Because he could write, and because he had sex with lots of women. I don’t really think there’s any more to it than that.

As the Marr piece says, no-one took Clark seriously enough to believe that he meant what he said.

Tim J…seems Alan was doing a David Lloyd George impression.

Perhaps it’s because despite his views, Clark was never in a position to do any damage.

Richard,

He granted export licenses to Iraq and was largely responsible for Matrix Churchill. No damage? What’s your definition of ‘damage’ then? Nuclear war?

Here’s what Dominic Lawson had to say:

“At the time, this country had an embargo against selling weaponry to Saddam Hussein. Clark did not agree with this policy, and so gave the nod and a wink to a company called Matrix Churchill to sell machine tools to Saddam, which he knew were for military use. This was against the law, so when HM Customs discovered the shipments, the Matrix Churchill executives were arrested. They protested that the then Trade Minister Clark had given them the all-clear; but when he was visited by the police, he lied and said that he had done no such thing.”

No damage? He helped arm the very country who we’re now at war with and got people chucked in prison to save his skin!

No damage! Good grief.

“He granted export licenses to Iraq and was largely responsible for Matrix Churchill. No damage?”

I was referring to damage that might have been caused by his political and racial views e.g. enacting racist policies.

The Matrix Churchill affair was outrageous and damaging but I wouldn’t say it was linked to Clarke’s disturbing political philosophy.

For every Tory Nazi sympathiser, there are a dozen admirers of Stalin, Mao, and other mass murderers. There’s a Labour parliamentary group which admires the brutal dictator Castro, and plenty of support in the Labour movement for Hugo Chavez who surely is losing any pretence at democracy.

“While Winston Churchill was deservedly voted greatest Briton…”

Sorry, what?
Churchill was a prize twat, and that’s about it…

I hardly think his actions throughout his political career merit any kind of praise on a (nominally) left-leaning website!

7 – fuckwit. Even regardless of his role in defeating the Nazis, I’d have thought that a left-leaning website should still applaud a politician who introduced the first minimum wage, the first Labour Exchanges and the first unemployment insurance.

Ignorance is rarely a good starting point for debate.

One of the many surprising elements of Alistair Campbell’s diaries is the closeness between him and Clark (they’re often having dinner, inviting Clark and his wife as dinner party guests, or Clark is heaping praise on new Labour). I suspect Clark was always suspectible to liking a party which made a fetish of newness, and Campbell was the kind of unexamining type who was carried along with the idea of Clark of a rogue who liked shagging birds, rather than fascist bastard, since the former fitted the misogyny that those diaries leave opne with the strong impression was the lingua franca of the inner circle.

6

My post is about Alan Clark as a Nazi sympathiser who became a “national treasure”. It neither says nor implies ‘all Conservatives or right-wingers are fascists’. Rather, it quotes several Conservatives, such as Dominic Lawson and Edwina Currie, criticising Clark’s Nazi advocacy/toleration/fantasies. Nor is it simply a question of politics – it is also interesting with regard to the Book of the Week/BBC serialisation approach to Clark. Clearly, being a rogue who was a good writer was trumps re public expression of fascism.

So if you really want to have a “are all Labour people secret Maoists and Stalinists and all Tories secret fascists” discussion, go ahead, but I personally find that tedious and boring. In any event, any question of double standards then depends on establishing which side of the standard one wants to be on. If prominent left-wing figures were to make comments of this nature about genocidal regimes such as those of Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, then I would have no difficulty treating them in precisely the same way. The point may be how far it would be likely for them to receive a similar level of affection and deference. I don’t personally feel one can make a direct analogy between say Alan Clark’s Nazism and Eric Hobsbawm’s Communism, but again if you feel that is an illuminating discussion, do please enlighten us all with it.

7
Jay. I entirely disagree. Churchill made lots of mistakes throughout his career, but he was right on one very important foundational and existential question. So we owe him rather a lot in being able to have this discussion, in my view. (Churchill was also complex and contradctory, and as Tim J has noted, was himself a man of the liberal left of his time, as a New Liberal, both after and before being a Conservative, so yours seems a rather one-dimensional account to me).

I wrote about Churchill’s reputation in this Observer book review a while ago
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/feb/13/biography.features1

For every Tory Nazi sympathiser, there are a dozen admirers of Stalin, Mao, and other mass murderers

typical whataboutery

8 – nor is “fuckwit” the best opening gambit I’ve ever heard, comrade.

Should leftists really applaud the arch-imperialist, the very embodiment of the old guard, the establishment, the old colonial, who himself applauded the use of chemical weapons against “uncivilised tribes” in Iraq?

Should we applaud the tireless warhorse who wanted to “strangle Bolshevism” in its cradle?

Does Churchill’s “role in defeating the Nazis” extend, do you think, to his support for the bombing of (civilian) Dresden?

Do you support or condone his views on race, or empire?

Churchill’s record on labour (the minimum wage, etc.) is merely a function of his role in the counter-revolution – “reforming” capitalism so as to ensure its continued existence. I do not doubt that he was a shrewd, calculating bastard.

If you genuinely think that Churchill advanced the interests of the working class before those of his own, you’re more of a “fuckwit” than I thought.

12 – it’s about what you’re worth chief.

Should we applaud the tireless warhorse who wanted to “strangle Bolshevism” in its cradle?

Um… is this a trick question? Comrade?

Does Churchill’s “role in defeating the Nazis” extend, do you think, to his support for the bombing of (civilian) Dresden?

Yup.

Jay@12

These are all polemical points on the charge sheet. Some are probably fairly accurate. I am less worried about his wish to strangle Bolshevism, which is not a great liberal cause for me, though on the whole in reality he was a great ally of Stalin’s in the circumstances he faced.

