The Black dog

Have you ever stopped and wondered what it take for some to reach ‘the top’

It seems so easy for some, doesn’t it. I mean they seem to have it all, born in the right family, gone to all the best schools, a career pretty much mapped out for them, especially if the grow up believing that they are destined for great things.

Well, today we’re going to look at one person who seems to fit that down to a tee, and you’d be surprised to know that for most of his life he was considered a failure! It was only the ‘sunset years’ when normal people retire that he broke the mold and became what we remember today.

Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill

It’s hard to think that a man the likes of Churchill could ever be one who had the same struggles as I have, but he did, and it took it’s toll on him.

He was both loved and hated by the British, and often at the same time!

Churchill, both loved and hated by the British, loved for the fact that he led us through the darkest period of our history, yet hated at times when the workers demanding what we would consider today to be fair terms he had no hesitation in imposing Martial law and ‘ruling’ with an iron fist.

This series isn’t so much about giving the life story of the people in the hubs as about looking at some of the challenges those people faced and seeing the lessons we might be able to learn from them, and Churchill faced challenges in “SPADES”

With Great Privilege, comes great responsibility.

Winston may not have been the author of those words, that honour goes to the French Revolution, and someone else, but he certainly believed in the statement.

Born into one of the most influential families of the Victorian Era, Winston grew up in ‘Great privilege’ in many ways.

His father, Lord Randolph Churchill was the fourth son of the eighth Duke of Marlborough, a senior politician and member of the House of Lords, the highest Lawcourt in Britain and at the time, it was the one place that held equal power to the Parliament in Britain. No law could be passed in Britain without the approval of the House of Lords.

The House of Commons was where the common people of the time had a voice, though in Britain at the time only Landowners could actually vote, the House of Lords was where the real power lay.

Winston’s Mother wasn’t English, she was American. Jenny Jerome was the daughter of an American Financier and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

During the 19th Century, the British aristocracy was already having financial problems, one way that they got around this was across the ‘puddle’ (as the Brits often refer to the Atlantic) the Americans had lots of money, and many of them were wanting ‘respectability’ so what better way to get it than have your daughter marry a Lord or an Earl?

Winston’s Father probably wasn’t having the financial woes, but he was a ‘lesser’ Lord.

Winston grew up in a world that was very different to the one you and I know, but it was one that carried a lot of responsibility.

People today think that the Aristocracy simply lived ‘off the backs’ of the working classes, but the relationship was a bit more complicated than that. If you were part of the ‘landed gentry’ you were expected to not only care for your estate, but you were expected to care for the people who lived and worked on the estate, and that included when they were no longer able to work, there was a lot of responsibility.

Hurdle number 1 “A speech impediment”

Yes, that’s right, probably the greatest orator of the English language had a speech impediment!

This is the man whose speeches galvanised a nation into defiance, who just by his use of the spoken word took a beaten and battered nation on the brink of catastrophic defeat and made them believe that they could win against impossible odds, but he had a speech impediment!!!

Not only that, but he was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature four times before he finally won it in 1955.

We don’t really know for sure what the impediment was, some say it was a stutter, most of history seems to say that, but some others have said that it was a lisp, but he had the impediment, and try listening to his speeches, see if you can hear the impediment?

He developed a way to deal with it, and it was simple, he would work his speeches until he knew them off by heart, yes he followed his notes, but he didn’t really need them as he knew the speeches ‘off by heart’

Winston turned his ‘weakness’ into one of his greatest strengths. He learned how to ‘Marshall the English language and send it into Battle”

Something I found out the other day that really surprised me, and made me respect the man even more was that Members of Parliament didn’t actually receive a salary for it until about 1925, but Winston was the son of a junior Lord who didn’t have an income from the Land, Winston had no money!

Churchill started writing sometime in the late 1890s, when he was in his twenties, and it was the writing that paid for everything, even when he was in parliament, it was his writing that paid the bills, not his family or even his position.

Listen to the craftsman speak

Hurdle 2 “Too fond of the Jews”

It’s hard to think, but prior to the Second world war, Germany wasn’t the only nation where the Jews weren’t liked, let alone trusted.

In 1892 France had put an officer on trial for treason, despite the obvious evidence of his innocence he was found guilty and sentenced to years of hard labour, the reason he was tried was he was Jewish!

Imagine this, October 1914. Britain is at war, but it’s a war that no one was ready for, everyone was seriously short on munitions, and they were about to take on a force that was much better prepared.

