Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliver_W
Clement Attlee (Labour Party) became Prime Minister in July 1945, and WWII ended in September of that year, so it wasn't Churchill who did those things.
It isn't Churchill's racism which he's admired for, his questionable attitudes are usually overlooked when he's talked about. To invalidate his contributions to winning WWII just because he held contemporary attitudes is just daft.
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In the early 1940s, an estimated 20,000 Chinese merchant sailors were recruited into the British Merchant Navy and, almost entirely based in Liverpool, around 300 of these married or cohabitated with local women. Although the Chinese sailors played a vital role in Britain’s warfare, their demands for the same pay and equal treatment as local sailors
in 1942, which led to strike action, saw them labelled as troublemakers. Post-war, the government, in collusion with the shipping companies, were keen to rid Liverpool of what they saw as an ‘undesirable element’ and, in October 1945, the Home Office opened a file on ‘the compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen at Liverpool’.
The wheels were in motion way before, maybe the new govt could have saved them who knows, it has no baring on the rest of his views as expressed at the time.
He did not 'win the war'... the troops, cabinet office, and allied forces worldwide won the war he was advised and he as you say made contributions to decisions.
His views were rather contemporary weren't they? There was someone else who thought that one race were superior to another, he was also a eugenics advocate... though for some reason he's not half as popular :/
http://www.mix-d.org/museum/timeline...n-in-liverpool