Tv, from the 33rd International Churchill conference, author and former president of the british liberal party, lord watson, talks about his book churchills legacy two speeches to save the world. This is about 45 minutes. Thank you very much. Our speaker is a commander in the British Empire so he outranks me. It is a great pleasure and enormous pleasure to introduce my good friend, lord watson of richmond. My job this afternoon is to furnish his churchill credentials for you. Its an easy task in this case. Like churchill, he made his name in the media. As a tv presenter and radio reporter. Rising to become chairman of the Royal Television society. Like churchill, he has always been passionate about politics. While churchill rewrote it and changed party allen has always , remained loyal to the liberal party. He became its president in the 1980s and now serves in the house of lords. Like churchill, he has always been interested and engaged in international affairs. In europe, the commonwealth and here in the United States. He is really the living embodiment of churchills free circles concept of international diplomacy. To give you a taste of that, he has been president of the anglofrench society. He is president of the british german society. A patron of the richmond society. International chairman emeritus of the English Speaking union and president of the european atlantic movement. I should point out he is high steward of cambridge university, also my boss. And a patron of the Churchill Archives Center and has the churchill medal from the English Speaking union. Like churchill, he is a writer and his latest book, churchills legacy two speeches to save the world, is about two vital speeches he gave in 1946. One at Westminster College and one of the university of zurich. That book is doing extremely well, on top of the list of bestselling hardback nonfiction books at the moment. You all have the chance to keep it there by going next door and buying more copies. Allen did not just write the book. In recent weeks he has been living it. I know for a fact that in the last few weeks he has appeared on the very podiums that in missouri. Od on and i can prove it. He spoke at Westminster College. And at the university of zurich. I cannot think about anyone better to speak about churchill and the europeans for this largely north american audience. Thank you. [applause] lord watson ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. All very well being compared to churchill in a sort of way but it can lead to rather frightening questions. For example, when i was last week in fulton, missouri, and i spoke in the gymnasium where churchill spoke, but before that we took questions from 13yearold children from the church. This is the church that was destroyed by the luftwaffe in on december 29 1940 and then , moved stone by stone, stepbystep across the atlantic to fulton, missouri. An extraordinary image when you enter that small town. We were in this church and taking questions. One boy had his hand up straight away, very urgent so i went to him on my left. I said, what is your question . He had several different papers in front of him and seemed very selfabsorbed in putting this question together. And in the end he said, much to himself as anyone else, he said, you were born in 1874. [laughter] lord watson and i calculate that means youre over 100. And then he looked up at me and said, why havent you croaked . [laughter] lord watson so i congratulated him on his arithmetic but not his sense of who i was and i was not Winston Churchill. [laughter] lord watson although i think its a common experience and very evident today really that those of us who have written or are writing anything about churchill, you do get strangely close to the man. And he somehow lives today. And it is through what he wrote and what he did and for me also very much his humor which i find so exciting. I have one other link with Winston Churchill. He was the third chairman of the English Speaking union, and i was the ninth, which means that we share a board at dartmouth house. The great pride to me. And people now say sometimes, his wit was a bit contrived and rehearsed. Let me tell you one little story. 37 child street was the headquarters of the English Speaking union and he had an apartment as chairman. Sadly doesnt have that way happen that way today. Apartment right in the heart of mayfair, living in an environment where he was easily satisfied with the very best and couldnt necessarily afford it. There was a hostess at number 16 and she invited him from time to time to dinner because he was a good raconteur. This evening he goes across, rings the bell and the butler comes to the door and is swept aside by the hostess and she looks winston in the face and says, winston, im very, very sorry but i have invited too many men to tonights dinner. Winston is crestfallen. Already thinking of the dinner that awaits him. Now it is back to fish and chips at 37 child street. He looks at her without a moments hesitation and says, madam, as i understood the purpose of this evening it is to dine, not to breed. [laughter] lord watson he cant have rehearsed that one before. So, there we are. And the subject ive been given and i am delighted to have is churchill and the