Shoot Out at Sidney Street

Indian politician Shashi Tharoor has made it a habit to attack Churchill’s legacy. The thrust of his critique is that Churchill was a bloodthirsty tyrant. Same old, same old. There is a lot that can be said about the errors Tharoor makes (and I plan on saying a lot about them). For now, I’d like to focus on one of Tharoor's stranger criticisms of Churchill. Of the Sidney Street siege, Tharoor writes:

“As home secretary, he [Churchill] enjoyed personally directing military repression, even assuming operational command of the police during a siege of armed Latvian anarchists in Stepney, where he took the decision to allow them to be burned to death in a house where they were trapped”

This is an extremely bizarre characterization of the events, and of Churchill’s role in them. As an example of military repression, Tharoor is really scraping the barrel for examples here.

Churchill observing the Siege of Sidney Street.

Background

Tharoor doesn’t go into the background to the siege. This might be due to reasons of space. However, it’s possible that he figured that if he did, then the siege wouldn’t look like an instance of military repression to any fair-minded reader. Or maybe he just didn’t care about accuracy and is throwing any old complaint at Churchill, hoping something sticks. Who knows what goes through his mind? 

The crucial point that must be borne in mind when discussing the siege of Sidney Street is that the anarchists involved were violent and extremely dangerous criminals.

On 16th December 1910, a gang broke into a jewelry shop on 11 Exchange Buildings by digging through the wall from a neighbouring building. A resident heard strange noises and reported it to a Police Constable on his nearby beat. The constable gathered other policemen – seven uniformed and two plain-clothed – from nearby. These policemen were unarmed, apart from wooden truncheons. When Sergeants Bentley, Tucker, and Constable Woodham, entered the building they were shot at by the gang. All three were seriously injured. Bentley was shot in the shoulder and the neck, Bryant was hit in the arm and the chest, and Woodham was hit in the leg. As the gang made an escape from the property, other policemen intervened and were shot at. Sergeant Tucker was killed instantly. Constable Choate wrestled with one of the gang members for their pistol, but the other gang members shot him repeatedly.  The gangsters escaped, although one of them, George Gardstein, would succumb to wounds he sustained in fighting Constable Choate. Sergeants Tucker and Bentley also succumbed to their injuries. The latter retained consciousness for long enough to have a final conversation with his pregnant wife before he died. 

The murdered policemen.

The killing of three policemen in one incident shocked the nation. It is not common for cops to be killed in mainland Britain. A memorial service for the murdered men was held at St Paul’s Cathedral on the 23rd of December 1910. As the men were taken to their final resting place, three-quarters of a million Londoners lined the streets to pay their respects.

In January 1911 two members of the gang – Svaars and Sokoloff – were tracked down to an address on Sidney Street, in Stepney. After spending much of the morning evacuating other residents of the address, at 07:30 the police banged on the door. There was no reply. As you might expect, the anarchists were not early risers. So, the police threw a brick through a window. The gangsters replied by shooting at the police. Sergeant Leeson was hit in the chest. Thankfully he recovered (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.130). 

Thus began the siege of Sidney Street, and it is worth pointing out that Tharoor’s alleged victims of Churchillian “military repression” were in fact the instigators of the gunfight. They fired the first shot. The police, in fact, was forbidden by the law at the time to fire the first shot (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.129). Had the gangsters surrendered to the police, the siege would have never taken place. 

The police were outgunned by the gangsters. The latter were armed with automatic Mauser pistols, while the former were armed with inferior revolvers and Morris Tube rifles. An hour into the gunfight the police on the scene telephoned Scotland Yard and requested from the Assistant Commissioner, Major Wodehouse, that troops be brought in to reinforce the police (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.132). Such a request required the approval of the Home Secretary – Winston Churchill. He was not at the Home Office at the time (he had received news about the gunfight when he was at his home and was still commuting to work), but officials approved the despatch of twenty Scots Guards from the Tower of London anyway. Churchill retrospectively approved the despatch when he arrived at the Home Office (Gilbert, A Life, p.223).

As there were no further details of the situation, Churchill decided to head to Sidney Street to see the events for himself (Gilbert, A Life, p.223). But Tharoor is wrong to claim that Churchill “took operational command”. He did not, and numerous writers attest to that:

Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer, writes that “at no point did Churchill direct the siege” (Gilbert, A Life, p.224). 

Gilbert himself quotes Sydney Holland, a director of the Underground Railway (who was with Churchill during the siege) as saying:

The only possible excuse for anyone saying [Churchill] gave orders is that [he] did once and very rightly go forward and wave back the crowd at the end of the road (quoted in Gilbert, A Life, p.224).

Donald Rumbelow, a former curator of the City of London’s Police Museum, wrote that:

[Churchill] had no wish to take personal control but his position of authority inevitably attracted to itself direct responsibility. He saw that he would have done much better to have remained in his office but it was impossible to get into his car and drive away while matters were so uncertain and – he wrote later – so ‘extremely interesting’. (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.136)

According to Roy Jenkins:

There is some uncertainty as to whether Churchill attempted to give operational commands. To the police he almost certainly did not, although the officer in charge of a fraught operation, in which yet another policeman was killed and two wounded, must have found it more inhibiting than encouraging to have to perform in the presence of such an elevated superior. (Jenkins, A Biography, p.195)

Basil Thomson wrote that:

I confess that we were both astounded by the news that the newly appointed Home Secretary, Mr. Winston Churchill, had himself started in one of the police cars for the scene of the siege - it was erroneously believed to take command of the operations....But he never overstepped official correctitude (Thomson, The Story of Scotland Yard, p.195)

It may be the practice in modern India for politicians to take personal command of police operations, but that was not what Churchill did. 

