Home Secretary Archives - 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.…

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.…