Dunkirk spirit is with us...and will see us through
“fortitude and stoicism in a demanding or dangerous situation”; and Macmillan as “an attitude of being very strong in a difficult situation and refusing to accept defeat”.
All these are true but each is only a fragment of a much greater idea. To get to the true meaning of the phrase and why we need the Dunkirk spirit now, we have to look at the different facets of what happened with Operation Dynamo.
A starting place is 40 miles up the coast in Calais where Brigadier Claude Nicholson and his command of 4,000 Rifles held out against the German Panzer divisions. Churchill had sent a telegram to Nicholson ordering them to fight “to the destruction of your command”.
When the Germans gave Nicholson 24 hours to give up, he dismissively replied: “The answer is no, as it is the British Army’s duty to fight as well as it is the Germans’.”
The four days of brave resistance by Nicholson and his Rifles drew away at least two German armoured divisions which, according to Churchill, bought time to evacuate the men from Dunkirk. The episode illustrates how duty and the willingness to put the greater need above your own are key to victory in the most desperate of circumstances.
In this present trial we are reminded of the nurses, doctors, carers and others on the frontline who have put their own welfare second to defeat this terrible disease.
Perhaps the greatest symbol of the Dunkirk spirit is the 850 small ships which sailed across the Channel to rescue the stranded army. While the Navy commandeered many of those boats, many were taken across by private citizens desperate to do their bit.
So the Dunkirk spirit encapsulates a collective effort which shows that however small your contribution is, it is magnified when put together with the efforts of others.
We have seen this in recent weeks with the more than three million volunteers, the countless acts of kindness, the respect for social distancing and much more that have brought the infection rate under control.
Until the film Darkest Hour starring
Gary Oldman as Churchill was released in 2017 many people born long after the final shot of the Second World War had been fired did not realise how close Britain came to surrendering and cutting a deal with Hitler in those dark days in 1940.
The efforts of the establishment Appeasers such as Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain almost brought resistance to an end.
So the Dunkirk spirit is in many ways about Churchill’s inspirational leadership and bloodymindedness to do the right thing. It was about courage of conviction and not doing what was easy or convenient, even when Britain stood alone devoid of friends and allies.
We see some of that spirit in Churchill’s biographer, Boris Johnson, as he wrestles with being a disease-time leader.
He, too, has had his setbacks, not least
‘Britain was able to regroup and fight on’
his life-threatening personal experience of the coronavirus, but his handling of Brexit shows he has the charisma, foresight and courage to fight against the prevailing tide of the establishment and do the right thing.
As we come out of lockdown and the unions, Labour and the Scottish,welsh and Northern Ireland administrations seemingly have different views of the way Britain gets back to near normality, Mr Johnson needs to resist them and be brave again to do the right thing for the good of the whole nation.
But in a week where Chancellor Rishi Sunak has told us that Britain and the world face “a recession like no other”, we are perhaps reminded of the true meaning of Dunkirk.
Yes, it was the conclusion of a humiliating military defeat for an ill-prepared and ill-equipped army, but because of what happened Britain was able to regroup and fight on.
The core of the British soldiers landed on the Normandy beaches on D-day in 1944 were the men rescued in 1940. Victory in May 1945 was only possible because of “deliverance” in 1940.
A lot of what we see now in terms of furloughing jobs, the £300billion bailout and much more is about ensuring we can bounce back even though we face hard times ahead.
So, as Churchill’s “no surrender” speech epitomised, the indelible Dunkirk spirit embedded in this country is that hope and a refusal to accept defeat mean when we join together we can overcome even the most appalling odds.