1980-1989 | Backing Apartheid | Backing repressive regimes | South Africa

16 AUGUST

CROWDED TEA SHOP OBLITERATED AS RAF TARGET REBEL KURDISH CHIEF

[ 16 August 1923 ]

On 16 August 1923, the RAF conducted a surprise bombing attack on the home of the Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji in the Kurdish town of Sulaymaniyah. He was suspected of conspiring against British rule and of becoming too popular among a population who felt the British were cheating them of their independence. 

THATCHER ADMONISHED FOR COLLUDING WITH APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Bust of Trevor Huddleston in Bedford (Simon Speed via Wikimedia) and statue of Margaret Thatcher at London’s Guildhall (The Wub – CC BY-SA 4.0 – via Wikimedia) 

[ 16 August 1985 ]

Today in 1985, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston wrote a letter to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, reprimanding her for propping up apartheid in South Africa. ‘If you persist in blocking sanctions in the EEC, the Commonwealth and the UN,’ he wrote, ‘Britain will assume the role of No. 1 protector of apartheid in South Africa,’ and he added: ‘There can be no moral justification for continuing to collaborate with the apartheid system.’1

FOOTNOTE

  1. Trevor Huddleston cited in Elisabeth M. Williams, The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa, I.B. Tauris, London, 2015, p. 38.

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