1 AUGUST
ABOLITION ACT – BIGGEST PAY-OUT IN BRITISH HISTORY FOR SLAVE OWNERS
[ 1 August 1833 ]
On 1 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act finally passed the House of Lords authorising a handout of some £20 million to the slave owners. The sum would be equivalent to either £17 billion or £100 billion in 2017 terms depending on whether it is measured by changes in wages or GDP.
THOMAS COOK – VISIT NAZI BERLIN – AS PEACEFUL AND PLEASANT AS LONDON
German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons
[ 1 August 1934 ]
Today in 1934, there was comforting reassurance on life in Nazi Germany from one of Britain’s leading travel businesses. Thomas Cook and Son took out a large display advertisement in The Times announcing that ‘everyone is talking about Germany today – speculating, wondering and in many cases exaggerating. Too many people confuse political upheavals with interference to the normal life of the community, and would doubtless be pleasantly surprised to find that life in Berlin is as peaceful and pleasant as it is in London.’1 The same day as the advert was published, 46 Berliners were sent to Bernau concentration camp merely for marking the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War by distributing pacifist leaflets in the city.2 Thomas Cook, however, appeared determined to play down the regime’s brutal repression through its propaganda of a ‘peaceful and pleasant’ Berlin so it could continue to profit from one of its most important holiday markets.
THE TIMES – NASSER MUST BE STOPPED OR OTHERS WILL ALSO DEFY US.
Photo – US Federal Government via Wikimedia Commons.
[ 1 August 1956 ]
On 1 August 1956, The Times ran a leader insisting that even if Egyptian president Nasser might be legally justified in taking back the Suez canal, his action must be opposed because it was a dangerous precedent which might lead other countries in the region to act in the interests of their own populations, thereby threatening British and Western hegemony. ‘If Nasser is allowed to get away with his coup,’ warned the newspaper, ‘all the British and other Western interests in the Middle East will crumble. Quibbling whether or not [Nasser] was ‘legally entitled” to make the grab will delight the finicky and comfort the faint hearted but entirely misses the issues.’3
FOOTNOTES
- ‘Germany’s News,’ Thomas Cook and Sons Ltd. display advertisement in The Times, 1 August 1934 p. 17.
- ‘German Workmen Executed,’ The Times, 2 August 1933 p. 10.
- The Times, 1 August 1956 cited in Scott Lucas (Editor), Britain and Suez: The Lion’s Last Roar, Manchester University Press, Manchester and London, 1993, p. 53.
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