28 FEBRUARY

GEORGE VI GLAD JEWISH REFUGEES PREVENTED FROM LEAVING THEIR COUNTRIES

[ 28 February 1939 ]

Today, King George VI is looked back on sympathetically, particularly in the wake of the acclaimed film ‘The King’s speech,’ which has immortalized his personal struggle with stuttering. Few who watch it might suspect that ‘Bertie,’ His Majesty’s nickname, shared some of the antisemitic views of the British elite and appeared indifferent to the fate of Jews in Nazi Germany. However, according to a document in the National Archives, on 28 February 1939, George VI’s private secretary, Sir Alexander Hardinge, informed Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, that ‘the king has heard from Lord Gort that a number of refugees from different countries (but primarily from Nazi Germany and Nazi occupied Austria) were surreptitiously getting into Palestine, and he is glad to think that steps are being taken to prevent these people leaving their country of origin.’¹

COLONIAL POLICE IN MALAYA BEAT WORKER TO DEATH IN ‘JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE’

[ 28 February 1947 ]

On 28 February 1947, colonial police in the Malayan town of Bedong clubbed an Indian rubber plantation to worker to death, as he stepped forward from a crowd of protesters shouting ‘We are not anti-government. We are only against the drinking of toddy.’

“A BLOODY GOOD SHOW” –  OFFICER CONGRATULATED FOR KILLING UNARMED PROTESTERS IN ACCRA

[ 28 February 1948 ]

Today in 1948, Superintendent Colin Ismay was congratulated on a ‘bloody good show’ by the Gold Coast’s Colonial Police Commissioner . He had just shot dead three unarmed ex-servicemen who had been protesting in Accra, the country’s major port and administrative capital, for the long delayed payment of their promised pensions. 

HIGH COURT SILENCES RENDITION AND TORTURE CLAIMS BY FORMER SAS SOLDIER

[ 28 February 2008 ]

On 28 February 2008, the High Court served a gagging order on former SAS soldier Ben Griffin, after he revealed at a Stop the War Coalition conference three days earlier, that British troops had been detaining Iraqis who were then handed over to the Americans for rendition and torture, in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law.

( see also 25 February 2008 )

FOOTNOTE

1. 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 pp. 366-367.

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