Exploitation: A history ignored, a debt unpaid — and the barbarians at the gate
By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN
22nd June 1948: MV Empire Windrush arrives at Tilbury Docks in London
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May joined more than 2,000 others at Westminster Abbey in London on Friday to recognize the contributions to the country by immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean and elsewhere invited in 70 years ago to help rebuild its war-ravaged economy. But it was more an act of contrition over the way the British government treated these people during its own crackdown on illegal immigration, giving birth to the Windrush scandal.
The ship Empire Windrush – yes, empire was flouted in those days – docked in London on June 22, 1948, with 1,027 passengers, 802 of them from the Caribbean, but the “Windrush generation” eventually totaled more than 50,000, coming from several other countries, with a promise that they could live and work in Britain. Continue reading
How Britain forcefully depopulated a whole archipelago – by John Pilger
by John Pilger – 25 Feb 2019
There are times when one tragedy tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments often justify their actions with lies.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the British government of Harold Wilson expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean, to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island. In high secrecy, the Americans offered the British payment for the islands in the form of a discount on the Polaris nuclear submarine system. Continue reading →
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