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Churchill changed view on India’s freedom in later years, claims PM Boris Johnson
Author of a 2014 book on Winston Churchill, Britain’s PM Boris Johnson wrote that his predecessor was a hero but one who expressed “all sorts of views” during his political career.
Winston Churchill had controversial views on India’s freedom struggle and Mahatma Gandhi, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday claimed the man many consider as the ‘greatest Briton’ changed his view of India in later years.
Churchill, who once opposed India’s independence and as prime minister contributed to famine in India in 1943, is at the centre of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. His statue in Parliament Square has been boarded up after protestors wrote ‘was a racist’ below it.
Johnson, who has opposed attempts to remove statues of historical figures demanded by BLM protestors, wrote in The Daily Telegraph that much has changed in the UK on race, but admitted that there is much more than needs to be done.
Author of a 2014 book on Churchill, Johnson wrote that his predecessor was a hero but one who expressed “all sorts of views” during his political career.
“As it happens, he generally changed with the times. He changed his view on India, and her capacity for independence; and whatever he may have said about Islam in the 1890s, he also built the Regent’s Park Mosque in the 1940s”, he wrote.
“And above all – as so many have rightly pointed out – it is the height of lunacy to accuse him of racism, when he stood alone against a racist tyranny that without his resistance would have overwhelmed this country and the rest of Europe”.
Labour and anti-racism campaigners promptly dismissed Johnson’s brief announcement in the article – with little detail – to set up a “cross-departmental commission” to look into inequalities in employment, health and other aspects of life
Shadow justice secretary David Lammy said that if Johnson were serious about wanting to address racial inequalities, he should implement the recommendations of the many reviews already conducted instead of setting up a new commission or inquiry.
He said: “I made 35 specific recommendations in the Lammy review. Implement them. There are 110 recommendations in the Anjiolini review into deaths into police custody. Implement them. There are 30 recommendations in the Home Office review into the Windrush scandal”.
“Implement them. Twenty six into Baroness McGregor’s review into workplace discrimination. Implement them. That’s what Boris has to do. And the Black Lives protests can stop and we can get on with dealing with the coronavirus”, he added.
Johnson reiterated in the article his opposition to statues being pulled down, stating that he would “resist with every breath in my body” any attempt to remove Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square.
He wrote: “It is not just that is wrong to destroy public property by violence. I am also extremely dubious about the growing campaign to edit or photoshop the entire cultural landscape”.
“Would it not be better and more honest to ask our children to understand the context, to explain the mixture of good and bad in the career of Churchill and everyone else?”
