17 October 1987 On 17 October 1987, at a press conference at the Vancouver Commonwealth Summit, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called the African National Congress ‘a typical terrorist organisation,’ adding that she would have ‘nothing to do with any organisation that practices violence. I have never seen anyone from the ANC or the PLO or…
20 September 1909 On 20 September 1909, the British parliament passed the South Africa Act, which laid the legal foundation for apartheid South Africa. Section 35 restricted voting rights in three of the four provinces in the newly created Union of South Africa to white males. Only in Cape Colony were black men to be…
2 June 1984 On 2 June 1984, 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 central London. Contrary to subsequent assertions, there is absolutely no…
15 May 1975 Throughout 1975, Harold Wilson’s Labour government supplied Apartheid South Africa with ammunition, military spares and other critical equipment for their armed forces. Britain’s backing helped the South African army enforce internal repression and prevent anti-imperialist insurgencies across southern Africa, as the regime increasingly resorted to extreme means to pacify the region. In…
24 April 1954 On 24 April 1954, British troops, under orders from General Sir George Erskine, started to round up thousands of Africans living in Nairobi and deport them to concentration camps. The operation was part of a deliberate policy of apartheid and collective punishment aimed at crushing the nationalist Mau Mau insurgency. Military vehicles…
[ 17 February 1978 ] On 17 February 1978, Prime Minister James Callaghan made it clear that he would not sacrifice British business interests to help end apartheid through the imposition of sanctions. ‘Why do it for political reasons ?’ he asked at a Cabinet Committee meeting on South Africa, adding ‘I won’t be pushed….
PREPARATIONS MADE TO BURN IRISH CONVICTS ALIVE [ 9 November 1804 ] On 9 November 1804, panic erupted among the British garrison of the remote penal colony of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, when they sighted a flotilla of ships, including the 64 gun warship Athenienne, and assumed they were under attack from the…
BRITISH TROOPS SEIZE MOSUL TO GAIN CONTROL OVER THE OIL FIELDS [ 3 November 1918 ] on 3 November 1918, four days after an armistice with Germany’s First World War ally Turkey had brought to an end hostilities in the near east, the British army in Mesopotamia, acting under direct orders from Prime Minister Lloyd…
MINISTERS UNABLE TO SAY IF BRITAIN IS AT WAR AS CAIRO AIRPORT IS BOMBED [ 1 November 1956 ] On 1 November 1956, an editorial in the Daily Mail was headlined ‘Britain at War’, however neither Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd nor Minister of Defence Antony Head were able to confirm whether or not Britain was actually at…
HARROWING ACCOUNT OF THE EXECUTION OF INDIAN MUTINEERS PUBLISHED [ 26 October 1857 ] Today in 1857, a graphic account was published of the bloody aftermath of an execution in which Indian rebels at Ahmedabad were blown apart by cannon. It was one of many instances of exemplary punitive executions carried out during Britain’s suppression…
