Churchill never said what the Times says he did
mainThe London newspaper publishes today on page three a myth about Churchill that has been comprehensively refuted and yetr continues to appear in once-reputable media.
The article begins:
When asked to slash arts funding in an effort to support the war effort, Winston Churchill is said to have replied: “Then what would we be fighting for?”
What’s wrong with this sentence?
1 The UK had no Government arts funding before 1945.
2 The Churchill Project gives the known facts: This alleged quotation was ascribed to Churchill some years ago by the Village Voice, and has since migrated widely throughout the Internet. Unfortunately, our best efforts fail to find it among Churchill’s 15 million published words of speeches, papers, letters, articles or books. The quote was reprised more recently by actor Kevin Spacey to Chris Matthews of MSNBC, though the YouTube post nicely corrects the misquote with a textual overlay.
3 Although he made no connection between culture and the war effort, Churchill was always sympathetic to the arts. In January 1945 he authorised a small amount for the economist Maynard Keynes to establish an Art Council and the Royal Opera House.
The Times is a broken newspaper of record.
If not for motivate war, why would we create art?
THE TIMES IS A SPENT FORCE. Read the “I” instead
It may be rooted in the fact that (as I understand it form some artists who were affected at the time, including Michael Somes) that Churchill was a vigorous proponent of keeping theatres open when many around him argued that they should close. He (allegedly) argued that their role in keeping morale up was crucial.
The quote does state that he is ‘said’ to have used those words.
And it is “true” that he is said to have said that – in fact the entire thrust of the post is the common and shared assumption that he said it. So the Times’s statement is quite correct. It is an attributed statement.
Quite apart from the fact that the inability to find the phrase in his published letters, speeches, books and such is irrelevant to what he may or may not have said, and which someone may have heard him say, unless he had a Boswell following him around noting down everything he said.
Searching Churchill’s published works is not sufficient to prove the fact in other words. “Suggestive but not determinative,” as one of my Evidence professors once put it.
On the subject of Churchill and Keynes:
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-153/thewizard-and-the-pragmatist/
By H.W. Arndt, who wrote t h e book on the matter.
The mutual appreciation between Keynes and Churchill is a fortiori impressive given the fact that Keynes had savaged Churchill’s tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer — while Churchill later more or less acknowledged the criticism.
The sheer intellectual and human size of these two makes the inanity of the buffoons to whom power is now entrusted all the more enraging.
Churchill was every bit the chancer Johnson is. Churchill’s earlier record as a minister was…not a success, and he was not considered for any important office througout the 1930s. He was fortunate that in 1940 he was the one public figure in the tory party that wasn’t compromised by being in government in the late 1930s.
Keynesian owes as much, if not more, to Hicks than to Keynes. It was Hicks who turned Keynes somewhat vague thoughts into a coherant theory. Hicks, however, was a great deal more modest.
And Dave Brubeck’s mother was English.
My favorite fake Churchill quote is, “America will always do the right thing… after it has tried everything else.”
Fake Churchill is almost as witty as Fake Twain.