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Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress
From A People’s History of the United States
By Howard Zinn
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Reconsider Columbus Day -> www.reconsidercolumbusday.org/
Transform Columbus Day -> www.transformcolumbusday.org/
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Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:
"
They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned…. They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
"
These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.
Columbus wrote: "As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."
The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?
The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone…." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."
Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.
Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.
The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of in formation about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty.
In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:
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Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.. ..
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Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings."
Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."
The Indians’ attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could tun for help." He describes their work in the mines:
"
… mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside….
After each six or eight months’ work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…. In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile … was depopulated…. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write….
"
When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it…."
Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.
The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those states men’s
policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.
When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a "vacuum." The Indians, he said, had not "subdued" the land, and therefore had only a "natural" right to it, but not a "civil right." A "natural right" did not have legal standing.
The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."
The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. A Dutch traveler in New Netherland wrote in 1656 that "the Indians . . . affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have died." When the English first settled Martha’s Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one.
Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples.
Source -> www.davesweb.cnchost.com/zinn.htm
Columbus Statue Toppled in Venezuela on Day of Indigenous Resistance -> venezuelanalysis.com/news/734
Hero-making, Christopher Columbus – Lies My Teacher Told Me -> www.thirdworldtraveler.com/History/Hero-making_LMTTM.html
Christopher Columbus: Extracts from Journal -> www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.asp
Corporate Avenger – Christians Murdered Indians -> www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZhsJGcBLiQ
That Was the Year That Was – 1985
Image by brizzle born and bred
1985 As the spread of aids increases Governments round the world start screening Blood donations for AIDS. On the technology front the first .com is registered and the first version of Windows is released Ver 1.0 . Terrorists continue to perform acts of terrorism including the hijack of TWA Flight 847 and the Italian Cruise Liner "Achille Lauro ". Famine in Ethiopia is shown more on TV News in July and Live Aid concerts around the world raise many millions to help the starving in Africa and the pop industry in US joins together to sing "We Are The World".
Band Aid’s "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" was at number one, Colin Baker was Doctor Who, and "Beverly Hills Cop" was in cinemas. But as 1984 ticked into 1985, 1 January ushered in more than just a new year: it was the start of a new era, as the first mobile-phone call in the UK was made.
3 March – Just two days short of a year after the Miners’ Strike began it ended in dignified if crushing defeat.
1985: Riots in Brixton after police shooting
Riots have broken out on the streets of south London after a woman was shot and seriously injured in a house search. Armed officers raided a house in Brixton early this morning looking for a man in connection with a robbery. Crowds began to gather outside the district’s police station when news broke the police had accidentally shot the man’s mother, Cherry Groce, in her bed with apparently no warning. Local people had already been very critical of police tactics in Brixton and a mood of tension exploded into violence as night fell.
Dozens of officers dressed in riot gear were injured as they were attacked by groups of mainly black youths with bricks and wooden stakes. The rioters also set alight a barricade of cars across the Brixton Road with petrol bombs and some looted shops in nearby streets. The suspected armed robber was not home when the police raided his address and Scotland Yard described the shooting of his mother as a "tragic accident".
One of Mrs Groce’s daughters told the BBC everything happened very quickly.
"It was a loud noise that made me run down the stairs – by the time I got down there were three police dogs, police rushing everywhere and one of them had a gun," she said. Mrs Groce is being treated at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London and her family say the mother-of-six may never walk again. "She is just in a state of shock – she cannot recall with any great accuracy because it all happened so fast," said her brother Tony Young.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said it did all it could to prevent mistakes like this, but it had to recognise the increased use of firearms by criminals made errors more likely.
Britain’s first official call on a mobile
Britain’s first official call on a mobile (following a beta test in London) was made on 1 January 1985 by 24-year-old Michael Harrison, son of Vodafone chairman Sir Ernest Harrison. Michael slipped out of the family New Year’s Eve party in Surrey and drove to Parliament Square in Westminster with a Vodafone Transportable VT1 phone, also known as Nokia’s Mobira Talkman. After Big Ben had struck 12 to ring in the new year, Harrison junior dialed home and greeted his father, "Hi Dad, it’s Mike. Happy New Year. This is the first ever call on a UK mobile network."
Vodafone was first to go mobile with the New Year’s Eve call, but the head start was brief: BT Cellnet — the forerunner of today’s O2 — launched its service just days later on 10 January 1985. Entertainer Ernie Wise, best known for his double act with Eric Morecambe, promoted the network a couple of weeks later with a photo-call at London’s St Katharine Docks during which he also dialed chairman Harrison, giving rise to the popular belief it was Little Ern who made the first mobile call.
The Sinclair C5 is launched
Within the space of two months in 1985 the UK’s first mobile phone call was made; the C5 launched; and Eastenders debuted: two successes and one flop.
The idea was perhaps ahead of its time, and of the battery technology then available, but in essence was a good one: a simple, cheap (costing less than £450 delivered) electric vehicle for urban transport. Sir Clive Sinclair had dreamt of the thing for years.
