Don’t punish the UK for Brexit – we helped in Europe’s darkest hour

If we are required to atone for the bad bits of our past, surely we are also entitled to glory in its good bits?

It comes as no surprise to discover that audiences for the film Darkest Hour have clapped and cheered at the end of Winston Churchill’s great “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, as we reported yesterday. The reaction at my local cinema was a bit too restrained for my liking. I would happily have stood and waved my metaphorical Order Paper, but made do with a ripple of modest applause.

It might seem just, well, not very British to make a song and dance about how noble and heroic we were in standing alone against the Nazi menace. But we have every reason to be proud of what we did and to wonder, at this juncture in our history, why those who are free today as a result often seem so reluctant to acknowledge the fact.

Of course, the film is emotionally manipulative. The scene in which Churchill, newly – and precariously – ensconced as prime minister, travels on the London Underground to gauge the willingness of ordinary Brits to prosecute the war with Germany is entirely fictitious. It is designed to demonstrate how Churchill’s instincts to stand and fight were in tune with the country at a time when he was under pressure from those we now call appeasers in the War Cabinet to cut a deal with Hitler through Italian mediators.

The film takes place during the first few dramatic weeks of his premiership in 1940, as the rampaging German army forces the surrender in quick succession of Belgium, Holland and Denmark, and invades France, trapping 300,000 British troops at Dunkirk.

Once France had fallen, or was about to, the dynamic of resistance changed. Had the Army not been rescued from the beaches by the armada of little boats, it is not difficult to imagine that Churchill might have been toppled, thereby allowing a Halifax-led government to sue for peace. Our most potent national myth is based on a moment in history that could have been very different.

While many alternative narratives are often implausible, this one could so easily have happened. Indeed, it was touch and go that Churchill would even become prime minister in the first place. An appointment seen today as the obvious solution to the nation’s gravest crisis was at the time of peril the least likely of outcomes.

In a brilliant new book Six Minutes

in May, Nicholas Shakespeare charts how in the run-up to the fall of Neville Chamberlain, the antipathy to Churchill as a possible successor grew. He was seen as the architect of the Norway debacle that brought down Chamberlain, a fiasco that reminded everyone of the Dardanelles calamity in 1915 when Churchill last held office as First Lord of the Admiralty.

He was considered an adventurer, concerned more for his own place in the history books than with the future of the nation, a warmonger who was happy to see the country destroyed rather than seek a peace deal that would allow it to survive, albeit in servitude.

“If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground,” he declaimed. I wonder how many today would go along with that if the option of peace talks was dangled before them? In fact, Churchill’s bellicosity did cause anxiety at the time, as did his speech on June 4, 1940 that ends the Darkest Hour. In the film, Churchill’s wife Clementine and the King listen to the oration on the radio. In truth, it was never broadcast and not even recorded by Churchill until 1949; yet there is an abiding sense that its roar of defiance was heard live across the land.

Without Churchill we might have come to terms with Germany and left Europe to its fate. The conventional wisdom is that, had Lord Halifax become prime minister and parleyed with the Germans, it would have been only a matter of time before they came for us. Without having to worry about a western front or fight in North Africa, they could have concentrated on subjugating the Soviet Union before turning against Britain.

On the other hand, unlikely though it is, they might have left us alone. Conceivably, we could be trading to this day with the United States of Nazi Europe. After all, Hitler had often said he did not want a war with the British Empire provided he could act with impunity on the continent.

But the fact is we did stand alone, thereby providing a jumping off point for the liberation of Europe, the “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, as Gen Ismay called it. Moreover, these events did not take place in the dim and distant past. Many who were alive then are still with us today; and yet we are always invited to stop obsessing about the war and accept that the world has moved on. But why shouldn’t we take pride in what was a remarkable episode – not just in our national story, but in that of Europe, too?

We are disinclined to refer, even in passing, to the obligation that Europe owes to this country while we haggle over Brexit. We do not want to upset our continental neighbours by harping on about it. Our reticence is a further example of this country’s innate decency: we are loth to remind other nations that, for them, the recent past is somewhat less than glorious.

Funnily enough, though, the same historical statute of limitations never applies when we are cast as the villains. The actions of the British Empire a century ago are trotted out to explain why the Middle East is a mess or how the Indian sub-continent became a hotbed of religious and ethnic tensions. I even heard it said on the radio the other day that the Rohingya refugee crisis is partly our fault because British colonial officials drew arbitrary frontier lines on maps of Burma decades ago.

Fair enough. I can see the point there. But if we are required to atone for the bad bits of our past, then surely we are also entitled to glory in its good bits? More than that, we deserve some credit for having bankrupted ourselves for the freedom of Europe.

When we hear German or French politicians intimating that the UK should be punished for leaving the EU it is hard to square such meanspiritedness with the debt they owe to us. Let’s face it, they did not exactly cut us much slack when we joined in 1973; so now, nearly 80 years after the events depicted in Darkest Hour, we cannot – and do not – expect eternal gratitude. But is it really too much to ask that we just be treated fairly?