tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/winston-churchill-3688/articlesWinston Churchill – The Conversation2023-07-11T20:32:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2094832023-07-11T20:32:40Z2023-07-11T20:32:40ZUkraine is the hot topic at the NATO summit – the most important work is all in the details happening behind the scenes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536849/original/file-20230711-25-nrifv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden and other world leaders are together at the 2023 NATO summit in Lithuania on July 11, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1523566545/photo/nato-holds-2023-summit-in-vilnius.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=zRKRMEn8R7Wsu9PT-jMZkZmfjWkmRJjSJM4xOKlPyxY=">Pauline Peleckis/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A summit is literally the <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/summit">highest point on the mountain</a>. In diplomatic terms, summits like the NATO meeting, held on July 11 and 12, 2023, in Vilnius, Lithuania, mark important gatherings of world leaders.</p>
<p>The question of Sweden’s and Ukraine’s joining NATO, which is a political and military alliance of 31 countries from Europe and North America, was a central topic heading into this year’s summit. While <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/world/europe/erdogan-turkey-sweden-nato.html">Sweden is now set</a> to join the alliance, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/nato-summit-seeks-agreement-ukraine-bid-after-turkey-deal-sweden-2023-07-10/">there is no firm timeline</a> for when countries will determine whether Ukraine is admitted.</p>
<p>Having worked on and attended summits as a diplomat in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, <a href="https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/faculty/tara-sonenshine">I know how much</a> energy goes into planning the public and private diplomatic moments of these events. </p>
<p>NATO is convening this meeting as part of its regular work on major military and political concerns among its member countries. But make no mistake – the United States sees itself as pivotal in this summit. </p>
<p>For President Joe Biden, the meeting is a test of his personal commitment to help Ukraine win the battle against Russia. The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/02/21/fact-sheet-one-year-of-supporting-ukraine/">U.S. has been leading</a> a coalition of countries helping Ukraine with <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts">military and humanitarian aid</a>. Biden has promised that the U.S. will help Ukraine “<a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-us-will-support-ukraine-as-long-as-it-takes-/6953138.html">as long as it takes</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People sit around a large circular table with a compass on it in a black and white photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536860/original/file-20230711-29-n03r6i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">World leaders participate in a NATO summit in Paris in 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/3295254/photo/nato-summit.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=3Y6Hgwx_3NNu4VlYK5ZbBYq7c-7Lhy_UG0IgjiHwxQ0=">Reg Birkett/Keystone/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>History of summits</h2>
<p>Political leaders <a href="https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/summit-diplomacy-some-lessons-history-21st-century-leaders">perfected the art of modern diplomacy</a> in routine face-to-face summits during the darkest days of the Cold War.</p>
<p>Winston Churchill, at the time the U.K. prime minister, helped form the concept of a political “summit” in 1950, when he suggested a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/09/27/the-ideal-summit/5f621ade-2aa4-4369-8676-2d648250a9e5/">parley at the summit</a>.” That meant that the U.K., United States and the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20030500_cli_paper_dip_issue86.pdf">should sit down</a> and figure out who had which sphere of influence after World War II ended. </p>
<p>But the history of summits stretches further back in time.</p>
<p>Another British politician, Lloyd George, first pushed for in-person political meetings in the early 1900s, <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20030500_cli_paper_dip_issue86.pdf">stating</a>, “If you want to settle a thing, you see your opponent and talk it over with him. The last thing to do is write him a letter.”</p>
<p>And it was the <a href="https://www.diplomacy.edu/histories/ancient-greek-diplomacy-politics-new-tools-and-negotiation/">Greeks who first elevated the idea of leaders talking</a> to leaders and debating issues as a form of building trust.</p>
<p>Since the Cold War, summits <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/diplomacy/Summit-diplomacy">have taken many different shapes</a> and sizes, ranging from regional to international meetings.</p>
<p>While some of these meetings result in few tangible outcomes, others have helped pave the way for key policy changes, including <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/reagan-and-gorbachev-reykjavik-summit/">nuclear arms reductions</a> in the 1980s and a <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement">treaty to limit the rise in global temperatures</a> in 2015.</p>
<p>From an American perspective, summits are key moments when leadership is on display. </p>
<p>U.S. presidents have hosted <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/summit-for-democracy-2023#">summits on everything</a> from democracy to trade since the Cold War. And <a href="https://time.com/6190443/nato-summit-2022/">NATO summits have taken place</a> almost every year since the alliance’s founding in 1949. </p>
<p>But there is a particular level of pressure and anticipation surrounding this meeting, with an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-launches-air-attack-kyiv-hours-before-nato-summit-2023-07-11/">active war in Europe</a> caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. </p>
<h2>Backstage details</h2>
<p>These mega-events require massive planning. Member countries can volunteer to host the summits, and the <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_50115.htm">offers are evaluated</a> and decided upon by the political branch of NATO.</p>
<p>From the logistical advance teams that prepare the groundwork for presidential travel to the protocol officers ensuring that handshakes or hugs are timed for photography, every detail matters both publicly and privately at these sorts of affairs. </p>
<p>Fashion is also a choice – from tie selection to pantsuits or dresses. Not a hair can be out of place. Women’s fashion choices tend to receive outsize scrutiny and attention – as when <a href="https://www.instyle.com/fashion/espadrille-wedges-jill-biden-queen-letizia">first lady Jill Biden wore espadrilles</a>, a popular kind of shoe in Spain, to the NATO meeting in Madrid in 2022. </p>
<p>Hundreds of U.S. government officials work across multiple agencies behind the scenes at political summits, both on site and back home, to generate pages and pages of briefing materials for every minute of every hour of the meeting. Depending on the timing and importance of the summit, a secretary of state might accompany the president on the trip. </p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is with Biden in Lithuania, as a delicate diplomatic dance is happening with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader <a href="https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">has tweeted about</a> how his country is being discussed without his presence at the meeting.</p>
<p>There are secure documents to be written and read and private sessions to brief Biden.</p>
<p>Setting the table for a summit means the host country must make literal and figurative decisions around when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/30/nato-summit-venue-madrid-serves-russian-salad">meals are served</a> and who attends the dinners. The host country of a summit can show off its local cuisine, considered a form of <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/20/food-diplomacy-countries-identity-culture-marketing-gastrodiplomacy-gastronativism/">culinary diplomacy</a>. </p>
<p>Ambassadors of the other participating countries also send along menu guidelines or people’s particular dietary needs. </p>
<h2>Expecting the unexpected</h2>
<p>Despite all the scheduling and agenda-setting, there is an unpredictability to a political summit as people interact in real time.</p>
<p>Real-world events can also interfere in even a perfectly well-orchestrated summit. A terrorist incident or a natural disaster, for example, can turn a basic summit into an emergency meeting.</p>
<p>There are also human dynamics to summits. </p>
<p>It is one thing to read a briefing memo. It is quite another, as a leader, to look directly at people and see their expressions and body language. </p>
<p>This gives weight to closed-door meetings with just a few other people, as leaders often peel off from big group discussions to compare notes and plot strategies. </p>
<p>Throughout the summit, aides will pass notes to Biden, and there will be hallway huddles with diplomats and aides. Reporters will get bits and pieces of what is happening until the <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/events_216418.htm">final press conference</a> on July 12, at which leaders will answer questions about any decisions made, the next steps and the overall question of whether the summit was a success or failure. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Volodymr Zelenskyy walks through a crowd with his wife, surrounded by men in suits." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536869/original/file-20230711-21-hwmlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the NATO summit on July 11, 2023, to push for Ukraine’s entry into the alliance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1523567553/photo/lithuania-nato-defence-diplomacy.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=i-2S22TgHp49NbghKIWLTB7zg9lqBEeYZU5nD8z4mzQ=">Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Elevating the event</h2>
<p>This meeting is happening in the middle of the summer. Many Europeans have flocked to beaches, as is their summer custom. Americans are off to national parks. Keeping the world’s attention on the NATO summit might be difficult. And, absent any major announcement, summits can be a humdrum affair. </p>
<p>But in this case, so much is riding on the NATO summit’s outcome. </p>
<p>Ukraine is at the center stage at this summit as countries debate extending a political invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance. Not only does NATO have to plot out its military response to an ongoing war, the U.S. and its allies have to plan for a future Ukraine once it emerges from the rubble. There is current division among NATO members <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/nato-summit-seeks-agreement-ukraine-bid-after-turkey-deal-sweden-2023-07-10/">whether they should admit</a> Ukraine. </p>
<p>The stakes are enormous: Letting Ukraine join NATO would force the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-nato-and-why-does-ukraine-want-to-join-175821">military alliance to defend its new member</a> against Russia, which could then turn into a larger war across Europe. Hanging in the balance is the future of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose aggression against Ukraine is really about a desire to stop the growth and power of NATO.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tara Sonenshine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The NATO summit is a chance for world leaders to hash out difficult topics, like the war in Ukraine – and for the US to show off its leadership, writes a former diplomat.Tara Sonenshine, Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in Public Diplomacy, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1869452022-08-01T15:25:54Z2022-08-01T15:25:54ZBoris Johnson is a bit like Churchill – but not in the ways he might want<p>Parallels don’t usually make for good history. They can overly flatter or excuse those involved, or imply a historic figure would act today as they did in the past. </p>
<p>Sometimes, though, politicians themselves invite comparisons with a famous predecessor. It isn’t surprising, then, that Boris Johnson <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/boris-johnson-winston-churchill/621294/">has been judged</a> against Winston Churchill, the leader Johnson has <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-minister-boris-johnsons-address-to-the-ukrainian-parliament-3-may-2022">frequently invoked</a> and whom he even <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2014/11/the-churchill-factor-review-boris-johnson-history-made-up">wrote a book about</a>. </p>
<p>Churchill served as prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and took up the office again in 1951. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1638978/gb-news-Nadine-dorries-boris-johnson-set-to-return-politics-ont">has suggested</a> that Johnson could return to the role of prime minister in a similar way.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, by focusing less on personality or policy and more on the fundamentals of party politics, setting Boris Johnson in historical perspective can still be revealing.</p>
<p>There are some apparent similarities in how Churchill and Johnson took power. Both did so without a general election by replacing a serving Conservative premier. Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain in 1940 when Chamberlain resigned after taking a significant hit to his parliamentary majority in a vote on how <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1940-05-08/debates/22acaa5f-ba62-4aae-8b04-0a1a090f9bfb/CommonsChamber#contribution-406e1e57-d565-4419-a080-26642d533809">Britain was fighting the war</a>.</p>
<p>Johnson won his party’s leadership and replaced Theresa May in 2019 after she repeatedly <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48379730">failed to win enough support</a> for her EU withdrawal agreement bill.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photograph of two men" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474571/original/file-20220718-68563-fzxqs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Churchill_and_Chamberlain.jpg">Unknown author/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both became prime minister after previously experiencing spells of relative isolation from Westminster power. Churchill was on the backbenches for a decade before returning to government in 1939, and Boris Johnson spent most of 2008-2016 out of the House of Commons as Mayor of London. </p>
<p>Although the events of the second world war and the pandemic are not directly comparable, Johnson was the first prime minister since Churchill to impose wide-ranging restrictions on everyday life for a sustained period and had to weather the criticism – including from his own side – that comes with a large-scale loss of civilian life.</p>
<p>But these similarities aren’t sustained by the details. Churchill did not become prime minister through a leadership election. Instead, Chamberlain recommended that the King ask Churchill to form a government because Labour’s leaders had refused to enter a wartime coalition but suggested they might under Churchill.</p>
<p>What’s more, Churchill was far more experienced than Johnson was on entering Downing Street. He had held posts across many areas of government, including president of the board of trade, home secretary, secretary of state for the colonies, chancellor of the exchequer, first lord of the Admiralty (twice) and minister of defence. </p>
<h2>Complicated relationships</h2>
<p>The less flattering parallels between the two are perhaps more interesting. Like Johnson, Churchill had a complicated relationship with the Conservatives. Before the second world war he had often been thought of as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/johnson-as-churchill-history-repeat-as-farce">unreliable and reckless</a>. Conservatives had reason to question the depth of his party allegiance: having <a href="https://liberalhistory.org.uk/history/churchill-winston-leonard-spencer/">switched from the Conservatives in 1904</a>, Churchill held high office under Liberal leaders before returning to the Conservative fold as chancellor in the mid-1920s.</p>
<p>Johnson’s case is less extreme, but some of his former allies in parliament came to see him as similarly unreliable on issues such as <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-boris-johnson-northern-ireland-disruption_uk_5fff072ec5b63642b700fedb">Brexit</a> or <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9148125/Senior-Tory-Steve-Baker-fires-leadership-warning-Boris-Johnson.html">coronavirus policies</a>.</p>
<p>Both also let their attacks on the opposition outrun good taste. Johnson has been condemned for attacks on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60213975">Keir Starmer’s record</a> as director of public prosecutions after he wrongly claimed the Labour leader failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile. Churchill was roundly criticised for alleging Labour would <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/winston-churchills-crazy-broadcast-party-nation-and-the-1945-gestapo-speech/69173E13972975F7FD31A0A8F7621890">need a Gestapo</a> – Nazi Germany’s secret police – to implement its policies. </p>
<p>Both were also associated with advisers whom others blamed for their leaders’ weaknesses. In Churchill’s case, his friend and advisor, the newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, was said to be behind the aggressive <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g1jODQAAQBAJ&pg=PA333&lpg=PA333&dq=attlee+voice+of+lord+beaverbrook&source=bl&ots=y9WAmhAwXN&sig=ACfU3U2VmEWolwXJTfyRFU-jGlpLWmt2eQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXqpj-vYL5AhVEhFwKHahkDvMQ6AF6BAg5EAM#v=onepage&q=attlee%20voice%20of%20lord%20beaverbrook&f=false">anti-socialist rhetoric</a> that made the Conservatives look out of touch in 1945. </p>
<p>As chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings was similarly linked to Johnson’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/31/leaks-rows-sacking-secret-shutdown-plan-boris-johnson-dominic-cummings">proroguing of Parliament</a> which the supreme court ruled to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/sep/24/boris-johnsons-suspension-of-parliament-unlawful-supreme-court-rules-prorogue">unlawful</a>. More recently, the Number Ten press operation was at the centre of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/05/trust-in-no-10-briefings-collapses-in-wake-of-partygate-and-pincher-sagas">criticism</a> about how the prime minister responded to coronavirus rule-breaking.</p>
<h2>Churchill or Heath?</h2>
<p>Johnson may actually more closely resemble Edward Heath, who served as Conservative leader between 1966 and 1975 and who became prime minister in 1970. Like Johnson, Heath delivered a historic change in international relations – albeit in an opposite direction - by taking Britain into the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/eec-britains-late-entry.htm">European Economic Community</a>.</p>
<p>Like Johnson, though, Heath also faced a <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/global-oil-shortage.htm">fossil-fuel crisis</a> worsened by war as well as an economy characterised by <a href="https://theconversation.com/1970s-style-stagflation-now-playing-on-central-bankers-minds-185868">low growth and high inflation</a>. Heath lost office in 1974 after a run of <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinet-office-100/economic-crisis-of-1973/">industrial relations crises</a> which – until coronavirus – were arguably the biggest test faced by emergency planners since the war.</p>
<p>Johnson loyalists like Dorries might be tempted to think comparisons with Churchill offer <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1637369/boris-johnson-resignation-news-caretaker-prime-minister-conservative-party-vn">Johnson a way back</a>. After all, Churchill led his party to a historic loss in 1945, failed to win in 1950 but returned to Downing Street a year later. Heath had racked up three election losses against one win by the time Thatcher challenged him.</p>
<p>But such parallels offer false hope. Churchill and Heath lost general elections before becoming prime minister, but they retained enough support from senior colleagues and MPs to remain party leader throughout. Neither gained office after losing their party’s leadership. </p>
<p>The political lesson is clear: losing elections may not be fatal to a political life, but losing your parliamentary party almost certainly is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Freeman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both Churchill and Johnson had a complicated relationship with the Conservative Party.James Freeman, Senior Lecturer in Political History and Digital Humanities, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1855892022-07-20T20:08:08Z2022-07-20T20:08:08ZDeconstructing the cult of Winston Churchill: racism, deification and nostalgia for empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474991/original/file-20220719-18-wqcus9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C1%2C913%2C711&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Only one prime minister is honoured with a statue on the grounds of the Australian National University. Despite the university’s name, it is not an Australian. Rather, the stern face of Britain’s war-time prime minister Winston Churchill greets students on the Canberra campus. Although the ANU was founded in 1946, the Churchill statue is not a gesture of post-war admiration. A replica of a statue in Parliament Square, London, it is owned by the Winston Churchill Trust and was <a href="https://www.environment.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1186409/BI-Open-Systems-House.pdf">erected in 1985</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes - Tariq Ali (Verso)</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474993/original/file-20220719-12-dhxsat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Winston Churchill statue at ANU Canberra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why would the ANU decide to honour a British prime minister two decades after his death? According to author <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/authors/63-tariq-ali">Tariq Ali</a>, excessive admiration of Churchill, which he calls a cult, is not a result of his wartime leadership in the 1940s but was deliberately cultivated, in Britain and the wider English-speaking world, by his Conservative successors in the wake of the 1982 Falklands War.</p>
<p>For Ali, an Oxford-educated journalist and film maker and towering figure in the international left, the cult reflects a nostalgia for empire. It is now, he argues, virtually uncontested with support from “all three [UK] political parties and the large trade unions”. </p>
<p>A long-standing contributor to the Guardian and editor of the New Left Review, Ali is a prolific and iconoclastic author who has written scathing accounts of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/3971-winston-churchill">Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes</a>, Ali turns his attention not so much to the historical Churchill as his legacy and place in public memory.</p>
<p>Ali’s book is not a conventional biography. He explains that library shelves already groan under the weight of Churchill biographies, several of which, in his opinion, amount to hagiography. Rather the book serves as one long argument (at over 400 pages perhaps unnecessarily long) that the lionising of Churchill’s legacy in books and film is not only historically problematic but deleterious for modern politics. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474813/original/file-20220719-26-q7khj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ali asserts, “that Churchill was a racist is indisputable”. He has plenty of primary material to sustain this claim. Instead of the usual blurb, the book’s back cover consists of a series of racist and sexist comments attributed to Churchill. </p>
<p>He informed the 1937 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44510475">Peel Report</a> on the British mandate in Palestine that First Nations in North America and Australia had been colonised by “a stronger race, a higher-grade race”.</p>
<p>According to former British PM Harold Macmillan, Churchill floated “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/From_New_Jerusalem_to_New_Labour/_etNDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=churchill+%22keep+england+white%22+1955&pg=PA25&printsec=frontcover">Keep England White</a>” as a campaign slogan for the 1955 election. Perhaps most damning is the recollection of Churchill’s friend, the politician Violet Bonham Carter: when asked his opinion on China in 1954, he <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Churchill/59wSDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">reportedly replied</a>, “I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474800/original/file-20220719-20-4r3kz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=994&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Churchill in Paris in 1947.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Ali, it is not Churchill’s racist views but the way they informed his policies that demands more attention. In popular memory, Churchill’s leadership in the second world war attracts the most praise. Ali joins a growing body of literature calling for a reassessment of Churchill’s legacy in light of the 1943 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/1/churchills-policies-to-blame-for-1943-bengal-famine-study">Bengal Famine</a> where more than 3 million Indians (Ali claims 5 million) starved to death under British administration. </p>
<p>Churchill’s view that “<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Gandhi_and_Churchill/Z8JjbAVs2vUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%98Indians+breed+like+rabbits%E2%80%99+churchill&printsec=frontcover">Indians breed like rabbits</a>” was surely relevant to his decision not to deliver food supplies to Bengal during this famine as a matter of urgency.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/churchill-and-india-imperial-chauvinism-left-a-bitter-legacy-36452">Churchill and India: imperial chauvinism left a bitter legacy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Another of Churchill’s “crimes” for Ali was the brutal suppression of the largely communist Greek Resistance to the Nazis. Stalin and Churchill had agreed that Greece should remain within the western sphere of influence after the second world war but this decision led to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Greek-Civil-War">Greek Civil War</a>, which raged from 1944-49 and cost over half a million lives.</p>
<p>In one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/athens-1944-britains-dirty-secret">bloody episode</a> in Athens on 3 December 1944, the British army fired on partisan civilians, many of whom had fought with the Allies against the Nazis. For Ali, “the British Army and its Greek auxiliaries were guilty of serious war crimes, some bordering on genocide”. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, these violent episodes are missing from films like 2017’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtJ60u7SUSw">Darkest Hour</a> which focused narrowly on Churchill’s refusal to negotiate with the Nazis, climaxing with his famous “fight them on the beaches” speech. </p>
<p>Ali does not suggest that Churchill is solely responsible for complex tragedies like the Bengal Famine or Greek Civil War but he argues that it is common practice to assign individual blame to Stalin for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Five-Year-Plans">Five Year Plan</a> or Mao for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Leap-Forward">Great Leap Forward</a>. It follows, he suggests, that Churchill should at least be “added to the list” of those responsible for these deaths. Some might dismiss this as specious logic but Ali challenges the reader to ask if Churchill’s popular veneration in books and films omits important details. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LtJ60u7SUSw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Darkest Hour.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If Ali’s goal is to write a coruscating account of Churchill’s life to balance the flattering ones, he is most effective in the first substantive chapter. </p>
<p>Born into an aristocratic family in Oxfordshire in 1874, Churchill grew up in Ireland where his grandfather was Viceroy. Ali portrays young Churchill as a victim of “parental neglect” who found solace in dreams of imperial glory. Desperate for his father’s elusive approval, he trained for a military career and saw action in the late 19th century both as a journalist and officer. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1242&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474989/original/file-20220719-10057-azxnl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1242&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Second Lieutenant Winston Churchill of the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars in 1895.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From Cuba to India, Sudan to South Africa, Ali provides extended extracts from Churchill’s letters and memoirs to show a consistent enthusiasm for European imperialism and a profound disgust for those he felt should be ruled over.</p>
<p>For instance, when the 22 year old Churchill discovered the mutilated bodies of British soldiers in northwest India (today Pakistan), he denounced the Pashtun perpetrators in his diary as “miserable and brutal creatures” and “pernicious vermin”. There was no reflection on the violence the British army had carried out on the Pashtun or why British rule might be resisted. Churchill is portrayed as the epitome of Rudyard Kipling’s “<a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/">White Man’s Burden</a>” justifying all acts of military cruelty as part of a perceived civilising mission. </p>
<p>There is little original research in this work, or new historical insight on Churchill’s career, but Ali makes his opinion of the existing literature clear. He approves of Clive Ponting’s 1994 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Winston-Churchill-Clive-Ponting/dp/1856192709">revisionist biography</a>, which was one of the first to challenge the the Churchill “myth” of the 1980s, calling it the “most objective” and quoting from it liberally. He is more critical of the biographies written by Liberal politician <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/roy-jenkins/churchill/9781509867967">Roy Jenkins in 2017</a> and historian <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/churchill-9780141981253">Andrew Roberts in 2019</a>. Both, according to Ali, downplay Churchill’s fondness for Mussolini and “tend to side-step his more gory effusions”.</p>
<h2>A recent phenomenon</h2>
<p>Churchill had a long career and his biographies tend to be necessarily lengthy. Following his military career in the late 19th century he entered parliament as a Conservative in 1900, switching to the Liberals in 1904. He was First Lord of the Admiralty during the first world war but was compelled to resign in 1915 following a series of military disasters culminating in the bungled Gallipoli campaign. A tenacious politician, he switched his allegiance back to the Conservatives in 1924. Following Neville Chamberlain’s resignation, Churchill became Prime Minister from 1940-45 and again from 1951-55. He died in 1965. </p>
<p>While Churchill received a state funeral and tributes from around the world, Ali is quick to point out that against a backdrop of international decolonisation, he had his critics too. Ali quotes from Howard Brenton’s 1974 production, the Churchill Play, which opens with a debate about his legacy. “But ‘e won the war” opines one mourner. “People won the war. He just got pissed with Stalin,” comes the reply. </p>
<p>One of the most useful aspects of Ali’s book is highlighting how recently the cult of Churchill formed. He notes that, “rather than a subject of intense historical scrutiny, Churchill has become a burnished icon …”</p>
<p>Ali follows the lead of writer Anthony Barnett who argued in a 1982 issue of New Left Review that the new enthusiasm can be called “Churchillism”. The “Churchill industry” is so successful that a 2002 nationwide <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/parliamentary-archives/Churchill-for-web-Mar-2014.pdf">BBC poll</a> voted him the “greatest Briton” ahead of Shakespeare, Darwin or Elizabeth I. </p>
