Secret History: Charley's War, Liverpool Lecture Part 2

Morel reveals the Secret Diplomacy that Sir Grey used to bring about the conflict. It’s frighteningly similar to how Blair drew Britain into invading Iraq.

Welcome to my Secret History of Comics: my new book serialised on Substack. The first section was on Marshal Law: now it’s all about Charley’s War.

If you’re joining me for the first time, you can read the intro to the Secret History here, it’s available for everyone, and so is the intro to Charley’s War.

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This is part two of the lecture I delivered at the University of Liverpool in 2014. If you missed it, check out part one.

Sir Edward Grey is at the heart of the State spin. We HAVE to believe that this man who led Britain to war is a model of virtue. If we found out otherwise, it’s all over.  Revisionism is finished. 

That’s why he’s endlessly drummed into us, starting with his famous lamps going out quote. The State even wanted us all to switch our lights off to commemorate the start of the War. 

The lights need to go on. 

The Spin Doctors constantly tell us he was a tragic, gentle, P.G. Wodehouse-style Edwardian gentlemen, who when he wasn’t fishing or bird watching, was a “lover of truth”. He had a sense of fair play, and, at the prospect of war, burst into tears at the London Zoo – according to a surprisingly compassionate Jeremy Paxman. 

It’s pure spin.    

In fact Grey was a deceitful British Machiavelli who also supported the South African war, which resulted in the deaths of 26,000 women and children in British concentration camps.