Chapter Seventeen - Racism, Classism, and the British Way

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Racism, Classism, and the British Way

WINSTON CHURCHILL DIDN’T just grow up in a racist, classist empire.

He believed in it.

And not passively. Actively. Loudly. Repeatedly. The man didn’t just accept the British hierarchy of white over brown, rich over poor, West over East, he saw it as the natural order of things. A world without that structure, to him, was a world in collapse.

He believed the English were superior. Not in metaphor or policy, in blood.

And Churchill wasn’t shy about it.

He said he didn't believe “a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia.” He described Palestinians as “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.” He argued that the British Empire was “bringing civilization” and that its critics were “weak sentimentalists.”

And this wasn’t just pub talk or diary rambling. These ideas shaped his decisions.

He backed policies that prioritized British lives over colonial ones. He held up famine relief because he thought Indians were irresponsible. He defended white rule in Africa. He mocked independence movements across the empire because he saw them as ungrateful children throwing tantrums.

He opposed Indian independence until the very end. Not for economic reasons, but because he couldn’t picture a world where Britain wasn’t in charge.

Churchill’s racism wasn’t an accidental byproduct of his era. It was core to his worldview.

And it wasn’t just about race. It was class, too.

He never trusted democracy. He thought the working class should be guided, not empowered. He opposed women's suffrage for years. He mocked unions. He believed some people were born to rule, and others were born to obey. And naturally, he saw himself at the top.

Even his own party didn’t always agree with him. Many Conservatives flinched when he ranted about India or worker strikes. But Churchill didn’t care. He was fighting for what he called civilization. A civilization that looked a lot like a gentlemen’s club in London, with brown countries on a map and white men sipping gin while talking about “uplift.”

People still try to explain this away, “he was a man of his time.” Sure. But so were his critics. So were the people who called him out while he was alive. Racism didn’t go unchallenged back then. People just weren’t in power.

Churchill was.

He didn’t invent the British Empire. But he did everything he could to preserve it at any cost.

That’s part of the legacy too.