May 2015 - Richard M. Langworth

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

27 May 2015

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)

26 May 2015

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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Churchillnomics: The “Stricken Field”

18 May 2015

Young Winston Churchill’s second speech in Parliament was a bravura performance taking up his father’s theme for economy in the budget.

In Churchill in His Own Words (p 45) I date this quotation 12 May 1901 and cite Churchill’s Mr. Brodrick’s Army, his 1903 volume of speeches (facsimile edition, Sacramento: Churchilliana Company, 1977), 16:

Wise words, Sir, stand the test of time, and I am very glad the House has allowed me, after an interval of fifteen years, to raise the tattered flag I found lying on a stricken field.

The “tattered flag” was Lord Randolph Churchill’s campaign for economy in the late 1880s.…

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Driving in Britain Then & Now

15 May 2015

Drive…if you dare

A friend headed for England who heard about their speed cameras asks how many he’ll encounter. Answer: a lot. Even out in the country, they’ll snap away at you.

Since 1974 I’ve logged 80,000 UK road miles, from Land’s End to John O’Groats, islands from Jura in the Hebrides to Guernsey in the Channel. For a long time it was a driver’s paradise. More recently UK driving turned from joy to drudgery. Of course a lot has to do with the huge growth of cars on cramped roads. The modern depredations of the State are a result rather than a cause.…

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“Rats in a Hole”: Churchill’s Apology

12 May 2015

Imagine if the President of the United States declared, “We will dig out terrorists ‘like rats in a hole.” Many would applaud and think maybe they had misjudged him. Or would they?

A colleague sends an exchange in the House of Commons on 7 March 1916. “Colonel Churchill,” recently returned from the Front but still a Member of Parliament, was speaking about the naval war with Germany. British naval planners must provide, Churchill was saying,

against what will be a continually increasing element of the unknown. I must also just point out another argument which shows that, great as were the anxieties with which we were faced in the first four months of the War, they have not by any means been removed, or, indeed, sensibly diminished by the course of events.…

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Churchill and Professor Lindemann, Lord Cherwell

4 May 2015

I reviewed the 1940-45 visitors books at Chequers. I was struck by how often Lord Cherwell (Frederick Lindemann) was there—far more than family and staff. He visited more than Bracken and Beaverbrook, or the Chiefs of Staff. What do you make of him? What’s best to read on him? —A.R., London

Most frequent visitor

After the death of the F.E. Smith, the first Lord Birkenhead, Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) was probably Churchill’s closest friend. His signature is also the most frequent in the visitors book at Chartwell, where it appears 86 times, more than anyone else (Brendan Bracken only 31, although visitors usually signed only when staying overnight, and Bracken frequently returned to London).…

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