England’s Angry Muslims,
Churchill, the Decline of Great Britain
--a discussion about the UK
Once
a month, a small group gathers in the Rockport Public Library, to
rip into some piece of world history.
William Tobin, history teacher at
Cambridge Rindge & Latin, began the group ten years ago, and now, he’s
pushed the fledgling history students out of the nest, to fly on their
own. He is now devoting his attention to
the company he formed four years ago, W.T. Green Energy Consultants.
This month,
the topic is The United Kingdom in the Twentieth Century.
In the past
few decades, many thousands of former subjects of the Queen have come “home” to
England
to work and live. A whole world of
Pakistanis came for jobs that paid much more than they could earn at home. They rented and bought cheap real estate and
formed ghettos. They had their families
join them, and they lived in tight-knit communities where they tried to
re-create the society they came from.
The same mosques, the same language, the same dress style, particularly
with the women. They did not, or could
not mix with the British population.
Jobs dried
up. They felt alienated and
frustrated. It took little to start the
idea of Jihad among some.
Beverly Varrengia introduced the subject of the growing population of
Muslims in the U.K. with Melanie Phillips’ book Londonistan: How Britain
Created a Terror State
How will Great Britain deal with a growing
population of people who have little desire to become members of British
society, who feel isolated and alienated, and in some cases have grown into a
massive, seething cauldron of hate and trouble?
We may see
the beginnings of the same situation in the United States , and certainly we
have seen it in several other European countries.
The word
“Multiculturalism”--- what does it mean?
Is there a general attitude amongst the majority of Britons of
appeasement, denial, compliance?
Then, we turn our attention to Northern
Ireland, and all those years of hateful conflict between the Loyalists, Protestants
holding on to Great Britain
for their lives, and the Catholic opposition
Dick Varrengia reports on Making
Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland New Amsterdam
Books. 2002. 368 pp.
“The Troubles” raged in Northern Ireland , and boiled over to Britain and Ireland during its nearly 30 years,
from the late 1960s until nearly 2000.
It is hard
to imagine the white-hot hatred of those times.
The tension
between England ’s
Muslims occupies our thoughts—then we’ve shifted to the tension between
Catholics and Protestants, who are all Irish.
Rick Heuser is next to present his view
of Britain
in the 20th century with Our
Times: The Age of Elizabeth II by A.N. Wilson.
Now, we’ve faced the raging
Muslims and the angry Northern Irish.
Now we have A.N. Wilson, an author of over 40 books, delving into the
modern history of Great
Britain . It’s not a pretty story, because Britain is in
“unrelenting decline.”
Dominic Sandbrook,
writing a review of Our Times in The Guardian in 2008 notes that Wilson
gives “the biggest beating” of any politician to “Roy Jenkins, or 'Woy', as
Wilson calls him. Since Jenkins is usually the hero of books like this, there
is something unexpectedly and perversely refreshing about finding him traduced.
When Woy first surfaces, Wilson draws attention to his 'Balliol bumptiousness'
and 'claret-marinaded dinner-party manners' and mocks the 'pomposity of his
aristocratic, high-table verbal mannerisms ... the ever-stirring right hand,
sometimes to emphasise a debating point, sometimes to feel along a hostess's
thigh'. But he is only warming up, for when Woy reappears as a founder of the
SDP, he is 'puffed-up, pompous and vacuous'. He was, Wilson tells us, 'an incompetent Home
Secretary and a disastrous Chancellor', his achievements dwarfed by those of
Margaret Thatcher, a 'person of high intelligence'.”
Which
brings us to the last book, which I report:
Churchill, A Biography, by Roy
Jenkins, 2001. New York
No one in
the United Kingdom made more
of an impact upon that country, indeed the British Empire ,
in the Twentieth Century than Winston Churchill.
In spite of
A.N. Wilson, I found Roy Jenkins in a different light. Jenkins (1920-2003) was
a career politician, entering Parliament in 1948 and staying connected with
British government for 50 years. His
biography of Churchill, one of 18 books he wrote, is an excellent look at the
long life of Winston Churchill (1874-1965).
Churchill
lived his life with a destiny for greatness.
