Posted on 01/14/2018 11:51:57 AM PST by nickcarraway
Many in Tonypandy and Llanelli saw Churchill as someone who would use troops against workers
Tourists line up each day in Whitehall to enter Winston Churchill’s subterranean war rooms and Gary Oldman is a favourite to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the Prime Minister in The Darkest Hour.
The Conservative leader was voted the “greatest Briton” of all time in a television poll in 2002 in which he was championed by Mo Mowlam, perhaps the most enduringly popular Labour figure of modern times. Wholehearted admiration for Churchill unites the UK – but not, perhaps, in Wales.
Stories of his handling of industrial unrest have smouldered for decades, and he was booed at Cardiff’s Ninian Park in the 1950 election campaign.
The Tonypandy Riots of 1910 and the Llanelli Riots of 1911 coincided with his time as Home Secretary and stories have been passed on of his alleged readiness to dispatch troops against workers.
Llanelli Labour AM Lee Waters recalls the depth of animosity.
He said: “I’d a very sweet old grandmother... The only person she would swear about was Churchill.
“She’d refer to him as a ‘b******’. She literally never said a bad word about anybody, not that I can remember, and she certainly never used bad language...
“Her father, who’d been involved in the general strike, clearly took a very dim of Churchill and I think that was typical of Welsh working class opinion.”
It is not just the older generation who are keen to give a different perspective on Churchill. Type “Churchill miners” into the search bar on Twitter and you will find many people who want to tell the world that he sent “in the military to crush a strike by striking Welsh miners”.
His true role in the Tonypandy Riots is the focus of debate.
Tensions soared in September 1910 when 950 miners were locked out of the Ely Pit in Penygraig. Owners had claimed that miners were deliberately working slowly on a new seam.
This triggered a strike across the Cambrian Combine network of pits. On November 7 miners gathered outside Llwynypia Colliery, the only one still in operation.
When stones were thrown and wooden fencing was ripped up the police staged baton charges. Miners were driven back to Tonypandy Square.
The chief constable requested Army reinforcements.
Author Phil Carradice wrote for the BBC: “[Churchill] ordered that soldiers, despatched by the War Office from barracks at Tidworth, should be held back, kept in readiness at Cardiff and Swindon. Churchill did agree, however, to send in an extra 270 mounted and foot officers from the Metropolitan police force.”
There was more rioting the next evening and on November 9 soldiers arrived and went on patrol.
Cultural historian Peter Stead said: “The soldiers were in fact quite well used in the strike and slightly lowered the tension compared to the police – because the police were so clearly in the pay of the coal owners. The coal owners could do what they wanted with the police.
“There was a note of caution and detachment with the troops.”
According to Rhondda Cynon Taf’s heritage website : “Although no authentic record exists of casualties of these disturbances, as many of the miners would have refused treatment in fear of being prosecuted for their part in the riots, nearly 80 policemen were injured and over 500 other persons, one Samuel Rhys later dying of his injuries.”
The Churchill family has deeply resented the narrative that soldiers attacked miners.
In 1978 then-Prime Minister James Callaghan told his grandson – also called Winston Churchill – in the Commons that he hoped he would “not pursue the vendetta of his family against the miners at Tonypandy for the third generation.”
Mr Churchill said his grandfather’s “vendetta was against not the miners, but the Nazis”, adding that far from sending in troops he “detrained them at Didcot and sent instead policemen from the metropolis”.
But there is also resentment towards Churchill over the Llanelli railway riots of August 1911.
Railwaymen went on strike over average wages of just £1 a week. Troops charged to clear the line for a passenger train but strikers were able to immobilise it by raking out the fire.
The confrontation that followed culminated in soldiers opening fire. Two men were killed – John ‘Jac’ John, a 21-year-old tinplate worker, and Leonard Worsell, 19, who is understood to have had nothing to do with the strike.
Major rioting followed in which four people died.
