Britain has deployed its armed forces for combat over 80 times in 47 countries since the end of the Second World War, in episodes ranging from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest The British military has used or threatened to use military force […]
Topic: Malaya
by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 13 September 2022 70 years ago the UK stepped up a brutal colonial intervention in Malaya, presenting it as a war against Chinese communism. British forces herded hundreds of thousands of people into fortified camps, heavily bombed rural areas and resorted to extensive propaganda to win the conflict. The so-called […]
By Phil Miller and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 25 August 2021 Britain’s regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have been catastrophic. A key reason is that UK policy has no moral consistency — friends and enemies are interchangeable over time, based purely on short-term pragmatism and rarely on ethical concerns or the […]
By Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 2 May 2020 The UK government’s failure to provide protective equipment to all health staff treating coronavirus victims prompts questions whether ministers are legally culpable for failing to prevent deaths. But UK ministers routinely act with impunity and every prime minister since 1945 has been complicit in deaths abroad. At […]
Articles 1948-60 war Mark Curtis, The war in Malaya, 1948-60 (Extract from Web of Deceit, 2003) ‘MI5 in Ceylon – the untold story’ (Phil Miller, Open Democracy, 5 November 2013) ‘British colonial files released following legal challenge’ (BBC, 18 April 2012) ‘Colonial Office files detail ‘eliminations’ to choke Malayan insurgency’ (Guardian, 18 April 2012) ‘Batang […]
By Mark Curtis An edited extract from Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World “The hard core of armed communists in this country are fanatics and must be, and will be, exterminated”. (Sir Gerald Templer, High Commissioner in colonial Malaya) Between 1948 and 1960 the British military fought what is conventionally called the […]
Britain’s Real Role in the World. In his explosive new book, Mark Curtis reveals a new picture of Britain’s role in the world since 1945 and in the “war against terrorism” by offering a comprehensive critique of the Blair government’s foreign policy. Curtis argues that Britain is an “outlaw state”, often a violator of international […]
by Mark Curtis Guardian, 26 October 2004 The redeployment of British forces in Iraq to support a US assault on Falluja marks another stage in a creeping return to the colonial era, when popular revolts against occupation were routinely suppressed by overwhelming force. These past episodes, revealed in declassified British government files, provide numerous parallels with […]