17 JULY
BRITISH TREASURY HALTS RELIEF TO FAMINE STRUCK IRISH PEASANTS
[ 17 July 1846 ]
On this day in 1846, Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary of the British Treasury, on learning of the ‘very unfavourable’ reports on the potato harvest’, wrote to Sir Randolph Ralph, head of Ireland’s Relief Commission, warning him that ‘the only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring the (relief) operations to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop only makes it more necessary.’1
BRITISH COMPANY HELPS EQUIP SADDAM HUSSEIN’S MILITARY.
[ 17 July 1990 ]
Today in 1990, just two weeks prior to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the British government granted Martix Churchill, a Coventry based company, licenses for the export of machine tools to Iraq, with the knowledge that they would be used to manufacture artillery shells and medium range missiles.
FOOTNOTE
- Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849, Penguin Books, London 1962, p. 89.
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