30 APRIL

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…

BOBBY SANDS MP DIES AFTER 66 DAYS ON HUNGER STRIKE 5 May 1981 – The Sinn Fein MP and Irish Republican prisoner Bobby Sands died after 66 days of his hunger strike at the H-Block Prison hospital at Long Kesh. At the age of ten Sands and his family had been forced to leave their…

OFFICER IN KENYA’S COLONIAL POLICE COMPLAINS OF A CULTURE OF COVERING UP ABUSES AND TORTURE [ 23 December 1954 ] Duncan McPherson, Assistant Commissioner of Kenya’s colonial police, was a rare exception to the norm of complete British indifference to the suffering of ordinary Kenyans. TONY BLAIR ACCEPTS HOLIDAY HOSPITALITY FROM DICTATOR MUBARAK [ 23…

THATCHER WELCOMES APARTHEID LEADER P.W. BOTHA [ 2 June 1984 ] On this day in 1984, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher greeted the apartheid leader of South Africa, P.W. Both, at her official country estate at Chequers.  An estimated 40,000 protesters, furious at the government’s implicit endorsement of the regime, took to the streets of…

MINISTER IN PHOTO OP WITH COLOMBIAN DEATH SQUADS GENERAL [ 11 February 2008 ] On 11 February 2008, The Guardian published a photo of a smiling Foreign Office Minister, Kim Howells, posing alongside General Mario Montoya, head of the Colombian Army, along with soldiers from the High Mountains Battalions (HMB). These were infamous elite units…

BRITISH SACK THE CRIMEAN CITY OF KERCH [ 24 May 1855 ] On this day in 1855, thousands of terrified citizens of the Crimean city of Kerch had their homes broken into and their possessions looted, while men and even children were slaughtered and hundreds of women raped. The local population had begged general Sir…