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." (1919 War Office memo)
"If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." [To Benito Mussolini in a press conference in Rome (January 1927), as quoted in Churchill : A Life (1992) by Martin Gilbert]
"One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations." ["Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)]
"We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation." ["Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)]
In 1937, Brigadier Packenham Walsh reported that ‘Winston says at heart he is for Franco’.
Two years after the infamous Nuremberg Laws, in 1937, Churchill said that “he hoped Great Britain would have a man like Hitler in times of peril” (quoted in the Times obituary of Leni Riefenstahl, 11 September)
On Hitler’s coming to power: ‘The story of that struggle, cannot be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy conciliate or overcome, all the authority of resistances which barred his path’, said Churchill. Asked about Germany’s anti-Jewish laws in 1938, Churchill thought ‘it was a hindrance and an irritation, but probably not an obstacle to a working agreement’.
Churchill saw the Soviet Union was a ‘tyrannic government of these Jew Commisars’, a ‘worldwide communistic state under Jewish domination’, ‘the international Soviet of the Russian and Polish Jew’, or just ‘these Semitic conspirators’.
On race: Churchill said ‘the Indians in East Africa are mainly of a very low class of coolies, and the idea that they should be put on an equality with the Europeans is revolting to every white man throughout British Africa’.
In February 1954, he told the cabinet ‘the continuing increase in the number of coloured people coming to this country and their presence here would sooner or later come to be resented by large sections of the British people’.
And from the ‘Churchill in perspective’ article (Socialist Standard, March 1965):
"..It was he [Churchill] who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C….In 1927 he was "charmed,…, by Signor Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of many burdens and dangers."
By way of conclusion, from the same article:
"Churchill was a member of the British capitalist class and he served his class well. He maintained a constant anti-working class attitude throughout his life….In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit - religious, political, press and radio - have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in doing to pay homage to future leaders and the principle of leadership…Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences - not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, is it a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears. And it will remain so, until the same workers who are deluded into hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally."
Some of these statements and others by Churchill can be found here.
From "Socialism or your money back"
Yesterday was Bill Landles’ 85th birthday. He is an active supporter of the Socialist Appeal in Britain and the IMT. His activity goes right back to the days of the RCP during the Second World War, where he played a role in the apprentices’ strikes. He is a living link to those early pioneering days of our movement.