Tharoor then attacks Churchill for taking “the decision to allow them [the gangsters] to be burned to death in a house where they were trapped”. As with so many criticisms of Churchill, there is a grain of truth mixed with complete falsehoods. The house the gangsters were in caught fire. That is true. According to Philip Gibbs, a journalist who witnessed the whole affair from the top of the nearby The Rising Sun pub, the criminals set the fire themselves and spread it around the house using paraffin (Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism, p.67).

The owner of this pub charged journalists to view the event from his roof

The fire brigade arrived, and they were instructed by police not to attack the fire. A junior firefighter, called Cyril Morris, went to Churchill asking him to overrule the police and let them put out the blaze. He refused to do so and instead told them to wait. 

Cyril Morris, pictured in 1936

Why would Churchill do this? Was it cruel? Was Churchill giving into his bloodthirsty and brutal nature? Not really.

Firstly, the part about the anarchists being “trapped” in the building is just made-up completely as far as I can tell. There was nothing stopping them from surrendering at any time. Of course, since they had attempted to murder an unknown number of policemen that day and had previously been involved in the actual killing of three policemen, it is likely they would have spent the rest of their lives (likely not too long since Britain had capital punishment back then) in gaol had they done so. Therefore, they decided to fight on. According to one policeman's report on the events:

It will be borne in mind that it was open to these men at any time to leave the burning house and surrender by coming into the street without their weapons and putting their hands up in the usual manner (quoted in Rogers, The Battle of Stepney, p.115).

Secondly, Tharoor leaves out that the gunmen continued to shoot at the police and army while the building was enveloped in flames!

Soon there was another shout: ‘The second floor is alight! They must surrender or suffocate’. Gradually the smoke became thicker. Slowly it funnelled through the shattered windows and rolled in billowing clouds out through the front and back of the house and gathered over the roof like an angry storm cloud….[A] reporter could see a gas jet burning steadily in the first-floor room and guessed that the men had deliberately set fire to the house before attempting to escape. The most likely route was through the back of the house where earlier the waiting detectives had seen two men come to an upstairs window. One of them was carrying two pistols which he fired simultaneously through the window… (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, pp.136-137)

Churchill’s stated rationale was to protect the firefighters. To quote Martin Gilbert:

Returning from this reconnaissance, Churchill found that the house had caught fire. At that moment a junior fire brigade officer came up to him and said that the fire brigade had arrived. He understood he was not to put out the fire at present.

‘Was that right?’ the officer asked.

‘Quite right,’ Churchill replied. ‘I accept full responsibility. 

From what he saw at that moment, Churchill later told the Coroner, 'it would have meant loss of life and limb to any fire brigade officer who had gone within effective range of the building'. In agreeing that the fire brigade should stand back, he was acting 'as a covering authority' for the police in charge, in what was clearly a situation of 'unusual' difficulty. 'I thought it better to let the house burn down,' he explained to Asquith” (Gilbert, A Life, p.224).

Melville Mcnaughten,  Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, confirmed that this was the reason for holding back the firefighters in his memoirs:

What has caused the fire ? Some are of opinion that the desperadoes themselves have done it. Personally I incline to the belief that one of the many hundreds of bullets pumped into the house pierced a gaspipe. But, after all, it matters little how it came about. It is sufficient that the house is burning — let it burn ! A fire engine comes up, but the police do not permit it to approach within one hundred and fifty yards of the burning premises. Shots are still being exchanged, and the lives of our gallant firemen are far too valuable to be sacrificed on the funeral pyre of alien miscreants (Mcnaghten, Days of My Years, p.261) [emphasis added].

Incidentally - and it’s a pedantic point but if I can’t be pedantic on my own blog where can I be? - only one of the gangsters was killed by the fire. The other was shot in the head during the firefight (Rumbelow, The Houndsditch Murders, p.137; Gilbert, A Life, p.224). 

Conclusion

One has to ask, what on earth Churchill should have done differently? What would Tharoor have done had he been in Churchill’s position? Perhaps he thinks Churchill should he have cancelled the despatch of troops and sent a note to the police saying:

No troops. The criminals should have the advantage in their gunfight with you. Best of luck, W.S.C

For the sake of the Indian police, I hope Tharoor isn’t tendering advice along these lines to Modi!

Was Churchill wrong to hold back the firefighters? Firefighters are used to risking their lives to save members of the public, but normally they don’t have to contend with a hail of bullets to rescue some murderers. Had Churchill told them to attack the fire and a number of them were shot, would we be praising Churchill for sending them in or would he be open to criticism for recklessly risking their lives? Something tells me that for Tharoor, Churchill could never have done anything right.

Finally, there is an amusing irony in the complaint. On the one hand, Churchill is attacked because of the (false) impression that he took over operational command of the siege. However, at the same time, Tharoor attacks him for refusing to overrule the police’s statement that the firefighters stand down until further notice. So which one is it? Is Churchill wrong for taking over control from the police, or wrong for going along with what the police say?

Bibliography

Gibbs, Philip, Adventures in Journalism (Harper & Brothers, 1923)

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (Pimlico, 2000)

Jenkins, Roy, Churchill: A Biography (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)

Mcnaghten, Melville, Days of My Years (Edward Arnold, 1914)

Rogers, Colin, The Battle of Stepney: The Sidney Street Siege: Its Causes and Consequences (Robert Hale, 1981)

Rumbelow, Donald, The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street (The History Press, 2009)

Thomson, Basil, The Story of Scotland Yard (Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1936)

The Fine Art of Cherry Picking, or Gas in Iraq

One of the more notorious Churchill quotes is usually presented as follows:

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes…[It] would spread a lively terror.

