Churchill viewed from different perspective
I ReaD the article in last week’s leader (“Why a revered wartime leader divides opinion in south Wales”).
Churchill was always portrayed as a hero by the British establishment. This is not the case. He was the Home secretary in 1910 and was responsible for the movement of troops in the country. There was widespread disruption in the south Wales coalfields at this time and troops were sent not only to Tonypandy but to Mountain ash and aberaman as well.
In 1911, during a railway strike, two men were shot dead by the military. By 1915 Churchill was The First lord of the admiralty and sent the fleet to a disaster in the battle for Gallipoli, a land battle in which 46,000 British, australian and new Zealand troops were killed.
as Chancellor of the exchequer he made the Great Depression deeper by trying to control the value of money, and seriously damaged export industries like coal in south Wales. as a result the TUC called the 1926 national strike.
another little-known disaster he was responsible for was the raid on Dieppe in 1942, where many Canadian and British forces were killed or taken prisoner. apart from the north african campaign and the invasion of sicily, British and Us forces were not involved in the european land war. The war was being fought in Russia. stalin appealed to Churchill to open a second front in Western europe but Churchill did not agree, he was quite content to see his two deadly enemies, the Communists and the nazis, slaughtering each other in their millions on the battlefields of Russia. When the soviet armies had practically defeated the Germans and had advanced into central europe, the second front was created in June 1944, and the war in europe was over in May 1945.
Professor Richard Toye, an accademic and expert on Churchill, claims in his new book The Roar of the lion that the establishment opinion on Churchill is fabrication. Many people thought he was drunk during his “finest hour” broadcast and there was little evidence that his speeches inspired the British people to fight on.