Oddly enough, though we go to Blenheim Place for a wander quite regularly, yesterday ( June 16th, wedding anniversary) for the first time we wandered in the new memorial garden to Winston Churchill which includes a quite fine bust of him as an old man ( He was born 1874 at the palace of course, and proposed to Clementine near the garden's location in 1908). Our presence there was not deliberate. This was just serendipity in the current moment of statue-bashing. I didn't know it was there until I saw it.
I suppose I can condense all those conflicting views about Churchill being fed into my brain, into a simple understanding of something quite important about him. He stood up against totalitarianism, and recognised in the zeitgeist, a misguided sense of virtue. Whatever else once can say about his long life (he was already 64 years old when Chamberlain waved his "Peace in our Time" message to an adoring public and media) it gave Churchill the wisdom to see the bigger picture.
What we can also say is that, after all the sacrifices made in WW2 to defeat a clear and present totalitarian push, our democracy booted him out with a landslide Labour victory. And that, to me anyway, is the point of the country we live in and the power of the democratic system. We have the Great Victorious Leader, but we can chop him down at any time.
Can they do that in China?
We have heard the following argument before, but I have absolutely no doubt that western democracy is now under a huge threat from China. And interestingly, part of that threat is to encourage us not to question what is happening to us as free-thinking people.
We are encouraged to do battle with each other on who is racist, who is privileged, who is the victim. Because deep down we know - quite rightly - to understand that humanity matters, and so most right-thinking people defend to the hilt those whom we see clearly are wronged. It is when we focus on the detail and not the big picture, we are in trouble.
And so, for example, it becomes more and more difficult to question the number of Chinese students arriving for extended study in the UK. Because we ask the question, the current zeitgeist confirms us in the view that we have something personal - even racist - against any individual wishing to broaden their horizons with an education in the UK. And so it is difficult to question, for example, how many of these individuals are obliged to be affiliated to the CSSA ( see: "China: Government Threats to Academic Freedom Abroad". Human Rights Watch. March 21, 2019. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/21/china-government-threats-academic-freedom-abroad (Archived from the original on January 14, 2020. ).
The hidden problem it seems to me, that however broad their horizons become, for the individual Chinese person educated in the UK, there is huge pressure on them to be part of the Beijing-sponsored CSSA and conform to its worldview. This affects their ability to think freely and vote independently in student forums, and indeed their ability to behave independently in their own peer group.
Why is this important? I think it is important because totalitarian regimes are in it for the long haul. Part of that long haul, of course, is to encourage populations to turn against each other, and especially in matters of "inclusivity" and "diversity". They also insist on a 'right' way of thinking, and an unquestioning obedience. They neglect the creativity of the individual which has every possibility to lead that individual to become the best of themselves as a rounded human being. How to navigate that conundrum is a constant problem. I think that's why we study history and must be careful not overly to focus on details of it to suit an agenda.
See updates on this Churchill, Confucius and the Question of How We Judge the Past
and China and the Question of Influence
