Colonial Hooliganism

In his review of Richard Toye’s book Churchill’s Empire, Johann Hari portrayed Churchill as a brutal thug. According to Hari, Churchill thought natives rebelled against British rule only out of a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill”. Hari wrote that Churchill bragged about personally killing non-white people. Hari adds that Churchill was seen by his contemporaries as “at the most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum”.

Hari’s review is one of the worst book reviews that I’ve ever read, on any subject. He misinterprets the book he is reviewing, attributing to Toye a thesis (that Churchill was nothing more than a brutal thug) that Toye categorically does not make. As I’ve described before, the examples that Hari cites of Churchill’s colonial brutality are not particularly convincing.

Hari also ignores clear instances where Churchill opposed colonial violence. In other words, evidence that Churchill was not on the “most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum”. This post will discuss examples of this from three colonies that took place while Churchill was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (1905-1908). It is not my goal to provide a detail history of everything significant that happened during Churchill’s time in that office. I merely wish to highlight certain important events that shed light on Churchill’s attitude to colonial violence.

Natal

In February 1906 a rebellion broke out in the colony of Natal (today called KwaZulu-Natal) in South Africa. The rebellion started as a protest against a recently imposed poll tax on adult males. On the 8^th of February two white police officers – Inspector Hunt and Trooper Armstrong - were killed. The following day the Governor, Sir Henry McCallum, proclaimed martial law, and mobilised roughly 1,000 local troops to put down the rebellion. He also brought in censorship while the rebellion was on-going. On the 15^th of February two Africans were executed after a “hastily convened court martial” found them guilty of the murder of the two police officers. In the days that followed a further 24 Africans were arrested for the murders, of whom 12 were sentenced to death.

Sir Henry McCallum

Based on how Hari describes him, one might think that Churchill was a supporter of hitting the rebels as hard as possible, and backed the Natal government to the hilt. In fact, the exact opposite happened.

Churchill had a realistic sense of what caused the rebellion. He didn’t think it was caused by the innate violence of aboriginals or anything like that. He blamed the poll tax (Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.239). Churchill also considered the imposition of censorship to be an overreaction. He wrote in a minute that:

“The action of the governor and ministers is preposterous. The proclamation of martial law over the whole colony, causing dislocation and infinite annoyance to everyone, because two white men have been killed, is in itself an act which appears to be pervaded by an exaggerated excitability. The censorship exploits descends to the category of pure folly” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.240).

Churchill was also sceptical that the proposed executions were justified. He wrote to the Natal government requesting more information, impliedly threatening to block the executions if they were unjust:

 “Continued executions under martial law certain to excite strong criticism here, and as H.M.G. are retaining troops in Colony, and will be asked to assent to Act of Indemnity, necessary to regularize the action taken, trial of these murder cases by civil course greatly to be preferred. I must impress upon you necessity of utmost caution in this matter, and you should suspend executions until I have had opportunity of considering your further observations” (quoted Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.241).

This telegram caused an outrage. Settlers across the Empire regarded the idea that the Colonial Office in London might interfere with the treatment the settler could mete out to natives to be unconscionable. The Prime Minister of Natal, C.J. Smythe, and the rest of his Cabinet resigned en masse in protest. Protestation against Churchill’s action came from elsewhere too. For example, the Governor-General of Australia messaged London:

“Since an intervention of H.M. ministers… with the administration of the self-governing colonial of Natal would tend to establish, even in regard to prerogative of pardon, a dangerous precedent affecting all states within the empire, your excellency’s advisers desire most respectfully to appeal to H.M. ministers for reconsideration of the resolution at which they are reported to have arrived in this subject” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.241).

The Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Elgin, and other officials, telegraphed their Natal counterparts to assuage their hurt feelings and assure them that London did not mean to step on their toes. This apparently satisfied them as they all withdrew their resignations. The Africans were duly executed on the 2^nd of April (Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.242).

Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin

By the end of 1906, the Natal government had imprisoned 4,000 Africans, and didn’t know what to do with them all. They asked the British government to assist in deporting the ring-leaders of the revolt. Churchill was against this in principle, but he wanted to use it as leverage to force Natal to provide better treatment for the imprisoned. As he put it:

“We cannot help unless we also mitigate” (quoted in Hyman, Elgin and Churchill, p.247).

