Authors: Winston Churchill
Many of these deplorable occurrences might have been avoided had he not at a critical moment refused to carry out decisively and effectively the measures which he contemplated. Had he not held back the military and not shown some doubt and hesitation at a critical moment, much destruction of property, many unhappy incidents, and many circumstances which all, whatever their opinions, must look upon as a great blot on the procedure of civilised society, might have been wholly avoided.
That is, I am sure, a very serious charge. . . .
I should like to point out to the House upon this point that the forces which the Government sent at the request of the Chief Constable and the local authorities in the Rhondda Valley were in every respect more suitable to the work which they were likely to have to do than the force of infantry which had been asked for in the morning. Policemen accustomed to handle crowds are from every point of view more effective in these matters than soldiers, especially infantry, and we were sending as many foot constables and a considerable number of mounted constables as well in place of the two companies of infantry which had been asked for, and we were sending in addition, to be in support, two squadrons of cavalry. Therefore, no charge could be made against the Government that adequate forces were not sent to the scene, or that suitable forces were not sent to the scene. On the contrary, the forces sent were larger and more suitable than those which were asked for. . . .
Whatever we were guilty of, there was no vacillation. Obstinacy perhaps, but vacillation, no. The decision was never departed from to use the police as a cover and shield for the military. What I had in my mind as the principal subject of apprehension was the idea of the arrival in the night of a body of soldiers hurriedly sent by train from a long distance, disembarking under conditions of excitement at a station and moved out of the station into direct collision with an angry mob, who were not at all accustomed to see the soldiers and were perhaps not at all acquainted with the weapons they carried or with the limitations attendant upon military action. That I was resolved to guard against, if it were possible to do so, while maintaining law and order. . . .
The mining population of South Wales are, as the House knows, a well-educated, peaceful, intelligent and law-abiding class of men, and have often, I may express the personal opinion here, been very hardly tried in more ways than one during these troubles, for which, in my judgment, they are not the only people to blame. In my opinion the riots were largely caused by rowdy youths and roughs from outside, foreign to the district, and I think it only just to place that on record in fairness to the miners of South Wales, who have been attacked in a general way by people who know nothing at all about the matter. Local authorities and private employers are very ready sometimes, and from insufficient cause, to call for troops. Troops cost them nothing, police cost money to the local authorities; and there is a very general disposition in some quarters to suppose that the whole British Army is always to be available, irrespective of the circumstances, upon the demand of any local authority. The local authority sends for troops, and they think that troops should always be sent, very often not thinking of the effect of military weapons or the difficulty which surrounds military action. Law and order must be preserved, but I am confident that the House will agree with me that it is a great object of public policy to avoid a collision between soldiers and crowds of persons engaged in industrial disputes. All such collisions attended, as they must be, by loss of life and by the use of firearms, do great harm to the Army, which is a volunteer Army, and whose relation with the civil forces of the country must be carefully safeguarded, and they also cause feuds and resentments which last for a generation. For soldiers to fire on the people would be a catastrophe in our national life. Alone among the nations, or almost alone, we have avoided for a great many years that melancholy and unnatural experience. And it is well worth while, I venture to think, for the Minister who is responsible to run some risk of broken heads or broken windows, to incur expense and an amount of inconvenience in the police arrangements, and to accept direct responsibility in order that the shedding of British blood by British soldiers may be averted, as, thank God, it has been successfully averted in South Wales.
22 May 1911
House of Commons
Churchill felt passionately the need to provide the breadwinners in every family in Britain with a safeguard against the risk of unemployment. He and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, were the principal architects of this far-reaching measure of social reform.
There is no proposal in the field of politics that I care more about than this great insurance scheme, and what I should like to say is that there must be no delay in carrying the unemployment insurance any more than in carrying the invalidity insurance. Strong as are the arguments for bringing forward invalidity insurance, they are no less strong – in fact, they are even stronger – for unemployment insurance. A few years ago everybody was deeply impressed with the unsatisfactory condition of affairs which left our civilisation open to challenge in this respect, namely, that a man who was willing to work, and who asked that his needs might be met, could not find the means either of getting work or being provided for. That could not but make thinking men uncomfortable and anxious. Providence has ordained that human beings should have short memories, and pain and anxiety are soon forgotten. But are we always to oscillate between panic and torpor?
People talk of the improvidence of the working man. No doubt he has to bear his responsibility, but how can you expect a working man who has few pleasures and small resources, and with the constant strain that is put upon him, to scan trade cycles and to discern with the accuracy of Board of Trade officials the indications and fluctuations of world-wide markets. His failure to do so is excusable. But what can be said of the House of Commons? We have the knowledge and the experience, and it is our duty to think of the future. It is our duty to prepare and to make provision for those for whom we are responsible. What could be said for us, and what could excuse our own improvidence if the next depression found us all unprepared? There is something to be said for the working man who does not provide against unemployment. It may not fall upon him. The great majority of working men will not become unemployed in the insured trades. A working man may escape, but the State will not escape, and the House of Commons will not escape. The problem will come back to the House of Commons as sure as death and quite as cruel, and then it will be too late. It is no use attempting to insure against unemployment when it is upon you and holds you in its grip. There is no use going round then to unemployed working men and asking them to insure against unemployment. It is only in those good years that we can make provision to secure the strength of the fund which will enable us to face the lean years. All our calculations are based upon taking good years with the bad. We must begin now while unemployment is not a feature of our political life and discussion. We must begin now if the fund is to begin strong. We owe a great deal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in connection with this great scheme. He has devised it and made it possible in the public life of this country. He has afforded us something which does give common ground for all our best efforts, and I think it will be found one of the strongest forces for the country to unite upon. There is exhilaration in the study of insurance questions because there is a sense of elaborating new and increased powers which have been devoted to the service of mankind. It is not only a question of order in the face of confusion. It is not only a question of collective strength of the nation to render effective the thrift and the exertions of the individual, but we bring in the magic of averages to the aid of the million.
