2019-20 Annual Report Final - Flipbook - Page 4
Remembering
Sir Winston
The Trust was formed in April 1965 to
perpetuate and honour the memory
of Sir Winston Churchill
As well as a great
war-time leader
and statesman,
Churchill also had
a strong social
conscience and
was able to achieve
improvements in
working conditions
and many other
reforms.
At 2.30am on 10 May 1940, Germany
commenced the invasion of Western
Europe. On the same day Sir Winston
Churchill was made Prime Minister of
Great Britain. He was by this time 64
years old and many thought his career
had come to a close.
After World War I, he was left to
shoulder much of the blame for the
disastrous Gallipoli campaign and
by the 1930s Churchill’s repeated
warnings to the Government about
the dangers of German nationalism
fell on deaf ears. However, the arrival
of World War II was to bring out
Churchill’s greatest strengths and
finest moments.
The pressure on Churchill at this time
must have been immense. By the end
of May 1940, the Netherlands and
Belgium had surrendered and France
appeared close to capitulation.
The Soviet Union had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. The
British Empire stood alone.
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2019-20 Annual Report
Recalling the cost of World War I,
many in the British Government
encouraged Churchill to negotiate
a peace settlement with Germany
and Churchill had to convince his
war cabinet and outer cabinet of
the dangers of this. And convince
them he did, knowing that to enter
into a negotiation with the German
Government of that time would not be
a negotiation at all.
On 4 June 1940, Churchill was to give
one of his most famous speeches to
the House of Commons declaring that
“…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...”
Churchill’s strength and
encouragement were clearly
conveyed around the
Commonwealth. By the time of his
death in 1965 he was still strong in the
Australian collective memory.