Churchill’s Funeral
The album cover of an audio publication of Churchill’s funeral, featuring Menzies’s eulogy.
On this day, 30 January 1965, a grateful population bids adieu to British wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill with a state funeral; an immense and elaborate public ceremony in which Robert Menzies would play a significant role. As the world watched on, London went all out to farewell the man credited with standing up to the Nazi menace and thereby saving liberal democracy.
Churchill had died on the 24th, and his body subsequently lay in state in Westminster Hall for three days, as thousands queued in bitter winter weather for the opportunity to pay their respects. On the 30th, commemorations began with the chiming of Big Ben and 90 cannon salutes marking each of the years of Churchill’s life. The body was then carried in procession out of Westminster, past Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, through the heart of London to Saint Paul’s Cathedral. There the funeral ceremony was held with an audience of the Queen and official representatives of 112 countries, before another procession carried Sir Winston’s body to Tower Pier. Their it boarded a river transport, which took it up the Thames to Waterloo Station, where it was placed in a special funeral train that would carry Churchill to be buried near his birthplace of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
Menzies’s had grown incredibly attached to Churchill over the years, though their early relationship had been quite strained. They first met during Menzies’s travels to England as Attorney-General in the 1930s, and the Menzies Collection contains a volume of Churchill’s speeches with an inscription from the author dated August 1938. Their real run-ins came during the Second World War, during which time Menzies was in England desperately trying to negotiate to have more troops committed to the Pacific theatre to protect Australia. During this time the Australian Prime Minister became concerned that his British counterpart was surrounded by yes-men, and that he (Menzies) was the only person in the War Cabinet who was adequately vetting Winston’s decision-making.
Despite their clashes, an element of respect and sympathy was clearly shown when Menzies lost his position as Prime Minister in late August 1941, as in September Churchill sent Menzies a four-volume biography of his father the Duke of Marlborough, with a message thanking ‘my comrade in anxious days’. In the post-war period Churchill became a symbol of a rugged British determination which Menzies greatly admired; warning of the descent of the ‘iron curtain’ and briefly returning to power. In these years the two men seem to have enjoyed a genuine friendship.
As the senior representative of the Commonwealth Menzies was asked to be one of Churchill’s pallbearers for the funeral and, more quixotically, to deliver a eulogy for the huge audience watching on BBC television. After the ceremony at Saint Paul’s, he was led into the crypt of the Cathedral to live record audio which played alongside images of the great funeral procession moving towards Tower Pier. This eulogy was subsequently published in commemorative books and even a vinyl record:
‘As this historic procession goes through the streets of London to the Tower Pier, I have the honour of speaking to you from the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. I do this in two capacities. One is that I, Prime Minister of Australia, happen to be, in point of time, the senior Commonwealth Prime Minister, and therefore speak on behalf of a remarkable world organisation which owes more that it can ever express to our departed leader, Sir Winston Churchill. He is one of the famous men whom we thank and praise.
My second capacity is more personal and more intimate. I am sure that you, most of you, have thought about Sir Winston Churchill a great deal, and with warmth in your hearts and in your recollections. Some day, some year, there will be old men and women whose pride it will be to say: ‘I lived in Churchill’s time’. Some will be able to say: ‘I saw him, and I heard him – the unforgettable voice and the immortal words’. And some will be able to say: ‘I knew him, and talked with him, and was his friend’.
This I can, with a mixture of pride and humility, say for myself. The memory of this moves me deeply now that he is dead, but is gloriously remembered by me as he goes to his burial amid the sorrow, and pride, and thanks, of all of you who stand and feel for yourselves and for so many millions.
Many of you will not need to be reminded, but some, the younger among you, the inheritors of his master-strokes for freedom, may be glad to be told that your country, and mine, and all the free countries of the world, stood at the very gates of destiny in 1940 and 1941 when the Nazi tyranny threatened to engulf us, and when there was no ‘second front’ except our own. This was the great crucial moment of modern history. What was at stake was not some theory of government but the whole and personal freedom of men, and women, and children. And the battle for them was a battle against great odds. That battle had to be won not only in the air and on the sea and in the field, but in the hearts and minds of ordinary people with a deep capacity for heroism. It was then that Winston Churchill was called, by Almighty God, as our faith makes us believe, to stand as our leader and our inspirer.
There were, in 1940, defeatists, who felt that prudence required submission or such terms as might be had. There were others who, while not accepting the inevitability of defeat, thought that victory was impossible. Winston Churchill scorned to fall into either category, and he was right. With courage, and matchless eloquence, and human understanding, he inspired us and led us to victory.
In the whole of recorded modern history, this was, I believe, the one occasion when one man, with one soaring imagination, with one fire burning in him, and with one unrivalled capacity for conveying it to others, won a crucial victory not only for the forces (for there were many heroes in those days) but for the very spirit of human freedom. And so, on this great day, we thank him, and we thank God for him.
There are two other things I want to say to you, on a day which neither you nor I will ever willingly forget. One is that Winston Churchill was not an institution, but a man; a man of wit and chuckling humour, and penetrating understanding, not a man who spoke to us as from the mountain tops, but one who expressed the simple and enduring feelings of ordinary men and women. It was because he was a great Englishman that he was able to speak for the English people. It was because he was a great commonwealth statesman that he was able to warm hearts and inspire courage right round the seven seas. It was because he was a great human being that, in our darkest days, he lit the lamps of hope at many firesides and released so many from the chains of despair. There has been nobody like him in our lifetimes. We must, and do, thank God for him, and strive to be worthy of his example.
The second thing I will never forget is this. Winston Churchill’s wife is with us here in London; a great and gracious lady in her own right. Could I today send her your love, and mine? She has suffered an irreparable personal loss. But she has proud and enduring memories. Happy memories, I venture to say. We share her sorrow, but I know that she would wish us to share with her those rich remembrances which the thought of the great man evokes.
There have been, in the course of recorded history, some men of power who have cast shadows across the world. Winston Churchill, on the contrary, was a fountain of light and of hope.
As I end my talk to you from the crypt of St Paul’s, with its reminders of Nelson and Wellington, those marvellous defenders of long ago, the body of Winston Churchill goes in procession through the streets of London; his London, our London, this most historic city, this ancient home of freedom, this place through which, in the very devastation and fire of war, his voice rang with courage, and defiance, and hope, and rugged confidence.
His body will be carried on the Thames, a river full of history. With one heart we all feel, with one mind we all acknowledge, that it will never have borne a more precious burden, or been enriched by more splendid memories.’