5 JULY

BRITISH TROOPS MURDER 24 UNARMED CIVILIANS 12 December 1948 – British troops executed 24 unarmed men, after separating them from the women and children at a Malayan rubber plantation at Sungai Rimoh near the small town of Batang Kali. The men had been subjected to mock executions before being herded into a hut where they were…

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….

BRITISH ARMY SHELL TEMPLE IN SAIGON, KILLING ONE HUNDRED [ 13 October 1945 ] On this day in 1945, 5he British occupying forces in Saigon shelled a “strongly defended (Buddhist) pagoda” occupied by Viet Minh and other groups opposed to French colonial rule, killing one hundred. They also summarily executed two Japanese army officers who…

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…

EARL GREY DESCRIBES IRELAND AS ‘OUR DISGRACE’ [ 23 March 1846 ] Earl Grey, addressing the House of Lords on 23 March 1846, as the Irish famine began to take thousands of lives, declared that ‘Ireland is the one weak place in the fabric of British power, Ireland is the one deep ( and I…

BURNING AND INDISCRIMINATE MURDER AT ISTALIF [29 September 1842 ] On this day in 1842, a retribution expedition under the command of Major General McCaskill entered the Afghan town of Istalif, forty miles north of Kabul. It has been one of the first towns to participate in an anti-British insurgency which had ultimately led to…