John McDonald, the shadow Chancellor and member of the UK Labour Party's frontbench, caused uproar this week responding to the question during an interview. He was pushed to a one-word answer and came down on the side of villain. Nicholas Soames, Churchill's grandson, said that he believed his grandfather's war record spoke for itself and was not in danger of being tarnished by the comments of a "Poundland Marxist!". McDonald defended his position in the press subsequently by pointing to Winston Churchill's record of sending in the military to the Welsh mining village of Tonypandy to suppress a strike, but he also acknowledged Winston's heroic stand against the evils of fascism.
So the question may be a stupid one, as the answer is complicated. My view is that at different times in his life he could have been described as both. Churchill himself was deeply embarrassed about his role in the First World War's Gallipoli campaign which went so badly wrong and in which hundreds of thousands of young men died. He might also have been viewed as a villain by the French because of his destruction of the French fleet after the surrender of France to the Nazis. He was certainly a very difficult man to work for, as many a tear-stained secretary has pointed out. But he was a human being, capable of great glory and yet making enemies and mistakes. He was as flawed as any of us who are marked by human frailty and sin.
The vicious ire stoked by John MacDonald's comment is not helpful in overcoming the terrible divisions that there are in British politics today. And we must avoid the temptation to either idolise prominent people from the past or demonise potential leaders in the present. We are all a mixture of villain and hero, and capable of great heights and profound depths in our behaviour. Thank God for a divine mercy revealed in the lives of flawed leaders like Moses, King David, Samson and Simon Peter that was able to take the clay of human frailty and create the fabulous tableware of redeemed lives.
