Winston Churchill spoke of the need to introduce compulsory labour camps for “mental defectives” in the House of Commons in February 1911. In May 1912, a Private Members’ Bill entitled the “Feeble-Minded Control Bill” was introduced in the House of Commons… It rejected sterilisation of the “feeble-minded”, but had provision for registration and segregation.
The bill was withdrawn, but a government bill introduced on 10 June 1912 replaced it, which would become the Mental Deficiency Act 1913.
At the height of operation of the Mental Deficiency Act, 65,000 people were placed in “colonies” or in other institutional settings. The act remained in effect until it was repealed by the Mental Health Act 1959.
The pages of Winston Churchill’s biography is a chapter short. Written by his son Randolph the sibling was too ashamed to go into any detail about the letter his father wrote to British statesman H.H. Asquith.
Behind the parotic speeches of fighting them on the beaches Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill fought another battle to keep the vulnerable out of sight hidden in the dunes.
In December 1910 the British PM sent a letter to Asquith stating: “The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate.”
When Churchill moved to the Liberal benches in 1904 he tried to push through tougher legislations for the “feeble minded” after researching a controversial act which was being carried out in Indiana.
The Eugenics Law made it compulsory for criminals and the mentally unfit to be sterilised, they were also not given the right to marry. Reading the act in a book written by Dr. H.C.Sharp Churchill asked the Home Office to put the laws into practice on these shores for the “Feeble-Minded” and research the legal requirements so he could introduce the sterilisation process.
His proposed actions were challenged by Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Horation Donkin who called the laws “The outcome of an arrogation of scientific knowledge by those who had no claim to it….It is a monument of ignorance and hopeless mental confusion.”
Churchill wasn’t one to back down. In 1910 he told the Government Britain’s 120,000 “feeble-minded “people should be “segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations.” Angered his views on sterilisation had been aborted the leader argued the “feeble-minded” should be segregated from the opposite sex.
Defending his case Churchill said sterilising would come as a much cheaper cost opposed to sending the “feeble minded” to colonies and surgery would allow them “to live freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others.”
Policies like these were in no way unique or extreme for the age. Eugenics was highly fashionable among the sensible educated people who made up the ruling class.
In my country anyone deemed r*tarded, which could be anything from genuine developmental disorders to just being too rowdy, or too promiscuous if you were a woman, could be shipped off to island camps where they would receive no education and do menial labour until the doctors determined they had improved enough to be let back out in society. For many agreeing to “voluntary” sterilisation was the only way to get away from the island. More severely mentally disabled people were sent to asylums where nobody bothered asking for consent.
This system was considered highly progressive and would draw positive attention from researchers and journalists all over the world.
Dr. Horatio Donkin
:fidel-wut: lmao
[Churchill’s] proposed actions were challenged by Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Horation Donkin.
Missed opportunity to say Dr. Donkin dunked on Churchill
Once again the thing Churchill disliked about Nazi Germany was the “Germany” part
And not even that, really. He thought it sucked they were fighting each other
That’s the most British thing I’ve seen all day
Next time someone tries to tell you Churchill was a good guy hit em
with this (cw: eugenics, ableism)And if anyone tries to pull the “standards of his time” BS, you can point out that his contemporary G.K. Chesterton wrote an entire book dunking on that law, Eugenics and Other Evils
When Churchill moved to the Liberal benches in 1904 he tried to push through tougher legislations for the “feeble minded” after researching a controversial act which was being carried out in Indiana.
:visible-disgust:
Just when you thought you found a piece about another country solely being awful, America runs by the camera throwing up the devil horns before running away
Definitely a monster It is still funny to quote him roasting the collective western powers over the Munich Agreement appeasing Hitler by sacrificing thousands/millions in Czechoslovakia whenever reddit tries to whataboutism the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
In May 1912, a Private Members’ Bill entitled the “Feeble-Minded Control Bill” was introduced in the House of Commons… It rejected sterilisation of the “feeble-minded”, but had provision for registration and segregation.
Imagine being a conservative and thinking anyone else is feeble minded.
The Crimes of Winston Churchill
Some choice quotes from the page:
“I’d rather see them have a good civil war”. – Churchill wishing partition on India
“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilized tribes… it would spread a lively terror.” – Churchill on the use of gas in the Middle East and India
“100,000 removed Britons should be forcibly sterilised/others put in labour camps to halt decline of British race”. He also went on to suggest that “for tramps and wastrels there ought to be proper labour colonies where they could be sent”.
Moral Imbeciles. Displaying mental weakness coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities, and on whom punishment has little or no deterrent effect.
That definition is certainly precise and not at all open to abusive interpretation to repress political dissidents (and probably women).