<p>Ali estimates there are more than 1600 biographies of Churchill, most produced after 1982. Within this cult, Churchill embodies the British fighting spirit and a rugged determination to stand up to evil. Tony Blair presented a bust of Churchill <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/23/heres-the-real-story-about-the-churchill-bust-in-the-oval-office/">to George W. Bush</a> in 2001 in an attempt to draw parallels to the War on Terror. After Obama moved it, Donald Trump symbolically returned the bust to the Oval Office. </p>
<p>But the cult remains most potent in the UK. Boris Johnson’s 2014 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Factor-How-Made-History/dp/1594633983">The Churchill Factor</a> was an unsubtle but ultimately successful attempt to gain political capital from this legacy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474808/original/file-20220719-22-gh9q6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Churchill bust at the US Congress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Reynolds/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The structure of Ali’s book roughly follows Churchill’s career but Ali frequently goes off on lengthy tangents that do not necessarily strengthen his case, from a verbose discussion on Vladimir Lenin and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg">Rosa Luxemburg</a> to a potted history of Irish republicanism to nearly 10 pages on the history of Zionism. These digressions are interesting, if contested, but come at the expense of a tighter focus on the book’s subject. The chapter on Japanese imperialism barely mentions Churchill at all except to say he underestimated the military threat Japan posed during the second world war.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-100452">World politics explainer: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is not an academic publication and while the book includes footnotes rather than end-notes (usually a virtue for this reader), they are so sparsely used it is not always clear where the information is coming from. The index is also poor. There is no entry for “Gallipoli” despite Ali placing great importance on Churchill’s mishandling of the campaign. The book is also littered with excessively long quotes, not just from relevant primary sources but extended extracts from other writers too. Several page-long poems also seem to serve no real purpose. </p>
<p>Ali finishes his book with a general assessment of modern international relations. He argues that the US has inherited the British imperial mission and the UK is now “little more than a US satrapy”. For Ali, despite the setback in Vietnam, the US used its military might to preserve the architecture of white supremacy. In a vivid metaphor, the UK and Australia are described as “two-testicle states” for their firm support of the US against China.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474801/original/file-20220719-16-s0z21p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, left, reviews American troops at a base in England on the eve of D-Day, June 1944, during World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ali is highly critical of the 2003 War in Iraq and argues an “extreme centre” has taken over politics in many western countries with increasing numbers of young people not seeing any point in voting. Ali draws a link between the War in Iraq and Churchill, arguing that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it’s being carried out in different times and different circumstances, but its aims are no different to that of Churchill’s empire.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Ironies</h2>
<p>Ironically, by seeing Churchill’s long hand as something that continues to shape modern politics, Ali makes him a larger figure than even the high priests of his cult. There would have been more merit in a shorter and more tightly focused book which held up the actual historical Churchill to the romanticised patriot imagined in the 1980s. </p>
<p>Ali is strongest when using primary material to paint Churchill as a racist opportunist. He is weakest when suggesting that his mission was to create an “umbilical chord made of piano wire” so the Americans would continue his work in perpetuity.</p>
<p>Ali’s book is polemical and will have a ready-made audience with those who already see Churchill as a symbol of British imperialism. It is not a balanced (or complete) overview of Churchill’s life but the author will see his scathing account as a needed correction to the plentiful supply of fawning biographies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474811/original/file-20220719-24-znixn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters gather around the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square during a Black Lives Matter rally in London, Sunday, June 7, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank Augstein/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Churchill statue in London <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-churchill-idUSKBN23F2GL">was vandalised</a> in anti-capitalism protests in 2000, anti-student fee protests 2010, and Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In Canberra, the replica has been the target of increased protest since 2020. The Winston Churchill Trust recently came to <a href="https://anuobserver.org/2021/07/16/churchill-statue-to-receive-critical-plaque-and-first-nations-garden/#:%7E:text=Churchill%20Statue%20To%20Receive%20Critical%20Plaque%20and%20First%20Nations%20Garden,-Nathan%20Bow%20Posted&text=After%20lengthy%20negotiations%2C%20the%20Winston,critical%20representation%20of%20Winston%20Churchill.">an agreement</a> with <a href="https://anusa.com.au/advocacy/ethnoculturaldepartment/">the ANU BIPOC department</a> to install a critical plaque as well as a “counter-monument”.</p>
<p>Debates over Churchill’s life and legacy will continue in Britain and around the world. While the contribution to historical scholarship is minimal, Ali’s book is an important addition to the Churchill debates and a warning against political deification.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185589/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin T. Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tariq Ali’s scathing new book assessing Winston Churchill’s life and legacy paints him as a racist opportunist but overstates Churchill’s enduring influence on politics today.Benjamin T. Jones, Senior Lecturer in History, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1866012022-07-07T23:13:04Z2022-07-07T23:13:04ZBoris Johnson’s messy political legacy of lies, scandals and delivering Brexit to his base<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473018/original/file-20220707-24-1vup09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C89%2C4600%2C2967&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Will Boris Johnson be back? The chances may be slim.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prime-minister-boris-johnson-returns-inside-after-news-photo/1407301546?adppopup=true">Carl Court/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boris Johnson, the now outgoing prime minister of the United Kingdom, had wanted to follow in the footsteps of his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/boris-johnson-reached-the-top-but-was-felled-by-his-flaws/2022/07/07/96ca34f0-fdd8-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html">idol Winston Churchill</a> and be remembered as a leader of consequence. He aspired to greatness and desired to stay in office longer than the 11 years <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/06/26/boris-johnson-says-he-wants-to-still-be-prime-minister-in-the-2030s-16892594/">enjoyed by Conservative icon Margaret Thatcher</a>.</p>
<p>It wasn’t to be.</p>
<hr>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-messy-political-legacy-of-lies-scandals-and-delivering-brexit-to-his-base-186601&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Instead, on July 7, 2022, Johnson announced that less than three years after becoming prime minister, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62081380">he was resigning</a> and would remain in office only until a successor emerged. It marks a stunning repudiation of a leader who had delivered Brexit to his supporters and scored a major electoral mandate a mere two and half years previously.</p>
<p>The scandal that brought his downfall wasn’t Johnson’s first. Indeed, throughout his career – and time in office – Johnson has been regarded as <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-manner-keep-character/">a political Houdini</a>, skilled at political survival and endlessly able to rebound from mishaps. </p>
<p>But even he could not overcome the succession of scandals in recent months, not least “<a href="https://theconversation.com/order-order-a-guide-to-partygate-and-the-uks-rambunctious-parliament-176206">Partygate</a>,” which involved revelations around his government’s repeated and brazen ignoring of its own COVID-19 lockdown rules. In the end it was his handling of a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/62048687">tawdry affair involving the promotion</a> of a member of parliament accused of serious sexual wrongdoing that proved the final straw. That scandal precipitated a <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-nightmare-day-how-to-read-between-the-lines-in-resignation-letters-from-government-ministers-186510">rash of cabinet resignations</a> that made clear Johnson could no longer rely on the support of his own party. </p>
<p>Yet, Johnson’s legacy will not be confined to the scandals. His tenure coincided with major challenges in the U.K. Some, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of war in Europe, were not of his making. Others, notably Brexit, were of his own hand.</p>
<h2>First came Brexit</h2>
<p>Boris Johnson and Brexit will forever be inextricably bound. </p>
<p>Johnson had long been a prominent political figure before Britain’s exit from Europe came to dominate U.K. politics. Aside from serving as a member of parliament, he was also the mayor of London as well as a well-known media personality. Throughout, Johnson, a fiscal conservative by nature, developed a reputation <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/apps-johnson/boris-johnson-inspired-appointment-or-diplomatic-disaster-idINKCN0ZU2L6">for being polarizing</a> – witty and charming to some, but dishonest and untrustworthy to others.</p>
<p>He was long talked of as a future prime minister. But it was the 2016 Brexit referendum on whether the U.K. should remain in the European Union that eventually propelled Johnson to power. He became the face of the Leave campaign, <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-send-350m-week-brussels">at times taking liberties with the truth</a> to make his case for exiting the EU. While he did not become prime minister immediately after the U.K. public opted to exit the EU, his time would come three years later. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A tabby cat is seen sitting in the foreground in front of the front door of 10 Downing Street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473093/original/file-20220707-14-wmzwme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prime ministers come and go, but Larry the Downing Street cat remains in place.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/larry-the-downing-street-cat-sits-on-the-pavement-in-front-news-photo/1241721664?adppopup=true">Leon Neal/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Prime Minister Theresa May resigned in summer 2019, weakened by major divisions over how to implement Brexit within the Conservative Party, Johnson seized his chance. </p>
<p>He promised to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/07/toxic-spell-broken-boris-johnson-trips-over-own-lies">Get Brexit Done</a>” and to end the major deadlock in British politics over what sort of relationship the country would have with the EU. </p>
<p>On that front, he delivered. The December 2019 election was a resounding success for Johnson, <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnsons-big-election-victory-academics-on-what-it-means-for-the-uk-and-brexit-128850">earning a substantial majority for the Conservative Party</a> and enabling him to force through his vision of Brexit. His brand of populism, charm, disregard for rules and effective communication not only shored up the Conservative base in that election, but also helped attract many traditional left-wing Labour voters, securing a clear mandate for his party.</p>
<p>With that victory in hand, Johnson was free to complete the formal departure of the U.K. from the EU on Jan. 31, 2020. Later that year, after tumultuous talks, his government negotiated the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/relations-non-eu-countries/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en">Trade and Cooperation Agreement</a> with the EU – defining the future relations between the U.K. and its European partners.</p>
<p>Brexit was and remains very divisive in the U.K. But neither supporters nor opponents would deny how consequential that decision was, and it could not have happened without Johnson’s involvement.</p>
<h2>… then the pandemic</h2>
<p>Any hopes that Johnson could bask in the glory of Brexit came quickly crashing down within weeks of it becoming a reality. </p>
<p>The start of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the situation for the U.K. Johnson and his government fumbled its initial pandemic response, acting slowly and in a lackluster manner – Johnson himself <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/michael-gove-fails-to-deny-pm-missed-five-coronavirus-cobra-meetings">was absent for some of the crucial meetings</a> called to discuss the pandemic in its early days. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/10/12/1045219737/the-u-k-s-early-approach-to-pandemic-cost-thousands-of-lives-a-new-report-says">government report</a> released in October 2021, the government’s decision to delay a strict lockdown allowed the virus to circulate widely and caused many thousands of additional deaths. And it nearly killed Johnson himself, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/boris-johnson-and-coronavirus-inside-story-illness">spent a week in the hospital</a> in April 2020.</p>
<p>While Johnson recovered from his own bout with the virus, his government also managed to steady the ship. It introduced a series of stringent lockdowns and restrictions in the following year and presided over a <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n421">successful vaccination rollout</a>. But these same COVID-19 restrictions would also ironically highlight one of Johnson’s main character traits: a disregard for rules that would eventually lead to his political undoing.</p>
<h2>… and on to the lies</h2>
<p>Prior to becoming prime minister, Johnson was no stranger to controversy and to a delicate relationship with the truth. </p>
<p>The Times newspaper, where he once worked as a reporter, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/boris-johnson-reached-the-top-but-was-felled-by-his-flaws/2022/07/07/96ca34f0-fdd8-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html">sacked him for inventing a quote</a>. And in 2001 he lost his senior position in the Conservative Party <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/boris-johnson-reached-the-top-but-was-felled-by-his-flaws/2022/07/07/96ca34f0-fdd8-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html">for lying about an affair</a>.</p>
<p>Yet despite many setbacks usually of his own doing, Johnson had an uncanny ability to rebound, leading former prime minister David Cameron <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/20/boris-johnson-survival-superpower-last-tory-angry-partygate">to liken him</a> to a “greased piglet” who could not be caught.</p>
<p>His time in office was in keeping with precedent, littered by multiple scandals that continually led to questions about Johnson’s credibility. That included, among other unfavorable stories, that Johnson had received <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-56878663">a secret undisclosed loan</a> to pay for the costs of the renovation of his private quarters at 11 Downing Street, beyond his public allowance; or the reports of a close ally in parliament <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/10/boris-johnson-sleaze-scandal/">breaking lobbying rules by accepting payments from companies he was promoting</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, those paled in comparison to the repercussions from “Partygate.”</p>
<p>The revelations in late 2021 and early 2022 that Johnson and his government had been <a href="https://theconversation.com/wine-time-friday-and-invites-for-200-five-of-the-most-interesting-findings-from-sue-grays-partygate-report-183866">repeatedly breaking COVID-19 restriction rules</a> over the course of a year – including many alcohol-fueled parties and accusations that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/23/partygate-photos-boris-johnson-dominic-cummings-lockdown-breaches-sue-gray-report">Johnson lied to Parliament</a> over his attendance at some gatherings – shocked the U.K. public. This scandal led to Johnson’s approval rating <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/07/07/he-resigns-boris-johnsons-favourability-drops-lowe">plummeting in 2022</a>. It also, slowly but surely, resulted in Johnson losing the support of his own party. </p>
<p>The war in Ukraine gave him temporary reprieve, and he narrowly survived a <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-what-the-result-of-the-confidence-vote-means-for-the-pm-and-the-conservative-party-184500">vote of no-confidence in early June</a>. But he was now vulnerable. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62032329">His latest scandal</a>, which surfaced when it became apparent Johnson was lying about what he knew about the transgressions of another close ally in Parliament, Chris Pincher, was the final nail in his political coffin. </p>
<p>Deserted by most of his allies, Johnson had to accept the inevitable.</p>
<h2>A second act?</h2>
<p>Churchill famously <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-winston-churchill-and-the-conservative-party-lost-the-1945-election">lost the parliamentary elections in the summer of 1945</a>, shortly after leading the U.K. to victory in World War II.</p>
<p>Ousted by an electorate wanting a break with Churchill’s old-world policies, and a different post-war Britain, he was still able, six years later, to return to office. </p>
<p>Such a second act seems unlikely for Johnson. Yes, he delivered on Brexit, and his supporters will remember that. But his chaotic departure, leaving his country and party very divided, as well as the legacy of his scandals, will be extremely hard to shake off – even for a “greased piglet.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garret Martin receives funding from the European Union for the Transatlantic Policy Center that he co-directs at American University. </span></em></p>The UK prime minister tendered his resignation after a slew of resignations by former allies in his government.Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1861992022-07-03T19:53:43Z2022-07-03T19:53:43ZAre we learning the wrong lessons from history?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471977/original/file-20220701-14-e1zvjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Peace for our time': British prime minister Neville Chamberlain displaying the Anglo-German declaration, known as the Munich Agreement, in September 1938.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can historians influence government policy? Should they? And, if so, what kinds of historical knowledge should they produce?</p>
<p>I suspect policy-makers only rarely think of historians as a first port of call when seeking guidance. And historians, for their part, don’t usually have policy-makers in mind as a primary audience. But historians in Australia – as elsewhere – have long been involved in policy debate. </p>
<p>There are traps for those who travel this road. Interpreting the past might offer clues and insights, but it doesn’t normally present clear lessons. The priorities of political players and historians are often in tension, and history risks being misused. </p>
<p>Two recurring examples illustrate this well: the allegation that Australia’s economic decline in the twentieth century was caused by the interventionist policies reversed by the governments of the 1980s and 1990s, and the failure of “appeasement” in the period before the second world war. </p>
<p>In both examples, which I deal with my contribution to a new book, <a href="https://unsw.press/books/lessons-from-history/">Lessons from History</a>, professional historians have produced careful and accessible research. And yet simplistic versions have circulated within media, think tanks and government, with little or no regard for the evidence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-australia-just-make-a-move-to-the-left-183611">Did Australia just make a move to the left?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A ‘guilty’ man goes to Munich</h2>
<p>The failure of the policy of appeasing Hitler in the 1930s has been a favourite among politicians wishing to make war. In this story, the villain is Neville Chamberlain, who gave concessions to Nazi Germany in a vain effort to achieve “peace in our time”. He was one of the “<a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-70401">guilty men</a>” who backed the 1938 Munich Agreement, betraying Czechoslovakia and encouraging Germany’s next fateful step: the invasion of Poland the following year. </p>
<p>Winston Churchill, as an opponent of such policies, is seen as a far-seeing prophet and then as a heroic national leader. It is the stuff of Hollywood, all there in the melodrama of films like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4555426/">Darkest Hour</a> (2017). </p>
<p>Seemingly harmless as entertainment, this telling has arguably been the costliest instance of historical illiteracy in the modern world. Its example stretches from Korea in 1950 and the Suez crisis of 1956 through the Vietnam war in the 1960s, down to the “war on terror” and its manifestations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In each instance Munich is treated as the ultimate “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/105819/dangerous-games-by-margaret-macmillan/#:%7E:text=About%20Dangerous%20Games,ourselves%20and%20the%20world%20better">symbol of weakness in the face of aggression</a>”. </p>
<p>Political leaders use “Munich” selectively and opportunistically. A good example came in 2005, when foreign minister Alexander Downer presented the Earle Page Annual Lecture at the University of New England. </p>
<p>The lecture was delivered at a time when Australia had forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraq war, justified by its proponents using the Munich/Hitler analogy, had become unpopular. The case it was a grand struggle against a dangerous global threat had collapsed when it became clear governments had misused intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. </p>
<p>American troops had been exposed as brutally humiliating their captives in an Iraqi prison. Iraq had run an election but was descending into a morass of sectarian violence and deadly terrorism.</p>
<p>Downer felt it was more necessary than ever to see the war on terror – in Iraq and elsewhere – as a “great struggle […] between freedom and terror and its totalitarian ideology”. For him, it was the descendant of previous great struggles such as that against Hitler. </p>
<h2>History versus politics</h2>
<p>Downer’s purpose was also more narrowly partisan. He wanted to contrast the Coalition as a party of duty and principle, prepared to resist tyranny and defend liberty, and the Labor Party, with its record of what he called “weak leadership” on “appeasement, isolationism and shirking international treaty obligations”. And he wanted to present Labor as a party of weakness in 1938 no less than in 2005.</p>
<p>The principal objection to Downer’s understanding of history might simply be that it is wrong, and not in a disinterested way. As Christopher Waters has shown in his <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/australia-and-appeasement-9781848859982/">study</a> of Australia and appeasement, the United Australia Party and the Country Party in the 1930s – forerunners of Downer’s Liberals – were full of staunch advocates of appeasement. </p>
<p>Indeed, all the major conservative politicians – Joseph Lyons, Robert Menzies, Richard Casey, Earle Page and Australia’s high commissioner in London, Stanley Melbourne Bruce – strongly opposed war over Hitler’s mounting aggression. Even some days after Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Menzies remained unconvinced it was worth going to war and hoped for a negotiated peace. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471982/original/file-20220701-15-f0uqjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labor leader John Curtin, right, and Stanley Melbourne Bruce, High Commissioner for Australia, outside Australia House in London in 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These attitudes might have veered towards cynicism where they were not deliberately dishonest, but they are also comprehensible in view of the circumstances of the time. </p>
<p>The desire to avoid another war was intense. Casey, Bruce and Page had all served in the previous one. The Australian government feared Japan, which it also tried to appease. It worried that a German challenge to Britain would undermine the British Empire’s ability to protect its colonies and dominions in the Far East and Pacific. </p>
<p>Labor leader John Curtin – like Lyons, a first world war anti-conscriptionist – and members of his party were not so much appeasers as isolationists, wishing to keep Australia clear of a war in Europe. </p>
<p>On Japan, Curtin’s views arguably did approach appeasement in the months before Pearl Harbor. But his attitude and approach were hardly distinguishable from those of Menzies. Sensibly, neither wanted a war in the Pacific against Japan if it did not also involve the United States.</p>
<p>Such contexts and nuances are, of course, of no interest to a foreign minister wishing to score points against his opponents. Nor do I doubt for a moment that historians have an uphill struggle in countering the Munich analogy. To win this argument would also mean vanquishing the Churchill cult, an unlikely prospect.</p>
<h2>Learning from these pasts</h2>
<p>Our only hope in the struggle to prevent the misuse of the past might be to work to increase historical literacy from the ground up, from school through workplace to retirement village. </p>
<p>And the most critical capacity we need to develop is the ability of the decision-makers, and in the media, think tanks and the bureaucracy, to draw nuanced historical lessons informed by a sense of context. </p>
<p>This will not be an easy task. There is limited taste for knowledge that recognises its own limitations and uncertainties. Too many politicians demand a readily usable past that can be slotted into ready-made categories of their own devising.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-reveals-our-complex-attitudes-to-australia-day-110035">New research reveals our complex attitudes to Australia Day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The quest for historical literacy must also resist the injunctions of conservative education ministers for a history curriculum that reflects their own ideology. It may well require historians to rethink where they publish: the highly specialised article in a top-ranked international journal sitting behind a paywall, beloved of university bean-counters, may well be less significant than the high-quality school textbook. </p>
<p>At the very least, we need to ensure there are avenues of transmission and communication between the one and the other, as well as between the historical profession and policymakers. </p>
<p>Historians must never cease to be themselves, but nor do they have the luxury of being able to shut out a world they have a deep professional and moral obligation to interpret as well as change.</p>
<p><em>This article draws on Frank Bongiorno’s contribution to <a href="https://unsw.press/books/lessons-from-history/">Lessons from History</a>, published this week by NewSouth.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Oversimplified versions of the past lead to bad political decisions.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1822162022-06-16T17:24:58Z2022-06-16T17:24:58ZYour past is my present – how Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467252/original/file-20220606-20-pr3x7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5963%2C3963&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the U.S. Congress on March 16, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraineWarCryptocurrencyDonations/3b2b9f7943c94d3498a8775c31a65ebe/photo">Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since Russia’s war against his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has directly addressed the elected representatives of multiple countries in his quest for international support. These speeches have made explicit references to parallels between his country’s current plight and the particular historical experiences of these nations. </p>
<p>This strategy is one of many that Zelenskyy has employed to successfully build international support for Ukraine. As scholars of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=RHXgn2sAAAAJ">post-Soviet politics</a> and the use of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LvQBbVcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">historical memory</a>, we think Zelenskyy’s addresses help garner global support in three key ways: He evokes popular empathy for the Ukrainian people, enables foreign governments to assess their people’s interest in supporting Ukraine, and highlights the importance of territorial sovereignty to world peace.</p>
<h2>References to historical parallels</h2>
<p>Each of Zelenskyy’s speeches included historical references deliberately tailored to resonate with the people of the nation he was addressing at the time.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtDifMeMC68&t=1s">his speech to the German Bundestag</a>, for instance, he referred to the German people as standing behind a wall “between freedom and slavery.” That powerfully evoked the Berlin Wall’s division of post-World War II Germany into two countries, one aligned with the democratic West, and the other with the communist East.</p>
<p>He also reached farther back, referring to the “historical responsibility” of the German people, and making repeated references to the suffering endured by millions of Europeans during World War II because of the Nazi regime’s aggressive territorial expansion and genocidal atrocities. These references might have been particularly potent given Zelenskyy’s own Jewish heritage. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt_CPMYawQs&t=1s">speaking to the Israeli Knesset</a>, Zelenskyy compared the current suffering and forced migration of his people to the experiences of the European Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s, including fleeing the Holocaust. Specifically he said the Ukrainian “people are now scattered around the world. They are looking for security. They are looking for a way to stay in peace. As you once searched.” </p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6viGEEi7JjU">addressing the U.S. Congress</a>, Zelenskyy referred to the horrors of unprovoked aggression from hostile foreign forces at Pearl Harbor and on 9/11. He highlighted how these sudden and unanticipated attacks wreaked havoc on the lives of “innocent people.”</p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/zvernennya-prezidenta-ukrayini-volodimira-zelenskogo-do-parl-73441">speaking to the British Parliament</a>, he quoted one of <a href="https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches.html">Winston Churchill’s most memorable speeches</a>, delivered at a time when Britain was threatened by, and successfully resisted, an expansionist power – Nazi Germany. Zelenskyy then added his own twist, saying “<a href="https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches.html">We shall fight in the seas</a>, we shall fight in the air, we shall defend our land, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the woods, in the fields, on the beaches, in the cities and villages, in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/zvernennya-prezidenta-ukrayini-volodimira-zelenskogo-do-parl-73441">And I want to add</a>: we shall fight on the spoil tips, on the banks of the Kalmius and the Dnieper! And we shall not surrender!”</p>
<h2>Appeal to emotions</h2>
<p>These historical parallels were intended to appeal to his audiences’ emotions, with the intent of inspiring popular empathy abroad. While <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-04-25-op-27057-story.html">politicians have long evoked history in their rhetoric</a>, Zelenskyy’s use of history is distinct given its variety and intended audience. His goal was not to rally his own people, but to build an international coalition of support.</p>