Churchill held views which were racist (in that he believed in hierarchies of different races) at a time when the idea of human equality across the races was not the majority position in any major western society, not least because most of them were running colonial Empires at the time. Sure, I think that its a shame that he wasn’t a pioneer of a more enlightened liberal minority attitude, which have increasingly become more normal in our societies and to the idea of human equality to which most societies now pay lip service at least. Understanding that in its historical context, which is not the same thing as to condone, excuse or agree with it. I suspect many of us would make some distinction between those who hold sexist or racist attitudes which were the norm at the time, and those who were particularly sexist or racist including by the standards of their own society and context.

His strategic view of Empire is very interesting because I think it is basically incompatible with his opposition to appeasement. He was clear that “he had not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire”. But that is precisely what fighting the second world war did, and what several of Churchill’s opponents in the 1930s knew it would. That is also why Churchill had to rely on the Labour members of the war cabinet to see off the final push, from Lord Halifax and others, to try to negotiate peace with Hitler through the Italians in 1940, if we can make one semi-partisan point.

But I think the historical revisionists like John Charmley have failed to land this (basically valid) punch on Churchill’s reputation, because our society is thankfully now entirely out of sympathy with both Churchill and his pro-appeasement opponents on this point. So nobody now understands the appeasers’ motivation, because most of us think that both of these outcomes were positive (the end of Empire, the defeat of fascism). But that was the American view, not the British one, and we all now have some tendency to think that history was bound to end up like that, even though there is no reason to think this. So this was a very welcome mistake – and the best thing that ever happened to the British Empire was the nature and timing of its demise.

On the working-classes. There is an argument that would never forgive Churchill for his role in the National Strike, or for getting the argument on the Gold Standard badly wrong if you are a Keynesian liberal. Even very accurate specific charges against him are outweighed by his role at a moment of existential national threat. So I humbly submit that – in the balance of his historical reputation – his contribution to the second world war must outweigh these issues. It does for me anyway. now, I might personally cast a vote for somebody else as greatest Briton – not sure who – but I really can’t disagree with the idea that Churchill is the natural and correct winner.

10 – the fact that Churchill was “right” on – presumably – the question of (eventually) opposing the Nazi threat in Europe, is not sufficient to redeem his many flaws.

Stalin fought against Hitler – and far more effectively. Are we to consider him a “great man” as a result?

I am well aware that Churchill has been labelled a member of the “liberal left” – “of his time”, as you correctly add – but this does not remotely alter the fact that his discourse remained that of class struggle (in the context of imperialism) and that it was his own class whose interests he ultimately defended.

13 – how predictable.

No trick question whatever, as I’m sure you well know.

The fact that Churchill felt able to sing the praises of Franco and Mussolini, whilst foaming at the mouth in an attempt to crush the Bolsheviks, should tell you something about the man and where his political allegiances lay.

I think it is instructive that your response to the question of the firebombing of Dresden receives a dismissive ‘yup’. Presumably the Kurdish victims of poison gas, had the British army acted on Churchill’s considered advice, would have heard: ‘meh’.

Churchill was a British imperialist. His actions – lamentable or heroic (from a modern, ‘enlightened’ perspective) – are tangled in this web. There is nothing for leftists to applaud.

For every Tory Nazi sympathiser, there are a dozen admirers of Stalin, Mao, and other mass murderers.

Quite right, barely a day goes by when some trot doesn’t spend half an hour extolling the virtues of Genrikh Yagoda to me.

On the ‘issue’ of Churchill, he was a fucking drunk, you might as well discuss the ramblings of a piss soaked tramp.

IMO Dominic Lawson’s assessment of Clark is largely, if not entirely, valid

The one small but significant academic debt I think we owe to Alan Clark is that he made us reflect in retrospect about whether Churchill had been sensible in May 1940 about rejecting almost out-of-hand all proposals or hints about doing a deal with the Nazis. Such a deal would not only have taken us out of the war in Europe but it would have rendered any subsequent sea-borne liberating invasion of Europe even more costly in terms of lives and resources than the Normandy invasion of June 1944.

By accounts, on becoming PM, Churchill learned of secret foreign office initiatives to keep open diplomatic channels to the Nazi government in Germany through Sweden, which subsequently remained neutral through the war and supplied iron ore to Germany across the Baltic. Churchill ordered the channels closed. On informing his multiparty war cabinet, the Labour members of the cabinet applauded the decision. For the history, try: John Lukacs: Five Days in London, May 1940 (Yale UP, 1999)

As Lukacs observes, Britain didn’t win the war – America and Russia did – but Britain didn’t lose the war. In 1939, Britain’s population at 40 millions was almost exactly half that of Germany and Austria.

Nowadays, we tend to forget how it was in May 1940. With the fall of France, Britain stood alone against Hitler in Europe until Hitler (stupidly) launched the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 – it would have made better sense from a Nazi perspective to have first consolidated hold of western Europe and turned its industries to supporting the war. The unpleasant fact is that there was much popular support for the Nazis in Europe. The Communists became the mainstay of the resistance movement in France but only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union: before that, the Communists were neutral. Recall that Nazi Germany and the SU signed a Friendship Treaty on 28 September 1939.

America didn’t enter the war in Europe until 10 December 1941 when Germany declared war on America following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan on 7 December 1941.

Prevailing sentiment in much of America was summed up by Speech of Charles Linbergh, the pioneering aviator, at Des Moines, Iowa, on 11 September 1941.

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country [America] toward war [WW2] are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.”
http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp

If you want to judge the value of Churchill, compare the world as it was with him in it, with one in which he’d never lived.

Stalin fought against Hitler – and far more effectively. Are we to consider him a “great man” as a result?

