The myths of history: Churchill’s defeat
There are a lot of myths that people accept as true about historical events. Some of these myths are relatively minor, such as the one I’m going to write about today. Some of these myths concern events/facts about which we’ve only recently learned the truth. Sometimes the MSM has purposely misinformed us about them—that is, propaganda has overwhelmed the truth. And some are about events that happened long, long ago and have gotten lost in the mists of time.
But some are about more recent happenings. And some are about things that are easily verifiable, not difficult-to-ascertain at all, and about which there hasn’t been a whole lot of purposeful propaganda, although there certainly does seem to be a great deal of casual misinformation.
And I’m not just talking about myths believed by extremely-low-information folks who don’t know who the vice president is, or what any of the branches of government are. I’m talking about myths believed by people who, if not history buffs exactly, are at least conversant with the main events of history and even some of the lesser ones.
And of course everyone has some of these myths, because we don’t even know they are myths if we think they are true.
The myth I’m going to write about today, which is a sort of pet peeve of mine since I’m a big Churchill admirer, is that the British public was so ungrateful to Winston Churchill that they threw him out for good after the war. What’s wrong with that? Indeed, they did throw him out after the war, so we can’t really call it a “myth”:
With a general election looming (there had been none for almost a decade), and with the Labour Ministers refusing to continue the wartime coalition, Churchill resigned as Prime Minister on 23 May. Later that day, he accepted the King’s invitation to form a new government, known officially as the National Government, like the Conservative-dominated coalition of the 1930s, but in practice known as the Churchill caretaker ministry. The government contained Conservatives, National Liberals and a few non-party figures…
Although polling day was 5 July, the results of the 1945 election did not become known until 26 July, owing to the need to collect the votes of those serving overseas. Clementine…[met] her husband for lunch. To her suggestion that election defeat might be “a blessing in disguise” he retorted that “at the moment it seems very effectively disguised”. That afternoon Churchill’s doctor Lord Moran commiserated with him on the “ingratitude” of the British public, to which Churchill replied “I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time”. Having lost the election, despite enjoying much support amongst the British population, he resigned as Prime Minister that evening, this time handing over to a Labour Government. Many reasons for his defeat have been given, key among them being that a desire for post-war reform was widespread amongst the population and that the man who had led Britain in war was not seen as the man to lead the nation in peace. Although the Conservative Party was unpopular, many electors appear to have wanted Churchill to continue as Prime Minister whatever the outcome, or to have wrongly believed that this would be possible.
Now, that’s certainly interesting. The rejection may have been a sort of “Moses was a good leader for the years in the desert, but he can’t lead us to the promised land” syndrome. Or it may have been an artifact of the parliamentary system and not so much of a rejection of Churchill himself at all. At any rate, the reason I call this a “myth” (more rightly a half-myth or semi-myth) is that the rejection—whatever its reason—wasn’t permanent. Churchill did not leave politics at that point, as many people seem to think. He remained a visible and active leader of the opposition until the event occurred that so many people seem to forget (and certainly don’t usually mention), which was his re-election as Prime Minister in 1951.
That’s the part I find confusing and puzzling. Many people who seem to know about his 1945 loss seem to regard it as the end of his political career. It was not. He served again as PM from 1951 to 1955, and resigned at that point due to health reasons (he had had several strokes, and the one he had close to his resignation had been relatively severe). What’s more, he was 80 years old by the time of his resignation.
Doesn’t sound like much of a rejection of Churchill to me.
Well, why do so many people who are relatively knowledgeable get this wrong? I think it’s a question of the story and its relative drama. Doesn’t it make a much better story to have Churchill’s career end with his rejection by an ingrate public after his war years of heroism and strength? His later prime ministership was relatively anticlimactic (what wouldn’t be, after WWII?), and his final leave-taking was, sadly, due to infirmity. So it’s a much less dramatic story.
[NOTE: I plan to write about other myths of history in subsequent posts.]
One of the most discouraging things I have become increasingly convinced of over the past decade (or two), is how important narrative is in belief. Important facts are unremembered quickly; others gradually transform so that events of 1987 are re-remembered to 1985, or from Aunt Sophie’s house to Gramma Helen’s. This is not the pathological few. This is how memory works. This is why contact with relatives from different branches, or showing up at a school reunion after a long absence can be both exciting and confounding.