This statement appears in Johann Hari’s review of Richard Toye’s book Churchill’s Empire. Hari characterises this as an instance of Churchill demanding that colonial subjects, when they “defied his script…be crushed with extreme force” and that, partly for his view on using gas on “uncivilised tribes”, Churchill was “seen as at the most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum”. Shashi Tharoor, in his essay in the Washington Post, includes the aforementioned quote and describes this as the act of a “war criminal”. The BBC placed Churchill’s opinion of poison gas as the second-most controversial aspect of Churchill’s life and legacy. 

In fact, this quotation is a fine example of the fallacy of incomplete evidence, otherwise known as cherry picking. The statement derives from a minute that Churchill wrote in May 1919 (not 1921, despite what Tharoor writes). It reads as follows:

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of gas retention as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on those affected (Quoted in Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.861; emphasis added).

Churchill was clearly advocating the use of tear gas (“lachrymatory gas”) and pointing out the absurdity (to him) of causing horrific injuries with conventional weapons yet refusing to employ less harmful chemical weapons. Dr Warren Dockter, of the University of Aberystwyth, summarises Churchill’s position thus:

These memoranda clearly demonstrate that Churchill saw the employment of gas as a tool for controlling ‘native tribes’ and for creating a crisis of morale among the ranks of the dissidents, a concept Trenchard wholeheartedly endorsed. Poison gas was never meant to exterminate frontier tribesmen but it did set a precedent in Churchill’s thinking on colonial air-policing as he would repeatedly return to the use of gas as a relatively humane and inexpensive way to maintain order (Dockter, Islamic World, p.113).

David A.T. Stafford, formerly of the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh, describes the interpretation that critics like Hari and Tharoor place on the quote as “far from accurate”. He attributes the continued misrepresentation of the minute to “Churchill’s own confused use of the term ‘poison gas’ when he was referring to non-lethal tear gas and not the far more deadly chlorine or phosgene gas” (Stafford, Oblivion or Glory, p.187).  Here I have to disagree with Stafford. I think many of Churchill’s determined critics – and I include Tharoor in this category without question - are set to despise him come what may. They just don’t seem to care about what Churchill actually said and did.

Churchill’s support for non-lethal gas as a tool of counter-insurgency is impossible to miss if you’ve carefully read what Churchill wrote. Many people online have no intention of doing that and are content to spread misinformation. Of course, the internet is a large space and full of (to quote Chris Snowdon) “bad faith actors, obsessives, bores, pile on merchants, psychopaths and borderline retards”. It isn’t surprising, therefore, to see the misquote still widely used by Churchill's detractors. It is much more concerning that even (semi-)respectable outlets publish dross containing the misquote.

Before moving on, I wish to highlight another example of selective quotation. In his article, Tharoor writes:

 “He [Churchill] wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their “squeamishness”, declaring that the “objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable”.

Tharoor however leaves out what exactly Churchill thought was unreasonable. In a minute dated May 29^th 1919 Churchill wrote:

If it is fair war for an Afghan to shoot down a British soldier behind a rock and cut him in pieces as he lies wounded on the ground, why is it not fair for a British artilleryman to fire a shell which makes said native sneeze? It is really too silly” (quoted in Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.868-869, fn.39; emphasis added).

Again, Churchill was pointing out the apparent absurdity of using high explosives and machine guns on enemy troops (which the India Office had no qualms about using) while balking at the prospect of using non-lethal chemicals against those same enemy troops.

What Actually Happened in Iraq?

Critics often connect Churchill’s minute of May 1919 to the insurgency in Iraq the following year. Therefore, it is worthwhile discussing what actually happened during that conflict. The rebellion broke out in June 1920. In August, the C-in-C of the British forces in the country – Lt. Gen. Sir James Aylmer Haldane - messaged London requesting that both the Army and the Royal Air Force be given permission to use chemicals weapons – “gas bombs” – against the insurgents. The commander of the local Royal Air Force contingent agreed with Haldane. In London, Haldane’s request was supported by none other than the head of the British Army, Sir Henry Wilson (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, pp.872-873).

Churchill considered the matter and agreed in principle. He was, however, bound by a Cabinet decision the prior October that Britain would not initiate chemical warfare but only retaliate in kind. Believing he had found a loophole, Churchill authorised the use of chemical weapons provided they were either in Iraq or in the process of being transported to Iraq. Churchill informed Wilson that:

If gas shell for the artillery is available on the spot or in transit it sh[oul]d certainly be employed in the emergency prevailing. It is not considered that any question of principle is raised by such an emergency use of the limited ammunition of various kinds. As no question of principle is involved there is no need for any special declaration. G.O.C.-in-C. should defend his positions with whatever ammunition is at hand (Quoted in Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.873).

It turned out that there were no gas weapons in Iraq. In September, Haldane had to request the importation of chemical weapons from the nearest source – Egypt. He asked for 5,000 rounds of 60-pounder SK shells and 10,000 rounds of 4.5-inch howitzer shells. Churchill authorised the dispatch (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.874). Transport difficulties meant that the weapons did not arrive until after the rebellion had been defeated (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, pp.882-883).

At the same time, Churchill authorised the Royal Air Force to begin experimental work on producing aerial gas bombs, saying that he wanted them to produce a weapon that would “inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them” (quoted in Gilbert, “Churchill”, pp.424-425).

The weapons Churchill sent to Iraq were tear gas shells. According to R.M. Douglas, the Russell B. Colgate Distinguished University Professor of History at Colgate University:

The use of gas shells in Iraq albeit containing tear gas rather than poison gas, was indeed sanctioned by the War Office [i.e., Churchill’s ministry] during the emergency of 1920. The decision to do so was taken by Churchill alone, who neither consulted nor even informed his ministerial colleagues – no doubt in view of the certainty that they would have strongly opposed it (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.874; emphasis added).