22 August 1911
House of Commons
Industrial unrest continued
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but now the Home Secretary and the Government found themselves confronted not by a localised dispute as in the South Wales mines at the beginning of the year, but by a nation-wide strike that theatened to disrupt the entire means of distribution of food and vitally needed supplies to maintain the life of the country. Troops were deployed and in one incident, at Llanelli in Wales
,
four people were killed.
I have a right to ask the House to look at the emergency with which we were faced, and which alone would justify the strong and unusual measures which we thought it necessary to take. Let the House realise it. In that great quadrilateral of industrialism, from Liverpool and Manchester on the west to Hull and Grimsby on the east, from Newcastle down to Birmingham and Coventry in the south – in that great quadrilateral which, I suppose, must contain anything between 15 to 20 millions of persons, intelligent, hard-working people, who have raised our industry to the forefront of the world’s affairs – it is practically certain that a continuance of the railway strike would have produced a swift and certain degeneration of all the means, of all the structure, social and economic, on which the life of the people depends. If it had not been interrupted it would have hurled the whole of that great community into an abyss of horror which no man can dare to contemplate. . . .
I was criticised very severely at the beginning of the year for trying to deal with the difficulties and troubles on the South Wales coal field without using the military forces. I think the House will admit that on that occasion, at any rate, I strained every effort in my power, ran considerable risk, and put the country to considerable expense, to try to substitute other means of maintaining order for the employment of the military forces. I can assure the House that the feelings with which I acted then have never departed from my mind. But Tonypandy was a small affair and produced no great national reaction, and when that took place we had other resources available. I had it within my power – by a very unusual step, I admit – to send a thousand, or, if necessary, two thousand Metropolitan Police to South Wales to stand between the people and the troops, and to put off the employment of the military to the last minute. But on this occasion, with the whole country in a state of disturbance, with disorder actually breaking out in scores of places, the Metropolitan Police would have been totally inadequate to render any assistance to the local forces. Even if they had been adequate, not one single man could be spared from his duty in the Metropolis. . . . It is quite idle for anyone to pretend that the strike was conducted peacefully and without violence. Even in the forty-eight hours which it lasted serious riots occurred in four or five places, and minor riots in twenty or more places. There were six or more attacks on railway stations, and a very great many on signal-boxes all along the line. I need not enlarge on the peril of driving people out of the signal-boxes at a time when even a few trains were running. There were nine attempts to damage the permanent way, of which we have a record at present, or to wreck trains, or to tamper with points. There were a great number of cases, almost innumerable in fact, of attempts to stop trains, and to stone them. I do not suppose the people of this country realise that these are a class of offences that the law says are punishable with penal servitude, up to penal servitude for life. There were many cases of telegraph and signal wires being cut. . . .
The policy which we have pursued throughout was wherever soldiers were sent to send plenty, so that there could be no mistake about the obvious ability of the authorities to maintain order, and so that the soldiers themselves could be in sufficient force to do what was necessary without taking advantage of the terrible weapons which modern science had placed in their hands. That decision has been taken with a view to the prevention of loss of life. I believe that it has achieved the results which we had in view. Some loss of life has, unhappily, occurred. In what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leicester calls ‘the reckless employment of force’, about twenty shots, carefully counted, have been fired with serious intent. Four or five persons have been killed by the military. The House sees these instances chronicled everywhere today. Their painful effect is fresh in our minds. What is not seen, what cannot be measured, is how many lives were saved and how many tragedies and sufferings were averted – that can never be known! But there are some things which indicate how great are the benefits which have been derived from the maintenance of order by the military forces. We know that people die from many causes. The death-rate in Liverpool has doubled during the course of these troubles. It is a death-rate which has not fallen upon those who live in the Toxteth district. It is contributed by the working-class children, who have suffered in the course of these disputes, and who would have suffered if the evils of the cessation of industry and of the stoppage of food supplies had been added to those of anarchy and riot.
The House should remember that the Llanelli rioters, left to themselves, with no intrusion of the police, and no assistance from the military for some hours, in a few streets of the town during the evening wrought in their drunken frenzy more havoc to life and limb, shed more blood, produced more serious injury among themselves, than all the 50,000 soldiers who have been employed on strike duty all over the country during the last few days. That is the answer which I make to the criticisms and the attacks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leicester. I say on behalf of the Government that we will cheerfully, confidently, face any reproaches, attacks or calumniations which anger may create, or malice may keep alive, because, as trustees for the people, responsible for their welfare and for their safety, thinking only of that and of their vital needs, we tried to do our duty.