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Articles
“Law Giver” Mussolini: Churchill’s Quotation as Used and Abused
- By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
- | January 6, 2022
- Category: Churchill Between the Wars Truths and Heresies
“The greatest law giver….”
Dr. Antoine Capet, author of Churchill: Le dictionnaire (2018) is developing an expanded English edition. “I am currently engaged on the Mussolini entry,” he writes. “Naturally I must quote Churchill’s words of 17 February 1933 to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union in London. He described Mussolini’s ‘Roman genius’ and called him ‘the greatest law giver among living men.’ Martin Gilbert first published these quotes in 1976.
“As you point out in Churchill by Himself, Robert Rhodes James provides only a truncated version of the speech in his Complete Speeches.1 I searched the Internet for a full text of the speech, or at least the paragraph with the fateful words. All search results derive from Gilbert. I suspect that Churchill’s speech was never published.”
It has been observed that politicians often say nice things about foreign leaders when they owe them lots of money. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1927, Churchill negotiated Italy’s payment of her war debt to Britain, which Mussolini was still honoring in 1933. But this is too flippant, and there is more to the question.
Churchill’s actual words
Dr. Capet is right that the full speech was never published. Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre, came to our rescue. He supplied the next best thing: Churchill’s original speech notes, corrected in WSC’s own hand (CHAR 9/104).
There is no appearance of Churchill’s “greatest law giver” remark on Mussolini prior to Martin Gilbert’s 1976 volume. Clearly, the methodical Sir Martin read and quoted from this very document years ago when researching his book. What he wrote was a model of fairness and balance:
During the course of his speech Churchill praised “the Roman genius” of Mussolini, whom he described as “the greatest lawgiver among living men,” for his anti-Communist stance, but he rejected Fascism as a model for Britain. “It is not a sign-post which would direct us here,” he said, “for I firmly believe that our long experienced democracy will be able to preserve a parliamentary system of government with whatever modifications may be necessary from both extremes of arbitrary rule.”2
As Martin Gilbert explains, this speech was not about the “law giver.” A few days before Churchill spoke, the Oxford Union had approved a motion: “That this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King and Country.” Churchill compared this “squalid, shameless avowal” with more robust attitudes abroad: “My mind turns across the narrow waters of Channel and the North Sea,” he continued, “where great nations stand determined to defend their national glories or national existence with their lives.” That brought him to Italy.
Ammunition for attackers
Churchill had consistently declared that Italian fascism was not for the British democracy. In Rome in 1927 he had told reporters:
If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been whole-heartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism. But in England we have not yet had to face this danger in the same deadly form. We have our own way of doing things.3
In 1933 he was simply repeating that view, but he is repeatedly quoted out of context to assert the opposite. The “law giver” phrase comes up 13 times in our digital scans of 80 million words by and about Churchill. Five of the first six are in books by hostile biographers.
David Irving wrote: “Nor do his other utterances of this period betray any of his later hostility to fascism.”4 Richard Lamb stated: “When Mussolini was executed in 1945 he was carrying letters from Churchill for use at his trial as a war criminal; they have not survived.”5 (What hasn’t survived is the lie about Churchill’s alleged letters to Mussolini.) John Pearson declared that “Churchill was not against dictatorship per se.”6 Clive Ponting added: “His admiration for Mussolini was also unchanged.”7 Each truncates the quote to avoid any suggestion that Churchill qualified his remark. No one reproduces the full context. Instead they imply that he was at home with fascism and dictatorship.
Continued eruptions
When the son of an unpopular minister entered Parliament, Churchill cracked: “Isn’t it enough to have this parent volcano continually erupting in our midst? And now we are to have these subsidiary craters spouting forth the same unhealthy fumes!”8 Mussolini as law giver continues to surface in modern Churchill attack books. The very latest is Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s In Churchill’s Shadow (2021). Again reprinting only the “law giver” line, Wheatcroft adds: “These were grotesque words to use about a posturing mountebank whose brutish followers beat up his opponents…. The Nottingham Evening Post’s headline ‘Winston a fascist’ may have been a little sharp…”9 A little?
One gesture of balance was Nicholas Farrell’s review of Andrew Roberts’ Wheatcroft review, in The Spectator and on this website. A Mussolini biographer, Farrell asserts Churchill’s admiration but provides the “law giver” quote in full context. (Less commendably, Farrell relied on Clare Sheridan’s claim that Churchill was “the likely leader of the Fascisti party in Britain.” That flies in the face of Churchill’s own words, and Sheridan was anything but a serious observer.)10
Reality
Wanting someone to defeat someone else—like Churchill wanted Mussolini to defeat communism—does not mean you espouse that person’s politics. I want to see the drug-dealing warlords of Panjshir to defeat the Taliban, but it doesn’t mean that I want drug-dealing warlords to rule my country. Approving Mussolini’s victory in 1923 does not make Churchill a fascist.
The critics then say: Well, if Churchill was not a fascist himself, he sympathized with them. As so often, investigation of what he actually said leads us to entirely different conclusions. Yes, Churchill expressed admiration for Mussolini, publicly and privately, until he allied with Hitler. Yes, if forced to choose between Italian fascism and Italian communism, Churchill unhesitatingly would choose the former. No, Churchill never believed in fascism as acceptable in a democracy.
Endnotes
1 Richard M. Langworth, ed. Churchill by Himself: In His Own Words (New York: Rosetta Books, 2016), 364. Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1874-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), V: 5219ff.
2 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, The Prophet of Truth, 1922–1939 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2009; first published 1976), 457.
3 Ibid., 226.
4 David Irving, Churchill’s War Bullsbrook, W.A.: Veritas, 1987, 35.
5 Richard Lamb, The Drift To War 1922-1939 (London: W.H. Allen, 1989), 94.
6 John Pearson, Citadel of the Heart: Winston and the Churchill Dynasty (London: Macmillan, 1991), 243.
7 Clive Ponting, Churchill (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), 374.
8 Winston S. Churchill, ca. 1953, quoted by A.P. Herbert in Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself, 559.
9 Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill (London: Bodley Head, 2021), 142.
10 Nicholas Farrell, “Churchill did admire Mussolini,” in The Spectator, London, 19 August 2021, online at https://bit.ly/3znc9od, accessed 29 August 2021.