17 DECEMBER
FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIAL – JEWISH REFUGEES DROWNING IS AN ‘OPPORTUNE DISASTER’
[ 17 December 1940 ]
On 12 December 1940, the Uruguayan registered freighter Salvador struck reefs off the Turkish coast drowning 230 Jewish refugees, including over seventy children.
BLACK WORKERS ‘MENTALLY SLOW’ CLAIMS GOVERNMENT REPORT
[ 17 December 1953 ]
Today in 1953, a report by the ‘Working Party on Coloured People Seeking Employment in the United Kingdom,’ commissioned by the government, claimed that ‘coloured workers’ were failing to gain employment in part due to their ‘irresponsibility, quarrelsomeness and lack of discipline’ and in part because they were ‘slow mentally.’ It concluded that they were simply ‘not up to the standards required by British employers.’1
FOOTNOTE
- Cited in David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History, Pan Books, London, 2017, p. 500.
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