During the May Day protests in England in 2000, nothing infuriated the British establishment — its press, its politicians, its courts of respectable opinion — more than the
desecration of Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square. The savage blood red spray-painted around Churchill’s mouth, the livid green strip of grass giving him a mohawk haircut, transforming the stoical father of the nation into the Joker, was unconscionable. Iconoclasm was all very well, to be encouraged even, but not when the target was an actual icon!
It is difficult to convey the symbolic and emotional value of this man to Britain’s ruling class, and to a significant though declining number of its citizens. Those whose national consciousness is shaped by
folk memories of World War II, probably the last moment of “greatness” save for England’s World Cup win in 1966, mostly know Churchill as the man who, more than any other, crushed the Nazi menace. Leading a wartime coalition government, he exhorted what had been a badly led and sold-out nation to dare, and win. He saved the British state, steering it through one of its worst crises. In his lifetime, Churchill was the last truly loved British leader; no one has since come close.