Arrest, Imprison, Impeach and then Hang the lot of them!
by Adam Porter
When the BBC were making their dramatised version of the life of Lloyd George, former British Prime Minister from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries they decided, like the political parties, to omit that particular phrase. In 1902 Lloyd George was giving his point of view to Parliament around the possibility of the UK government signing a treaty that prohibited the killing of civilians in any future wars. It didn’t get very far. The young parliamentarian Winston Churchill, noted Hanson (the documenters of parliamentary life and debate) gave Lloyd George a standing ovation.
Winston Churchill was also fully aware of the need for Britain to control the “uncivilised tribes” that threatened British control over major economic sources, shipping, minerals and so on. “Recalcitrant Arabs” he called them. Churchill who had become Colonial Secretary after the First World War decided that an impoverished Britain could fight by different, cheaper means. So he gassed the Kurds. He despised the “squeamishness” of those who “objected to poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.” He used airpower that was just emerging to drop mustard gas on the Kurds, as he extolled, “spreading a lively terror.” Perhaps the most damning statement by Churchill was that in fact the gassing of the Kurds was “as experiment.”
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