A word to the troops.
Who leads the leaderless?
On 13 May 1940, Winston Churchill met with his Cabinet, having become PM a couple of days earlier. Later in the day in the House of Commons, he made his famous Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat speech. It was the first of many great speeches which characterised his leadership during the war.
Those speeches encouraged a country facing unimaginable fear, loss and suffering. The generation facing the trials of WW2 had parents who had vivid family memories of WW1, the “war to end all wars”. They knew from the catastrophes of 1914-1918 that their leaders were far from infallible, that terrible mistakes would be made, that judgement calls would result in the deliberate sacrifice of innocent people of many nations. That, too often, they would be lions led by donkeys.
Churchill’s speeches - huge, emotional., pulsing, outpourings which he crafted with great care, were designed to lift spirits, to give courage where it was flagging, to persuade people to persist, to tolerate the intolerable. They were not fact filled; indeed, they were either fact-free or at the least dubious in their assertions. On more than one occasion he lied, deliberately. They were bullishly optimistic, bluntly stoic and refused to accept the notion of defeat even as defeat threatened to swallow the nation whole. He was an orator, one of the greatest.
Put aside your view on his background (he was in his youth a known scoundrel, exaggerator, self-propagandist), his judgement, his morality, his greatness or otherwise. Without that oratory, we cannot say where we would have ended up. It lifted a nation when it desperately needed to be lifted.
I am a huge fan of facts, rather than rhetoric. Examination of facts is one of the greatest tools we humans have to ground us in the face of emotional overwhelm. When we use our vivid imaginations to catastrophise, a return to facts can talk us off the ledge. But sometimes we need blind faith, a dose of courage which defies all logic, an internal Winston Churchill (substitute if you will with Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Oprah Winfrey, John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton - many of them with dark shadows lurking behind their staggering ability to communicate), urging us on, reminding us of our individual and collective goodness, and our ability to survive and thrive again.
Many of us are facing big challenges, and watching people we care about face them too. We are fearful for our health and of the damage to the economy, the loss of businesses, jobs, homes. In order to pull up the courage and strength to push through this, to innovate, to re-build, to support the needy and become better for the experience, we each will need our inner voice, reminding us that we can, and will, prevail.
We need to counter the relentless tsunami of negativity, blame and political point scoring - no matter how relevant it may or may not be; and at the time of writing, it seems that we are in the UK both drowning and rudderless. We desperately need to believe there is a purpose doing the hard things that make the good things; that we personally and collectively are made of the right stuff.
If we are lucky enough to be alive, our personal track record of dealing with difficulty and surviving to fight another day is 100%.
Shut out the naysayers, the defeatists, the doom-mongers; ignore the rule-breakers, the selfish, the liars; refuse to fall into despair, and summon your own inner oratory to encourage yourself, and those who hear your voice.
Without leadership, we all must become leaders.
