Was Piers Morgan right?

M0nica nobody is saying WC was not the right leader in that moment in history but , like you an me, he was a flawed human being!
Acknowledging faults and mistakes is important. Not doing so and only seeing things in black & white is why people end up so polarised! Good and bad everywhere.. nobody is totally good or evil!

I watched this today and the question was a fair one.

The professor was asked the question in the context of his point of view the British are ALL racist and as a man of means and education why did he not move if that was his feeling.

His reply was ' Where to.' He said something like we had ruined the world .

It was one of those interviews where the accuser of racism somehow made themselves seem rather racist in their view.

He was asked which politician did he respect and Mendella was raised as a point in question and he was asked is Mandela a terrorist or hero , again that was the gist of the question and he said 'He was a Sell Out '.

His favoured politician after complaining Churchill killed millions of people was to name a female Marxist.

I think you need to watch the whole interview to make an assessment not to jump to conclusions by ' possibly' taking things out of context.

So, basically, you have to bow down to every establishment icon and tradition - the royal family, Winston Churchill, military displays, etc, etc, etc unless you want to be accused of loathing your country.

Surely there are many more things a person can respect and appreciate about living in this country than just the usual unoriginal - and, in my opinion, often undeserved - choices.

Idolising, or idealising, people and places & being unable or unwilling to consider criticisms and falling into defending the indefensible is not a very mature response in any debate.

I wish the UK was better at acknowledging its own history, rather than this simplistic view that either the Empire was something we should not question, or the empire was an evil perpetrated by our disgusting imperialistic country.

Churchill was a fascinating personality, admired and disliked in equal measure for much of his life. Acknowledging his contribution to the war effort in WW2 doesn't mean we ignore the devastation at Gallipoli. Churchill seems to have been as distraught about what happened there as anyone would be and it informed his approach in WW2.
Well said PECS, surely we can discuss someone as relevant and interesting as Churchill without falling into polarising the debate and being unable to consider positives and negatives.

Iam I often find it hard to see anyone as totally bad or to hate anybody. There are one or two people I can think of that I know about who make me feel a level of hate.
My mum, who suffered because of the attitude of snobs and racists found kindness and support from people she least expected it from. She taught us, her children, to always judge by your experience of a person, not their reputation, wealth or lack of, education or lack of etc! A good lesson that I tried to pass on to DDs.

PECS I think expecting a 'mature response' from Piers Morgan is asking too much. I know some people believe in miracles but even they wouldn't expect that.

Trisher ? though I avoid most TV political debate progammes for that reason!,

Like you paddyann, I too love my country, in my case England!
We weren't the only country to have colonies! Most of Europe did, the Dutch East Indies among others comes to mind, but other countries don't seem to have our guilt complex, they also don't have our Commonwealth, born out of former colonies, which should tell us something!!

I love England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland but I'm English. At the risk of repeating myself (again) I wish our history could be discussed in a mature, reflective manner. I wish public buildings and statues weren't re-named or torn down but amended, to include today's view of the benefactor whose politics/slave trading are unacceptable today.
Berlin is one city I've visited that marks and records its own history without hiding from the truth.

It isn't easy to judge historical figures by today's standards, but it seems to me, looking back to my childhood, it is fairly clear who was 'prejudiced' and who just may have used language that is unacceptable today.
In my working class family, I was definitely taught to respect people who worked hard and lived decent lives and absolutely not to judge by their colour or religion. My parents would challenge what would now be called racism. My father taught me that 'nigger' was very disrespectful and never to be used. However he also taught me a great way to remember Pythgoras' Theorem that used the term 'squaw' because no-one had told him what it meant. One of our last conversations was lamenting that I couldn't pass it on because we wouldn't want to be disrespectful to Native American women.
He reckoned that Churchill would never have looked like such a great leader if Atlee hadn't been running the country.

You cannot judge anyone who lived in previous centuries by today's standards. Only by the standards of their age. In every age there will be people who transgress the standards of the time and can be condemned, standards also change.