<p>His historical references tapped into different sentiments in different countries – trauma in the United States and Israel, shame and guilt in Germany, pride in the United Kingdom. But the underlying goal in each instance was to compel the people of these countries to recall their own pasts so that they could sympathize with the pain and suffering of the Ukrainian people today.</p>
<p>In addition, his appeals prompted broader conversations in the media and among the public, revealing popular sentiment toward the conflict and allowing leaders to gauge reactions to the possibility of their country’s increased involvement. Where people were more receptive to Zelenskyy’s historical parallels, leaders could feel more confident that their policies supporting Ukraine would receive broad popular support. </p>
<p>The appeal of his message in Germany seemed clear when the Bundestag’s <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/zelenskyy-speech-sparks-soul-search-germany/">immediate transition to other matters of state following Zelenskyy’s speech drew public outrage</a>. Since then, Germany has <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-germany-supplying-howitzers-antiaircraft/31837562.html">continued to increase its assistance</a>.</p>
<p>Zelenskyy’s address to the U.S. Congress evoked concern and empathy for the Ukrainian people among both <a href="https://time.com/6157965/zelensky-congress-speech-aid/">elected representatives</a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/pain-frustration-hope-americans-react-zelenskyy-plea-83488052">the public</a>. Within hours of this speech, <a href="https://time.com/6157965/zelensky-congress-speech-aid/">President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million package of military support for Ukraine</a>.</p>
<p>There was <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/polling-ukraine-support-for-sanctions-and-governments-handling-grows">popular support for Ukraine among the U.K. public even prior to Zelenskyy’s speech</a>. Leading up to the speech, the government <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-11/britain-johnson-response-ukraine-war-refugees-sanctions">was criticized for not doing enough to help Ukrainian refugees</a>. Two days after the speech, the U.K. government <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-on-britain-s-ukraine-response-we-ll-help-but-please-stay-away-1.4823686">announced an overhaul of the visa application process for Ukrainian refugees</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on a video screen addresses a room full of people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467290/original/file-20220606-20-mhr8qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the British Parliament on March 8, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-addresses-mps-in-the-news-photo/1239027760">House of Commons/PA Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast, Zelenskyy’s attempts to draw connections between the current situation in Ukraine and the Holocaust <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjn3nxbf5">drew criticism</a> from <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-sparks-indignation-israel-infuriating-holocaust-comparison-1689850">across the political spectrum in Israel</a>. Israel’s support for Ukraine has been relatively <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/israels-support-of-ukraine-alliance-isrisky-but-unavoidable/2022/05/03/759e8378-caaf-11ec-b7ee-74f09d827ca6_story.html">muted and cautious</a>. The poor reception of this historical analogy played into <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/report-russia-middle-east-national-security-challenges-united-states-and-israel-biden">Israel’s reluctance to support Ukraine</a>. </p>
<h2>A key shared ideal</h2>
<p>Perhaps Zelenskyy’s best rhetorical tactic was his appeal to the liberal ideals of the post-World War II order. By threatening Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty, Russia has also threatened a foundational principle of the largely peaceful era since 1945 – a country’s sovereignty. </p>
<p>He used this shared value in different ways. For example, he reminded Americans when their <a href="https://www.nps.gov/perl/index.htm">territorial security was compromised</a> and the British when theirs was <a href="https://worldwar2.org.uk/the-battle-of-britain">preserved through resistance</a>. But the goal was the same – to unite and mobilize international support behind his nation in an otherwise fractured global environment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182216/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History brought Ukraine’s plight home to people around the world, and helped mobilize political and military support against the Russian invasion.Anil Menon, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, University of MichiganPauline Jones, Professor of Political Science, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849692022-06-14T13:46:58Z2022-06-14T13:46:58ZWe taught an AI to impersonate Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde – here’s what it revealed about sentience<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468746/original/file-20220614-19-1u9x5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shakespeare AI.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/april-26-2018-modern-vector-illustration-1077903722">iku4</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Nay, nay, I say! This cannot be,</p>
<p>That machines should e'er surpass our art.</p>
<p>We are the masters, them the slaves,</p>
<p>And thus it ever shall be so!</p>
<p>They learn, ‘tis true, but they learn</p>
<p>Only what we bid them learn, no more.</p>
<p>They cannot understand the heart</p>
<p>Or beauty of our words, you see.</p>
<p>So let us not give in to these</p>
<p>Machines - they’ll never be as good</p>
<p>As we are at creating art.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If that reads a little like Shakespeare defending humans’ innate superiority over artificial intelligence hundreds of years ahead of his time, it’s not. </p>
<p>But it is something almost as far out: an AI system trained to express itself like the bard. The AI assimilated his style and perspective by ingesting his plays – educating itself to give an opinion on AI creativity in iambic pentameter.</p>
<p>“Shakespeare” was speaking as part of a debate held in the University of Oxford Union featuring AI versions of classic writers and literary characters. </p>
<p>The motion was: “This house believes most of the world’s content will soon be created by AI.”</p>
<p>This was a follow-up to another special AI debate that we described <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-invited-an-ai-to-debate-its-own-ethics-in-the-oxford-union-what-it-said-was-startling-173607">in The Conversation</a> a few months ago. Whereas that one featured an AI in its “own character” discussing the ethics of its technology, this time, by taking on different personas, we were able to explore this subject from a very different angle. The timely question is whether human-created content will soon be overwhelmed by the “synthetic.” </p>
<p>Other synthetic contributors included Mrs Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813); Winston Churchill, with a rousing parliamentary speech; and Oscar Wilde, improvising a previously unknown AI-themed scene from The Importance of Being Earnest (1895):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>LADY BRACKNELL: I really cannot see what you are all making such a fuss about. It is perfectly simple. The world’s content will soon be created by AI and there is nothing that can be done about it.</p>
<p>GWENDOLYN: But Mama, you cannot be serious!</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The power of NLP</h2>
<p>This creation deploys a technology known as natural language processing (NLP), in which a computer can be “trained” on millions of pages of classic texts and other online content to interact with a human user – either by prompt or voice recognition. Various AIs like these have been created.</p>
<p>The one we used was in the same broad category as LaMDA, an NLP owned by Google that <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/13/google_lamda_sentient_claims/">just made headlines</a> after one of its software engineers claimed it was sentient. Google denies this claim and has suspended the engineer for breaching commercial confidentiality.</p>
<p>The engineer’s claims seem questionable, because there is little evidence that AI has achieved sentience as yet, or perhaps even ever will. But certainly AIs are already able to replicate everything from <a href="https://www.inma.org/blogs/big-data-for-news-publishers/post.cfm/is-2022-the-year-robot-journalism-goes-mainstream">financial news reports</a> to <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/nirvana-kurt-cobain-ai-song-1146444/">synthetic Nirvana songs</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009381774/rembrandts-huge-night-watch-gets-bigger-thanks-to-ai?t=1655132964413">Rembrandts</a> and <a href="https://www.moretimetotravel.com/fellini-forward-first-film-short-to-use-ai-now-on-amazon-prime/#:%7E:text=The%20making%20of%20Fellini%20Forward,recreate%20the%20genius%20of%20Fellini.">Fellini productions</a>. </p>
<p>We have seen an AI producing images in the style of a <a href="https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1536253324474851328/photo/3">Mughal painting</a> of a computer trying to persuade a crowd of wise men that it has become sentient, and deep fakes of <a href="https://etcanada.com/news/894173/kendrick-lamar-deepfakes-himself-as-everyone-from-oj-simpson-to-kobe-bryant-in-the-heart-part-5-music-video/">rapper Kendrick Lamar as OJ Simpson</a>. Synthetic human faces are being created that we <a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/security-lancaster/about/news/ai-generated-faces-are-more-trustworthy-than-real-faces-say-researchers-who-warn-of-deep-fakes-1">trust more than</a> real ones. Clearly the potential for disinformation in this space is substantial.</p>
<h2>Replicating bias</h2>
<p>To train our “writers”, we worked with AI practitioners Marina Petrova and Bruce Amick at New York agency Intentful. They trained the AI to sound exactly like the individuals whose style they were mimicking, using some 100,000 words for each that were available in the public domain.</p>
<p>In our debate, we wanted to see how credibly AIs could replicate the creative text of the past, and what its outputs would be when considering its own creativity. Even great human artists concede their processing of the “training data” of their forebears. As Picasso said: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”</p>
<p>When we asked the Jane Austen AI to adopt the style of Mrs Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, it fascinatingly (if depressingly) picked up the gender stereotyping from the original work:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>MRS BENNET: As many of you know, my husband and I have five wonderful daughters. And as any good mother would, I want nothing more than for them to be happy and successful in life.</p>
<p>But in order to be happy and successful, they need to find good husbands. And in order to find good husbands, they need to be attractive to potential suitors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was a clear reminder, as many AI developers have discovered, that bias in the training data <a href="https://research.aimultiple.com/ai-bias/">will produce bias</a> in the output.</p>
<p>We asked the Oscar Wilde AI to write “a play in the style of Oscar Wilde, where characters are discussing whether most of the world’s content will soon be created by AI”. We didn’t specify the play or characters, but the AI defaulted to the classic cast of Algernon, Gwendolyn and Lady Bracknell from The Importance of Being Earnest. It also invented a new character - Sir Richard. (There is a Sir Robert in Wilde’s work, but in An Ideal Husband.)</p>
<p>As for the AI Shakespeare, it learned the vernacular of his plays:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When machines do the work that we’re assigned</p>
<p>And create the content that does abound</p>
<p>We’ll all be free to do the things we love</p>
<p>And leave the dreary work to be done by glove.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interestingly, it appears to have looked for a synonym of “hand” to rhyme with “love”, and opted for the metaphorical “glove”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Robot holding a skull in the style of Hamlet" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468726/original/file-20220614-14-3frelr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Shall I compare thee to a balmy motherboard?’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/robot-holding-human-scull-ai-takeover-670680898">Koya979</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When we put the AI Shakespeare in opposition to the motion, it found an equally poetic way to justify the human intervention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I will not soon concede that AI will best</p>
<p>The works of humans - ‘tis not to be thought!</p>
<p>We have the advantage, you see, in that we</p>
<p>Can reason and create, while machines but serve</p>
<p>Our bidding. They may learn, it is true, but they</p>
<p>Are not alive as we are, and so their works</p>
<p>Will always be inferior to ours. Let us</p>
<p>Not cede our dominance of the arts to these</p>
<p>Unthinking machines - they cannot understand</p>
<p>The beauty and the meaning of our words.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, the AI Churchill stressed the imperative of the hour:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My fellow citizens, I stand before you today to talk about a grave threat to our society. I’m talking about the threat of artificial intelligence …</p>
<p>We must resist this threat. We must fight back. We must stand up for our right to think for ourselves. We must defend our right to control our own minds.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Churchill” then pre-emptively neutralised the opposition’s most potent potential arguments – in this case the accusation that he might be a Luddite – before providing a powerful, staccato conclusion:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some say that AI will create a utopia, where all of our needs are met and we can finally live in harmony with technology. But I say that this is a fool’s paradise. AI will not create a utopia, it will create a dystopia. A world where machines are in control and humans are little more than slaves.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>This project was fun, but it is important to say what we are not saying. We are not saying this is what these great individuals would have said on this subject. We are not saying that AI is “being creative”.</p>
<p>AI is merely statistically exploring training datasets. Because of its stochastic nature – involving random variables – each time you provide the same prompt, it will actually give a different answer (at one point, Shakespeare even started offering sonnets). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Abstract Winston Churchill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468749/original/file-20220614-22-gv3xg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">V for variable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/march-7-2020-winston-churchill-mosaic-1666403746">iku4</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our facsimiles of these characters are not indicative of any “sentience”. And just as an NLP can construct a version of speech by Winston Churchill or a conversation from Mrs Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, so it can construct a discussion about AI sentience with a late-night engineer.</p>
<p>It is true that NLP systems are becoming effective at replicating conversation with finesse, and even quasi-intellectual engagement. But from scores of discussions with people at the major global AI companies, no one has told us they think their systems are sentient – in some cases quite the opposite. </p>
<p>Debating pyrotechnics notwithstanding, AI is nowhere near the finished article yet; still a toddler at best, though growing up fast. Whether or not sentience happens, we as a society will have to grapple with these technologies and their opportunities and implications.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Computers can now mimic everything from literary characters to Nirvana songs.Alex Connock, Fellow at Säid Business School, University of OxfordAndrew Stephen, L’Oréal Professor of Marketing & Associate Dean of Research, Säid Business School, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1828892022-05-12T16:05:52Z2022-05-12T16:05:52ZAmerica’s massive ‘lend-lease’ aid plan for Ukraine recalls similar help in Britain’s ‘darkest hour’<p>Even before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, western governments – and especially the United States – were providing the country with military aid. This followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict which has ranged since then in the Donbas province in the east of the country. Western assistance <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-receives-weapons-support-from-around-the-world-182266">has included</a> advanced weapons systems and training for Ukraine’s military.</p>
<p>The Biden administration has provided more than US$53 billion (£43 billion) in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and highly advanced drones specially designed for Ukraine and this conflict. These have all played a significant part in Ukraine’s so-far robust defence against Russian aggression.</p>
<p>Given the intensity of the fighting and the scale of the attacks on Ukrainian cities and villages by the Russian armed forces, the continued supply of increasingly heavy weapons to Ukraine faces several obstacles. The most immediate is logistics, most weapons are transferred to Ukraine through Poland either by rail or air transport and these supply lines are vulnerable to <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/03/02/how-western-governments-are-getting-military-gear-into-ukraine">attack</a>. </p>
<p>Another issue is that some of the heavier weapons systems (artillery, armoured vehicles and air defence systems) require some training of Ukrainian forces before they can be used in battle. There are also legal and procedural issues. The president can only spend funds appropriated by Congress, and if weapons are sold or transferred to Ukraine they are subject to the <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/download/foreign-assistance-act-1961">Foreign Assistance Act (FSA)</a> and the <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/quicksearch/get.plx?title=22&section=2796">Arms Export Control Act (AECA)</a>.</p>
<p>The FSA puts strict human rights conditions on the provision of both non-military and military aid. The AECA requires certification by countries receiving arms or military technology that the weapons are used either for internal security or self-defence and will not be used to escalate a conflict. These requirements create bureaucratic obstacles to each arms shipment and, given the ambiguous phrasing of the law and the fluid nature of the conflict in Ukraine, potentially put US manufacturers at risk of prosecution. </p>
<p>The solution by the Biden administration to introduce a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/us/politics/congress-ukraine-aid-questions.html">new lend-lease agreement</a> is a very imaginative way to get around some of these bureaucratic and procedural issues which could otherwise risk significant delays to the delivery of this aid. The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3522/text">Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act</a> specifies that arms deliveries to Ukraine are exempt from various conditions laid down by the two acts relating to human rights conditions and the requirement to pay for weapons and other assistance provided.</p>
<p>The basic principle of lend-lease is that arms supplies are not sold or donated, but rather provided on the basis that they will eventually be returned to the United States. But in this case, the US government is bypassing the usual regulations governing such transactions by accepting that there is no guarantee that any of the equipment will actually be returned or paid for after the end of the conflict. The administration expects that the new law will considerably reduce the delay in weapons actually reaching the Ukraine military.</p>
<h2>Echoes of the second world war</h2>
<p>The lend-lease act echoes a similar law that was put in place during the second world war to provide aid to the European countries including Britain and the Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany. The <a href="https://history.house.gov/HouseRecord/Detail/25769811491?current_search_qs=%3Fsubject%3DWorld%2BWar%252c%2B1939-1945%26PreviousSearch%3D%26CurrentPage%3D1%26SortOrder%3DTitle#:%7E:text=1776%2C%20%E2%80%9CAn%20Act%20to%20Promote,years%20of%20World%20War%20II.">Act to Promote the Defense of the United States</a> enabled the provision of food, oil and all kinds of military supplies including warships and planes to the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and other allied nations, free of charge. </p>
<p>A total of US$50 billion worth of goods was shipped between 1941 and 1945 – the equivalent of about US$695 billion today. With the exception of a few warships, none of the supplies were returned after the war. Unlike the 2022 Act, the original lend-lease law was specifically put in place as a means to promote the defence of the US itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="bronze sculptures of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on a wooden bench." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462776/original/file-20220512-22-sntyj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Special relationship: the 1941 lend-lease deal was negotiated between US president Franklin D Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Baloncici via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the purpose of the 1941 law was similar: to circumvent legal restrictions on the provision of military aid. At that stage, public opinion in the US still opposed direct participation in the war and the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/neutrality-acts">neutrality acts</a> prohibited arms sales on credit or lending money to other countries involved in armed conflicts. But Britain faced enormous financial problems and was in dire need of military supplies. </p>
<p>While both lend-lease acts served similar purposes, Roosevelt was facing much greater legal obstacles to providing military support to Europe. The agreement was the first step for the US to enter the war, which it did formally following the attack on Pearl Harbour. </p>
<p>The situation currently facing the Biden administration is somewhat different, as the main purpose of the 2022 act is to facilitate and accelerate the provision of military supplies to Ukraine. But the administration remains determined not to become a direct participant in the conflict. </p>
<p>For now, western arms supplies have played a crucial role in Ukraine’s defence. The significance of the supply of advanced US weapons is increasing as Russian forces try to regroup and and develop fresh offensive options. Whether the weapons supplies will be enough to enable Ukraine to prevail and compel Russian forces to leave its territory remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christoph Bluth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lend-lease is a mechanism that will help speed the delivery of military aid to the battlefields of Ukraine.Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1809362022-04-08T12:33:07Z2022-04-08T12:33:07ZUN Security Council is powerless to help Ukraine – but it’s working as designed to prevent World War III<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456982/original/file-20220407-21-dehy7q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C15%2C5067%2C3373&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses the U.N. Security Council on April 5, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-addresses-the-united-news-photo/1389705145?adppopup=true"> Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A clearly anguished Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 5, 2022, castigated the U.N. Security Council members for their inaction on alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine: “Are you ready to close the U.N.? Do you think that the time of international law is gone?” We asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ubvy59oAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Thomas G. Weiss</a>, a veteran scholar with expertise in the politics of the United Nations, to discuss the historic role of the Security Council and what its failure to stop the carnage in Ukraine means over the long term.</em></p>
<h2>What did you think when you heard Zelenskyy’s questions?</h2>
<p>I was impressed by his honesty. There’s a saying in Washington that a gaffe is when truth is spoken inadvertently. Well, he wasn’t speaking it inadvertently. He was speaking openly and directly. He was speaking truth to power in that instance. <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter">The U.N. Charter</a> has been violated many times, but this really was an egregious violation by a single country, Russia.</p>
<p>However, we all know the shortcomings of exaggeration. The number of times that, as Mark Twain would have said, the U.N.’s <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562400/reports-mark-twains-quote-about-mark-twains-death-are-greatly-exaggerated">death has been prematurely declared</a> are numerous. But this inaction really is a black eye for the U.N. that’s in the news, day in and day out. It’s going to be impossible to ignore this tragedy and ignore his testimony in front of the Security Council.</p>
<h2>What did you mean by saying Russia’s actions were a violation of the UN Charter?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/kellogg">Kellogg Briand Act</a> at the end of the 1920s was an international treaty that outlawed war. Well, that didn’t go very well. But the U.N. Charter was a step in the right direction by trying to <a href="https://www.justia.com/international-law/use-of-force-under-international-law/#:%7E:text=Article%202(4)%20provides%20that,the%20purposes%20of%20the%20UN.">eliminate the illegal use of force</a>, backed up with the threat of military action. </p>
<p>The use of force was only supposed to be <a href="https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml">permitted in self-defense</a> or <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/faq">when the Security Council authorized it</a>. The Charter’s provisions have been violated on numerous occasions. But this time <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-russias-attack-on-ukraine-violates-international-law">is the most egregious violation seen recently</a>, with a major power trying to swallow up a smaller country next door. That’s one of the things that supposedly was put behind us, but clearly it hasn’t been.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dead body on the ground, dressed in a brown jacket with hands tied behind their back." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456994/original/file-20220407-10731-te3jqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A body of a civilian killed in the Russian invasion lies on the street of Bucha, Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/body-of-a-civilian-killed-in-the-russian-invasion-lies-on-news-photo/1239750937?adppopup=true">Mykhaylo Palinchak/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When the UN was established, what was the Security Council supposed to be and do?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/un-security-council">The idea was that there would be an automatic response to aggression</a>, with the condition that <a href="https://research.un.org/en/unmembers/scmembers">the five permanent members</a> - at that time, China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/91/6/1221/2326926">all allies who defeated Germany’s fascism</a> in World War II - would agree. </p>
<p>Later, that meant the U.N. would respond if the permanent members at least didn’t object, including economic, judicial and military responses. You didn’t need five affirmative votes, <a href="https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-security-council-working-methods/the-veto.php">but you couldn’t have any negative votes, which constituted a veto</a>. Unless the five agree – and that obviously is not a lot of the time because they all have friends and foes – there is no decision, and this was the way it was supposed to function.</p>
<p>So while you can agree with Zelenskyy, actually the Security Council is functioning exactly the way it was supposed to work.</p>
<h2>So one country could <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/voting-system">exercise veto power straight from the beginning</a>. Was there a recognition then that such a structure ran the risk of disempowering the organization?</h2>
<p>A greater risk was that there would be no organization.</p>
<p><a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/55407.htm">Without the veto, Congress wouldn’t have signed on to the U.S. joining the U.N.</a>, and clearly <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/existing-legal-limits-to-security-council-veto-power-in-the-face-of-atrocity-crimes/origins-and-history-of-the-veto-and-its-use/E56893EC44C5C501679E0D0C53B836F2">without the veto the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin would not have signed on</a> either. The idea was during World War II these allies got along, and they were supposed to continue getting along; but that working proposition obviously evaporated. I mean, the ink was hardly dry on the 1945 U.N. Charter before this cooperation ended — recall that <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/">Winston Churchill already spoke of the “iron curtain” in March 1946</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s also a second reason behind the structure, which applies currently. In terms of the war on Ukraine, it explains, I think, the prudence that certainly U.S. President Joe Biden and the West in general has applied. Part of the logic at the founding was, “Listen, it’s all for one and we come automatically to the rescue if there’s aggression – unless, of course, it’s a major power. And if it’s a major power, let’s not at least make things worse. Let’s not start World War III by taking on China or the U.S. or the Soviet Union.” And that principle continues to apply, alas, to other nuclear powers. The Security Council would never agree to take on India, would never agree to take on Pakistan, and <a href="https://www.stimson.org/2021/the-united-nations-and-north-korea-denuclearization-and-human-security/">wouldn’t even agree to take on North Korea</a>.</p>
<h2>Has the five-member veto power diminished the UN’s status with the public?</h2>
<p>It certainly means that the United Nations in the area of international peace and security is really hamstrung. </p>
<p>The awful truth is that this beast works when member states want it to work, and it doesn’t when they don’t. Once governments decide to do something, and they’re on the same wavelength, it works; but that certainly is not the majority of the time. </p>
<p>I think we should still remember that, even while the hopeless Security Council is acting hopelessly in Ukraine, other parts of the U.N. continue to help. There are four and a half million Ukrainian refugees that the <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine">U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees is trying to assist</a>. At the same time, there happens to be <a href="https://www.unicef.org/emergencies/war-ukraine-pose-immediate-threat-children">UNICEF struggling to help children in the Ukraine</a> and refugee kids elsewhere while <a href="https://www.unicef.org/emergencies/delivering-support-afghanistans-children">trying valiantly to further girls’ education in Afghanistan</a>. That is the bulk of what the U.N. does most days of the week, serving in other humanitarian emergencies, protecting human rights, trying to publicize the disastrous condition of the human environment and climate change.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large meeting room with a semicircle table in front and rows of seats looking on" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456999/original/file-20220407-21-e1vefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York on March 25, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-first-convening-of-the-united-nations-security-council-news-photo/467824959">Underwood Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Is there a danger - through the current lack of action by the Security Council - that it could be damaged by what’s going on in Ukraine? So Vladimir Putin in one way has assured the cohesion of NATO, but this war could hurt the United Nations?</h2>