Churchill continued to be appalled by what had happened in Natal, and it coloured his impression of the colony in the future. The following year he referred to the rebellion as the “disgusting butchery of the natives”. In June 1907, when he received reports that the Natal authorities had inflicted unlawful punishments on a native for offences under the pass law, he advocated London intervening again, describing Natal as a “wretched colony – the hooligan of the British Empire” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.251).

Churchill insisted on reviewing the diet provided to the deported ringleaders to ensure it was adequate. When the inspection reported its findings to him, he denounced the diet as being “more suited to the lowest of animals than men” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.251).

Here’s what Professor Toye makes of the events:

“[Churchill] was, in fact, consistently infuriated by the behaviour of the Natal government and made serious efforts to improve the welfare of Zulu prisoners. In 1907 he wrote a striking minute condemning ‘the disgusting butchery of natives’ which to him demonstrated ‘the kind of tyranny against which these unfortunate Zulus have been struggling’. Elgin was less inclined to intervention than Churchill, which reflected both the older man’s innate caution and his perhaps more realistic appreciation of the powers of the Colonial Office, which were in practice quite limited. It was hard to control territories thousands of miles away using telegrams or written despatches; it was easy for those on the spot to use their supposedly superior knowledge of local conditions as an excuse for circumventing the wishes of Whitehall. Deferring to such knowledge was at any rate a standard tenet of imperial administration. As the battle over the execution of the twelve rebels showed, it was easier to put up with the criticism of a few Radicals at home than it was to hold British colonial governments to account” (Toye, Churchill’s Empire, p.102).

Kenya

Churchill’s opposition to wanton violence against colonial subjects was also apparent with regards to Kenya. In March 1907, Ewart S. Grogan, the President of the Colonists’ Association, dragged three Kikuyu employees – who had allegedly been disrespectful to his sister and another white woman - to the court-house in Nairobi and flogged them in the street. A medical official reported that two had suffered “simple hurt” while another had been severely hurt (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33). The colonial authorities charged Grogan with unlawful assembly (and also assault, but for some reason that charge was dropped). This incident outraged the Kenyan settlers – not the assault, but the fact that the authorities prosecuted a white man for attacking black men. One settler, W. Russell Bowker, said bluntly:

“It has always been a first principle with me to flog a n***er [asterisks my own] who insults a white woman” (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33).

Churchill was outraged, but not for the same reason as the settlers. He was appalled by their cruelty. He wrote the following in a minute:

“We must not let these few ruffians steal out beautiful and promising protectorate away from us, after all we have spent upon it – under some shabby pretence of being a ‘responsibly governed colony’. This House of Commons will never allow us to abdicate our duties towards the natives – as peaceful, industrious, law-abiding folk as can be found anywhere” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.410).

The rest of the Colonial Office agreed with Churchill and they backed the Kenyan Government in prosecuting Grogan. A cruiser was sent to Mombasa to deter the settler community from causing any trouble (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33).

Ewart Grogan

The Grogan incident reflected, according to the Acting Governor, a growing tendency by white settlers to “deny the native any rights whatever” and to treat Africans “not as a labourer but a helot, not a servant but a slave” (quoted in Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.33). A.C. Hollis, head of the Native Affairs Department, campaigned for improved working conditions for Africans, to the consternation of many settlers. According to historians Anthony Clayton and Donald Savage, the department:

“received massive on-the-spot- support from Churchill…. Churchill… had on arrival [in Kenya] seen at first hand a shocking example of bad labour conditions. He had found a large party of some 300 labourers walking back from a site over 150 miles away and demanded an explanation; he wrote of them later as ‘skinny scarecrows crawling back to their tribe after a few weeks contact with Christian civilization’. Hollis ascertained that the men had originally been recruited for work on a farm not far from their homes near Nairobi, but the farmer had transferred them to a railway ballast contractor who did not have the money to feed or house them. At the end of the contract the contractor had been unable to pay the men off, telling them to wait, without food, for five days until a train with the money arrived. But the labourers had had enough and had begun to walk home. The contractor, a European, was prosecuted, no doubt at Churchill’s instigation, and ordered to pay immediately or face imprisonment” (Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p.34).

