Tyke Not really, Max Hastings just been on saying Churchill alone was prepared to fight Hitler rather than do a deal with him, however he was not suited to the post-war desires of the electorate for a welfare state and NHS which led to Attlee's victory
what I am finding from this doc,churchill was crap in ww1,he was a drunk,crap at most speeches,war monger,hated the working classes,he's a racist and so on.
What the hell has half the things brought up in the doc has to do with him losing the 45 election.
Churchill was a bit rubbish at the democracy thing, never persuaded a majority of the UK electorate to vote for him.
GIN1138 Except Michael Howard had to face Blair for one more election in 2005, Labour's leader will not have to face Cameron in 2020
Cameron's serving a full five year term. That means that however he plans to organise a handover, the next Labour leader will be confronted with Cameron in the election.
And who knows what Cameron's real plans are? He might do something unexpected like a simple job-swap with Osborne.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
If you had read "The Wilderness Years" its quite true that many thought Churchill was barmy (but the Farage stuff is way off beam) and the MOD was trying to supress the truth, IIRC correctly given to Churchill by a civil servant
Churchill was indeed barmy on many subjects such as Indian nationalism. His time as minister for the colonies then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920's were also pretty poor. His response to the General Strike was so inflammatory that it could have led to mass civil unrest.
It was for these reasons that Churchill was in the wilderness in the 1930's, not for opposing appeasement. It was Baldwin who rebuilt the Royal Navy in the 1930's, and Chamberlain who modernised Britains air defences.
He was a great war leader, particularly in the early phases, but too idiosyncratic to be a great leader in peacetime.
Are you re-writing history ?? from what I recall it was Churchill's continual badgering that forced the Govt to consider re-armament. Its a bit late at night for me to start checking thro my books, but to suggest Chamberlain willingly re-built our air defences is not anywhere near my understanding of events... In fact AFAICR Chamberlain hated the idea, but only did so under duress.
WG So, Clinton was still president until the end of 2000 when Gore lost the election, as Ike was in 1960 when Nixon lost, had Clinton and Ike run again they probably would have won
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
I'm glad to see you making the right response. We started our rearmament too late which is why we were not well prepared in '38. Despite Hitler's ambition Germany was not either, and Hitler was angry to have been forced into the agreement. This probably made him more dictatorial with his generals in the future (to our benefit in the long term).
GIN1138 Except Michael Howard had to face Blair for one more election in 2005, Labour's leader will not have to face Cameron in 2020
Cameron's serving a full five year term. That means that however he plans to organise a handover, the next Labour leader will be confronted with Cameron in the election.
And who knows what Cameron's real plans are? He might do something unexpected like a simple job-swap with Osborne.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
If you had read "The Wilderness Years" its quite true that many thought Churchill was barmy (but the Farage stuff is way off beam) and the MOD was trying to supress the truth, IIRC correctly given to Churchill by a civil servant
Churchill was indeed barmy on many subjects such as Indian nationalism. His time as minister for the colonies then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920's were also pretty poor. His response to the General Strike was so inflammatory that it could have led to mass civil unrest.
It was for these reasons that Churchill was in the wilderness in the 1930's, not for opposing appeasement. It was Baldwin who rebuilt the Royal Navy in the 1930's, and Chamberlain who modernised Britains air defences.
He was a great war leader, particularly in the early phases, but too idiosyncratic to be a great leader in peacetime.
Are you re-writing history ?? from what I recall it was Churchill's continual badgering that forced the Govt to consider re-armament. Its a bit late at night for me to start checking thro my books, but to suggest Chamberlain willingly re-built our air defences is not anywhere near my understanding of events... In fact Chamberlain hated the idea, but only did so under duress.
Re-armament was prompted by events in 1936 that discredited the League of Nations: Hitlers occupation of the Rhineland, the Abbysinian crisis and the Spanish Civil War. By then there was quite a large groundswell of support for rearmament, both from Imperialists on the right and from the anti-fascists on the left. Churchills voice was an important one on the governing Tory backbenches, but far from the only one.
GIN1138 Except Michael Howard had to face Blair for one more election in 2005, Labour's leader will not have to face Cameron in 2020
Cameron's serving a full five year term. That means that however he plans to organise a handover, the next Labour leader will be confronted with Cameron in the election.
And who knows what Cameron's real plans are? He might do something unexpected like a simple job-swap with Osborne.
There is no possible way that Cameron will be leader in the election.
