and then Home Secretary when he was working as a close ally of Lloyd George, who was laying the foundations of our present system of public welfare. And American conservatives, who would like to cite Churchill, should remember that even in 1945, when he led the conservatives unsuccessful, into the general election, an election which the Labour Party won and then having formed a government created the National Health Service. At that in, at that 945 election,

the Conservative Party manifesto said that we must create a national health service. And Churchill was entirely, it was very much in favour of public welfare. But that was only a quite brief period in his early career. He then, for several years before 1914, was first Lord of the Admiralty. And he came to grief, of course, with the Gallipoli campaign, which is very few people, I think, now, would regard as anything other than ill-conceived, as well as a lamentable episode. In March 1915, the Allied bombardment of Gallipoli began.

The idea was a rapid naval advance to Constantinople or Istanbul, forcing Ottoman Turkey, Germany's ally, out of the war. When that failed, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand landed their troops anyway. 58,000 of them were slaughtered, both sides fighting each other to a standstill until the Allies withdrew. If Churchill had died in the summer of 1939,

he would be regarded as the most interesting failure of early 20th century British politics. Everything was transformed by 1940, and Churchill himself was transformed almost by some kind of political alchemy from this very widely distrusted politician against whom each of the parties in turn bore a grudge to a true national leader above party, for at least the summer of 1940, before he most regrettably, in my view, became leader of the the Conservative Party and a genuine hero. There is nothing to be said against the Churchill of the summer of 1940. But if he led our country, my country, heroically at that particular moment, in some ways, he has misled us since. Okay, Michael, come back on that, because I know you think Churchill made many important

contributions after the war, his Iron Curtain speech, his opposition to the threat of the Soviet Union and new forms of illiberty that were emerging in the world. He did. Both before and after the war, he made many contributions and he made many wise decisions. He clearly saw, and never really had any illusions about Stalin, despite the friendly things he felt compelled to say about him in order to maintain the anti-Hitler alliance. He, of course, was, again, a sort of lonely voice who agitated many people when he came to Fulton, Missouri to make his famous speech about an Iron Curtain falling across Europe. And those contributions were extraordinary and ongoing.

And the fact that he was on different, that his political views didn't necessarily line up with one party or another in the United States really don't. detract from that at all. And in fact, you know, I've been lucky enough to work with people from both parties in this country to do events and conferences and other things for Winston Churchill. Speakers of the House like Paul Ryan, for example, but also Nancy Pelosi have hosted Churchill receptions to honor his memory and celebrate his birthday. So his appeal is widespread, even though he has become a kind of a sort of a symbol of some of our modern obsessions about race and about the imperial past of Britain and other things.

Let's start moving to closing statements in a moment, but I'm going to give you one more kick at the can, Jeffrey, before we do that. Yes, if I could just take up one point, Michael made, which I think is an important one. It is obviously convenient for Churchillians, let us call them, to say that Churchill had to do a deal with he had to embrace Stalin as a military ally, but never had any illusions about it. But I didn't think that's true. I think Churchill was full of illusions about Stalin.

He certainly said so in the House of Commons in 1944. And in 1945, he said that he knew of no government more reliable and honorable than the Soviet government, even to its own despite, meaning even to its own disadvantage. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desired war. From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect

than for weakness, especially military weakness. And he said to Anthony Eden, I can't help it. I like that man, meaning Stalin. And there was, oddly enough, a kind of affinity between Stalin and Churchill, which I'm not even sure there was on personal terms, between Churchill and Roosevelt. If, as Churchill said, an iron curtain had fallen across Europe, then nobody really bore more responsibility for that fact than Winston Churchill. Because he decided, rightly, I think, to fight on in 1940. he embraced Stalin as an ally in 1941, and not least, he Churchill dragged his feet as long as he could about the invasion of Northern Europe, which was the only way that the Western allies could make a serious

contribution to the defeat of the Third Reich. And indeed, if Churchill had had his way and the invasion of Normandy had been delayed to 1945, then instead of an iron curtain falling, from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste, as he put it, it might have fallen much further west. And the one thing that the Normandy campaign and the subsequent campaign in northwest Europe meant was that at least the Western armies reached Germany at the same time as the Red Army.

Well, I would respond just by saying that, you know, Churchill was right to resist a premature invasion of Europe. I think Churchill was right. We can never know for sure, of course, but I think it's pretty clear that it might have ended up in terrible disaster had it happened too soon. So I think that's one thing. And another is regarding his views about Stalin. He once said that if Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. I don't think he had any illusions

about Stalin. I think he made what was a necessary, painful and difficult deal with the devil. Michael, let's go to closing statements. You're up first a couple of minutes just to sum up this far-ranging debate. What are some of the key points that you want to leave our audience with as they consider our resolution today, be it resolved? It's time we canceled Winston Churchill. I'd like just to close by saying that Winston Churchill was, I believe, the greatest statesman of the 20th century, a profoundly admirable figure, a brilliant writer, a great and inspiring military leader and also someone who in many ways, whose zest for life inspires many and who I think has had an overwhelmingly benign influence on the world. In a broader sense, I would just question,

what's going to happen to us if we cut ourselves off from our cultural and historical patrimony? The same people who would cancel Churchill would do the same to the American founders. You know, What an ugly little world this cancel crowd seems to be creating bereft of heroes. We recently saw a statue of Thomas Jefferson removed from New York's City Hall. This city is a mess and crime is up. People are fleeing. It's time that we stopped canceling heroes and began to emulate them instead, to boldly tackle our problems and try and make the world a better place.

And I can think a few figures more worthy of emulation than Winston Churchill. Jeffrey closes his book with a quote from Churchill's magnanimous eulogy to Neville Chamberlain in 1940. And Churchill said, History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. And I would say that both our past and our present would be far darker without Winston-Churchase. Churchill. Let us celebrate him, not cancel him. Thank you, Michael. Well said. We're now going to give

Jeffrey, as per convention, the last word in our debate today, be it resolved. It's time we canceled Winston Churchill. Jeffrey, wrap up this debate for us. Once again, what needs to be canceled is the legend of Churchill, the mythical status he has acquired with often pernicious consequences. The Churchill, we can admire, as certainly one of the most extraordinary men of the 20th century, and I would say the most extraordinary person ever to have been prime minister of my country, and a man who did change the course of history at one absolutely critical moment in the summer of 1940. It is possible to do that, while, if not counselling, then certainly coming to terms with the much, darker and sometimes uglier side of Churchill's record.

And since Michael has mentioned another example, I'd like to end really by saying, by quoting something that I have Stone, the radical journalist once said, when he was asked why, or how he as an American radical, he could admire the notorious slave owner, Thomas Jefferson. And Stone said, because history is a tragedy and not a melodrama. And that seems to me the essential way of looking at Churchill's life.

If one can see it in terms not of melodrama, of simply a great and noble and unblemished hero, that is what needs to be cancelled. But to see him as a figure of tragedy in the very full Greek sense of that, and we must come to terms with the real Churchill. Thank you very much, gentlemen, both, for a civil and substantive debate on a topic that just opened up so many interesting avenues of inquiry from kind of history to how we think about the past to how we venerate or not these defining figures that have captured so much of our collective imagination. So on behalf of the Muck Debates community, thank you both, Jeffrey Michael, for being part of this special debate. Well, that wraps up today's debate.

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