Patrick Christys: Winston Churchill has been cancelled

Winston Churchill has been cancelled, but can you guess who by? Brace yourselves, he’s been cancelled by the Winston Churchill memorial trust.

Yes, really. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to take a one-way trip into outer space, isn’t it?

Apparently Winston Churchill’s ‘views on race’ mean that he’s a toxic relic of a bygone era and we must erase him from our collective consciousness.

Trustees have agreed to change its name to the Churchill fellowship and erase him from its website in a new 'woke' storm that has sparked fury towards Julia Weston, the charity's £100,000-a-year chief executive whose face appears repeatedly across the website despite the fact that Sir Winston’s does not.

That’s interesting, because I don’t remember Julia Weston winning a war.

The fact is we’d be living in a Nazi occupied German colony now if it wasn’t for Sir Winston, to get to the studio today, if it even existed, I’d have had to walk past giant swastikas, members of the ss and goodness knows what else.

But it’s lazy to only wheel out the line that ‘Churchill won the war’. I mean, yes, that’s a big deal, but he actually did so much more than that:

Churchill was responsible for the first minimum wage system in Britain

He played an active role in the passage of the people’s budget which slapped taxes on the wealthy in order to roll out a radical system of social reform

He introduced compulsory health insurance for workers who earned less than £160 per year. Which is considered one of the foundations of the modern social welfare system in the uk

He won the Nobel prize in literature, and he was voted the greatest Briton in history.

But all of that isn’t good enough for Julia Weston, apparently. It does beg the question what does someone have to do to not get cancelled these days.

And why is it that with some figures in history, we’re seemingly able to overlook their flaws?

Gandhi was friends with Mussolini, he wrote letters to Hitler, and they were friendly to say the least, and he was accused of engaging in relations with some very young children.

Nelson Mandela, undoubtedly a great figure in history, was on a terror watchlist and had a hand in letting off car bombs.

Why are we able to overlook the actions of some, but not others, say with Winston Churchill?

I find it deeply offensive that someone whose greatest achievement is probably winning the three-legged race at primary school sports day thinks they have any right whatsoever to pass judgement on someone like Winston Churchill.

The irony is, if it wasn’t for Winston Churchill, the likes of Julia Weston wouldn’t have the privilege of being able to earn mega money in a free, liberal, western democratic society and sit there desecrating the memory of one of the greatest men who ever lived.