There's a variety of ways to enable Cameron to serve a full five year term while having a new leader face the election. Many countries across the globe do this successfully - and the fixed term parliament act makes it even more plausible to have managed handovers.
One possible way to do it would be to have Cameron serve the full five years as PM, then towards the end of the Parliament the Conservative Party to have a primary style election to determine who the new leader will be. Cameron would stay in 10 Downing Street until the election but the new leader would lead the party into the election.
Many countries do this perfectly healthily, including not just Presidential systems like the US but also parliamentary elections like ours.
WG So, Clinton was still president until the end of 2000 when Gore lost the election, as Ike was in 1960 when Nixon lost, had Clinton and Ike run again they probably would have won
That's a Presidential election with a term limit which is very different to the situation we will have with a parliamentary PM.
As far as I'm aware there's no precedent for a British Prime Minister remaining in office while a new leader fights an election campaign. People don't seem to have spent much time thinking about the practicalities of this. It seems almost impossible that this could be handled smoothly unless Cameron is planning to remain in the Cabinet. His rationale for ruling out a third term was that PMs tend to go mad which doesn't in itself mean that he is planning to walk away from front-line politics.
GIN1138 Except Michael Howard had to face Blair for one more election in 2005, Labour's leader will not have to face Cameron in 2020
Cameron's serving a full five year term. That means that however he plans to organise a handover, the next Labour leader will be confronted with Cameron in the election.
And who knows what Cameron's real plans are? He might do something unexpected like a simple job-swap with Osborne.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
If you had read "The Wilderness Years" its quite true that many thought Churchill was barmy (but the Farage stuff is way off beam) and the MOD was trying to supress the truth, IIRC correctly given to Churchill by a civil servant
Churchill was indeed barmy on many subjects such as Indian nationalism. His time as minister for the colonies then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920's were also pretty poor. His response to the General Strike was so inflammatory that it could have led to mass civil unrest.
It was for these reasons that Churchill was in the wilderness in the 1930's, not for opposing appeasement. It was Baldwin who rebuilt the Royal Navy in the 1930's, and Chamberlain who modernised Britains air defences.
He was a great war leader, particularly in the early phases, but too idiosyncratic to be a great leader in peacetime.
Are you re-writing history ?? from what I recall it was Churchill's continual badgering that forced the Govt to consider re-armament. Its a bit late at night for me to start checking thro my books, but to suggest Chamberlain willingly re-built our air defences is not anywhere near my understanding of events... In fact Chamberlain hated the idea, but only did so under duress.
Re-armament was prompted by events in 1936 that discredited the League of Nations: Hitlers occupation of the Rhineland, the Abbysinian crisis and the Spanish Civil War. By then there was quite a large groundswell of support for rearmament, both from Imperialists on the right and from the anti-fascists on the left. Churchills voice was an important one on the governing Tory backbenches, but far from the only one.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
Though of course it was Churchills ten year rule as Chancellor in the early twenties that had so radically cut back the British armed forces. It wasn't just Attlee who changed his mind on rearmament!
But it can only interpret what is there. It wasn't the ECJ which created the Euro or completed the single market or extended the competencies of the EU (well, maybe very slightly), or for that matter created the EU.
The Court of Justice exercises a legislative as well as an interpretative function. Anyone who pretends otherwise is deceiving themselves. Where did the principles of supremacy, direct effect, and state liability come from, but the Court of Justice? Does anyone seriously believe that the four freedoms would operate as they do today if the Court of Justice had not taken the approach it did? It openly rewrites clear treaty provisions. It nullifies derogations negotiated in good faith by the member states. It claims that it has the power to give legal effect to nullities. It asserts EU law is superior to resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, notwithstanding TFEU article 351.
WG As PT points out other countries have done this, in Spain for example Aznar in 2004 and Zapatero in 2011 both stayed as PMs while their parties had different leaders for the election in those years
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
I'm glad to see you making the right response. We started our rearmament too late which is why we were not well prepared in '38. Despite Hitler's ambition Germany was not either, and Hitler was angry to have been forced into the agreement. This probably made him more dictatorial with his generals in the future (to our benefit in the long term).
As it turned out, the timing of Britain's air force rearmament was just about spot-on - had it been earlier, the country would have gone into the war with squadron after squadron of obsolete craft; had it been any later, it would barely have gone in with any at all. But the building up of the fleet and the army was undoubtedly too slow.