Douglas goes on to quote Sir John Salmond, the head of the Royal Air Force in Iraq, as describing SK gas as “Lacrimatory” [sic] and J.A. Webster, assistant secretary at the Air Ministry, as describing the chemical weapon sent to Iraq in 1920 as “definitely classified as non-lethal” (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p. 876). The British Army conducted human trials in Iraq (using their own soldiers as the test subjects) using the 4.5-inch SK artillery shell to determine its effects. It found that the gas irritated the eyes of men even if they were wearing respirators, but within twenty minutes the effects wore off and the subjects could “remove their masks completely and walk about without discomfort” (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.878).

The Royal Air Force asked permission from Churchill for permission to convert the artillery shells to aerial gas bombs. Tellingly, the case they put across to Churchill stressed the non-lethal effects of aerial gas weapons and made them seem benign. In this respect, they were an improvement even on the artillery shells. Notwithstanding the human trials conducted by the Army, and while conceding that the 4.5-inch shells were “non-lethal” weapons and “far less noxious than even mustard gas”, Webster argued that they potentially could have “serious” and “permanent effects” on eyes and in “some certain circumstances, cause death”. However, “the dropping of these shells from aircraft is definitely less likely to produce fatal results than their discharge from guns, since it would be exceedingly difficult to obtain a concentration sufficient to cause anything more than extreme discomfort” (quoted in Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.876 & 862). If Churchill had been so indifferent to the lives of native tribesmen as often alleged, why did the Royal Air Force feel the need to sell the prospect of aerial chemical weaponry to him by stressing how humane it was?

Churchill declined to make a decision until advised by the British plenipotentiary in Iraq, Sir Percy Cox. Sir Percy talked the issue through with Iraq’s monarch, Faisal I. Faisal had “no objection to the use of gas bombs in Iraq provided that they were not lethal or permanently injurious to health”. Sir Percy recommended the usage of the aerial gas bombs (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.879).

Having been informed that the SK gas was non-lethal, that aerial bombs were even less dangerous than artillery chemical weapons, and that the Iraq government has no problem with the use of chemical weapons, Churchill authorised the Royal Air Force’s use of those weapons in December 1921. Formal permission was conveyed in January 1922. However, the Royal Air Force could only use it in the defence of “isolated post[s] whose communications are cut and whose existence is threatened”. In any other scenario, the Royal Air Force would need to request permission from the Colonial Secretary before using aerial gas bombs (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.879).

Two days before Salmond got permission to convert the gas shells to aerial bombs, the Washington Disarmament Conference passed a resolution forbidding the use of chemical weapons of any kind in war, even tear gas. Churchill therefore quickly rescinded his authorisation to the RAF (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, pp.879-880).

Churchill in Context

When discussing Churchill, many of his defenders feel the need to suggest he was “a man of his time” or “everyone/ lots of people had similar feelings back in Churchill’s day”. This is often unnecessary as the criticisms are frequently made up out of whole cloth and Churchill’s views seem reasonable by today’s standard, let alone the standard of one hundred years ago.

In this case, though, it is worth discussing the milieu when Churchill made his remarks about chemical warfare for two reasons. Firstly, because many of his detractors claim this as an example of Churchill’s extremism and brutishness that astonished even his contemporaries (e.g., Hari’s remarks quoted above). The second is because the taboo against using any kind of chemical agent is so strong today that it is easy to assume that it was ever thus.

 In regard to this taboo, historian Marion Girard wrote:

The taboo did not develop immediately after World War I in Britain, let alone in the world. Nor was it instinctive; there were many rational arguments for keeping gas in the repertoire of weapons, as Haldane, Churchill, and others demonstrated during the interwar period. The British taboo was not inevitable. If Britain had continued to accept gas rather than reject it, so might the rest of the world. After all, in the decades between the World Wars, Britain was still one of the most influential global leaders. If she had refused to abandon gas, perhaps others would not have embraced arguments against gas and emphasized its negative characteristics. Yet, because they did so strongly, only the destructive story of gas has been remembered and told; the part of its history in which gas has been accepted and even embraced has been forgotten, and thus the taboo seems inescapable (Marion Girard, Strange and Formidable, p.198).

The important thing to remember is that Churchill - and others – had just witnessed one of the most devastating wars in European history. They had seen men’s skin shredded on barbed wire, bones and nerves destroyed by artillery fire, horrendous burns caused by flamethrowers, and bodies riddled by machine gunfire. To many people, gas, especially tear gases, didn’t seem so bad in comparison to conventional weaponry. This was not an opinion unique to Churchill. The General Staff made the same point in March 1919:

If it is advisable and possible to abolish gas on purely humanitarian grounds, the abolition of High Explosive, a far more terrible weapon which removes limbs, shatters bones, produces ‘nerves’, and generates madness, is equally advisable(quoted in Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.867).

At various times, the use of tear gas weapons in Iraq was endorsed by:

• Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff
• Lt-Gen Sir James Aylmer Haldane, Commander-in-Chief of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force
• Sir John Salmond, then Air Officer Commanding British Forces in Iraq and later Marshall of the Royal Air Force
• Sir Percy Cox, High Commissioner of Iraq
• Faisal I, the King of Iraq

There were other senior colonial officials from elsewhere in the Empire who asked, well into the 1920s, for the Cabinet’s prohibition on the use of non-lethal gas to be set aside. Douglas mentions officials in India, Southern Rhodesia, Nigeria and Egypt asking for this. The Chiefs of Staff, the General Staff and members of the Committee for Imperial Defence also made the same point (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.881). Authorities in France, South Africa and the United States of America used tear gas “hundreds” of times in the inter-war period (Douglas, “Chemical Weapons”, p.881).