europeans. Over the last 16 days i have been traveling around the states, giving a lot of addresses about this book, two speech that saved the world, the first in fulton, missouri, and the other zurich, switzerland. And i think im justified in focusing initially on these two speeches because the focus of those speeches actually is about what is going to happen to europe. His motivation is that he believes that unless the United States can be persuaded and can in a way be inspired to provide a defense for western europe, using the temporary monopoly of the atomic bomb, and secondly, if they can be persuaded to help the economic recovery of europe, of britain of course, that of the rest of europe as well so that europe can be both defended and restored, and that is the focus of these two speeches. One other thing about putting those in context. There is sometimes a tendency, understandable perhaps, but i think ultimately wrong, to see churchills career as a kind of gradually downward trajectory, but the high peak is clearly may 1940. He stands alone against adolph hitler. Then so the argument would go, by 1943, certainly by 44, he is no longer the Senior Leader within the alliance against the third reich. His place of power has been taken by fdr and by joseph stalin, and then he does indeed gets to potsdam for the closing conference of the european war. That actually he is only there for a few days and then has to go back to britain and face an election which he is pretty sure he will lose. He does lose it, not on the margin but substantially. , and he doesnt much enjoy being leader of his majestys opposition. In fact he is very depressed by all of that. And so the story would go he finally gets back to number 10, 1951, but maybe he is too old for that job. He had a stroke the next year and its all in a way declined. That narrative is incorrect in one absolutely vital regard. Which is actually 1946. Because these two speeches have a profound effect on the way in which the post war world is constructed and on the recovery of europe. And it is worth recalling after he made the speech at fulton he gets back on the train and says to the people who are with him, that was the most important speech of my life. And this is from the man who made all those incredible speeches in 1940. One has to have that context. So, lets deal with that first one. Fulton, and its impact on the world, but particularly for europe. He goes back to britain, and loses the election, and his periods of depression have already been referred to today and he called them his black dog mood, and after he has lost the election, that dog has him by the throat and he cannot throw off the mood. And he is so depressed that he says to his doctor, it would have been better if, like fdr, i had died. And then he says again a little later, the flies are gathering on the corpse. And what has really worried him and he expressed this he would be at these great altitude in which he could both see and help shape the world and now suddenly he pulled to the ground. With the ever be able to shape events and have influence in the world again . And then as you all know, he was down at chapel, and this letter is put in front of him. And superficially theres nothing very unusual about the letter. It is from a college he probably at that stage had not heard of, Westminster College, fulton, missouri, and it invites him to come and receive an honor award honorary doctorate and give a speech about the world. But what electrifies him is that the last two sentences on the letter are by hand and written by truman. What they say is this is a prime college in my home state. If you come, i will introduce you. And winston immediately realized this means 18 hours on the train with the new president of the United States. So with alacrity he accepts and really from that moment his morale begins to improve. And we heard how he refused an honor from george vi on the grounds that it was no good giving him an order when he had been given an order of the boot by the british people. But when he decides to return, the day he makes his way to South Hampton to board the Queen Elizabeth he takes the shorter trip to george vi where he is given this great decoration a , sure sign his morale has come they crossed the atlantic. Churchill is struck by that in many ways because he is the only civilian in his family but there are 12,000 canadian troops returning home. Part of this great denuding of the western defense while stalin sits outside berlin and outside britain and germany with 300 divisions in that part of the world. 