The “Darkest Hour” has been on at the Capital and we very much enjoyed (with a near sell-out crowd) seeing the film. Gary Oldfield and Kristen Scott Thomas are being rightly praised for their portrayals of Winston and Clementine Churchill. I am told by one of the dwindling number who knew the Churchills that the actors capture much of the essence of their characters. There are points in the film on which a historian may take issue. However the effect is superb and catches a moment in our history when outcomes could easily have been very different. Last year “Dunkirk” focussed on the individual heroism of a great many – Darkest Hour examines the huge weight of responsibility then carried by very few.
For all the intensity of the current political debate it is on a different scale to how it must have felt in 1940 with the threat of mass bombing (expected to be even worse that the dreadful reality) and invasion. The UK ultimately winning out against the evil of Nazism was by no means certain.
Some things are far from certain. Some we can look back on with incredulity that the struggle had to be as long as it was and that the outcome could have been anything other.
100 years ago women got the vote (technically got it back – some existing women voters were, ironically, banned by the “Great Reform Act” of 1832). In 1918 some women joined the franchise which was also expanded to allow all men to vote - hundreds of thousands of men and women who volunteered to serve their country through the horrors of the Great War had not previously been trusted by it to vote. Full Universal Suffrage was finally introduced in 1928. The struggle for Womens’ Suffrage had been long and difficult and was to continue in France and Spain into the 1940s and Switzerland, unbelievably, as late as the 1990s for some elections.
We now boast our second women Prime Minister but there is no room to be complacent and the question, as ever, is what will future generations be saying about us with the benefit of 100 years of hindsight....
Photo caption: At Ingfield Manor School near Billingshurst accompanying Nick Gibb MP on a recent visit. The School is currently sponsored by the charity Scope and achieves extraordinary results with students who require additional help.