Nigeria

In Nigeria, Churchill was also opposed to indiscriminate violence against natives. He put his opposition to punitive expeditions on the record:

“Of course, if the peace and order of [Nigeria] depends on a vigorous offensive we must support him with all our hearts. But the chronic bloodshed which stains the West African seasons is odious and disquieting. Moreover the whole enterprise is liable to be misrepresented by persons unacquainted with Imperial terminology as the murdering of natives and stealing of their lands…. I do not think we ought to enter upon these expeditions lightly or as a matter of course” (quoted in Hyam, Elgin and Churchill, p.208).

In late-January 1906 the Colonial Office sent a telegram to Lugard opposing the dispatch of a large punitive expedition. Frederick Lugard, the High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, was furious with this interference. Elgin and Churchill eventually relented, but only on condition that the expedition should be carried no further than “the immediate object rendered necessary”. In March there was a one-sided battle (or massacre) of Nigerians in Satiru. According to Lugard’s biographer, Margery Perham, Lugard did not order a massacre and, when he heard of it, he put a stop to it (Perham, Lugard, p.199). Nonetheless, Churchill was appalled and criticized the action:

“How does the extermination of an almost unarmed rabble…compare with the execution of 12 k****** in Natal after trial?... I confess I do not at all understand what our position is, or with what face we can put pressure on the government of Natal while these sorts of things are done under our direct authority” (quoted in Pakenham, Scramble for Africa, p.652; asterisks my own).

According to Ricard Toye, Churchill’s views of Nigeria struck some connected to the empire project as dangerous and radical. He quotes the wife of Lord Lugard – then the High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate – as writing to her husband:

“[Churchill] repeated all the foolish things you have ever heard about having gone too fast and added to them the extreme radical rubbish about holding innocent peoples tight in the grip of a military despotism. To abolish the [West African Frontier Force], to give up the greater part of Nigeria ‘which is much too big for us to hold’, put an end to the whole system of punitive expeditions and to be content with the peaceful administration of one small corner of the whole were the principal suggestions which he had to make” (Toye, Churchill’s Empire, p.113 emphasis added).

Lugard and his wife

Conclusion

Some assume that as all empires were built on violence and war, anyone who was explicitly pro-Empire must have been pro-violence against the subjugated populations. However, in the case of Churchill it just isn’t that clear cut. Churchill was definitely committed to the cause of Empire, but he was quite willing to criticize atrocities carried out in its name. To quote Toye:

“Defenders of Churchill’s racial attitudes correctly point out that throughout his career he often spoke up for the welfare of indigenous peoples. His humanitarianism did not imply a belief in racial equality, though, but rather accompanied a conviction that ‘degraded’ races were susceptible to improvement over the very long run” (Toye, Churchill's Empire, pp.58-59).

Another historian, Ronald Hyam, makes a similar point:

"[Churchill] had a generous and sensitive, if highly paternalistic, sympathy for subject peoples, and a determination to see that justice was done to humble individuals throughout the empire. He had this sympathy to a degree that was rather rare among British administrators, and even politicians, at this time. [Emphasis added] Human juices must be injected into Olympian mandarins. By vigilant reading of routine official files he frequently uncovered what he thought were ‘flat’ or ‘shocking’ violations of the elementary principles of law and justice. He insisted that the principles of justice, and the safeguards of judicial procedure, should be ‘rigidly, punctiliously and pedantically’ followed.

He insisted, too, on questioning the Colonial Office assumption that officials were always in the right when complaints were made against government by Africans or, as was more probable, by Asians. He campaigned for an earnest effort to understand the feelings of subject peoples in being ruled by alien administrators, ‘to try to measure the weight of the burden they bear’. The business of a public officer, he maintained, was to serve the people he ruled. The officer must not forget that he was as much their servant, however imposing his title, as any manufacturer or tradesman was the servant of his customers" (Hyam, "Winston Churchill’s First Years", p.306).

Bibliography

Clayton, Anthony and Savage, Daniel Cockfield, Government and Labour in Kenya 1895 – 1963 (Routledge, 1974)

Hyman, Ronald, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905-1908: The Watershed of the Empire-Commonwealth (Macmillan, 1968)

Hyam, Ronald, "Winston Churchill's First Years in Ministerial Office, 1905-1911" in Ronald Hyam, Understanding the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.299-318

Pakenham, Thomas, The Scramble for Africa (Abacus, 1992)

Perham, Margery, Lugard: The Years of Authority 1898–1945 (Collins, 1960)

Toye, Richard, Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (MacMillan, 2010)

Beer and Sandwiches

 A common criticism of Churchill, particularly one made by left-wingers, is that he was hostile to trade unions. In a recently published essay in Jacobin, Lenin fanboi Tariq Ali refers to Churchill as a “foe of trade unions”. This is supposedly demonstrated by his opposition to strike action, which he had crushed using military force. Historian Priya Satia mentions Churchill as “violently” putting down strikes. The BBC listed Churchill’s treatment of striking workers in a list of controversies concerning Churchill. As is par for the course, geniuses on Twitter spread this viewpoint with the helpful addition of entirely made-up quotes.

