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Winston Churchill played a pivotal role in defeating Nazi Germany as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945. However, recently he has come under criticism over his support for imperialism and alleged racism.

In June the statue of Mr Churchill in Parliament Square was vandalised with “was a racist” being painted on during a Black Lives Matter protest.

The statue was boarded up to prevent further attacks thought this has since been removed.

There were also violent clashes between organised football fans and right-wing groups which had gathered to ‘protect’ the statue and police.

According to the Mail on Sunday a number of junior Treasury officials have complained they “do not feel comfortable” with the name of the Churchill Room.

They reportedly raised their concerns during a meeting with the Treasury equalities team.

These complaints were relayed to Tom Scholar, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.

However they have been rejected by Ministers who say there is no plan for a name change.

The Churchill Room was named after the wartime Prime Minister used its balcony to address crowds below on VE Day in May 1945.

Over the past few weeks there has been an intense debate about Britain’s imperial legacy as well as contemporary racism in the UK.

This was triggered by Black Lives Matter protests across the world, including Britain, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

Back in May Chancellor Rishi Sunak praised Mr Churchill for his wartime leadership.

He said: “It is called the Churchill Room because it is the balcony where Winston Churchill stood and addressed the crowds.

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“He spoke to a sea of people stretching all the way down Whitehall and into Parliament Square.

“After six years of horror, hardship and grief when so many sacrificed so much, people came together in a collective moment of joy and relief.”

Boris Johnson has attacked calls to remove the Churchill statue from Parliament Square as the “height of lunacy”.

The Prime Minister, who has written a biography about Mr Churchill, said he was “extremely dubious about the growing campaign to edit or photoshop the entire cultural landscape”.

Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874, began his career as an army officer seeing service in Sudan and on the frontier of British controlled India.

He went on to become a journalist and war captured, then escaped, during the 1899-1902 Second Boar War.

In 1900 he was elected as a Conservative MP, though he later defected to the Liberal Party then re-joined the Tories.

As well as his wartime service Mr Churchill was Prime Minister for a second time between 1951 and 1955.

A keen writer he would go on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 2002 he was voted the greatest Briton by viewers of a BBC series aimed at finding the “100 Greatest Britons”.

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