29 FEBRUARY

THATCHER ADMONISHED FOR COLLUDING WITH APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA [ 16 August 1985 ] On this day in 1985, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston reprimanded British prime minister Margaret Thatcher for propping up apartheid in South Africa. “If you persist in blocking sanctions in the EEC, the Commonwealth and the UN,” he wrote, “Britain will assume the role…

  UNGRATEFUL SHEIKH SHAKHBUT DEPOSED BY BRITISH LED COUP. 6 August 1966 – The British deposed Sheikh Shakhbut of Abu Dhabi in a military coup because he was failing to reward British military support by spending enough on British goods, although in the words of historians the serious problem his prudence presented has been more…

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CHURCHILL ADVOCATES A NUCLEAR STRIKE AGAINST MOSCOW. On 8 August 1946, over lunch with his physician Lord Moran at Chartwell, Winston Churchill enthusiastically answered Moran’s question regarding how a nuclear war might be waged against the Soviet Union.  “We ought not to wait until Russia is ready,” Churchill explained, adding “America knows that fifty-two per…

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…

BRITISH WITNESS GIVES HARROWING ACCOUNT OF THE EXECUTION OF INDIAN MUTINEERS AT AHMEDABAD 26 October 1857 – A British witness gave a graphic account of the bloody aftermath of the execution, by being blown apart by cannon, of Indian mutineers at Ahmedabad. It was subsequently published in several British newspapers. “I walked straight to the…