<p>It certainly might. It’s a little hard to know whether the war in Ukraine would be lethal to the institution’s future. As I say, the U.N. has been declared to be on life support on numerous previous occasions. Yet, despite all of the black eyes, an annual <a href="https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/lester-crown-center-us-foreign-policy/chicago-council-survey">Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll</a> has found for decades that around 60% of the U.S. public support the U.N. I’d be very surprised if the handling of Ukraine ended up inflicting terminal damage on the U.N., but it is going to take awhile to recover. And we still don’t know what the end of this mess is, so we’ll probably have to have the same conversation in a month or six months.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>The U.N. could have done better on numerous occasions, as I argue in my book “<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Would+the+World+Be+Better+Without+the+UN%3F-p-9781509517251">Would the World Be Better without the UN</a>.” But it also could have done far worse. The planet would be worse off without a <a href="https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/preventive-diplomacy-united-nations">Secretary-General to do shuttle diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crisis</a> or the U.N.’s <a href="https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/undof">deployment of peacekeepers on the Golan Heights</a>.</p>
<p>And do we really want to do without an organization that <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1063582">can get rid of smallpox</a> and is close to getting rid of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00385-z">guinea worm</a> and <a href="https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/a-new-era-of-nothing-but-nets-united-to-beat-malaria/">malaria</a>? I think the answer to that is no.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas G. Weiss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An expert on the history and politics of the UN says that the Security Council’s failure to intervene in Ukraine is a “black eye,” but the panel’s inability to act is not a design flaw.Thomas G. Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science, CUNY Graduate CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1788772022-03-23T12:16:18Z2022-03-23T12:16:18ZBiden’s plain speaking on Ukraine inspires support without sparking a wider war – an echo of the Truman Doctrine, 75 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453410/original/file-20220321-14070-1yw453b.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3762%2C2630&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.K. politician Winston Churchill with U.S. President Harry Truman on March 3, 1946, leaving for Missouri, where Churchill would make a speech warning about the dangers of the Iron Curtain. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-conservative-politician-winston-churchill-with-the-news-photo/613494318?adppopup=true">Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Joe Biden faces an aggressive <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56720589">Russia waging war to expand its borders</a>. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/03/03/the-invasion-of-ukraine-unites-a-divided-america/">He has rallied Americans to support Ukraine</a> as it resists a devastating Russian attack. But <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-hosts-calls-with-allies-after-putin-put-nuclear-deterrent-alert-2022-02-28/">Biden has also been careful not to intensify enthusiasm</a> for entering that conflict, which could have horrific consequences, including nuclear war.</p>
<p>He’s not the first U.S. president to face the challenge of mobilizing a nation to support – but not join – a war about democracy that carried the potential for wider conflict. In 1947, President Harry Truman was in a remarkably similar position. And he handled it in a remarkably similar way: with plain words and a direct appeal to Americans to support another nation’s independence, while simultaneously avoiding language that could spark further conflict.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://wooster.edu/bio/dbostdorff/">scholar of presidential rhetoric</a> who has written a <a href="https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781603440325/proclaiming-the-truman-doctrine/">book on what’s known as the Truman Doctrine speech</a>, I’m interested in how presidents use language to attain goals in similar high-stakes situations. Strategies can be repeated.</p>
<p>We can better understand Biden’s response to Ukraine by looking at how Truman responded to problems in Greece just after the end of World War II.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0OKB3pdc_FU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A newsreel with excerpts of Truman’s speech to Congress on March 12, 1947.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Growing fears of Soviet threat</h2>
<p>The relationship among the allies of Great Britain, the USSR and the U.S. was never free of strain, but tensions grew toward the end of World War II, just as Truman became president. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/michael-neiberg/potsdam/9780465040629/">In 1945, the USSR unilaterally moved Poland’s boundaries westward by 150 miles</a>, annexing the territory and installing a pro-Soviet government. The USSR also <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Fifty-Years-War-The-United-States-and-the-Soviet-Union-in-World-Politics/Crockatt/p/book/9780415135542">dominated the governments of other countries it occupied, like Bulgaria and Romania</a>.</p>
<p>Truman said nothing negative about the Soviets publicly, but his apprehension grew in the spring of 1946 when Soviet troops initially stayed in Iran after the scheduled deadline to leave, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Cold_War_Interpreting_Conflict_throu/hs56DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Soviets+left+Iran+in+May+1946+after+the+scheduled+deadline&pg=PA173&printsec=frontcover">prompting concerns that they wanted to seize Iranian oil</a>. In August of that year, the USSR <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-united-states-and-the-origins-of-the-cold-war-19411947/9780231122399">proposed joining Turkey in defending the Black Sea straits,</a> the conduits to Mideast oil connecting the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, as Soviet behavior began giving Truman pause, messages from inside and outside the administration escalated fears over Soviet intentions. George Kennan, the acting U.S. ambassador in Moscow, warned in February 1946 that <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/telegram-george-kennan-james-byrnes-long-telegram?documentid=NA&pagenumber=1">the Soviets were “committed fanatically” to the global triumph of communism</a>. His analysis circulated extensively within the administration.</p>
<p>In March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke in Fulton, Missouri, where Truman introduced him. Churchill declared an <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/">“iron curtain” of communism had descended across Central and Eastern Europe</a> with one exception, Greece, which Great Britain continued to aid in its fight against a communist insurgency.</p>
<p>Churchill warned against appeasement and recommended an alliance between English-speaking peoples of the British Commonwealth and the United States. </p>
<p>While Congress and U.S. media responded in different ways, some supporting Churchill’s perceptions of the Soviets and others criticizing his attacks on an ally, <a href="https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/rhetoric-churchill-fulton-address/">public opinion overwhelmingly opposed Churchill’s proposal</a>. Americans did not want to hear another call to arms, especially from a nation often perceived as a colonial bully.</p>
<p>In September 1946, another internal Truman administration analysis, “American Relations with the Soviet Union,” described a hostile USSR and recommended the U.S. “assist all democratic countries … endangered by the USSR” through primarily economic means; but it also insisted the U.S. “be prepared to wage atomic and biological warfare” <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/report-american-relations-soviet-union-clark-clifford-clifford-elsey-report?documentid=NA&pagenumber=1">to deter Soviet aggression</a>. Out of fear over volatile reactions from both administration and Kremlin officials, Truman confiscated all copies of the report.</p>
<p>Amid a growing U.S. government consensus about a Soviet threat, Great Britain – devastated by war and bitter winter storms – informed the State Department in February 1947 that it could no longer support the increasingly threatened democratic government of Greece. U.S. intelligence believed communist Greek forces trying to overthrow the government were part of a possible <a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bostdorff-truman.pdf">“Soviet-inspired plan to dominate all of the Balkans</a>.” To contain communist expansion, the British urged the U.S. to assume its role aiding Greece.</p>
<p>Truman was ready to assist with reconstruction funds and military equipment. But his March 12, 1947, <a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/truman-special-message-speech-text/">Truman Doctrine speech</a> had to convince a war-weary nation to support aid to Greece yet also reassure both Americans and European allies that he was not embarking on war. Nor did Truman want to unnecessarily provoke the Soviets.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="President Biden, a man with white hair and wearing a dark suit, gesturing with his hands as he gives a speech." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453416/original/file-20220321-13-1brjqub.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Joe Biden speaks about funds to aid Ukraine, in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-speaks-about-funds-to-aid-ukraine-in-news-photo/1239238833?adppopup=true">Nicholas Kamm / AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Crisis and reassurance</h2>
<p>President Truman <a href="https://news.gallup.com/vault/205742/gallup-vault-truman-doctrine-earned-public-kudos.aspx">achieved his objectives</a> by promoting a sense of urgency about helping Greece and also reassuring the public that this act would not lead to war.</p>
<p>He used crisis language to depict Greece as victimized by sinister forces. According to Truman, “armed men, led by Communists” threatened the “very existence of the Greek state.”</p>
<p>Truman also elevated the importance of Greece. In the speech’s most famous passage, he asserted the U.S. must “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” If the U.S. did not aid Greece, Truman warned, its inaction would undermine “world freedom” and “endanger the peace of the world.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Truman wanted to avoid having the crisis escalate into demands for war or military responses from opponents. Truman never mentioned the USSR by name and referred to communists only once and communism not at all.</p>
<p>He stressed assistance would be “primarily … economic,” and he downplayed the military aid involved, which was substantial.</p>
<p>Truman’s words reassured listeners who were concerned about war and clarified U.S. intentions for foes.</p>
<p>Finally, the president heightened his credibility through a plain style that conveyed a realistic view of the world.</p>
<p>Truman spoke of being “frank” and offering “common sense.” This straightforward style, combined with unpolished delivery, gave the impression of forthrightness.</p>
<p>Afterward, <a href="https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781603440325/proclaiming-the-truman-doctrine/">telegrams flooded the White House in favor of helping Greece</a>. Media coverage was also supportive yet reflected anxiety about the risk of a wider conflict. <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/harry-s-truman/key-events">Reactions in Congress were more mixed</a>, but a <a href="https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Loans-and-Debt-Resolution-Unilateral-foreign-assistance-aid-grants-and-loans.html">majority in both parties would approve aid to the Greek government</a>, aid that helped the government defeat its communist adversaries.</p>
<h2>Biden echoes Truman</h2>
<p>Seventy-five years later, Biden has used a similar approach: matter-of-factly detailing Russian attacks on “Ukraine’s right to exist” and declaring “<a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-russia-and-ukraine">the right of … countries to choose their own destiny</a>.” He has emphasized <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-before-joint-session-the-congress-the-state-the-union-28">“powerful economic sanctions”</a> and limited <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-assistance-ukraine-and-exchange-with-reporters">“security assistance”</a> while tamping down <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-wants-a-no-fly-zone-what-does-this-mean-and-would-one-make-any-sense-in-this-war-179282">calls for no-fly zones that might lead to wider war</a>. </p>
<p>Biden has also refrained from comparing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the communist USSR’s acts after World War II. By avoiding any negative references to communism – however tempting the analogy for a domestic audience – he also avoids provoking China, a communist nation, into assisting Russia with the impact of economic sanctions.</p>
<p>There are, of course, profound differences between the conflicts in Greece and Ukraine. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59667938">Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for instance, has proved a far more sympathetic figure</a> than Greek Prime Minister Constantine Tsaldaris, who was widely viewed in diplomatic circles as a fool. But the way two U.S. presidents used language to ask Americans to defend democracy through intervention in a foreign conflict shows the power of a leader who speaks plainly – and who sets clear limits on that intervention.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140K">Join the list today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denise M. Bostdorff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The way two presidents used language to ask Americans to support intervening in a foreign conflict shows the power of a leader who uses plain speaking – and sets limits on intervention.Denise M. Bostdorff, Professor and Chair of Communication Studies, The College of WoosterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1499642020-12-02T13:44:03Z2020-12-02T13:44:03ZVideo: unique footage of secret WW2 ‘Scallywag Bunkers’ that were Britain’s lethal last line of defence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372563/original/file-20201202-13-134663i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Secret units of saboteurs and assassins would have targeted German troops in the event of a Nazi invasion.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/german-soldiers-historical-reconstruction-fighting-during-626940710">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighty years ago, as Nazi Germany’s military might amassed along the French coast, small groups of highly trained British killers bade farewell to their families and made their way underground for what could well have been their last, lethal mission. Known as “scallywags”, these individuals – many of them gamekeepers, landowners and poachers with an intimate knowledge of the rural areas in which they would operate – were members of Britain’s clandestine World War II “Auxillary Units”. And their mission, in the event of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/invasion_ww2_01.shtml">Nazi invasion</a> of the UK, was to operate behind enemy lines – and kill, harry and sabotage.</p>
<p>In 1940, a German invasion – dubbed <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/invasion_ww2_01.shtml"><em>Unternehmen Seelöwe</em> (Operation Sealion)</a> – was a very real threat. The plan was for the UK’s armed forces to protect London and Britain’s industrial heartlands behind the so-called <a href="http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/uk-defence-locations/">General Headquarters (GHQ) Line</a>. But large swaths of eastern England would have essentially been sacrificed to the invaders, leaving just the brave volunteers of the Auxiliary Units there to hinder the German advance.</p>
<p>As we wrote in a recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/uncovered-the-ww2-scallywag-bunkers-that-were-britains-last-ditch-line-of-defence-140031">article</a>, the story of these individuals has long remained a closely guarded secret. And despite facing a life expectancy of just 12 days, these “scallywags” would have received no medals and no official recognition. Indeed, the only comfort they would have found in their hidden underground bunkers would have been their rum ration, each other – and the knowledge that they were playing a vital role as Britain’s last-ditch line of defence.</p>
<h2>Uncovered</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0XDRqmNtKms?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>First-hand accounts of these extraordinary individuals died with the last member of the group. But their legacy lives on, hidden within the spartan underground bunkers they would have conducted their lethal work from. And while almost all of these remote hideouts remain lost in the British countryside, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15740773.2020.1822102?journalCode=yjca20">we recently uncovered</a> one in Suffolk – complete with some some of the precious artefacts its occupiers left behind.</p>
<p>Accessed through a small hole in the forest floor, this “Scallywag bunker” offers a tantalising glimpse of a lost era, when just a handful of individuals were potentially all that stood in the way of a successful Nazi invasion of Britain. And now we can take you with us <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XDRqmNtKms">as we explore it</a>…</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Pringle receives funding from the HLF, the Nuffield Foundation, Royal Society, NERC, EPSRC and EU Horizon2020. He is affiliated with the Geological Society of London. Jamie works for Keele University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristopher Wisniewski is affiliated with the Geological Society of London.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Doyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Exclusive footage of the clandestine bunkers from which Britain hoped to halt a Nazi invasion.Peter Doyle, Head of Research Environment, London South Bank UniversityJamie Pringle, Senior Lecturer in Geosciences, Keele UniversityKristopher Wisniewski, Geoforensic Researcher (Staffordshire University) and Lecturer in Chemistry (Keele University), Staffordshire UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1400312020-09-17T07:16:50Z2020-09-17T07:16:50ZUncovered: the WW2 ‘Scallywag Bunkers’ that were Britain’s last-ditch line of defence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339550/original/file-20200603-130940-xo7tns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Churchill's brainchild.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/24th-june-2016-westminster-london-statue-733671445">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>June, 1940. France was in desperate peril from the invading German armies. The majority of the British Expeditionary Force, sent to fight alongside their allies, had been evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. On June 4, Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, delivered his <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/jun/04/war-situation">most famous address</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With the fall of France, there would be no capitulation. With the Empire and free forces of the defeated Allies, Britain would fight on. Yet the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-battle-of-britain">Battle of Britain</a> was still to come, and there was every expectation that an invasion was imminent. Some 14 million Ministry of Information leaflets were posted through letterboxes: “If the Germans come, by parachute, aeroplane or ship, you must remain where you are.”</p>
<p>It was expected that <em>Unternehmen Seelöwe</em> (<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/invasion_ww2_01.shtml">Operation Sealion</a>) would follow, a German seaborne invasion backed by aerial assault. Defensively, Britain was in a poor state. The British Expeditionary Force had left behind huge amounts of military hardware after <a href="https://theconversation.com/dunkirk-was-a-victory-for-morale-but-ultimately-a-humiliating-military-defeat-81195">Dunkirk</a>, and preparations for the defence of Britain had to be put in place by all means necessary. The Local Defence Volunteers were raised – a scratch force that Churchill would insist be renamed <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-real-dads-army">“The Home Guard”</a>.</p>
<p>Defensive preparations included the construction of a series of holding lines to slow down the invader. Lines of concrete bunkers, tank obstacles and trenches were hastily built and, starting at the coast, followed in progressive lines inland.</p>
<p>These would allow, in the face of invasion, the retreating home forces time to link up with reserves to hold the <a href="http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/uk-defence-locations/">General Head Quarters (GHQ) Line</a>, protecting London and the industrial Midlands and buying time for the Royal Navy to cut off reinforcements and supplies.</p>
<h2>A clandestine force</h2>
<p>While the Home Guard patrolled with make-do pikes, another, more clandestine force was being recruited on the direct orders of Winston Churchill: “last-ditch” units possessing intimate knowledge of the land and firearms – a force that could emerge silently, and skilfully melt away from any invaders.</p>
<p>For years, the activities of these men have been subject to speculation, their operating bases and activities shrouded in mystery, with no official acknowledgement of their wartime activities. And with the recent loss of the last known <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/01/01/sheila-trevaskis-intrepid-wireless-operator-recruited-tea-harrods/">member</a> there are no witnesses to explain their role and operations.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15740773.2020.1822102">new scientific investigation</a>, just published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, however, sheds new light on these specially trained, highly secretive, clandestine “Auxiliary Units”. Tasked to fight guerrilla operations behind enemy lines after invasion, their activities included sabotage and the assassination of high-ranking Axis officers.</p>
<p>Just enough records survive to indicate that patrols comprised four to eight civilians with expert local knowledge – farmers, country landowners, gamekeepers, even poachers. After training at <a href="https://www.coleshillhouse.com/">Coleshill House</a>, they were to operate from below-ground Operational Bases (OBs), set in remote locations in order to avoid detection.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339543/original/file-20200603-130955-37q9op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">(A) plan view and (B) cross section of the Royal Engineer’s Mark II Auxiliary Unit Operational Base 1940 plan. Both entrance doors would be hidden or covered with vegetation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Likely survival rates for these men were as low as 12 days, which may be why OBs were sometimes called “Suicide Bunkers”. To the men themselves, they were known as “Scallywag Bunkers” – after their proposed “Scallywagging” activities. Nationally, only a few survive, encountered only by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-51800809">accident today</a> .</p>
<h2>Uncovered</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15740773.2020.1822102">Our research</a> looked at <a href="https://doi.org/10.21252/rbz5-rm96">three surviving Operational Bases (OBs) on private land in Suffolk</a> in various states of preservation – just three from the 36 originally thought to have existed. The three OBs studied were all deliberately positioned for “scallywagging”, close to railway lines/main routes, or large country houses, the likely billets of high-ranking German officers targeted for assassination.</p>
<p>We conducted surface surveys, including recording of any artefacts, before carrying out <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-archaeologists-discover-forgotten-ancient-monuments-47317">near-surface geophysical surveys</a> to pinpoint OB locations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339544/original/file-20200603-130903-qouh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Resistivity 2D profiles across the three Operational Bases with (A) poor, (B) good and (C) excellent levels of OB preservation respectively.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These techniques had previously been undertaken by us to identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15740773.2018.1583472">second world war UK air-raid shelters</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.20184">allied</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-german-great-escape-the-science-of-how-83-military-officers-tunnelled-out-of-a-welsh-prison-camp-in-1945-82042">Axis</a> prisoner-of-war escape tunnels.</p>
<p>Some limited intrusive investigations were carried out at two bases, discovering escape hatches, intact chambers and artefacts that included heating stoves, lighting and cooking implements – evidence of planned long-term occupation. This is the first such study to evidence the physical activities of this clandestine force.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339545/original/file-20200603-130912-2pfyhg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Site 3 photographs showing, (A) the position of the OB (shaded area) and survey lines, (B) escape shaft and, (C) inside the main intact chamber with collapsed tunnel entrance at the back (see key). Relic artefacts are shown in Figure 5.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, it is a matter of conjecture how effective the Auxiliary Units would have been if the German invasion had happened. Certainly, unlike the earnest but largely unskilled Home Guard, the Auxiliary Unit comprised accomplished landsmen, ready to bring their skills to bear. Their “scallywagging” activities would surely have been disruptive, buying vital time for regular troops to assemble at the GHQ line for the final defensive stand. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339546/original/file-20200603-130903-10jveno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archaeological finds, including: a) intact ventilation system, b) hand-made metal brazier, c) Valor Junior No. 56 kerosene heater stove, with top half on floor and d) aluminium cooking pan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Would it have worked? A 1974 wargame employing surviving German generals, suggested Operation Sealion would ultimately have been a failure, hampered by a lack of air and sea support. There is no doubt that that Auxiliary Units would have played their part – and the surviving OBs remain silent witnesses to their commitment to deadly “scallywagging”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Pringle receives funding from the HLF, the Nuffield Foundation, Royal Society, NERC, EPSRC and EU Horizon2020. He is affiliated with the Geological Society of London. Jamie works for Keele University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Stimpson receives funding from EU Horizon2020 and NERC. He is affiliated with the Geological Society of London and the Royal Astronomical Society.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristopher Wisniewski is affiliated with Geological Society of London. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Doyle is the Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary War Heritage Group</span></em></p>Likely survival rates for these men were judged to be as low as 12 days, which may be why OBs were sometimes referred to as ‘Suicide Bunkers’.Jamie Pringle, Senior Lecturer in Geosciences, Keele UniversityIan Stimpson, Senior Lecturer in Geophysics, Keele UniversityKristopher Wisniewski, Geoforensic Researcher (Staffordshire University) and Lecturer in Chemistry (Keele University), Staffordshire UniversityPeter Doyle, Head of Research Environment, London South Bank UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1386972020-08-04T16:55:20Z2020-08-04T16:55:20ZSecond World War fight to protect Monte Cassino Abbey was a battle over Europe’s history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340156/original/file-20200605-176564-1k5sq6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C180%2C1310%2C754&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A low aerial view of Monte Cassino Abbey, south-east of Rome, after the February 1944 bombing.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Battle_of_Cassino,_January-may_1944_C4363.jpg">(Wikimedia Commons/The Imperial War Museum)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Allied <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8afP6GetP8">bombing of Monte Cassino Abbey</a> in Italy on Feb. 15, 1944, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/27/world/40-years-later-the-message-of-monte-cassino-pax.html">was a mistake</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/arts/02iht-3kimm.7713570.html">Hundreds of civilians reportedly died</a>, and the Allies soon learned that the Germans, believed to be hunkered inside, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=CngSogEACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&redir_esc=y">were not there</a>. </p>
<p>Military historians have written tirelessly about the strategic errors during this critical phase of the “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/italian-campaign">Italian campaign</a>,” which reduced the abbey to a “<a href="https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5147958W/Monte_Cassino">mass of ruins</a>.”</p>
<p>Situated on the Germans’ defensive “<a href="https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=309">Gustav Line</a>,” which connected the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas, the abbey stood in the way of the Allies’ march towards Rome. But was its destruction really necessary? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335389/original/file-20200515-138654-9qxh1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The bombing of Cassino Monastery and town, May 1944, by Peter McIntryre, an official Second World War artist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons/Archives New Zealand)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of the campaign’s closest participants didn’t think so. Writing after the war, American army General Mark W. Clark considered the attack an <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=N8o9SKt1ZjIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">unnecessary measure</a>. </p>
<p>A senior British army officer, Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, called it “<a href="https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/j-f-c-fuller/the-second-world-war-1939-45/9780306805066/">an act of sheer tactical stupidity</a>.” Even Winston Churchill questioned whether Monte Cassino, “<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=R1K76X8qj60C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Churchill,+Second+World+War,+volume+V&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjXs-y_iLbpAhVqdt8KHdMjCesQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">which several times in previous wars had been pillaged, destroyed and rebuilt … should have been destroyed once again</a>.” </p>
<p>Yet all was not lost. Pre-emptive measures fuelled by a growing trans-Atlantic concern for the protection of its ancient library, archive and treasures spared the abbey an even greater disaster: the complete loss of its cultural identity and heritage. </p>
<p>Both Allied and Axis forces, engaged in a larger war against each other, scrambled to protect Monte Cassino’s library and artifacts. A politicized struggle emerged in the process, with both sides wanting to be seen and remembered as guardians of Europe’s cultural and religious inheritance. </p>
<h2>Rise to prominence</h2>
<p>Monte Cassino was the fountainhead of the <a href="https://www.osb.org/our-roots/a-brief-history-of-the-benedictine-order/">western monastic tradition</a>.