300 divisions. And short of the incredible and beneficial timing of the possession for just long enough by the west of the atomic weapon, a space is created in which there can be a balance, in determining the future of europe and the future of the world, and that space churchill is determined to fill. To fill it with ideas, proposals and new thinking and thats what he is quite set on when he gets to the United States. To fill, with ideas, proposals, new thinking. And thats what he is quite set on when he gets to the United States. Now, when he arrives in the United States, there are several thinks which hes not all together happy about. Hes no long eer Prime Minister so hes not invited to stay as a guest in the white house. Instead he has to stay in our embassy in washington. And who is the ambassador . Lord halifax, which he had clashed with in 1940. Halifax always believed it would be better for britain to have negotiated in 1940 with hitler while the raf was still in tact and not defeated, as he feared it might be. He has one or two conversations , and the halifax secretary who is traveling with him has given us a plan hough they all sat at the embassy table and there was a lot of small talk and she wrote and said it was boring, boring, boring. Churchill wasnt giving anything away to halifax. And the journey starts. Hour away on train. It is a great journey. Harry truman is there, of course, and several other people, and britainamericans, they drink a prodigious amount of alcohol and play cards. Harry truman allowed churchill to win, which i think was wise. And and then churchill gets up and takes the final copy of his speech and goes across the carriage to a mimeograph machine and feeds in the machine and hands them to truman, and truman reads them and expresses himself satisfied, but he also observed that this would cause one hell of a shindig. Thats quite important because what were actually approaching, faster than the train, is the first moment of real crisis in american policy towards europe in the postwar environment. They arrive in full fulton and have a great time and when i was there the other day i was enormously flattered they dressed the stage in the gymnasium exactly as it had been when truman and churchill were there, even the same flowers, gave us the same lunch. Including the famous iconic ham. The pride of the missouri farmers. As you know, when he ate it, he was waiting for some judgment, and he gave it in his particular way and he said, madam, this ham represents the high point in the evolution of the pig. [laughter] anyway, he gives the speech, and we all know the famous terms that he used, iron curtain across europe from the baltic to the adriatic, and his message is simple at the end of the day. Butoesnt use this phrase, good old uncle joe is not good old uncle joe. Stalin is a tyrant and will take whatever he can short of a nuclear war. So again we come to this business of the space that the bomb creates because actually the sequence of events is churchill makes the speech, within a matter of months truman has issued the truman doctrine, committing the United States to the defense of freedom wherever freedom is attacked, and then we have the berlin airlift, and still the russians have not exploded their bomb. And then of course nato. But actually, the bomb exposed in 1949 and by then the berlin airlift had succeeded in westing wresting the possibility of taking west berlin and possibly the whole of western germany and possibly more, short of a nuclear exchange. So this is the space he is determined to fill. Fullon, how does he attempt to fill it . Well, he points to what he believes is a unique relationship between britain and the United States, and between the British Empire, and he was still using that term, of course, and the United States, and how the future safety of the world and certainly the safety embedded and bedded in law, the safety of democracy, turns on the cooperation and understanding between the United States and britain and the empire. That is the main message he gets across. There is a hell of a shindig and indeed within one week after hes returned, harry truman calls a press conference with secretary of state, and in this press conference he says, not just once but twice, almost biblical, twice, i never knew what mr. Churchill was going to say. I had no idea. And the fact that i was sitting next to him on the platform in theay denotes Administration Support of what mr. Churchill was proposing. See say thats politics but it was of course , because truman was uncertain of his position. He had not been elected and knew he would face a tough struggle being reelected. The roosevelt family was very powerful and they immediately campaigned against what churchill has been proposing. So we come to end of his visit to america. He goes to new york, time to board the queen mary, and new york is divided. Theres a ticker tape parade for winston, given the freedom of the city and also 4,000 demonstrators of the streets saying, no war for winston. Divided. Churchill is over the moon. He is delighted. His morale is completely restored. He is right back in the midst of consecutive controversy, debate, all the thing head loves, and he returns to the United Kingdom elated and arrives five hours late, fog in the channel, and a Little Dinner Party has been planned for him by lord salisbury with anthony eaten and they rehearsed the line they intended to take. The line is, well, winston, wonderful speech, pity we didnt know about it, close bracket. We know you dont much like being leader of the opposition, and anthony was very happy to take the burden on his own shoulders. Then you can go around the world and go on making speeches like that, absolutely wonderful. It must have been a dismal dish dinner party because when churchill arrives at South Hampton he gives a press conference and says im going to fight in the next general election and will kick this man out of number 