The Royal Navy was seriously short of acetone to make Cordite, the propellant needed to launch their massive shells for the Battleships. They needed 60,000 tons of the stuff by Christmas, and there was none!

At the time, a chemist in Manchester had come up with a new way of manufacturing the material, but it was experimental and they needed the stuff today!

There was one minor problem though, and that was the Chemist was a Zionist Jew by the name of Chaim Weismann, and he wanted something from Britain.

The Royal Navy was only able to take on the Imperial German Navy because of the work of Dr Weismann.

Churchill saw that Britain owed Dr Weismann its very existence, and by extension, they owed the Jewish nation their very lives. It was Dr Weismann who supplied the acetone for the Battleships, but it was the wealthy Jewish families who were funding the war for Britain, they were there helping when no one else would.

To the rest of the world the Jews were a nation to be used and then thrown away, but to Winston, you never forgot your friends!

Churchill was a friend of the Zionist cause all his political life, and whenever he could do something for the Jewish people, he took advantage of it, even when it meant countermanding standing orders.

Hurdle number 3 “Too many ideas”

Franklyn Delano Roosevelt once said of Winston, “Winston has a thousand ideas a day, but only about two of them are worth anything!”

He had a very quick mind, and could analyse problems while others were still trying to work out if actually was a problem!

It meant at times he got things spectacularly right, but other times he got them spectacularly wrong.

In 1915 Turkey had decided to join Germany in the war, the entire Middle East was in danger, and there was a very real possibility that the British Empire could be cut in two.

In early 1915 Turkey launched an attack on the Suez canal, the fighting was brutal but eventually, they were beaten back.

Churchill came up with a scheme to send a fleet of Battleships though the Dardanelles to attack Constantinople and knock Turkey out of the war, to do so they had to take the Gallipoli peninsula.

It became the worst defeat in British Military history and would have finished the career of anyone else, but Churchill believed in admitting mistakes and resigned as First Lord of Admiralty and joined his old regiment in France (Yes, he fought in the trenches).

After the war, he was re-elected to Parliament and took up the post of ‘Colonial secretary’ where he worked on the creation of a Jewish homeland.

Many places were suggested, but the Zionist movement would consider only one, Israel.

Churchill did eventually come up with a plan that he got the Jewish people to agree to, in it they would get roughly 10% of the land, but Jerusalem would stay an ‘international’ city protected by the league of nations, and the Palestinians would get the rest, it was the Palestinians that rejected the plan, and eventually when the nation was formed, they got less than the plan allowed them to have.

Churchill’s plan was for a two-state system, but with the roles reversed from what is there today.

Just one of those ideas not working out would have finished the career of most politicians, and they almost finished Churchill’s career, but as the title says, “Never give up, never, no never, no never give up!

Did you know that even after WW2 Churchill was still hated and mistrusted by some places in Britain? Not because of the war, but because of the things he did before, the blunders he’d made.

Okay, how does all that relate to the title I’ve given the article?

Well, it’s said that after the Gallipoli campaign Churchill was so ashamed he resigned as a member of parliament, took up his old Military Commission and went to the battlefields of the first world war.

The horrors of that war, and the feeling of failure as a politician left him with what he described as ‘The Black Dog’ of depression, something he was to fight with all his life. But he had a unique way of fighting back.

Meet Winston the Artist

Even without the war, Winston would probably have been fairly well known as an artist, not a great one like Monet or Rembrandt, but a respectable one.

But the Black Dog was always there in the background, nipping at his heels. It’s hard to realise that the man who inspired a nation in the depths of despair was himself a man who battled with depression, but he never gave in to it.

We’re not battling with that so much as battling with wanting to be recognised for the craft and the time we put into that craft to bring the stories alive for people. Maybe on those says when we’ve just had enough, we could realise that it’s okay to walk away for a day, maybe go and do something like painting to help with the stress, but give up? NEVER

If you want to know more, then catch this video by the latest biographer.

Did you know that Churchill, at 70 years of age (in 1944) travelled 170,000 miles durig WW2?

Modern Criticism

There are those today who try to tell us that Churchill was a Racist, but that’s kind of hard to swallow as he was proud of the fact that his Mother was American and was part Iroquois Native American! In fact the race card (that he was not totally white) was often flung in his face, yet he rose above it!

The ‘Black Dog’ never slowed him down.

Neither did being called racist names!

Anyway, I really should sign off for now. Bye

Lawrence