Churchill was ‘too fond of the Jews’

In a press release announcing a book by Richard Toye on Churchill and Lloyd George, Cambridge University Press put its main emphasis on the discovery of a previously unknown article written by Winston Churchill in 1937, containing considerable anti-Semitic imagery.

In fact, not one word of this article was written by Churchill. Nor did the article ever appear in print, either under his name or that of any other. The article was written in its entirety by a British journalist, Adam Marshall Diston.

Churchill, who was then writing on average an article a week, paid Diston, a journalist and would-be Labour party parliamentary candidate, to draft these articles. Some of Diston’s drafts were amended by Churchill and published with his amendments; a few were published unamended.

The article in question, however, was never published. This was fortunate, as it was twice offered for publication. On the third occasion it was offered, in 1940, Churchill noted, ‘I have forgotten all about it’, and would not permit publication. Someone else’s opinions, in an unpublished article, which never appeared in print under Churchill’s name, cannot be laid at Churchill’s door.

Twenty-five years ago I published Churchill’s written instructions to Diston on what this article should cover: ‘Obviously there are four things. The first is to be a good citizen of the country to which he belongs. The second is to avoid too exclusive an association in ordinary matters of business and daily life, and to mingle as much as possible with non-Jews everywhere, apart from race and religion. The third is to keep the Jewish movement free from Communism. The fourth is a perfectly legitimate use by the Jews of their influence throughout the world to bring pressure, economic and financial, to bear upon the Governments which persecute them.