Winston Churchill (person)

No entry on Churchill is complete without noting that (at least by today's standards) he was an insufferable bigot. He actively opposed women getting the vote¹ and authorised the use of mustard gas against Kurdish villagers, saying he could not understand people's squeamishness about using gas on uncivilised tribes². He also sent in troops to put down striking welsh miners³ and was one of colonialism's staunchest defenders.

During the May Day 2000 'riots' in central London someone painted the statue of Churchill which stands on Parliament Square with red paint dripping blood-style from his mouth, and somebody gave it a rather fetching lawn mohican. In the media furore which followed a lot of newspapers ran conveniently outraged eulogies of the man; to someone who knew a bit about him besides the fact that he led the country in war time and made some powerful speeches, all this hagiography rang hollow.

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• ¹ See eg. http://www.winstonchurchill.org/wjenniejerome.htm. He was with his mother on this, but apparently he later changed his mind when he realised how many women would vote for him. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/53819.stm quotes his reaction to seeing a woman in parliament in the 1920s: "It was as embarrassing as if she burst into my bathroom when I had nothing on with which to defend myself".
• ² See eg. http://www.iraqwar.org/chemical.htm, http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=6888&TagID=2 - it is not clear that gas was in in the end ever used in the campaign of brutal repression of Kurds (which was maintained mainly by bombing) but it is a matter of record that Churchill strongly favoured it.
• ³ See eg. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/winston_churchill.htm, and http://www.theidler.co.uk/html/frontsection/churchill.htm, which also backs up the rest of this - it seems that in the end, the police took care of the action (in which two miners died), but troops were at the ready.