I think we can guess your answer to this comrade.

I think it is instructive that your response to the question of the firebombing of Dresden receives a dismissive ‘yup’. Presumably the Kurdish victims of poison gas, had the British army acted on Churchill’s considered advice, would have heard: ‘meh’.

I don’t think you’re really worth much of a following argument. The answer to ‘was the bombing of Dresden the right decision taken in the context of the war?’ is ‘yes’. Was it a morally great thing to do? No. Was it necessary for the winning of the war? Arguable, although it should be remembered that it was a communications and railway hub, and that the Battle of the Bulge had made the war in the West look like much less of a foregone conclusion. But you’re using it as a straightforward bludgeon.

As for the Kurds, Churchill’s comment was “It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.” I don’t see the inherent wickedness of this position – non-lethal gas is a better alternative to high explosive – the reason why riot police don’t use howitzers for crowd control.

If Churchill had not led Britain in 1940, Halifax would have done, and would have negotiated a peace with Hitler that would have led to the annihilation of democracy in Europe. There would have been no scope for the US to enter the war in Europe, and the only question remaining would have been whether lunatic blood-soaked Nazi tyranny ruled Europe, or lunatic, blood-soaked Communist tyranny.

Churchill was a British imperialist. His actions – lamentable or heroic (from a modern, ‘enlightened’ perspective) – are tangled in this web. There is nothing for leftists to applaud

And this sums up why there’s no point entering into a serious discussion with you. Gladstone was a British imperialist. Lloyd George was a British imperialist. Atlee was a British imperialist. Bevin was a British imperialist. Your simplistic view on history is intellectually dishonest and morally vacuous.

“If Churchill had not led Britain in 1940, Halifax would have done,”

Really? Which parties would have served in a Halifax administration?

“The blood and violence was an essential ingredient of its strength, the heroic tradition of cruelty every bit as powerful and a thousand times more ancient than the Judaeo-Christian ethic.

Now, Nietzsche may have been utterly unfairly appropriated by the Nazis (he loathed nationalism, and thought the christian peoples of Europe every bit as weak, snivelling and pathetic as the Jews) but it would appear that Clarke has been reading his On the Genealogy of Morals with great gusto indeed!

20 – There were only two possible contenders for Prime Minister following the fall of Chamberlain: Halifax and Churchill. The Labour party stated that they were willing to enter into a coalition on the proviso that the leader was not Chamberlain.

Although it has been suggested since that Atlee’s preferred choice was Churchill, there is no suggestion that the Labour party would have refused to serve under Halifax.

14 – long post; interesting points. (Sorry to go off topic on your thread – I liked the original article.)

“I am less worried about his wish to strangle Bolshevism, which is not a great liberal cause for me…”

Perhaps not (a debate for another day, no doubt), but surely British imperialism isn’t all that high on the list of “great liberal causes” either?

“Churchill held views which were racist…”

Indeed, and whilst it may be true that his viewpoint was shared by “a majority” (certainly in the West, as you describe), contextualising prejudice does little to lessen its toxicity.

Of course, some on the left had espoused views that remain radical today. Churchill’s response was belligerent – attempting to “strangle” not only Bolshevism, but anarchism in the Ukraine. (And, later, the independence movement in India, etc.)

I actually think Churchill’s “strategy of Empire” fits in perfectly with his stated opposition to appeasement. British imperialism was colonialism and as such was strongest when power in Europe was (approximately) evenly balanced. Hitler threatened that delicate balance, hence the danger of continued appeasement.

19 – was the bombing of Dresden the right decision in the context of war? You apparently think it was, though you concede that its necessity was “arguable” and its morality indefensible.

According to the president of Genocide Watch:

“the Allies’ firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes…”

Bludgeon indeed.

As to your astonishingly ‘liberal’ theory that there is no “inherent wickedness” in using (non-lethal – or, more accurately, not-always-lethal) “poison gas” against “uncivilised tribes” – or even, protestors – well, fuck me. If I don’t deserve much of your argument, you don’t deserve a fart in the wind.

Or is context everything?
Is lunatic, blood-soaked imperialism okay “in context”?

Of course imperialism was part of the intellectual tradition of the age. But there were plenty for whom it wasn’t – just as there were plenty who suffered the sharp end of a bayonet (e.g. India), or man-made starvation (Bengal), due to the prejudices of those for whom it was.

It is a national tragedy that a “piss-soaked tramp” / bigot / war criminal has been elevated to the status of national hero. The arguments about the great role he played in defending British democracy against the tyranny of fascism frankly obscure the fact that the man was a relic of the 19th century.

It hardly furthers the leftist cause to valorise such a reptile.

As to your astonishingly ‘liberal’ theory that there is no “inherent wickedness” in using (non-lethal – or, more accurately, not-always-lethal) “poison gas” against “uncivilised tribes” – or even, protestors – well, fuck me. If I don’t deserve much of your argument, you don’t deserve a fart in the wind.

This is tiresome and pointless. On this, very narrow, point, Churchill’s argument is that it is silly to cavil at using tear gas if you are already prepared to use high explosive shells. In the context of border warfare in Northern India and the Middle East, it was a question of restoring order with the minimum loss of life. Without advocating the immediate abandonment of the empire in 1919, a policy of minimising bloodshed in border warfare does not strike me as inherently wicked.

It is a national tragedy that a “piss-soaked tramp” / bigot / war criminal has been elevated to the status of national hero.

I think I’ll revert to my initial impression. Fuckwit.

“This is tiresome and pointless.”

You make it so, ass hat.
Pleasantries dispensed with…

On this very narrow point…

“Without advocating the immediate abandonment of the empire in 1919…”

Why? Why, why, why?
What possible reason did the British empire have to exist?

