3 MARCH

QUEEN GREETS KILLER TYRANT CEAUSESCU AND AWARDS HIM WITH A KNIGHTHOOD [ 13 June 1978 ] On this day in 1978, at the insistence of Britain’s Labour government, the Queen welcomed Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu at Buckingham Palace as part of a British effort to encourage the regime to continue to distance itself from Moscow….

HORSE TRADING WITH A TYRANT [ 1 October 2017 ] On this day the Bahrain News Agency announced that earlier the same day Queen Elizabeth had given a three year old prize stallion to Bahrain’s murderous tyrant, King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa. The gift was handed over in a formal ceremony by the British…

WIDER POWERS OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT AUTHORIZED IN KENYA 25 November 1952 – Sir Evelyn Baring, British governor of Kenya, issues new emergency measures designed to widen the conditions for the imposition of collective punishment on the kikuyu population in areas considered sympathetic to the anti-British Mau Mau insurgency. The pro-Empire Daily Express commented the same day…

BRITISH EXECUTE AFGHAN VILLAGERS AS A “LESSON” 8 November 1879 – A British cavalry detachment surrounded the Afghan village of Indikee where shots had been fired at the invading British army the previous month. They gave the village headmen five minutes to round up thirty suspects. The correspondent of the London Daily News explained that…

ROYAL NAVY DESTROYS LAGOS – ‘AN IMMENSE NUMBER OF NATIVES BEING KILLED’ [ 26 December 1851 ] On 26 December 1851, British naval vessels began a three day bombardment of the coastal town of Lagos on the west coast of Africa, reducing it to rubble, at a cost, to quote a British press report, of ‘an…

MI6 HEAD EXPLAINS THE NEED TO DECEIVE THE PUBLIC OVER IRAQ WMD INTELLIGENCE. 23 July 2002 – On returning from the Washington, the MI6 head Richard Dearlove is summoned by Blair to join a hastily arranged meeting in the Prime Minister’s office with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon,  Attorney General Peter Goldsmith,…