10. There we are. [laughter] lord watson we know incidentally exactly what happened on that train because in the churchill archives, and i think Allen Packwood will remember the date this was discovered, there was cable sent bevan, an churchill to great ally of his, explains what happened on the train, including feeding the sheet into the mimeograph machine. Now we come to the second speech and he has, again, enormous impact on what happens in europe and tells us so much about churchill and the europeans. You see, when churchill was in the United States, he was given the second job to do. By mr. Anthony, actually. It was to try to get a loan for britain because lend lease has stopped on ve day, and britain was, frankly, broke, really broke. They didnt know where the next thing was coming from. And i found, i was in new york just the day before, and i spoke at the university club, and i never heard this story before and i dont know whether Allen Packwood has but its in their magazine, and apparently he got on the chair and made a speech and he gave the peace sign and all the rest of it, and he used this extraordinary image, and he is talking about britain being bankrupt and he says, what would happen if the mighty queen mary liner ran out of fuel and the engine stops . And it found itself drifting without control towards the american coast . Ill tell you what would happen. The american coast guard would ensure that every conceivable ship that could come out to save the queen mary would leave harbor and save the queen mary. The message was, this is what i want you to do now, because britain is like the queen mary, dangerously close to running out of fuel. Now, winston, despite all his influence on the hill, actually gets nowhere on that visit to try to persuade people in power in the United States to look seriously at loans for britain and wider to Financial Support for europe to be enabled in a way to recover. And i cant prove this, but my instinct really is that churchill, remember, was half american and he said to congress, if my father had been american, not my mother, i would have got here under my own feet. He probably would. And he understands that the american reluctance is something to do with not being persuaded that the europeans themselves will do nothing. Do something. They will actually make a move which will get their house in order and which will then enable people, like George C Marshall, who is thinking down the lines and puts together what is called marshall aid. And so he goes to zurich with a s clear an agenda as as when he went to fulton. He drove to the university, and he stands up in this enormous podium there, and he says in his unique way, now, i shall startle you. And he actually writes in the text, now startle you. And he says, we have to build a kind of United States of europe, and it has to be based on a partnership between france, and germany. Now, this is september 1946. The nuremberg trials are on. Every day the fresh revelations of the horrors of the nazi regime, and this is an extraordinary thing to say. The french have just executed lavall and other collaborators, and he says the speech and theres more of a shindig than there was, frankly, even at fulton. General gold goes absolutely apoplectic. He says this this worst speech that Winston Churchill ever made and duncan sands, churchills soninlaw, is said to try to explain what churchill was trying to do, and he never gets a word in. Because degaulle was there and says, my attitude towards germany is that we will open the left bank of the rhine in perpetuity and establish a commit on which the soviet union will have an honored flies supervise what happens in the industrial germany which meant they weve ha stripped it out as the stripped out in the streets in eastern germany and we will screen them for everything theyve got. Voila. Not a good start. But an extraordinary thing is going to happen. Both speeches ignite a process of thought and action which m is which is transformational. Fulton, truman acknowledges this and leads to churchills forecast becoming every day more accurate, and it leads to the truman doctrine and eventually to nato. In the case of fulton, George C Marshall has already made it ,lear, he is back from china that this is not going to be something that the United States will invent for europe. If the europeans just sit there , he wants the europeans themselves to take an ownership in and it he later on acknowledges the importance of the zurich speech in his own thinking. So, again, a trail is ignited which leads, as i say, ultimately to the marshall plan, and then to the coal and steel community. Theres one other player in this. A frenchman who found the european coal and steel community. He is put in charge of the economic plan for the reconstruction of france. He goes along to see the germans. He was never intimidated by them. France cannot be economically restored without u. S. Credits, and there will be no u. S. Credits unless we change our policy towards germany. So on both sides of the atlantic , something quite new is beginning to come into view. I mentioned now let me turn to de gaulle in terms of relations with the europeans. De gaulle spends a lot of the war sitting in london, and churchill was very generous to