The campus Churchill delusion

Was Winston Churchill a racist? For students like me who attended Churchill College, Cambridge, it’s a question which barely even merits an answer: of course he wasn’t. But some Cambridge academics appear to take a different approach when it comes to assessing the record of Britain’s most famous prime minister.

Churchill College recently announced a ‘year-long programme’ into Sir Winston’s allegedly ‘backward’ conceptions of empire and race. As part of this review, the college has held events such as ‘The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill’. Many students are simply bemused.

Academic debate is, of course, no bad thing. It is something to be encouraged at any university. But a problem arises when it appears to be taking place in a way which is one sided. At the recent event on Churchill’s legacy, which promised a ‘critical re-assessment of Churchill’s life and legacy in light of his views on empire and race’, it was hard not to conclude from the outset what the verdict would be.