A Fond British History of Genocide

A lengthy (yet incomplete) list of Britain's involvement in genocide, ethnic cleansing and all-round barbarity

What follows is a summary of some of the worst instances of British involvement in mass murder around the world, as occuring during and after the time of the British Empire. (Should I have missed anything, please comment below and it shall be added.)

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1649: Ireland

By the time Oliver Cromwell’s year-long campaign in Ireland came to an end in 1650, it is estimated that over 600,000 were dead from war and disease, and that is from a pre-war population of 1.5 million. Lest your mathematics are not up to scratch, that is almost fifty per cent of the population. In order that he could furnish his army and those who funded his campaign with land, he undertook a nationwide campaign of ethnic cleansing to rid the country of land-owning Catholics. He is still valorised in England to this day.

1915: Armenia

Britain’s strategic partnership with Turkey means that they have a wishy-washy and inconsequential position on the Armenian genocide. So much so that the Turkish government feel it necessary to boast on a government website that Britain sees history very much as they do: “The British Government does not recognise the events of 1915 as genocide. While we remember the victims of the past, our priority today should be to promote reconciliation between the countries and peoples affected.”

1943–5: Germany

Churchill is the man credited for ushering in the modern use of ‘blitzkrieg’ or ‘bombing war’, in other words, the widespread murder of civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure (‘terror’, in other words) to break the enemy’s will. Before Churchill became Prime Minister both Germany and Britain had a kind of gentleman’s agreement that neither would attack targets that would result in the widespread death of innocents. Historian Richard Overy dismisses the idea which is “‘firmly rooted in the British public mind’ that Hitler initiated the trend for indiscriminate bombings. Instead, the decision to take the gloves off was Churchill’s.” This murderous strategy culminated in the bombing of Dresden, an orgiastic campaign of bombing that resulted in 25,000 dead and a city in ashes.

1947: India

One million dead and seventeen million displaced was the result when Britain assigned a lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a man who had never set foot on the Indian subcontinent, to oversee the partition of India. This was after two hundred years of the subjugation, oppression and exploitation of the Indian people. Then the Brits simply fucked off back home.

1948: Palestine

From the moment of the Balfour declaration, Britain shepherded the ethno-supremacist state of Israel into being. This direct involvement in the ethnic cleansing of the land of Palestine continued right up until 1946 when the Israeli terrorist group the Irgun (a precursor to today’s so-called Israeli Defence Forces) bombed the King David Hotel, the headquarters of British administration in the land. What did the British do? Yes, they decided to scuttle away, drawing a big dirty line across the country (Haven’t we been here before?) and returning home. This culminated in the Nakba and the slaughter of 17,000 Palestinians, the displacement of 750,000 and the loss of 77 per cent of their homeland.

1952: Kenya

In the 1950s, as the Kenyan people were struggling for independence from British rule, the British Crown operated a network of gulags across Kenya which in total incarcerated around 1.5 million people. “In camps, villages and other outposts, the Kikuyu suffered forced labour, disease, starvation, torture, rape and murder.” All in all, estimates are that between 10 and 20,000 Kenyans died as a result of British barbarism in the country.

1995: Srebrenica

Robert Hunter, the US ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998, believes that Britain was the country most responsible for preventing intervention by the UN or NATO to rescue the Bosnians. “Britain,” Hunter has said, “has a huge burden of responsibility for what happened at Srebrenica. Responsibility for NATO’s failure to act militarily lay in London.”

1980: Iran–Iraq

Kit Klarenberg takes a good look at how the Thatcher government armed both sides of the conflict during the Iran–Iraq War, sending over £1.5 billion worth of weaponry to Iran and £3.6 billion to Iraq.

“In addition to assisting in the deaths of over one million Iranians and Iraqis, the arrangement made many involved at the state level very wealthy too. Ministers, advisors, and assorted insiders wise to the gimmick saw the setup as a nice little earner, and duly invested in the companies involved, or helped bring in unsuspecting suppliers for a commission fee.”

And if that doesn’t make you sick, nothing will.

