Churchill – Right and Wrong

In the film Darkest Hour, Churchill’s most famous speech is depicted. ‘We will fight them on the beaches…’
And the speech goes on ‘and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.’
Churchill was right, it was the ‘New World’ far more ancient than the Old, in the form of the Indian Empire that did indeed come to the ‘rescue and the liberation of the old’. And it did not wait until Britain was subjugated or starving, as Churchill did with the Bengal Famine.
“It is nothing short of a miracle…which has called men from the uttermost ends of the earth… and which has caused human beings to do the most incalculable, improvident and, from a narrow point of view, profitless things.” This was Winston Churchill describing to the House of Commons the support for the war effort from the people of what was then the British Empire.
Berlin - which could have been during the Cold War the trigger for World War 3. And indeed would have made Germany at the heart of a third consecutive global War – and why papers released in Britain in 2009 show Margaret Thatcher was not exactly thrilled about a unified Germany.
Brexit owes much to World War 2 and how Britain sees itself in our outside Europe. But immigration that other major issue of our times is also connected to World War 2.
 There is a part of immigration policy connected to military service of course. Just ask the Ghurkas who are able to now reside in Britain because of their military service, or indeed myself as the off-spring of a member of the British Army having the same privilege when the laws were different.
Immigration policy in this country and our attitude elderly immigrants needs to have as much honour as we do for our war Dead.
There was a document for schoolchildren ‘We also served’. In it is recounted one quote to catch my eye: ‘I was a little coloured boy from the Caribbean and I instinctively call him Sir. “No Sir,” he hastily corrected. “It is I who call you Sir”, Flight Lieutenant Billy Strachan on being introduced to his newly appointed batman.
Of course little did Churchill know that as he spoke those words in tribute to the peoples of the Empire, it would be one of them, the one he termed a ‘half-naked fakir’ from Gujarat who would both support the War effort, and ensure the demise of the Empire peacefully too. On that name for Mahatma Gandhi and his view of him, Churchill was wrong.