Any attempt to rename Heathrow Airport after Winston Churchill would run into opposition today — at least from Indians in the UK — because of his association with the Bengal Famine of 1943.
However, such a move was considered by John Major in 1996 when he was the British Prime Minister.
This is revealed in government documents released by the National Archives at Kew under the 25 year rule.
Churchill was certainly against Indian independence and harboured a particular antipathy towards Gandhi. But Indian academics and writers are divided on the question of Churchill’s complicity over the Bengal Famine. Madhusree Mukerjee and Shashi Tharoor think he was guilty, while Amartya Sen and Ramachandra Guha take a much more nuanced view of the complicated matter.
Churchill was no friend of India. Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, by Arthur Herman, suggests that Churchill backed Jinnah’s plan for the partition of India and the creation of a Muslim Pakistan as one way for the British to retain some of their influence after independence.
In a September 1996 letter written to Major at 10 Downing Street, Harvey Spack, a business acquaintance of the Prime Minister, urged a name change.
Spack appears to have known Major personally for the letter, addressed to “Dear John”, asked about an “amazing” holiday he had heard the Prime Minister had enjoyed with his wife Norma in France.
He began: “This is an old hobby horse of mine, but I think it is appropriate timing for you to take such an act and I think would be superb PR.
“New York has Kennedy Airport, Paris has De Gaulle and we have the stupid name of Heathrow. It should be renamed with the name of the greatest man of the century, who has no truly great memorial in our country.
“I can only see this as a tremendous boost to the ‘feel-good factor’ for all of us.”
Spack, a property developer, explained he got the idea after reading the novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, set on the Greek island of Cephalonia.
“It is about a Greek island and what happens to its population during the Second World War,” Spack said. “It is firstly invaded by the Italians, then the Nazis and finally by Greek communists, who were possibly the worst perpetrators of all.
“Throughout all this, the people are very brave and keep looking to the heavens to pray for salvation by ‘Wiston (sic) Churchill’.” The British — unlike Indians, for example — are not great ones for name changes but Major certainly did not dismiss Spack’s suggestion out of hand.
He wrote back on September 19: “Thank you for your intriguing idea about renaming Heathrow Airport after Sir Winston Churchill. I am looking into this, and I am grateful to you for raising it.”
In the end, the idea fizzled out.
Major and the Tories were ousted from power in 1997 by the Labour Party under a young and dynamic Tony Blair who went on to win three successive general elections.
It also didn’t help there already existed a Churchill Airport in Manitoba, Canada, built during World War II.
Heathrow was named after the small hamlet in Middlesex which was demolished to make way for the airport in 1944.
When the first regional director of Air India International, Maneck Dalal, arrived in London in 1948, he worked out of a caravan on the site and described Heathrow as “a collection of huts”.
He also spoke of regular rabbit shoots to clear the undergrowth.
Heathrow has over the decades earned a not entirely flattering nickname — “Thiefrow” — because some of the airport staff are alleged to be nimble fingered.
Today, there is a plan to expand Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest airports, by adding a third runway and a sixth terminal. An Indian property developer, Surinder Arora, is bidding for the contract.