The truth is, though, that Churchill supported trade unions. He was their friend, not their foe. He supported the right to strike, although he didn’t support every particular strike that took place while in office.

Tonypandy. Villain?

By far the most notorious strike Churchill dealt with took place in Tonypandy, in Wales, in 1910. The incident is so infamous that Churchill supposedly earned the lasting enmity of the Welsh mining communities. In 2019 John McDonnell, then the Shadow Chancellor, replied “Tonypandy; villain” when he was asked if Churchill was a hero or villain. The truth of the Tonypandy incident is rather different to the leftwing mythology. The late Paul Addison, in his book Churchill on the Home Front, 1900-1955, discussed it in some detail. The account below is based largely on this book (except where otherwise cited). 

In 1910 coal miners in the Rhondda valley in Wales went on strike. There were fights between the police and miners at the Glamorgan Colliery near the town of Tonypandy. The Chief Constable of Glamorgan was sufficiently concerned about the situation that he called for troops to be sent to his jurisdiction to support the police. He was perfectly within his powers to make such a request. However, after an appeal by the President of the South Wales Mines Federation, Churchill, in his capacity as Home Secretary, cancelled the dispatch of troops to Glamorgan. Churchill had police officers from elsewhere sent to Wales to support the police there. Churchill also sent a personal message to the strikers that was read to them at a mass meeting:

Their best friends here are greatly distressed at the trouble which has broken out and will do their best to help them get fair treatment. Askwith [Arbitrator at the Board of Trade], wishes to see Mr. Watts Morgan with six or eight local representatives at Board of Trade, 2 o’clock tomorrow. But rioting must cease at once so that the enquiry shall not be prejudicial and to prevent the credit of the Rhondda Valley being impaired.

However, the violence escalated and that evening riots rampaged throughout Tonypandy, damaging and trashing over 60 shops and businesses. One man was killed in the riot. Churchill rescinded his ban on the dispatch of troops. 

This supposedly brutal military occupation resulted in not a single casualty, let alone any fatalities. General Macready set out the policy vis-à-vis troops in a memorandum:

In accordance with the verbal instructions of the Home Secretary, the general line of policy pursued throughout the strike was that in no case should soldiers come in direct contact with rioters unless and until action had been taken by the police. In the event of the police being overpowered, or not being in sufficient strength to protect a large and intersected area, the military force would come into play, but even then each body of military should be accompanied by at any rate a small body of police to emphasize the fact that the armed forces act merely as the support of the civil power and not as direct agents (quoted in Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.35)

Roger Geary sums up Churchill’s policy as “delaying the arrival of troops, sending police reinforcements, obtaining an independent assessment of the situation and finally, if absolutely necessary, authorising the military to move into the disturbed area with instructions to avoid contact with the miners if at all possible” (Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.35)

So far from being an example of his hostility towards organised labour, Churchill acted with restraint, sending troops only when he felt he had to and only to support civil authorities (and not for the purposes of suppressing the strike). Historian Roland V. Sires defended Churchill: 

Churchill could hardly have escaped criticism in the South Wales coal strike. If he had precipitately sent troops to intervene he would have been charged with being an enemy of labor; if he had withheld police or military forces he would have been criticized for indifference to public peace and the protection of property. He steered a middle course between intimidation and laxity and caused each side to be instructed as to its rights and duties. His actions may have avoided a deadly clash between military forces and the disaffected miners. He consistently held to his standards of government action in a violent industrial dispute - the police should protect life, property, and the public peace, and the military should be used only when the police could not cope with the situation. He cannot properly be blamed for violent acts by either strikers or policemen (Sires, ‘Labor Unrest in England’, p.260).