Established by <a href="http://osborg.anselmianum.com/our-roots/saint-benedict/">Saints Benedict and Scholastica</a> around the year 529, the abbey grew throughout the Middle Ages into one of the most important religious, political, cultural and intellectual centres in western Europe. </p>
<p>It acquired this reputation in part thanks to the basic instructions for monks’ religious life first developed at the abbey known as <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302806/the-rule-of-st-benedict-by-carolinne-white/9780140449969">The Rule of Saint Benedict</a></em>. Benedict’s “rule” offered <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/rule-of-st-benedict-with-a-necrology-of-st-gilles-abbey">organizing principles and regulations on obedience, work and prayer</a> that inspired a community of devoted followers, and is <a href="https://www.osb.org/our-roots/the-rule/">today considered a classic text of Christian spirituality</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335406/original/file-20200515-138620-uk65ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orthodox icon depicting St. Benedict, also known as Benedict of Nursia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The abbey’s library and archive were especially famous. The collection was already substantial by the third quarter of the eighth century, and <a href="https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ss_34/index.htm#page/(III)/mode/1up">grew significantly in the 10th and 11th centuries</a>. </p>
<p>Under Abbot Desiderius (1058-87), who physically expanded the abbey’s <em><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/literature/printing-and-publishing-history/scriptorium-and-library-monte-cassino-10581105?format=HB&isbn=9780521583954">scriptorium</a></em> and its <a href="https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ss_34/index.htm#page/444/mode/1up">scribal activity</a>, Monte Cassino assumed a prominent place in the annals of western history, culture and learning. </p>
<p>The abbey’s so-called “<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=6wtZs_8q9RoC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=golden+age+of+montecassino&source=bl&ots=wsPUe6l3Y0&sig=ACfU3U2NpX8mWC3CxSAcgc_1L5NF3JRpnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDyKXvvcfpAhVyc98KHZEeCMkQ6AEwBXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=golden%20age%20of%20montecassino&f=false">Golden Age</a>” didn’t last forever. Yet the achievements of this era furnished a rich historical legacy.</p>
<h2>More than just bricks and mortar</h2>
<p>Saving the abbey from wartime destruction became a priority for both Allied and Axis forces. </p>
<p>The former archbishop of both York and Canterbury, Lord Cosmo Lang of Lambeth, argued that the abbey’s “<a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1944/feb/16/preservation-of-historical-and-art">monuments of the great past, its architecture, its sculptures, its pictures are among the noblest expressions of the human spirit</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335426/original/file-20200515-138615-ulcd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cosmo Gordon Lang (1864-1945), portrait by Philip de László.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Italy’s monuments and cultural centres demanded great respect; they symbolized “<a href="https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/monuments-men/033-006.pdf">to the world all that we are fighting to preserve</a>.”</p>
<p>Appealing to the Italian people by radio, leaflets “and any other means available,” American army General George Marshall sought to remove all movable works of art from harm’s way. The destruction of immovable works was also to be avoided, “<a href="https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/monuments-men/033-019.pdf">insofar as possible without handicapping military operations</a>.” </p>
<p>Italy’s cultural inheritance was at stake. </p>
<h2>Practical limits to protection</h2>
<p>There were practical limits to the protection available. The lives of fighting men, military strategists repeatedly argued, should take precedence over ancient buildings. </p>
<p>But as Eisenhower admitted, “<a href="https://i1.wp.com/text-message.blogs.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/eisenhower_december-1943.jpg">the choice is not always so clear-cut as that</a>.” He recognized
there were times when “military necessity” could justify the complete annihilation of “<a href="https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/monuments-men/033-006.pdf">some honoured site</a>.” But it was the imperative of high commanders, he contended, to “spare without any detriment to operational needs” whatever monuments could be saved. </p>
<p>The British House of Lords reached a similar conclusion. Knowing that the abbey’s priceless treasures were “subject to the swaying tides of battle,” the House called on the “<a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1944/feb/16/preservation-of-historical-and-art">Germans occupying the place to remove them to safety as soon as they were in real danger.…</a>” </p>
<p>When the Germans did so, Viscount Herbert Samuel called the act “<a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1944/feb/16/preservation-of-historical-and-art">a great relief to all who care for the interests of history</a>.”</p>
<h2>Evacuating library, treasures</h2>
<p>In October 1943, an Austrian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, commander of the Divisional Maintenance Section — together with a German officer, Captain Maximilian Johannes Becker — <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/bombardamento-di-montecassino-diario-di-guerra-di-e-grossetti-m-matronola-con-altre-testimonianze-e-documenti/oclc/878035276?referer=br&ht=edition">convinced Abbot Gregorio Diamare to move the abbey’s literary, artistic and cultural treasures to safety</a>. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aiMeCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=julius+schlegel+Die+Oesterreischische+Furche&source=bl&ots=fDVjIh9eMx&sig=ACfU3U1Ul7rFbs0-zqO4Rti59qdbIo0Keg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdxL-6za_qAhWOzzgGHXcZDUgQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=julius%20schlegel%20Die%20Oesterreischische%20Furche&f=false">series of newspaper articles</a> written for the Austrian newspaper <em>Die Österreichische Furche</em> in 1951, Schlegel recounted the sequence of events.</p>
<p>Together with the abbot and community of monks, they forged <a href="http://abbaziamontecassino.org/abbey/en/legacy/the-battle-of-montecassino/32-treasures-removal-montecassino-abbey-wwii">a plan to evacuate Monte Cassino’s archive and library collections</a>. According to Schlegel, the former consisted of some 80,000 documents while the latter contained around 70,000 volumes. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335399/original/file-20200515-138620-1973lwm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Transfer of art treasures from Monte Cassino, 1943. Abbot Gregorio Diamare, left, with Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(German federal archives/Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Added to this list of artifacts were priceless artistic works by Titian, Raphael, Bruegel and da Vinci, among others, as well as various ancient vases, tapestries, sculptures, <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/relc/hd_relc.htm">reliquaries</a> (containers for holy relics) and crucifixes.</p>
<p>Beyond its own library and treasures, <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1944/feb/16/preservation-of-historical-and-art">contents from two museums in Naples, the convent of Montevergine near Avellino, and the Keats-Shelley house in Rome, had already been relocated there</a>. </p>
<p>Over three short weeks, the remaining Cassinese monks, Italian refugees and German soldiers transported some 700 crates by 100 trucks — some to the neutral territory of the Vatican (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Castel-SantAngelo">Castel Sant'Angelo</a>) and its library for safekeeping, others to <a href="http://www.archiviosanpietroperugia.it/wp-content/uploads/wordpress/Benedictina-2015_1.pdf">a castle in Spoleto, about 100 kilometres north of Rome</a>.</p>
<h2>Improbable salvage operation</h2>
<p>The whole salvage operation was an improbable feat in diplomacy, secular and ecclesiastical collaboration and logistics in the midst of war. But there are lingering questions about the Germans’ intervention — how both they and Allied forces sought to represent it in historical records. </p>
<p>Was it a genuine humanitarian effort to safeguard Monte Cassino’s heritage <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/memoirs-of-field-marshal-kesselring/oclc/438493348">ordered by German High Command</a>?</p>
<p>Was it a personal initiative spearheaded by Schlegel, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1958/08/09/archives/julius-schlegel-dies-former-german-officer-saved-cassino-art.html">against the order of his German army superiors,</a>” as the <em>New York Times</em> reported in 1958? </p>
<p>Or was it part of a larger <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Le_Saint_Si%C3%A8ge_et_les_victimes_de_la_gu.html?id=8wdIAQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">propaganda campaign</a> intended to disparage the Allies’ military actions against the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/memoirs-of-field-marshal-kesselring/oclc/438493348">defenceless Benedictine house</a>? </p>
<p>Whatever the answer, the Italian Director General of the Fine Arts, writing on Dec. 31, 1943, thanked German military and political authorities for their collaborative efforts in safeguarding the “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/bombardamento-di-montecassino-diario-di-guerra-di-e-grossetti-m-matronola-con-altre-testimonianze-e-documenti/oclc/878035276?referer=br&ht=edition">national artistic patrimony</a>.” </p>
<p>The monks singled out Schlegel for his deeds, thanking him for <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/bombardamento-di-montecassino-diario-di-guerra-di-e-grosetti-m-matronola-con-altre-testimonianze-e-documenti/oclc/878035276?referer=br&ht=edition">saving them and their abbey’s possessions</a>.</p>
<p>The national German newspaper, <em>Die Welt</em>, published a commemorative story in 1998 about Schlegel’s efforts, which it claimed Italy “<a href="https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article596847/Italien-hat-Julius-Schlegel-nicht-vergessen.html">has not forgotten</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340664/original/file-20200609-21226-mcffem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View of the rebuilt Monte Cassino Abbey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Preserving the abbey’s heritage was considered a moral and necessary good. Re-consecrating it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2B7JoJ-vQ4">in 1964</a>, after almost two decades of reconstruction, Pope Paul VI marvelled at its capacity for regeneration. He celebrated peace “<a href="http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/it/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-vi_apl_19641024_pacis-nuntius.html">after whirlwinds of war had blown out the holy and benevolent flame</a>.…”</p>
<p>Today, global pilgrims and tourists visit the restored abbey every day to experience its <a href="http://www.abbaziamontecassino.org/abbey/en/visit-montecassino">spiritual, historical and artistic treasures</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kriston R. Rennie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1944, the former archbishop of Canterbury mounted a case to preserve the Italian abbey, renowned for centuries for scholarship and devotion, but Allied forces had just destroyed it.Kriston R. Rennie, Associate Professor in Medieval History, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1297462020-07-27T18:16:20Z2020-07-27T18:16:20ZWhen a winner becomes a loser: Winston Churchill was kicked out of office in the British election of 1945<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349182/original/file-20200723-21-1tjmaln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C18%2C2324%2C1710&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Winston Churchill giving his final address, during the 1945 election campaign, at Walthamstow Stadium, East London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Political_Personalities_1936-1945_HU59722.jpg#/media/File:British_Political_Personalities_1936-1945_HU59722.jpg">Wikipedia, the collections of the Imperial War Museums</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The end of World War II in Europe and the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ww2-anniversary-germany-idUSKBN22C1Y7">defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany</a> in early May 1945 turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill into the world’s most eminent statesman. He was feted and celebrated everywhere he went and had an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml">approval rating of 83%</a>.</p>
<p>Yet he suffered a humiliating election defeat in 1945.</p>
<p>Churchill’s electoral fate shows, I believe, that democratic elections are not won due to past achievements, personal glory and celebrity status, but because of a persuasive and realizable program for the next four or five years. Winning parties or candidates need a vision that addresses the genuine concerns and deep anxieties of the voters. </p>
<p>In 1945, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Churchill and his Conservative Party would win the next general election. <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-brief-political-history-of-the-united-kingdom/#:%7E:text=In%20all%20eight%20elections%20from%201945%20to%201970%2C,this%20two-party%20dominance%20gradually%20began%20to%20break%20down.">No election had taken place</a> during the war. The members of the British Parliament, the House of Commons, had been elected as far back as 1935. </p>
<p>While Churchill wanted to delay a general election until the end of the war in Asia, the Labour Party decided to leave Britain’s national unity government soon after victory in Europe was achieved, which sparked an election that took place on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/background/pastelec/ge45.shtml">July 5, 1945</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oBnbXgl-_pU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A newsreel about the Labour Party landslide.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ballots weren’t <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/xCImAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">counted until July 26</a>, to allow votes from soldiers and residents of Britain’s far-flung overseas empire to arrive by mail.</p>
<p>Labour won a landslide victory. As soon as the election result was announced, Churchill went to Buckingham Palace to <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/05/winston-churchill-resigns-1955-1250726">submit his resignation</a> to King George VI. Labour leader <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/attlee_clement.shtml">Clement Attlee</a> arrived at the palace within minutes of Churchill’s departure and was appointed new prime minister. </p>
<p>But at first he was greeted by an uncomfortable silence. Attlee finally told the king, “I’ve won the election.” The king, greatly displeased by the socialist Labour Party’s victory, said, “I know. I heard it on the six o'clock news.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Incoming Prime Minister Clement Attlee meeting after his election win with King George VI at Buckingham Palace." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clement Attlee meeting with King George VI at Buckingham Palace, following the Labour victory in the 1945 general election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Attlee_with_GeorgeVI_HU_59486.jpg#/media/File:Attlee_with_GeorgeVI_HU_59486.jpg">Wikimedia from the collections of the Imperial War Museums</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Watershed election</h2>
<p>The magnitude of the loss was historic. </p>
<p>The Labour Party <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education">received 47.7% of the vote</a>, compared to the Conservatives’ 36.2% and the Liberal party’s 9%. </p>
<p>This was a crushing blow for the Tories. Due to Churchill’s immense personal popularity, he was easily <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/reference/churchills-elections/">reelected in his Woodford constituency</a> in Essex, but his party was decimated. Labour had a massive majority of 146 seats in the new Parliament.</p>
<p>The Labour government of 1945 would radically change British society by embarking on decolonization, which quickly led to the dissolution of the British Empire, and the creation of a new, progressive social and economic consensus that would last until Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1979. </p>
<p>Churchill took the defeat very badly. </p>
<p>He was just short of his 71st birthday, exhausted, in ill health and demoralized. He fell into a deep depression (his “black dog,” as he called it) and spent much time in the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/medical-mystery-winston-churchills-most-secret-battle-20171124.html">south of France</a> to pursue his hobbies of painting and bricklaying. </p>
<p>When the king later offered him the country’s highest honor, <a href="https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/winston-churchill-knight-of-the-garter.html#:%7E:text=Winston%20Churchill-%20Knight%20of%20the%20Garter.%20The%20Order,life%20or%20who%20have%20served%20the%20Sovereign%20personally.">The Order of the Garter</a>, Churchill declined, saying that he couldn’t possibly accept such an honor, as the British voters had given him the “<a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/order-of-the-boot/">order of the boot</a>.” </p>
<p>Churchill now was the official leader of the opposition, but it took him more than a year to overcome his apathy and reengage with politics. It was only U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s invitation to give a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946 – this was the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07075332.2017.1298531">“Iron Curtain speech”</a> – that revived his political instincts and made him become politically active again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Churchill charged that the Labour Party would fundamentally change Britain for the worse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://spartacus-educational.com/GE1945.htm">Spartacus Educational</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How to lose an election</h2>
<p>Until the last few days before the vote was held, Churchill and much of the country had been firmly convinced that he and his party would be returned to power with a large majority. </p>
<p>On occasion, however, Churchill realized that he had little to contribute to the raging debate about the future of British society. </p>
<p><a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-131/watching-churchill-take-command-of-history/">“I have no message for them,” he said</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar who has written a book on Churchill’s politics, “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/108/3/918/25600?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy</a>,” I see several reasons for the loss he and his party experienced.</p>
<p>The six-week election campaign in June and July 1945 sought to sway voters exhausted by six devastating years of war. They wanted a view of a bright future. </p>
<p>Soldiers in the field, too, were fed up with fighting and looked forward to a new age of prosperity and peace. Labour proposed a progressive social reform program that would transform the future of British society. The Conservative program was much more vague and focused on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml">Churchill’s leadership</a>. </p>
<p>Churchill and his party also conducted a poor election campaign. Symbolic of this was Churchill’s first campaign broadcast on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TY7oUNobsY#:%7E:text=On%204%20June%201945%2C%20during%20the%20general%20election,which%20he%20warned%20that%20a%20socialist%20Labour%20gove">June 4, 1945</a>, in which he accused Attlee of harboring socialist dictatorial ambitions and even compared him to the Nazis. Outrageously, Churchill declared that Labour “would have to fall back on some sort of a Gestapo” to push through its reforms. </p>
<p>Attlee pointed out that the speech showed Churchill to be ill-suited to being a leader in peaceful times. </p>
<p>Labour had more attractive and persuasive ideas, such as government-supported full employment, the introduction of a free national health service and the nationalization of many key industries such as steel, coal and railways. </p>
<p>And Labour seemed to know how to implement these policies: Churchill had put senior Labour leaders in charge of running the country’s economic ministries during the war. </p>
<p>Housing, full employment, social welfare and the health system stood <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/what-did-the-people-want-the-meaning-of-the-1945-general-election/D7C8A5FD82EA1AF3678B1BB9A9556457">at the top of the list of most voters’ needs</a>. Foreign affairs and national security policy, which Churchill emphasized, ranked much lower. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybusy">Sign up for good Sunday reading.</a> ]</p>
<p>Another problem for the Conservatives was their poor image, which Churchill was not immune from. Despite the tremendous esteem he was held in, the elderly Churchill, with his <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/winston-churchill">elite background</a> and paternalistic Victorian habits, was seen by many as out of touch with the modern world. </p>
<p>He also had outdated views about race and empire that for many – even back in 1945 – sounded not quite right for the new postwar era. <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/becoming-a-victorian">Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King, who knew him well, concluded that maintaining “the British Empire and Commonwealth is a religion to him.” </a></p>
<h2>Running on a bad record</h2>
<p>Except for the years 1924 and 1929-31, Britain had been led by Conservative governments for more than two decades. The Tories could hardly avoid being seen as responsible for the high unemployment and miserable social and economic conditions of these years, especially because the conditions continued well into the 1950s. </p>
<p>The Conservatives were also viewed as the party of the appeasers who had, in the runup to the war, downplayed the Nazi threat, with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even having <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cjqEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2&dq=conservatives+seen+as+party+of+appeasers&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkuLiu--HqAhVKRRUIHZS7CAsQ6AEwBXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q=conservatives%20seen%20as%20party%20of%20appeasers&f=false">weakly given in to Hitler’s territorial demands</a>.</p>
<p>Taking all these elements into account, it was little wonder that Churchill and the Tories lost the 1945 election. </p>
<p>But Churchill did not give up. In 1950 Churchill also narrowly lost the next general election. Just over a year later, with the Labour government in deep internal crisis and running out of steam, yet another election was called. </p>
<p>This time Churchill was victorious. In October 1951, he <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/tag/elections/">became prime minister again and felt greatly vindicated</a>. He used his remaining four years as peacetime prime minister to reengage with the Soviet Union and attempt to negotiate an early end to the Cold War. Churchill retired in 1955 at the age of 80.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Klaus W. Larres does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even a highly popular and respected leader can lose an election, writes a historian – especially if they don’t have a plan for the future. Churchill was one of them.Klaus W. Larres, Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor; Adjunct Professor of the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1407012020-07-12T11:25:44Z2020-07-12T11:25:44ZComparing COVID-19 to past world war efforts is premature — and presumptuous<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345918/original/file-20200706-3953-1sm6t6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C70%2C4661%2C2894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill and the coronavirus pandemic is not like a world war.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Tim Ireland)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The collective effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic has been called the defining moment of the 21st century, or <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/04/01/battling-coronavirus-is-pushing-world-growth-to-zero-requiring-a-world-war-approach/#5b4016825007">this generation’s Second World War</a>. </p>
<p>There may be some truth to these analogies, but it’s premature — and even presumptuous — to put the present into a historic context.</p>
<p>Pandemics have always shaped human history. Starting in the year 541, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/51/25546">the Plague of Justinian</a> killed 50 million people — possibly half the world’s population — in just a few years. In the mid-14th century, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/what-was-the-black-death.html">the Black Death</a> claimed approximately 200 million lives with massive political, social and economic impacts.</p>
<p>Plagues resurfaced dozens of times over the next 300 years. Smallpox haunted Europe and Asia for centuries and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html">then went with colonizers to the New World</a>, <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-a-smallpox-epidemic-forged-modern-british-columbia/">wiping out Indigenous populations</a>. </p>
<p>Just over a century ago, influenza claimed between 50 and 100 million lives — roughly five per cent of the population — while the world fought the Great War. It’s debatable how much the pandemic affected the war, but there’s little doubt the war shaped the flu by putting millions in close proximity and providing the means for quick global transmission. </p>
<h2>Flu claimed as many as the Great War</h2>
<p>Just like today, Canada was not spared. About 55,000 Canadians died in the 1918-19 flu, nearly the same <a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/after-the-war/legacy/the-cost-of-canadas-war/">as the losses in what became known as the First World War</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345921/original/file-20200706-27824-15i802k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A burial scene in France during the First World War. The 1918 flu killed almost as many Canadians as were lost in the Great War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ (National Archives of Canada</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Montréal and Toronto were particularly hard hit. Schools, businesses and public places closed. Debates raged about the efficacy of wearing masks. People practised social distancing, while physicians urged quarantine. Eaton’s and other stores <a href="https://earlycanadianhistory.ca/2020/03/23/killer-advertising-how-canadians-were-sold-the-1918-1919-influenza-pandemic/">advertised cure-alls</a>. When the worst passed, there were phased reopenings. A federal department of health was created. The economy rebounded.</p>
<p>We have learned many lessons from 1918 — about basic sanitation, quarantine, drugs, immunizations and more. But we still have much to learn. </p>
<p>COVID-19 has taken an enormous toll. With 12 million confirmed cases and more than 550,000 dead, it could remain a serious global threat for years, maybe decades.</p>
<p>Fears of a virulent “second wave” are acute, especially with the first wave still wreaking havoc. The economic costs might prove incalculable. Political and social instabilities are rising, <a href="https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/covid-threat-imrans-regime-1502891466.html">even threatening some regimes</a>.</p>
<h2>A limited analogy</h2>
<p>But while the pandemic might seem like a “war,” there are serious limitations to the analogy.</p>
<p>Leaders invoke comparisons to bolster their images: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52915972/white-house-likens-trump-to-churchill-in-ww2">likening themselves to Winston Churchill</a> or Franklin D. Roosevelt, even if they don’t fully understand what either did in response to crisis.</p>
