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What made Churchill great?

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

What made Churchill great?

Winston Churchill, so often quoted and studied, is arguably the greatest leader of modern times, possibly of all time. But why exactly? His story is so 'familiar' that it's easy to overlook some of the key learning points.

This post tries to tease them out.

Yesterday (Saturday 24th January 2015) was the 50th Anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill. In the last week the UK media has been full of reflections, tributes, pictures and video footage. Two programmes in particular - one on radio and one on TV - have captivated and moved me, and I suspect many others too.

On Friday morning I listened on BBC Radio 4 to a 30 minute programme about Churchill's grave. If you don't know the answer to the following question it will surprise and may even astonish you, and it immediately tells you something essential about him - Where is he buried?

Blenheim Palace

Churchill was born into an aristocratic family on 30th November 1874 in the magnificent Blenheim Palace, just outside Oxford, His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, 3rd son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and his mother Jennie Jerome was the daughter of an American millionaire. When he died Churchill was given a state funeral on 30th January 1965, said to have been greater than that afforded to a monarch, and with good reason. He saved the United Kingdom, and thus eventually freed Europe from the appalling tyranny of Nazism, by standing alone as leader of free world against the might of Hitler's Third Reich during the critical (and desperate) 19 months from his appointment as UK Prime Minister in May 1940 until the Americans entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941.

The chosen circumstances of his burial speak volumes about his character and values. He refused to be buried at Westminster Abbey in London, the traditional resting place of great British leaders and war heroes. Instead he lies with members of his immediate family in a simple grave in the churchyard at Bladon, a small village 2 miles from Blenhein Palace. In fact his grave is so unremarkable that you would not know it was there unless someone directed you to it.

Friday's Radio 4 programme interviewed local people in Bladon and others whose lives have been affected by Churchill. One is businessman Martin Long, who has set up a series of businesses including the well-known (in the UK) insurance company Churchill, named after his hero. He described how, as an 11 year old schoolboy in London, struggling academically, he discovered in 1961 that Churchill, then aged 86, had also done badly at school. Interviewed in the churchyard close to Churchill's grave, his voice cracking with emotion, Long said that Churchill had been a lifelong source of inspiration to him. He has studied the great man's life in depth and regularly makes the pilgrimage to Churchill's home, Chartwell, in Kent, and the graveyard in Bladon. The presenter of the programe told us that over many years Long has amassed a remarkable collection of Churchill memorabilia.

Picture above - the excavation of Mark 1 Spitfire N3200 on Dunkerque Beach

Picture below - Guy Martin with the rebuilt N3200

Even more moving was last night's superb 2 hour programme Guy Martin's Spitfire on Channel 4 television. For two years (2012-14) motorbike racing champion Guy Martin worked with a specialist team at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, south of Cambridge, to rebuild a Mark 1 Spitfire aircraft, N3200, coded 'QV', which crashed on Dunkerque beach in Northern France in 1940. The pilot, Squadron Leader Geoffrey Stephenson, managed to evade capture for days and made his way to Brussels where he sought refuge in the US Embassy. Unfortunately the Americans refused him entry because they were still 'neutral' in 1940 and did not want to offend the Germans, so he turned himself in as a prisoner of war. He was so troublesome to the Germans in captivity that he was eventually sent to legendary POW camp Colditz, where he was reunited with his great friend the literally (not alcoholically!) legless air ace Douglas Bader and spent the rest of the war unsuccessfully trying to escape. Sadly he later died testing a new jet fighter in the USA in 1954.

Winston Churchill and the Supermarine Spitfire were arguably the two greatest British icons of World War II, which would have been lost without either. Together they were instrumental in preventing a German invasion in the so-called Battle of Britain, Britain's 'darkest hour' as Churchill called it, in the Summer and Autumn of 1940.

The story of the expert reconstruction and rebirth of Spitfire N3200 and it's eventual first flight last summer in front of Geoffrey Stephenson's two daughters was astounding and deeply emotional. I defy anyone not to be moved, or to be in love with this superb aircraft having watched the programme. Whilst the Spitfire was, as the programme stated, a brilliantly manoeuverable gun platform and therefore in brutal reality an instrument of death, it remains the most beautiful evocation when in flight of moral courage and the perpetual fight against evil. Many of its pilots were ridiculously young, some as young as 19 - still boys. My son turns 19 next month and it is incredible to imagine kids of his age risking all - many sadly dying horribly and violently - to save the free world in the skies over southern England in 1940. Churchill had it so profoundly right when he uttered those immortal words:

The test pilot who flew N3200 on its maiden flight last year captured the spirit of this fabulous machine when he quoted a US pilot who once said:

'In America we get into a fighter plane, but you put a Spitfire on'.