As for the claim that Churchill earned the enmity of Welsh miners forever, Langworth quotes W.H. Mainwaring, a militant striker at the time:

We never thought that Winston Churchill had exceeded his natural responsibility as Home Secretary. The military that came into the area did not commit one single act that allows the slightest resentment by the strikers. On the contrary, we regarded the military as having come in the form of friends to modify the otherwise ruthless attitude of the police forces (Quoted in Langworth, Myth and Reality, p.42). 

Afterwards, Churchill moved to improve the working conditions of the miners. As Paul Addison says:

Churchill’s response was to bring forward new legislation to improve safety regulations and reduce the number of fatal accidents. The proposals contained in his Coal Mines Bill derived mainly from a report of a Royal Commission, with some additions by the Mines Department of the Home Office. Churchill supplied the political drive and, no less important, obtained the necessary finance…

The Great Unrest

Tonypandy was far from the only strike Churchill had to deal with as Home Secretary. The following year was one of tremendous industrial strife - The Great Unrest. Nine percent of the industrial population of Britain was involved in strikes of one kind or another in 1911, compared with an average of 2.9 percent between 1902 and 1911 (Sires, ‘Labor Unrest in England’, p.246). This period is almost completely forgotten in the popular memory of Churchill, though ironically it was a far more serious affair than occurred at Tonypandy. Paul Addison wrote that by his response to the strikes, Churchill “fatally compromised” his reputation as a radical reformer. However, Addison added a qualifier:

Churchill was deeply disturbed by militant industrial unrest and reacted strongly against it. He became, to this extent, anti-labour. But like most parliamentary politicians he was careful to distinguish between the ‘militants’ and the ‘moderates’ of the labour movement. It would be wrong to suppose that he turned against the working-class, the Labour party, or the trade unions, as a whole. But he did begin the fear the influence of subversive and revolutionary elements (emphasis added).

Churchill had three concerns during the unrest of 1911. Firstly, was the economic and social impact of the strikes. In the summer of 1911, a national seamen’s strike began in the ports, which spread to the dockers. In August 1911 the railway workers also went on strike. These effectively paralysed the British transport system. According to Paul Addison:

The Government was suddenly faced by the possibility of an almost complete standstill in the import and distribution of food supplies. The local authorities, prompted by the port and shipping employers, appealed to the Government to provide troops or extra police for the protection of strike-breaking workers.

In London, food shortages were reported as early as the 10th of August as supplies of fresh food dwindled. On the 16th of August Liverpool based cold-storage companies warned that without deliveries of coal then £3 million worth of meat would rot. The Mayor of Liverpool warned that there would be shortages of flour and bread due to strikes and that food “must be getting very scarce in the poorer districts”. On the 16th of August, the mayor of Sheffield reported that food was getting short in that town as well. On the 17th of August Liverpool’s Health department reported their concern about the health impact of the strike as “the men employed on the sanitary service… have struck… therefore there are no water carts and no clearance of dust etc from the streets, and no collection of refuse from houses”. That same day the Lt-Governor of the Isle of Man reported that the island’s supply of sugar and butter had run out, fresh meat would run out in a day, stocks of tinned meat and fish would last only week and coal supplies would only last a few days. The next day authorities in Hull complained that food supplies were being “menaced”, and leading wholesale suppliers of pharmaceuticals warned that orders of medicines from doctors and hospitals could not be met. On the 22nd of August, the Wholesale Provision Association in Manchester reported that “large quantities” of provisions were “badly wanted”. In Stoke-on-Trent, the food situation was “one of gravest importance” (Davies, “Crisis?”, p.110-113).

Churchill’s second concern was the rioting that attended the strikes. Major rioting took place in numerous cities and towns. Many perceived matters as going beyond a mere industrial dispute. As Roger Geary writes:

There seems little doubt that this reversion to a more military response occurred because of a growing sense of extreme unease in establishment circles. For example, the King thought that the situation was ‘more like a revolution than a strike’. Similarly, the Mayor of Liverpool told Lord Derby that ‘it is no ordinary strike riot’ and a Hull councillor remarked that the situation was worse than that prevailing during the Paris Commune (Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.37).

