Winston Churchill

100-75-50-25 YEARS AGO
claiming that "I have been fighting Socialist
candidates in every election I have
fought since 1908." In a speech on 11
March 1924, Churchill's prescient attack
on socialism highlighted its inherent contradictions
and foreshadowed its intellectual
collapse 65 years later:
"It is an absurd delusion that the
industries of this country can be conducted
through committees of elected
politicians. One-tenth of the dose of Socialism
which ruined Russia would kill
Great Britain stone dead....[M]en with
pedant and pedagogic minds and doctrinaire
views, men with a desire to rule out
exactly what every one of their fellow-citizens
was to do and was not to do from
dawn to dusk, from one year's end to another,
in pursuance of their goal, have in
the history of the world brought untold
miseries upon millions. [Cheers.]"
Churchill described in Thoughts
and Adventures the Socialists who opposed
him in that election: "Of course
there are the rowdy meetings...shouting
interruptions...and every kind of nasty
question carefully thought out and sent
up to the Chair by vehement-looking
pasty youths or young short-haired
women of bulldog appearance." In vivid
contrast, Churchill writes that he received
"...all kinds of support. Dukes, jockeys,
prize-fighters, courtiers, actors and business
men all developed a keen partisanship.
The chorus girls of Daly's Theatre
sat up all night addressing the envelopes
and despatching the election address. It
was most cheering and refreshing to see
so many young and beautiful women of
every rank in life, ardently working in a
purely disinterested cause, not unconnected
with myself."
Fifty years ago:
Winter 1948-49 • Age 74
Fighting for a Comeback (2)
Twenty-five years later saw Churchill
as Leader of the Opposition making
the same attacks on Socialists, speaking
against a bill to nationalize the iron and
steel industries: "I say this is not a Bill, it
is a plot; not a plan to increase production,
but an operation in restraint of
trade. It is not a plan to help our patient
struggling people, but a burglar's jemmy
to crack the capitalist crib. [Laughter.]
"The Rt. Hon. Gentleman
laughs, but he lives on the exertions of 80
percent of industries still free and all his
hopes are founded on their activities.
Those free industries constitute practically
the whole of our export trade...but
still they are carrying the whole burden of
our life and represent our only solvent
economic earning power."
While complimenting Labour's
stand against the Soviet Union's blockade
of Berlin, he was critical of its refusal to
recognize the new state of Israel, for
which he blamed the anti-semitism of
Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin:
"Whether the Rt. Hon. Gentleman
likes it or not, and whether we like it
or not, the coming into being of a Jewish
State in Palestine is an event in world history
to be viewed in the perspective, not
of a generation or a century, but in the
perspective of a thousand, two thousand
or even three thousand years....I say that
the Conservative Party has done a great
task over twenty-five years, with Parliaments
which had a Conservative majority,
in trying to build a Jewish National
Home in Palestine, and now that it has
come into being, it is England that refuses
to recognize it, and, by our actions, we
find ourselves regarded as its most bitter
enemies. All this is due, not only to mental
inertia or lack of grip on the part of
the Ministers concerned, but also, I am
afraid, to the very strong and direct streak
of bias and prejudice on the part of the
Foreign Secretary. I do not feel any great
confidence that he has not got a prejudice
against the Jews in Palestine."
In the same address, responding
to the criticisms that Palestine could not
accommodate the explosive growth of the
Arab and Jewish populations—more than
doubling in the previous 25 years—
Churchill conveyed his optimistic vision
of people as a resource and an asset rather
than a liability: "The idea that only a limited
number of people can live in a country
is a profound illusion; it all depends
on their co-operative and inventive
power. There are more people today living
twenty storeys above the ground in
i New York than were living on the ground
in New York 100 years ago. There is no
limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly
and vigorously applied under conditions
of peace and justice."
Twenty-five years ago:
Winter 1973-74
A Portrait by Giugiaro
/ Hnest Hour would publish only two is-
JL sues in 1974, for it was having editor
troubles. Dalton Newfield, declaring that
"no working man could hold successfully
both the offices of President and editor,"
had recruited Stephen King (not that
Stephen King) as editor, but King had
been unable to complete an issue. Wearily
Dal gathered up the makings of issue
#30, sixteen pages long, and produced another
edition full of interest.
The cover
was a favorite of Dal,
who wrote: "There is
Sir Winston! There is
the rotundity of his
later life and the
humor of which he is
so justifiably famous
dominating the portrait—yet
there is
also the wide brow of his exceeding intelligence,
the furrows of his concern for the
world and even that shrewdness that enabled
him to effect his dreams despite opposition
from every quarter. Surely the
artist must have steeped himself in the
Churchill Story ere he drew the first line
of this exceptional portrait?
"Not so! Giugiaro writes, 'At
that time I liked to make pictures of that
kind as a hobby, taking the inspiration for
most of them from the most famous personalities
in the political, movie and show
world.' But Sr. Giugiaro has claims to supremacy
in his field, which is the design
of automobiles. He has been with Fiat
and Bertone, and now is a principal at Ital
Design. A few of his many credits include
Alfa Romeo's Sprint Speciale, Alfasud,
Canguro and Giulia GT; Iso's Rivolta,
Fidia and Grifo; Ferrari's 250GT; Fiat's
850 Spyder; de Tomaso's Mangusta;
Maserati's Ghibli; Porsche's Tapiro and
Lotus's Esprit." Coincidentally, Giugiaro
had come to the notice of America's automotive
press when Automobile Quarterly
published a feature on his designs (Spring
1971, Vol. 9, No. 3)—the same issue
where Dai's successor as editor of Finest
Hour published his first automotive article,
"The Glorious Madness of Kaiser-
Frazer"....
Ms
FINEST HOUR IOI /35