11 FEBRUARY

BRITISH CAPTAIN TORTURES AND EXECUTES MAU MAU SUSPECTS At around 6 pm on 14 June 1953, Captain Gerald Griffiths began to interrogate two forestry workers suspected of taking up arms against British rule in Kenya. THE UK BLOCKS A U.N. INITIATIVE TO AVERT CONFLICT ESCALATION AND FAMINE IN YEMEN [ 14 June 2018 ] On…

FOREIGN OFFICE WARNED NOT TO DISCLOSE DATA WHICH MIGHT BE USED AGAINST THE UK. [ 7 July 1975 ] On this day in 1975, John Hickman, an official at the British embassy in Dublin, wrote to Bill Harding at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, warning him that statistics on the relative number of Catholics and…

PINOCHET CAN’T BE PROSECUTED FOR WHAT HE DID AS HEAD OF STATE On this day in 1998, Britain’s High Court cleared the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, responsible for the disappearance, torture and murder of thousands, on the bizarre grounds that he was head of state when he committed the crimes. Labour MP Tony Benn noted…

PRIME MINISTER – IRISH TREACHERY MEANS THEY MUST STARVE [ 13 February 1849 ] On 13 February 1849, Prime Minister Lord John Russel wrote to the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, advising him to ‘leave things to the operation of natural courses.’ He was referring to several letters from the Earl appealing for…

CHURCHILL ADVOCATES A NUCLEAR STRIKE AGAINST MOSCOW. On 8 August 1946, over lunch with his physician Lord Moran at Chartwell, Winston Churchill enthusiastically answered Moran’s question regarding how a nuclear war might be waged against the Soviet Union.  “We ought not to wait until Russia is ready,” Churchill explained, adding “America knows that fifty-two per…

REFUGEE DEPORTED BACK TO AFGHANISTAN TO BE EXECUTED BY THE TALIBAN [ 14 September 2018 ] On this day in 2018 reports emerged confirming that a 47 year old Afghan father of four who had previously fled to Britain 16 years earlier, had been “shot dead by the Taliban” after he had been deported back…