As you say, the appeasers' best argument - that Munich bought Britain and France time - is a weak one: it bought Hitler time too.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
WG So, Clinton was still president until the end of 2000 when Gore lost the election, as Ike was in 1960 when Nixon lost, had Clinton and Ike run again they probably would have won
That's a Presidential election with a term limit which is very different to the situation we will have with a parliamentary PM.
As far as I'm aware there's no precedent for a British Prime Minister remaining in office while a new leader fights an election campaign. People don't seem to have spent much time thinking about the practicalities of this. It seems almost impossible that this could be handled smoothly unless Cameron is planning to remain in the Cabinet. His rationale for ruling out a third term was that PMs tend to go mad which doesn't in itself mean that he is planning to walk away from front-line politics.
There is no precedent in British politics but that doesn't mean it can't be done. There is certainly precedent for the PM not having to be a party leader.
However, I wouldn't take his 'full term' comment too literally. My expectation is that if things go as Cameron wants, he'll step down as Conservative leader in the autumn of 2019 and as PM as soon as a successor is in place.
WG So, Clinton was still president until the end of 2000 when Gore lost the election, as Ike was in 1960 when Nixon lost, had Clinton and Ike run again they probably would have won
That's a Presidential election with a term limit which is very different to the situation we will have with a parliamentary PM.
As far as I'm aware there's no precedent for a British Prime Minister remaining in office while a new leader fights an election campaign. People don't seem to have spent much time thinking about the practicalities of this. It seems almost impossible that this could be handled smoothly unless Cameron is planning to remain in the Cabinet. His rationale for ruling out a third term was that PMs tend to go mad which doesn't in itself mean that he is planning to walk away from front-line politics.
As I said there's plenty of historical examples from other countries. The fixed term parliament act has made this more plausible as previously the PM decided when the election was. One advantage of Fixed Terms is that Parties can and should be able to make smooth transitions rather than relying on a PM constantly going "on and on" or being defeated.
As it turned out, the timing of Britain's air force rearmament was just about spot-on - had it been earlier, the country would have gone into the war with squadron after squadron of obsolete craft; had it been any later, it would barely have gone in with any at all. But the building up of the fleet and the army was undoubtedly too slow.
As you say, the appeasers' best argument - that Munich bought Britain and France time - is a weak one: it bought Hitler time too.
Both appeasement by Britain and France and the declaration of war primarily bought time for Stalin and the USSR.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
The difference was one of tactics and combined arms co-ordination. The Germans had been working on this from the 1930s, though ironically largely by copying British military tactics as used in 1918.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
Clearly not a match in 1940 given what actually happened.
In October 1938, excluding overseas and FAA units, the RAF had 1606 front-line planes against 3200 German ones. Of that, Britain had five squadrons of Hurricanes and just one of Spitfires.
And that was with the rearmament programme that the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments had pursued. Had Labour been in power with the pacifist policies it promoted from 1933 (and before) to 1937, there wouldn't even have been that.
As it turned out, the timing of Britain's air force rearmament was just about spot-on - had it been earlier, the country would have gone into the war with squadron after squadron of obsolete craft; had it been any later, it would barely have gone in with any at all. But the building up of the fleet and the army was undoubtedly too slow.
As you say, the appeasers' best argument - that Munich bought Britain and France time - is a weak one: it bought Hitler time too.
Both appeasement by Britain and France and the declaration of war primarily bought time for Stalin and the USSR.
Though Putin recently claimed the opposite: that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was as a result of Anglo French appeasment.
I think this is special pleading and actually it was just an excuse for Russia to recapture what it saw as lost territories in the Baltic, Finland, Poland, Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Though a rather worrying defence of the MR pact in light of contemporary events in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine!
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
The difference was one of tactics and combined arms co-ordination. The Germans had been working on this from the 1930s, though ironically largely by copying British military tactics as used in 1918.
In 1938 the Germans were ready for war, the British and French much less so. Arguably the French were not ready even in May 1940.
Sure, it's probably inarguable that France & Britain were tactically incapable by 1940. Also after Munich the Wermacht had an extra 1000 nippy Czech Pz 38s that fitted in beautifully with Blitzkrieg.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
Clearly not a match in 1940 given what actually happened.
In October 1938, excluding overseas and FAA units, the RAF had 1606 front-line planes against 3200 German ones. Of that, Britain had five squadrons of Hurricanes and just one of Spitfires.
And that was with the rearmament programme that the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments had pursued. Had Labour been in power with the pacifist policies it promoted from 1933 (and before) to 1937, there wouldn't even have been that.
Though it was Churchill as CoE that had brought the British forces to such a low position with his ten year rule!