It wasn’t just colonial officials who were in favour of non-lethal gas weapons either. In some respects, gas seemed less cruel than conventional weapons. One of the most brilliant scientists of the 20^th century, J.B.S. Haldane, felt very strongly that this was the case and argued in a book titled “Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare” in 1925 that chemical weapons did not result in a large proportion of combat fatalities (Coleman, History of Chemical Warfare, p.33). “In his opinion, gas did not deserve its status as a pariah among armaments (Girard, Strange and Formidable, p.164). Another scientist, Victor Lefebure, also “believed that gas was a relatively humane weapon, if a humane weapon was one that produced a lower “death rate… [and] a much smaller proportion of the injured suffered any permanent disability”” (Girard, Strange and Formidable, p.179; emphasis in the original).

Conclusion

Many of Churchill’s detractors paint his support for chemical weapons as evidence of a wicked or depraved mind. At the very least, he is alleged to have shown a shocking indifference to the people who would be affected by the weapons. This is ahistorical. Churchill supported the use of tear gas as a tool of counterinsurgency. He never pushed for chlorine gas or phosgene gas to be used in Iraq. In the case of Iraq specifically, he authorized the use of tear-gas weapons. Later on, he approved the development of an aerial tear gas weapon which, the Royal Air Force claimed, was even less harmful. Churchill wanted weapons to be used that would not inflict “grave injury” nor leave “serious permanent effects” on the natives. Churchill’s support for the use of tear gas weapons was supported by numerous senior officials and the Iraqi Government itself, although not the Cabinet as a whole. In the event, tear gas was not used in Iraq and Churchill rescinded his permission to use such weapons. 

Bibliography

Coleman, Kim, A History of Chemical Warfare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)

Dockter, Warren, Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2015)

Douglas, R.M., "Did Britain Use Chemical Weapons in Mandatory Iraq", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 81, No. 4 (December 2009), pp.859-887

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (Pimlico, 2000)

Girard, Marion, A Strange and Formidable Weapon: British Responses to World War I Poison Gas (University of Nebraska Press, 2008)

Stafford, David, Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill (Yale University Press, 2019)

Greek Tragedy

 In 2014 The Observer published an article headlined “Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secret”. The authors alleged that in December 1944 British troops shot and killed unarmed civilian demonstrators on the streets of Athens, Greece. The subtitle of the article states:

When 28 civilians were killed in Athens, it wasn’t the Nazis who were to blame, it was the British. Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith reveal how Churchill’s shameful decision to turn on the partisans who had fought on our side in the war sowed the seeds for the rise of the far right in Greece today

And the caption under one of the photographs says:

A day that changed history: the bodies of unarmed protestors shot by the police and the British army in Athens

A few paragraphs into their article the authors write:

This was the day [3rd of December 1944], those 70 years ago this week, when the British army, still at war with Germany, opened fire upon – and gave locals who had collaborated with the Nazis the guns to fire upon – a civilian crowd demonstrating in support of the partisans with whom Britain had been allied for three years.

Thus, was born another element of the Churchillian Black Legend – Winston Churchill's massacre of innocent Greek civilians. 

Contrary to what The Observer says, these people were not killed by British soldiers.

The article appeared, on the surface, to be credible. It was written by two distinguished journalists: Ed Vulliamy, a notable war reporter, and Helena Smith, the Guardian’s correspondent for Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus.  They cite several experts on Greek history and also interviewed eyewitnesses of the event. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that their article has been very influential. Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor wrote in the Washington Post that:

This week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man [Churchill]. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands (emphasis added).

 The reference to “Greek protestors” links to the article by Vulliamy and Smith. 

The Indian news channel WION (World is One News) summarised the events thus:

In the year 1949 [sic], Churchill ordered the British army to fire on the anti-Nazi protestors in Greece...

If you google “Churchill Athens”, Vulliamy and Smith’s essay is the top suggestion out of 4,280,000 results. 

There is one problem with the allegation – it is completely untrue.

Fake News

Almost four months after that Vulliamy and Smith’s article was published, Stephen Pritchard was compelled to write a follow-up. This later article proves that the lurid account of British troops gunning down protestors was false. According to Pritchard, after Vulliamy and Smith’s article was published:

Seven Greek historians protested. They said the British had not fired on the crowd, but that Greek police certainly had, and that to present the December confrontation as one fought between the British alongside supporters of the Nazis against the partisans was “a gross misrepresentation” (emphasis added).

This isn’t a controversial point. No one before Vulliamy and Smith had ever claimed that the British Army shot at a civilian crowd on the 3rd of December 1944. Greek police certainly did, but there was no British involvement in that massacre. It frankly boggles the mind that this accusation passed even the most basic fact-check review. 

What followed after this protest by historians is quite revealing as to Weltanschauung of The Observer:

The following week, I ran a clarification, noting the protest by the seven and pointing out that Greek police were also likely to be among those who shot the 28 protesters. I recognise now that it was plainly inadequate in addressing concerns about the article (emphasis added).

So, after being told that they were flat out wrong about British troops killing Greek protestors, The Observer doubled down, merely suggesting that it was “likely” that Greek police were also involved in the shootings. This crosses the line from being reckless with the facts to being deliberately dishonest. The Observer was so keen to portray British troops in a negative light that they just assumed their involvement in the shooting. The slander was allowed to remain in the article despite numerous experts correcting the paper.

The blame for this misinformation shouldn’t fall on the elderly eyewitnesses quoted by Vulliamy and Smith. There were understandable reasons why they misremembered who was responsible for the shooting.

He [historian André Gerolymatos] wrote: “Did the British open fire on the demonstrators on 3 December 1944? The answer is no, but that reality is filtered through perceptions clouded by a day filled with violence and considerable confusion.