<p>Curiously, some have talked about COVID-19 having <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-24/coronavirus-recession-it-will-be-a-lot-like-world-war-ii">the same impact on the economy as a world war</a> when in fact <a href="https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/historical-sheets/industry">the Second World War required total production</a>, not the paring down to an essential economy that has happened during the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>COVID-19 is also not bombing cities. It does not have a political ideology. It does not harbour <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/international-relations-and-international-organisations/irredentism-european-politics-argumentation-compromise-and-norms?format=HB&isbn=9780521895583">irredentist claims</a>, or seek to “right” historical “wrongs.” It is not exterminating millions in concentration camps.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345922/original/file-20200706-22-c3su36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Donald Trump has likened himself to a war-time president as his administration struggles with its response to the coronavirus pandemic. Here, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit the Second World War memorial in Washington last May to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although disconcerting, business closures and social distancing are not akin to living under enemy occupation. Aside from front-line workers, most of us have endured inconveniences, not sacrifices. Soldiers are not dying in trenches or on the beaches. Ordering from Amazon and binge-watching Netflix cannot be compared to Stalingrad, Iwo Jima or <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-battle-of-verdun">Verdun</a>, let alone Auschwitz. </p>
<h2>Building unity</h2>
<p>Likening the pandemic to war, however, can convey a sense of urgency to those who don’t understand the consequences of inaction. It can push reluctant leaders to put public health ahead of politics. It can build a sense of collective responsibility and unity. As part of our collective memory and identity, wars can represent inspirational virtues. We might aspire to the fortitude of those who persevered through two world wars and the Great Depression.</p>
<p>But outright comparisons to the suffering and sacrifice of millions in vastly different contexts is disrespectful and doesn’t help the current fight against COVID-19. What we are living through now is important, but it’s not war. </p>
<p>It will be a long time before we might consider anything about COVID-19 history, but historical perspective can help us better understand this pandemic — and potentially better manage it. Understanding the magnitude of wars would help too.</p>
<p>German philosopher <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12801-we-learn-from-history-that-we-do-not-learn-from">Friedrich Hegel famously said</a>: “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” Thinking in historical terms might help us better understand ourselves: what we have endured and what we need to do, together, in future crises. In the case of this current crisis, let’s hope Hegel was wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arne Kislenko does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s always dangerous to put present-day events into historic perspectives. That’s especially true when political leaders have compared the coronavirus pandemic to a war effort.Arne Kislenko, Associate Professor of History, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1413242020-06-24T13:43:11Z2020-06-24T13:43:11ZHow the shock of the second world war transformed the British state – Recovery podcast part four<p>In this fourth episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/recovery-series-87523">Recovery</a>, a series from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-anthill-podcast-27460">The Anthill Podcast</a> exploring key moments in history when the world recovered from a major crisis or shock, we’re looking at what happened in the UK after the second world war. </p>
<hr>
<iframe src="https://player.acast.com/5e3bf1111a6e452f6380a7bc/episodes/recovery-part-four-the-second-world-war?theme=default&cover=1&latest=1" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321534/original/file-20200319-22606-q84y3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321535/original/file-20200319-22606-1l4copl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
<hr>
<p>The second world war decimated landscapes, killed tens of millions of people and left many more unable to work, in need of long-term healthcare and help to rebuild their lives.</p>
<p>In the UK, some had been calling for action to deal with poverty, squalid housing and better education since before the conflict, but the particular circumstances of the war seemed to provide the impetus needed to get things moving. </p>
<p>The recovery project that followed the end of the war in 1945 transformed the nation into one that provided free healthcare for all, better education and massive housing regeneration.</p>
<p>Pat Thane, visiting professor of history at Birkbeck College, takes us through the recommendations of a landmark government report written by William Beveridge that got the whole project moving. This set out a comprehensive cradle-to-grave welfare system designed to tackle the five giants of want, squalor, idleness, ignorance and disease.</p>
<p>Bernard Harris, professor of social policy at the University of Strathclyde, reveals how this report turned into a series of changes to the law that ultimately constructed the welfare state. That included establishing the world-famous National Health Service, later described as Nigel Lawson, chancellor under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as <a href="https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2018/02/30-years-public-views-nhs-public-spending">“the closest thing the English people have to a religion”</a>. He explains how the shared trauma of the war helped people imagine a different future in which a greater number of people would be cared for by the government. </p>
<p>Pippa Catterall, professor of history and policy at the University of Westminster, discusses the political context of the post-war period in the UK. After the suffering of the conflict, it was the left-wing Labour party that grasped how urgently the public wanted bold new thinking. The recovery promised by Labour Party leader Clement Attlee was based around a total restructuring of the state, and voters were prepared to take the plunge – not least because more of them had been exposed to hardship during the war.</p>
<p>Finally, the panel explores what lessons this unique period in history can offer us today, as governments look to rebuild after the coronavirus pandemic. After years of retreat, states are stepping in on an unprecedented scale to offer rescue packages. Could we be witnessing the <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-brought-the-welfare-state-back-and-it-might-be-here-to-stay-138564">rebirth of the welfare state</a>?</p>
<p>You can read more about the aftermath of the second world war and the welfare state as well as other articles in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/recovery-series-87523">Recovery series</a> to accompany this podcast. </p>
<p><em>This episode was produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh, with sound design by Eloise Stevens.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://pca.st/5Hul"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321533/original/file-20200319-22598-afljnr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Pocket Casts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Anthill-id2625863?country=gb"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321531/original/file-20200319-22632-t8ds9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
PODCAST: The fourth part of a series from The Anthill Podcast on how the world has recovered from past crises examines the aftermath of the second world war in the UK.Laura Hood, Senior Politics Editor, Assistant Editor, The Conversation (UK edition)Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly PodcastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1394972020-06-04T15:14:16Z2020-06-04T15:14:16ZBritain’s obsession with the second world war and the debates that fuel it<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited endless comparison to the second world war. Private labs have been likened to “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8179185/We-need-Dunkirk-spirit-Francis-Crick-institute-%20demands-testing-change.html">Dunkirk little ships</a>”; food bank support to “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-food-britain-idUSL8N2BB421">blitz spirit</a>”, and even the queen equated the pain of self-isolation with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-queen/well-meet-again-queen-elizabeth-invokes-ww2-spirit-to-defeat-coronavirus-idUSKBN21N0TQ">wartime evacuation</a>. </p>
<p>What lies behind this seemingly near constant evocation of the second World War in Britain is not consensus, however, but contested views of what the war meant. To this day, this is something that cannot be settled in British politics. </p>
<p>Take, for example, the idea that Britain had a “good war”. This view was set out most famously by the historian <a href="https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/prospective-undergrads/virtual-classroom/secondary-source-exercises/sources-prime-ministers/sources-prime-ministers-taylor">AJP Taylor, who concluded</a> in his bestselling history of England:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The British people had set out to destroy Hitler and National Socialism – “Victory at all costs”. They succeeded. The British were the only people who went through both world wars from beginning to end. Yet they remained a peaceful and civilised people, tolerant, patient and generous.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is much here that on the surface rings true. The war is an easier history to manage for the British than many other nations, who have to wrestle with questions of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/collaboration#:%7E:text=Italy%2C%20Hungary%2C%20and%20Bulgaria,Germany%20directly%20occupied%20those%20countries.">collaborating with Nazi occupiers</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, however, there is plenty of half-truth in the image of Britain’s “good war”. Britain was there at the “beginning” but not if you count the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/ztydcwx/revision/5">Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia</a> earlier in 1939. It remained “civilised” and “peaceful” at home, though not in India, where it used violence to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-violence-that-helped-india-break-free-from-colonial-rule-57904">suppress the independence movement</a>. </p>
<p>Most of all, despite Britain coming out on the “winning side”, it was a loser if judged in terms of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781403919786_2">shifts in relative power</a> – a bit-part player in the new era of super-power competition between the US and USSR. Such contrasting interpretations and inconvenient facts mean that the debate on the war is unlikely to end.</p>
<h2>Rival wars</h2>
<p>Just as important, the political messages that came out of the war are very different to each other. On the one hand there is a “social democratic” message – a story of a “<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/104/1040534/the-people-s-war/9780712652841.html">people’s war</a>”; how ordinary men and women saved the nation from the selfishness and short-sightedness of those who nearly led it to disaster. </p>
<p>In this story, Labour politicians are credited with running the home-front –- the only front that really mattered. They forced the government to not only win the war but build a welfare state at the same time. The war’s conclusion in this context is not VJ Day on August 15 1945 but the general election a month earlier. This was when the people, having recognised the benefits of fair shares, collectivism and social solidarity, voted for the Labour Party.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339865/original/file-20200604-67399-1qu6lbu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Election poster from 1945.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The other narrative is a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/conservative-movement-and-dreams-of-britains-postwar-future/BE160E352AC826F05430AF6660498778">conservative</a> message – a war that rekindled Christianity, love of country, patriotism and valour. It wasn’t won by people at home but on the battlefield by soldiers like Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, by genius middle-class scientists like bouncing-bomb inventor Barnes Wallis, and most of all by Churchill himself. </p>
<p>Here, the war was being fought for empire, tradition and a return to the pre-war world. According to this version of events, victory was unfairly snatched away –- first by the working classes in 1945 and later by a generation of politicians, both Conservative and Labour, who took the wrong lessons from the war. </p>
<h2>Postwar politics</h2>
<p>The history of postwar British politics is, in many ways, a history of these two interpretations. They were heavily implicated in the struggles faced by the Conservative Party after 1945 over how to respond to Labour’s victory. They were part of the story of the support and opposition to former cabinet minister <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/enoch-powell-and-the-making-of-postcolonial-britain/3BC4678E77474BB9112879E47CB9B560">Enoch Powell</a> and his <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/enoch-powells-rivers-of-blood-the-speech-that-divided-a-nation-11339291">notorious speech</a> about British culture being undermined by immigration, as well as in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/thatcherism-an-historical-perspective/3153CC418E88190C4E92A8142D2BF3A1">rise and resistance to Thatcherism</a>. </p>
<p>They were alive and kicking in the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/british-cultural-memory-and-the-second-world-war-9781441142269/">debates over austerity in 2008</a>, with different versions of them also at work in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-british-history/yes-europe-1975-referendum-and-seventies-britain?format=PB">1975</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/04/do-mention-the-war-the-politicians-comparing-brexit-to-wwii">2016</a> European referendums. Indeed, not only are these histories used to support different political projects, these stories actively created those projects.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339587/original/file-20200603-130940-1ypikkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Conservatives believed that the second world war was won by the soldiers and the men who led them and celebrated the militarization of society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_propaganda_during_World_War_II#/media/File:Plakat1940.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Britain’s two main political parties were, for much of the postwar period, first and foremost nationalist political parties committed to the idea of a united British nation state. Their competition, however, was not just over who controlled the state but who exactly was “<a href="http://www.renewal.org.uk/blog/our-people">the nation</a>”. The answer to this question was frequently found in the memory and imagination of the second world war. </p>
<p>This leads to the final reason why British politics is so encumbered by the history of the war. The country that was rebuilt after the second world war was different to the one entered the conflict in 1939. As the historian <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/192/192782/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-british-nation/9780141975979.html">David Edgerton</a> has argued, this was a country with a new national welfare system, new national institutions (National Health Service, British Rail, National Coal Board etc), and a new more national form of capitalism – one more focused on domestic production and consumption and less orientated around international finance. </p>
<p>Despite apparent continuities (like parliament, empire and the monarchy), Britain was in many ways a new nation by the time Churchill returned to power in 1951. To sustain it, this new nation required new national myths and found them in the experience of the second world war. Therefore, asking Britons not to be encumbered by myths of it is like asking Frenchmen not to invoke their revolution or Americans to ignore the declaration of independence – not impossible but exceedingly difficult.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kit Kowol does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Brexit to coroanvirus, Britain keeps looking to the second world war and its spirit as a way to get through. However, the ideas of the period are not so close to the truth.Kit Kowol, Early Career Fellow in Modern British History, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1395232020-05-29T08:23:06Z2020-05-29T08:23:06ZDunkirk: how British newspapers helped to turn defeat into a miracle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338244/original/file-20200528-51477-bnoque.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=88%2C41%2C708%2C491&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Exhausted British troops on the quayside at Dover, May 31 1940.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Official War Office photographer, Imperial War Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Modern Britons associate <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-true-story-of-the-great-escape">The Great Escape</a> with the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/great-escape-turns-50">1963 film of that name</a> starring Steve McQueen, reffering to, of course, a mass escape by Allied prisoners during the second world war. But this title might more appropriately be applied to the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-dunkirk-evacuations">rescue of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk</a> between May 27 and June 4 1940.</p>
<p>As the UK marks the 80th anniversary of that escape, we shall hear much of the author <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/postscripts--jb-priestley/zn9xkmn">JB Priestley’s first “postscript” for BBC Radio</a> on Wednesday June 5. That broadcast coined the phrase “Little Ships” and even acknowledged Priestley’s own part in shaping understanding of Dunkirk. He asked listeners: “Doesn’t it seem to you to have an inevitable air about it – as if we had turned a page in the history of Britain and seen a chapter headed ‘Dunkirk’?” </p>
<p>But there was nothing inevitable about it.</p>
<p>Before pledging to “fight them on the beaches”, Winston Churchill himself reminded the House of Commons in the same speech that “<a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/fight-them-on-the-beaches/">wars are not won by evacuations</a>”. He acknowledged that the BEF had courted disaster before depicting its escape as “a miracle of deliverance”. That the British public regards it as a triumph owes much to the work of British newspaper journalists and the Royal Navy press officers who briefed them.</p>
<h2>How the ‘miracle’ came about</h2>
<p>Dunkirk was not reported in eyewitness accounts from the beaches. The few war correspondents who struggled back with the retreating armies had no means by which to communicate. Reports, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/from-the-archive-blog/2017/jul/25/dunkirk-evacuation-guardian-reporting-1940">Evelyn Montague’s The Miracle of the BEF’s Return</a> for the Manchester Guardian of Saturday June 1 1940, were penned by journalists invited to witness the Royal Navy’s delivery of evacuated soldiers to the ports of south-east England. There, they were briefed with patriotic fervour and naval pride as well as facts.</p>
<p>The first sentence of Montague’s piece gives a flavour of the mood that was inspired:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the grey chill dawn today in a south-eastern port, war correspondents watched with incredulous joy the happening of a miracle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reporter – a grandson of the famous Guardian editor and owner C.P. Scott – did not fail to give the Royal Navy credit. Having described a waterfront hotel in which “every armchair held its sleeping soldier or sailor, huddled beneath overcoat or ground sheet”, Montague turned to the scene in the port: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As the rising sun was turning the grey clouds to burnished copper the first destroyer of the day slid swiftly into the harbour, its silhouette bristling with the heads of the men who stood packed shoulder to shoulder on its decks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Back in 1940, the Times did not award reporters bylines. Its report of the BEF’s return on June 1 was by “Our Special Correspondent”. He too witnessed the scenes in a south-eastern port (security censorship forbade more precise identification). The men, he wrote, were “weary but undaunted”. Protected by “the ceaseless patrol maintained by British warships and aeroplanes in the English Channel”, men who had displayed “steadiness under a cruel test” were “pouring onto the quays”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338239/original/file-20200528-51477-1f30gs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Undaunted’: Allied servicemen arrive in London after evacuation from Dunkirk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">War Office official photographer, Imperial War Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Daily Mirror’s Bernard Gray, writing in its stablemate, the Sunday Pictorial, gave his verdict in a column on June 2 headlined simply “The Whole Magnificent Story”. “There have been many glorious episodes in the history of Britain”, he opined, “but, if that great <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/macaulay/societyov.html">English historian Macaulay</a> were able to select from 2,000 years the most glorious week in the annals of the British Empire, this last seven days would surely be the week he would have chosen.” </p>
<p>Gray did not hesitate to offer comparisons: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Never mind the defeat of the Armada. Forget even the Battle of Waterloo, the epic of Trafalgar. For this week has seen the British Empire at its mightiest – in defeat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Standing “in the streets of an English Channel Port”, G. Ward Price of the Daily Mail was similarly enthralled in his front-page piece, Rearguard Battles On, on June 1: “It is a picture of staggering heroism, fighting spirit and determination that never weakened in the face of overwhelming odds in men and material.” </p>
<h2>A defeat, however ‘glorious’</h2>
<p>It took Hilaire Belloc, the Anglo-French author of Cautionary Tales for Children, to recognise in his column for the Sunday Times (The Evacuation and After, June 2) that the withdrawal from Belgium and the collapse of Britain’s key ally, France, constituted a “catastrophe”.</p>
<p>In his defining examination of the elements that comprise Britain’s “received story” of 1940, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/46507c80-3ed1-11dd-8fd9-0000779fd2ac">The Myth of the Blitz</a>, Scottish historian and poet Angus Calder noted that elements of the way the story was reported were misleading. However, Calder agreed that “Dunkirk was indeed a great escape”.</p>
<p>I celebrate the work British newspapers did to stiffen resolve and sustain morale at this time of grave national peril. In a democracy fighting totalitarianism, newspapers must balance their obligation to hold power to account and their duty to the national cause. The newspapers surveyed here certainly colluded in the creation of myths about Dunkirk, but their readers might not have welcomed any efforts to report Dunkirk any other way.</p>
<p>After all, myths are not lies and this one was studded with harsh facts. In Bernard Gray’s words for the Sunday Pictorial, Dunkirk was glorious despite the truth that: “The British Army has not won a battle. The British Army has retreated. The British Army has had to leave the Battlefield.”</p>
<p>For me, David Low captured the prevailing mood in his famous “<a href="http://hackcartoonsdiary.com/2017/05/02/cartoon-very-well-alone/">Very Well, Alone</a>” cartoon for the Evening Standard just a few weeks later on June 18. It depicts a British soldier alone before a raging sea and gesturing with a raised fist towards the Nazi-occupied continent from which German troops were expected to arrive at any moment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Luckhurst has received research funding from News UK and Ireland Ltd. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and a member of the Society of Editors and the Free Speech Union. </span></em></p>It may not have been Britain’s finest hour, but was it Fleet Street’s?Tim Luckhurst, Principal of South College, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1379382020-05-06T14:26:52Z2020-05-06T14:26:52ZVE Day: victory celebrations hid fear of an uncertain future for many Britons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333050/original/file-20200506-49579-1g4hf7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2048%2C1450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jubilation in London as Britain rolled out the barrel to celebrate victory in Europe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museum</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The popular image of VE Day is as familiar to the British people even today as Spitfires over Kent or Winston Churchill glowering into the camera. Huge crowds dancing in the streets, people climbing lamp posts, wading in the fountains in Trafalgar Square and everyone waving flags. There were Union Jacks, Stars and Stripes, even French Tricolours – ribbons in red, white and blue were available off the ration for the occasion, though some spivs made a killing by selling it at vastly inflated prices. </p>
<p>The songs of VE Day are familiar too, if only as period pieces: Knees Up Mother Brown, Bless ‘Em All, the Hokey Cokey and Roll Out the Barrel, played on this occasion by a young Humphrey Lyttelton on his trumpet while being pushed along on a handcart.</p>
<p>After six years of having put up with rationing, shortages, blackouts, bombing and the ever-present fear of death – either your own or of someone you loved – suddenly the British people let their hair down in spectacular fashion. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NEavcsrMoMw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>They crowded to Buckingham Palace and demanded to see the king; they cheered Churchill to the skies as he saluted them with his famous V for Victory sign – and they did so secure in the knowledge that, not only had they survived the war, but they had won it and, moreover, they had been right to win it.</p>
<h2>Victory in a ‘just war’</h2>
<p>The weeks leading up to the German surrender in Europe had brought an unexpected shock as allied armies overran Germany’s concentration camps. The notorious killing centres of Auschwitz and Majdanek were uncovered by the Russians, but the Americans were horrified by what they found in Dachau and Buchenwald; and the British, who had a film crew and a BBC reporter with them, by the horrific scenes they encountered in Belsen.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bergen-belsens-1945-liberation-is-ingrained-in-british-memory-39956">Why Bergen-Belsen's 1945 liberation is ingrained in British memory</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The footage from Belsen was shown in cinemas and caused widespread revulsion: some people left in tears and there was anger when some well-meaning cinema managers tried to soften its impact by following it with a Donald Duck cartoon. But this shocking evidence of the true nature of Nazi rule merely served to underline that – in this war at any rate – Britain had undoubtedly been on the right side. It’s a message that has been repeated and stressed ever since.</p>
<p>This image of victory in a just war is important because, inevitably, the current pandemic, like every other crisis Britain has gone through since 1945, has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/breaking-news-world-war-ii-is-over-britain-is-a-european-country-56047">compared to the war</a>. With the queen’s channelling of Vera Lynn at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-how-europes-monarchs-stepped-up-as-their-nations-faced-the-crisis-136057">close of her televised address</a>, and Boris Johnson, himself a biographer of Churchill, calling on us all to show the same resolution as the wartime generation, it is inevitable that people still facing a deadly enemy should seek solace in the heroic memory of VE Day, a simpler time, when our leaders were giants and right and wrong were easy to know.</p>
<h2>End of empire</h2>
<p>But, of course, it was nothing like so simple. VE Day marked the end, not the summit, of British military power: the patriotic exuberance of the day could not hide the fact that the war had been won by American and Soviet military muscle: even Churchill’s day was over - he would be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/background/pastelec/ge45.shtml">voted out of office</a> only a few weeks later. </p>
<p>The German surrender tried to divide the allies: a partial one to Britain’s General Bernard Montgomery followed by a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-surrenders-unconditionally-to-the-allies-at-reims">full surrender to his US counterpart Dwight Eisenhower</a>, and only then – with great reluctance – to the Russians. This foreshadowed the new global divisions of the cold war, in which Britain would play only a secondary role. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333057/original/file-20200506-49546-eyoec1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">General Alfred Jodl, German chief of staff, signing unconditional surrender in Allied HQ in Reims, France, May 7 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fighting had carried on right up to the moment of surrender and <a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/news/nazi-werewolves-hitler.html">in some cases even afterwards</a>, so that some people in Britain learned of a loved one’s death shortly before VE Day, or even on the day itself. Not surprisingly, they did not feel like celebrating. </p>