Why actively pursue repression “in the context of border warfare”, or anywhere? Why consider tear gas at all?

Why? Why, why, why?
What possible reason did the British empire have to exist?

You want a one sentence answer to that? Are you talking practically, morally, legally, financially, economically, or what? Ever exist, or exist specifically in 1919?

What possible reason did Great Britain have to exist? What possible reason did France have to exist? What possible reason did Liechtenstein have to exist? Actually, that last one is a good question.

The British Empire began in the 16th Century (arguably earlier, arguably in fact much earlier – in the 10th Century). The history of the world is the history of empires. Not only, for example did France have an empire in the 18th century (ignoring Napoleon for the moment) but France was an empire – having taken control over the independent Duchy of Burgundy and the English possessions in Normandy and Gascony. The state of Germany was inherently imperial in its creation. Russia? The US? China? India? The Monomotapa? The Ashanti? They were all sodding empires.

You are asking an existential question about the entirety of world history.

“What possible reason did the British empire have to exist?”

Shorter TimJ’s answer: “Because the bigger children had one.”

27 – When abbreviating posts it’s probably helpful if you understand them first.

#20

I don’t doubt that many Labour figures would’ve served under Halifax, but not all of them. I doubt Bevan would’ve served under an appeaser. The Labour Party wouldn’t have been united under Halifax, and if the most left-wing figures hadn’t served, they wouldn’t have had the experience to make as significant a contribution in the 1945 government.

Arguing that Churchill was a great man is one thing – he was certainly a titan of British politics. But the idea he should be praised specifically by the left is a nonsense. His actions in the Great Strike, the failed Gallipoli campaign, the blase attitude towards Kurdish lives, India etc all see to that.

29 – that’s quite possibly true, although had Halifax become leader there would never have been the Atlee Government of 1945 in any event…

I suppose the question is does Churchill’s imperialism (and, less tendentiously, his attitude to Trade Unions) invalidate him from support from the left. His early career was dominated by liberal concerns – as I said, minimum wage, labour exchanges and national insurance were all introduced by him at the Board of Trade.

Why would Gallipolli count against him from a left-wing perspective? Its idea was to prevent (or reduce) the appalling loss of life on the Western Front. The flaws in conception and failings in execution were a disaster (and ended his political career for a while) but I don’t see the specifically Left angle on it.

“When abbreviating posts it’s probably helpful if you understand them first.”

Po-faced and humourless, much?

“The fact that Churchill felt able to sing the praises of Franco and Mussolini, whilst foaming at the mouth in an attempt to crush the Bolsheviks, should tell you something about the man and where his political allegiances lay.”

Churchill was sympathetic to Franco and Mussolini because they were perceived, rightly or wrongly, as bulwarks against communism – a political system that had led to mass famine and a policy of widespread state terror in the USSR. Bearing in mind this was before WWII and the holocaust and that Spain and Italy didn’t go in for the racial stupidities and same level of repression as Nazism, the fascist dictators were seen as a lesser evil.

If Churchill had been sympathetic to the introduction of fascism in Britain (which is what you seem to be implying) he’d have joined the BUF.

As for crushing the Bolsheviks, it’s a pity this didn’t happen. Does anybody apart from the nutters on the hard left think that Lenin’s government was a Good Thing? Chances are if Russia hadn’t gone communist, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler would never have become the menaces they did.

Tim J, I don’t want to get into the whole “how right your argument is” thing (oh, alright, then – it’s about 40 per cent right), but you really are coming across as a dick.

Have a word with yourself, mate.

31 – Sorry, was 27 a joke? Arf arf.

33 – what, because I don’t think that describing Churchill as “a piss soaked tramp/bigot/war criminal” is a worthwhile starting point for a discussion? And, out of curiosity, what do you think my argument is? And which 40% is right?

32
‘Chances are If Russia hadn’t gone communist, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler
would never have become the menaces they did’
You need to re-read your late nineteenth century/early 20th century European history.

As I choke, saying these words but I agree with Tory Tim.
Churchill was a racist imperialist but there are human beings who find that at one moment in time they become immortal.
In 1940 Churchill became a immortal British hero.
Like it or not.
Although it does make me chuckle that modern conservatives like Tim, Goldberg and Nick Cohen call the most important war time democrat Rooservelt a liberal fascist.

Does anybody apart from the nutters on the hard left think that Lenin’s government was a Good Thing? Chances are if Russia Had’t gone communist, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler would never have become the menaces they did.
I think if you read the most basic O level book on the rise of the Nazis, their rise was due to the perceived weakness of the social democratic Weimar republic. I suggest you read up on the subject.
As for the soviet government I do agree that I wish the Mensheviks would have gained power.
Although I have feeling that you would have been happy with the Monarchists who by the way started the Gulags and pogroms
But the Nazis would have gained power with or without the Soviets because the impetus for their gain in power was the Wall Street Crash.
Whether a social democratic or monarchist Russia could have beaten the German army, that is one the world’s great what if’s

“You need to re-read your late nineteenth century/early 20th century European history.”

Admittedly it’s been some time. I did wonder whether it was wise adding the last line seeing as it was more than fear of communism that brought those 3 to power.

“I think if you read the most basic O level book on the rise of the Nazis, their rise was due to the perceived weakness of the social democratic Weimar republic. I suggest you read up on the subject.”

Question is, would the KPD have been perceived as a threat without the USSR and without the KPD getting large numbers of votes, would the conservative leaders have made Hitler Chancellor? It’s been a while since I read around this area (and for history GCSE I recall concluding that the great depression was the main reason for Hitler coming to power).