“The British did make an effort to peacefully disperse part of the crowd. One explanation is that some protesters easily mistook the use of tracer shells by British armoured units, fired over the heads of the demonstrators, as being directed at them. Another issue that further complicated matters was that the Greek soldiers wore British battledress, as did the Greek gendarmerie. Furthermore, there were American and British soldiers on the roof of the Grand Bretagne Hotel, observing the spectacle. For those on the ground it could have appeared that the gunfire from the police could have been mistaken as originating from the soldiers on the roof of the hotel. Although the police wore grey, they were in concealed positions on the balcony, roof, windows, and behind a wall in front of the police headquarters, making it difficult for the demonstrators to identify whether they were police or soldiers.”

The responsibility for the error lies with Vulliamy and Smith, who apparently did not bother to check this claim to see if it was correct. The Observer is at fault as well. They did not fact-check the article before publication, and they kept it online without removing the allegations. Unless a reader spots the link to Pritchard's article (which they euphemistically call a “column by the readers’ editor”) they will have a completely wrongheaded view of the events of the 3rd of December 1944. As this “readers’ editor” column has been shared a mere 59 times while the original essay has been shared 31,073 times, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of readers have been misled by the article. 

The Observer added a correction at the bottom of Vulliamy and Smith's article, but even that is misleading. It implies that it was possible that Greek police also fired on the protestors along with British troops, instead of saying that no British troops were involved:

A group of Greek historians writes concerning this article. It was reported that British troops opened fire on the Greek demonstrators from the Grande Bretagne hotel in Athens on December 3 1944. The hotel was British military headquarters, but the fire from it could also have come from Greek police.

What Actually Happened in Athens

On the morning of the 3rd of December 1944, a large demonstration took place in Athens. This demonstration was mainly left-wing, consisting of ‘communists, socialists, republicans, and antimonarchists’. According to the late André Gerolymatos, a Professor of Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, some people were coerced into attending. The National Liberation Front (EAM) had previously announced that anyone who stayed away would be regarded as an “enemy of the people and dealt with accordingly (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, pp.100-101).

Greek police had cordoned the entrances to the city centre but a number of protestors broke through and advanced to the police station located near the Grande Bretagne Hotel. This was the headquarters of the Allies, i.e., the British. Gerolymatos actually is fairly understanding of the police and makes it clear that this incident wasn’t just an example of far-right Nazi collaborators butchering innocent left-wing protestors:

The policemen had every reason to fear for their lives: as they had served under the jurisdiction of the occupation authorities, the majority of Athenians had, rightly or wrongly, labeled them collaborators. Although many Greek police officials had covertly assisted the resistance and the allies, not enough time had passed since liberation to permit a clear distinction between absolute traitor and patriot. Indeed, some had had to wear the mask of the former in order to assist the latter.

Making matters worse, the Greek government failed to purge the security establishments and civil service of collaborators, whose continued presence now tainted every state official. The government had argued that time was required to conduct a meticulous and judicious purge, but such reasoning was lost on the crowds advancing toward the center of the city in the morning of 3 December 1944. To the half-starved population of Greece, symbols truly mattered, and the gray uniforms of the police invoked the fear and agony of the occupation

The handful of policemen positioned a few yards beyond their station were aware of this reality, and for the previous several hours they had witnessed dozens of wounded fellow officers being carried off on stretchers into the station following clashes with groups of demonstrators. As the crowd got closer and closer, the policemen’s fears turned to panic, and some began to replace their blank rounds with live ammunition.

When the crowd advanced to less than one hundred yards from the police cordon, suddenly a man in military uniform ran out of the station and shouted, “Shoot the bastards!” He then dropped to one knee and began firing his gun. A few seconds later the panic-stricken policemen followed suit.

They did not fire in unison like a disciplined unit, but discharged their weapons sporadically. Some of the officers hesitated for a few seconds; others had remained transfixed by the spectacle before them, but one after another they began to return fire. The first ranks of the crowd fell forward; the fortunate ones found protection behind trees or nearby walls, but most simply lay flat on the ground.

The shooting continued for approximately half an hour, and when it was over twenty-two of the demonstrators remained still, twelve of them dead (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, pp.104-105).

Gerolymatos is one of the experts cited by Vulliamy and Smith, and he is unequivocal that it was Greek policemen who shot demonstrators on the 3rd of December, not British soldiers. 

Mark Mazower, Professor of History at Columbia University and another expert cited by Vulliamy and Smith, also wrote that it was Greek police, not the British Army, who fired on protestors:

Shortly before 11 a.m., as thousands of EAM demonstrators entered Constitution Square, several policemen panicked and fired directly into the crowd from the police station which stood at one corner of the square. People fled, but it was discovered later that at least ten had been killed and over fifty injured. The initial reaction of the British 23rd Armoured Brigade, whose men moved in and cleared the square, was that the Greek police had lost their nerve: they had 'dealt rather wildly with the demonstration' and had 'fired unnecessarily' (Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p.352).

The shooting outraged left-wingers in Athens. Gerolymatos notes:

By noon, a second wave of demonstrators broke through the police cordons and was soon joined by thousands more, until the square was jammed with almost 60,000 people.11 The police retreated to their station and locked themselves inside. Over the next thirty minutes, the remaining police barricades disintegrated as most of the officers discreetly left the scene and sought refuge in nearby private homes or managed to reach the safety of the police headquarters. A few police stragglers near the square, however, were not as fortunate. They were seized by dozens of hands, punched, kicked. and spat upon. Their protestations of innocence were drowned out by a torrent of verbal abuse. The lucky ones were dragged off to the nearest lamppost and lynched; some, however, could not be pried away from the clutches of the mob, which, intoxicated by raw animal savagery, tore the men literally from limb to limb (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, p.105)

You know things are bad when being lynched makes you one of the lucky ones!