Former Llanelli Plaid Cymru AM Helen Mary Jones said that one of the legacies of this time was an “ambivalent” attitude towards Churchill.
She encountered “a sense that he was the right person at the right time when it came to World War Two but essentially not a good man”.
Swansea’s Prof Stead – who found himself riding in a lift with the former PM on a visit to the Commons at the start of the 1960s – argues the “stronger charge” against Churchill concerns the impact of his decisions on the Welsh economy in the wake of World War One.
He said: “Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer in that five year period after the war when the miners’ wages were driven down and the country came off the gold standard. The economic consequences of Mr Churchill were far more devastating for south Wales.”
Let’s attack all the dead heroes. Cool sport, bro’.
Well, he totally hoodwinked FDR and screwed over the U.S., but he’s a hero to the British.
My grand parents were from mountain ash.
Based on what?
More leftist fake news.
Which part based on what?
Now, and for the past several decades they have morphed into and now identify themselves as "progressives," a term which, in itself is misleading. The so-called "progressive" philosophy is, in fact, most regressive, for it advocates failed ideas which lead to tyranny and oppression, not to freedom, opportunity, productivity, and plenty. "Progressive" ideas are more aptly described by the word "socialist."
In the following quotations from Churchill, we can see thoughts of his on the subject dating from 1908 to the 1950's. Much of what is happening in America today is described within these words:
"When I see the present Socialist Government denouncing capitalism in all its forms, mocking with derision and contempt the tremendous free enterprise capitalist system on which the mighty production of the United States is founded, I cannot help feeling that as a nation we are not acting honorably or even honestly." - Winston Churchill, Woodford Green, July 10, 1948."We shall not allow the advance of society and economic well-being of the nation to be regulated and curtailed by the pace of the weakest bretheren among us. Proper incentives must be offered and full freedom given to the strong to use their strength in the commonweal. Initiative, enterprise, thrift, domestic foresight, contrivance, good housekeeping and natural ability must reap their just reward. On any other plan the population of this island will sink by disastrous and agonizing stages to a far lower standard of life and two-thirds of its present numbers." - Winston Churchill, speech, Blenheim Palace, August 4, 1947.
"The difference between what is seen and what is not seen was often noticed by the old economists. What is not seen is the infinite variety of individual transactions and decisions which, in a civilized society, within the framework of just and well-known laws, insure the advantage not only of the individual concerned, but of the community, and provide that general body of well-being constituting the wealth of nations. All this is blotted out by an over-riding State control, however imposing some of its manifestations may be. It is the vital creative impulse that that I deeply fear the doctrines and policy of the socialist Government have destroyed, or are rapidly destroying, in our national life. Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the mainspring, and until we get a new one the watch will not go." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, October 28, 1947.
"It is in the interest of the wage-earner to have many other alternatives open to him than service under one all-powerful employer called the State. He will be in a better position to bargain collectively and production will be more abundant; there will be more for all and more freedom for all when the wage earner is able, in the large majority of cases, to choose and change his work, and deal with a private employer who, like himself, is subject to the ordinary pressures of life and, like himself, is dependent upon his personal thrift, ingenuity and good-housekeeping." - Winston Churchill, speech, Blackpool, October 5, 1946
"Liberalism (classical liberalism) has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly." - Winston Churchill, Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, May 14, 1908.
"The British nation now has to make one of the most momentous choices in its history. That choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination: between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of a property-owning democracy; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity: between a policy of levelling down and a policy of finding opportunities for all to rise upwards from a basic standard." - Winston Churchill, speech in Woodford, England, January 28, 1950.
"It is curious that, while in the days of my youth I was much reproached with inconsistency and being changeable, I am now scolded for adhering to the same views I had early in life and even of repeating passages from speeches which I made long before most of you were born. Of course the world moves on and we dwell in a constantly changing climate of opinion. But the broad principles and truths of wise and sane political actions do not necessarily alter with the changing moods of a democratic electorate. Not everything changes. Two and two still make four, and I could give you many other instances which go to prove that all wisdom is not new wisdom." - Winston Churchill, speech, Bele vue, Manchester, December 6, 1947.
