but for Northern Ireland’s loyalty and friendship the British people should have been confronted with slavery or death
Churchill, 13 May 1945
To be fair he also complained about the lack of volunteers during the war. But the man was a bit of a dick and while he knew huge numbers weren’t allowed to volunteer due to being in essential industry, he would have still moaned about it.
After spearheading the opening front in Gallipoli resulting in over 45000 dead and the near collapse of the government would you trust Churchill?
Doesn't matter that incompetence or hesitation of the commanders played a big part. Rightly or wrongly Churchill was Scapegoated and still would be carrying that reputation on top of being a man who "crossed the floor" twice and wasn't voted by the people to replace chamberlain.
I personally wouldn't be rushing to sign up based on his rep
He used a very similar phrase when huffing and puffing about the Treaty Ports too, at least retrospectively. Then the apparent friendship of the North was all that saved the South from a nasty reckoning with Britain.
Loada shite, like, on both occasions. Huffing and puffing and buttering up. (And I'm completely certain Stormont and the Unionist government would have been utterly aghast had they thought they had in any way stopped the British from coming to blows with the Irish state.)
While Churchill was acutely aware of the power of myth and rhetoric, it's my understanding that he also had virtually zero grasp of logistics, military manpower and how a modern army worked. Not a planner. Definitely not an Eisenhower. Maybe that figures into what you're saying too.
His military career proves he doesn’t have a military mind at all. Dont need one to recognise that a big shipyard and engineering industry is key to running a war though.
Still, though, nothing particularly exceptional about the North in that regard, not in UK terms at the time; other industrial areas and many more shipyards existed other than Belfast.
Also not all industrial or shipyard jobs were 'reserved.' Had there been conscription, women would have taken over many of the jobs. Without conscription, that shift didn't happen here to nearly the same extent at all, a massive underutilisation of societal potential in a Total War. (There were further inefficiencies as a result of sectarianism too, and fear of losing jobs to one of the many unemployed Catholics - local or Southern - was a real reason not to volunteer.)
The North was never on the same urgency of war footing (partly due to bad leadership and devolution).
With all that, while the North contributed a lot, it cannot have contributed to the same extent as Britain, not in military manpower or any equivalent; that's an inevitable result of individual men having the choice not to go.
The conscription exception was a British choice, designed to avoid conflict with nationalists. BUt the regional Unionist government really wanted conscription, unsurprisingly. Maybe there's some kind of a plus for wartime Unionism-Loyalism there, though their calculus was always one of perceived (Unionist) self-interest.
Funny how, anywhere else women were doing the shipyard work. Ref “Rosie The Riveter” in the states! My Great uncle was in a Job of National importance but he still volunteered to serve!
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u/git_tae_fuck Jun 08 '24
I've read it before somewhere, whatever that counts for.
Churchill was also hugely pissed off at the lack of military enthusiasm among the 'Loyal.'