The next day shooting took place throughout the city between ELAS – EAM’s Paramilitary wing - and the police, and between ELAS and their political opponents.  By mid-afternoon ELAS had captured most of the police stations in Athens. Usually, police officers who surrendered were summarily executed by ELAS insurgents, either by being shot or hanged. Gerolymatos mentions one particularly gruesome incident:

In Piraeus, a British unit attempted to interpose itself between a police station and ELAS, but faced overwhelming opposition. After a tense verbal exchange, the guerrillas dragged out several of their prisoners and in front of the British soldiers proceeded to gouge out the eyes of these hapless prisoners. The British soldiers gawked, transfixed by the horror unfolding before them and disgusted by their impotency to interfere. The screams of the policemen reverberated along the empty streets, and were quickly reduced to low guttural moans, but the ordeal was far from over. For a few minutes, the ELAS executioners just grinned while savoring the spectacle of torment and the vulnerability of the British. Then, they took out butcher’s cleavers and began to hack off the forearms of the blind policemen and continued slashing until the bodies resembled heaps of human pulp. The agony, for victims and spectators, ended when the policemen were put out of their misery by bullets to their brains. The tormentors exploited such sadistic brutality on several levels—by exercising of their total superiority over their victims, and by forcing the British to observe the atrocity they made them de facto participants (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, p.108).

Churchill received updates on the situation in Athens throughout the 4th of December. That night he telegraphed the commander of British forces in Greece, Lt Gen Ronald Scobie: 

Do not hesitate to fire at any armed male in Athens who assails the British authority or Greek authority with which we are working….Do not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress….It would be a great thing for you to succeed in this without bloodshed if possible, but also with bloodshed if necessary (quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, p.807; emphasis added).

Churchill was not in favour of shooting at civilian protesters. He was ordering the British Army to put down a communist insurgency. The telegram to Lt Gen Ronald Scobie was inadvertently shared with the US authorities (one of Churchill's Assistant Private Secretaries, Jock Colville, neglected to write the codeword ‘Guard’ on it which would have prevented it from being shared). The Americans leaked it to the press which led to a political storm for Churchill (Roberts, Churchill, p.850).

A paratrooper takes cover during fighting in Athens, Dec 1944

Fighting with communist insurgents was, at that time, controversial given the role communist partisans played in the fight against the Germans. It even led to a vote of no confidence in Churchill on the 8th of December, although Churchill won it comfortably at 279-30. 
Churchill's statements show that his motivation was the defence of democracy in Greece, not thwarting democracy. 

Democracy, I say, is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting other people's rights as well as their ambitions. Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun. I trust the people, the mass of the people, in almost any country, but I like to make sure that it is the people and not a gang of bandits from the mountains or from the countryside who think that by violence they can overturn constituted authority, in some cases ancient Parliaments, Governments and States. That is my general description of the foundation upon which we should approach the various special instances on which I am going to dwell. During the war, of course, we have had to arm anyone who could shoot a Hun. Apart from their character, political convictions, past records and so if they were out to shoot a Hun we accepted them as friends and tried to enable them to fulfil their healthy instincts

This wasn’t the end of the matter for Churchill. The fighting in Athens continued throughout December and so he decided to go there to facilitate discussions between all Greek parties, including the communists, that could bring the conflict to an end (Gilbert, Churchill, pp.808-810). This was an extremely risky trip for him, and at several moments he was nearly killed by stray - or deliberate - gunfire. On Boxing Day (26th of December) the communists attended a conference with the other Greek parties. Churchill stayed in Athens until the 28th of December when he left for Naples. Unfortunately, the Greek parties failed to come to an agreement that would stop the fighting and the conflagration continued into January 1945.

The conference on Boxing Day

The Road to Civil War

Vulliamy and Smith repeat a common far-left allegation that Churchill's orders to defeat ELAS amounted to a betrayal of a British ally and inaugurated a devastating civil war in Greece, costing thousands of lives. Churchill's motivation is presumed to have been to reimpose an unpopular monarchy on the Greeks. The problems with this thesis are as follows: (1)  it oversimplifies Churchill's attitude to the Greek monarchy, (2) it ignores the events that preceded the December 1944 insurgency, and (3) it whitewashes communist atrocities.

Churchill and the Greek Monarchy

It is true that, during the Second World War, the monarchy was not popular with the Greek people. It is also true that Churchill was committed to reinstalling the monarch when Axis troops could be ejected from the country. However, Churchill accepted that the Greeks were within their rights to become a republic after the war. As he told the British ambassador to the Greeks, Rex Leeper:

The King is the servant of his people. He makes no claim to rule them. He submits himself freely to the judgement of the people as soon as normal conditions are restored. He places himself and his Royal House entirely at the disposition of the Greek nation. Once the German invader has been driven out, Greece can be a republic or a monarchy, entirely as the people wish (quoted in Gerolymatos, International Civil War,  pp.51-52).

The British government did not wish to reimpose the pre-war dictatorship on the Greek people. King George II of Greece was pressured to terminate it and restore the 1911 constitution, which he did in February 1942 (Gerolymatos, International Civil War,  p.47).

Communist Shenanigans

The Greek Civil War did not begin with the events of the 3rd of December 1944. In October 1943 ELAS started fighting with other resistance groups, notably the pro-monarchy EDES. ELAS’s offensives were quite successful although it was unable to fully eradicate the other groups (Gerolymatos,International Civil War, pp. 86-87). While the fighting between Greek resistance groups ended in February 1944 with the Plaka Agreement, the political disagreements between the different organisations were not resolved. The conflict was merely frozen.