"It is not Parliament that should rule; it is the people who should rule through Parliament." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons. November 11, 1947.
"We have to combat the wolf of socialism, and we shall be able to do it far more effectively as a pack of hounds than as a flock of sheep." - Winston Churchill, speech, 1937.
:Athough it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of this century, there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism." - Winston Churchill, B.B.C radio address, June 4, 1945.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." - Winston Churchill, House of Commons, October 22, 1945.
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." - Winston Churchill, Perth, May 28, 1948.
"I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries: that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level; against the folly that it is better that everyone should have half rations rather than that any by their exertions, or ability, should earn a second helping." - Winston Churchill, London, June 22, 1948.
"Socialism is based on the idea of an all-powerful State which owns everything, which plans everything, which distributes everything, and thus through its politicians and officials decides the daily life of the individual citizen." - Winston Churchill, London, January 21, 1950.
"The British and Americans do not war with races or governments as such. Tyranny, external or internal, is our foe whatever trappings and disguises it wears, whatever language it speaks, or perverts." - Winston Churchill, Speech, Dorchester Hotel, London, July 4, 1953.
"You may try to destroy wealth, and find that all you have done is to increase poverty." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons. March 12, 1947.
"Nor should it be supposed as you would imagine, to read some of the Left-wing newspaper, that all Americans are multi-millionaires of Wall Street. If they were all multi-millionaires that would be no reason for condemning a system which has produced such material results.: - Winston Churchill, speech, Royal Albert Hall, London. April 21, 1948.
"Rich men, although valuable to the revenue, are not vital to a healthy state of society, but a society in which rich men are got rid of, from motives of jealousy, is not a healthy state." - Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons, April 24, 1950.
The screwed over the U.S. part.
My great-grandparents were from that area but had gone to America before the riots. I remember hearing the names of the towns from my grandma and her brothers but not what happened. My great-grandpa went down to the mines at age 8.
Over there, they see him as a complicated figure with good and bad sides, successes and failures.
Americans tend to see only the shining successes.
If it hadn't been for Hitler and the war, Churchill would have been regarded as an embarrassing failure.
Britons also don't have the affection for Thatcher than American conservatives do.
On the other hand, Americans are more likely to be critical of FDR, JFK, and more recent Democrat presidents than the English.
Most Americans, and maybe most Britons, don't realize how owned by Soviet intelligence British intelligence was and how it hurt the U.S. They kept a lot of their failures secret. They also made us engage in terrible deals with the Soviets, etc.
For example, the war in the Pacific would have ended much earlier, if the Allies required the USSR to declare war on Japan immediately for they aid we gave them.
Remember, Japan surrendered because Russia invaded and sliced through their mainland army, NOT because of dropping nuclear bombs.
Wow.
“Churchill’s less popular in Britain than he is with many Americans.”
“Britons also don’t have the affection for Thatcher than American conservatives do.”
Total baloney. Only the liberals in England think those things and that tell us a lot about you.
The Welch are whiners....at lest that’s what an Englishman told me.
“Remember, Japan surrendered because Russia invaded and sliced through their mainland army, NOT because of dropping nuclear bombs. “
Liberal Revisionist History. Lots of nonsense.
What’s next from you, member of the Flat-Earth Society?? Why didn’t go to the moon??
I don't see the Japanese surrendering to the Soviets in this picture. If the Soviets were the reason Japan stopped fighting, and the US was inconsequential, why did the Japanese surrender to the US??
You really gotta stop reading anti-American liberal propaganda.
Yes, and if he’s less popular, why do they keep making excellent tv shows and movies about him: Robert Hardy, Albert Finney and Gary Oldman are only 3 actors who have portrayed him in heroic fashion by the Brits.
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