9 APRIL

LORD PALMERSTON JUSTIFIES MILITARY PROTECTION FOR BRITAIN’S OPIUM TRADERS

[ 9 April 1840 ]

Today in 1840, Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, justifying Britain’s determination to defend its opium traders from any interference from Chinese officials, told parliament that it was not Britian’s responsibility to protect ‘the morals of the Chinese people who were disposed to buy what other people were disposed to sell them.’¹

LOYALIST UVF REMAINS LEGAL DESPITE OPENLY BOASTING OF KILLING CATHOLICS

[ 9 April 1975 ]

On 9 April 1975, Cardinal Conway met with Roland Moyle, the Minister of State for Northern Ireland. He expressed his deep concern that the British government appeared to be tolerating the illegal activities of the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), elements of which were terrorizing Catholic communities, where almost every resident felt that they could be the next target for assassination.  He reminded Moyle that it was ‘intolerable’ that the Secretary of State should permit the UVF to remain a legal organisation while they were giving press conferences in the Shankill ‘at which they openly boast of killing Catholics.’²

TONY BLAIR AND ALASTAIR CAMPBELL JOKE ABOUT KILLING CLARE SHORT

[ 9 April 2003 ]

Such was their mutual dislike of Clare Short’s frank criticism of the Iraq War as both an illegal and disproportionate use of force, that British prime minister Tony Blair and his Communications Directors, Alastair Campbell joked about killing the minister.

FOOTNOTES

1. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Vol L111, p. 940 accessed online.
2. Minutes of meeting between Cardinal Conway and Roland Moyle MP, 9 April 1975, quoted in Margaret Urwin, A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries, Mercier Press, Cork, 2016, pp. 142-143.

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