In Bush v Gore in 2000, there were two parts decided, an Equal Protection Clause decision and a remedy decision. Opinions vary, but most observers of both parties before the hearing that the former was more important. SCOTUS ruled 7-2 in favor of Bush on that. Beginning almost immediately after, it ceased to be mentioned in news reports and discussion. The remedy issue was decided in favor of Bush 5-4, and that quickly became to only piece anyone remembered. You can’t even find more than 1 in 10 Republicans who know it now.
I think it’s a question of the story and its relative drama.
This way of looking at it reminds me of a comment I saw on a YouTube video some time back concerning Boris Spassky’s chess career after his defeat in the world championship by Bobby Fischer. Some commenter on that video started BS-ing about how “it’s a little known fact, but Spassky never played serious chess again after that match”, something to that effect – the really killer part being that wise-looking “little-known fact” angle.
I normally don’t get into the back-and-forth too much on comment threads like that, but I couldn’t take that one lying down, so I replied simply stating that the reason it was so little-known is because it was 100% false and gave some basic facts about Spassky that anyone could verify. But I could understand why someone would go for that narrative, because to hear it put that way does add to the drama of the real history, even if it’s completely and utterly fecal in terms of fact.
Winston Churchill didn’t really exist, say teens
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577511/Winston-Churchill-didnt-really-exist-say-teens.html
A fifth of British teenagers believe Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character, while many think Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were real, a survey shows.
A quarter of the population think that Winston Churchill never actually existed, a survey suggests.
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I battle these Mythperceptions all the time..
even here…
we say Trump brings out the negative
“He would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises.”
(Lloyd George on Churchill)
And you realize that Winston Churchill and Princess Diana were related, right?
Churchills dad: Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
Diana, Princess of Wales: Diana Spencer
Spencer family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_family
there are a lot of myths connected to the organs of state and the games played, especially the great game…
“This movement among the Jews is not new. It is part of a world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, envious malevolence, and impossible equality.” W Churchill
if you want to really read about myths that are in our souls and the truth behind them try reading
The Sword and the Sheild
Support of international terrorism
And what do we believe the PLO and all that is today? and Islam myths and more?
Thats ok, they are helping kill american troops in the middle east now… and most of the palestine stuff now is birthed in these operations then…
tons tons tons tons tons of stuff…
Aids made in a militery biowarfar center in the US is another myth that people believe… in fact, Racialist leaders in the west bring this up claiming it was to kill blacks…
even CNN foments it!!!
AIDS: Manmade Biological Weapon
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-949062
Disinformation and Dan Rather
http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/disinformation-and-dan-rather/
Its amazing to compare the two
which do you believe, the complicated one with all the references.. or the one where the soviets admit they did this? gorbachev admitted it… it was to cover up their Anthrax excape and violation of biowarfar treaties… (so youc an be sure yamentau mountain is not full of weapons as they always follow treaties. like the eight peace treaties they violated in invading latvia)
oh well..
i could spend weeks listing out things on both sides..
and the funnier thing is i read here and people mention lots of myths and dont know it and ignore open facts that what they think is not true, and on and on….
whatever…
Doesn’t sound like much of a rejection of Churchill to me.
Of course it was a rejection of Churchill, right after the war he had won. And, to make it even worse, the Brits voted in a party that was dedicated to many of the things that Britain had just fought against in the war. You can’t get much more serious rejection than that.
I’m not sure why the idea of Churchill being permanently tossed out is a thing. I’ve never heard that even included in any discussion of Churchill and the lunacy of Great Britain following WWII.
The facts are that Churchill basically won the war for Britain and they thanked him by tossing him out and putting a bunch of brain-dead socialists in power.
the item your referring to with Bobby Fischer is from Seirawan & Stefanovic 1992, p. 22…..
After the 1972 World Chess Championship, Fischer did not play a competitive game in public for nearly 20 years n 1977 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he played three games against the MIT Greenblatt computer program, winning them all
at the time of the actual events, i was part of the manhatten chess club, and used to play ex soviets. i was never that good, but Maurice Seymour and my dad used to make a bit of extra scratch taking on people for money. Maurice was incredible chess player and loved playing me, and both taught me about real art, and such…
maurice would always beat me… but he loved playing cause of what i would do to desperately stay in the game pushing for 25 turn tie… he said i would make brilliant moves and then not know i did it and so did not capitalize on them… he played for the brilliant flash of ignorant desperation leading to interesting moves.
