Churchill's Connections

UK strikers

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1910s-1920s, 1940s
Various

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Churchill’s main involvement in responding to strike action was during considerable labour disruption in the 1910s when he was home secretary and minister of munitions for the Liberals. Some of his responses are still controversial today, particularly in relation to events in Tonypandy, Liverpool, Llanelli and Glasgow, although some versions of their retelling have become inaccurate. He played a minor role in responding to the 1926 general strike when he was chancellor of the exchequer. He appointed trade union leader Ernest Bevin as minister of labour during World War II and lawyer Walter Monkton to the same position in the 1950s.

2. Stories

  • The Liberals’ reforms were insufficient to prevent widespread unrest in the 1910s and 1920s.
  • Churchill was criticised in 1910 for not using troops in an industrial dispute in south Wales; he has subsequently been accused of the opposite.
  • The House of Commons descended into chaos in 1978 when Labour prime minister James Callaghan accused Churchill of having a vendetta against the Tonypandy miners.
  • Various incidents in 1911 have been used by critics to add to Churchill’s portrayal as a loose cannon and an aggressor.
  • Churchill’s involvement in Scottish disputes include munitions strikes on the River Clyde in 1917 and 1918 and the ‘Battle of George Square’ in Glasgow in 1919.
  • Churchill’s role in the general strike of 1926 was mainly as the publisher of a government newspaper.
  • One of the libraries at Churchill College, Cambridge, is the Bevin Library, founded by a donation from Bevin’s trade union.

The Liberals’ reforms were insufficient to prevent widespread unrest in the 1910s and 1920s.

David Lloyd George and Churchill were the primary champions of the 1909 ‘People’s Budget’ and of new legislation to improve workers’ conditions and financial security (see Budget Protest League). As president of the Board of Trade, Churchill also became involved in conciliation discussions between employers and workers, helping to end disputes in the shipbuilding and cotton industries and creating a Standing Court of Arbitration.

His transition to home secretary in 1910 came as the UK was beginning to enter the ‘Great Unrest’ of 1911 to 1914 which would see over 3000 strikes, notably the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike and the 1913-14 Dublin lockout. He said at the time that ‘I consider that every workman is well advised to join a trade union’,1 and ‘It is most important for the British working classes that they should be able if necessary to strike’.2 However, as home secretary his obligation was to maintain law and order and it was in the nature of his character and his military background to do this firmly. In commenting on disturbances, he would sometimes distinguish between lawful protesters and those he saw as unlawful rabble-rousers, defending strong measures against the latter.

World War I interrupted most of the labour unrest but it returned in 1919 with high inflation and competition for jobs after demobilisation. The Russian civil war was raging and there were fears of the Bolshevik revolution spreading westwards. In 1921, coal mines were handed back to owners after wartime government control at a time when coal prices were falling. That year, strike action against proposed wage reductions resulted in 86 million lost working days, the second highest figure since official records began in 1891 until today.

The highest figure (162 million) was in 1926, mostly due to a nine-day general strike involving various unions including the ‘Triple Alliance’ representing miners, railwaymen and transport workers. This was partly the result of hardship caused by Churchill’s decision as chancellor of the exchequer to return to the gold standard in 1925 at the pre-war rate (see John Maynard Keynes). One of the leaders of the strike was Ernest Bevin, later Churchill’s wartime minister of labour.

Churchill was criticised in 1910 for not using troops in an industrial dispute in south Wales; he has subsequently been accused of the opposite.

A dispute in the Rhondda Valley escalated into a strike by around 25,000 coal mine workers in 1910. A riot broke out in the town of Tonypandy (pronounced ‘Tonna-pandy’) with shop windows being broken and one person being killed by a blunt instrument, possibly a police truncheon.

The Glamorgan chief constable requested troop reinforcements but instead Home Secretary Churchill sent additional policemen, with troops as a backup. He kept the soldiers initially at Swindon, then at Cardiff, concerned about provoking the situation. He then allowed some soldiers into the valley but they did not engage with the strikers or rioters until the following year. There is no reliable account of them firing any shots during the whole strike, contrary to some stories.*

Churchill’s reticence to use military force was heavily criticised by the Times which said that any deaths from civil unrest would be his responsibility because of failing to send in the troops. He was defended the following day by the Manchester Guardian: ‘Mr Churchill was violently attacked in yesterday’s Times for a decision which in all probability saved many lives.’3

Will Mainwaring, Welsh miner, trade unionist and Labour MP, said in 1965: ‘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 in order to modify the otherwise ruthless attitude of the police forces.’4 **

Churchill was ultimately responsible for police action but it is primarily the legend of army violence that has resulted in Tonypandy becoming for some a symbol of Churchillian wrongdoing. In 2019, for example, Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell was asked: ‘Winston Churchill – hero or villain?’ He hesitated, then replied, ‘Tonypandy – villain’.5 Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames, a Conservative MP, responded, ‘I think my grandfather’s reputation can withstand a publicity-seeking assault from a third-rate, Poundland Lenin’6 (Poundland being a UK discount retail chain).

