Why Churchill?

Sir Martin Gilbert

One of the leading historians of his time and the official biographer of Winston Churchill 

for more than 40 years, Martin Gilbert passed away in London on February 3, 2015. 

His career was dedicated to the writing of “true history,” based on the idea that 

 “what happened in the past is unalterable and definite.” 

He worked tirelessly to uncover and write this history, publishing 88 books on

 Winston Churchill, the World Wars, the Jewish people, the Holocaust, Israel, and

 the 20th century. His commitment and mastery of his discipline shines in his greatest 

challenge: the nearly five decades he spent as the official biographer of Winston Churchill.

 His labors produced a biography that is essential reading for those who wish to

 understand the judgments of the supreme statesman of his time. Those who love freedom 

and seek to understand history owe Sir Martin a debt beyond repayment.

Hillsdale College is honored to have shared a long partnership with Martin Gilbert.

 In 2002, he was named the William and Berniece Grewcock Distinguished Fellow at 

Hillsdale College. In this capacity, he taught several courses on Churchill and gave 

numerous public lectures.

 Through the Churchill Project, Hillsdale College endeavors to propagate and 

expand Martin Gilbert’s masterful work on Churchill.

Churchill & Hillsdale

Hillsdale College has launched the Churchill Project to propagate a right understanding 

of Churchill’s record. Through the Churchill Project, it will complete the remaining

 volumes of The Churchill Documents, a series in the official biography of Winston Churchill. 

It will archive the papers of Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer from 1968 to 2012. 

And it will promote Churchill scholarship through national conferences, scholarships, 

online courses, and an endowed faculty chair. Through these endeavors, Hillsdale College 

will establish itself at the forefront of Churchill research, scholarship, and analysis.

 *** 

Why Churchill?

Winston Churchill’s career presents an unsurpassed opportunity for such study because it

 was so long, because the facts of it are so well recorded, and because its quality was

 so very high. His career spanned the most traumatic events in history—the largest wars, 

the greatest depression, the worst tyrannies, and the most rapid advancement of technology

 and therefore of human power. As he faced these crises, Churchill wrote with profuse detail 

and with great ability about his doings, thereby leaving one of the richest records of

 human undertaking.

  ==================================

Terrorism, as Churchill saw it, is not irrelevant to the world we live in.
 His words were little quoted in the past, when it was not the problem it is today.
His 1935 remark on the Government of India Act, warning of the danger if terrorists
were elected to the Bengal Assembly, puts us in mind of the election of a Hamas government
 in Palestine in 2006—or, the unelected advent of what calls itself an Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria.
“No countries are less prepared to deal with terrorism than Western democracies,”
he said in 1947. ”…squalid warfare with terrorists should be avoided, and if ever it breaks out,
 every effort should be made—I exclude no reasonable proposal—to bring it to an end.”
 Above all he emphasized that respecting terrorism, national politics must stop at the
water’s edge. If it does not, he believed, “all hopes are lost, all plans squandered”:
wise words that alas would go mainly unheeded in later times, but are perhaps worth
heeding now.

Excerpts from Churchill by Himself, edited by Richard M. Langworth

1920

What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a
 particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd,
but the whole district or the whole country.…Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the
British pharmacopoeia.… I have heard the Hon. Member for Hull
 [Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy] speak on this subject. His doctrine and his policy is to
 support and palliate every form of terrorism as long as it is the terrorism of revolutionaries
against the forces of law, loyalty and order. Governments who have seized upon power by
 violence and by usurpation have often resorted to terrorism in their desperate efforts to keep
 what they have stolen, but the august and venerable structure of the British Empire,
where lawful authority descends from hand to hand and generation after generation,
does not need such aid. Such ideas are absolutely foreign to the British way of doing things.

— House of Commons, 8 July 1920, following a report on a massacre of

 Indians at Amritsar. Joseph Montague Kenworthy, 10th Baron Strabolgi (1886-1953), 

was a Liberal MP (1919–26) and Labour MP (1926–31).

1922

…Terrorists are naturally drawn to imitate Lenin and Trotsky;
 while we sh[oul]d take our stand on the will of the people freely expressed in both cases.

—To Austen Chamberlain, 13 May 1922

1935

…there is real danger of dangerous terrorists, persons engaged in the gravest forms of
 terrorism, standing for the Legislature of Bengal in particular and being elected for
 the Bengal Assembly, unless this bar is put in their path.…If it is a fact that under this
constitution the Provincial Legislature of Bengal may select dangerous terrorists and send
them to the Federal Legislature then all I can say is that I hope this will be noticed by
people  outside these doors.

—House of Commons, 12 March 1935

1944

A number of persons suspected of active complicity in terrorist activities have been arrested,
 and on October 19th, 251 were deported from the country, where their presence, with the
possibility of a large-scale attempt at rescue, only led to increased insecurity.
Since then, numerous further arrests have been made, including those of some wanted
terrorists.…In Palestine the executive of the Jewish Agency has called upon the
Jewish community—and I quote their actual words:
“to cast out the members of this destructive band, to deprive them of all refuge and shelter,
 to resist their threats, and to render all necessary assistance to the authorities in the
prevention of terrorist acts, and in the eradication of the terrorist organization.”
These are strong words, but we must wait for these words to be translated into deeds.
 We must wait to see that not only the leaders, but every man, woman and child of the
 Jewish community, does his or her best to bring this terrorism to a speedy end.

—House of Commons, 17 November 1944, following the murder of Lord Moyne, the Minister Resident in Cairo, by members of the terrorist Stern Gang on 5 November 1944.

1947

The idea that general reprisals upon the civil population and vicarious examples would be
consonant with our whole outlook upon the world and with our name, reputation and
 principles, is, of course, one which should never be accepted in any way.
We have, therefore, very great difficulties in conducting squalid warfare with terrorists.
That is why I would venture to submit to the House that every effort should be made to avoid getting into warfare with terrorists; and if a warfare with terrorists has broken out, every effort should be made—I exclude no reasonable proposal—to bring it to an end.…
No country in the world is less fit for a conflict with terrorists than Great Britain.
That is not because of her weakness or cowardice; it is because of her restraint and virtues,
and the way of life which we have lived so long in this sheltered island.

—House of Commons, 31 January 1947

1951

The impression has got about the world that we have only to be kicked or threatened
 to clear out of any place. The Persians like the idea of nationalization of other people’s
 property and, under the pressure of the terrorists in Teheran, they now propose to seize
the Anglo-Persian oilfields, which have been discovered and developed by fifty years of British
 brains and capital. Iraq threatens the same policy of spoliation.…
All this and much else is happening within six years of the world war, in which for more than
 a year we sustained the cause of freedom alone and from which we emerged with complete
victory and worldwide respect.

—Scottish Unionist Association, Glasgow, 18 May 1951

Further reading:

 “Churchill and Terrorism”

“Anarchism and Fire: What we Can Learn from Sidney Street”