In March 1944 EAM set up the Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA). This organisation represented an alternate government to the Government in Exile. Shortly afterwards PEEA sympathisers in the Greek forces in the Middle East mutinied. Churchill blamed the communists for this, and it soured his attitude toward them (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, p.90). In May 1944 the Greek Premier, George Papandreou chaired an all-party conference in Lebanon aimed at establishing a government of national unity, bringing EAM into the fold. The resulting charter was accepted by EAM, ELAS and PEEA delegates, as well as the King. However, EAM and ELAS soon changed their minds and refused to join the government. It took the intervention of the Soviets, who were concerned that EAM and ELAS were undermining Allied unity, for them to eventually agree to join the government (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, pp.92&96)

By this point, Churchill, and other British officials, assumed that the communists would attempt to seize control of Greece when the Germans withdrew. As British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, said on the 9th of August 1944:

Were the Greek Communist forces, who were strongly armed, to seize power, a massacre might follow. This would be very injurious to our prestige, and might even add Greece to the post-war Balklan Slav block which now showed signs of forming under Russian influence, and from which we were anxious to keep Greece detached” (quoted in Gerolymatos, International Civil War, p.98). 

Whitewashing Red Terror

Vulliamy and Smith gloss over atrocities by ELAS and the role they played in bringing about the Greek Civil War. ELAS was brutal, and not just to Germans or to Greek collaborators. Political scientist Stathis N. Kalyvas has written the following on the actions of ELAS from the autumn of 1943 onwards:

Although some of the victims, particularly in the towns, had been working for the German occupation authorities, the great majority had not. Indeed, they were described by EAM cadres as “reactionaries” rather than “traitors”. They were typically notables: mayors, doctors, merchants, petty officers, that is, individuals who were seen as both potentially disloyal to the EAM cause and able to influence many villagers. Their potential disloyalty was connected to what were rather trivial issues: traveling to a (German-occupied) town too often, hiding or refusing to hand in a gun, refusing to pay a tax or perform some duty requested by EAM, criticizing EAM or even poking fun at a local EAM member in the coffee shop, and so on (Kalyvas, 'Red Terror', p.148).

The predictable result of such violence was that people either joined or gave support to the collaborationist Security Battalions. To quote Kalyvas:

The role of the kin of EAM’s victims is central in understanding the wave of terror launched by the Security Battalions. As soon as they realized that the Security Battalions were willing to help them overthrow EAM in their villages, the victims’ kin lobbied the SB to organize raids and supplied the Battalions with crucial information about the EAM organization of their villages. More than sixty years later, many among these people have no qualms about their actions, which they view as either just retribution for the distress suffered under EAM rule or as the inevitable result of the only defense that was available to them. For instance, a man whose parents had both been killed by EAM before he joined the Security Battalions, told me: “I went to the Germans. What should I have done since there was no one else to turn to?” (Kalyvas, 'Red Terror', p.151).

Gerolymatos writes about the activities of one ELAS commander called Veloukhiotis:

ELAS was also beginning to lose popularity because of the hardships endured by the mountain villages. Veloukhiotis, in particular, exacted terrible vengeance upon any villager suspected of aiding the enemies of ELAS—not just the Germans. Often, he even forced members of the AMM to watch helplessly as he tortured a simple peasant for some minor offense. In the village of Mavrolithary, ELAS arrested fourteen men simply because they belonged to a rival band. The punishments, designed to set an example for all the local inhabitants, usually took place in the village square and set the pattern of death and degradation that continued until 1949. On this occasion, Veloukhiotis’ henchmen grabbed the first prisoner and stripped him of his clothes. Then in front of the villagers, they tied the man to a table, spread eagle. The victim quickly realized what was in store and vainly pleaded for mercy. In a few minutes, his shrill cries reverberated in the village square as the executioner, splattered with blood, slowly proceeded to hack away at the man’s body, pausing enough for each blow to take effect and prolong the process for as long as possible. The savagery went on until a British officer present pulled out his revolver and terminated the man’s agony. Veloukhiotis, shaking with anger, had to be restrained from killing the officer (Gerolymatos, International Civil War, pp.88-90)

 

Conclusion

The claim that Churchill ordered British troops to fire on an unarmed protest in Athens on the 3rd of December 1944 is baseless. Greek police, not British soldiers, shot at a demonstration that day. They did so for their own reasons, and not because they were following Churchill's orders. After the massacre, there was widespread fighting throughout Athens and Churchill ordered the British Army to put down the insurgents. Churchill was not attempting to crush democracy, but to save it from what appeared to him to be a communist coup d'état.  

While the massacre of the demonstrators was appalling, it is misleading to describe it as marking the beginning of the Greek Civil War. The first phase of the civil war began over a year earlier when the communist resistance group ELAS attempted to destroy other resistance organisations. ELAS acted with such savagery that it drove many people into the arms of the German occupiers. Between that, and EAM's shenanigans throughout 1944 to oust the Greek government-in-exile, it is hard to take seriously the claim that Churchill stabbed an ally in the back in December 1944. 

Churchill deserves credit though for travelling to Athens - at great personal risk - to facilitate a conference that would bring the warring parties together. It might have ended the fighting, and so Churchill was willing to risk his own life to secure peace. Unfortunately, while the conference took place, the Greek factions could not come to an agreement and so the war continued. 

Bibliography

Gerolymatos, André, An International Civil War: Greece, 1943 – 1949 (Yale University Press, 2016)

Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (Pimlico, 2000)

Kalyvas, Stathis N., 'Red Terror: Leftist Violence during the Occupation' in Mark Mazower (ed.), After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943 - 1960 (Princeton University Press, 2016), pp.142-183

Mazower, Mark, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941 – 44 (Yale University Press, 1993)

Roberts, Andrew, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Penguin, 2019)