July 5, 2013

FINEST HOUR 128, AUTUMN 2005

ABSTRACT
“IN 1911, HOME SECRETARY WINSTON CHURCHILL SENT TROOPS AGAINST THE STRIKING MINERS OF TONYPANDY.” This legend has been around a long time; subsequent elaborations include the claim that the troops used machine guns.

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The strike in Tonypandy, Wales, grew from a dispute concerning wage differentials in the working of hard and soft seams. Between 25,000 and 30,000 men and many coal pits were involved. After looting began, local authorities appealed to the War Office for troops. Churchill consulted the Secretary of War, Haldane, and they agreed instead to send police, but to hold troops in reserve near by.

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In the official biography, vol. 2*, Churchill’s son Randolph wrote that WSC’s conduct was “grotesquely distorted, and it has become a part of socialist demonology that Churchill sent troops who fired upon the miners ….Fortunately, a contemporary account of the truth survives in words written before the lie had ever been born.” (See below)

Although his father’s instincts were as Randolph represented them, Winston Churchill did in the end send troops as support to civil authority. And, Geoffrey Best writes in his Churchill: A Study in Greatness (London: Hambledon, 2001), “he was to do the same again and again (whether the civil authority asked for them or not) in the summer of 1911″ during strikes by longshoremen, miners and railway workers. Not all of Churchill’s Cabinet colleagues became as worked up as he did….”.

But “Churchill did not see himself as an ‘enemy of the people.’ He perceived himself as a benevolent friend to the working class, a promoter of social welfare, and the protector of unions’ rights and of everybody’s civil rights; and indeed the record shows that he was in all those things. But the record also shows how little he was prepared to see everybody’s civil rights and the security of the state endangered by civil disorder and revolutionary activism. The legend of ‘Tonypandy’ after all had some justice in it, though for the wrong reason.”

* Winston S. Churchill, vol. II, Young Statesman 1901-1914, by Randolph S. Churchill. London: Heinemann, 1967, 373-77

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WSC TO THE KING

[? 10 November 1910] Copy [? Draft]

Reports today from the whole of the Rhondda Valley are satisfactory. Absolute order has been maintained around all the threatened collieries. A few trifling incidents of windowbreaking have occurred in two of the villages. The 1,400 Police at the disposal of the Chief Constable will, it is expected, be able not merely to prevent attacks upon the collieries but to control the whole district and to deal promptly with any sign of a disorderly gathering large or small. No need for the employment of the military is likely to occur….

With regard to the action taken by the Home Office on Tuesday, the following facts should be known:

The 400 Cavalry and Infantry which were sent for by the Chief Constable on Monday night were not started by the Secretary of State for War or by the Home Secretary, but were sent, pending superior instructions, by the General Officer Commanding of the Southern Command. Up to 10 o’clock on Tuesday morning the Home Office had no knowledge of this movement or of the necessity for it. At 11 o’clock Mr. Churchill, after consulting with Mr. Haldane and communicating by telephone with the Chief Constable of Glamorgan at Tonypandy, definitely decided to employ Police instead of Military to deal with disorder, and, while moving troops near to the scene of disturbance, to keep them in the background until it was certain that Police methods had proved insufficient. From this policy there has been no change whatever….

The Chief Constable of Glamorgan concurred in the substitution of the Metropolitan Police for the Infantry, who were halted at Swindon, and the Cavalry were told to proceed no further than Cardiff and to await further instructions there. General Macready [Commander of the 2nd Infantry Brigade] was specially selected to take charge of any military forces which might be required to support the police….

All the attacks of the rioters upon the Glamorgan Colliery were, however, successfully repulsed by the Chief Constable with the County Police at his disposal, and when the Metropolitan Police arrived the rioters had already been beaten from the collieries without the aid of any reinforcement either of London Police or Military…

The whole district is now in the effective control of the police, and there appears to be no reason at present why the policy of keeping the military out of direct contact with the rioters should be departed from.

 

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