2 MARCH
BRITAIN REQUESTS NAZI GERMANY TO CLAMP DOWN ON JEWISH REFUGEES
[ 2 March 1939 ]
On 12 March 1939, the Foreign Office cautioned Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, that the ‘large irregular movement from Germany of Jewish refugees, who as a rule set out without visas or any arrangements for their reception,’ was ‘a cause of great embarrassment to His Majesty’s government.’ It urged him to bring the ‘situation to the attention of appropriate German authorities’ and to request ‘them to discourage such travel on German ships.’ Henderson willingly obliged, imploring Nazi officials to ‘check unauthorized emigration’ of Jews across their borders.1
MARTIAL LAW IMPOSED ON PALESTINE’S JEWISH POPULATION
[ 2 March 1947 ]
On 2 March 1947, General Sir Alan Cunningham, the High Commissioner in Palestine, declared martial law in Tel Aviv, its surrounding suburbs and in several Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.
PREVENTING KENYAN ASIANS WITH BRITISH PASSPORTS FROM ‘FLOODING’ BRITAIN
[ 2 March 1968 ]
Immediately after midnight the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 became law. Its official aspiration was to introduce new restrictions on all Commonwealth immigrants, although it was openly acknowledged that its real raison d’etre was to prevent the arrival of thousands of Kenyan Asians with British passports who faced the prospect of forcible repatriation under president Jomo Kenyatta’s programme of ‘Africanisation.’
CHILE’S MURDEROUS TYRANT PINOCHET ALLOWED TO RETURN HOME
[ 2 March 2000 ]
On 2 March 2000, the aging Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was jubilant on discovering that he would be allowed to return to Chile following the intervention of Britain’s Home Secretary Jack Straw, despite the House of Lords ruling that he should be extradited to Spain to answer the most serious imaginable charges of torture and murder.
FOOTNOTE
- Martin Gilbert ‘British government policy towards refugees ( November 1938 – September 1939 )’ in Michael Robert Marrus (Editor) The Nazi Holocaust: Part 8: Bystanders to the Holocaust. Volume 1, Meckler, London p. 367.
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