1991: Iraq

You might argue that the Gulf War and the resulting deaths of up to 200,000 Iraqis was not the fault of the British, but it was the CIA who helped put Saddam in power, and it was British and American money and intelligence that helped build the Ba’ath Party and fuelled the Iran–Iraq War mentioned above. Saddam was merely another example of a Western-backed tyrant who was allowed to slaughter on a massive scale, just as long as he was slaughtering the right people. But when he got a bit uppity, his paymasters intervened.

1992–5: Bosnia

A Grayzone expose reports that SAS and SBS forces were present on the ground in Bosnia in 1995 at the time of the assault on Srebrenica, and not only were they aware that an attack was imminent, but were involved in secret operations at the time. What Britain’s precise role was in the massacres is still unclear, but given the country’s murky history with slaughter, genocide and ethnic cleansing as a means to political ends, we can say with some certainly that their hands are not clean. 

1994: Rwanda

This detailed article lays out how “the rebel guerrilla force of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was supported militarily and ideologically by the United Kingdom prior to its 1990 attack on Rwanda from Uganda; throughout the ensuing civil war in Rwanda between the RPF and the forces of the Government of Rwanda; and during the genocide and massacres of many thousands. The study confirms that the British government had a wealth of knowledge regarding insecurity and violence in Rwanda, and took a positive decision not to act to prevent or stop it, thereby omitting to fulfil its obligations in terms of the UN Convention on Genocide and International Law.” 

1999: Kosovo

Subsequent to the NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia in 1999, the post-war ravages of Tony Blair’s secret friends, the KLA (a group with links to Al Qaeda), through a rampage of ‘murder and kidnap’, reduced the Serb population of Pristina from 400,000 to just 400. Some of those friends went on to be tried for war crimes. When will Tony Blair be tried for war crimes, one might ask, not only for Yugoslavia, but Iraq?

2003: Iraq

“We’re here for your fucking freedom!”

Sure you are, pal. Twenty years on, the whole world is aware that the reasons for going into Iraq in 2003 were absolute horseshit. No one knows exactly how many people died, but estimates range from 150,000 up to a million. All in all, taking into consideration the direct military deaths as a result of the US and Britain’s ill-conceived invasion, the casualties of the Gulf War, and the millions killed as a result of sanctions over the years, you have a level of death and destruction more than any country should have to endure.

2011–present: Syria

The regime change operation in Syria which is erroneously called a ‘civil war’, and which has still not come to completion, was the brainchild of – yes, you guessed it – MI6 and the CIA. In fact, that diabolical alliance of western intelligence agencies was trying to subvert the Syrian government all the way back in the 1950s and possibly beyond, all the way up to the outbreak of the war in Syria when Britain decided to fund and arm the so-called ‘moderate’ insurgency fighting Assad’s government, and were also involved in the botched job of shipping weaponry from Libya through Turkey into Syria. And remember the White Helmets? Well, despite their branding, they were essentially an MI6-run outfit designed to produce high-quality propaganda for the anti-Assad forced. The outfit was created by James le Mesurier, an ex-army officer and serving MI6 agent, now dead.

The war in Syria has produced up to 600,000 casualties, at least half of which are civilian. A genocide by any definition.

2014–present: Yemen

As Declassified UK points out, British involvement in Yemen is nothing new; the Brits were involved in a dirty war in the country sixty years ago when they allied with the Saudis to overthrow the government in favour of one more ‘friendly’ to the West. Old story. Thousands died then as they do now, and with the Brits still refusing to curtail their supply of weapons to the Saudis in order that they can continue to wage war on one of the poorest countries on the planet, nothing will change.

2023: Palestine

Very early in the conflict that began late 2023, Keir Starmer (at the time the leader of Britain’s opposition party, now sitting Prime Minister) voiced his support for the cutting off of water and power to Gaza, home of 2.3 million Palestinians. The politicians in London, along with their counterparts in the US, have been in full support of genocide and ethnic cleansing since the beginning of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, and that vigour has not dimmed one bit, even with the death of up to 200,000 of Gaza’s population. Never has genocide been so enthusiastically embraced, and it is indeed a sign of our times that the political class in Britain feel comfortable enough to let the mask fall, so that, for the first time ever, the true face of Britain’s ruling political establishment is clear for all to see.