In the port of Tallinn, capital of Estonia, stands a statue of Winston Churchill. They treasure our former prime minister there. However, this monument was erected not to commemorate his exploits in the Second World War, but to honour the way he rescued Estonia from the scourge of Communism after the First World War.
In December 1918, when he was Minister of Munitions, Churchill despatched a naval squadron to the Baltic States under Rear-Admiral Alexander Sinclair. Under the code name Operation “Red Trek”, Sinclair sailed into the Estonian and Latvian ports, landing troops and supplies and promising to attack the Bolsheviks “as far as my guns can reach”.
There was no other politician at the time who had such a clear-sighted understanding of the evils of Socialism.
Throughout 1919, Churchill fought an almost lone battle inside the war-weary Cabinet to sustain support for the resistance to Bolshevism. He almost broke with Lloyd George, then prime minister, over the issue. But in the end, he prevailed sufficiently to ensure that the Baltic States held out against the Red Army and maintained their independence for those 20 inter-war years.
As he was able to say with personal satisfaction in various speeches in 1919:
“The Estonians, to some extent supplied with British arms, have made a very stout fight and have really shown the weakness of the Bolshevists…”1
“When our pacifists or Bolshevist featherheads in this country raise their shrill voices in hysterical glee at every Bolshevist victory let them remember that but for the [White Russians] the whole weight of Bolshevist aggression would be thrust upon these small states…”2
“They are intact today. They have maintained their existence precariously. Quivering and shaking, but still standing, they have held back not only the Bolshevik armies but the more devastating Bolshevik propaganda.”3
Churchill’s stoutness of heart in 1919, did not arise from a tendency to warmongering, which his enemies liked to ascribe to him. It was far more the expression of a deeply held distrust of Socialism, which first found expression in 1908, in his great Dundee speech.
There was no other politician at the time who had such a clear-sighted understanding of the evils of Socialism, or who returned to the theme so often. When Churchill first laid out his argument, in 1908, it was as a leading member of the great reforming Liberal government. He saw Socialism as a dire threat to the progressive cause as it willed similar progressive ends as Liberalism, while destroying the capacity to create the wealth to pay for them.
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Subscribe[…] and to name for a British historical past day. He is additionally written about Churchill’s rejection of Marx (“Socialism seeks to tug down wealth; Liberalism seeks to lift up poverty. Socialism would […]