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
Clearly not a match in 1940 given what actually happened.
In October 1938, excluding overseas and FAA units, the RAF had 1606 front-line planes against 3200 German ones. Of that, Britain had five squadrons of Hurricanes and just one of Spitfires.
And that was with the rearmament programme that the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments had pursued. Had Labour been in power with the pacifist policies it promoted from 1933 (and before) to 1937, there wouldn't even have been that.
It was never going to be a mano a mano Germany v Britain conflict though. As Foxinsox points out, it wasn't the weapons or numbers that let the French & British forces down in 1940 but the way they used them. Of course it's a racing certainty that the Western Allies' commanders would have been just as ineffective in 1938.
Some professor bloke even said that Churchill was, between the wars. like a Farage figure of his time. Crazy, they have to bring Nigel's name in somewhere.
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
Clearly not a match in 1940 given what actually happened.
In October 1938, excluding overseas and FAA units, the RAF had 1606 front-line planes against 3200 German ones. Of that, Britain had five squadrons of Hurricanes and just one of Spitfires.
And that was with the rearmament programme that the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments had pursued. Had Labour been in power with the pacifist policies it promoted from 1933 (and before) to 1937, there wouldn't even have been that.
Though it was Churchill as CoE that had brought the British forces to such a low position with his ten year rule!
Not strictly 'his' rule - it was first adopted in 1919 - but Churchill did make it self perpetuating which was a gross error, not least because it made it extremely hard to remove without sending all the wrong signals. Also, the event that made the war likely happened less than seven years before it began. Arguably, if the rule was to have been dropped in response to events then it would have been the Japanese Manchurian incident that should have been the spark, and that was ten years before Pearl Harbour - but that's more coincidence than judgement.
As it turned out, the timing of Britain's air force rearmament was just about spot-on - had it been earlier, the country would have gone into the war with squadron after squadron of obsolete craft; had it been any later, it would barely have gone in with any at all. But the building up of the fleet and the army was undoubtedly too slow.
As you say, the appeasers' best argument - that Munich bought Britain and France time - is a weak one: it bought Hitler time too.
Both appeasement by Britain and France and the declaration of war primarily bought time for Stalin and the USSR.
Though Putin recently claimed the opposite: that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was as a result of Anglo French appeasment.
I think this is special pleading and actually it was just an excuse for Russia to recapture what it saw as lost territories in the Baltic, Finland, Poland, Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Though a rather worrying defence of the MR pact in light of contemporary events in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine!
From the Soviet perspective the Molotov-Rippentrop pact was also about buying time. It was known that Hitler's territorial ambitions lay in the east and it would have been strategically stupid of Stalin to turn down the chance to push his front-line further west before the overt Nazi aggression against the USSR started.
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie · 2 mins2 minutes ago An unnecessarily anti-Churchill flavour to this BBC2 documentary - not just about the 1945 election campaign but re his speechmaking too
Anyone watching this Documentary on Churchill,very negative on Churchill.
snip
Worth remembering Clement Attlee. In 1938 he led the Labour party voting against the Munich Agreement. A few Tories abstained but most voted to back Chamberlain.
Churchill was far from a lone voice in recognising the risks of Nazism, and it perhaps explains part of why Attlee was popular in 1945. He was not appearing from nowhere, and indeed had a distinguished war record himself.
Attlee spent most of the 1930s opposing rearmament. He, and people like him, had no moral right to criticise Chamberlain when they'd done their best to deny the country the means to oppose Hitler. As late as October 1936 (after Germany had begun remiliratising the Rhineland), Attlee was still proclaiming to the Labour conference his opposition to the government's rearmament programme.
It was all very well him opposing Munich. If he'd been prime minister - and he was Labour leader at the 1935 election - what would he have opposed it with? Bows and arrows?
By the end of 1938 half of Germany's fighters were biplanes and they had less than 250 medium & heavy tanks. Britain & France were a match for them technically at that point (and arguably in 1940 also).
Clearly not a match in 1940 given what actually happened.
In October 1938, excluding overseas and FAA units, the RAF had 1606 front-line planes against 3200 German ones. Of that, Britain had five squadrons of Hurricanes and just one of Spitfires.
And that was with the rearmament programme that the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments had pursued. Had Labour been in power with the pacifist policies it promoted from 1933 (and before) to 1937, there wouldn't even have been that.
It was never going to be a mano a mano Germany v Britain conflict though. As Foxinsox points out, it wasn't the weapons or numbers that let the French & British forces down in 1940 but the way they used them. Of course it's a racing certainty that the Western Allies' commanders would have been just as ineffective in 1938.
