Would Churchill have supported Brexit?

-
There has been a terrific amount of drivel written about Britain needing to engender some wartime spirit and defeat the enemy during Brexit.

There has been some good commentary in the press for example this extensive research in E-International Relations by Alistair Steward.

There is also, of course some complete horlicks floating around mainly in the Brexiteer press and the comments sections.


This comment by Euan Scott: First sentence correct, second sentence complete make believe.


Here another comment from the Telegraph newspaper on this article.

Here Simon Coulter uses the same technique as the first comment - write some genuine text then make up some "analysis".

Churchill may have shifted his opinion over the years, as many do, but after the war he became more in favour of a United States of Europe and all that that entails.

At the first Congress of Europe Churchill said:

..."Mutual aid in the economic field, and 'joint military defence', must both 'inevitably be accompanied step by step with parallel policy of closer political unity"....  "It is said with truth that this involves some sacrifice or merger of national sovereignty.' 1

  page 407 Gilbert, M.

So there we have it.    I would like to add that I find it incredibly frustrating when I hear Brexiteers cry... "We don't want to be ruled by Germany!"   Do they not understand that for every bit of "ruling" the Germans do of Britain... we are "ruling" them back in equal measure?

Did Churchill see Britain's role in Europe as a "great trading nation with our European friends?"  or did he see some closer union?

For the avoidance of doubt whether Churchill meant to include Britain in the United States of Europe - which some commentators seem to assume he didn't.  Please read the analysis of Churchill's speech from a debate on Foreign Affairs in the House Commons on March 28, 1950 p520

"There could be 'no hope' for a United Europe without Germany, and there was 'no hope' for Germany except within a free and United Europe.  Britain, France and Germany should, by combining together, make the 'core or nucleus upon which all the other civilised democracies of Europe, bound or free, can one day rally and combine'".2

So I hope that settles it.

1 page 407 Gilbert, M  Winston S. Churchill VIII, Martin Gilbert 1988
2 page 502 Gilbert, M  Winston S. Churchill VIII, Martin Gilbert 1988

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why does Premiere Pro "Sequence from clip" on MP4 and then "Match Sequence" result in a massive AVI file?

-
Image
Good Question! You would imagine that just "trimming" an MP4 file with same setting would be quick and painless, but when I tried it the resultant file was massive - like 10x the size of the original file. https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/match-sequence-settings-mp4-to-mpeg-is-this-normal/td-p/11042944 Turns out this is because the .mp4 compression means there aren't really full frames in the file just deltas. So when you select "Match Sequence Settings", it has to give you AVI format anyway. So this is what you HAVE to do.   Go ahead and create your HUGE AVI file.  Then use an app or an online service to compress it back down... I had a good result using  https://cloudconvert.com/avi-to-mp4 It shrunk the 76Mb AVI to less than half a Mb.  
Read more

Churchill's Reaction to Eisenhower's Speech at the English Speaking Union 1951

-
Image
I'm still reading Never Despair Winston S. Churchill  1945-1965 by Martin Gilbert.  It is a bible-sized book, albeit the print is slightly bigger, and it will take me a while yet. Recently I've come across an interesting chapter.   This section of interesting stuff starts on Page 619. Interesting to me, and those Brits and others on the EU side of the Brexit-argument, I've found more compelling evidence to answer the question:  " Would Winston Churchill have been in favour of Britain being in the EU?" .   Of course, I believe the answer (certainly after the War) was that he would have been in favour. Ike Eisenhower made a speech at the English Speaking Union Dinner on July 3, 1951.  Churchill was there.  Churchill didn't actually hear the speech well enough at the time, but read it's transcript the following day.  He was ecstatic when he did. Eisenhower and Churchill The relevant text, of the above mentioned book, is as follows;  " ...So pleased wa
Read more

Randsomeware and blackmail crimes to be solved in the future like DNA genetic finger prints can help now?

-
Having recently become away of an egregious cyber crime incident where a criminal gang attempted to extort a large sum from an organisation via blackmail using a crypto wallet as the money drop; I was musing about the possibility that this crime might one day be solved, and the culprits apprehended in the same way that sex criminals have been apprehended many years after their crimes by DNA matches to evidence left at the scene. Over the past years there have been many successful prosecutions of criminals who committed crimes against innocent people, during the assault they have left bodily fluids or matter that at the time of the assault would have been unable to identify the assailant. The clothing of the victim had been stored however by the police, and as time and technology has moved on so have advanced in DNA matching. Subsequently the criminal, often many years later, has been apprehended as for some reason, often suspicion to do with another crime, they have given a DNA sa
Read more