my favorite chess style would be Lasker.. incredibly aggressive, and amazingly so…
i prefer Go to Chess…
but if you want to understand international intrigue and things that are done, evne here, chess is the game.
especially the concept of disparate parts that converge over time to be something that is very dangerous or bad, but was thought of as innocuous and nothings..
you know, like ayers weather undergroud leading to the presidency by such methods…
an interesting book to read if your interested in how it applies to intrigue
“The KGB Plays Chess” by GM Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov (KGB Colonel, retired), Yuri Felshtinsky, and GM Viktor Korchnoi
Anatoly Karpov turned out to work with the KGB his codename was Raul…
Possessing a powerful intellect, a great player and a great manipulator, Karpov made splendid use the opportunities which opened up before him as an agent of the KGB.
– from the Foreward by Boris Gulko, pg 10
P&F, pg 21
ya have to study it to know, otherwise you wont even know your missing information in your thoughts and assesments!!!! but dont ignore it, as they have had huge influence to things, or havent you noticed that we have fulfilled most of the planks and such as to suskinds warnings?
I would add that the reaction of US politicians after WWII left something to be desired, too. We doubled down on the crazy League of Nations (which was a sick joke and an unnatural entity of the worst kind) and ratified the 4th Geneva Conventions, which basically declared “illegal” all the most effective tactics we had just used to win the war. To our credit, no one really took those conventions seriously (nor the UN, to start) but just giving such hair-brained and nutty ideas life was bad enough and certainly provided decent competition to the stupidity of the Brits in tossing Churchill out.
Of course, such silliness is to be expected after such traumatic events such as WWII (as when someone wakes up with a crushing hangover and “swears” that he’ll never drink again – LOL) but one usually hopes that such post-traumatic stupidity is restricted to unimportant issues.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Potsdam Conference in Germany was happening with Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin and Winston when the Labour Gov’t took over. Churchill was replaced at the vastly important table by the far less experienced and Leftward/Socialist Clement Atlee.
Breathtaking timing to understate it by a mile.
progressoverpeace:
You are taking my “doesn’t sound like…” quote out of context.
I wrote “doesn’t sound like much of a rejection of Churchill to me” in this context. This is the quote:
I think it’s very clear I’m referring to the entire history of Churchill’s postwar political career.
Of course the immediate postwar vote was a defeat, and a rejection at least partly aimed at Churchill (although probably more aimed at his party). But that’s not what I’m referring to in that quote, as you can see if you look at where in the post I put it.
Assistant Village Idiot Says:
June 10th, 2016 at 3:37 pm
One of the most discouraging things I have become increasingly convinced of over the past decade (or two), is how important narrative is in belief. Important facts are unremembered quickly; others gradually transform so that events of 1987 are re-remembered to 1985, or from Aunt Sophie’s house to Gramma Helen’s. This is not the pathological few. This is how memory works. This is why contact with relatives from different branches, or showing up at a school reunion after a long absence can be both exciting and confounding.
***
I remember many summer afternoons in my grandparent’s yard listening to Granny and Auntie sparring with each other interminably over when or where this or that happened, and they would never agree, and then re-run the same conversation the next week.
There is lots of research out on how our memory plays tricks on us.
You omit Neo to mention that he second time as PM was a disaster. Glossed over by the Churchill fans.
The thing is that Churchill was never that popular at the time.
The popularity is a retrospective thing — basically people’s gratitude for his service in the war. But if you read contemporary documents you can see it shining through.
There are many pockets that hated Churchill with a passion. His attitude to “colonials” was disgraceful (and ditching Australians in the deep end at Gallipoli and Singapore did little to help that). The Welsh didn’t forgive him for sending in the troops against their striking miners. The Catholic Irish hated him. The Liberal Party didn’t like him as a ship-jumper.
You are confusing your admiration with what the people at the time felt, which was quite different. I would suggest that he lost the election in 1945 because he was unlikeable and unliked.
Chester Draws:
I never said he was wildly popular in the Fifties in England, nor did I assume or suggest his PM-ship during the Fifities was especially successful.
Churchill always had his detractors. During the Thirties, in particular, he was considered at best mildly eccentric and at worst crazy and even dangerous. They called on him during the war because they recognized he would be the best person to lead the nation during wartime, and in particular because it turned out that much of the “crazy” stuff he was warning about during the 30s had been correct.
