10 NOVEMBER

CHURCHILL VOWS TO PREVENT THE DISSOLUTION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

[ 10 November 1942 ]

Today in 1942, in a well prepared speech at the Lord Mayor’s luncheon at the Mansion House, Winston Churchill informed his elite audience that he ‘did not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire.’  The reassurance was well received by the assembled politicians and business leaders. Even the left leaning Daily Mirror, reporting the speech under a front page headline of ‘We mean to hold the Empire,’ declared that ‘the statement was greeted with thunderous applause,’ while more typically the Western Morning News lauded his commitment to maintaining Britain’s imperial hegemony, insisting that Winston Churchill ‘shames the apologists by exulting in the achievements of the Empire builders.’¹

BRITISH TROOPS KILL 10,000 INDONESIANS IN BATTLE TO REASSERT DUTCH COLONIAL RULE.

[ 10 November 1945 ]

On 10 November 1945, 24,000 British troops began a large scale assault on the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where nationalist forces, equipped with weapons they had seized from Japanese troops, were determined to defend their newly acquired independence.

HIGH COURT – GOVERNMENT ILLEGALLY LINKED FOREIGN AID TO ARMS SALES

[ 10 November 1994 ]

Today in 1994, the High Court ruled that the British Government had acted illegally in linking a huge aid package of £234 million for the Pergau Dam in Malaysia to an even bigger arms sale of £1.3 billion to the country. 

FOOTNOTES

1. ‘We Mean to Hold the Empire,’ The Daily Mirror, 11 November 1942, p. 1 and p. 4 and ‘Remembrance’, The Western Morning News, 11 November 1942, p. 2.

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