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Karl Popper, Winston Churchill, and the Tradition of Liberty among the English-speaking Peoples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2018

João Carlos Espada
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Abstract

This paper starts by recalling a conversation of the author, then a young student, with Karl Popper in 1988. Popper argued that there is a ‘British mystery’ among the English-speaking peoples: their deep love of liberty, combined with a deep sense of duty, which was epitomised in the 20th Century by Winston Churchill. This paper argues that Churchill was a representative of an old tradition that goes back to Magna Carta of 1215. At its core is the protection of liberty to enjoy decentralised and peaceful ways of life and the corresponding allergy to revolutions and to schemes of perfection centrally designed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 93 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 571 - 580
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2018 

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References

1 Espada, João Carlos, The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty: A View from Europe (London: Routledge, 2016; paperback edition, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This book provides the argument which the present paper summarises. An earlier version of the present paper's view on the political philosophy of Winston Churchill was published in Finest Hour 173 (Summer 2016), 32–35.

2 Churchill, Winston, ‘Personal Contacts’, in Thoughts and Adventures (London: Thornton Butterworth, Ltd, 1934), 54Google Scholar.

3 Churchill, Winston, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (London: Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. 1956)Google Scholar.

4 Winston Churchill – Ashley, 12th April 1939, CHAR 8/626, 147, cited in Clarke, Peter, Mr. Churchill’s Profession: Statesman, Orator, Writer (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 224Google Scholar. Also cited in Gilbert, Martin, Churchill's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 100Google Scholar.

5 Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. I, vii.

6 Broadcast of 8th August 1939, cited in Gilbert, Churchill's Political Philosophy, 100.

7 Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. I, xvi.

8 Ibid., xvii.

9 Ibid., xix.

10 Churchill, Winston S., Thoughts and Adventures (London: Thornton Butterworth, Ltd., 1934), 52Google Scholar.

11 John Betjeman, ‘Coming Home’, a talk on the BBC Home Service, 25th February 1943, in John Betjeman, Letters, Vol. I, 323, cited in Mandler, Peter, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 207Google Scholar.

12 T.S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture, 31, 37, 41, cited in Mandley, The English National Character, 207.

13 Churchill, Winston S., ‘Personal Contacts’, in Thoughts and Adventures (London: Thornton Butteworth, Ltd, 1934), 53Google Scholar.

14 Rowse, A. L., The English Spirit: Essays in History and Literature (London: Macmillan, 1945), 36Google Scholar.

15 Gilbert, Churchill's Political Philosophy, 82.