“That he was a class warrior who sent the army to shoot striking miners.”
He blocked the army from intervening and sent unarmed police. Not a single shot was fired by troops.
“Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”
— Winston Churchill (1954)
The “Tonypandy Massacre” is perhaps the most enduring myth in British labour history. It is cited as proof of Churchill’s hatred for the working class. The facts prove the opposite.
When rioting broke out, local authorities demanded troops. Churchill refused, fearing bloodshed. He explicitly sent Metropolitan Police armed only with rolled-up macintoshes to control the crowd. When he finally sent troops as backup, he ordered them to stay in reserve. Not a single shot was fired by the army.
Far from being an enemy of the poor, Churchill (alongside Lloyd George) founded the British Welfare State. He created the Labour Exchanges (Job Centres) to help the unemployed and introduced the first unemployment insurance. He was a radical liberal reformer who was called a “traitor to his class” by the aristocracy for these very policies.