him in that regard. Headquarters were provided for club innd the rac london. And if you go there now theyve restored the cabinet room which de gaulle used in the original particular, all that. De gaulle had the ability sometimes to infuriate Winston Churchill, almost beyond conceivable measure. And the for some really that he does this, we were checking the date earlier today. I was in december 1941, churchill is in the white house for christmas, you remember may and have seen photographs with a christmas tree. He is sitting with roosevelt having dinner, and paul arrives with astonishing news, which is the free french without asking anybodys permission or indeed telling anybody including the United States or canada or the United Kingdom has just occupied two islands off the canadian coast. And he is enraged and says to the president and the Prime Minister youve got to do something about this. Winston grumbled a bit and says , ill see de gaulle when i get back. He gets back and i was told the story, and i believe it. De gaulle is summoned into number 10 to explain himself. And churchill is sitting there when churchill really wanted to have a go, he was like a volcano erupting. And he actually gave de gaulle 40 minutes. And the gulf attended knewlle pretended he english but he understood nothing really. He is doing his best. At the end of the day rather like a volcano eventually subsiding, churchill sits back in his chair and looks at de gaulle expecting a reply. De gaulle has come in full military rank. He puts his hat back on his head, puts his heels together, salutes and turns on his heel and walked out without saying a word. And churchill says, magnificent. Magnificent. [laughter] lord watson i think for churchill in a way, de gaulle did symbolize the honor of france. And thats why he gave him the leeway that he did. But he could extremely irritating, and if churchill believed in victory magnanimity, general de gaulle did not. And when he becomes president of france, as you all know, he twice vetoes britains application to join the European Union. He does so on the grounds that he claims mr. Churchill has always told him that he was choose the atlantic rather than sea, rather than the land. We dont know. But i do believe that de gaulle s vetoes and his resentment, he seems to have been bothered after the Second World War and had a profound effect on my countrys relationship with the European Union. I will never forget the time when angela merkel, the german chancellor came to address both houses of parliament in westminster. She said at one point in her speech to the parliamentarians, Great Britain has no need to prove its european credentials. It proves them in 1940. Thats from the german chancellor. And, of course, she was absolutely right. One of the problems in the evolution of our relationship with the institutional European Union we have not left europe, of course, that is geographically impossible. [laughter] ways. Atson in other i think its very unfortunate that in a way the europeans, Continental Europeans, institutional of the European Union never actually recognized the difference in motivation and status between Great Britain and the other members of the European Union. They shouldve found a way to do it. And when churchill later on, 19471948, becomes an open advocate of the United States, europe and the wishes britain to join it but thats not enough. What he wants is for britain to lead. Much more believable in characteristic. And let me share with you an instant that affected me quite a lot. Allen talked about various hats i wear, which are about bilateral relations in europe, including being the president of the britishgerman association. Chairman thetish last six years, and on the last occasion it was a farewell dinner at a very senior german politician, well known in germany, got up and he made a very aggressive speech. And it was partly directed to me and partly directed to the rest of the british contingent. He said, you brits have never been loyal to the idea of europe. Youve always held back. Youve been reluctant europeans. Youve been disloyal to the idea of europe. And i was really angry about this, and i got up and i said, i want you to understand one thing very clearly. Germany was of course enthusiastic for the european construction because it was a way back to respectability, and a way back to a role. The french were equally grateful because they had also been occupied and in a way disgraced. And the rest of Continental Europe to greater or lesser extent have suffered the same fate. The british came out of the war in 1945 not thinking that somehow national independence, patriotism, had been disproved by what had happened in the war. Quite the opposite. They believed that is what kept them going. Thats how they held their head above water. Churchill said that several times when he was over for the speech. That shouldve been recognized much more than it was. So finally, what is the legacy of this man with regard to europe . Just before i flew out here last week, the week before last, parliament had reassembled under and i went to the house at westminster and the house of lords, and there was not much going on in the chamber, that i took myself to the bar, to the bishops bar. I dont know why its