Read part 1 here.
Lawrence and the Left
Probably more than anything else, it is the ideological inroads made by the left that have led to a diminishing of T .E. Lawrence’s profile and standing. In the eyes of the Imperial War Museum today, he is “no longer relevant”.
Leftists have managed to shift public opinion decisively towards the view that the British Empire was a wholly disreputable enterprise. They have also persuaded many that armed conflict is unjust and futile. These shifts have not only knocked British military heroes like Lawrence off their pedestals; they have also recast the celebration of such figures as something distinctly dubious, even “far-right”. Indeed, the removal of Lawrence’s motorcycle from "IWM London" was clearly part of ongoing efforts to “decolonize” what is now called “Imperial War Museums” (reflecting the growth of the organization to encompass multiple sites): that is, to purge from the IWM museums and branding any hint of boyish excitement or imperial nostalgia—those qualities that, until recently, made the London museum a firm favourite with military history buffs of all ages.
Leftists have managed to shift public opinion decisively towards the view that the British Empire was a wholly disreputable enterprise.
At various times the left has expressed its antipathy toward Lawrence himself. Now reflected in official policy, that hostility has a long, at times rather comic, history. Of the many wild stories printed about Lawrence in the last decade of his life, one in particular incensed progressives. In 1928, when Lawrence was stationed at RAF Miranshah in Waziristan, close to the Afghan frontier, a newspaper rumour that he was “fighting red activities in the Punjab” rapidly grew more colourful in the telling: soon super-spy Lawrence had crossed into Afghanistan and met King Amanullah, and now, disguised as a holy man, he was trying to raise a pro-Amanullah force.
Although not a whit of supporting evidence accompanied it, the story was taken sufficiently seriously by the left for howls of indignation to be heard from that quarter. Rumors of Lawrence’s fiendish schemes in Central Asia must have attracted the attention of the Soviets, as in 1930 Ukrainian filmmaker Georgiy Tasin directed The Guest from Mecca, a film (unfortunately now lost) in which the railway-building efforts of “Gulistan’s” pro-USSR modernizers are obstructed by two Machiavellian villains, the British Resident and his ally, a Muslim “saint”. The former is a general with colonial ambitions, while the latter, claiming to have come from Mecca, preaches against the godless modernizers. At the denouement, the Resident is assassinated, and the holy man is unmasked as an impostor: behind his false beard is none other than Lawrence of Arabia.
While he was alive, political attacks on Lawrence almost always focused on his motivations and the real nature of his work for the British state. This was the case whether an attack came from the left or the right. An example of the latter was Aufruhr in Damaskus (Tumult in Damascus), which in early 1939 provided German cinema-goers with a timely reminder of the threat posed by perfidious Albion and her agents. Produced by Goebbels’s propaganda department, the film is set during the First World War and has Lawrence, devious agent of British Imperialism and Zionism, as its arch-villain.
Produced by Goebbels’s propaganda department, Tumult in Damascus is set during the First World War and has Lawrence, devious agent of British Imperialism and Zionism, as its arch-villain.
There is no evidence Lawrence had any knowledge of The Guest from Mecca, and the release of Tumult in Damascus came almost four years after his death. If Lawrence could have seen these films, what would he have made of them? Not much, most likely: he told Robert Graves that, though newsreels delighted him, he had no taste for movies, for him always marked by “superficial falsity”. Furthermore, he "loathed the notion of being celluloided". Had he lived, Lawrence would have thus been happy to see director and producer Alexander Korda fail in his ambition to bring a Lawrence of Arabia movie to the screen. Despite Korda's passion for the project—after Lawrence's death he declared him the greatest personality he had ever met—the opposition of the Foreign Office, to which Turkey had made its objections known, proved an insurmountable obstacle. The outbreak of war in 1939 finally killed the endeavor.
The Secret Side of T. E. Lawrence
Given the climate of profound self-questioning that prevailed in Britain after 1945, with national bankruptcy forcing the down-scaling of ambitions and the breakup of the Empire, it was inevitable that Lawrence of Arabia and other mythical figures of the peak imperial age would be subject to aggressive reassessment, something made easier by the loosening of speech norms and the weakening of taboos.
Fervently championed by Churchill, Lawrence had been effectively canonized by the establishment after his death. By the 1950s, conservatives’ secular saint presented a tempting target for anyone who knew, or suspected, there was much more to the story, especially if they had the ability to uncover what was hidden. Lawrence and his friends and family had indeed kept secret certain details of his family background and his sexuality. These are worth examining closely to understand both what drove Lawrence, and why the revelations contained in certain biographies of the 1950s and 60s were so damaging to his reputation.
Lawrence and his friends and family had indeed kept secret certain details of his family background and his sexuality.
With respect to family background, the then-shameful secret was that Lawrence had been an illegitimate child. A few years prior to his birth, his father, Thomas Chapman, a minor Anglo-Irish noble, had left an unhappy marriage for a very different life with his daughters’ governess, Sarah Junner, a woman of humble origins and illegitimate herself. Unable to marry, as divorce was against Chapman’s wife’s religious principles, Thomas and Sarah took the surname Lawrence and embarked on an itinerant existence, always fearful that their secret would be discovered. T. E. Lawrence was born in this unsettled period, the second of the couple’s five sons. When Lawrence was eight, the family settled in a suburb of Oxford, where they remained for the next twenty-five years.
Sarah was a domineering mother. Already very religious, she became even more so to atone for the sinful life she was living with Thomas. In consequence, Lawrence’s upbringing was puritanical even by Victorian standards. Probably influenced by his mother’s obsession with moral purity, he became deeply absorbed in the literature of the Middle Ages. Thomas Malory made a particular impression on Lawrence. According to his brother A. W., the writings of the medieval saints did the same. He developed a passion for the ideals of chivalry and the ascetic life; the habits of fasting and other forms of self-denial he took on would stand him in good stead in the desert. During his undergraduate days, Lawrence’s love of the Middle Ages then brought him to the Holy Land to study the Crusader castles.
During his undergraduate days, Lawrence’s love of the Middle Ages brought him to the Holy Land to study the Crusader castles.
This is where the matter of his sexuality enters the picture. Lawrence had a close companion during his undergraduate work at Carchemish in Syria, an Arab youth named Selim Ahmed, aka “Dahoum”. The outbreak of war separated them. In a letter of 1919, Lawrence claimed love, presumably for Dahoum, had been his main motivation in the Arab Revolt: "I liked a particular Arab very much, and thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present". As unlikely as this sounds as Lawrence’s prime motive, I can see how it might have been true: acting out the chivalric ideal in this way would have appealed greatly to him.
"I liked a particular Arab very much, and thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present". - T. E. Lawrence
On the other hand, might Lawrence’s true motive have been a political one which he was keen to conceal?
