Stop Blaming Churchill

The Bengal Famine was nothing to do with him

It’s amazing how bad history can take root. Take the death of Hitler, for example. He died by his own hand in the Führerbunker next to the Reich Chancellory in Berlin on the afternoon of 30 April 1945. There were a mass of witnesses and a load of further evidence, from a sizeable chunk of his jaw and dental X-rays to a piece of his skull and blood-stained material taken from the place where he shot himself with his blood on it. Moreover, anyone who has studied Hitler will know that it was inconceivable that someone as megalomaniacal and narcissistic as him could quietly live out their days incognito in South America. Really, it’s too absurd. There is literally no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived beyond that day. None at all. And yet barely a week goes by without someone asking me about whether he could have survived. These notions, these historical whims and conspiracy theories, somehow develop roots and like the toughest thistle are hard to pull out.

The same is true of Winston Churchill’s part in the Bengal Famine – or rather, his total lack of culpability in that terrible tragedy. I wonder how much research into this dark moment in history was undertaken by Helen Cammock before she made her film for the National Portrait Gallery? Or rather, was she merely echoing the accusations from those within her own echo chamber? It’s quite a thing to accuse anyone of deliberately starving others, let alone Britain’s wartime prime minister. Winston Churchill remains a towering figure of the twentieth century and he’s an easy target; when those who blame him for the tragedy, as Helen Cammock has done, they do so knowing they are calling out one of the most venerated Britons ever to have lived. After all, Churchill was the man who saved Britain against the Nazi hordes in 1940; he led Britain in the grand coalition that defeated not only Hitler and his mob but the cruel Imperial Japanese too. He is a titan and because of that, all the more enticing a target more than eighty years on. Cammock is not only calling out Churchill, she is also knowingly provoking those who would naturally leap to his defence. I’m sure she’s thoroughly relishing all the brouhaha.

None the less, she has not done her prep and is spouting vile nonsense that deserves to be called out in turn. The lack of intellectual curiosity on this subject is staggering. It’s not good enough to simply look at the three million who died in the famine as victims of unjust imperialism. How many of a post-imperial inclination have bothered to read official histories such as Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War or Global Logistics and Strategy 1943-1945, for example? How many have researched and got to grips with how global shipping worked and operated during the Second World War? Or undertaken a detailed examination of the intricate relations between the leading nations of the western coalition? And did Helen Cammock take the trouble to read the Famine Inquiry Commission: Report on Bengal? It’s all very well saying Churchill could and should have sent more relief, but to do so is to fail to understand how impossible that was in 1943 and how it was a catastrophe that was entirely out of his hands.

The Bengal Famine had been caused by a terrible combination of factors. A cyclone had hit Bengal the previous autumn of 1942 and had brought three separate tidal waves that had wiped out 450 square miles, badly affected a further 400 square miles and damaged another 3,200 square miles. These floods alone had ruined or severely damaged the homes and livelihoods of as many as 2.5 million Bengalis. A fungus then hit much of what rice stocks remained, while the misery of the people had already been heightened by the confiscation of river craft earlier in the year when the British had been trying to stem the Japanese advance and the threat of an enemy invasion of India. This was unquestionably a bad decision and one it would have been far better to have had ready to enact only if absolutely necessary – and at the time of its imposition that was not the case. It had been a knee-jerk response borne of the panic at the speed of the Japanese advance in Burma. It was, though, a decision made in Calcutta and New Delhi, however, not Whitehall or even Downing Street.

There had been, however, a concerted effort at relief, not only in terms of food, but also in loans and grants of money for boats in those areas where they were permitted, and for new homes – but not in time to prevent catastrophe.

Most Bengalis lived an extremely precarious existence. Some ten million were utterly dependent on agriculture, but of these, more than half held less than 2 acres of land and many none at all. There was charity and relief but no social welfare; there was very little social welfare anywhere at that time. So, they had to fend for themselves. Through the first half of 1943 food prices had increased dramatically. In some parts of India rice remained at around 8 rupees a maund (around 37 kilograms), but in Bengal it had risen to Rs.21 per maund at the start of the year and by August was more than Rs.31. This was due in part to the shortages in Bengal but also to increased demand for the feeding of troops in India, as well as demand from around the world. It was artisans who suffered first, because as poverty increased so the money available for goods dried up. Then the shortages hit the wider Bengali population, many of whom left the country for the cities.

Yet while the cost of food was certainly a factor, the biggest problem now facing the authorities was how to get food to Bengal and urgently. The state had already been an importer of food for over a decade and most of it had come from Burma, now closed to India, thanks to the invasion of the Imperial Japanese. The loss of Burma had been disastrous for Bengal’s fragile economy and the subsequent cyclone had made it catastrophic. Where else could it be sourced? North America and South America were the obvious places, but the amount needed was enormous and would have required a major diversion of shipping at a time when the demands on such seaborne transport had never been greater.

