August 15, 2013

Finest Hour 118, Spring 2003

Page 36

By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH

What Is The Churchill Centre? What Does It Stand For? And Where Is It Going?

In late December, at the request of one of its committees, The Churchill Centre invited a famous world figure to deliver a major address. On February 6th, the same committee unanimously voted to rescind the invitation.

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What happened in the interim was a speech in which the individual fell short of his reputation: he delivered inflammatory and insulting remarks about, as Churchill might say, “a certain great personage.” The remarks were ill-considered, intemperate, and unjustified. The Centre was threatened with a mass walk-out should the speaker appear at the event in question.

The identity of the speaker or the event are not the point. The point has to do with questions of much greater importance: What is The Churchill Centre? What does it stand for? And where is it going?

Our mission is plain enough: “To foster leadership, statesmanship, vision and boldness among democratic and freedom loving peoples worldwide, through the thoughts, words, works and deeds of Winston Spencer Churchill.” Does this suggest only congenial and chummy meetings, limited to right thinking guests who agree with us? Or does it imply principled, learned discussion of controversial issues of statesmanship in the Churchill context, with people we respect? Do we “strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends,” as members of the legal profession are encouraged to do? Do we subscribe to Churchill’s famous Rule 12 of The Other Club: “Nothing in the rules of the Club shall interfere with the rancour and asperity of party politics”?

These issues have arisen before, suggesting betimes that some of us lack an important quality that was key to Churchill’s character and success throughout his life: collegiality toward people with whom he violently disagreed. There was the unfriendly reception we gave to a historian of another subject, who made a less than fair comparison between Churchill and his own man; there was the shout “No!” from the back of the room at a 1998 conference, when a toast was proposed to the President of the United States.

The person we invited in December will not be remembered for his outburst in February, no doubt in a moment of frustration, and I suspect helplessness, to an obscure audience in a distant land. History will remember him for manifesting, some years before, a Churchillian virtue: magnanimity in victory.

When he rose to power, the easy course was there for him to take. It was a familiar formula, widespread in dark corners of the world: revenge and retribution. He had every opportunity to choose that course. No one would have gainsaid him. Instead he chose peacemaking—just as Churchill had with vanquished Boers, Pathans, Sudanese, Germans, Turks, Irish, Italians. And that entitled him to permanent respect for “leadership, statesmanship, vision and boldness.”

In saying we will have no truck with someone because we don’t like certain of his opinions, we sound precisely like the BBC and The Times in the 1930s, which would have no truck with Winston Churchill for the same reason. Remember the words of Alistair Cooke, recalling the reaction against Churchill in those days: “If you were alive and sentient and British in the 1930s, not one in ten of you would have been with him.” How many events like ours, in the 1930s, would have written themselves off rather than invite Winston Churchill? One wonders.

Nothing is more important than that The Churchill Centre welcome and honor statesmen of Churchillian quality from all political schools of thought, all backgrounds, all opinions— if for no other reason than that people of such quality are exceedingly rare.

The individual in question said enough in February to eliminate any chance of being a guest of honor of The Churchill Centre. He might however take part in a panel discussion, with other prominent guests who feel differently about “great personages.” Such a forum would be an interesting, provocative and thoughtful event. And that, I should have thought, is what we do.

My point is: To walk away from a statesman of Churchillian quality, who will remain great despite certain intemperate remarks, would betray our mission. Particularly the part about “vision and boldness.” 

Mr. Langworth writes as Chairman of the Churchill Centre’s Board of Trustees. Comment is welcome and will be published.