Malcolm Barker: The speech that defined Churchill and a nation's wartime defiance

THE 70th anniversary of the most memorable and most quoted speech ever made falls on Friday.

It will be recalled with pride as long as any Englishmen and women

remain on this increasingly cosmopolitan island of ours.

A hushed House of Commons heard it first when the Prime Minister, Mr Winston Churchill as he was then, addressed himself to the Speaker soon after arriving from Downing Street.

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He first made reference to Dunkirk and expressed his confidence in the nation's ability to "ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone".

He then launched into his most resounding passage: "Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.

"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

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Mr Churchill was very much a House of Commons man. It would not have occurred to him to make this declaration of policy anywhere outside the confines of Westminster. He was vastly experienced but, even so, betrayed signs of nervousness after he had taken his place on the front bench. He sat hunched, twisting his fingers and shuffling his papers, and stooping to pick scraps of paper off the floor.

But any apprehension on his part was unfounded. He rose and began at a slow measured pace, and a crowded and subdued House sat rapt to hear his oration, perhaps the greatest ever by a British politician. At the end there was a brief silence, then an ovation erupted, seemingly sufficient to shake the roof timbers of the old chamber.

Mr Churchill had prepared the speech thoroughly, and put the final touches immediately after a morning meeting of the War Cabinet, dictating, revising, breaking down the structure into pauses, and rehearsing the precise way in which the sentences would be delivered.

His mastery of the English language and painstaking attention to detail were crucial to his success. He was a brilliant writer, with a wonderful facility for coining memorable phrases, so many, and so well remembered, including "Blood, toil, tears and sweat", "this was their finest hour", and "never was so much owed by so many to so few".

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He intended to be heard throughout the country. His speech was broadcast that evening, with an announcer reading the text. So powerful was the impact, and so famous did it become, that many listeners were convinced they had heard the Prime Minister himself. Thus it united him with the people; "Winston" entered English homes.

Its effect was electric. Vita Sackville-West, the author and poet, wrote to her husband: "Even repeated by the announcer it sent shivers (not of fear) down my spine."

There was another target audience, the German Fhrer. He needed convincing that Britain was not about to capitulate, thus abandoning her European allies. In the days when the Blitzkrieg was bringing about a collapse of opposition in France, Hitler was dining with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, when Otto Dietrich, a functionary in Josef Goebbels's propaganda ministry, came in and said that the English would not accept a truce. Hitler exclaimed: "My God, what else can I do? After all, I can't fly there and go down on my knee."

Already he had granted a stay of execution that made way for the Dunkirk evacuation. German forces under Generals Fedor Von Bock and Gerd Von Rundsted had the British Expeditionary Force trapped against the sea, and they anticipated its imminent destruction. But then, to their astonishment, at 12.45pm on May 24, an order came down from the Fhrer to halt the advance of the German Fourth Army.

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Either Hermann Gring had convinced him that the Luftwaffe could finish the job without further depleting ground forces that would be needed for the assault on Russia, or perhaps he was hoping that Britain would withdraw from the war if he spared its Army. Either way, he left his generals bemused and exasperated, and Mr Churchill with the task of convincing him that Britain was committed to fighting on to the end. This the British Prime Minister surely achieved with his speech of June 4.

He also reached a vast American audience through the broadcaster Ed Murrow, who was in the House of Commons for the speech. His reaction was that Mr Churchill had mobilised the English language and sent it

into battle.

Curiously, an attempt at censoring Mr Churchill emanated from his own Ministry of Information. A BBC internal memorandum reported that the Ministry was very anxious that they omit the words "if necessary alone" from the Prime Minister's avowal of intent to carry on the war. The Ministry thought that this could convey the false impression that we believed the French might give in.

Within less than three weeks, that had come to pass. Hitler travelled to Compigne in triumph to sign the armistice he had imposed on France. Thus the English faced a challenge envisaged by the Prime Minister on June 4.

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Inspired by him, with their pride stirred, and their mettle primed for testing, they stood resolute behind their indomitable leader. Their finest hour had come.

Malcolm Barker is a former Editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post.