Should we choose the open sea?

It's been claimed that Churchill said:

“We have our own dream and our own task.  We are with Europe, but not of it.  We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed.  If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.”

Indeed some sources put a date on it: 11 May 1953 in the Commons.

I have seen much of this quote repeated in the newspapers this very week.

Well, Churchill did say all these sentences. But not at the same time and in very different contexts.

A journalist, Jon Danzig, has researched this. The first 4 sentences date from 1930. As for the final sentence, Churchill shouted this remark to the French leader, General Charles de Gaulle, in a  raging row  on the eve of the Normandy landings in 1944.

So this is a stitch up, in the sense that his quotes have been stitched together.

On 11 May 1953, he actually said

"Where do we stand? We are not members of the European Defence Community, nor do we intend to be merged in a Federal European system. We feel we have a special relation to both. This can be expressed by prepositions, by the preposition "with" but not "of"—we are with them, but not of them.  We have our own Commonwealth and Empire."

Sounds Eurosceptic enough, so why not use that quote?

Who knows, but a few years earlier, Churchill in his opening speech to the Congress of Europe in May 1948, proclaimed:

“We cannot aim at anything less than the Union of Europe as a whole, and we look forward with confidence to the day when that Union will be achieved.”

As Britain's Empire withered Churchill's views shifted and by August 1961, he said:

 “I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community...”

I suppose we all make misquotes - it's not unusual for Shakespeare quotes to be mangled, for example. But political campaigners making claims ought to be more careful.

So don't vote Leave on account of Churchill then.

Danzig's article can be seen at https://neweuropeans.net/article/604/revealing-deception-about-winston-churchill