“Although I have feeling that you would have been happy with the Monarchists who by the way started the Gulags and pogroms”

I’d have preferred the monarchists to the Bolsheviks, To put it bluntly, the former would have killed fewer and would have moved to democracy quicker than the communists did.

“Whether a social democratic or monarchist Russia could have beaten the German army, that is one the world’s great what if’s”

The Russian economy was growing pretty fast pre WWI and I recall reading that it was growing faster than under Stalin. Without the problems caused by the Russian Civil War and War Communism it might have been that a democratic or monarchist Russia was perfectly capable of fighting the Nazis (epsecially as there would have been no Stalin and no purges of the officer classes).

As the Marr piece says, no-one took Clark seriously enough to believe that he meant what he said.

I don’t think anyone took Clark seriously enough to care whether he meant what he said.

Question is, would the KPD have been perceived as a threat without the USSR and without the KPD getting large numbers of votes, would the conservative leaders have made Hitler Chancellor? It’s been a while since I read around this area (and for history GCSE I recall concluding that the great depression was the main reason for Hitler coming to power).

That is my point, the reason got to power because of Industrialists fear of the left and the unions and these were hate figures before 1917 and the German peoples irrational belief that it was was weak liberals and the Jews that brought about defeat in 1918. Nothing to do with the Soviets.
Also at the time the Soviets were very insular, Trotsky and the spread of internationalism had been crushed.

“Although I have feeling that you would have been happy with the Monarchists who by the way started the Gulags and pogroms”

I’d have preferred the monarchists to the Bolsheviks, To put it bluntly, the former would have killed fewer and would have moved to democracy quicker than the communists did.
How do you know.
They killed millions and looked upon it’s people as sub human.
The Russian monarchy had numerous chances to embrace democracy but refused and there is no evidence that they would have changed.
Personally I would have thought the liberal and social democratic option was the one UK democrats should have supported

“Whether a social democratic or monarchist Russia could have beaten the German army, that is one the world’s great what if’s”

The Russian economy was growing pretty fast pre WWI and I recall reading that it was growing faster than under Stalin. Without the problems caused by the Russian Civil War and War Communism it might have been that a democratic or monarchist Russia was perfectly capable of fighting the Nazis (especially as there would have been no Stalin and no purges of the officer classes)
Like in 1914-15 at the Battle of Tannenberg when the German a army was far less effective than the Wehrmacht of 1941.
The Russian economy was growing fast under the Czar is debatable because it is based purely on it’s agriculture. One bad harvest and the figures don’t look so good.
It still was a manufacturing backwater, although a dose of liberal democracy would have changed the problem.
You seem very much like the communists you despise but instead of living under Stalin your nirvana would be 1950 Madrid

26 – I am aware that the British empire ‘existed’ and of the history surrounding its inception, development, etc. I wasn’t being ridiculous.

In 1919 (and earlier, and afterwards), the British empire was only able to survive by exerting militart force to suppress dissidents. The use of bayonets, howitzers and / or poison gas (not tear gas) against “uncivilised tribes” is utterly indefensible, and I cannot quite conceive how leftists can take any stance other than: fuck right off.

Churchill sided with ‘empire’, and as such, deserves any and all associated condemnation.

The Tsarist (Russian) empire was in a similar position. It had no reason to exist – and shortly, it did not.

32 – as regards “mass famine” and “state terror” – I’m sure you’ll concede that the history of the British empire is strewn with such injustices. In fact, the word ‘empire’ provides something of a ‘bludgeon’ of a clue.

The history of the Soviet state is really another question.

Without the benefit of hindsight, I think that most leftists should really have aligned themselves with the Bolsheviks over the empires of Western Europe – i.e. taking precisely the opposite stance to (comrade) Winston.

Certainly, a large percentage of the politicised working class chose to do so.

Churchill, on the other hand, advocated military intervention not because of any state-sponsored terror (in its infancy), or mass famine (not yet occurring) – but because, politically, he could not accept the concept of an independent, workers’ state.

If the newly formed Soviet state had not had to contend with military aggression on the part of the surviving Western imperialist powers, who knows what alternative history might have been told?

33 – thank fuck for informed comment.

Actually through a combination of selective tariffs, infant industry protection and effective industrial policy Tsarist Russia was actually industrialising really swiftly.

Their investment rate was up there with Stalinist Russia, Japan and Prussia in the midsts of their growth explosions.

That’s were the working class came from and where the social dislocation that led to revolution sprouted from too.

“31 – Sorry, was 27 a joke? Arf arf.”

Well it’s pretty funny that I predicted this thread nearly a fortnight ago. Yer nothing if not reliable, Tim.

Very little here on where our great ally America fits in all this.

The fact is that for all Roosevelt’s assessment of the growing threat of Nazi Germany when Britain was already at war, many, if not most Americans didn’t want to be dragged into a war in Europe even after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

William Shirer, the distinguished American journalist and historian of the war, wrote in his seminal book: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

“My own impression in Washington at that moment was that it might be difficult for President Roosevelt to get Congress to declare war on Germany. There seemed to be a strong feeling in both Houses as well as in the Army and Navy that the country ought to concentrate its efforts on defeating Japan and not take on the additional burden of fighting Germany at the same time.” [chp. 25]

In the event, Germany resolved the political dilemma in America by declaring war on 10 December 1941.

Nowadays, we are apt to regard WW2 as a moral war beyong question and the Nazis as unequivocally evil but overlook that many in the 1930s didn’t share those perspectives.

Some believed that King Edward VIII held completely unacceptable Nazi sympathies:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2701965.stm

Dig a little in online archives and it emerges that Republican Senator Prescott Bush – the grandfather of President GW Bush – raised capital in America for armaments producers in Nazi Germany:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

If the newly formed Soviet state had not had to contend with military aggression on the part of the surviving Western imperialist powers, who knows what alternative history might have been told?

