1 FEBRUARY

THE DAILY EXPRESS URGES HITLER TO USE ‘EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES’

[ 1 February 1933 ]

On 1 February 1933, just days after Hitler was elected to power in Germany, the Daily Express urged the nascent Nazi regime to take ruthless action to tackle the supposed threat from Russian backed communists; informing its readers that ‘the communist wave of terror has begun, and Moscow’s orders that disturbances are to be organized all over the country (in response to Hitler’s election) have already been carried out.’ The newspaper warned that ‘extraordinary measures will have to be taken by the government.’ Needless to say, the Nazis needed little encouragement and within months they had detained thousands in concentration camps.¹

MINISTERS AVOID DISCUSSING VIETNAMESE VICTIMS OF AMERICAN BOMBING

[ 1 February 1967 ]

On 1 February 1967, in an internal memorandum, British Foreign Office official Denis Murray noted that ‘on the political level I must stress that ministers are anxious to engage as little as possible in the House of Commons in discussions of casualties or damage in North Vietnam caused by American bombing; since to do so would immediately open the way for a general attack on US policy and our support for it.’²

TONY BLAIR PRAISES TYRANT MUBARAK AS ‘IMMENSELY COURAGEOUS’

[ 1 February 2011 ]

Today in 2011, during an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, former prime minister Tony Blair described the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was facing unprecedented protests that would soon topple his regime, as ‘immensely courageous and a force for good.’³ Blair also warned against what he saw as the danger of holding early elections in case the Muslim Brotherhood, a moderate Islamist party which was sometimes equivocal in backing Western interests in the region, might win a majority of the seats.

FOOTNOTES

1. ‘Red Wave of Terror – Moscow’s Orders,’ the Daily Express, 1 February 1933 p. 2. The same report was also carried under the heading ‘Nazi Journalist Murdered’ in the Gloucestershire Echo, 1 February 1933, p. 1.
2. Mark Curtis: Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, Vintage, London, 2004, p. 236.
3. Chris McGreal, ‘Tony Blair: Mubarak is immensely courageous and a force for good,’ The Guardian, 2 February 2011, accessed online at url https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/02/tony-blair-mubarak-courageous-force-for-good-egypt

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