Lion to the Last

[Valin]

National Review:

Winston Churchill’s unrelenting fight against socialism

Larry P. Arnn

Jan. 24 2014

 

In June 1945, a month after the Germans’ surrender, with the general-election campaign under way, Winston Churchill gave a 21-minute speech by radio. He was 70 years old. To the shock of much of Britain, it included this:

 

 

I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

 

 

Asserting in 1945 that the socialists would become like the Nazis was met with outrage, and even Churchill’s allies and members of his family heavily criticized the speech, which was dubbed his “crazy broadcast.” A month later, Churchill’s Conservatives were not just beaten in the election, they were overwhelmed — by a Labour party that gained the largest majority in the history of modern British politics to that time.

 

But in 1945 he refused advice to rise above the fray and become a revered eminence. He could have had something like the moral position of Hindenburg after the Great War, war hero and chancellor of Germany. But he seems to have thought that failing to state his views about socialism in the strongest terms would be to emulate Hindenburg in another way: It would be to welcome a doctrine as vile as Nazism into the government of Britain. Rather than take his victory lap, Churchill attempted, among his other purposes, to expel socialism from British politics.

 

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death. Half a century later, Churchill is still relevant and still a statesman of our time deserving our attention and study....................(Snip)

 

 

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Winston Churchill, a 19th century man stuck in the 20th century.