Probably millions of Soviet citizens would have died, just as they did in real life, because of the idiot, unworkable policies of their incompetent leaders, which today’s idiot romantic communists appear to be unable to see.

Try this on the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials

“You seem very much like the communists you despise but instead of living under Stalin your nirvana would be 1950 Madrid”

I can understand why some English people considered Spanish and Italian fascism to be a lesser evil than Soviert communism in the 1930s, that doesn’t mean I agree with them or would actually wish to live under a dictatorship. I value liberty far too highly.

“If Churchill had been sympathetic to the introduction of fascism in Britain (which is what you seem to be implying) he’d have joined the BUF.”

“If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you [Mussolini] from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism … But in England we have not had to fight this danger in the same deadly form. We have our way of doing things”

“Surely there cannot be any fundamental difference of outlook between the Blackshirts and their parents, the Conservatives” – Colonel Thomas Moore MP, Daily Mail, 25/05/34.

He didn’t join the BUF for the same reason the likes of Doran, Macquisten, Beaumont, Hayles and Maule Ramsay didn’t; there was never any reason to, as Rothermere put it they employed “sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine”.

“I can understand why some English people considered Spanish and Italian fascism to be a lesser evil than Soviert communism in the 1930s”

Ho, ho. See Martin Clark, an academic historian at Edinburgh University, on: Modern Italy 1871-1995 (Longman 2nd ed. (1996)), p.250, which has an illuminating passage reflecting on the policies of Mussolini’s fascist government : “They seemed to offer ‘a third way’, between capitalism and Bolshevism, which looked attractive in the Depression. …”

Seems familiar.

Speculative history is, generally, a useless waste of time.

When sentences such as ‘I remember from GCSE history…’ are used, it is even worse.

Perhaps LC should add a ‘Fantasy History’ feature, based on Fantasy Football, for these kids to play with.

“I’ll take the Russian Revolution, but not bother with Lenin or Trotsky, I’ll have a front two of Blair and Campbell”

“Ok, Nazism was quite good if it wasn’t for all the death, and if Hitler had spoke without notes at the Nuremburg rallies”

49
‘Surely there cannot be any fundamental difference of outlook between the Blackshirts and their parents’
This quote was written before the emergence of ‘Hitler Youth’, and illustrates the conservative’s distinct lack of uinderstanding of environmental factors which shape/change behaviour and attitude.
Returning to the original proposition, many things could have shaped Alan Clark’s attraction to Nazism, from what I gatther he had quite a big ego, maybe the concept of white supremisism was the draw. I also believe that from the immediate post-war period, people wanted to forget about the atrocities of WW2 and also the following relative economic prosperity.created a mass popular culture based on consumerism. By the 1980′s, Hitler and the Nazis had been reduced to,figures of ridicule and humour, eg ‘Allo Allo’, ‘Springtime for Hitler’. This may account for the apparent lack of disapproval for his expressed views. For some reason the idea of the ‘toff’ womaniser/cad was considered to be funny, eg the films of Terry Thomas and Leslie Phillips etc.

.

The Tsarist (Russian) empire was in a similar position. It had no reason to exist – and shortly, it did not.

Without the benefit of hindsight, I think that most leftists should really have aligned themselves with the Bolsheviks over the empires of Western Europe – i.e. taking precisely the opposite stance to (comrade) Winston.

If you really think that the Russian Empire ceased to exist after the Bolshevik revolution then you’re simply deluded. The USSR was the continuation of the Russian Empire, and aggressively sought to expand right up until its last moments in the 1980s.

The Communists were just as much imperialists as the British (or French, Portuguese, American etc).

In 1919 (and earlier, and afterwards), the British empire was only able to survive by exerting militart force to suppress dissidents. The use of bayonets, howitzers and / or poison gas (not tear gas) against “uncivilised tribes” is utterly indefensible, and I cannot quite conceive how leftists can take any stance other than: fuck right off.

And that’s a ludicrous simplification at best. In 1919, the old British Empire was broadly peaceful – except for the North West frontier of India, which was always, and is still, a border area of permanent violence. The violence in the Middle East was a function of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The idea, for example, that Nyasaland (now Malawi) could have been handed over to a functioning independent government in 1919 is historically absurd. And look, go and read what Churchill said about gas – and look up lachrymatory if you have to. Tear gas is ‘poisoned gas’, although ‘poisoned gas’ is not always tear gas.

If the newly formed Soviet state had not had to contend with military aggression on the part of the surviving Western imperialist powers, who knows what alternative history might have been told?

Oh for fuck’s sake. Yes, I’m sure that Soviet Russia would have been a happy playground, where laughing kulaks played in the sun. The violence and tyranny of Soviet Russia was not a lapse, but was integral to the regime – and it was present right from the very beginning.

51 – speculative history is indeed a waste of time, though occasionally an interesting (fictional) read.

53 – like Churchill, you are obsessed with the concept of empire.

“The history of the world is the history of empires.”
“The USSR was the continuation of the Russian Empire…”

Do you even consider that ‘class struggle’ (in its broadest sense) plays any role whatever?

“Yes, I’m sure that Soviet Russia would have been a happy playground, where laughing kulaks played in the sun.”

Not at all.
Like I said – who knows?

“The violence and tyranny of Soviet Russia was not a lapse, but was integral to the regime – and it was present right from the very beginning.”

Entirely unlike the peaceful and sedate British empire; whilst the French revolution, famously, was accomplished without bloodshed or terror of any sort…

54 – perhaps I ought to limit the terminology slightly – any geo-political history of the world is a history of competing and successive empires. Things get really messy about the collapse and fall of empires. This is, largely, Niall Ferguson’s thesis, but see also Paul Kennedy for a good general overview.