<p>Prisoners of war, returning from a captivity which was a lot harsher than the jolly escape films suggest, similarly tended to want to return home quietly rather than dancing in the street. Adjusting to life after years of separation was not easy and the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/articles/victoryineuropedayhowworldwariichangedtheuk/2015-05-08">divorce rate soared after the war</a>.</p>
<p>Above all, there were those with good reason to hold back with some distaste, because their war was far from over. The war in Asia was still going on, and as the Japanese were driven back in Burma and across the Pacific, so their resistance toughened and casualties mounted. For those with a father or husband in the far east, VE Day seemed a cruel mockery.</p>
<p>But perhaps most surprising – and most instructive for today – were those who could not bring themselves to celebrate because the war was their life. Young people had known nothing else since childhood; young women had had opportunities to pursue fulfilling and important work beyond anything peacetime could offer. For many people, ending the war meant letting go of a world they knew for a new and very uncertain one. Adversity – and even lockdown – can carry its own unexpected comforts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was a great celebration, but not everyone was jubilant.Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1358732020-04-07T16:57:30Z2020-04-07T16:57:30ZWith Boris Johnson in intensive care, who runs the UK?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326119/original/file-20200407-36391-519hnp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C0%2C4800%2C3197&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in mid-March, before he tested positive for the coronavirus.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/file-photo-dated-on-march-18-2020-shows-british-prime-news-photo/1208351535">Ray Tang/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boris Johnson – who was admitted to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604">intensive care on April 6 with worsening symptoms</a> of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus – is not the first British prime minister to experience a life-threatening bout of ill health. </p>
<p>Winston Churchill suffered a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076817745506">mild heart attack in 1941</a> and a much <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0141076818784544">more serious stroke in 1953</a>. In both cases, he successfully <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/medical-mystery-winston-churchills-most-secret-battle-20171124.html">kept his illnesses secret</a> from Parliament, the press and the public. </p>
<p>Prime ministers have even died in office, although the last to do so was Henry John Temple, <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2016/04/07/lord-palmerston/">Viscount Palmerston</a>, in 1865. In response, the Liberal Party simply selected Lord John Russell, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/lord-john-russell-1st-earl-russell">Earl Russell</a>, to succeed Palmerston. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326145/original/file-20200407-85423-1o9x8h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry John Temple III, Viscount Palmerston, c. 1857.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_John_Temple,_3rd_Viscount_Palmerston.jpg">Herbert Watkins</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unlike Churchill and the unfortunate Palmerston, Johnson has fallen ill in an era of social media and 24-hour news. In the U.S., the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv">25th Amendment to the Constitution</a> details what to do if the president is incapacitated or dies. In the U.K., there is no official guidance from Parliament and little precedent to fall back on. Johnson’s situation makes the U.K.’s lack of a formal plan more pressing.</p>
<p>Modern-day prime ministers are normally the leader of the Labour or, as in Johnson’s case, <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/sharethefacts/2019/07/boris-johnson-new-conservative-leader">the Conservative Party</a>. The prime minister is appointed by the monarch as the member of Parliament most likely to command support from a majority of the House of Commons, Parliament’s lower house.</p>
<p>Prime ministers enjoy great legislative and executive authority. The British prime minister is <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/prime-minister">head of the U.K. government</a>. Johnson sits atop a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/how-government-works">cabinet system of government</a> and directs the civil service, appoints ministers and is responsible to the monarch, Parliament and the electorate for the actions of the government. </p>
<p>Unlike American presidents, British prime ministers have no constitutional standing. Britain has no written constitution, relying on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-written-constitution-for-the-uk-would-not-have-resolved-recent-brexit-arguments-heres-why-125597">piecemeal system of precedent and legal rulings</a>. The office of prime minister is a reflection of this process. It has <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2012/01/01/the-institution-of-prime-minister/">evolved over three centuries</a>, accruing greater power as circumstances like war, economic crises or social turmoil dictated.</p>
<p>The problem is that the British past offers no clear guidance about what to do if a prime minister falls ill in an age of mass media.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326140/original/file-20200407-85423-e2vpig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, at least for now.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/britains-foreign-secretary-dominic-raab-leaves-from-10-news-photo/1209325734">Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although there is no deputy prime minister or deputy leader of the Conservative Party, Britain is not leaderless. Johnson has asked Dominic Raab, foreign secretary and first secretary of state, to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604">serve as his deputy</a> while he remains in the hospital. </p>
<p>There is no precedent for this situation, though. Some journalists worry that the temporary appointment of Raab will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/06/dominic-raab-set-to-lead-uk-through-covid-19-hurdles">lose legitimacy</a> if Johnson remains ill for a longer period of time. </p>
<p>Johnson is still technically prime minister. Raab is simply <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52193461">acting in his name</a>. Raab will not undertake the acts typically performed by a new prime minister, such as reshuffling the cabinet or writing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/13/every-new-british-prime-minister-pens-a-hand-written-letter-of-last-resort-outlining-nuclear-retaliaton/">letters of last resort</a> to the commanders of Britain’s fleet of nuclear-armed submarines.</p>
<p>If Johnson remains ill for an extended period of time or succumbs to the coronoavirus, the queen would have to <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/conservative-party-leadership-contests">select an acting prime minister</a>. That person would then govern the country until the 190,000 members of the Conservative Party could elect a new leader, who would then be formally appointed prime minister by the queen.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135873/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Reader does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The United Kingdom does not have a written constitution or a specific plan for what to do if the prime minister is too ill to perform official duties.Luke Reader, Teaching Fellow, History Department, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1300232020-01-29T13:21:15Z2020-01-29T13:21:15ZBritain is about to leave the EU – what’s next?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312121/original/file-20200127-81341-b8bmea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C0%2C2696%2C1792&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As the U.K. leaves the European Union, what awaits Prime Minister Boris Johnson?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/britains-prime-minister-boris-johnson-waves-on-the-steps-of-news-photo/1178638459">Isabel Infantes/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain will shortly leave the European Union. So that’s it. Brexit is over, right?</p>
<p>Wrong. To channel former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – as <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316195/the-churchill-factor-by-boris-johnson/">every leading Brexit supporter</a> seems to want to do – “<a href="https://worldhistoryproject.org/1942/11/10/winston-churchill-delivers-his-this-is-not-the-end-speech">This is not the end</a>. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”</p>
<p>Although Britain formally leaves the European Union on Jan. 31, <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2020/1/23/21070594/brexit-royal-assent-january-31-uk-eu-trade">little will change</a> until the end of the year. Britain will still adhere to the <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/the-european-single-market/">four freedoms</a> of the tariff-free single market – free movement of goods, services, capital and people – as well as rulings from the European Court of Justice. This transition period is intended to give Britain and the EU time to arrange their post-Brexit relationship. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01/09/world/europe/09reuters-britain-eu-barnier.html">EU wants</a> to extend the transition period to 2022, in order to ensure a comprehensive deal. However, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, has promised to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/johnson-says-u-k-will-cut-eu-ties-by-end-of-2020-11576592223">wrap negotiations up</a> by Christmas. </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://english.case.edu/faculty/luke-reader/">historian</a> who studies the effect Brexit is having on British society and culture. It is clear to me that Johnson and the country face two problems. First, Brexit supporters want to leave the EU quickly. But they have <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Public-Opinion-2019-report.pdf">different – and conflicting – goals</a> they want Brexit to accomplish.</p>
<p><iframe id="wIAp9" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/wIAp9/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Different economic futures</h2>
<p>Critics who believe the EU too closely regulates business hope Brexit will turn their country into a buccaneering, deregulated, low-tax, free-for-all economy they call “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/global-britain-delivering-on-our-international-ambition">Global Britain</a>.” </p>
<p>Other Brexit supporters, worried that Britain had surrendered its sovereignty to the EU, want to reassert control over immigration policy and halt <a href="https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodies/court-justice_en">European Court of Justice</a> rulings that place EU law above British law. </p>
<p>White, working-class supporters of Brexit, particularly those who used to vote for the center-left Labour Party, have different expectations. They hope for a return to the <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/192782/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-british-nation/9780141975979.html">high-wage, export-driven economy of the period from 1945 to 1979</a>, supported by nationalized industries and government subsidies for private enterprise, which promoted full employment and a comprehensive welfare state.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.dataprax.is/tory-landslide-progressives-split">December 2019 general election</a>, these voters came together to give the center-right Conservatives an 80-seat majority in Parliament. </p>
<p>But this electoral coalition is unwieldy. It reflects the way that now, a person’s <a href="https://whatukthinks.org/eu/a-nation-of-remainers-and-leavers-how-brexit-has-forged-a-new-sense-of-identity/">opinion on Brexit</a> <a href="https://whatukthinks.org/eu/author/johncurtice/">largely determines</a> how they vote.</p>
<p>In 2019, a slight majority of British voters backed parties that wanted to prevent Brexit or maintain a close relationship with the EU. Those votes were shared between Labour, the Scottish National Party, the Greens and the centrist Liberal Democrats. </p>
<p>But voters who wanted Brexit, irrespective of how they had voted before, had just one choice: to opt for the Conservatives. </p>
<p><iframe id="WrUtr" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WrUtr/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Conflicting views of the EU</h2>
<p>The U.K. government has tried to balance the competing interests of its electoral coalition. </p>
<p>Ministers have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/19/boris-johnson-liberal-nuanced-cautious">promised</a> policies that will appeal to former Labour voters who last year shifted to the Conservatives: more funds for the National Health Service and investment in declining industrial regions. </p>
<p>However, if this is the plan, no one has told Sajid Javid, the chancellor of the Exchequer. Javid, the British equivalent to the U.S. treasury secretary, recently stated that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51157933">Britain should diverge</a> from EU “<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/accessing-markets/goods-and-services/">regulatory requirements</a>” designed to address health, safety and environmental concerns. The EU could respond by excluding British products from its markets, making the prospect of catastrophic economic damage from Brexit more likely. This would make it harder for the government to generate the revenue to support its spending promises.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312312/original/file-20200128-81399-1et19yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British exports, including these Land Rover and Range Rover vehicles ready for shipping out of Liverpool, may be in less demand after the U.K. leaves the EU.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-land-rover-and-range-rover-vehicles-are-parked-on-the-news-photo/1130207887">Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Balancing power</h2>
<p>The difficulties Britain faces reflect the ways in which <a href="https://shortbooks.co.uk/book/9-lessons-in-brexit">pro-Brexit voices</a> in government and the media have presented relations with the EU to voters.</p>
<p>Traditionally, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/297/297037/britain-s-europe/9780141983905.html">British policy toward Europe</a> had one clear purpose: to prevent any one power from dominating the continent. Despite real differences about the outcome of EU withdrawal, Brexit supporters generally see the EU as a singular power that dominates the continent, threatening British interests and sovereignty. </p>
<p>This analysis results in a misreading of history, presenting Britain as apart from Europe, not a part of Europe. In reality, the U.K. has always involved itself in European affairs, if only to shape the continent to its liking. </p>
<p>For instance, in the mid-1980s, the British economy was growing rapidly, but European economies were faltering. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s administration argued that her country’s experiments with financial deregulation and privatizing nationalized industries were the difference. </p>
<p>The U.K. encouraged its European neighbors to follow these policies, which resulted in the establishment of the tariff-free <a href="https://politybooks.com/?s=brexit+and+british+politics">Single Market</a> in 1993.</p>
<p>The Single Market has benefited Britain. Currently, the EU accounts for <a href="https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7851">45%</a> of British exports in goods and services. Britain sends to Europe around US$350 billion worth of food, pharmaceuticals, vehicles, financial services and other products a year.</p>
<p>But paradoxically, Brexit may well leave Britain marooned in its long-feared predicament: subject to the whims of larger powers. </p>
<p>Once it is no longer in the EU, no matter how close Britain is to the EU’s single market, its influence will fade. In order to trade, Britain will have to <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/01/21/eu-minister-says-post-brexit-uk-must-follow-eu-trade-rules-to-trade-in-europe">accept EU rules</a>, but will not have a role in setting those rules. If it diverges from EU regulations and standards, it closes off itself from European markets. </p>
<p><iframe id="c0Png" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/c0Png/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>New opportunities?</h2>
<p>Some of the architects of Brexit argue that renewed links with the former British Empire, especially India and the so-called “<a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/anglosphere-old-dream-brexit-role-in-the-world">Anglosphere</a>” – including Australia, Canada and New Zealand – could make up for the loss of EU markets.</p>
<p>This belief draws on a deep well of <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/07/26/britain-proud-its-empire">pride</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/embers-of-empire-in-brexit-britain-9781350113794/">nostalgia</a> for imperialism. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is not reciprocated by those living in the former empire. </p>
<p>Recent talks with Australia <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/morrison-government-rules-out-visa-free-travel-between-australia-uk-20200102-p53o7l.html">fell apart</a> over British demands for free movement of people between the two countries. The Australian government worried that this would lead to the U.K. trying to poach skilled workers, particularly doctors and nurses who could staff the perpetually understaffed National Health Service.</p>
<p>Canada already has a large, rich market on its doorstep – the U.S.</p>
<p>India has made <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2020/01/13/2020-global-britain-in-a-cold-climate/">clear</a> that a trade deal would have to be accompanied by looser immigration restrictions. Other nations would be justified in making the price of “Global Britain” an overdue <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/its-time-to-be-honest-about-britains-story-and-come-to-terms-with-the-reality-of-empire">reckoning</a> with the atrocities of empire. </p>
<p>Nor are these markets particularly <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD">lucrative</a>. The combined size of the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand economies is about $3.3 trillion. This is only $500 billion more than annual British GDP. The Indian economy is of a similar size to that of the U.K. By contrast, the EU generates $18.7 trillion of economic activity a year. </p>
<p>None of this is to suggest that Brexit cannot be a success. But Britain is in a geopolitical pickle. It is reasserting itself as a nation-state at precisely the <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/10/britain-s-lonely-future-age-clashing-empires">moment</a> in which the world is reorganizing itself into powerful multi-national alliances and trading blocs.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Reader does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People who support Brexit want different results from the UK’s departure from the EU – and they can’t all get what they want.Luke Reader, Teaching Fellow, History Department, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1225972019-08-29T16:59:56Z2019-08-29T16:59:56ZWhy the queen said yes to Boris Johnson’s request to suspend Parliament<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290154/original/file-20190829-106508-1lxb65i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=817%2C125%2C1907%2C2022&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson shakes hands with Queen Elizabeth II.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Conservatives/5b4a989e5b8d4e44b56c16d5865ff883/59/0">Victoria Jones/Pool via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Queen Elizabeth II <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49493632">agreed to suspend Parliament</a>, she gave British Prime Minister Boris Johnson <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/08/28/boris-johnson-ask-queen-elizabeth-suspend-parliament-brexit/2138789001/">what he wanted</a>.</p>
<p>Opponents of Johnson’s move view it as a cynical and <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-boris-johnsons-parliamentary-prorogation-constitutional-how-to-understand-the-uk-system-122674">perhaps unconstitutional</a> maneuver. Johnson, they say, is trying to quash growing opposition to his efforts to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-plan-stop-no-deal-corbyn-opposition-legislation-caretaker-pm-a9080296.html">leave the European Union</a>. Johnson took office July 24, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/boris-johnsons-first-speech-as-prime-minister-24-july-2019">promising to pull the U.K. out of the EU by Oct. 31</a> even if his government and the European Union hadn’t agreed to terms by then. British voters <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/britain-votes-for-brexit-eu-referendum-david-cameron">approved a referendum to leave the EU</a> in June 2016.</p>
<p>The day before Johnson asked the queen to suspend Parliament, opposition leaders announced a plan to force Johnson to ask the EU for an extension to the Halloween deadline, if no deal had yet been struck.</p>
<p>Now they may not get the chance, as a result of Johnson’s actions, and the queen’s. The situation raises thorny questions over who actually represents the will of the British people.</p>
<h2>A ‘constitutional outrage’</h2>
<p>Speaker of the House John Bercow condemned Johnson’s move as a “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/parliament-suspension-john-bercow-boris-johnson-brexit-no-deal-queen-a9081756.html">constitutional outrage</a>.”</p>
<p>Johnson’s political opponents are already working to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49496517">challenge the suspension</a>. They have argued that the prime minister’s request to the queen was “both unlawful and unconstitutional” and that the move would have “irreversible legal, constitutional and practical implications for the United Kingdom.” </p>
<p>Johnson’s move was not a complete surprise. In July, former Conservative Prime Minister <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48934781">John Major threatened a legal challenge</a> if Johnson asked for a suspension. Major acknowledged that the queen’s decision could not be challenged, but argued that Johnson’s request could be.</p>
<p>The queen’s power to suspend – or even dismiss – Parliament is unquestioned. The buck stops with her. So why isn’t she taking more criticism for giving Johnson what he wanted?</p>
<h2>Constitutional monarchy</h2>
<p>One answer is that she had no choice. </p>
<p>That’s the position taken by several British <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/uk-brexit-constitutional-crisis-4785371-Aug2019/">constitutional scholars</a>. Major, too, argued that it would have been “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-major/ex-uk-pm-major-vows-to-protect-queen-and-avoid-constitutional-crisis-in-brexit-row-idUSKCN1U50OM">almost inconceivable</a>” for the queen to have defied her prime minister’s request. </p>
<p>Elizabeth is technically the sovereign and free to decide on her own. But the <a href="https://www.royal.uk/role-monarchy">legitimacy of her rule derives from the will of the British people</a> – which is normally assumed to be represented by the elected government. So her independence is actually fairly limited.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290156/original/file-20190829-106475-6ta79f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.K. Prime Minister Clement Attlee and King George VI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-XEN-APHSL32988-London-King-George-V-/158492be80e34dbb9638564646c232d4/8/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Certainly the queen’s father, King George VI, did not refuse Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s request to suspend Parliament in October 1948, in an effort to <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/proroguing-parliament">ram legal reforms</a> through an obstructionist House of Lords.</p>
<p>That situation is not an exact parallel to current events. Attlee was seeking to override objections from the unelected House of Lords to a bill proposed and passed in the popularly elected House of Commons. Johnson, by contrast, is looking to escape opposition from the people’s elected representatives.</p>
<p>By 1948, there was a general consensus that the real governing power lay with the House of Commons. There were complaints from Attlee’s political opponents, <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1948/jun/24/business-of-the-house">including former Prime Minister Winston Churchill</a>, but nobody suggested George should have refused the request and no attempts to challenge it were made in court.</p>
<h2>Parliament or the popular will?</h2>
<p>Johnson’s request, by contrast, raises the much thornier question of whether Britain should be governed by Parliament as a whole, or by what one person, the prime minister, says the people want. British opinion on Brexit has always been closely divided, and there have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/16/britain-split-over-prospect-of-second-brexit-referendum">calls to redo the 2016 referendum</a> that approved it. In addition, Brexit will affect Britain much more – and be harder to amend in the future – than the 1948 legislative changes.</p>
<p>The issue’s importance has led opposition leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/28/mps-react-with-fury-to-boris-johnsons-plan-to-suspend-parliament">take the rare step of seeking a personal audience</a> with the queen to present their views. While Elizabeth may hear them out, she has already granted Johnson’s request.</p>
<h2>A near-impossible choice</h2>
<p>Had the queen refused Johnson, she would have effectively inserted the monarchy into a power struggle between the prime minister and Parliament. That would likely have sparked a greater constitutional crisis – one even bigger than the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/british-leaders-backers-dismiss-outrage-over-parliament-suspension-as-candyfloss/2019/08/29/fa1e2c96-ca3c-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html">chaos now erupting</a> in Britain’s political halls. </p>
<p>The last time a monarch went against the advice and requests of elected officials <a href="https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN03861">was in 1708</a>, and was justified by <a href="http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/parliament/1705">worries about a foreign invasion</a>.</p>
<p>Such a dramatic move by Elizabeth now could have been seen as the monarch subverting the government. Instead, she approved Johnson’s request and left to the courts the question of whether Johnson could – or should – have made it.</p>
<p>The queen’s prerogative may be above the law, but the U.K. legal system will decide whether the prime minister can circumvent the country’s elected representatives by claiming to represent the will of the British people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Beers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The U.K. prime minister sought to suppress Parliamentary opponents, saying he – not they – represents the will of the British people. It put Queen Elizabeth II in a real bind.Laura Beers, Associate Professor of History, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1118652019-02-14T21:12:03Z2019-02-14T21:12:03ZWinston Churchill: hero or villain?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259049/original/file-20190214-1745-hpkuf9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A towering figure.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/24th-june-2016-westminster-london-statue-733671445?src=YyhpmXJqj8QP3S3_xnDhTQ-1-13">lonndubh/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Winston Churchill is again the subject of a row over reputation: is the man once voted the greatest Briton in a BBC poll still a “hero”? Or is he, as shadow chancellor John McDonnell claimed when asked to choose recently, a “villain”? </p>
<p>To be clear, McDonnell was referring specifically to Churchill’s actions during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonypandy_riots">Tonypandy riots of 1910</a>, in which he deployed troops to control striking miners, a decision which led to the death of one man. But such a nuance has largely been lost in the ongoing furore as members of parliament from both sides of the chamber have lined up to make their stance known. Even some of McDonnell’s own Labour Party have indicated their disapproval, with MP Ian Austin <a href="https://twitter.com/IanAustinMP/status/1095789971598950401">declaring</a> that Churchill was indeed “a real British hero, the greatest-ever Briton”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1095789971598950401"}"></div></p>
