March 28, 2015

Finest Hour 131, Summer 2006

Page 12


Churchillians “will instantly recognize a favorite notion of Britain’s World War II Prime Minister,” writes Greg Levine in Forbes.com for April 4th: “the Chinese ideogram for ‘crisis’ being a montage of two word-pictures, ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.'”

***

In April 1945, Home Secretary Herbert Morrison expressed the opinion that a mock trial for Nazi leaders would be objectionable. Better to declare that we shall put them to death, he said. Churchill agreed that a trial for Hitler would be a farce, but within weeks both the United States and Russia said they favored trying Nazi leaders, and trials were later held at Nuremberg, Germany. Later, Churchill proposed that Britain negotiate what to do with Nazi leaders.

***

Simon Hughes MP, who recently confessed that he is gay, says this makes him tougher than Churchill or Lloyd George. “Whether either one of their private habits [Churchill’s alleged drinking and LG’s womanizing] would have withstood the sort of news coverage that it’s been my lot to face over the last 48 hours, I shudder to think.” WSC’s grandson Nicholas Soames remarked: “What an absolutely daft thing to say. He is stretching credibility, already to a breaking point, to compare himself in any way at all.” Labour ex-minister John Speller added: “Churchill battled for six years day and night to save Britain…”

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

***

Tony Blair’s authoritarian populism is “indefensible and dangerous,” writes Jenni Russell in The Guardian: “Blair has drawn an alarming conclusion…that more executive power is always right, and that the answer to every problem is to give the authorities greater control over all dissentersโ€”citizens, peers or MPs. He has no time for his contemporary liberal critics. He might listen to the words of a former prime minister, talking of the need to uphold western values in the depths of the cold war. Winston Churchill spoke of the need ‘to proclaim, in fearless tones, the great principles of freedom and the rights of man…Magna Carta, habeas corpus, trial by jury and the common law.’ These principles were, said Churchill, ‘the title deeds of freedom….Here is the message of the British and American people to mankind. Let us preach what we practice: let us practice what we preach.’ As Blair, too, preaches the spread of western values, he ought to remember what they really mean.”

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.