Destruction of private property, intimidation of non-striking labourers and of their families and harassment of businesses to prevent them from serving non-striking workers were regrettably unlawful tactics used by some of the strikers throughout the summer (Davies, "Crisis?", p.108). Requests from local authorities for troops to support civil authorities poured into the Home Office. In June Churchill authorized the dispatch of additional police to Hull, and in July in response to a request for soldiers from the Lord Mayor of Manchester he sent the Royal Scots Greys to Salford. In August rioting “on a scale approaching that of a local civil war” (according to Paul Addison) broke out in Liverpool. Again, at the request of the local authorities, Churchill assented to the dispatch of infantry and cavalry troops to the town, as well as a Royal Navy cruiser. In total, 58,000 troops were mobilised and sent to various trouble spots while four warships and eight other vessels were sent to protect various ports (in addition to the one sent to Liverpool, ships were sent to London, Hull and Barrow) (Davies, “Crisis?”, pp.113-114).

The third concern of Churchill’s was the impact on Britain’s strategic position. This unrest took place against the backdrop of the Agadir Crisis when Britain and France came close to war with Germany. According to Paul Addison, Churchill received allegations that labour leaders were being bankrolled by a German agent named Bebel. Addison quotes the diary of Sir Almeric Fitzroy, the clerk of the Privy Council, as recording that “Winston Churchill is said to be convinced that the whole trouble is fomented by German gold, and claims to have proof of it, which others regard as midsummer madness”. 

Churchill initially tried to chart a moderate course. As Paul Addison put it, “in the policing of the dispute Churchill strove to ensure the impartial enforcement of the law as between workman and employer”. What this meant was that owners had a right to use voluntary labour while strikers had the right to peacefully picket. In early August, Churchill allowed mediation to take place between the London dockers and the chief industrial conciliator at the board of trade. The dispute was resolved peacefully, and socialist leader Ben Tillett credited Churchill thus:

He refused to listen to the clamour of class hatred, he saved the country from a national transport stoppage becoming a riot and incipient revolution.

Unfortunately, riots were not always peacefully brought to an end. On the 15th of August a convoy of prison vans in Liverpool was attacked by an angry crowd. Soldiers opened fire and two people were killed (Davies, “Crisis?”, p.115). 

The announcement of a national railway strike a few days later caused a change in policy. The government adopted a more belligerent stance. Churchill decided the situation was so serious that troops were to be sent to trouble spots by the Home Office, rather than simply sent upon request of local authorities. According to Roger Geary, this meant that some places were provided military support despite not asking for it (Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.37). The purpose of sending these troops was not to attack or kill strikers, but to, as Paul Addison puts it, “the protection of the rail network from sabotage [and] to enable the companies to continue as best they could with non-union labour”.

Thankfully, incidents that resulted in deaths were extremely rare despite the serious situation. The 58,000 troops mobilised only killed four civilians during the whole summer. In addition to the aforementioned Liverpool shooting, on the 19th of August in Llanelli a train carrying strike-breaker workers was halted by strikers, who then proceeded to pelt the armed troops with stones. According to the Chief Constable of Carmarthenshire:

Troops attacked on both sides by crowd on embankments hurling stones and other missiles. One soldier carried away wounded in head and others struck. Riot Act read. Major Stuart mounted embankment and endeavored to pacify crowd. Stone throwing continued, crowd yelling at troops. Shots fired as warning, no effect, attitude of crowd threatening and determined. Other shots fired, two men killed, one wounded, crowd fled (quoted in Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.45).

Naturally, the exact course of events was heavily disputed, with some accusing the troops of committing murder. Nonetheless, a jury returned a verdict of “justifiable homicide” (Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.45). In the aftermath of the shooting, rioters proved a greater menace to their own safety than the soldiers did – four were killed in an explosion after they set fire to a train containing explosives. 

It is likely that the police and army did, at times, act with unjustifiable brutality. While Churchill categorically did not order troops and police to rough-up rioters, the hardening stance as the strikes continued may have, according to Roger Geary, conditioned the police to act more strongly than they might otherwise have done so. Geary says:

There is, for example, no evidence of a concerted policy of repression being formulated at the Home Office, but a preference for ‘vigorous’ police action is unmistakable (Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p.44).

In fairness to the police, Geary notes that police tactics for riot control were not as sophisticated as today. The standard tactic, the baton charge, was unavoidably indiscriminate. To quote Geary:

 there was a strategic commitment to impartial policing [but] the relatively undeveloped state of control tactics militated against its implementation (Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p. 43; emphasis added).