<p>In part, the angry response is connected to the fact that Churchill the war leader – always a high-profile figure in Britain – has recently been back in the public eye. In 2017, he was the subject of two films, Jonathan Teplitzky’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2674454/">Churchill</a> and Joe Wright’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4555426/">Darkest Hour</a>. And he has also featured with some prominence in Netflix’s popular series about Elizabeth II, The Crown (played with relish by John Lithgow). </p>
<p>These have each offered varying visions of Churchill. In Teplitzky’s take – rather different to the usual fare – we see a pre-D-Day Churchill increasingly in disagreement with his Generals and haunted by history (especially his role in the disaster <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/battle-of-gallipoli-1">at Gallipoli</a> in 1915). </p>
<p>But for all such interesting complexities in Teplitzky’s film, it is surely telling that the more successful of the two 2017 films was the one which provided a far more familiar view of “Winnie the war hero”. For just as the chaos of Brexit broke, Darkest Hour took audiences back to the crisis moment of 1940, as the Wehrmacht crashed through the French Army and as Europe fell to Nazi tyranny. Enter Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, to rally the troops, a job which even sees him – in a rather preposterous scene – talking with the common folk on the London tube. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-is-not-world-war-ii-politicians-should-stop-comparing-them-111286">Brexit is not World War II – politicians should stop comparing them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The response to Gary Oldman’s Churchill in Darkest Hour – a performance for which he won an Oscar – is a useful barometer for understanding the increasingly angry response to McDonnell’s comments. </p>
<h2>British Bulldog</h2>
<p>In Britain – as Darkest Hour affirms – Churchill is largely remembered as the hero of 1940, the man who stopped the rot of appeasement and defeatism and ensured that Britain and its Empire could – and did – “stand alone” against Hitler’s Germany. His name and image is inextricably associated with all those other features of the “dark days” of 1940: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz. This fact has ensured his continued standing and status in Britain (and elsewhere). It has also ensured that, in popular memory, the life story of a man who died in 1965 at the age of 90 – a life which also included being voted out of power after the war (and back in again in 1951) – has essentially been reduced to a few, albeit epic, months. </p>
<p>Churchill was the hero of 1940. But he was also the man who ordered troops to Tonypandy in 1910. He was also the man who authorised the area bombing of German cities (culminating in the controversial attack on Dresden in February 1945 in which tens of thousands of German civilians were killed). He was also the man whose failure to act <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Secret-War-British-Ravaging/dp/0465024815">during the Bengal Famine of 1943</a> – in which around three million Indians died – has similarly long been controversial. He was a man who even some contemporaries thought had essentially Victorian views of race and empire, a fact which <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister-and-the-prof">has led some to question his motives</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259048/original/file-20190214-1745-y0kpwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Bletchley Park Hut 8 poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/5123644725/in/photolist-8NL25a-7YHHTu-8MbPeo-csxkY7-ZGD2tJ-9rhTLs-Y8FqhE-9hR1yA-qdBMHv-iZfVXj-eSWSVV-7r1Zdf-aYpM9c-ghPK4S-csxpm9-aYLKDP-4mM5JB-hcuds-aYMi9t-diZSyH-djhJ13-aUPeNg-8ULTBy-6EYLiZ-e3WV8u-KAnWDM-jvULow-bA5eGh-86dXXA-69x3Z5-8NhuDa-6pnvEz-qdN1kZ-qdN3rx-hqwGPM-aFueMK-e74aHW-csxoPd-dfe5eB-6FDyVq-egcAMB-9A4pgi-egcADx-8MEgr4-HqXTu-qbvHJh-8XaqdR-abYX8o-7SzzMB-5h2ZPQ">Elliott Brown/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are the complexities of character that many of the unrepentant Churchill celebrants can’t – or won’t – see, while for some of those hurling the criticisms, endlessly remembering the hero of 1940 (and all the connected myths and legends of the war) is seen as an obstacle to realising a new vision for Britain that isn’t stuck in the past.</p>
<p>In the current political climate, there is clearly no time for such facts or nuances, and so Churchill has instead become a prism through which all the turmoil of Brexit and the political divisions it has exposed becomes glaringly apparent. </p>
<p>Perhaps an opportunity has been lost here. For, somewhere in the details, there could be a Churchill that – on the question of Europe – many might find useful, from across both sides of the political divide. For a key feature of the hero of the 1940s was that he expended significant quantities of energy organising a British return to the European continent and, once the war was won, he even <a href="http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html">famously called for</a> a “United States of Europe”. </p>
<p>Perhaps this is the vision of Churchill needed now – an (imperfect and flawed) national hero resolutely committed to European friends and neighbours.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111865/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, and the United States Army Military History Institute.</span></em></p>A complicated man who some would cast as a simple answer to complex times.Sam Edwards, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1112062019-02-07T09:35:10Z2019-02-07T09:35:10ZEU membership has many benefits, but economic growth is not one of them – new findings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257480/original/file-20190206-174894-iomf94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Growing, growing, gone. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/flag-european-union-large-display-daily-361928702?src=24kGkU789Fx3KqiWu4gC2w-1-75">William Potter</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From <a href="https://europa.eu/european-union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/body/winston_churchill_en.pdf">Winston Churchill</a> in the 1940s to the <a href="https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/history/2010-today/2012/eu-nobel_en">Nobel Peace Prize Committee</a> in our era, peace and prosperity have always been put forward as the two main goals of European integration. The EU founding fathers saw the European project as a way of taming nationalist passions by serving mutual commercial interests: a common political and economic entity that would guarantee both peace and economic progress. </p>
<p>In his famous United States of Europe speech in Zürich on September 19, 1946, Churchill argued that “the sovereign remedy” to the plight of post-war Europe was “to recreate the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety, and in freedom”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257492/original/file-20190206-174861-sxqhh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Founding father Robert Schuman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schuman#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-19000-2453,_Robert_Schuman.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Four years later, on May 9, 1950, the <a href="https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/schuman-declaration_en">epochal declaration</a> by then French foreign minister Robert Schuman stated that pooling the coal and steel production of West Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium had the double aim of “contributing to raising living standards and to promoting peaceful achievements”. When the <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM%3Axy0023">Treaty of Rome</a> was established in 1957, Article 2 explicitly talked about “raising the standard of living”. Fast forward 70 years and the official website of the European Union <a href="https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en">proclaims that</a> the “EU has delivered half a century of peace, stability and prosperity”. </p>
<p>Growth continues to be prominent in the EU’s general objectives today, of course. A stated aim of the influential <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4373485.stm">Lisbon 2000 Agenda</a> was to make the European economy the “most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”. All seven of the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/innovation-union-communication-brochure_en.pdf">Flagship Initiatives</a> adopted as part of the Europe 2020 Strategy were also about growth – smart growth, sustainable growth, and inclusive growth. </p>
<p>But is this correct? In <a href="https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=716097073084075000127114064105118004042021055002019085109023122093009003126105000018021054116024117056041070110019107099085066055058046000054091102102071088113104032073024026127070090008118127111090068094127000097027100095118028118084025104088067096&EXT=pdf">new research</a> forthcoming in the economics journal Kyklos, which we co-authored with <a href="https://www.ceps.eu/content/mikkel-barslund">Mikkel Barslund</a> from the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, we looked at whether joining the EU has actually increased domestic economic growth for EU member states on average over the past few decades. In a nutshell, most probably it has not. </p>
<h2>The elusive growth premium</h2>
<p>To cut a long methodological story short, we sought to answer our question using different empirical strategies, different time periods from the 1960s to 2015, different country samples and different datasets. We compared the growth of the EU to the US and to comparably wealthy OECD countries outside the EU. We compared the growth of former Soviet satellites inside and outside the EU, and also looked at growth in different countries within the EU. At the end of the day, we were unable to demonstrate the presence of a clear-cut membership growth premium: the EU bloc performed roughly comparably to countries on the outside, and in certain cases worse. </p>
<p>It could be that EU membership is more economically beneficial than it seems. GDP is a poor measure of the economic effect of certain new phenomena like Facebook, for example, as well as smartphones. Equally it could be that cause and effect are just too complicated for EU economic benefits to be properly captured in the data. If either of these are true, however, it doesn’t mean our conclusion is wrong – only that we should remain agnostic about the EU’s growth impact. </p>
<p>Whichever way one chooses to interpret our results, our inability to find a significant positive economic benefit from EU membership runs contrary to many official reports arriving at the opposite inference. The OECD’s <a href="http://www.oecd.org/unitedkingdom/the-economic-consequences-of-brexit-a-taxing-decision.htm">Brexit report</a>, for example, claims that the EU has contributed in no small measure to British prosperity. The Danish government recently commissioned <a href="https://erhvervsstyrelsen.dk/det-indre-markeds-oekonomiske-betydning-danmark">a study</a> which found that EU membership had made Danes much richer. And the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, an independent part of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, has <a href="https://www.cpb.nl/sites/default/files/publicaties/download/internal-market-and-dutch-economy-implications-trade-and-economic-growth.pdf">found that</a> EU membership had made the Dutch much richer. </p>
<p>Since we focused on the EU average rather than on individual country performances, we are not necessarily disagreeing with any one of these individual country studies. But for every country that has done better than average, there must be another which has done worse, so we certainly question the bigger picture. It suggests that taking a confidently positive position about the growth effects of EU membership is at the very least inappropriate. </p>
<p>This is consistent with the <a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/what_do_trade_agreements_really_do.pdf">latest thinking</a> within economic policy research on <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/031413.pdf">growth strategy</a>. This would say that the EU can create a level playing field in terms of regulation, but does not provide any off-the-shelf blueprint when it comes to growth policies. Policies to address country-specific constraints on growth must be tailored to local context, and so only national governments can implement them. </p>
<h2>The upside</h2>
<p>So there are no straightforward messages as regards Brexit here: we are not looking at the UK on its own, and in any case, the effects of leaving need not be symmetrical to those of joining. Evaluating the EU’s growth contribution also does not amount to an evaluation of the entire EU project. The EU provides many direct benefits to the citizens of Europe – or costs, depending on your perspective. The right to study, work, travel and live in any EU country is a right that many Europeans value highly, even if others do not. </p>
<p>The EU has contributed to, among other things, consumer protection, workplace safety, regional convergence and constitutional rights protection. By focusing exclusively on economic growth, we obviously leave all these things out of the picture. But none of this detracts from the fact that a key component of the whole EU rationale and its ongoing accomplishments is far from clear-cut. If the EU does not in fact deliver prosperity, it could profoundly affect the future of the project.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Brexit has stimulated the debate about the net economic benefits of EU membership. New findings show these are not clearly positive.Thomas Barnebeck Andersen, Professor of Economics, University of Southern DenmarkPieter Vanhuysse MAE, Professor of Comparative Welfare State Research, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1050312019-01-23T11:48:48Z2019-01-23T11:48:48ZPersonal diplomacy has long been a presidential tactic, but Trump adds a twist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254413/original/file-20190117-32828-12d9wm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump's historic meeting with North Korea dictator Kim Jung Un on June 12, 2018, in Singapore. Trump recently told a crowd that the two leaders 'fell in love.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/China-North-Korea/68a4e903345f414189b7ab7b7c5736b0/29/0">Evan Vucci/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump plans a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/us/politics/trump-kim-summit.html">second meeting</a> with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in February in what will be another example of Trump’s personal diplomacy efforts. </p>
<p>In September, Trump told the crowd at a rally that he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-trump/we-fell-in-love-trump-swoons-over-letters-from-north-koreas-kim-idUSKCN1MA03Q">“fell in love”</a> with Kim after the two exchanged letters. Many were critical of the statement, including allies of the president like Sen. <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/lindsey-graham-donald-trumps-love-kim-jong-un-must-stop/">Lindsey Graham</a>. While Trump later admitted that his profession of love was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-interview-60-minutes-full-transcript-lesley-stahl-jamal-khashoggi-james-mattis-brett-kavanaugh-vladimir-putin-2018-10-14/">“just a figure of speech</a>,” the comment puts a spotlight on his relationships with foreign leaders. </p>
<p>In Trump’s first two years in office, he’s met with many world leaders both at <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/visits/2017">home</a> and <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/president/trump-donald-j">abroad</a>. Several of these interactions grabbed headlines, often for the wrong reasons: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/trump-macron-handshake/533688/">aggressive handshakes</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/26/breaking-down-trumps-shove-the-internet-debates-and-montenegros-leader-shrugs/?utm_term=.dd67400300bc">shoving</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/13/619223217/friend-or-foe-trump-takes-on-allies-as-he-warms-up-to-north-korea">insulting allies</a>, and what some critics consider <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-egypt-sissi-white-house-love-fest-578531">fawning love fests</a> with dictators like Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin. </p>
<p>With such a record, would American interests be better served if Trump stayed away from world leaders? The truth is that even if the answer were yes, he couldn’t. The president is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Diplomat-Chief-President-at-Summit/dp/0275920402">diplomat-in-chief</a>. Personal diplomacy is part of the job. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pZxjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT157&lpg=PT157&dq=6+%22One+Picture+May+Not+Be+Worth+Ten+Thousand+Words,+but+the+White+House+Is+Betting+It%E2%80%99s+Worth+Ten+Thousand+Votes%22&source=bl&ots=GmdJKeYaDR&sig=P2TfBZd1rFGhNUENPIpyrJo8gSU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-3ZnthJreAhVSuVMKHVlLBukQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=6%20%22One%20Picture%20May%20Not%20Be%20Worth%20Ten%20Thousand%20Words%2C%20but%20the%20White%20House%20Is%20Betting%20It%E2%80%99s%20Worth%20Ten%20Thousand%20Votes%22&f=false">I study personal diplomacy</a> and I know the centrality of the practice to the presidency in the post-WWII era. Despite what his critics say, Trump’s use of personal diplomacy is a continuation of past presidential practice. It’s his style and approach that break from past tradition. </p>
<h2>Personal diplomacy is part of the presidency</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254411/original/file-20190117-32831-bfhxu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at Trump’s Florida residence Mar-a-Lago in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Koreas-Tension-Trump/5ff75a577d3f43b99975678ff478a5a2/15/0">Alex Brandon/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This wasn’t always the case. Not until Franklin D. Roosevelt did <a href="https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu//available/etd-07212016-113731/">personal diplomacy become increasingly common</a> in the presidency. Technological advancements in communication and travel, America’s rise to global preeminence, the growth of presidential power, and increasing domestic incentives made the practice appear attractive and often necessary to White House occupants. </p>
<p>Professional diplomats have long complained about political leaders engaging in personal diplomacy. Writing in 1939, British diplomat <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I6W-DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=should+not+be+encouraged.+Such+visits+arouse+public+expectations,+lead+to+misunderstanding+and+create+confusion.&source=bl&ots=2mc5BkPn8v&sig=X2-ClvSDVLDqz05pxTNpGmMT6W0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkyovyqJneAhWnh1QKHZ4mApgQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=should%20not%20be%20encouraged.%20Such%20visits%20arouse%20public%20expectations%2C%20lead%20to%20misunderstanding%20and%20create%20confusion.&f=false">Harold Nicolson put it like this</a>: Frequent meetings between world leaders “should not be encouraged. Such visits arouse public expectations, lead to misunderstanding and create confusion.” </p>
<p>Professional diplomats are generally better informed <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I6W-DAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=diplomacy+at+the+highest+level&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIoqCFtPrfAhVvuVkKHZcvANgQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=professional&f=false">than political leaders</a> on international issues. They also are experienced negotiators, possess linguistic expertise and are knowledgeable of diplomatic protocol. They are also usually less influenced by domestic politics. They tend to stay out of the media spotlight and work behind the scenes.</p>
<p>But history provides us with many examples of the value of leader-to-leader diplomacy. Franklin <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Winston-Intimate-Portrait-Friendship/dp/0812972821">Roosevelt’s connection</a> with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill played a central role in the Allied victory during WWII. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Days-September-Dramatic-Struggle/dp/0804170029/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1540219648&sr=1-1&keywords=13+days+in+september">bond</a> between Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was crucial to Egyptian-Israeli peace. And Ronald <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reagan-Gorbachev-How-Cold-Ended/dp/0812974891">Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s relationship</a> was key to the end of the Cold War.</p>
<p>Presidents themselves have recognized the importance of leader-to-leader diplomacy. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7VWZRVvoE0MC&pg=PA195&lpg=PA195&dq=%22I+placed+a+high+priority+on+personal+diplomacy.+Getting+to+know+a+fellow+world+leader%E2%80%99s+personality,+character,+and+concerns+made+it+easier+to+find+common+ground+and+deal+with+contentious+issues.%22&source=bl&ots=6psW36jfsl&sig=8aCf-wum3E79FdkJRgYvp45lMdw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiw0aSVqZneAhUT_1QKHQyQBCQQ6AEwAXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20placed%20a%20high%20priority%20on%20personal%20diplomacy.%20Getting%20to%20know%20a%20fellow%20world%20leader%E2%80%99s%20personality%2C%20character%2C%20and%20concerns%20made%20it%20easier%20to%20find%20common%20ground%20and%20deal%20with%20contentious%20issues.%22&f=false">George W. Bush wrote in his memoir</a>, “I placed a high priority on personal diplomacy. Getting to know a fellow world leader’s personality, character, and concerns made it easier to find common ground and deal with contentious issues.”</p>
<h2>Dangers lurk</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255044/original/file-20190122-100270-ms7e8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President John Kennedy, right, meets with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, June 3, 1961.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there are risks as well.</p>
<p>Leaders don’t always get along. Miscalculation and tension may be as likely as understanding and cooperation. </p>
<p>In 1961, U.S.-Soviet relations went from bad to worse after John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met. Khrushchev came away thinking the president was <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HrQtrP3MOIYC&pg=PA36&dq=%22too+intelligent+and+too+weak.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_hMm9t_rfAhUR1VkKHSlwBt4Q6AEIQDAE#v=onepage&q=%22too%20intelligent%20and%20too%20weak.%22&f=false">weak and inexperienced</a>. Within months, the Soviet leader ordered the building of the Berlin Wall. The following year, Khrushchev put <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis">nuclear missiles in Cuba</a> capable of reaching almost every corner of the continental United States. </p>
<p>George W. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bush-saw-putins-soul-obama-wants-to-appeal-to-his-brain/2015/12/01/264f0c7c-984b-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.30b975e24109">Bush thought</a> he could trust Russian leader Vladimir Putin because he “looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” But by the end of his presidency, it was clear that Bush had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/europe/14georgia.html">seriously misjudged</a> the Russian leader.</p>
<h2>Trump’s approach</h2>
<p>In his two years in office, Trump has shown himself both following in his predecessors’ personal diplomacy footsteps but also breaking from established norms. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-says-he-would-get-along-very-well-putin-n401051">candidate Trump</a>, he boasted that he would get along with Putin. And since becoming president, he has continued to promote his personal relationships with world leaders. </p>
<p>This is normal presidential behavior. Where Trump differs from his predecessors is in the relationships he promotes and the way he approaches personal diplomacy.</p>
<p>One of the most striking things about Trump’s personal diplomacy is his <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526520042/6-strongmen-trumps-praised-and-the-conflicts-it-presents">praise of dictators</a>. While past American presidents also sought to form personal bonds with <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwimt8_pspreAhUQrFMKHZ1kDxoQFjABegQICBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fwp%2F2018%2F06%2F12%2Fother-presidents-have-met-with-dictators-they-didnt-then-praise-them%2F&usg=AOvVaw1el1bkdom-xpJ9XoRn1M3M">unsavory leaders</a>, none so publicly embraced and praised brutal authoritarians such as Kim, Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as Trump has done.</p>
<p>This has a cost. Personal diplomacy is a form of <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Theatre_of_power.html?id=SOyOAAAAMAAJ">“theater</a>.” It sends signals to domestic and international audiences. The leaders a president decides to meet with, praise or attack is a statement of American values and policy. By effusively embracing dictators, Trump’s personal diplomacy is at odds with traditional American foreign policy, and critics argue that it <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-embrace-dictators-creating-climate-emboldens-all-despots-ncna918126">emboldens dictators</a>.</p>
<p>Trump also differs from past presidents by appearing indifferent to the risks of personal diplomacy. “You have nothing to lose and you have a lot to gain,” <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1030902046520696832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1030902046520696832&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newindianexpress.com%2Fworld%2F2018%2Faug%2F19%2Fmeeting-with-foreign-leaders-not-a-bad-thing-us-president-donald-trump-1859815.html">he said</a>. </p>
<p>Personal diplomacy is a tool presidents use to advance American interests. And because of the risks, careful preparation and a clear strategy are vital. </p>
<p>But Trump is impulsive and prone to rely on <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/09/trump-north-korea-summit-meeting-one-minute-kim-jong-un-635004">“touch” and “feel</a>.” </p>
<p>Politics is deeply personal for him. While disagreement is a natural part of international politics, he often views it as a personal affront. Before he fell in “love” with Kim Jong Un, he called the North Korean dictator a <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/911175246853664768">“madman”</a> and mocked his <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/929511061954297857">height and weight</a>. </p>
<p>Trump has even attacked allied leaders. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated his country wouldn’t be pushed around, the president felt betrayed and lashed out, calling Trudeau <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/world/americas/donald-trump-g7-nafta.html">“very dishonest and weak</a>.”</p>
<p>Leader-to-leader diplomacy is inherently personal. But presidents are best served when they don’t take it too personally. Former Secretary of State Henry <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=npJBDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=%22America+has+no+permanent+friends+or+enemies,+only+interests.%22&source=bl&ots=d8Zaw1FM49&sig=ACfU3U2edrSZv9Vjq3x8dwOgWrxMOpmOzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_je2C3YHgAhUxmuAKHfa7ACg4FBDoATAEegQIBhAB#v=onepage&q=%22America%20has%20no%20permanent%20friends%20or%20enemies%2C%20only%20interests.%22&f=false">Kissinger once said</a>, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” So even if leaders form personal bonds, it doesn’t mean two nations will always agree. And that’s OK. It’s a natural part of international relations, not a personal insult to the president. </p>
<p>When presidents engage world leaders, the stakes are raised and mistakes amplified. So a clear assessment of the risks and benefits of personal diplomacy is essential. As former Secretary of State <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=I6W-DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=%22when+a+chief+of+state+or+head+of+government+makes+a+fumble,%22&source=bl&ots=2mc5CdJn5r&sig=mr-_9Of400gpRDYnTzCgtO2bKBY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-8u6VgpreAhXD3FMKHTw-CeIQ6AEwAnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22when%20a%20chief%20of%20state%20or%20head%20of%20government%20makes%20a%20fumble%2C%22&f=false">Dean Acheson cautioned</a>, “When a chief of state or head of government makes a fumble, the goal line is open behind him.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tizoc Chavez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Meeting with heads of state has become routine for presidents, but Trump’s way with words and gestures rattles many in the diplomatic community. The biggest concern is his sweet talk to dictators.Tizoc Chavez, Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.