Do you even consider that ‘class struggle’ (in its broadest sense) plays any role whatever?

It plays a role, and an increasingly important role in 20th century history. Not much of a role before that. But then there are lots of strains within history. Class is one, race is one, gender is one.

But the history of the Soviet Union is not one of ‘class struggle’ it is one of empire.

Entirely unlike the peaceful and sedate British empire; whilst the French revolution, famously, was accomplished without bloodshed or terror of any sort…

Violence was of course a part of both the British Empire and the French Revolution. As it has been of every Government. The Soviet Union (and Nazi Germany and Maoist China) were merely extreme representations, in that violence was the fundamental basis of the regime.

Go now to Sunder’s Fourth Paragraph and click on the Edwina Currie link.

Be sure to empty your bladder beforehand.

Alright, so the awful fellow had a feeling of caneraderie for the National Front.

Hey, looking back, weren’t the NF 100% right on Third World immigration back in the seventies without even knowing just how right they were?

#29 “I suppose the question is does Churchill’s imperialism (and, less tendentiously, his attitude to Trade Unions) invalidate him from support from the left.”

Actually, for me his anti-union attitude is worse than his imperialism. Churchill was more extreme in his imperialism than Labour MPs were, but there were plenty of pro-imperialist Labour figures too. It’s easier to accept that he was an imperialist because he was a creature of his time. On the question of the unions there is no such defence.

In terms of Gallipoli, the left-wing criticism would be that he wasted working-class lives in an attempt at securing personal glory on a mission that was doomed from the start.

58 – that’s what I meant! I can certainly see why his anti-Trade Unionism would put him beyond the pale as far as leftists are concerned.

On Gallipolli, I still don’t think it was a class thing. The aim was to minimise loss of life by rolling up the Central Powers through the middle, rather than continuing to hurl bodies at the barbed wire in Flanders.

Gallipoli was sound strategically but a mess tactically.

Smack Turkey and Bulgaria out of the war; reinforce Russia and rescue Romania.

Shorten the war and save missions of lives.

Did anyone on this site see the tiny Turkish steamer that laid the mines that wrecked the Allied plans? It’s a national monument now and – astonishingly – about the size of something on Windermere or Coniston Water.

#60 “Gallipoli was sound strategically but a mess tactically”

Well, that’s one view. The other is that it was never going to work, and Churchill got over-excited by the grand strategic implications you outline, ignoring the cold hard reality that it had no real chance of success.

To the extent that this is a class thing, you could say that this was an upper-class armchair general playing RISK with ordinary soldiers’ lives. It’s not the strongest of anti-Churchill arguments (of course, he did have military experience), but it’s a perspective, and I personally think his arrogance – which I’d argue was a consequence of his class – led him to overlook certain dangers in the campaign.

To the extent that this is a class thing, you could say that this was an upper-class armchair general playing RISK with ordinary soldiers’ lives. It’s not the strongest of anti-Churchill arguments (of course, he did have military experience),

I think the ‘armchair general’ tag is a bit harsh, especially considering that after Gallipolli he went to the Western Front as CO of the Scots Fusiliers.

re 53
To be fair the Russian Empire did not cease after the revolutions in 1917, over 90 per cent of the population were peasants, and both revolutionary regimes inheritted a military beauracracy.together with the chaos left by the Czar. Lenin understood that, despite the Bolsheviks aspirations towards Marxism, (Marx stated that socialism could only emerge from mature capitalism), the environment would not enable this. Furthermore, most of the existing peasantry wanted to return to their pre-revolutionary existence.
The Russian revolutions also emerged within the wider political turmoil of Europe, I think it would have been an extraordinary fete for any government to make any inroads into political/social/cultural change considering the circumstances.

55 – Niall Ferguson – that explains a lot.

Might as well throw in Richard Pipes for a “fair and balanced” (in the Fox News sense) assessment of the Russian Revolution…

I’ve read at least 100 books on the subject and the best I came across was Igal Halfin’s ‘From Darkness To Light’. (And no, it’s not Stalinism in hardback.)

But it is interesting that you should state: “the history of the Soviet Union is not one of ‘class struggle’ it is one of empire.”

- having previously quipped: “… I’m sure that Soviet Russia would have been a happy playground, where laughing kulaks played in the sun.”

The reference to kulaks presumably referring to Stalin’s attempted liquidation of the, er, class…

Your point about government (I would substitute: ‘the state’) and violence is entirely valid; it is, of course, rather the point. I would contend that violence is always implicit, and as such, forms the basis of every ‘regime’ (as so defined). Particularly the British empire – and, yes, the Soviet state.

The British empire directed violence towards its own working class, to the working classes of rival European powers and to the “uncivilised tribes” that comprised its “empire”. Churchill was not mildly acquiescent but actively complicit in this crime.

The Soviet state – in the years immediately after the revolution – directed violence towards the class enemies of the proletariat, e.g. the ‘White’ counter-revolution, the kulaks, the remaining nobility, etc. – and the aggressive imperialist powers who threatened the survival of the state through armed intervention.

(I do not condone – or condemn – merely observe.)

Leaving aside the later degeneration of the situation (which, incidentally, can also be observed in Britain, France, the United States, etc. post-revolution), leftists at the time should clearly have sided with the workers’ state, and not the rabid colonialism of Churchill’s old guard.