Having also used the term ‘Poundland Lenin’ two weeks earlier against Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader of the opposition, Soames provoked objections on both occasions from Poundland, including the comment: ‘Your lexicon of insults, unlike the wider repertoire of your grandfather, is somewhat limited.’7

* For example, Cwmardy (1937), a novel by former Communist activist Lewis Jones, contains an entirely fictional incident in which eleven strikers are killed by two volleys of rifle fire in the Tonypandy town square.

** Churchill was, however, also ultimately responsible for the behaviour of the police during his 20-month tenure as home secretary.

The House of Commons descended into chaos in 1978 when Labour prime minister James Callaghan accused Churchill of having a vendetta against the Tonypandy miners.

In a Commons debate, Churchill’s grandson Winston Churchill queried a recent miners’ pay rise of 36.5 percent in relation to a less than 10 percent productivity increase. Callaghan’s response was ‘I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not pursue the vendetta of his family against the miners – [Interruption.] – at Tonypandy for the third generation.’8

‘Cheap!’ roared many MPs. After much disruption, grandson Winston said, ‘Mr. Speaker, would it be in order for the Prime Minister to withdraw his wholly false smear accusation against my late grandfather, whose vendetta was against not the miners, but the Nazis?’

Callaghan was Anglo-Irish but was MP for Cardiff South East in south Wales. He responded that Sir Winston’s actions were a matter of historical dispute and that he (Callaghan) took one side of the quarrel, adding that the subject continued to stir deep feelings in south Wales.

Grandson Winston accused Callaghan of ‘seeking to advance a hoary old chestnut of Socialism’ regarding Churchill sending in troops rather than police reinforcements. After more chaos, Conservative MP Willie Whitelaw said that ‘slurs on people who are dead are not advisable in the House’, to which Callaghan responded, ‘If I had thought that the remark was untruthful, I would not have made it’.

Labour MP Eric Heffer then took the opportunity to refer to the ‘great baying noise’ made by the ‘73 per cent. of public schoolboys’ on the Conservative benches, saying that they should not behave like ‘street corner boys’.

Labour MP and Welshman Neil Kinnock intervened but was cut off by the Speaker, anticipating another interpretation of history. Conservative MP Robert Rhodes James tried to say that Sir Winston exercised constraint but the Speaker also cut him off for ‘pursuing the argument’.

The Speaker was Welshman George Thomas, a Labour MP who had been educated in Tonypandy. He later chose the name Tonypandy when he became a member of the House of Lords. He ended the fracas by saying, ‘I never thought that the day would come when a pupil of Tonypandy grammar school would have the last word between both sides of this place on such a matter’.

Various incidents in 1911 have been used by critics to add to Churchill’s portrayal as a loose cannon and an aggressor.

A few weeks after the initial Tonypandy disturbance, there was a showdown in London between police and the remnants of a Latvian gang that had killed two policemen during an attempted jewellery heist. They holed up in a house in Sidney Street, Stepney, in east London. The ‘siege of Sidney Street’ resulted in another policeman being killed and the property burning down, leaving two charred gangsters and a dead fireman. In the middle of it all, Home Secretary Churchill turned up in his top hat and stylish overcoat and was filmed watching the action, waving his arms around. He was widely criticised for publicity-seeking and unnecessary involvement.

In mid-August 1911, there was a transport workers’ strike in Liverpool which led to three days of riots. Churchill authorised the use of troops, as well as the presence of the armoured cruiser HMS Antrim on the River Mersey. Soldiers fired at the crowd, killing two and injuring others.

In the same month, there was a national railway strike. Churchill despatched troops around the railway network with the instruction to act only if the public were at risk. In Llanelli, south Wales, after a train was held up and immobilised by pickets, there was a confrontation between the crowd and troops. The soldiers fired above and into the crowd and two young men were killed. A riot followed during which a munitions wagon was dynamited, exploding and killing four more, after the national dispute had already been settled.

During the Liverpool riots, Churchill was asked in parliament whether the presence of the military ‘caused provocation and exasperation’. Churchill replied, ‘I believe that the presence of the military has averted even more serious trouble than there has been’.9 King George V wrote to him, saying, ‘Feel convinced that prompt measures taken by you prevented loss of life in different parts of the country’.10 Nevertheless, there is still significant resentment against Churchill today amongst some communities in south Wales and Liverpool.

