Channel 4 has been branded a “disgrace” for a programme suggesting that Winston Churchill oversaw an apartheid system in Britain.

       The broadcaster has produced the documentary Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid, which examines the life of American soldiers in the UK during the Second World War.

       The documentary looked at how the US Army’s racial segregation rules were applied in Britain, which had no such rules.

       The title of the programme, fronted by the novelist Nadifa Mohamed, has provoked criticism for the suggestion that Churchill supported racial segregation.

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       Baron Roberts of Belgravia, the historian and author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, told The Telegraph: “It’s a total disgrace to give a headline to a show that is in direct contravention to the facts.

       “The person who chose the headline either knew that [it was false] and was being deliberately dishonest, or did not and was just assuming that Churchill must have been racist in this matter because that’s what the liberal zeitgeist says he would have been.

       “For Channel 4 to have chosen a novelist rather than an historian to present the show is just another example of their sneering disregard for historical accuracy.”

       He added: “Amongst the other failures of the last 14 years of Tory rule was its cowardice over the long-overdue privatisation of Channel 4.”

       Lord Roberts said that the facts of Churchill’s position on segregation were made clear in a war cabinet meeting of Oct 13 1942, which concluded that the US Army “must not expect our authorities, civil or military, to assist them in enforcing a policy of segregation”.

       It was set out that admission to canteens, pubs, theatres, cinemas and other public spaces would not be restricted by race.

       The Channel 4 programme sets out to investigate the impact of the US Army’s racial segregation policies in the UK.

       Ms Mohamed, the presenter, finds that the British public and British government did not support racial segregation, and the programme highlights occasions when black US military personnel suffered at the hands of their own side.

       The programme was produced by Red Bicycle, whose other titles for Channel 4 included Britain’s Human Zoos, billed as a “shocking exploration of the stories of the black and brown people brought to Victorian Britain – and exploited for popular entertainment”.

       The broadcaster has created a number of racially themed shows in recent times, including Defiance, the story of Asian immigrants facing the National Front, and a show following the presenter Ade Adepitan’s travels to a white-only town in South Africa.

       Churchill came under increased scrutiny following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, and his statue on Parliament Square has been vandalised multiple times.

       Critics allege that he held racist views, and others have levelled the highly contested accusation that he played a part in the Bengal famine, which cost as many as several million lives in wartime India.

       Channel 4 and Red Bicycle have been contacted for comment.