In summary, in 1911 Churchill was faced with an unprecedented series of strikes. These strikes threatened to cause food shortages, public health catastrophes, and cripple the country on the eve of a war. Widespread rioting forced him to agree to requisitions of troops by local authorities to support law and order. Churchill, and others in the government, became more belligerent and hostile to the strike the longer it lasted, and he changed the rules to allow the Home Office to immediately send the military to support law and order without a local invitation. However, the troops were not sent by Churchill to massacre or brutalise strikers, as evidenced by the fact that 58,000 troops only killed four people during the entire summer. It was these particular strikes Churchill was hostile to, not the working class or trade unions as a whole. As Churchill put it in a handwritten letter to a Liberal Party organizer in Manchester:

The progress of a democratic country is bound up with the maintenance of order. The working classes would be almost the only sufferers from an outbreak of riot & a general strike if it could be effective would fall upon them & their families with its fullest severity. At the same time the wages now paid are too low and the rise in the cost of living (due mainly to the increased gold supply) makes it absolutely necessary that they should be raised. I have never heard of the British people complaining (as they now do) without a good & just cause. I believe the Government is now strong enough to secure an improvement in social conditions without failing in its primary duties.

Socialism, Individualism and Trade Unionism

When examining Churchill’s view or impact there is a tendency by both detractors and hagiographers to take a particular moment/speech/letter and identify that as showing who Churchill really was. For example, detractors often take a distorted picture of the Tonypandy incident (or the lesser-known strikes in 1911) and say that this shows Churchill’s true colours – a class warrior who was opposed to working-class interests and trade unions. However, these specific incidents lasted only a few weeks and Churchill’s career in politics lasted over half a century. To understand Churchill’s actual position on trade unions it is necessary to examine the whole of his career.

In 1899, during his first election campaign, Churchill famously declared support for social reforms and improving the condition of the working class:

I regard the improvement of the condition of the British people as the main aim of modern government… I shall therefore promote to the best of my ability all legislation which, without throwing the country into confusion and disturbing the present concord, and without impairing that tremendous energy of production on which the wealth of the nation and the good of the people depend, may yet raise the standard of happiness and comfort in English homes (quoted in Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions’, pp.47-48).

As Christ Wrigley puts it, Churchill’s view of labour can be understood by the phrase noblesse oblige. What this entailed was an expectation that the ruling classes should use their position to behave honourably to the ‘lower orders’ (Wrigley, “Trade Unions”, p.49). 

It shouldn’t be surprising that Churchill thought along these lines. Anyone familiar with British history will know that the Conservative party under Disraeli had already passed quite a bit of social reform legislation. Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, developed a conception of ‘Tory Democracy’ (today called One Nation Conservatism) that supported social reform. So, Churchill’s support for “the improvement of the condition” of the working class wasn’t exactly a radical departure from Conservative thinking.

Churchill also saw himself as an individualist. In October 1906 he said:

The existing organization of society is driven by one mainspring – competitive selection. It may be a very imperfect organization of society, but it is all we have got between us and barbarism… and great and numerous as are the evils of the existing condition of society in this country, the advantages and achievements of the social system are greater still. Moreover that social system is one which offers an almost indefinite capacity for improvement… I do not want to see impaired the vigour of competition, but we can do much to mitigate the consequences of failure. We want to draw a line below which we will not allow people to live and labour, yet above which they may compete with all the strengths of their manhood (quoted in Wrigley, “Trade Unions”, p.50).

Crucially, Churchill did not see trade unions as contradicting the principle of individualism. In fact, he supported them as they strengthened the hand of workers in industrial disputes. In October 1906 Churchill said:

[I]t is the trade unions that more than any other organization must be considered the responsible and deputed representatives of Labour. They are the most highly organised part of labour; they are the most responsible part; they are from day to day in contact reality… The fortunes of the trade unions are interwoven with the industries they serve. The more highly organised trade unions are, the more clearly they recognize their responsibilities; the larger the membership, the greater their knowledge, the wider their outlook (quoted in Wrigley, “Trade Unions”, p.52). 

Churchill was no socialist. But he was a ‘Tory Democrat’ initially and later a Liberal. He contrasted socialism and liberalism and summarized the differences between the two ideologies thus:

Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way they can be safely and justly preserved, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference (quoted in Pelling, “Labour Movement”, p.115).

He did not regard trade unionism as socialistic per se. In 1908 he declared:

Trade unions are not socialistic. They are the antithesis of socialism. They are undoubtedly individualistic organisations, more in character of the old Guilds, and much more in the culture of the individual, than they are in that of the smooth and bloodless uniformity of the masses (quoted in Wrigley, “Trade Unions”, p.52).

