MƒH Battle of Britain Day ~ 15 September 1940

Moments from History

Battle of Britain Day ~ 15 September 1940

I

I JOINED the police force on Monday 14 September 1970, the eve of an important day, underpinned by something else of greater personal importance to my family ~ Battle of Britain Day.

Three decades had passed.

At 17, it seemed a long time ago, but by the time I was celebrating my fiftieth, I could see that a mere 30 years or three decades was, well, like my now looking back to 1990 ... yesterday morning! 

II

My whole life has been one of ‘sailing close to the wind.’

At heart, a constitutionalist, any form of one-system government, or nationalism bordering on a one-party state because there seems to be no coherent official party of opposition, is abhorrent. For me, it always has been. It always will be.

Extremists will not silence me. When agendas cloak their shoulders with extremism, then freedom, liberty and social democracy are in flight.

The Greatest Generation showed that it too would not be silenced, and, moreover, turned defence into offence.  

III

On 18 June 18 940, Churchill addressed the House of Commons and, in turn, the Nation. I speak of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, not England, when he spoke those famous words that struck the core of friend and foe alike, and epitomised that phrase that was the dread of all totalitarian regimes ~ the English-speaking Peoples.

IV

The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.

Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire.

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’

 V

I had heard it many times on history programmes as a young child. In my teens, I obtained an LP Record of his speeches and only then did this particular speech, its first two sentences, strike home.

In his broadcast to the Nation that same day, there is a lament in his voice. . . What General Weygand called the Battle of France, is over. . . . A huge silence ... as if mustering the courage to speak that next and frightening line ... …

I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin . . . and which he did with a voice that went downwards on every syllable into a seemingly dark, deep, bottomless pit.

I remember playing it over and over again. I needed to know the import of these lines. I needed to know why speeches are so important. I needed to know how it was that Churchill could make such a pronouncement and still, somehow, give my parents and four grandparents and uncles and aunts, hope. 

The rest is history.

VI

Some still argue that the threat of invasion was a ‘bluff’. One has only to read the accounts of what was in store for Britain to see that this was no bluff.  Most of us have access to the internet, so if we feel so disposed, we can look these things up for ourselves.

Nor am I going to quote Churchill’s tribute to ‘The Few’. We know it. And that wonderful tribute tends to move our attention away from ‘The Many’, and not least the RAF Groundcrews in Fighter, Coastal and Bomber Commands. These are the unsung heroes, for without these, Goering would indeed have obtained his objective.

We have one of the most beautiful languages. In the hands of an orator, it becomes a Symphonic Sound, and Churchill could speak and write with an eloquence that leaves us way behind today.

So I end this Moment from History with the words written by Churchill in 1939 in Volume I The Birth of Britain (pages 34-35) of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples[1] from the manuscript penned by Churchill in 1939.

His monumental History is itself a Masterpiece. Almost three-quarters of a century on since its publication in 1956, we have something else. A glimpse pre-war, of the man who dared stand up to tyranny and which is why all of us live as we do now. As we see in the portrait we do indeed see that saying …

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

Extract

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES

Volume I

The Birth of Britain

The Island Race – The Roman Province

IF A NATIVE of Chester in Roman Britain could wake up today [1939] he would find laws which were the direct fulfilment of many of those he had known. He would find in every village temples and priests of the new creed, which in his day was winning victories everywhere. Indeed, the facilities for Christian worship would appear to him to be far in excess of the number of devotees. Not without pride would he notice that his children were compelled to learn Latin if they wish to enter the most famous universities. He might encounter some serious difficulties in the pronunciation. He would find in the public libraries many of the masterpieces of ancient literature, printed on uncommonly cheap paper and in great numbers. He would find a settled government, and a sense of belonging to a world-wide empire. He could drink and bathe in the waters of Bath, or if this were too far, he would find vapour baths and toilet conveniences in every city. He would find all his own problems of currency, land tenure, public morals and decorum presented in a somewhat different aspect, but still in lively dispute. He would have the same sense of belonging to a society which was threatened, and to an imperial rule which had passed its prime. He would have the same gathering fears of some sudden onslaught by Barbarian forces armed with equal weapons to those of the local legions or auxiliaries. He would still fear the people across the North Sea, and still be taught that his frontiers were upon the Rhine. The most marked changes that would confront him would be the speed of communications and the volume of printed and broadcast matter. He might find both distressing. But against these he could set chloroform, antiseptics, and a more scientific knowledge of hygiene. He would have longer history books to read, containing worse tales than those of Tacitus and Dio. Facilities would be afforded to him before seeing “regions Caesar never knew”, for which he would probably return in sorrow and wonder. He would find himself hampered in every aspect of foreign travel, except that of speed. If he wished to journey to Rome, Constantinople, or Jerusalem, otherwise than by Sea, a dozen frontiers would scrutinise his entry. He would be called upon to develop a large number of tribal and racial enmities to which he had formerly been a stranger. But the more he studied the accounts of what had happened since the third century, the more satisfied he would be not to have been awakened at an earlier time.

Winston Spencer Churchill

1939

18 April 2024
All Rights Reserved


LIVERPOOL

© 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb

There is a very direct corollary between what the British People undertook on their own eighty-four years ago in defence of the free world and not just Christian civilization,
and what the People of Ukraine are doing right now in the third year of the War in Ukraine
on behalf of today’s free world
and all civilization
and regardless of religion or faith
or absence thereof.

KTW

Last published 15 September 2023

[1] Winston Spencer Churchill published by Cassell and Company LTD LONDON First Edition 1956

Children watching dogfights over London - Battle of Britain 1940 - all rights reserved to the copyright holder – an image, now so famous, in light of its impact on the ordinary man and woman in the street in the USA. Suddenly, people could feel the iced hand of tyranny, they felt they could identify with Londoners. This image in every American newspaper across the States engendered a major shift in public opinion away from isolationism., enabling FDR to take more supportive measures. ‘But these are ours. We speak the same language, we have the same values.’

Heinkel 111 over the River Thames - Battle of Britain 1940.

I’ve included this. In the late 1980s I was being given an air experience flight in a Royal Air Force Sea King Helicopter. We could not speak because of the noise, but the wing commander suddenly pointed down at the famous double S bend in the River; we knew exactly this photograph, and because we were a military aircraft we were flying low; it seemed extraordinary to be seeing the same detail of buildings and target infrastructure as the enemy would have seen …a long discussion ensued afterwards with our crew in the mess, as they had given us, literally, a view that few of the millions who are acquainted with this famous image, would experience.

St Paul’s Cathedral, London 1940

Dogfights over London 1940 - RAF fighters (Spitfires and Hurricanes) and enemy bombers and fighters

Well might that imaginary figure from Roman Chester that Churchill had asked us to consider in 1939, have been dumb-founded yet with a quickened and lightning heart of steel at this sight : a Squadron of Hawker Hurricanes over southern Britain in 1940

Author’s Note

I have quoted Churchill’s speech direct from Hansard. A few minutes ago, there were changes to the text that were not there when I pasted them across. Churchill refers to “our Christan civilisation”. He also states the name of Hitler. Both ‘christian’ and ‘Hitler’ had become ‘British’. I dislike this insistence upon wokeism. This demand to be woke is what happens to the walls of a house that the occupier refuses to regularly repoint. Eventually, the cement in the bricks crumbles, the bricks are woke, and the bricks then tumble. The occupier wonders what on earth has happened. Why has the world come tumbling down about him? Then his arrogant and lamentable grunted why won’t someone do something? KTW