April 25, 2015

Finest Hour 119, Summer 2003

Page 13


Q: I took issue with a Scottish lady who referred to Churchill as “infamous’.” She replied, “Yes, he was a great war leader, but he did also order the troops to shoot the miners when they went on strike [in the Rhondda Valley in 1910] for better pay and conditions.” What is she on about? I can’t believe this.

A: Don’t. For almost a century it has been accepted socialist dogma that Churchill as Home Secretary “sent troops to shoot” striking Welsh miners in the Rhondda Valley in 1910. One Oxford undergraduate actually suggested that Churchill used tanks, a tribute to his acumen since they hadn’t been invented then. In fact, the officer commanding the Southern Command dispatched 400 standby soldiers to be used in the event of strike disorders; Churchill ordered that they not be used unless the Chief Constable of Glamorgan considered the situation beyond police control. The Chief Constable did not so consider, and no troops were used. Even the left-wing Manchester Guardian admitted at the time that Churchill’s action “saved many lives.” It is all in the official biography, vol. 2, and other good biographies, and Finest Hour 35, Spring 1983.

Q: It is said that Churchill once slept ‘with a man. Is this true? Also, was he a homophobe?

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A: No to both questions. He is alleged to have said he once went to bed with a man (supposedly Ivor Novello) “to see what it was like” and, when asked what it was like, is alleged to have replied, “musical.” But there is no evidence that he either said this or did it. His most devoted private secretary for nearly fifty years, Eddie Marsh, was a homosexual; their friendship was one of the longest in Churchill’s life.

Q: What newspapers did Churchill read when in Britain?

A: He chiefly read the Manchester Guardian, but took them all, including the Daily Worker. He would read them in bed, one by one, shuffling the read material onto the floor left and right, causing protests by his valet, Sawyers, who had to pick them up. In Townsman of Westerham (1969) Percy Reid, a newspaper stringer who followed goings-on at Chartwell, wrote that he could always tell when WSC was away: the village newsmonger’s rack would offer the Worker. WSC was the only regular local reader, so the vendor never stocked more than one copy!

Q: Who said “Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right, “and when?

A: Lord Randolph Churchill, in a letter to a Liberal Unionist a few weeks after his famous speech on Home Rule in Belfast on 22 February 1886. His grandson wrote in the official biography of Sir Winston (1:7172): “This famous slogan became the watchword of Ulster; it pithily explains why Ulster is still part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Q: The Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, purports to quote Churchill’s Gathering Storm: “Nowhere in the world will you find a landscape more ravishing than this. It’s ours, to look at and to cherish for the rest of our lives. I would die for it. “Did Churchill actually say this?

A: No. In The Gathering Storm (vol. 1 of The Second World War) Churchill uses “landscape” only once, and not in this context, although it is true that he loved Kent. In My Early Life, on page 19 (first edition), he writes:

“I was also taught to be very fond of Kent. It was, Mrs. Everest said, ‘the garden of England.’ She had been born at Chatham, and was immensely proud of Kent. No county could compare with Kent, any more than any other country could compare with England. Ireland, for instance, was nothing like so good. As for France, Mrs. Everest, who had at one time wheeled me in my perambulator up and down what she called the ‘Shams Elizzie,’ thought very little of it. Kent was the place. Its capital was Maidstone, and all round Maidstone there grew strawberries, cherries, raspberries and plums. Lovely! I always wanted to live in Kent.”

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