The Allies never had enough shipping. The agreed priority was to win the war against both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as quickly as possible, but every operation, whether in the Mediterranean, South-East Asia, the Pacific or northwest Europe, as was planned for 1944, required vast amounts of shipping. The entire Allied war machine was, at heart, a giant amphibious operation, dependent on freighters, landing craft, submarines and, of course, warships. The British had designed a pre-fabricated vessel that became known as a ‘liberty ship’ and which American shipyards were, by the end of 1942, producing in a matter of weeks; one was even launched after just five days, sixteen hours and 26 minutes. It was still not enough and, more importantly for Bengal, shipping was a very slow means of travel, as it still is to this day. Not until May 1943 was the entire Mediterranean open to Allied shipping, which meant sending supplies to India from Britain or North America via the Cape in South Africa, rather than through the Suez Canal.

The turn-around time for a ship from the USA to India, for example, was factored as 185 days – six months. This, of course, meant that shipping material around the world also required a considerable amount of long-term planning - because it took a considerable time to sail around the world from California, say, to a Pacific atoll or from Britain to India. One of the reasons why the Allies had prioritised winning the Battle of the Atlantic in the first half of 1943 was so they would have a much clearer idea of exactly what shipping they could expect and when, and that meant they could better plan for future operations, yet by the middle of 1943, at the height of the famine, the Allies were struggling badly with shipping shortages, partly due to the effect of enemy u-boats but also because the Tunisian campaign had taken a lot longer than planned and had, as a consequence, required more shipping. Allied war leaders and planners considered there to be a profound crisis in shipping at this time.

So, during August 1943, Churchill was not in a position to suddenly release shipping to take food to Bengal even if had wanted to. Not in the middle of a life and death struggle in which the lives of millions of British and those of their allies were at stake. Britain and America were fighting in Sicily – an island that could be supplied effectively only by ship; they were about to invade mainland Italy, which also required an amphibious operation and supply; they were preparing for the invasion of north-west Europe; and they were fighting the Japanese throughout the Pacific. It is inconceivable that their US coalition partners would have sanctioned a sudden and massive diversion of shipping to Bengal; it is also inconceivable that Allied public opinion would have supported such a move - a move, which almost certainly would have been too late in any case. Famines tend to happen because of a contribution of different factors: weather, conflict, economic crisis and so on, and because they are not anticipated. Preventing them occurring in the first place is key. In the case of the Bengal Famine, predictably many people and many factors were responsible, but in no way was Churchill a contributory factor.

In any case, there was a far more practical and obvious solution closer to home in India. Not all India was facing famine – only Bengal and the north-east. One problem was that, in 1935, the central government in New Delhi had ceded considerable central powers to the provinces, where the regional governments were all democratically elected with Indians, rather than British, taking their seats. The previous year, 1942, these had all agreed to introduce trade barriers between one another. The central government of India now announced there should be free trade in grain but plans to send relief to Bengal had been obstructed by local government officers, police and other officials who feared their own provinces risked suffering a similar fate to that of Bengal. Wavell, in one of his first acts as Viceroy-Designate, had forced the issue by threatening legal and even military action, and by August substantial amounts of grain had finally begun to arrive in Bengal.

It was, however, too little too late to bring a swift end to the humanitarian disaster rising horrifically throughout the region - which also goes some further way to vindicate Churchill. Relief kitchens hastily set up in Calcutta and elsewhere were simply not enough. With malnutrition came disease; those not dying of starvation were just as likely to succumb to typhus, malaria or cholera, and there were not enough hospitals or medical care to cope.

The famine had certainly been exacerbated by the war and by the fact that the Indian government had prioritized combatting the Japanese above all other matters. Yet the authorities, although slow to react, were certainly not immune to the horrors unfolding and, of course, while the tragedy of human suffering was truly appalling, the famine was yet another massive problem for the Allied command to overcome. It stretched already overstretched lines of supply, pushed the limited medical services to breaking point, affected food supplies to the troops, further sapped the morale of those who witnessed the starving, dying and dead throughout Bengal, and damaged the reputation of the British even more. Nor was it that case that Bengal did not receive overseas aid; it did. Only 30,000 tons of grain was sent in 1942, as the tragedy was unfolding, but before it was realised how catastrophic it was likely to be; yet in 1943, 303,000 tons was sent and 639,000 tons in 1944. It was not enough, of course, but at the height of the war, with demands on shipping at their peak, this was still a huge commitment.

I can see that some reading this might wonder whether I am writing about this tragedy through the same biased prism I was decrying at the outset; I am, after all, a white, middle-aged Brit. The material about shipping, however, comes largely from official histories and a raft of other books on shipping during the war, while the details of what was happening in India and Bengal at the time are drawn from the Report made by the Famine Inquiry Commission, made up of six members, of which four were Indian. They also drew upon the detailed expertise and knowledge of a further 285 people, of which the vast majority were Indian, and most drawn from the various regions of Bengal as well as from Calcutta and New Delhi.

Many things can be laid at the feet of Winston Churchill, both good and bad, but the terrible loss of life in the Bengal Famine is not one of them.