Churchill was a hero, not a villain

I AM disgusted by some of the comments and opinions going around about World War II hero Winston Churchill - but isn’t this a British phenomenon?

Going way back in to history our heroes have become villains and villains become heroes.

Francis Drake defeated the Spanish Armada but was later beheaded for treason. Guy Fawkes was a villain who tried to blow up parliament but has become a hero.

Alan Turing was a genius and hero who was responsible for developing the Enigma codebreaking computer but was hounded by our government and sent to prison because he was gay, and later took his own life. Thankfully he now sits among our other heroes where he belongs.

As for Churchill, we must remember that he was a human being with flaws, just

like the rest of us. We can not impose 21st century standards on things that took place up to 100 years ago.

Things were completely different in those days. Racism was not even recognised as an offence as it is today. As for his stance on striking miners, we must again remember that in those days the state ruled supreme and again we can’t impose 21st century standards on things that took place all those years ago

Thanks to Churchill’s stand against Hitler we can now all sit at our computers and write about anything we want under our democratic freedom of speech and opinion - and long may it continue.

So I say thank you very much Mr Churchill for what you did for the free world - it could not have been easy. ALAN PIPER