The same year he also said:

While I believe in the advantages of a competitive system under which man is pitted against man, I do not believe in allowing men to be pitted against each other ruthlessly until the last drop of energy is extracted, and there the trade unions come in as safeguards and checks (emphasis added; quoted in Wrigley, “Trade Unions”, p.53).

In May 1911 Churchill said the following:

I consider that every workman is well advised to join a trade union (quoted in Wrigley, “Trade Unions”, p.55).

In 1928 Churchill further demonstrated his support for trade unionism by joining one himself. Churchill wasn’t motivated by self-interest; he didn’t require help in a dispute with his employer. The local secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers invited him to join because of his brick-laying hobby. Churchill told the secretary that he would be “very pleased to join the union”, sent off the membership dues and was admitted as a member. The Union’s executive council ruled him ineligible, but not before he acquired a membership certificate (Pelling, “Labour Movement”, p.121). 

He was willing to give practical support to trade unions too. In 1901 the House of Lords (then the highest appellate court in the United Kingdom) decided in Taff Vale Railway co v Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants that trade unions were tortiously liable for loss of profits due to strike action. This represented a major setback for the union movement, and Churchill voted in favour of a resolution to nullify the Taff Vale decision (Pelling, “Labour Movement”, p.114). Churchill was one of the few members of the Cabinet who voted for the Trade Disputes Bill - which would negate Taff Vale – on its second hearing (Farr, Reginald McKenna, p.87).

After the Second World War Churchill, according to Chris Wrigley, “continued to take a positive view of the trade unions” (Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions’, p.65). During the 1947 Conservative Party conference he said: 

The trade unions are a long-established and essential part of our national life… we take our stand by these pillars of our British Society as it has gradually developed and evolved itself, of the right of individual labouring men to adjust their wages and conditions by collective bargaining, including the right to strike (quoted in Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions’, p.65). 

He repeated the theme of the trade union as being an essential British institution in the 1950 conference and added:

I have urged that every Tory craftsman or wage-earner should of his own free-will be a trade unionist, but I also think he should attend the meetings of his trade union and stand up for his ideas instead of letting only socialists and communists get control of what Is after all an essentially British institution (Quoted in Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions’, p.65).

Conclusion

Contrary to far-left mythology, Churchill actually supported trade unions. Throughout his career he made statements expressing the view that they were a ‘British’ institution. For him, socialist infiltration of unions was something to be regretted, but it didn’t make him hostile to unions per se. His support wasn’t just empty words, as demonstrated by his support for legislation overriding the Taff Vale decision. Despite claims that Churchill repressed strikers, he was in fact on the record as supporting the right to strike. In 1904 he said:

It is most important for the British working classes that they should be able if necessary to strike – although nobody likes strikes – in order to put pressure upon the employers for a greater share of the wealth of the world or for the removal of hard and onerous conditions but in the socialist state no strike would be tolerated (quoted in Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions’, p.52)

Historian Henry Pelling put it best:

In the course of his peregrinations through the British party system [Churchill] retained a number of clear principles for his political conduct. One was opposition to socialism, which he regarded as an enemy of good government…. But another principle was sympathy for working people and for their representative leaders, that is to say, trade unionists, whom he regarded as an estate of the realm quite as much as any other (Pelling, ‘Labour Movement’, p.128).

Bibliography

Addison, Paul, Churchill on the Home Front, 1900 – 1955 (Kindle edition, 2013)

Davies, Sam, “’Crisis? What Crisis?’: The National Rail Strike of 1911 and the State Response”, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, Vol 33, No. 12, pp.97 -126

Farr, Martin, Reginald McKenna: Financier Among Statesmen, 1863 – 1916  (Routledge, 2008)

Geary, Roger, Policing Industrial Disputes: 1893 to 1985 (Cambridge University Press 1985)

Langworth, Richard M., Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (McFarland & Co, 2017)

Pelling, Henry, “Churchill and the Labour Movement”, in Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War (Clarendon Press, 1996), pp.113-128

Sires, Roland V., “Labor Unrest in England, 1910 – 1914”, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 15, No.3 (September 1955), pp.246-266

Wrigley, Chris, “Churchill and the Trade Unions”, in David Cannadine and Roland Quinault (eds.), Winston Churchill in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.47–67