51st highland division churchill

2. https://www.pressreader.com/ uk/the-scottish-mail-on-sunna/20130324/282106339089564. The promotion of this fake history is an interesting study. It included not only the headline, but the body of the Daily Express article from 25 March 2013. The narrative has developed from one of “oppression of the workers by capitalists” into one of an “English invasion.” The reality is that the army was called in by the city’s own authorities; the army decided to use mainly Scottish troops; in such situations the army decides what force it needs and, fearing perhaps a re-run of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, took six tanks along, which were not used. The story was picked up and repeated in the Daily Express the next day. General Rommel accepted the surrender of the 51st Highland Division, at Saint-Valéry-en-Caux. Emanuel Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice (London: Odhams, 1955); I’ve Lived Through It All (London: Gollancz, 1973); Lead with the Left (London: Cassel, 1981); Shinwell Talking (London: Quiller Press, 1984). It appears to have little connection to the real man in the context of the times he lived through. St. Valery was forgotten about, an embarrassment. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. Perhaps his political objectives were even more important. Churchill thought it needed ‘strengthening’ with some regular units, so the 1st Battalion took the place of the 6th, which went to the 4th Division. More than 10,000 members of the Division were driven into five years of captivity in prison camps. The army was not “sent to Glasgow” by Churchill, nor even by the government, but was called in by the Sheriff of Lanarkshire as “military aid to the civil power”; he had previously checked that troops would be available. The soldiers of the 51st (Highland) Division paid a heavy price with more than 10,000 taken prisoner at St. Valéry. There was no support from the RAF. It is here that the most blatant rewriting of reality, past and present, is being carried out. And rightly so. The Argyll and Sutherland battalions in particular suffered heavy casualties. On 28th March they were deployed into the defensive line relieving the French 21st Division between Bailleul and Armentiéres. But … On social media, their rhetoric can cross the line into something like hate speech. It could be argued that the Highland Division was just unlucky. In fact, the War Cabinet had been reminded on the previous day, 30 January, by the commander of the army in the UK, that the government had no legal powers to send troops onto the streets of a British city, unless martial law was declared which in this case, it was not.5. Jock Morrison. The narrative veers back and forth between “sacrifice” and “abandonment”; the latter is more problematic because it links directly to the frequently made but false assertion that no attempt was made to evacuate the men from St. Valéry. Ill-equipped and out-gunned, they fought with outstanding discipline and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. 5. After Dunkirk, Churchill abandoned the Highlanders at St. Valery, This article was originally published in June, 2015. Led by General Victor … Whatever the reasons for the calamity at St. Valery, Fortune's Highland Division should be remembered with pride. “Truth” has become no more than “what I want to you to believe.”. Churchill made a calculated decision to keep the 51st in the line with the French, as part of his efforts to keep them in the fight. edu/35272980/The_birth_and_development_of_a_factoid_2013_17_ the_invention_of_history_in_the_ Scottish_independence_debate. But after a victorious war, the British people weren't interested in defeats and surrenders. Fortune recommended an immediate retreat to Le Havre. The Highland Division retreated over the River Bresle and re-grouped. “Another successful escapee was Corporal Malcolm Straughan who, by a twist of fate, was a member of the reformed 51st Highland Division, … Gordon J. Barclay, If Hitler Comes: Preparing for Invasion, Scotland 1940 (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2013). On 12 June 1940, more than a week after the last British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender to General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division at St Valery-en-Caux. Rank-and-file soldiers were forced into back-breaking labour in mines, quarries and factories. The 51st Highland Division had originally been the 1st Highland Territorial Division when it was raised at the general creation of the Territorial Force in 1908. Brigadier Charles S Grant said the 51st Highland Division was put under French command to bolster the country's defence against German forces. On June, 12, 1940, days after the successful mass evacuations at Dunkirk, thousands of British troops remained on continental Europe under French command, most of them from the 51st Highland Division. He was held as a prisoner of war until he escaped the Nazis in 1945. I started challenging the mythology as soon as I discovered it, but it continues to appear frequently, even now. In fact, most of the force was Scots. The Luftwaffe had total command of the skies. The International Churchill Society expands with two new chapters in the US. The observant reader will have noticed the flaw: how could sailors on, at the latest, 4 June 1940 threaten to mutiny about an event that would not happen until 11 June? The 51st Highland Division was a sector of the British Army which fought in the First world War from 1915 to 1918. It has also been alleged that during World War II, Churchill was ready to surrender Scotland to Nazi forces to defend the south of England. A desperate, last-minute plan to evacuate the Highlanders from St. Valery, a small fishing port, bound on either side by high cliffs, proved to be forlorn. A Scottish veterans’ charity posts a version of the “abandoned” myth that places personal blame on Churchill and airbrushes non-Scots from history. Others descend to cruder levels: an office-bearer in an organisation affiliated to the Scottish National Party has recently promoted a newly popular and peculiarly unpleasant variant of the mythology, that Scots and Irish troops were selectively abandoned on the beach at Dunkirk, in favour of Englishmen. In particular, there are what I have termed the four twentieth-century “military myths,” and it will perhaps come as no surprise to the reader that Churchill features in three of them. After a week of further retreat, with the French close to surrender and the collapse of its armies evident to all, Fortune was finally given permission to evacuate his Division. At 10 p.m. on 25 March a scan of the Daily Express article was posted on the Facebook page for “Yes to an Independent Scotland” (see image above). Churchill and Scottish Mythologies of Grievance. The evacuation rescued 300,000 fighting men. See Gordon J. Barclay, “‘Duties in Aid of the Civil Power’: The Deployment of the Army to Glasgow, 31 January to 17 February 1919,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies (2018), 38.2, pp. The 51 st (Highland) Division under Major-General Victor Fortune formed part of the British Expeditionary Force's GHQ reserve. If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can contact IPSO here, By Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local services. Three years later, I was passing long days beside my wife’s hospital bed revising that article, and, while searching for recent occurrences of the first myth, I came upon many social media posts about two others.4 These were, first, that in 1919 “Churchill sent English troops and tanks to George Square, Glasgow to crush a strike,” and, second, that in June 1940, after the end of the Dunkirk evacuation, Churchill “abandoned” or “sacrificed” the men of the 51st Highland Division at St. Valéry-en-Caux “because they were Scots and expendable.”, The first of these two is not as mythological as the “abandon Scotland” story, in that it is, to some extent, based on real events, but the “Battle of George Square” is perhaps the most mythologised event in twentieth-century Scottish history. Lance Coporal Colin Chisholm was captured at St Valery when attached to the 51st Highland Brigade. The division was raised in 1908, upon the creation of the Territorial Force, as the Highland Division and later 51st (Highland) Division from 1915. Much is being made of the 75th anniversary of the Dunkirk 'Miracle'. It was decided that British formations would be rotated to the French Army, into positions in advance of the Maginot Line, just east of the border with Luxembourg. Major General V M Fortune, GOC [General Commanding Officer] 51st Highland Division (right), with General Major Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valéry-en-Caux after the surrender of the 51st Division to Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division 12 June 1940 The shocking fragility of the French forces, the crass ineptness of its senior leadership, were only fully exposed after the disaster. 6. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. The Argyll and Sutherland battalions in particular suffered heavy casualties. Thus, if there were troops and tanks in Glasgow, logically it follows that they must have been “sent… to disperse protestors in George Square,” with “orders to shoot to kill,” resulting in “hundreds” dead. 161–63. The myth that “Churchill persuaded the Cabinet that troops, machine guns, and tanks should be deployed” seems to have been invented by the Labour politician (and a leader of the Forty Hours Strike) Emanuel Shinwell in his 1973 memoirs I’ve Lived Through It All. They would probably have held out for even longer at St. Valery had the French around them not hoisted the white flag. WINSTON Churchill was undoubtedly a great war leader ("Myth of reckless egoist who was last of the imperialists", The Herald, January 21, and Letters, January 22 & 23). First, it is clear from their basic errors of fact that the majority of the people repeating these myths, especially on social media, have almost no knowledge of the historical events to which they supposedly refer. German remote-controlled tracked vehicle used to deliver a demolition charge, captured by 51st Highland Division troops at Benouville, 27 June 1944. Unfortunately, this problematic post was put up on the Facebook page of a Scottish veterans’ charity in May 2019. Copyright © 2021 International Churchill Society. On 12 June 1940, more than a week after the last British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender to General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division at St Valery-en-Caux. On 12 June 1940, more than a week after the last British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender to General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division at St Valery-en-Caux. Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. In April, the 51st were sent to the Maginot Line, along the French-German border, under the … We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments. Dr. Gordon J. Barclay is an archaeologist and historian. Oddly, at both extremes, these positions can often be characterised as “nationalistic.” In much of this rhetoric, “Churchill” often seems merely to be a personification of Britain, England, or the Empire for those whose nationalism either idolises or denigrates what they stand or stood for. But at least we can honour their memory. The commonly employed narrative of grievance about the 51st is not, however, a subtle consideration of Churchill’s realpolitik, but a series of claims that the 51st was treated worse because they were Scots and therefore expendable. The real, complex, and historically important Churchill is increasingly disappearing behind crudely mythologised versions erected by those who wish to defend a political position or a series of values, and those who wish to attack them. The ancillary force sent with the 51st also contained three English infantry battalions.7. It also enabled a morale-boosting, positive spin on what had been a military debacle. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . Patrick Watt, “Manpower, Myth and Memory: Analysing Scotland’s Military Contribution to the Great War,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 39.1, pp. A comment under an article in the nationalist newspaper the National during the controversies about Churchill’s reputation, early in 2019. The lucky ones who lived are still angry about how they were 'forgotten' to fulfil Churchill's political goals. Was that a useless “sacrifice”? Its leader, General Fortune, knew that. The mythology continues to be used as the touchstone of English, Tory, or Westminster oppression, whenever a suitable (or not so suitable) occasion arises. His Division was outnumbered and outgunned in every aspect, particularly tanks. The evacuation of ten thousand men from there, a major international port, would have been a relatively simple matter. The British Expeditionary Force, they argued, was a half-hearted effort and, at the first opportunity, it had packed up and run off home. Gott had been killed. The rest retreated towards St. Valéry-en-Caux. The tamer version of this kind of social media post merely states, for example, “Churchill abandoned the fighting Scots of the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division June 1940.” This not only particularises the loss of Scottish troops by ignoring the shared fate of non-Scots, but also promotes the myth of “abandonment,” and implies some sort of deliberate act of malice by Churchill. Second, I have been struck by the ways in which people are willing to invent new “facts” or fabricate circumstantial detail to support their own version. An almost completely mythical version of the event, English troops, tanks in the square and all, continues to appear in Scottish school textbooks. 291–93, and Peter Scott, In the Eye of the Storm (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), pp. Historical grievances are being resurrected, exaggerated, or just invented. Read More. Most of all, we should remember the valour of the Fighting 51st in France. Either way, for military or political reasons, Churchill abandoned the Highlanders. Three days before the article was published, the devolved Scottish Government had announced that the referendum on Scottish independence would be held in September 2014. 7. The most strikingly illogical story that I have come across is that Scottish sailors serving on ships during the Dunkirk evacuation were close to mutiny when the news reached them that the 51st was being “abandoned” at St. Valéry. Early doubts about the division's performance earned it the nickname of "Harper's Duds" after the name of its commander, Major-General George Harper. The problem was, that the article named me and my then about-to-be-published book on the anti-invasion defences of Scotland during the Second World War as the source of this “fact.”3 The book and my research suggest no such thing: the myth was created by assigning words to people who did not say them, quoting things from one context as though they were from another, and leaving out much that undermined the story. 8. All of the units involved from both operations were part of the 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. 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