So what lessons do I take away from the 50th Anniversary commemorations of Churchill's death juxtaposed with the restoration of one of the exceptional aircraft that came to symbolise the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany?

Churchill and the Spitfire capture the essence of the indomitable human spirit. They make me proud to be British (as opposed to what makes me ashamed of it) and determined to fight for the truth and for freedom. The problem is that this fight goes on every day, in all walks of life. Hitler and his evil cronies may have become hackneyed cariacatures of big, bad bogeymen, but the reality is that the spirit of oppression, bullying, contempt, cyncism, hatred, exploitation of others, lust for and abuse of power, narcissm and sociopathy is to be found everywhere, including throughout so-called 'free' Western societies! What makes it insidious is that many privileged, wealthy and powerful figures in Western democracies see and tout themselves as bastions of freedom, as long as it doesn't inconvenience them!

You cannot have truth without honesty and integrity. Sadly these are abused, overused and underpractised words. The majority of us pay lip service as long as, as I say, it doesn't cause us discomfort. However, underneath we think we're too clever and sophisticated to need to conform like sheep to these quaint, old-fashioned notions. In so doing we make precisely the same colossal error as the generations before us and, no doubt, the generations to come. For the truth exists, and unfortunately it is often unpalatable. It is also often complex and multi-faceted - one person or one group's truth is another's lie, or mortal threat. But there is always deeper truth, and it tends to be threatening to those who feel they have something to lose if it gets out.

When 'the rubber hits the road' most of us are found wanting, unless the threat we face is mortal like Britain's in 1940. Otherwise we tend to resemble the rich young ruler in Jesus's parable, for whom entering the Kingdom of Heaven was more difficult than a camel passing through the eye of a needle because much as he valued in theory the ideas Jesus put forward he could not bear to give up what he had. Let's be clear - you do not have to be a Christian to understand the point of the parable - the secret of happiness and fulfilment is not how much money, status or fame you've got. It's why I've adopted my favorite Churchill quote as the underpinning core of my business behaviour, to be found in my business email signature: 'We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give'

Intelligent giving of oneself, one's time and one's talents in the service of others is cathartic because, as neuroscience now clearly shows, our brains are wired for it. It is how we collaborate and thus best advance ourselves as a species. The majority of people in authority are scared - scared they'll be 'found out', that they'll be humiliated, that somehow they'll lose their privileges and status. So instead of encouraging others they try to suppress them to prevent them being a 'threat'. Above all Churchill possessed two timeless qualities of the greatest heroes - wisdom and moral courage. He was also humble, generous in spirit, truth-seeking, fun-loving, unifying, witty and error-prone. This is an intoxicating package - a sure-fire winner! He was utterly human and yet utterly inspirational, which is the inevitable paradox of outstanding leadership. The problem we all have is that our childlike primeval instincts tell us our leaders should be perfect - they never are.

Two of Churchill's other personality traits are worthy of note. Firstly he was, to use one of my key words of the moment, contrarian. In other words he knew his own mind and did not follow the herd or toe the party line. At times his contrarian behaviour infuriated his colleagues, his allies, his friends and his family, but he never wavered. Without this vital personal attribute he would never have become Prime Minister in Britain's darkest hour and led her to eventual victory in World War II. Secondly he humbly understood his weaknesses (which no doubt contributed to his regular bouts of depression) but crucially also his strengths. One of his greatest strengths was his ability to write and speak most powerfully, in a way that motivated, inspired and encouraged vast numbers of people.

The greatest leaders are those who put others ahead of themselves. Think of it this way - they act like loving parents, not spoilt, selfish and opinionated teenage playground bullies. What's so remarkable about that, and why on earth is it so rare for goodness sake??!!

Churchill understood profoundly well the need to combine three elements espoused by that Ancient Greek font of perennial wisdom - Aristotle. You cannot have one without the other two. They are:

LOGOS - the 'word', in other words the facts and the data. In World War II Churchill famously set up a group outside normal reporting circles called the Statistical Office, to feed him raw, unfiltered, unsanitised facts about the progress of the war, which was not at all good during the first 2 years

ETHOS - character, integrity

PATHOS - emotional connection with others, a genuine concern for them and interest in their well-being. It's a devilishly simple formula.

So how about you? Can you get your camel through the eye of the needle?!

'Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.' Winston Churchill

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Mark Ashton

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