18 NOVEMBER

THE TIMES – JAMAICAN BLACKS ‘SPOILT CHILDREN’ – INDULGED IN ‘DRUNKEN DREAM OF NEGRO MASTERY’

[ 18 November 1865 ]

On 18 November 1865, an editorial in The Times, declared Jamaican blacks were ‘our spoilt children’ who had dared to indulge in a ‘drunken dream of negro mastery.’ This followed two days of rioting the previous month provoked by a harsh court verdict against a black farmer and the shooting dead of seven protesters. During the riot and the subsequent campaign of retribution by the British governor, eighteen white settlers and up to a thousand black Jamaicans were killed. The Times noted how the plantation owners had warned that ‘the negro was incurably idle, intractable, insolent, that he needed a strong master, and was incapable of either self-control or gentle management’ and now it argued their former slave masters had been proved correct. A number of black workers, led by a baptist deacon, Paul Bogle, had dared to protest for their rights and refused to be silenced by the island governor’s use of military force.¹ Bogle was one of 353 black Jamaicans who was hung following summary court martials [ see 24 October 1865 ].

RAF STARTS KENYA BOMBING CAMPAIGN – SIX MILLION BOMBS DROPPED

[ 18 November 1953 ]

On 18 November 1953, the Royal Air Force commenced a massive carpet bombing operation against Mau Mau insurgents opposed to British rule in Kenya.

UK FAILS TO INVESTIGATE AFTER DEATH SQUAD ALLEGATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN

[ 18 November 2007 ]

In the early hours of 18 November 2007, eighteen civilians were killed when Afghan and coalition special forces, possibly American, landed by helicopter in the village of Toube in Helmand province, an area where British forces held responsibility for law enforcement.

FOOTNOTE

1. Editorial, The Times, 18 November 1865, p8, issue 25346 accessed online at The Times Digital Archives on 18 November 2018.

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