Channel Tunnel The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns asserting that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. These early works were encountered more than a century later during the TML project. A 1907 film, "Tunnelling the English Channel" by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès, depicts King Edward VII and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a tunnel under the English Channel. In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend
Channel Tunnel against another German attack. The French did not take the idea seriously, and nothing came of Lloyd George's proposal. In the 1920s Winston Churchill was an advocate for the Channel Tunnel, using that exact nomenclature in an essay entitled "Should Strategists Veto The Tunnel?" The essay was published on 27 July 1924 in the "Weekly Dispatch", and argued vehemently against those that believed the tunnel could be used by a Continental enemy in an invasion of Britain. Churchill extolled his enthusiasm for the project again in an article for the "Daily Mail" on 12 February 1936, "Why Not A Channel