But there is a world of difference between a good idea and a good product: to keep the thing cheap it had no cover, not ideal in English weather ; likewise its one battery was not man enough for hilly ground. The C5’s top-speed of 15mph (the legal maximum in the UK without a driving licence being necessitated) was the cause of much hilarity in pubs and the papers, but given London traffic moves at an average speed well below that its speed should not have been a disadvantage in the capital, apparently its first target market.
Perhaps the biggest problem the C5 had was its appearance: more like a children’s toy go-cart than a car, and with a strange driving position, it failed to attract buyers. Only around 12,000 were made before the electric car project had its plug pulled, as it were. Today we may wonder if Sinclair’s brainchild came just a little too soon.
1985 Football dominated the headlines
May 1985 was perhaps the blackest month in British football history . On the 11th May 56 people died in a horrific fire at Valley Parade, Bradford City’s ground. That tragedy was inadvertent; on May 29th more sinister actions led to the deaths of 39 football fans before that year’s European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels.
Heysel it was later acknowledged was a far from ideal venue for such a big match: old-fashioned, parts of it said to be in a state of disrepair, and cramped for space when holding a capacity crowd as it was that night. But there would have been no problem had drink-fuelled hooligans, purportedly Liverpool fans, not decided to attack a section of Juventus supporters about an hour before kick-off after prolonged exchanges of makeshift missiles by both sides. The louts burst through scanty police lines and surged towards their targets; many of those facing the attack retreated in panic to a corner where a wall collapsed on them, killing 39 and injuring a further 200.
Against the wishes of both managers it was decided to play the game in spite of the disaster, the fear being that the violence which had followed the tragedy, Juventus fans seeking revenge for the loss-of-life, might escalate into a hand-to-hand battle in the stadium and the streets of Brussels without the diversion of a game. Liverpool lost 1 – 0 in a match played without passion, many players looking like they were on automatic pilot. Shortly afterwards the FA, backed by UEFA, banned English clubs from European competition for five years.
13 March – Rioting breaks out at the FA Cup quarter-final between Luton Town and Millwall at Kenilworth Road, Luton; hundreds of hooligans tear seats from the stands and throw them onto the pitch before a pitch invasion takes place, resulting in 81 people (31 of them police officers) being injured. The carnage continues in the streets near the stadium, resulting in major damage to vehicles and property. Luton Town win the game 1-0.
31 May – The Football Association bans all English football clubs from playing Europe until further notice in response to the Heysel riots. Thatcher supports the ban and calls for judges to hand out stiffer sentences to convicted football hooligans.
10 September – Scotland national football team manager Jock Stein, 62, collapses and dies from a heart attack at the end of his team’s 1-1 draw with Wales at Ninian Park, Cardiff, which secured Scotland’s place in the World Cup qualification playoff.
A wall collapsed on to Ian Hambridge, a 15-year-old Leeds fan, during the trouble at St Andrews on 11 May 1985. His death was overshadowed by the Bradford City fire on the same day.
Battle of the Beanfield
The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on 1 June 1985, when Wiltshire Police prevented The Peace Convoy, a convoy of several hundred New Age travellers, from setting up the 1985 Stonehenge Free Festival in Wiltshire, England. The police were enforcing a High Court injunction obtained by the authorities prohibiting the 1985 festival from taking place. Around 1300 police officers took part in the operation against approximately 600 travellers.
The convoy of travellers that were heading for Stonehenge encountered resistance at a police road block seven miles from the landmark. Police claim that some traveller vehicles then rammed police vehicles in an attempt to push through the roadblock. Around the same time police smashed the windows of the convoy’s vehicles and some travellers were arrested. The rest broke into an adjacent field and a stand-off consequently developed that persisted for several hours. According to the BBC "Police said they came under attack, being pelted with lumps of wood, stones and even petrol bombs". Conversely, The Guardian states the travellers were not armed with petrol bombs and that police intelligence suggesting so "was false".
Eventually the police launched another attack during which the worst of the violence is purported to have taken place. According to The Observer, during this period pregnant women and those holding babies were clubbed by police with truncheons and the police were hitting "anybody they could reach". When some of the travellers tried to escape by driving away through the fields, The Observer states that the police threw truncheons, shields, fire-extinguishers and stones at them in an attempt to stop them.
Dozens of travellers were injured, 8 police officers and 16 travellers were hospitalised. 537 travellers were eventually arrested. This represents the largest mass arrest of civilians since at least the Second World War, possibly the biggest in English legal history. Two years after the event, a Wiltshire police sergeant was found guilty of Actual Bodily Harm as a consequence of injuries incurred by a member of the convoy during the Battle of the Beanfield.
In February 1991 a civil court judgement awarded 21 of the travellers £24,000 in damages for false imprisonment, damage to property and wrongful arrest. The award was swallowed by their legal bill as the judge did not award them legal costs.
