Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell has branded Sir Winston Churchill a “villain,” as Churchill sent the army to deal with striking miners, when he was then the home secretary in 1910.
The Metropolitan Police sent 200 officers to the Welsh mining town Tonypandy, along with a detachment of Lancashire Fusiliers who were stationed at Maindy Barracks in Cardiff.
McDonald was asked in a question and answer session with the Politico Website, was “Winston Churchill, hero or villain?”
McDonald said that Churchill is a “Tonypandy villain.”
The Metropolitan Police were no match for the Welsh miners in the Rhondda Valley and many ran or refused to deal with the miners, eventually the army was sent in to deal with miners and families under the order of Churchill.
Sir Nicholas Soames Conservative MP and the grandson of Churchill told the Daily Telegraph, “Frankly it’s a very foolish and stupid thing to say, surely said to gain publicity.
“I think my grandfather’s reputation can withstand a publicity-seeking assault from a third-rate, Poundland Lenin. I don’t think it will shake the world.”
Ian Austin Labour MP disagreed with McDonald, he said in tweet, “Look who takes pride of place on my mantelpiece in Dudley: a real British hero, the greatest ever Briton, the man who motivated Britain to defeat the Nazis and fight not just for our liberty but the world’s freedom too.”
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