In 1920, a year after General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on an unarmed crowd in the Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar in the Punjab, Secretary for War Winston Churchill rose in the Commons to denounce the entire episode. He labelled it monstrous, and dismissed out of hand all attempts to excuse or diminish the horror of it.

Churchill did not hesitate to describe the action as an act of terrorism. Some had justified it on the grounds that Communist agitators may have been among the crowd; yet it was government by terror, said Churchill, that made Communism itself so repugnant, and such a policy must play no part in British politics.

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