Churchill’s involvement in Scottish disputes include munitions strikes on the River Clyde in 1917 and 1918 and the ‘Battle of George Square’ in Glasgow in 1919.

From 1908 to 1922, Churchill’s constituency was Dundee on the River Tay in eastern Scotland. In the west, around 80 miles (130 km) away, were various munitions factories on the River Clyde. When he was appointed minister of munitions in 1917, he inherited a year and a half old dispute during which strike leaders had been arrested and deported from the Clyde area. Churchill invited their leader, David Kirkwood, for a meeting. Kirkwood expected arrogance and abruptness but was offered tea and cake and found Churchill to be genial and understanding. ‘I felt I had found a friend’,11 said Kirkwood. The deportees were reinstated and within three days work recommenced.

Churchill was not so conciliatory during a munitions strike the following year, when he threatened conscription for strikers, who were exempted from military service while employed in a vital activity. The strike soon ended.

The ‘Battle of George Square’ in Glasgow has become highly mythologised. Gordon Barclay, retired head of policy at the public body Historic Scotland, summarises a common version of the myth as follows: ‘Churchill sent the tanks, a howitzer and 12,000 young, inexperienced English troops against 100,000 peaceful demonstrators in George Square, many of whom were injured or killed, to crush the strike.’12

Barclay deconstructs each element as follows. Churchill’s role was minimal and cautionary: he was not in the War Cabinet that made the decisions and he thought it was too soon to deploy troops. The six tanks despatched did not arrive until after the violence ended and remained in a temporary storage area (an often-used photo of a tank in George Square was from a war fund-raiser the year before). There is no contemporaneous account of a howitzer. It was a Scottish sheriff who requested the army troops, who were mostly Scottish and did not arrive until after the end of the violence. Two of the three representatives of the war cabinet quorum that agreed to the request were Scottish, including deputy prime minister Bonar Law, MP for Glasgow. The likely number of demonstrators in the square was 20,000-25,000 and no-one was killed. Nevertheless, the myth has continued to grow in some circles.

Churchill’s role in the general strike of 1926 was mainly as the publisher of a government newspaper.

In May 1926, 1.7 million workers across various industries went on strike in support of 1.2 million coal miners involved in a dispute. Churchill, chancellor of the exchequer at the time, was assigned to run a new government propaganda newspaper called the British Gazette, printed using the idle presses of the Morning Post.

He threw himself into the project, with Solicitor General Thomas Inskip noting, ‘Winston is enjoying himself […] His [Exchequer] Budget of 820 millions [equivalent to £52 billion today] no longer interests him very much.’ Churchill infuriated the newspaper’s editor who said, ‘He butts in at the busiest hours and insists on changing commas and full stops’. Another observer commented, ‘He thinks he is Napoleon, but curiously enough the men who have been printing all their life in the various processes happen to know more about their job than he does’.13

Nevertheless, his gusto resulted in a circulation of 2.2 million by its eighth and final edition, the day after the nine-day strike ended. The Trades Union Congress’s British Worker described it as ‘a melodramatic “stunt” on Sydney* Street lines’.14 Two months later, in the House of Commons, a Labour MP raised the possibility of renewed strike action. Churchill stood up and said sternly, ‘I have no wish to make threats which would disturb the House and cause bad blood’. There was nervous silence. He continued: ‘But this I must say. Make your minds perfectly clear that if ever you let loose upon us again a general strike, we will loose upon you…’ – pause – ‘another British Gazette.’15 The tension disappeared in laughter.

In the same debate, Churchill was challenged about his publication’s lack of impartiality. He responded, ‘I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire’. He noted that during major disturbances in ancient Greece, ‘anyone who could not make up his mind which side he was on was put to death’. Given his track record of changing parties and policies, the inevitable heckle was, ‘You would have died young’.16

* ‘Sydney’ was a mis-spelling of ‘Sidney’.

One of the libraries at Churchill College, Cambridge, is the Bevin Library, founded by a donation from Bevin’s trade union.

Ernest Bevin co-founded the Transport and General Workers’ Union (‘TGWU’) in 1922 which soon became the UK’s largest trade union, with Bevin leading it until 1945. When Churchill formed a coalition government in 1940, he appointed Bevin as minister of labour and national service.*

The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1940 enabled the creation of Defence Regulations which included banning strikes and lockouts, and allocating labour to where it was most needed. However, there were various unofficial strikes regarding pay and working conditions, particularly in 1944. Bevin took a conciliatory position at first which hardened over time, including against some members of his own trade union, resulting in fines and some imprisonments.

