The movie The Darkest Hour is supposedly a historically accurate story of Winston Churchill’s first month as Prime Minister.
Except for one scene that is awful Hollywood sap: when Churchill goes into the underground station to ride a train for the first time in his life,
and meet the common people.*
But my question isn’t about the cinematics–it’s about the people on the train in 1940.
In the film, one of the passengers is black, apparently African.
My question is:
How many blacks were living in London in 1940?
The British Empire ruled half the planet, but how many colonists had moved to London? (especially working-class people–did they need visas,etc)?
And how many of them were black?
And would they be welcomed to join in a political discussion with strangers and the Prime Minister?
*(the scene just doesn’t make sense: rousing cheers of political support, inside what would have been a noisy train which stops every 3 minutes as rush-hour crowds enter and leave.
The scene might have been believable if it had been set in a corner grocery shop,and Churchill chatting with the local customers.)
I doubt anyone could really say how ‘welcome’ a theoretical black passenger on the tube would be to join in a conversation with anyone; people probably varied heavily in attitude.
I suspect many white people would be uncomfortable with a strange black person joining their conversation, but I also doubt anyone, in in front of Winston Churchill, would come out and say that, if he didn’t. It certainly wasn’t a universal attitude: take this clip from US army video from 1943 (should be linked to the relevant time) for a mention of near contemporary attitudes.
I doubt it was all that rosy, and certainly not for poor immigrant workers rather than GIs; your black passenger would probably be well advised to avoid some streets, especially near pub kicking out time, but I doubt he’d get more than a few sideways glances on a busy tube. Besides, if he was a regular commuter, he might well be a familiar face to the other regulars, and have a few friends or work mates on there too.
If you are looking for inaccuracies in that scene, what about the fact it took longer for the train to travel from St. Jame’s Park to Westminster tube station than it would take my octogenarian mother to walk it, arthritic knees notwithstanding. The actual time he would have had for the entire conversation would be no more than a two minutes.
I hope it’s not out of place to link to an opinion piece, but this article about Churchill’s opinions about British colonies may case doubt on the idea that he’d welcome non-white participants in a discussion.
Yeah, it did seem out of time/place, but there have been blacks living in London since Elizabethan times, so it not beyond the realm of possibility. And since England never was much in terms of African slavery and abolished the slave trade in 1807, the cultural background for bias/bigotry wasn’t as ingrained as it was in the USA (not that it wouldn’t occur, I am sure).
As for Churchill’s opinions, he was a Victorian Empire man through and through, with the superiority of ‘England above all’ ingrained in him, but if the man had a English accent I think he would have recognized him.
And Churchill did go out among the people, if not via Tube, especially after the Blitz started, to the dismay of those trying to protect him. If he had the bad qualities of the Imperialist, he also had courage and caring for those he saw under his charge and the (unusual) determination to see things from their perspective.
So the Underground story is fiction, but in keeping with what we know of the man.
IMHO (butressed by my current reading of The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm by Manchester and Reid. YMMV.
Odious though his views were, the man was a politician; I’m not aware of him habitually publicly snubbing non-white people to their faces.
Killing them at a distance, yes, insulting them behind their backs, yes, but not insulting them during a publicity stunt. When deliberately going out to ‘meet the people’ he’d probably let everyone speak unless the crowd was against them. Might not pay much attention to anything they said, and he may have insulted them later, but he’d probably at least pretend to listen. He was a bigot, but he knew how to play a crowd.
[hijack]
In Ulysses the expression is used (Dublin 1904) “chucking out time.” Chucking/kicking not so important, but is the expression a…, well, Brit expression?
[/hijack]
That’s a good answer, my first thought was that US Army video. The case of Seretse Khama, an african chief who married an English woman he met while studying law in London, sheds further light on both contemporary attitudes and also involves Churchill.
It’s a bit of a tangled story and I can’t really do it justice in summary (here’s a good account), so I’m going to quote a few lines of the wiki article.
*"The international ramifications of his marriage were not, however, so easily resolved. Having banned interracial marriage under the apartheid system, South Africa’s government opposed having an interracial couple ruling just across their northern border. As Bechuanaland was then a British protectorate (not a colony), the South African government immediately exerted pressure on the UK to have Khama removed from his chieftainship…
The British government conducted a parliamentary enquiry into Khama’s fitness for the chieftainship. Although the investigation reported that he was eminently fit to rule the Bamangwato, “but for his unfortunate marriage”, the government ordered that the report be suppressed… It exiled Khama and his wife from Bechuanaland in 1951.
Various groups protested against the government decision, holding it up as evidence of British racism. In Britain, there was wide anger at the decision and calls for the resignation of Lord Salisbury, the minister responsible."*
This is a quote from the Daily Express, a right-wing populist paper with the largest national readership:
“For the nation’s good, Lord Salisbury’s first deed as Commonwealth Relations Secretary should be his last.”
In 1950 we have a paper selling to working-class conservatives supporting a mixed-race marriage, a fair indication that most of their readers wouldn’t be shocked by it.
“However, his cause was not forgotten either in London or in Africa, and a number of politicians kept the issue alive in the British Parliament, including Winston Churchill and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.”
(Seretse Khama later became the first president of Botswana. He deserves to be better known, his policies helped take it from the third-poorest country in the world to one of the more successful African nations.)
I haven’t seen the scene in question, but that much at least is fairly plausible.
That’s a highly biased and mangled article I’m afraid. For example, take this quote:
“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.”
This is what he actually said:
“It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.”
Very different to the shortened version. Lachrymatory gas is otherwise known as tear gas.
Churchill shouldn’t be whitewashed, but understanding him and the time he lived in requires a careful reading of history. The greatest failure of his government was the woeful initial response to the Bengal famine, but there are some counter-points in this piece.
One of the big differences people always noticed between the UK and the USA was that the English didn’t talk on the train talking to other passengers on a commuter service would have been noticeably odd.
Regarding conversation, the “blackness” of any passenger would have been less important than their social class. Churchill was upper class, so he would have been comfortable talking to a working class person. He was a politician, so he might have been able to talk with a middle class person, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
In the UK pubs can only open to serve alcohol during the specific hours for which they are licensed. Although nowadays a pub can apply to be licensed for just about any hours they wish, it is not so long ago that 11pm was the latest any pub in England or Wales could stay open (Scotland was more permissive). The result was that all pubs shut at the same time and in a busy town the streets would suddenly fill with the hoards in various states of intoxication.
Quite. Anyone from the Commonwealth had unrestricted right of entry to the UK until the 1960s; but up until the 1940s, travel was too expensive for more than a few, so the familiar stereotypes would most likely have been sailors and their descendants, mostly in port cities, or students from relatively well-off families (or the rare fabulously rich Indian rajahs). That said, more and more black people are being re-identified and brought to the fore in today’s social history of times much further back than commonly supposed - but still not huge numbers.
While it’s possible that the pubs stashed drunkards away for safekeeping only to release them at 11pm, the streets were more likely filled with hordes.
People sometimes find it difficult to talk to other people. By reason of class, race, gender or situation.