Regarding the Battle of Britain I would commend to you "The Narrow Margin" by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster, probably the definitive account of the battle. It starts with the retooling of the UK and German air forces in the 1930s and has all the charts, details of aircraft numbers and types, plus a day by day breakdown of the battle.
England has suffered deeper spending cuts than Scotland during the economic downturn, a shock report has found.
The SNP won a landslide election victory north of the border this month after vowing to oppose austerity measures.
But Scotland has already been cushioned from the worst effects of public spending cuts compared to England, a study by the House of Commons Library reveals.
NZ look set to lose the Lord's Test after scoring > 500 runs in their 1st Innings. I wonder whether this has ever happened before?
Cricinfo says it's happened 13 times in history, NZ's record losing score is 433. The problem is that we need to get the other 5 wickets, and this is England we are talking about! 38 overs minimum, although I guess they can add half an hour if we're only a couple short at the end?
NZ look set to lose the Lord's Test after scoring > 500 runs in their 1st Innings. I wonder whether this has ever happened before?
Cricinfo says it's happened 13 times in history, NZ's record losing score is 433. The problem is that we need to get the other 5 wickets, and this is England we are talking about! 38 overs minimum, although I guess they can add half an hour if we're only a couple short at the end?
Comments
There's a variety of ways to enable Cameron to serve a full five year term while having a new leader face the election. Many countries across the globe do this successfully - and the fixed term parliament act makes it even more plausible to have managed handovers.
One possible way to do it would be to have Cameron serve the full five years as PM, then towards the end of the Parliament the Conservative Party to have a primary style election to determine who the new leader will be. Cameron would stay in 10 Downing Street until the election but the new leader would lead the party into the election.
Many countries do this perfectly healthily, including not just Presidential systems like the US but also parliamentary elections like ours.
As far as I'm aware there's no precedent for a British Prime Minister remaining in office while a new leader fights an election campaign. People don't seem to have spent much time thinking about the practicalities of this. It seems almost impossible that this could be handled smoothly unless Cameron is planning to remain in the Cabinet. His rationale for ruling out a third term was that PMs tend to go mad which doesn't in itself mean that he is planning to walk away from front-line politics.
As you say, the appeasers' best argument - that Munich bought Britain and France time - is a weak one: it bought Hitler time too.
However, I wouldn't take his 'full term' comment too literally. My expectation is that if things go as Cameron wants, he'll step down as Conservative leader in the autumn of 2019 and as PM as soon as a successor is in place.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0304352853?vs=1
In 1938 the Germans were ready for war, the British and French much less so. Arguably the French were not ready even in May 1940.
In October 1938, excluding overseas and FAA units, the RAF had 1606 front-line planes against 3200 German ones. Of that, Britain had five squadrons of Hurricanes and just one of Spitfires.
And that was with the rearmament programme that the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments had pursued. Had Labour been in power with the pacifist policies it promoted from 1933 (and before) to 1937, there wouldn't even have been that.
http://en.polishexpress.co.uk/putin-defends-nazi-soviet-pact/
I think this is special pleading and actually it was just an excuse for Russia to recapture what it saw as lost territories in the Baltic, Finland, Poland, Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Though a rather worrying defence of the MR pact in light of contemporary events in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine!
As Foxinsox points out, it wasn't the weapons or numbers that let the French & British forces down in 1940 but the way they used them. Of course it's a racing certainty that the Western Allies' commanders would have been just as ineffective in 1938.
The SNP won a landslide election victory north of the border this month after vowing to oppose austerity measures.
But Scotland has already been cushioned from the worst effects of public spending cuts compared to England, a study by the House of Commons Library reveals.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3096621/Average-Scot-1-600-spent-Englishman.html#ixzz3bCY2cW9r
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/62437.html
England's Adelaide performance is third on the list. Australia hold second:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;innings_number=1;orderby=team_score;result=2;runsmin1=550;runsval1=runs;template=results;type=team;view=innings
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;innings_number=1;orderby=team_score;result=2;runsmin1=500;runsval1=runs;template=results;type=team;view=innings
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/62437.html
England's Adelaide performance is third on the list. Australia hold second:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;innings_number=1;orderby=team_score;result=2;runsmin1=550;runsval1=runs;template=results;type=team;view=innings
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;innings_number=1;orderby=team_score;result=2;runsmin1=500;runsval1=runs;template=results;type=team;view=innings