I’ve been reading Paul Johnson’s excellent biography of Winston Churchill. Yesterday I came upon a quote in the book that blew me away. It did so because it was so revealing about the current state of American politics and the behavior of members of one of our national parties.
Some background. Churchill, though enormously admired by his people during the 1939-1945 war years, was drummed out office in the 1945 national election along with his Tory Party. It wasn’t a close vote. It was a landslide for Labour.
The reasons this happened were quite clear then and since. The great majority in Great Britain were simply desperate for change. Real change. Big change. They expected Labour to enact domestic policies that significantly loosened the grip in all aspects of daily life of the monied and upper class elite that had long ruled the country. In the foreign realm, the electorate was fed up with the imperialist policies of this same grouping, most notably when it came to the matter of giving India its independence.
Churchill was the embodiment of this ruling class, and the most public spokesman for holding on to India. He was personally crushed by his countryman’s rejection of these policies. He might therefore have been expected to be vindictive in defeat. But he wasn’t.
Rather, this is what he said to a gathering of his fellow Tories just after that election:
“I will never give way to self-pity. The new [Labour] government has a clear mandate which the opposition [his own Tories] has no right to attack in principle. The new government will have the most difficult task of any in modern times, and it is the duty of everyone to support them in matters of national interest.”
Churchill understood one of the basic necessities required to keep a democracy functioning. When your own team is thrown out of office and you go into opposition, you become a loyal opposition. And if the other guys got a big enough win, they had a mandate, and you step aside to let them do their thing. Not without continually criticizing them, of course, but without displaying an angry churlishness.
A personal note. Year ago I had an Irish landlady who used an especially harsh put down with people she didn’t like. Small potatoes, she called them, because as she once explained to me, that was all that was left over after the good stuff had all been harvested, what the poor were forced to eat during the great Potato Famine because there was no better food available.
I think of Winston Churchill’s comments cited above, and the word that comes to mind is greatness. I watch the actions of Republicans since they were so badly trounced in the 2008 elections, and the phrase that comes to mind is small potatoes.
Winston Churchill was a magnificent conservative in defeat as well as victory. But what can one say about the state of conservatism in this country today, watching people who claim the conservative mantle behaving the way they do?