called the bishops bar. Ive never seen a bishop in it. But anyway, it was full and there was a single subject of debate and conversation. One thing was brexit and what did it mean, and the other was the previous sundays president ial debate between your two candidates for the presidency of the United States. And when i left the bar, i thought maybe we should take one of the most iconic sentences of Winston Churchill, in 1940 when he paid the great complement to the world air force, and he said , never in the field of Human Conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few. Perhaps faced with the situation we have today on both sides of the atlantic we might say never in the field of political dispute has so little been owed by so many to so few. [laughter] watson we need [applause] lord watson we need churchills legacy. We need the energy. We need imagination. We need the refusal to give way and in need to grasp opportunity, carpe diem, and weve got to think afresh and think new. A couple of weeks before he gave his speech in zurich, he wrote a short article to the daily telegraph, and uses a powerful image. He says you know the start of the story of the spanish prisoner who has been in a dungeon for decades, and the man has wasted away. He has no energy and he has no hope. Finally, he gets to his feet as he approaches the door of the dungeon, and with desperation he pushes on it once again. This time it opens. What churchill was saying, he said it very directly to the french. The greatest value that you can get from victory is magnanimity. You have to have the ability to recreate a europe in which they there will be once again a spiritually great friends and a spiritually great france and a spiritually great germany. You dont usually think of Winston Churchill in quite those terms, but i think there is a that dimension to churchill, and its the leadership we now need. Thank you. [applause] have fiven until we minutes for questions. As long as you dont ask me about 74 and all that is fine. Ok, who would like to go first . Questions . Other than ms. Merkel, who, if anyone, do you see on the horizon who can possibly show the kind of leadership, even if not quite as much, as churchill did . Lord watson if i am blunt, i would say no one. But that doesnt mean that they are not there. And remember, who wouldve predicted in 1938 that Winston Churchill would become the Prime Minister of britain or that he would lead such a triumphant process of recovery and resistance . So i think we dont know. What is important is that whoever they are out there, they do understand that the possibilities of leadership exist. But we are talking about real leadership. We are not talking about parodies of leadership. We are not talk about populism. We are talking about something else. Churchill was never a populist. One thing you can be sure of and i think randolph, you will probably agree with me about this, but if you took, if you look at the referendum on brexit, whatever churchill might have thought or said or done, and, of course, we dont know, but one thing i think we can be certain of, he wouldnt have agreed to a referendum. [applause] lord Watson Churchill did not believe in referendums. He believed in the sovereignty of parliament. So i want leaders to appear who can use the real sinews of their democracy to provide real leadership. And weve got to have it because not only does it affect the middle east but also Vladimir Putin. And just a quick word on that. The soviet union is gone, but Vladimir Putin is a man of the soviet union. He was the head of the kgb, he was the head of the kgb in dresden for seven years, speaks fluent german by the way, and i think his attitude toward russian influence, greater , isia, the near abroad totally in line with that other russian leaders, powerful leaders before him. He will take the opportunities that present themselves, whether it is in the baltic or the crimea or syria or wherever it is. Hes poised to take those opportunities. And churchill used to say always of the russians that he admired the courage of the people enormously, that they had formed torn the guts out of the nazi war machine. True, but he also absolutely did not believe in the sincerity of bolshevism. He said of bolshevism, he used crocodile,it to a im not sure why. He said he is somebody who looks at a crocodile believing that he will eat him last. Or another was if you look at a crocodile and you think its smiling, remember, it thinks its looking at breakfast. [laughter] lord watson so churchill should warn us of foolishness in that regard. The thing is, the legacy is the legacy of freedom. Its a legacy that many people have to die to preserve. Its also a legacy which needed churchills leadership. And i think we sometimes think that democracy is an entitlement. We have got into the habit of believing that countries are going to cooperate and its all going to be ok. Its not like that. Its got to be earned in every generation and in every situation. That is why think the legacy matters. [applause] lord watson thank you. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook. Ceoational Civil War Museum motts highlights the defense of cemetery ridge. The mosby heritage
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