1900-1919 | Racism

30 OCTOBER

LLOYD GEORGE SCORNS ROLE OF BLACK SOLDIERS AND ‘A FEW NIGGER POLICEMEN’

French prime minister Georges Clemenceau with David Lloyd George. Library of Congress via Wikimedia.
French prime minister Georges Clemenceau with David Lloyd George (right).
Library of Congress via Wikimedia.

[ 30 October 1918 ]

On 30 October 1918, during the last days of the First World War, Prime Minister David Lloyd George met French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, at Versailles to discuss among other pressing issues, a proposed armistice with Turkey. Clemenceau suspected that Lloyd George was attempting to unilaterally negotiate peace terms so that Britain could win a lion’s share of the post war territorial spoils. However, when he protested the lack of French participation in the negotiations, he touched a raw nerve.  According to the official minutes of the meeting, which Lloyd George proudly cited in his memoirs, the British prime minister sharply rebuked Clemenceau, contending that:

‘Except for Britain no one had contributed anything more than a handful of black troops to the expedition in Palestine… The British now had 500,000 men on Turkish soil… The other governments had only put in a few nigger policemen to see that we did not steal the Holy Sepulchre ! When, however, it came to an armistice all this fuss was made.’1

FOOTNOTE

  1. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 1918, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1937, pp. 279-180.

Please feel welcome to post comments below.  If you have any questions please email alisdare@gmail.com

© 2020 Alisdare Hickson All rights reserved

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *