What Was Churchill's Fulneral Like?

[jake-the-peg]

We must have quite a few members who remember this

Was there as much controversy as there is now with MT's fulneral?

In some quarters he was a contraversial figure - Gallipoli, botched return to the gold standard, troops and miners

Booed in some places campaigning after the war when people wanted 'a land fit for heroes' not 'back to the 30s'

Television was more highly censored for 'appropriateness' then but what did people say in the streets and pubs - did everybody forget the controversies and just concentrate on those 6 war years?

[askyourgran]

I think I should have said pre-war politics, not post war.^

[Peter Pedant]

oh God Omdurman - - first time weapons of mass destruction were used
that is, the Maxim gun

10,000 dead, 10,000 wounded and 47 British dead.

[FredPuli43]

And, according to wiki, Churchill complained that our commander, Kitchener, ordered that many of the injured be shot (presumably not our injured). Ah, those were the days !

[jno]

fredPuli, I'm not sure revered can be the word for someone who was turfed out of office when the war ended. I think (from what I have read; I wasn't sentient at the time) people thought he had done his job and was old and out of step with the new mood of communal effort (as in eg the NHS).

His later return to office made no great waves - but they might have if the public had known the true state of his health.

The public seemed happy to honour him for what he'd done to lead the country in its time of greatest peril, but without actually wanting him to lead them any more. (That's the UK public - I think Australians have always taken a dimmer view of him.)

My own feeling is that Thatcher was nowhere in his league and that it's insulting to compare the Falklands to WW2; her funeral felt much more like a Conservative party event than a national one.

[jake-the-peg]

//the reverence of the people. Once obtained, that was never lost//

Really Fred ?

So why did such a reverred man lose the 1945 election so decisively?

[FredPuli43]

That election wasn't a vote against him as a person. If it were a matter of personality and achievement, nobody would have voted for Clement Attlee rather than Churchill. It was simply that the people back from the war wanted what the Labour Party promised; and why not? It did not mean that Churchill himself wasn't revered.




Churchill

[FredPuli43]

[We definitely need an edit function on here. My post, above, was not signed 'Churchill' LOL ]

[humbersloop]

//did everybody forget the controversies and just concentrate on those 6 war years?//

I think they more or less did jake, and the situation was as fred describes as @9.23, although I'd say respected rather than revered.

I only have a vague memory of watching events as a very small child when he died, but both my parents went through the war - neither of them tories by a long stretch and, like anyone voting in '45, they'd lived through the thirties.

Their attitude was he was the right person for that job at that time, he got the country through it and was ruthless in doing what was thought necessary. And they wanted profound change afterwards.

They still gladly queued for hours to pass his coffin at the lying in state, and no, there was none of the controversy of recent days. I was told the cranes dipped as the barge passed to show the dockers' respect.