FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Greatest Briton

Rant Number 406 10 August 2010

Greatest Briton

‘I do not admit the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there a long time. I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that stronger race, a higher grade race...has come in and taken their place.’ Winston Churchill

The ‘dog in the manger’, by the way, meant the Arabs of Palestine, who objected to Zionist colonisation of their land.

In 2003 Winston Churchill was voted the ‘Greatest Briton’ of all time. Now, as Shakespeare puts it, some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them. Churchill’s own greatness – the son of a Lord, the Prime Minister of a worldwide empire and a much glorified war leader - indeed encompasses all of those. However, in the next five years an orgy of WWII anniversaries is going to be unleashed upon us. Churchill’s name will loom very large in it. Hence it is salutary to remember that being great and being flawed are not incompatible. The greatest Briton’s evidence to the 1937 Peel Commission on Palestine exemplifies that.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, taken by Zionists as their Magna Charta, promised Jews a national home in Palestine. ‘We did not adopt Zionism entirely out of altruistic love of starting a Zionist colony’ Churchill candidly told fellow Harrovian Lord Peel ‘...we gained great advantages in the war...it was a matter of great importance to this country’. Bloody true. Until 1917 many Zionists recoiled from supporting a Britain allied to a Tsarist Russia notorious for anti-Semitic pogroms. After Balfour influential Zionists agitated to bring America into the war, effectively saving the British Empire from the Huns. With that at stake, cynically selling the Arabs down the river surely was a mere bagatelle, no?

By 1936 the Palestinians were in revolt. Zionist settlers had reached 400.000. Arabs were less than pleased. Lord Peel saw the problem – in his own terms: ‘That terrifies the Arabs, of course. They know they are – I call them – an inferior race in many ways to the Jews...the Jews will rule them financially, culturally and educationally.’ Churchill agreed: ‘Why is there injustice done if people come in and make a livelihood for more and make the desert into palm groves and orange groves? There is no injustice. The injustice is when those who live in the country leave it to be a desert for thousands of years.’

The desert. Interesting how Judaism, Islam and Christianity initially had a lot to do with the desert. But Winston seems to have had a bit of a down on it. ‘You find where the Arab goes it is often desert...where there is now desert would become a really lovely place (thanks to the Jews) and the Arabs would reap the benefit.’ Pity the Arabs did not see it like that. Maybe they just preferred ‘the desert’ to losing their homeland, who knows?

It seems Churchill – unlike another great British imperialist PM, Disraeli - was not quite a fan of Islam. ‘When the Mohammedan upset occurred in world history and the great hordes of Islam swept over those places they broke it all up, smashed it all up. You have seen the terraces on the hills which used to be cultivated, which under Arab rule have remained a desert.’

Sir Horace Rumbold, a member of the Commission, sought to redress the balance a little. He pointed out that the Arabs ‘created a good deal of civilisation in Spain’. Churchill’s reply was curt, lapidary: ‘I am glad they were thrown out.’ ‘It is a lower manifestation, the Arab’ for good measure he added.

The great Briton’s position on the Arabs of Palestine was unambiguous. He set forth a straight argument from military conquest. ‘These Arabs were a poor people...they lived fairly easily in flat squalor... when the war came they became our enemies...but our armies advanced and they were conquered...they were beaten and our disposition...they were beaten out of the place. Not a dog could bark.’

But were not the Arabs Britain’s allies? Lawrence of Arabia and all that? Sir Harold Morris, another member, sought clarification. ‘The Arabs from the Hedjaz were our allies’ Winston countered. But the Arabs of Palestine fought with the Turks, Britain’s enemies. A true and exemplary answer. Only, just a whiff of the old ‘divide and rule’, perhaps? But that’s the way it is meant to be...

The quirkiest passage in Churchill’s deposition for me came when he raised the spectrum or bogey of Britain finding it all a bit too much. He imagined the Brits clearing out and the Italians coming in. ‘They would love to. They would have no trouble at all. They would use ruthless force: they would kill the whole lot of their opponents. They made an offer to the Jews if they could get their support and help they would clear the Arabs out...The Arabs would never get on with the Italians. The Jews could perfectly well manage to do it.’

What a scenario! Today in 2010 Berlusconi’s Italy is a laughing stock and people regard Italians as a jolly and benign bunch, if generally incompetent and a bit corrupt. Think that in 1937 Mussolini’s fascist Italy was thought a confident, aggressive and young imperialism, bent on a campaign of pillage and plunder in Africa! Amazing. How times change! But I disagree with Winston. He thought that Mussolini was very anxious to grab Palestine. The Duce was a big bungler but even he cannot have been as foolish as that. Too much of a hot potato. His real mistake was to think backward, basically peasant Italy could score against the mighty British Empire. That was stupid, stupid, stupid. His downfall followed. Served him right.

To conclude. Some of Winston’s derogatory remarks are simply part of the terminology of the time. What shocks today was once commonplace. All empires – Arab and Ottoman included – have often dealt harshly with subject peoples. ‘What are great empires but bands of robbers?’ lamented St Augustine long ago. He got it right. Greed, robbery and plunder are the engines of all human empires. Nonetheless, the British Empire was probably one of the best - or less bad, at least. But the Palestine imbroglio is still insoluble.

The priest admires Churchill as a writer of great historical books, as a man of culture and a wit. But was he the Greatest Briton? No way. For that I shall stick to King Arthur.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli