Topic: Churchill

[TepidT2O]

Some great posts here...

[Sangria]

Since I was taught by CB's here in England back in the 60-'s to early 70's, I was made well aware of certainly the more recent British Irish history, though perhaps not with the message you might expect. I clearly remember aged about 14 when covering the Cromwell period a Brother telling us about Drogheda and him being quite adamant that it was the rules of warfare at that time, but it's only in later life I've become more aware of the pre-Cromwell era. (I've found the post Romano to pre-Norman era of Irish Chieftain raids on the British mainland fascinating. Antagonism on both sides goes back well over a 1400 years, possibly more)

The history I was taught covered a concentrated period of 60-70 years from the social and electoral reforms in the late 1860s through to the Weimar Republic. WWI was taught mostly as an example of historiography and media rather than strategy. Everything was directed towards understanding the liberal democracy I lived in. The Irish potato famine fell outside this period, and while awful, also fell outside this remit. Home Rule, the British oppression of the early 20th century and the lead up to partition and civil war got covered though. In a way you could argue this was Republican-biased as it covered a period in which grievances were incurred, but it didn't cover a period which Unionists celebrate as their identity. That argument would be stretching it of course, but it illustrates the problems of providing a detailed and balanced historical education when you only have so much time to cover a subject.

I think a large amount of simmering antagonism towards the Irish Neutrality position was largely around their refusal to allow any use of Irish ports for British convoy escorts especially as the also neutral Portugese seemed to manage to find a way for their Azores to be employed by the Allies.

On my part in this thread at least, the disgruntlement came from the attempt to paint Britain as the same kind of genocidal no gooders as the Nazis. Whatever the wrongs of British actions in WWII, we were leagues away from even imagining the Hunger Plan, let alone implementing it. And of course, that wasn't even the worst that the Germans did. Even significant numbers of Irish of that period knew that at the time.

https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-forgotten-volunteers-of-world-war-ii/

I'm surprised to see Hubert Gough's name appear in the article. Didn't even know he was still alive

[Crosby Nick]

Cheers CorKopite, really interesting post.

Early years of History at my schools were all Battle of Hastings, Middle Ages stuff. GCSE was WW1 and the events leading up to WW2.

Ashamed to say that all I knew of Cromwell was the he Civil War. Didn’t know he’d set foot in Ireland til I started visiting regularly.

[So… Howard Philips]

I've come in here to get away from the bloodbath of the post match thread.

The standard of knowledge and civilised debate in here isn't replicated there unfortunately.

It's only recently watching reruns of Starkey's Monarchy that I realised how James II I'll judged expedition to Ireland, resulting in William defeating him at the Boyne added another thread to the tapestry of violence.

[Xabi Gerrard]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anti-colonialist-protesters-storm-churchill-themed-cafe-5fjdm6vkg

A café that celebrates the life of Winston Churchill has been stormed by protesters who claim that he was a racist who stood for an unjust British Empire.

The owners of Blighty UK in Finsbury Park, north London, called the police after a demonstration that involved nine people chanting slogans such as “It is out duty to fight for our freedom” and “We have nothing to lose but our chains”.

Shook, Corkboy - can you account for your whereabouts on Saturday?

[J_Kopite]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anti-colonialist-protesters-storm-churchill-themed-cafe-5fjdm6vkg

Shook, Corkboy - can you account for your whereabouts on Saturday?

Haha, of course the ringleader is involved in campus politics at SOAS - stay woke

[Alan_X]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anti-colonialist-protesters-storm-churchill-themed-cafe-5fjdm6vkg

Shook, Corkboy - can you account for your whereabouts on Saturday?

It actually celebrates the diversity of the Commonwealth:

"Welcome to the Blighty Commonwealth of Cafes – originally founded in 1944 by RAF fighter pilot and war hero, Capt Roy Bevans.

After years of decline Blighty was resurrected in 2013 by Roys grandson, Horatio Bevans.

Blighty’s mission is to make the world a closer place by celebrating and improving the relationships between the people and nations of the 52 members of the commonwealth.

We celebrate these relationships via the mediums of brunch, coffee and community.

Mission:

To make the world a closer place by improving the relationships between the people and nations of the commonwealth.

They also run a charity:

Blighty Arts is a registered charity focused on lifting people out of poverty one person at at time. We raise money through donation, and by providing workspace and offices for entrepreneurs, creatives and small businesses. All the profits raised are then given as microfinance or "good faith" loans to some of the poorest people in society who want to start their own business. To date we have helped nearly 200 women in rural India start their own business, with all loans paid "forward" to the next person who needs assistance. We also provide desks and services at cost to young entrepreneurs in the UK who need help getting started, with plans to extend our microfinance loans in 2017 to would be self-employed amongst the homeless in the UK. In this way we use entrepreneurship to lift people out of poverty and change the world one person at a time!

https://www.blightyarts.org.uk/

Those bastards! Helping poor people? What the fuck were they thinking of?

As for making light of history:



John Lansmann as the Great Helmsman. Mao, the aforementioned helmsman of the Great Leap Forward was responsible for 45 million deaths.

[Djozer]

Those bastards! Helping poor people? What the fuck were they thinking of?

Idiots, utter, utter idiots. I suppose in some ways it could be considered slightly incongruous to have a Churchill-themed cafe that celebrates diversity, given some of the things we know about the man's views, but that cafe and its associated charity quite obviously appear to do some very positive work in their local community and further afield, work which the protesters would surely have approved of if they'd bothered taking their heads out of their arses long enough to do some very basic research.

It's this sort of stupidity that gives "the left," for want of a better term, a bad name, and I'm someone with generally very liberal views myself.

[Corkboy]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anti-colonialist-protesters-storm-churchill-themed-cafe-5fjdm6vkg

Shook, Corkboy - can you account for your whereabouts on Saturday?

Get bent, copper. I'm not doin' a ten stretch for no man.

[Mumm-Ra]

It was electoral and social reforms of the late 19th century for me, followed by Ireland, followed by WWI, followed by Germany in the 1920s-30s. A Eurocentric study of the roots of modern Britain, with hardly a sniff of empire, neither glorifying nor criticising.

I remember spending ages on Chartism, whatever tf that was all about. Dead boring. Industrial revolution as well, Hargreaves' spinning jenny.
Other than that it was all Weimar-Nazi stuff which was really interesting.

[So… Howard Philips]

I remember spending ages on Chartism, whatever tf that was all about. Dead boring. Industrial revolution as well, Hargreaves' spinning jenny.
Other than that it was all Weimar-Nazi stuff which was really interesting.

The strange thing is as you get older you start to realise that those bits of history you found boring a more relevant to your knowledge of the modern world.

At a Christian Brothers school I got the message that Henry VIII was the actual anti-christ. However when I look at it now you can see why, for internal political reasons, he wanted to ensure his dynasty with a son and the desire to break away from Rome gave him a great deal of freedom. A bit like May trying to keep her job by making the best of Brexit.

I now find British history from Henry interesting as its seems to be the start of the modern country.

The War of the Roses lose me a bit but I may revisit that through a Game of Thrones prism.

[Yorkykopite]

I remember spending ages on Chartism, whatever tf that was all about. Dead boring.

Chartism was the first organised working-class movement in the world. They wanted working people to have the vote and they wanted that vote to be secret. That's what it was about.

[hansen6]

So in the context of whether Ireland should have declared war on Germany, do you think that, given what they knew about the oppression, forfeiture of property and existence of work camps, and given the norms of the time (no one declaring war over the Pogroms), that Ireland were unreasonable to not declare war on Germany?

(Apologies for the persistence, I'm genuinely just curious whether Ireland were wrong to be neutral, all things considered).

I'm Irish, and given the history of the Brits in Ireland there is no question they would have formed an alliance with them. I've had British people ask me this and I'm astonished it's thought to be honest.

I think the motivation for the UK being at war was fear of losing the empire - not the existence of camps, they had done that themselves in the Boer war.

[TepidT2O]

I'm Irish, and given the history of the Brits in Ireland there is no question they would have formed an alliance with them. I've had British people ask me this and I'm astonished it's thought to be honest.

I think the motivation for the UK being at war was fear of losing the empire - not the existence of camps, they had done that themselves in the Boer war.

I can’t agree.... it was a genuine fear that Britain and the rest of Europe may have been a facist superstate ...


Was loss of empire in the back of people’s minds?  Quite possibly yes, but to be frank, there were far bigger fish to fry...

[oldfordie]

I'm Irish, and given the history of the Brits in Ireland there is no question they would have formed an alliance with them. I've had British people ask me this and I'm astonished it's thought to be honest.

I think the motivation for the UK being at war was fear of losing the empire - not the existence of camps, they had done that themselves in the Boer war.

Interesting theory, As you know Britain declared war in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland, what makes you think Germany planned to take the war outside Europe then, why would Britain be prioritizing saving the Empire over the survival of Britain itself in 1939.
1940. Churchill believed the Empire would come to our rescue even if the Germans occupied Britain. I agree with him, I think he was thinking more of Canada when he said this but the country would have suffered irreversible damage before any possible rescue.
I can understand the man in the street not wanting Ireland to get involved in WW2 in 1939. it wasn't the right decision based on the facts we know now. we were all lucky enough to have a big sea between us and the Germans.

[Alan_X]

I'm Irish, and given the history of the Brits in Ireland there is no question they would have formed an alliance with them. I've had British people ask me this and I'm astonished it's thought to be honest.

I think the motivation for the UK being at war was fear of losing the empire - not the existence of camps, they had done that themselves in the Boer war.

The empire was 'lost' before the war started. New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Egypt, Iraq and South Africa were all independent before or just after WW1.

India was well on the way to Independence before war broke out and became independent in 1947, when Pakistan became independent as a result of partition.

So fuck knows why Britain would plunge itself into a war in Europe, just twenty years after losing a generation of young men in the First World War, just to retain it's remaining overseas colonies (none of which were in mainland Europe).

[KERRYKOP]

It was electoral and social reforms of the late 19th century for me, followed by Ireland, followed by WWI, followed by Germany in the 1920s-30s. A Eurocentric study of the roots of modern Britain, with hardly a sniff of empire, neither glorifying nor criticising.

Very curious, what did you learn about Ireland, how was it thought? If you can remember

[Sangria]

Very curious, what did you learn about Ireland, how was it thought? If you can remember

Home Rule, British repression during WWI, independence post-WWI. It bridged the mid-late 19th century electoral and social reforms and WWI. I think the time period was chosen because it had some common characters at the beginning and end, like Gladstone and Winston Churchill. One character that I remember was "Randy" Churchill and his line "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right". The course spent a lot of time on Home Rule.

[KERRYKOP]

Home Rule, British repression during WWI, independence post-WWI. It bridged the mid-late 19th century electoral and social reforms and WWI. I think the time period was chosen because it had some common characters at the beginning and end, like Gladstone and Winston Churchill. One character that I remember was "Randy" Churchill and his line "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right". The course spent a lot of time on Home Rule.

Nothing on The Troubles? I always find that amazing considering it was historically very recent 30 year civil war fought inside UK jurisdiction. The War of the Roses ran for around the same length of time but was 500 years ago. 

[Sangria]

Nothing on The Troubles? I always find that amazing considering it was historically very recent 30 year civil war fought inside UK jurisdiction. The War of the Roses ran for around the same length of time but was 500 years ago. 

My course covered a tight 60-70 years, from 1860s (start of reforms) to 1930s (end of Weimar). The potato famine was closer to this time period than the Troubles were.

[KERRYKOP]

My course covered a tight 60-70 years, from 1860s (start of reforms) to 1930s (end of Weimar). The potato famine was closer to this time period than the Troubles were.

Was it thought at all during your time in school or anyone else reading this?

[Xabi Gerrard]

Was it thought at all during your time in school or anyone else reading this?

It wasn't taught to me, but I suppose when I was at school The Troubles weren't history, they were current affairs.

[Zeb]

Was it thought at all during your time in school or anyone else reading this?

It came up during English classes more than anywhere else. Like Xabi says there, this was still current events. So newspaper reports and how they differed on covering the violence (still recall a cartoon from one of them where there's two figures of death clubbing each other in a coffin floating on a sea of blood). And then Heaney was used a lot even prior to me studying him for A Level English Lit., so the background for some of his poetry came into things. Stuff like names becoming signifiers of which side of the divide someone could be placed on was a new idea to most of us I'd have thought.

[zero zero]

Was it thought at all during your time in school or anyone else reading this?

The Troubles were on the news, seemingly every single day. I was taught more about Sutton Hoo than the 700 hundred year history of England in Ireland. Nothing on Colonialism either. Other areas of focus; The Tudors, The Industrial Revolution, The Weimar Republic and the Second World War.

[Yorkykopite]

It's quite clear that we were all taught different things at different times. I never did Tudors and Stuarts at school, but did do Hammurabi and Babylon. We were never taught anything about US history (unbelievably) but did study Ireland from the Phoenix Park murders to the Civil War.

It's easy to point to English ignorance about Ireland by summoning Joe Bloggs, call-centre worker from Ashington, to the dock. But Joe doesn't know about Gladstone and Disraeli either or Chartism.

I don't think there's a special ignorance in the UK about the Empire or about Ireland. And, I remember, for a while in the 1980s it was impossible to have a discussion in England about the Troubles without someone mentioning Cromwell. Usually within 30 seconds of the discussion starting.

That's a good thing by the way.

[So… Howard Philips]

It's quite clear that we were all taught different things at different times. I never did Tudors and Stuarts at school, but did do Hammurabi and Babylon. We were never taught anything about US history (unbelievably) but did study Ireland from the Phoenix Park murders to the Civil War.

It's easy to point to English ignorance about Ireland by summoning Joe Bloggs, call-centre worker from Ashington, to the dock. But Joe doesn't know about Gladstone and Disraeli either or Chartism.

I don't think there's a special ignorance in the UK about the Empire or about Ireland. And, I remember, for a while in the 1980s it was impossible to have a discussion in England about the Troubles without someone mentioning Cromwell. Usually within 30 seconds of the discussion starting.

That's a good thing by the way.

I think Elvis Costello had something to do with a greater awareness of Cromwell and his legacy in the 1980s with "Oliver's Army".

There is some evidence that the Roman's were planning to use Chester as an embarkation port to send a legion to Hibernia, after a request from Irish chieftains for military support. That didn't come off but I'm sure the same scenario took place with an invitation to the Normans - and that's when the problems began.

[Yorkykopite]

I think Elvis Costello had something to do with a greater awareness of Cromwell and his legacy in the 1980s with "Oliver's Army".

Yes, that must be right I think. Good call.

There's been some terrific historical stuff written about Anglo-Irish relations over the years. Anyone read George Dangerfield, 'The Damnable Question'? This looked at British imperial policy in Ireland from the Famine to the Treaty. Masterful book by a brilliant writer. 

[Mumm-Ra]

Chartism was the first organised working-class movement in the world. They wanted working people to have the vote and they wanted that vote to be secret. That's what it was about.

I googled it after posting and thought, ah I'll get some grief for that now 

All I remember is it was deadly boring listening to our teacher drone on about it for what seemed like months when I was 15 or so. I was well into the WWI and WWII stuff, that was fascinating

[Yorkykopite]

I googled it after posting and thought, ah I'll get some grief for that now 

All I remember is it was deadly boring listening to our teacher drone on about it for what seemed like months when I was 15 or so. I was well into the WWI and WWII stuff, that was fascinating

Probably your teacher mate. There's only one subject that can survive a crap teacher at school and that's sex education. Sadly a bad teacher can kill interest in anything else for ever more.

[Mumm-Ra]

Probably your teacher mate. There's only one subject that can survive a crap teacher at school and that's sex education. Sadly a bad teacher can kill interest in anything else for ever more.

I think that particular topic was his passion, because I remember asking other people and they said they covered it in about 2 weeks, this guy spent a whole term on it.

[Robinred]

Probably your teacher mate. There's only one subject that can survive a crap teacher at school and that's sex education. Sadly a bad teacher can kill interest in anything else for ever more.

So true. I attended an all boys grammar school where the staff all had “good” degrees from red brick universities (some were Oxbridge), but far too many shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near children. I’m now a (long) retired teacher, and I still have fun recounting to my kids and grandkids how appallingly we were “taught” in many subjects, and how prevalent was the use of the cane.

It wasn’t at all uncommon for a lesson to be a short instruction in chalk on which pages of a textbook to read, to make notes - and then summarise for homework. The teachers in three particularly cases would then retire for a smoke, and return to instruct whichever boy was monitor to collect the books before the bell.

[Zeb]

Couldn't resist posting after John Barnes comments
we will see how "liberal" RAWK handles it

As said much earlier when the thread was active, shook.

the hero worship of Churchill misses the petty vindictiveness of the man as much as the hunt for his genocidal tendencies misses the tacit racism which underpinned all the assumptions of Empire and how it was governed. It is odd to laud him for his principled concern about civil liberties when he was as capable of mass internment as he was agonised concern over the imprisonment of Oswald Mosley's wife and newborn baby. Context is all I suppose? Both then, and now.

[Devon Red]

It's almost as if people can have both positive and negative aspects to their characters, and carry out both good and bad deeds.

If there's one thing that blights our social and political discourse it's lack of nuance.

[rafathegaffa83]

If there's one thing that blights our social and political discourse it's lack of nuance.

Definitely

[Corkboy]

It's almost as if people can have both positive and negative aspects to their characters, and carry out both good and bad deeds.

Right, but if one of the deeds is genocide, that's a stand out item.

[afc tukrish]

Right, but if one of the deeds is genocide, that's a stand out item.

Isn't that a recognition of Dev's nuance?

That even though there are positive and negative aspects to historical figures, certain actions or beliefs need acknowledgement or highlighting?

[WhereAngelsPlay]

Couldn't resist posting after John Barnes comments
we will see how "liberal" RAWK handles it

    You're so edgy.

Churchill whilst being the right man for the country at the right time was a racist bastard.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/Ze66N6XK88M" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/Ze66N6XK88M</a>


I would happily listen to the handsome bastard talk 24/7 & I yet to see him "lose" an argument when talking about racial issues.

[Devon Red]

Right, but if one of the deeds is genocide, that's a stand out item.

Yes of course. In Churchill's case the general public view of him is severely skewed towards the positive. It's totally reasonable that the negatives are highlighted and factored in, people get far too defensive about accepting an iconic figure as a real, flawed human. I also realise it's weird to just be using the word 'negatives' when talking about genocide, but I'm trying to make a more general point, whether it be Churchill or Liam Neeson.

Isn't that a recognition of Dev's nuance?

That even though there are positive and negative aspects to historical figures, certain actions or beliefs need acknowledgement or highlighting?

Exactly, cheers.

EDIT - Except for John Barnes, he is flawless 

[Zeb]

Still waiting on evidence to support the genocide claims, to be honest. Racist man in charge of an Empire built on racism, with the argument to that point. It's that final jump to "deliberately orchestrated starvation in Bengal" which seems missing and perhaps why people end up trawling through recollections of racist things Churchill said rather than the Cabinet archives for what was ordered and done.