Winston Churchill and the plot to smear Britain’s great men

The concerted attempt by left-wing figures to smear Winston Churchill last week is no surprise. In fact, it is another instance of a phenomenon I identified on these pages last November when I wrote about the cultural appropriation of the first world war.

That process began in the early 1960s, with the myth of ‘Lions led by Donkeys’, but the liberal intelligentsia soon began to broaden their cultural appropriation of British history by impugning the reputation of its great men.

In September 1967 the Sunday Times published an article by Len Deighton in which he accused David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, of imperilling the lives of his men during operations in the second world war through careless talk at cocktail parties. Stirling won substantial damages in his libel action and in a subsequent statement to the SAS Regimental journal he accused Deighton of ‘debased prejudices’ and lamented a culture ‘hell bent on eroding away the remaining vestiges of our country’s basic moral discipline and principles by snide mockery of traditional institutions and the people honourably serving them.