He was a soldier, but unlike nearly any other. He managed to position himself where he would
experience danger, and then he managed to capture the exclusive rights to the
story. Even when he was on the Queen’s list as a young soldier, (in India , Sudan
and South Africa ) he was
mailing back thick dispatches to London
newspapers.
Roy Jenkins
wrote this voluminous engorgement of parliamentary history in two and a half
years, when he was in his eighties. At
every point one can sense Jenkins’ rather tart view of Churchill. He gives Winston his due, as a statesman,
elegant speaker and writer, but also as an almost mythical character, who always, in the direst of times, manages
to sit down to a well-laid table and enjoy a fine meal, with plenty of
champagne, port, brandy and a good cigar.
Churchill
might have been one of those fine men we have seen all through British history,
and that of the United
States .
The man, born to a leading family, accustomed to wealth and station,
attending the “right” schools, occupies reasonably impressive posts in
government.
In America , Henry
Cabot Lodge, Averill Harriman, Teddy Kennedy come to mind.
However,
Churchill, who tried his utmost time and again to elevate himself in British
government, from his days as a “Flailing” First Lord of the Admiralty in World
War I, became the right man at the right time after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s
disastrous handling of relations with Adolf Hitler put Britain at the
brink.
It is
amazing how Jenkins, an excellent writer, can delve into tons of letters,
diaries, official journals and other material to construct a colorful,
extremely detailed picture of Winston’s life and his relations with those
around him. Churchill often whisks
himself away to the south of France ,
or cadges a voyage in the Mediterranean aboard
the yacht of a wealthy acquaintance, and while he is thus “resting”, churns out
reams of manuscript for his next book or article.
Churchill’s
life style was legendary. He stayed in
bed until noontime, furiously dictating memos, letters, newspaper articles.
Then his valet drew his bath and he lowered his fat, pink body into the tub. After dressing, he would engage in the
performance of luncheon, which routinely involved distinguished guests who
would partake of Winston’s rich wit and wisdom.
There were always good food, wine and spirits, and cigars.
In the
afternoon, if Parliament were sitting, he would attend, and perhaps deliver a
speech.
Then there
would be dinner, another spread of elegant food, drink and people, usually with
Winston as the principal figure.
Jenkins’
account of Churchill’s leadership of Britain after he became Prime
Minister in May, 1940 is particularly interesting. Winston flew to France numerous times to try to
give the French leaders (PM Paul Reynaud et al) encouragement to resist Hitler.
At the same time, Churchill was trying his best to bring the United States into
the fray, so once he promised the French that American intervention was
nigh. Jenkins called Churchill’s
hopefulness of that “living in cloud-cuckoo land”.
Churchill
tried everything to get Roosevelt to commit to U.S. intervention. Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins to visit
Churchill early in 1941, and Hopkins
spent a month with him. The two formed a
fast friendship. Jenkins notes that Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s relationship
was never that warm sort of friendship.
Here’s this
comment:
“…in joint wartime
photographs, from Placentia to Yalta ,
Roosevelt always looked Churchill’s superior.
He held his head higher, and his careless yet patrician civilian clothes suited
him better than the fancy uniforms which Churchill was only too inclined to
assume…..Roosevelt… often enhanced by a long cigarette holder at a jaunty
angle. In the nicotine stakes this was a more elegant symbol than Churchill’s
often spittle-sodden cigars.” p.663.
Churchill
came to lead Britain
in its darkest hours at the start of the war with Hitler. He replaced Neville
Chamberlain, a man who will forever by identified with weakness and
appeasement. Nazi bombers were pounding
London and
other British cities, and invasion by the Germans by air and sea seemed
imminent. Morale was low. His leadership at the beginning was resisted,
and unappreciated, but he persisted, and the British people came to see him as
the figure leading them to victory.
In 1946,
after he was voted out of office and Clement Atlee became Prime Minister, the
new United States President Harry Truman invited Churchill to come to Westminster College
in Fulton , MO
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic ,
an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all
the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern
Europe . Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade,
Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them
lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or
another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases,
increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
In this
speech, which was met with great animosity not only in the USSR , but in many parts of the U.S. , Europe and the U.K. , Churchill drew the shape of
the Cold War that would dominate our lives for the next four decades. It was primarily important for sounding the
call for an alliance between the U.S.
and the U.K. to oppose
communism, and the beginning of the idea of a North
Atlantic alliance.
