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perhaps, be explained by an examination of what actually happened at Tonypandy in 1910. As the general election drew close in early 1950, the Conservative party correctly anticipated that Labour would harp on the prevalent image of Churchill as the long-time enemy of the miners. In preparation for the onslaught, all Conservative candidates and agents in Wales were issued with a summary of the 'South Wales Miners Dispute, 1910', and were given copious quotations from Churchill's statements at the time. The document asserted that Churchill had stopped the troops and replaced them with Metropolitan Police, 'and then allowed the troops to be drafted into the area as a reserve to the police, but they were never used'.3 Churchill himself responded with characteristic pugnacity to the expected accusations. He went out of his way to refer to the Tonypandy controversy in a speech at Ninian Park, Cardiff, in February 1950, effectively repeating what his letter to the Lord Mayor had said. Churchill claimed that he had made an 'unprecedented intervention' in stopping the troops, albeit temporarily, and replacing them with policemen. He went on: 'The troops were kept in the background and all contact with the rioters was made by our trusted and unarmed London police, who charged not with rifles and bayonets, but with their rolled-up mackintoshes. Thus all bloodshed, except perhaps some from the nose, was averted.' This led lorrie Thomas, Labour candidate for Rhondda West, to issue a blistering manifesto entitled Troops in Tonypandy, which suggested that Churchill was troubled by his conscience because of the 'part HE played in requesting the use of military forces'.4 By this time the folk-history of the Rhondda tended to depict Churchill as the villain who had sent troops to Tonypandy to crush the legitimate aspirations of the miners in 1910. Professor David Smith recalls that, as a young man growing up in the Rhondda in the 1950s, he witnessed the unbridled hostility of a cinema audience when Churchill's face appeared on the screen.5 Before long the charge and counter-charge against Churchill and the Tonypandy riots became a matter for historiographical debate. Sir Alan Herbert in The Spectator (28 June 1963) endeavoured to absolve Churchill 3 Memorandum on the 'South Wales Miners Dispute, 1910'. Enclosure with letter from Viola Price to J. P. L. Thomas, MP, 25 January 1950, Conservative Party Archives (Bodleian Library, CC0/2/1/16). Western Mail, 9 February 1950; typescript copy of the manifesto kindly supplied by David Maddox. In addition to Iorrie Thomas, other Labour figures took up the cudgels against Churchill, especially Ness Edwards, each accusing the other of telling lies. It has been suggested that Churchill's election campaign suffered adversely as a result of the controversy. 5 Dai Smith, Wales! Wales? (Allen & Unwin, 1984), p. 56.