The Real Reason to Pull Down Churchill’s Statue
A truer history would remember how unimportant many of his constructive acts were and how awful his destructive ones.
Not his achievement alone.
Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics briefly united the world in Anglophilia. The Britain celebrated there seemed amused, multicultural, cool — the Britain of the Beatles, the National Health Service, Shakespeare and Mr. Bean. There was, however, one strong dissonant note: the moment when, as a camera follows the Queen’s supposed helicopter from Buckingham Palace to the East End, Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square smiles and waves its stick in greeting. That had no place in this warm celebration of Cool Britannia.
Those who abhor Churchill do so for good reason. Shashi Tharoor has explained that Churchill was “a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples, a man who fought not to defend but to deny our freedom.” When angry Londoners attacked this same statue last week, many cheered here in the colonies Churchill struggled all his life to keep.