Our Darkest Hour: the danger of blundering Britishness exposed
British troops at Dunkirk, 1940
Kezia Niman considers how current politicians might learn about crisis management from leaders of the past.
On Saturday the 9th of April, the BBC aired The Darkest Hour, Joe Wright’s 2017 textbook biopic of Churchill’s first days in office. The following day, the Guardian reported over 30,000 Covid-19 related deaths in the UK. Watching the film (for which Gary Oldman garnered the Oscar for Best Actor), to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, seems like a natural choice. Yet the depiction of a Prime Minister lying to the public, a government who’d blundered its way to near catastrophe, and the fall of continental Europe reminded me of present-day failings, rather than wartime spirit.
The film presents the British modus operandi - blundering but in the end triumphant - and celebrates plucky Britain’s ability to pull itself back from the brink. The film shows how 400,000 men were nearly annihilated at Dunkirk thanks to poor military planning. At the eleventh-hour Churchill grasps the gravity of the situation and comes up with ‘Operation Dynamo’, rescuing most of the men with a civilian fleet. I sat through it, gritting my teeth thinking, “Why is it that we are frequently unprepared for a crisis? Why do the British always have to skirt so close to the edge?”
For too long we have romanticised blundering Britishness. Churchill himself called Dunkirk, “a colossal military disaster” and warned, “we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory”. British culture has often ignored his plea, as have politicians running the country. The current government’s approach to tackling the coronavirus appears to have wilfully mirrored the terrible failings that led to Dunkirk, albeit without the against-all-odds rescue. Johnson himself has aspired to Churchillian heights, even writing a biography of the statesman. But Boris is no Winston, and this crisis proves it. It seems like his philosophy is ‘if you stumble and evade long enough something good will come of it’. The truth is, there comes a time when all the floundering nonsense must dissolve and make way for competence, and in Churchill’s case, flashes of brilliance.
Or better yet, try to avoid making preventable errors in the first place. The coronavirus has exposed the danger of arrogantly assuming everything will be alright, even if no expert advice is followed and no real plans are made. Most situations can barely afford such devastating unpreparedness - lest we forget, Dunkirk was nearly a bloodbath and thousands of soldiers did lose their lives (although thankfully many more were saved). When you look around the world and see countries with similar risk factors (an older population, high population density) avoiding the loss of life incurred by the UK, one has to stop and think. South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand and Australia, have all proved that forethought, decisive action and honesty are essential when handling a crisis, especially a pandemic.
Rather than learn from our wartime mistakes our leaders have revelled in them. Are they hoping for some Dunkirk-style miracle to redeem us from the coronavirus? The government’s unscientific herd immunity strategy – suddenly abandoned when they realised hundreds of thousands would die – meant that they never aspired to save as many people as possible. All they could do was try to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. So far they’ve succeeded (at the cost of most other routine appointments), but this is no cause for celebration.
We need politicians who can react swiftly and saliently, rather than blindly chasing the empty success of near failure. Britain needs to wake up from its dreams of wartime victory, imperial supremacy, and world dominance. These delusions led to Brexit and fatally set the tone for our government's losing battle against the coronavirus. Surely, a country full of content, healthy citizens with a good quality of life is what our government should be aspiring to ensure? Not a return to 1940 or worse still, 1900. Britain has potential, not to reconquer the world and recapture its former glory, but to be a great nation of happy, fulfilled people, served and protected by the choices of their government – not put at risk by them.
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