What I was trying to point out by this post was that you read over and over about his rejection by the British people postwar (usually the “ungrateful” British people) as though that was the end of the story between Churchill and the British people. It certainly was not. However “popular” he was or wasn’t during the early 50s, he was popular enough to have been the leader of his party as PM once again. That’s almost never part of the “narrative” that’s told by those who talk about the rejection—the fact that said rejection apparently was neither deep nor permanent.
I grew up during the 50s and 60s, by the way, and well remember when Churchill died (January of 1965). The Brits treated it like a very, very, VERY big deal.
Myths are about what people wish to be true and/or about what they wish other people to believe is true.
progressoverpeace,
Perhaps I misunderstand but the League of Nations matter happened after WWI not WWII…
Chester Draws,
What colonial attitudes might those be? If memory serves, commenter ‘blert’ recently asserted that Churchill was not responsible for Gallipoli. A reading of the Tonypandy riots demonstrates that the Welsh unfairly held Churchill responsible. The Catholic Irish favored disunion. Churchill right and wisely opposed any movement toward a balkinized UK. Reagan too was a ‘skip jumper’ and each had valid reasons for doing so.
I’m not disputing that Churchill was disliked by many but as Oscar Wild observed, “You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies”. Churchill was a giant among men.
Churchill was openly advocating sending MORE boys to the Far East to go shoulder to shoulder with America and Russia against Japan.
THAT’s what did him in — with 14th Army — in particular.
14th Army’s votes were the last to surge into Britain — as they had to be flown back from the Far East.
The RN vote from the Far East was also dismal, IIRC.
( Oft forgot, the RN was also active at Okinawa, American video histories entirely omit this British Fleet. They did make the USN overnight believers in armored flight decks. )
What no-one at the time imagined was that the atomic bomb was waiting in the wings to instantly terminate the Pacific Campaign.
The overwhelming popular consensus was that Japan would be a multi-year campaign. Visions of advancing through Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, China were bouncing through the brains of 14th Army.
The RN reported back suicidal furies at Okinawa… with no nearby port facilities to support the Royal Navy.
( Only the USN had an oceanic floating port. )
As they retreated, the Japanese left everything devastated — Warsaw, style.
Perhaps I misunderstand but the League of Nations matter happened after WWI not WWII…
Yes … and after WWII we doubled down on that stupidity by making an even worse entity – the UN. That was my point.
And neo, I know exactly what that quote I posted was from and referring to but I used that quote to answer your more general point that Churchill had not really been rejected by the Brits because they hired his party back later on. My point was that that later election didn’t matter. The Brits’ rejection of Churchill at the end of the war was the only significant point and it was an unequivocal, ungrateful, insane rejection of “the man” who had just saved them. Their later actions made no difference for this point. His later tenure as PM is totally inconsequential in assessing the mind-numbing ingratitude and stupidity of the British electorate immediately post-WWII.
British politics is not presidential; we vote for parties. In the summer of 1945 the Conservative Party was seen as the party of Appeasement and also associated with ‘The Hungry 30s’ (many a myth there).
Britain had become a socialist country to fight the war, and it seemed logical that peace time socialism would work even better. Attlee was no Churchill, but he seemed the man to make the transition from wartime to peace time socialism. He is still much admired for his character.
Churchill’s relationship with the Conservative party was ambiguous. He was far more of a Liberal. Churchill was about all the Conservatives had going for them. He alone was not enough.
The 1945 Election was a rejection of the past and an affirmation of the future.
We had, in WW II, rationing. There were other inconveniences not directly related to combat. Some rationing involved gasoline, so travel was difficult. Food was not as easily available.
Dozens, hundreds, of little pinpricks in daily life.
In the UK it was exponentially worse. Less food. Less energy. Street signs taken down. People looking over your shoulder for “spies”.
All at the behest of “the government” which, in British terms can mean either the mechanisms of government or the ruling coalition of the moment.
I’m sure getting rid of those so-and-sos was on everybody’s mind.
There’s a story that the socialist ministers said, after WW II, that an island made of coal and practically floating on fish can run out of neither. Shortly thereafter, both were rationed. So the government got out of the coal and fishing business and things returned to normal.
“The 1945 Election was a rejection of the past and an affirmation of the future.” Caedmon
Yes and we can all now see the future it led too; civilizational suicide.
It’s an interesting comparison that here in America, the General who won the war was made President in 1952.