Why can’t Britain handle the truth about Sir Winston Churchill?

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.’’

(Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962)
― John F. Kennedy

In response to calls for fuller information about its founder, Churchill College, Cambridge very recently set up a series of events on Churchill, Empire and Race. Priyamvada Gopal is Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Fellow of Churchill College and she chaired the second of these events. It was a panel discussion on “The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill”.

She wrote recently in The Guardian newspaper about the response she and other academics received even before anything was discussed at the event itself,

‘‘Even before it took place, the discussion was repeatedly denounced in the tabloids and on social media as “idiotic”, a “character assassination” aimed at “trashing” the great man. Outraged letters to the college said this was academic freedom gone too far, and that the event should be cancelled. The speakers and I, all scholars and people of colour, were subjected to vicious hate mail, racist slurs and threats. We were…