I wonder what we are doing now that we find perfectly acceptable that we will be condemned for in 100 years time.

Could Gransnet be pilloried 100 years from now for reasons that we cannot now imagine?

During the war he wasn't and that's when it mattered!

By chance, I spent Monday Evening in conversation with a German Businessman and at one point posed him the Question 'Who won the war?'Having qualified his answer first by saying that nobody 'wins' during a war, he said that no matter what the USA and GB think and the movies tell us it was undoubtedly the Russians who brought the war to an end by sheer ruthlessness.

You're absolutely right MOnica. In 100 years time what will people make of us?!! or Winston come to that!! Perhaps Hitler will be considered a hero!!!

It was the Russians who demanded the destruction of Dresden.

"It was the Russians who demanded the destruction of Dresden."
And who can blame them? After what the Nazis did in Russia. They only wanted revenge.

Yes and No, Dresden was a main railway terminus part of which went East. The Russians wanted this destroyed to prevent German soldiers being sent to reinforce the Eastern front. I guess they wanted revenge, tbh I think a lot of people both east and west did too! The Nazi's were, and had been for a very long time, unbelievably dreadful. Curiously in all that appalling chaos a number of prisoners being transported east to the camps were able to escape, and incredibly some survived to tell the tale after the war. Amazing!

Good point niggley, about the human spirit and the desire to escape, to live and tell the story. I find myself waiting for the stories from Syria to begin to be told. It's so reminiscent of the way in which the stories of Jews and others, who managed to get out and tell the story of what was happening in concentration camps isn't it. The DM for example didn't want the uk to offer refuge to Jewish refugees, any more than it does now want us to offer refuge to Syrians fleeing the war there - or indeed refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo and all those other desperate Middle Eastern/African countries.

You cannot judge anyone who lived in previous centuries by today's standards. Only by the standards of their age.
That sums it up M0nica

However - every so often, throughout history, murderous dictators have emerged and I think that Churchill saved many people from one of them, despite what people say who are applying today's criteria to judge him.

Yes Iam, apparently tales of the awfulness of the concentration camps did filter out to the wider world, told by the very few escapees who made it back to the west, but seemingly no one really believed them and perceived it as exaggeration! I think that no one could comprehend that a civilised European country like Germany could commit such appalling cruelties! After all our own dear RF were German, people went to school, college, had relations, friends, holidays in Germany - they're like us - surely?! Imagine the shock and complete horror when the camps were liberated.

Iam64 did you watch 'A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad'? which was on BBC2 the other night? The first part of a three part documentary.

By today's standards Winston would be considered racist but he thought the English speaking people and their history was the greatest thing ever, an education in the Classics would have helped him and his views of Empire. The thing is most of our grandparents and probably parents would be considered racist today. This man lives in this country and has taken what he wants from it, he then tells us how awful we all are, isnt this racism of a kind. Its a strange idea that we would have all been fine if Adolf Hitler had won or Stalin had taken us over.

Kahinde Andrews's field of expertise would appear to be quite specialised - which makes one wonder if he, too, has pre-conceived ideas and is somewhat blinkered.

Of course, Sir Winston Churchill is not here to speak for himself; easy to criticise someone who is dead and without looking at the full picture.

Andrew's is an academic with a PhD in Sociology and Cultural Studies, an MA in Social Research and a BSc Psychology so not someone necessarily just making statements grasped from thin air! One may disagree with his analysis but I don't think you can underplay his qualification to make the analysis!

"This man lives in this country and has taken what he wants from it, he then tells us how awful we all are, isn't this racism of a kind." sounds fairly like racism to me!

Nobody anywhere, including Professor Andrews, has said that it would have been better for the Allies to have lost the war!! WC was not a saint.. he did a good leadership role and contributed hugely to the successful outcome of WW2 for the Allied forces.

I have worked with some people I really would never wanted to have socialised with but who were brilliant at their job! Maybe Churchill was like that? We don't know.