"Darkest Hour"? We need "Churchill's Darkest Moments".

Is there a myth over the Popularity amongst the general public of Winston Churchill in his lifetime?

He may have been voted the Greatest Britain but  that was in part to the fact that the case for him was made by the  popular Labour MP Mo Mowlam who made the case for him on the BBC series and glossed over his darkest moments.

Wales online point out that his part in the The Tonypandy Riots of 1910 and the Llanelli Riots of 1911 coincided with his time as Home Secretary and stories have been passed on of his alleged readiness to dispatch troops against workers and left a legacy of hate against th eman.
Llanelli Labour AM Lee Waters recalls the depth of animosity.
He said: 

“I’d a very sweet old grandmother... The only person she would swear about was Churchill.
“She’d refer to him as a ‘b******’. She literally never said a bad word about anybody, not that I can remember, and she certainly never used bad language...
“Her father, who’d been involved in the general strike, clearly took a very dim of Churchill and I think that was typical of Welsh working class opinion.”

Whilst there is an  argument that Churchill may  not be entirely in the wrong over Tonypandy even claiming part ofhis action was to mitigate the actions of the then Chief Constable  Captain Lindsay who was  unstable and may be the real villain of the piece.

However the Morning Star  has pointed out there were many reasons why Churchill should not have been chosen the Greatest Briton,

As historian Richard Toye has shown in his book, Churchill’s Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (2010), they didn’t.

Many of Churchill’s colleagues saw him at the more extreme end of racist and imperialist ideology, referring to him as a “Victorian” because of his outdated views.

Prime minister Stanley Baldwin was warned by Cabinet colleagues not to appoint him and his doctor Lord Moran said of his approach to Chinese and Indians: “Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin.”

It should be no surprise then that he was vehemently opposed to Indian independence, declaring that Gandhi “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new viceroy seated on its back. Gandhi-ism and everything it stands for will have to be [...] crushed.”

He would later remark: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

The Morning Star continues  

It also warrants noting here his advocacy for the use of chemical weapons to repress other peoples under Britain’s imperial rule.
When Iraqis and Kurds revolted against British rule in northern Iraq in 1920, Churchill, then secretary of state at the War Office, said:

 “I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes. It would spread a lively terror.”

Of course, you will detect none of this side of Churchill from watching the Darkest Hour because, as usual, he is portrayed as a flawed but lovable rogue who endeavoured virtuously to save democracy and the free world from the jaws of fascism. 

The problem with this cliched narrative, however, is that, contrary to virtually every mainstream account, Churchill was in fact explicitly and openly supportive of fascism prior to the second world war, notably in Italy.

He wrote lovingly to Mussolini:

 “What a man! I have lost my heart! […] Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world […] If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely.”
As late as 1935 he wrote affectionately of Hitler: “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

Like the US government and much of the British Establishment at the time, including the royal family and the intelligence services, Churchill enthusiastically favoured fascism as a bulwark against Bolshevism and only became overtly anti-fascist when German expansionary ambitions directly threatened the empire.
None of this is an exaggeration. You can, as is nowadays fashionable to say, “fact-check” it all. And this is to illustrate but a fraction of Churchill’s odiousness.
The truth is that, behind the cult-like worship and glorification of him that plagues the Anglosphere, manifested in films like Darkest Hour, Churchill was in reality a horrid man who, if around today, would most certainly be ridiculed and reviled by decent-minded folk for the hideously archaic views he possessed.

Indeed even in 1945 there is plenty of evidence that Churchill did not receive total adoration   .

It may be claimed that Labour's  1945  landslide victory as a reaction against the Tories rather than Churchill himself in his own constituency of Woodford  Labour and the Liberals did not put up a candidate.

He was however challenged by an Alexander Hancock, a obscure self-styled "philosophical Communist," polled more than 10,000 votes  against Churchill.

General Election 1945: Woodford

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Conservative	Winston Churchill	27,688	72.53	N/A
	Independent	Alexander Hancock	10,488	27.47	N/A
Majority			17,200	45.05	N/A
Turnout			38,176	65.53	N/A
	Conservative win

The fact that over 10,000 people voted against Churchill may indicate the general mood amongst many voters, who had negative views against Churchill.

I don't think we will see any Bafta or Oscar nominations for an actor portraying  as the Imperialist, Racist and Union crushing man he really was . but a more factual film of his life would be welcome.