Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Is the BBC 'rewriting' British history? Oxford University lecturer Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda discusses" video.

  1.  @KemetledAfrica  India was not a nation but a conglomeration of independent Princely states, often at war with each other. Please provide the source of your 'New Research.'
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  2.  @tonywilliams7152  'Barbarically' in what terms, precisely? Judged by modern standards, perhaps. But, judged by the standards of the time, generally not.
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  3.  @rolandedwards2923  'Churchill was the first leader to sanction the use of Chemical Weapons.' Really? Weren't they used by both sides in WW1, or have I got that wrong? 'That is real history - do YOU want to suppress the truth?' No. I try to explain the truth to people apparently ignorant of it. Evidently you, for example.
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  4.  @RoberttAvro  Good try, but I suspect that rolandedwards is one of those sad, indoctrinated, people, who blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death. I doubt that mere facts interest him much.
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  5.  @rolandedwards2923  Oh dear. It isn't good changing a post when you are exposed as in error, is it? Actually Churchill proposed the use of gas, not against 'unarmed civilians' as your revised claim suggests, but against rebellious tribesmen on the North West Frontier or in what is now Iraq. What he actually wrote, should you be interested, was '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.' Later, he wrote to Hugh Trenchard, head of the RAF, that 'Continued use of the Royal Air Force in Iraq, might require “the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death.' A year later Churchill urged Trenchard to continue “experimental work on gas bombs, especially mustard gas, which would inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them.” Even the type of gas used in the 'M Devices' which so excited Giles Milton in the Guardian about 10 years ago, and seems to have a similar effect upon you, was actually called DM, short for Diphenylaminechloroarsine. To read some accounts in the Guardian, and later in the BBC, this comes across as a deadly creation almost on a par with Zyklon B, whereas in fact it was an unpleasant, but non-lethal, advance on tear gas. In point of fact, opposing British troops were advised that in the event of accidentally inhaling DM, “cigarette smoking would give relief." Churchill was actually proposing a humane means of suppressing uprisings or riots, and of reducing the probable level of casualties. In fact, something akin to the use of more sophisticated gases often used by police forces today. Sorry to upset you with a few facts, which I assume you will probably ignore.
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  6.  @rolandedwards2923  I have given you the actual texts of Churchill's communications. There is nothing to be sad about, little chap, as I am not wrong. By the way, there was no Royal Air Force in 1917.
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  7. Wasn't it Goebbels who said 'repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it?'
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  8. Remember the BBC's pet historian, David Olusoga, presenting a programme about Beachy Head lady, who he argued apparently came from Sub-Saharan Africa? When DNA analysis by the Crick Institute proved that she actually came from Cyprus, I don't recall Olusoga modifying his opinion.
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