Churchill
suffered a final stroke 12 January 1965 and died 24 January. His funeral was a
grand affair, with his body lying in state in Westminster Hall for three days.
This was the first time such an affair for a non-royal personage had taken
place since the death of Gladstone
in 1898.
If you live near Rockport, we invite you to
join us for History Book Club meetings.
Our next meeting is Wednesday, October 31
(Hallowe’en). The topic will be Russia USSR , or any
related topic.
For its November 30 meeting the club will
turn its attention to Germany in the 20th century, and that will
include the start of the century, the Kaiser and the Great War, the Weimar
Republic, the origin of the Nazi party and Hitler, World War II, Divided
Germany after the war, the Berlin Blockade, the Fall of the Berlin Wall,
Reunification, or other such topics. Richard Verrengia will lead this meeting.
The January, 2013 meeting will focus on China in the 20th
century, from Sun-Yat-Sen to the Rape of Nanking, Chiang Kai-Shek
and World War II, Mao Tse-Dung (Zedong) and the Cultural Revolution, and China
after Mao. Rick Heuser will chair this meeting.
The Personal Navigator offers these books
for sale:
Journal of Countess
Françoise Krasinska Great Grandmother of Victor Emmanuel, attributed to
Klementyna Tanska Hoffman, translated from the Polish by Kasimir Dziekonska. 1896 Chicago ,
IL Warsaw ,
about the King, Augustus III, her sister Basia's forthcoming marriage, and
apologizes for disparaging comments about the Staroste, whom she will
marry. Her own wedding is dreadful,
conducted in strict secrecy before dawn, to the Duke of Courland. The journal ends at that point. The Countess lives a wandering life, in
convents in Warsaw and Cracow , her fickle husband returns from time
to time, but their marriage is kept secret, to spare the old king the shock.
She finally joined him in Saxony , he clung to
her and they lived happily. They had one
child, Marie Christine, who married the Duke of Savoy. They had two children, a
girl who married the King of Lombardy-Venice and a son who became the father of
Victor Emmanuel. Both the King and Queen of Italy are the great-great
grandchildren of Françoise Krasinska (1895). With illustrations including
portrait of the Countess at frontispiece. Decorated
maroon cloth on board, spine missing, thus poor. (8267). $22.00. Biography
Lowell on the Merrimack, An Art Souvenir explaining 54
Albertype views of the principal Public Buildings, etc. of the City of Lowell,
Mass. by Bigelow, Edwin S., Compiler
and Publisher. 1892 Lowell , MA
Temple Bar, vols. 94, 95. 96, 97, and
102
Temple Bar, with which is incorporated "Bentley's
Miscellany", A London Magazine for Town and
Country Readers, Vol. 97, January to April 1893 London , England New
Burlington Street Russia Lake Onega ,
shoots a splendid old male bear, 540 lbs. "The
Campaign of Waterloo
Temple Bar, with which is incorporated "Bentley's
Miscellany", A London Magazine for Town and
Country Readers, Vol. 95, May to August 1892 London , England New Burlington Street Concord English Court France
Temple Bar, with which is incorporated "Bentley's
Miscellany", A London Magazine for Town and
Country Readers, Vol. 96, September to December 1892 London , England New Burlington Street
Temple Bar, with which is incorporated "Bentley's
Miscellany", A London Magazine for Town and
Country Readers, Vol. 94, January to April 1892 London , England New
Burlington Street England France Toulouse Norway
Temple Bar, with which is incorporated "Bentley's
Miscellany", A London Magazine for Town and
Country Readers, Vol. 102, May to August 1894
London , England New Burlington Street St. Petersburg ; "The
unspeakable Turk" and Turkish-French-Russian foreign relations as Russia France
saw Turkey and Poland Versailles Egerton Castle
Contact me at scoulbourn1@verizon.net
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