30 AUGUST

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…

‘HEADS (OF BLACKS) FIXED ON POLES IN VARIOUS PARTS’ OF DEMERARA [ 18 December 1823 ] Following a mostly non-violent slave insurrection in the British colony of Demerara (now Guyana) in August 1823, in which the plantation owners had been locked into their homes, Governor Major General John Murray imposed a savage crackdown,  shooting dead…

HOMES AND SHOPS BURNED DOWN AS A REPRISAL FOR IRA AMBUSH [ 1 January 1921 ] At about 2 pm on New Years Day 1921, several lorry loads of British soldiers and Royal Irish Constabularly arrived in the main street of Midleton in County Cork. . . DOCUMENTS BELATEDLY EXPOSE BRITISH-ISRAELI COLLUSION IN SUEZ CRISIS…

BRITISH ARMY MURDERS “EVERY NATIVE THAT APPEARED IN SIGHT.” [ 11 June 1857 ] On this day in 1857, Colonel James Neill, who had been ordered to crush the slightest sign of support for the Indian mutiny, seized the city of Allahabad. In the two days which followed he implemented a reign of terror, unprecedented…

BRITISH TROOPS COMMENCE THE LOOTING AND DESTRUCTION OF BEIJING’S SUMMER PALACE [ 7 Ocobter 1860 ] On this day in 1860, British officers joined French troops in looting Peking’s legendary Summer Palace.  The complex might however have been more accurately described as palaces, as there were over two hundred summer houses and pavilions within eighty…

  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…