Cameron, Churchill, race... and a historical howler

Niall Ferguson called Churchill and Cameron 'kindred spirits' in an article in Newsweek

One of the more irritating habits of modern politicians is to invoke the shade of Winston Churchill to lend their tawdry policies some of the glamour of the great man who in 1940 embodied Britain's will to resist Nazi conquest. It's bad enough when third rate politicians pull this tedious trick, but it is shocking indeed when a first rate historian does so. And it is still worse if the historian concerned misrepresents what Churchill truly thought when making his spurious comparison.



But that is just what the Scots-born but long resident in the US historian Niall Ferguson has done in an absurd article for the American magazine 'Newsweek' to mark David Cameron's current visit to the US. Calling Churchill and Cameron 'kindred spirits', Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University, writes: 'David Cameron's dream is not a return to the England of Downton Abbey. It's an authentically British dream - of a multi-ethnic United Kingdom, close to but not subsumed by Europe, allied with but not subservient to the United States. Churchill would surely have approved'.



In fact, far from 'approving' a multi-ethnic United Kingdom, Churchill regarded the prospect with shuddering horror, as the learned Professor Ferguson must surely be aware. As Andrew Roberts - another conservative British-born historian now resident in the United States - amply documents in his revealing book 'Eminent Churchillians', Churchill was, by the standards of our painfully politically correct modern society, a virulent Victorian racist whose views on 'lesser breeds' shocked even his own Cabinet colleagues, and would today land him in the dock accused of incitement to racial hatred.

Churchill's long lifetime (1875-1965) spanned the century which saw the British Empire at its height - swiftly followed by its inexorable decline. Literally born - at Blenheim Palace - into the heart of that Empire's ruling caste at its zenith, it is scarcely surprising that Churchill was an ardent Imperialist who played an active personal part in building the Empire at the expense of the people over whom the Union Flag waved. Churchill took part in Kitchener's 1898 victory over Islamic dervishes at Omdurman in the Sudan, riding with the 21st Lancers in one of the Empire's last cavalry charges in an action which left 10,000 dead dervishes, compared to less than fifty Britons. Before the battle he had confided to his American mother that he had a 'Keen desire to kill several of these odious dervishes... I anticipate enjoying the exercise very much'.



Racist? Far from 'approving' a multi-ethnic United Kingdom, Churchill regarded the prospect with shuddering horror

Churchill's 'racism' was the common currency of his early life, when European empires ruled most of the world, and the superiority of the white race over the rest was considered part of the natural order which only villains and cranks would question. As a half-American, Churchill considered that the Anglo-Saxon English speaking races of Britain and the US were destined to lord it over the rest. For instance, he regarded the Africans of Kenya - the native country of President Obama's father - as 'Light-hearted, tractable if brutish children...capable of being instructed'.



Churchill's opinion of Asians was no higher. As Colonial Secretary in the 1920s, when demands for independence in Britain's Indian and African domains was beginning to stir, he opined that Indians in East Africa were 'mainly of a very low class of coolies, and the idea that they should be put on equality with the Europeans is revolting to every white man throughout British East Africa'.



Famously, Churchill described Mahatma Gandhi, the charismatic leader of India's independence movement in 1930 as 'a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a Fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the vice-regal palace to parley with the representative of the king-emperor'.



Vision: Niall Ferguson wrote that 'David Cameron's dream is... of a multi-ethnic United Kingdom... Churchill would surely have approved'



Churchill habitually used epithets, today regarded as highly offensive, to describe non-Anglo-Saxons. Chinese were 'Chinks' or 'Pigtails'; Africans were 'Blackamoors' or 'Hottentots'; and Indians 'Babus'. In the midst of the Second World War, when Churchill was leading the fight for freedom and democracy against a totalitarian regime based on institutional racism he remained contemptuous of non-whites, telling his friend, the Indian Secretary of State, Leo Amery, - who reported that the 1943 Bengal famine had killed a million people - that the losses would soon be replenished as Indians 'bred like rabbits'. And it is unlikely that David Cameron as he visits the White House, will quote to his host President Obama Churchill's words spoken there at a lunch in September 1943 when the Prime Minister asked 'Why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority? They are superior'.



Niall Ferguson is Scots-born but a long term resident of the United States

When Churchill returned to power for a second stint of Prime Minister in the 1950s, the first waves of immigration that would turn Britain into today's multi-racial society were lapping on its shores. But far from welcoming this development, Churchill continued to be an unrepentent white supremacist, 'joking' that South Africa's first Apartheid Prime Minister, Dr Malan, should 'Keep on skelping the kaffirs!' He walked out of the film 'Carmen Jones' - a 1954 version of Bizet's opera with an African American cast, because he 'Didn't like blackamoors'. He foresaw that if immigration from the former Empire - now called the Commonwealth - continued, Britain would become the multi-racial society, that he called, disapprovingly, 'A magpie society' - and was clear that he opposed the concept: 'That would never do'. In short, Ferguson's notion that Churchill would have beamed benignly upon David Cameron''s multi-culti Britain is utter nonsense, totally at variance with the historical record.



Changing tides: When Churchill returned to power for a second stint of Prime Minister in the 1950s, the first waves of immigration were beginning

Ferguson's attempts to sprinkle some Churchillian stardust over Cameron's distinctly wobbly record in office are scarcely more credible. If Britain is not being subsumed by Europe

as the Professor claims, can we name one instance when Dave has not ultimately bowed the knee to Brussels? Churchill famously told De Gaulle that if Britain had to choose between Europe and the open sea she would always choose the open sea ( by which he meant her traditional role as a global trading nation rather than a participant in Europe's interminable internecine quarrels) - but Cameron has gone for Europe every time.



Professor Ferguson writes that it is 'In the realm of foreign policy that Cameron is most obviously Churchillian'. I had to rub my eyes upon reading that - Dave's sole contribution to foreign affairs, beyond saying 'me too' to the EU and US, has been to initiate the bombing of Libya, which, while getting rid of one murderous, terroristic, torturing tyrant has left that poor benighted country in the hands of numerous murderous, terroristic, torturing tyrants. If this is 'most obviously Churchillian' - then come back Neville Chamberlain - all is forgiven.

