Winston Churchill: ‘A committed Anti-Nazi, he was not Anti-Fascist’

• THE Spanish Inquisition was horrific and was the origin of the racial theories that subsequently underpinned the slave trade and everything that has followed, up to and including our current situation.

However, despite the disgraceful discrimination present in modern Spain, Spaniards on the whole do not have the colonial mindset found in the UK.

They accept, admit, and refuse to condone, their brutal history and the effect on their current policy is lessened as a result.

There are museums documenting their history, in context and without excuse. That’s what should happen regarding British colonialism in general and Winston Churchill in particular.

Spain have even made token reparations in the form of Spanish citizenship rights, whereas we deported long-term British citizens.

Spaniards are still intensely patriotic as they reconcile these issues as children. We do not do this here and this is why so many are struggling with the cognitive dissonance that comes from challenges to lifelong ideas and beliefs and is why we need to be taught this history from a young age.

Churchill was gravely unpopular until the start of World War II and was thrown out of office immediately afterwards, for good reason.

If it wasn’t for the rise of German fascism he would be remembered for his strategic incompetence during WWI, particularly at Gallipoli, for the partition of Ireland, the Black and Tans, and everything that resulted from the creation of the British border, the torture of the Mau Mau, setting tanks on strikers in Tonypandy, and the starvation of Bengal; not to mention his own fascist ideas and statements.

A committed Anti-Nazi, he was not Anti-Fascist.

He had a world view that was regressive by the standards of the late 19th century and his reputation was only saved by the fantastic coincidence that occurred when the strategic needs of the British Empire aligned with the needs of humanity and was cemented by the fact he was able to write his own history.

The stand he took against the Nazi desire to Empire-build is unduly coloured by subsequent knowledge of the Nazi atrocities.

This has led to a cultural consensus that it was a war against bigotry, fascism and to protect free speech, when those things were simply positive side effects of a war to prevent our own colonisation.

As we derive much of our national self-esteem from our “lone stand” (notwithstanding the help from the 8.5 million colonial forces) we have used this nostalgia to create a false narrative that we cannot have racial justice issues because we went to war to save the Jews. What we are seeing now is the result of sanctifying this man’s ideas.

Churchill’s impact on modern policy is enormous because his impact on British attitudes is enormous. I don’t blame anyone who did not know this history for believing the hero narrative. We were all fed that line. We all believed it.

However, if you are able to look at the reality of the man and still believe him to be unsullied we do not have a difference in political opinion, we have a difference in morality.

JESSICA BALDWIN