Month: May 2015

Churchill, Troops and Strikers (2): Llanelli, 1911

Churchill, Troops and Strikers (2): Llanelli, 1911

 Llanelli in Context

Llanel­li and the Rail­way Strike: con­clud­ed from Part 1

Through­out the August 1911 rail­way strike, troops stood by. Their orders were to inter­fere only against threats to pub­lic secu­ri­ty. But there was anoth­er rea­son why anx­i­ety ran high at that time. A few weeks ear­li­er, the Ger­mans had sent a gun­boat to Agadir, French Moroc­co. Rumors of war with Ger­many were ram­pant. David Lloyd George said the Agadir Cri­sis was a threat to peace. The Ger­mans, he warned, “would not hes­i­tate to use the [strike] paralysis,,,to attack Britain.” Paul Addi­son, in Churchill on the Home Front, described the pub­lic mood.…

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Churchill, Troops & Strikers (1)

Churchill, Troops & Strikers (1)

This is a time when we often ques­tion the actions of police forces. In Amer­i­ca, gov­er­nors occa­sion­al­ly call in the Nation­al Guard dur­ing riotous protests. Local res­i­dents are always the main vic­tims of such events. Churchill’s expe­ri­ence with strik­ers is wor­thy of study, his mag­na­nim­i­ty wor­thy of reflection.

Did WSC Send Troops Against Strikers?

For a cen­tu­ry it has been part of social­ist demonolo­gy that Churchill sent troops to attack strik­ers dur­ing a 1910 min­ers’ work stop­page in Tony­pandy, Wales. In 1967 an Oxford under­grad­u­ate wrote that Churchill faced down strik­ers with tanks. This was very pre­scient of him, since tanks didn’t exist in 1910.…

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Misquotes: “At your throat or your feet”

Misquotes: “At your throat or your feet”

The Huff­in­g­ton Post reports that the Nation­al Memo’s Joe Cona­son crit­i­cized Joe Scarborough’s ambiva­lent atti­tude toward the Clin­tons by mis­quot­ing Churchill: “It’s what he said about the Hun, which is, ‘They’re either at your feet or at your throat.'”

“You just used a Win­ston Churchill quote to com­pare me to a Nazi because you don’t like the facts,” Scar­bor­ough replied.

“No, I didn’t com­pare you to a Nazi,” said Cona­son. “He wasn’t talk­ing about the Nazis, he was talk­ing about World War I. [The Huns] were not Nazis.”

Ah, all Huns are not Nazis, but in Churchill’s con­text, most Nazis were Huns!…

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