the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I was thinking about my post of a few days, wherein I suggested that D-Day was the single most defining moment in European history and because of that, it therefore follows that Winston Churchill is by quite a wide margin the most important European ever.

I know that there are increasing numbers of revisionists who maintain that because a number of controversies in his past, these dwarf any other consideration. In my opinion, proponents of these controversies seek to defame Churchill in order to promote their own reductive narratives or divisive agenda’s and because of the age we live in now, such idea’s have inexplicably become commonplace. This obsession of interpreting the past through the prism now is utter nonsense, because as I pointed out in my earlier post, we only have the values of now because of his actions then.

The undeniable truth of this was borne out in the European elections that took place recently. Not the results themselves – although I might come back to them – but the fact of them even having happened. That there exist the necessary conditions that allow them to take place is thanks chiefly to him. 

Functioning democracies that help create a flourishing civil society, ones that allow a multiplicity of views, the right to hold those views and not be subject to arbitrary arrest if you hold views that are deemed unpalatable, rights that are guaranteed by the rule of law, a law that is interpreted by an independent judiciary, free from the whims and score-settling of politicians and governments. With a free press that is able to hold those politicians and governments to account, and with political parties for those with differing political beliefs to belong to.  

And whilst it hasn’t always been that way for all European countries, all of the time, broadly speaking it has. However imperfect it may have been, and possibly still is for some, it could all have been so very, very much worse. 

The Europe that Europeans live in today only happened because after the war that had torn Europe apart ended. European leaders looked at the ruins of their former countries and put in place measures to prevent it happening again.  For example, The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), set up in 1949, a security alliance between the US, Canada, and 10 Western European counties. It has grown, as the threats individual countries face increase and the so the benefits of membership become ever more apparent. Now it has 30 members.

Because of that, and the obvious benefits of closer co-operation that helped to ensure continued peace and stability in non Soviet Europe, more institutions were created and more European countries joined those institutions, leading, until recently, to over 70 years of almost unbridled peace and harmony unparalleled in European history.

But this happy outcome only happened because the Allies won the war. A war which I believe was one war, not two, but one with a half time stoppage, like a football match so everyone could take a breather, except in the case of the Germans, who instead massively built up their military. Churchill, being aware of this and alive to the very real threat it posed, constantly sounded warnings and for his troubles he was eventually cast out into the political wilderness. 

Until his warnings proved to be correct in 1939.  Germany resumed the war. European countries were quickly overrun. And he alone had both the moral and political authority needed to provide the leadership that had been so conspicuously lacking and had allowed events to unfold as they had.

Yes, he may not have been perfect. Yes, some of his views might be unpalatable now. Yes, some of the things he did could be judged unfavourably. But those are as nothing when compared to fact that he led Britain through the war, led it when Britain stood alone, when accepting a peace deal with Hitler was more favourable to the political elites. 

But thankfully he didn’t and we live in a better world because he didn’t. That’s why there were elections in Europe, because fascism, the old kind, the unimaginable horror kind, the dictatorial and concentration camp kind, not the modern someone disagreeing with you or misgendering you kind, was vanquished.

No man has ever had more of a single greater influence upon the present he lived through and because of that, the present we now enjoy.  

And that is why, to me at least, he is the most important European to have ever lived.