“Might as well throw in Richard Pipes for a “fair and balanced” (in the Fox News sense) assessment of the Russian Revolution…”

I would heartily recommend Richard Pipes book about Communism to anyone with a sense of humour, or to anyone wondering how to get a book published about a subject you know absolutely fuck all about. The man is a genius subversive, pretending to be an academic and milking the capitalist cash cow for all it is worth. At least, I assume that is what he must be doing. Either that, or a nursery somewhere has bought a typewriter.

“51 – speculative history is indeed a waste of time, though occasionally an interesting (fictional) read.”

It can be interesting, the point is that too many people here don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Saying stuff like ‘I wish the Menshiviks had won the Russian Revolution’ is downright ignorant on so many levels. Not so much alternate history, than make your own fantasy history with no bearing in reality what so ever.

Alan Clark is not the only vile person who has been elevated to the status of national treasure or role model for young people. Alas, all of the examples I can think of are wealthy and living, so thus cannot be named. The closest dead example would be Bob Maxwell, who was given red carpet treatment by all political parties and media, whilst he defecated on his employees.

The UK fails because this country has prohibitive libel laws and a stifled press. For every Tom Bower, there are a thousand journalists eulogising Richard Branson or dodgy sports club owners/managers. This week, Flavio Briatore has been ejected from work in motor sport and questions are being asked about his suitability as part-owner of QPR. Now that he has been judged guilty of a sports code violation, he is considered as a slippery individual, but why weren’t questions raised in public beforehand? There is an awful lot of smoke in his past, not just from the pipe bomb that somebody planted on Briatore’s London door step.

Our laws make us craven to Nazis, thieves, con artists and all other forms of mortal sinner if the offender has political influence or wealth. In the case of Alan Clark, would he have been permitted to become a government minister if his true politics were publicly known? Even under Thatcher, that is difficult to conceive.

The Soviet state – in the years immediately after the revolution – directed violence towards the class enemies of the proletariat, e.g. the ‘White’ counter-revolution, the kulaks, the remaining nobility, etc. – and the aggressive imperialist powers who threatened the survival of the state through armed intervention.

This is truly ridiculous. In no sense other than the purely rhetorical did the Bolsheviks represent the ‘proletariat’. The ‘kulaks’ remained undefined because they were undefinable – merely a conduit for localised revenge and petty squabbles in the context of a state that needed to define itself by its ‘enemies’ even by the method of creating them themselves.

And my citation of Niall Ferguson was purely because he is the most prominent of recent historians to propound this view of world history. Out of interest though, have you read his early books (before they became TV companion books)? The Pity of War is a cracker.

I doubt you would appreciate a full reading list from me on Imperialism. Doing a doctorate in Imperial and Commonwealth Studies (must get that damn thesis finished) tends to leave you with a big back log. But a good starting point is John Darwin (my supervisor), whose newish theories on chaotic pluralism are pretty sound.

There is an argument that the early, internal social history of the Soviet Union can be understood through a ‘class struggle’ lens. On the other hand, it makes as much or more sense as a struggle for power. When two bourgeois jewish intellectuals fall out, which of them is representative of the working class? How horny handed a son of toil was Felix Dzerzhinsky? Are you still claiming that the Tsarist empire ceased to exist altogether in 1917 – or do you accept that the USSR was its successor in title, and far bloodier and more authoritarian into the bargain?

I think there’s an extent to which this is becoming a true dialogue of the deaf. I do not accept that Russian communism represented the triumph of the working class; I do not accept that the Russian civil war can be simply characterised as heroic workers and peasants struggling against their class enemies; I do not accept that the ‘kulaks’ were a distinct class entity.

For what it’s worth, I do not accept that the Bolshevik Government was substantially different in 1919 than it was 10 years later. The Cheka was established in 1917, and was shooting political opponents without trial pretty much instantly.

On the other hand, I’m just not terribly interested in arguing the merits of Russian communism with someone who remains wedded to Marxist dialectic. I had enough of that in the MCR. And my experience there is that the arguments get nobody anywhere. Lets just agree to differ, it’ll save time.

Tonga Tim:

“Because he could write, and because he had sex with lots of women. I don’t really think there’s any more to it than that.”

Nick Griffin is taking notes…

65 – I have read ‘Communism…’ by Pipes and indeed, would have laughed harder, but for the thought that some would undoubtedly take it seriously. It is much like the ‘Daily Mail’ in that respect: unintentionally hilarious, yet bone-chillingly scary at the same time.

“Not so much alternate history, than make your own fantasy history with no bearing in reality what so ever.”

Did you hear? Gordon Brown saved the world…

67 – I wrote my own thesis on the early history of the Russian revolution, the formation of the Cheka, the civil war, etc., so I’m not as ignorant as you might suppose.

I researched primary source material as well as reviewing the (frankly terrible) secondary literature – most of the better stuff has been written relatively recently, by Russian historians with access to the state archives.

Nor am I “wedded to the Marxist dialectic”, though I see it as infinitely preferable to adopting your meta-narrative of choice. It is simply impossible to understand the history of the Russian revolution without engaging in the discourse of class struggle. You engage with it, even as you ridicule it.

Agree to differ: fine.

69 – for the sake of clarity, I wasn’t suggesting that you were ignorant, but that a diversion into the historiography of imperialism would be tedious.

EPIC DALE!

71 – for better clarity. When I said ‘I doubt you would appreciate a full reading list from me on Imperialism’ in response to ‘I’ve read at least 100 books on the subject and the best I came across was Igal Halfin’s ‘From Darkness To Light’. I wasn’t then assuming you were ignorant.

When you said “Churchill was a prize twat, and that’s about it…”

I was assuming you were ignorant. Can you understand why that would be?

72 – hush, the grown-ups are talking.

Dishes it out, can’t take it. Big surprise.

74 – what? What are you talking about? You really have to do better than that.

You replied, so no, I clearly don’t need to try harder.