30 APRIL

ROUTINE USE OF TORTURE IN ULSTER EXPOSED [ 17 October 1971 ] On this day in 1971, The Sunday Times published a front page article entitled “How Ulster Internees are Made to Talk,” in which former detainee Pat Shivers recounted how, over a period of several days, he was hooded and forced into agonizing stress…

FIELD MARSHAL ROBERTS – DETAIN BOER CIVILIANS AND BURN THEIR HOMES [ 16 June 1900 ] In October 1899, Boer settlers in the Transvaal and Orange Free, faced with a tightening circle of British troops advancing from Cape Colony and Natal, had declared a war against Britain. It was a desperate act of rebellion, which…

BRISTOL CELEBRATES THE DEFEAT OF BRITAIN’S FIRST ANTI-SLAVERY BILL [ 19 April 1791 ] On this day in 1791, the House of Commons, many of its members having close business ties to the trade and the West Indies plantations, overwhelmingly rejected a bill proposed by William Wilberforce to outlaw the slave trade. The margin of…

  THATCHER REFUSES TO DISCUSS NELSON MANDELA’S RELEASE [ 15 July 1988 ] On this day in 1988, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher replied to Bishop Trevor Huddleston, who was asking her to pressure the South African government to release Nelson Mandela.  He had requested that she might meet himself and 25 activists who were…

SLAVES IN JAMAICA REFUSE TO WORK FOR THEIR BRITISH SLAVE MASTERS. 27 December 1831 – a widespread slave strike occurred in the British administered island of Jamaica. A severe drought during the summer had brought increased hardship for the slave population which was compounded by the ruthlessness of the plantation owners, who insisted on their…

HUNDREDS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN SLAUGHTERED ON RATHLIN ISLAND [ 26 July 1575 ] Rathlin Island forms a rugged rocky L-shape six miles long, lying just off the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. By the mid 1570s, Walter Devereux, the first Earl of Essex and a rising star in the Elizbethan court, was increasingly frustrated…