Around 48,000 conscripts, known as ‘Bevin Boys’, were assigned to work in coal mines, chosen by a secretary picking numbers out of Bevin’s homburg hat, which were then matched with the last digit of social security numbers. Some of the conscripts were resentful about not being able to fight in the war and sometimes being viewed wrongly as draft dodgers, deserters or ‘conchies’, a derogative term for conscientious objectors.

Churchill regarded Bevin highly, describing him as by ‘far the most distinguished man that the Labour party have thrown up in my time’.17 Both of them were anti-communist, anti-fascist, patriotic, imperialist and in favour of a close relationship with America. Both enjoyed their food, drink and tobacco. Churchill admired Bevin as being ‘as English as the oak’, a Labour man of ‘the old school who had been brought up among the working class’,18 rather than being a socialist intellectual.

Bevin died in 1951, aged 70, and the TGWU gave £50,000 in 1959 (equivalent to £1.1 million today) for a memorial within a memorial: the Bevin Library within Churchill College, Cambridge, founded in 1960, five years before Churchill’s death (see Brendan Bracken).

Churchill’s 1950s minister of labour, Walter Monckton, saw little unrest, partly because of Churchill’s continuation of Attlee’s conciliatory approach to the unions, and partly because of Monckton’s professional and charming manner. He was Churchill’s solicitor general in 1945 and, when summoned in 1951, was anticipating a legal post. However, Churchill greeted him by saying, ‘I have the worst job in the Cabinet for you’.19 Monckton accepted the position.

* At the time of his appointment, Bevin was not an MP. Convention (not law) requires government ministers to be members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords to be accountable to parliament. It was arranged for Harry Nathan, Labour MP for Wandsworth Central, London, to resign, triggering a by-election in which Bevin stood, uncontested. Bevin retained his seat in 1945, contested by a Conservative.

3. Biographical summary

–

4. See also

Liberal reforms

  • Budget Protest League

Causes of the General Strike

  • Keynes, John Maynard

Other respondents to UK civil unrest

  • Baldwin, Stanley
  • Lloyd George, David

Use of ‘Black and Tans’ in Ireland

  • De Valera, Éamon

Churchill controversies

  • Excessive force
  • Gold standard
  • Self-promotion

5. Further reading

Churchill’s roles in home affairs

  • Addison, Paul, Churchill on the Home Front, 1900–1955 (Faber & Faber, 2013)
  • Toye, Richard, Winston Churchill: Politics, Strategy and Statecraft (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)

Tonypandy and Llanelli, south Wales

Battle of George Square, Glasgow

General strike

Miscellaneous

  • Adonis, Andrew, Ernest Bevin: Labour’s Churchill (Biteback Publishing, 2020)
  • Powell, David, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain 1901–14 (Macmillan Education, Limited, 1996) (also relevant to the Budget Protest League, Suffragettes and de Valera)

6. References

1. Winston S. Churchill, ‘Trade Unions (No. 2) Bill’, Hansard, 1911.

2. Winston S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963: Volume 1: 1897-1908, ed. by Robert Rhodes James (Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), p. 384.

3. ‘Editorial’, Manchester Guardian, 10 November 1910.

4. BBC Archive, ‘The Long Street – Road to Pandy Square’, BBC, 1965.

5. Political Editor Gordon Rayner and Deputy Political Editor Steven Swinford, ‘John McDonnell Brands Sir Winston Churchill a “Villain”’, Telegraph, 2019.

6. Ibid.

7. Poundland, ‘Twitter Message to Nicholas Soames’, 14 February 2019.

8. James Callaghan and others, ‘Prime Minister (Engagements)’, Hansard, 1978.

9. William Byles and Winston S. Churchill, ‘Strikes in London and Liverpool’, Hansard, 1911.

10. Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill. Companion Volume 2, Part 2. 1907- 1911 (Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 1290.

11. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (Heinemann Educational Books, 1991), p. 376.

12. Gordon Barclay, ‘“Churchill Rolled the Tanks into the Crowd”: Mythology and Reality in the Military Deployment to Glasgow in 1919’, Scottish Affairs, 28.1 (2019), 32–62 (p. 34).

13. J.C.C. Davidson, Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson’s Memoirs and Papers, 1910-37, ed. by Robert Rhodes James (Macmillan, 1970), pp. 244–45. Davidson was parliamentary secretary for the Admiralty.

14. General Council of the Trades Union Congress, British Worker, 10 May 1926, p. 1.

15. Winston S. Churchill, ‘Emergency Services’, Hansard, 1926.

16. Winston S. Churchill, ‘Emergency Services’, Hansard, 1926.

17. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries: Volume Two: 1941-April 1955 (Sceptre, 1987), p. 154.

18. W.H. Thompson, I Was Churchill’s Shadow (C. Johnson, 1951), p. 154.

19. Lord Frederick Birkenhead, Walter Monckton: The Life of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 274.