In 1985 the festival was banned by the Thatcher government and in May the Battle of the Beanfield took place, with an estimated 1000 police ambushing a convoy of travellers on their way to Stonehenge, trashing their vehicles and doing their best to completely demoralise the hard core festival community .The week after, 38 football fans were killed in a riot at an away match in Europe which not only diverted attention away from this event , but also put the Stonehenge festival in perspective. To my knowledge, the festival never had any deaths occur, the mess made was unfortunate, but compared to the mayhem and cost that the average football match cost to the taxpayer in policing, the Henge festival was a mere pinprick. So why was so much effort made to destroy it? Total drug related hospital admissions from the festival in 84 were five ,the policing cost of the Beanfield exercise was 800.000 pounds. Value for money?.
1985 Timeline
January – The Fraud Investigation Group is set up for cases of financial & commercial fraud.
1 January – The first British mobile phone calls are made.
7 January – Nine striking miners are jailed for arson.
10 January – The Sinclair C5, a battery-assisted recumbent tricycle, designed by the British inventor Clive Sinclair is launched.
Eight people are killed by a gas explosion at a block of flats in Putney.
16 January – London’s Dorchester Hotel is bought by the Sultan of Brunei.
17 January – British Telecom announces it is going to phase out its famous red telephone boxes.
23 January – A debate in the House of Lords is televised for the first time.
29 January – Margaret Thatcher becomes the first post-war Prime Minister to be refused an honorary degree by Oxford University.
10 February – Nine people are killed in a multiple crash on the M6 motorway.
16 February – Civil servant Clive Ponting resigns from the Ministry of Defence after his acquittal of breaching section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 concerning the leaking of documents relating to the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War.
19 February – EastEnders, the BBC1 soap opera, goes on the air.
25 February – Nearly 4,000 striking miners go back to work, meaning that only just over half of the miners are now on strike.
3 March – The miners’ strike ends after one year.
7 March – Two IRA members are jailed for 35 years at the Old Bailey for plotting the bombing campaign across London during 1981.
11 March – Mohammed Al Fayed buys the London-based department store company Harrods.
13 March – Rioting breaks out at the FA Cup quarter-final between Luton Town and Millwall at Kenilworth Road, Luton; hundreds of hooligans tear seats from the stands and throw them onto the pitch before a pitch invasion takes place, resulting in 81 people (31 of them police officers) being injured. The carnage continues in the streets near the stadium, resulting in major damage to vehicles and property. Luton Town win the game 1-0.
19 March – After beginning the year with a lead of up to eight points in the opinion poll, the Conservatives suffer a major blow as the latest MORI poll puts them four points behind Labour, who have a 40% share of the vote.
Ford launches the third generation of its Granada. It is sold only as a hatchback, in contrast to its predecessor which was sold as a saloon or estate, and in continental Europe it will be known as the Scorpio.
11 April – An 18-month-old boy becomes the youngest person in Britain to die of AIDS.
22 April – Construction of Japanese carmaker Nissan’s new factory at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, begins. The first cars are expected to be produced next year.
30 April – Bernie Grant, born in Guyana, becomes the first black council leader when he is elected leader of Labour-controlled London Borough of Haringey council.
2 May – The SDP–Liberal Alliance makes big gains in local council elections.
11 May – A fire engulfs a wooden stand at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford during a football match, killing 56 people (54 Bradford City supporters and two Lincoln City supporters) and injuring more than 200 others.
A 14-year-old boy is killed, 20 people are injured and several vehicles are wrecked when Leeds United football hooligans riot at the Birmingham City stadium and cause a wall to collapse.
15 May – Everton, who have already clinched their Football League title for 15 years, win the European Cup Winners’ Cup (their first European trophy) with a 3-1 win over Rapid Vienna in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. English clubs have now won 25 European trophies since 1963. Everton are also in contention for a treble of major trophies, as they take on Manchester United in the FA Cup final in three days.
16 May – Two South Wales miners are sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie. Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, both 21, dropped a concrete block on Mr Wilkie’s taxi from a road overbridge in November last year.
Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey discover the ozone hole.
18 May – Manchester United win the FA Cup for the sixth time in their history with a 1-0 win over Everton in the final at Wembley Stadium. The only goal of the game is scored by 20-year-old Northern Irish forward Norman Whiteside, who scored in United’s last FA Cup triumph two years ago.
29 May – In the Heysel Stadium disaster at the European Cup final in Brussels, 39 football fans die and hundreds are injured. Despite the tragedy, the match is played and Juventus beat Liverpool 1-0.
31 May – The Football Association bans all English football clubs from playing Europe until further notice in response to the Heysel riots. Thatcher supports the ban and calls for judges to hand out stiffer sentences to convicted football hooligans.
1 June – Battle of the Beanfield, Britain’s largest mass arrest and the effective end of Stonehenge Free Festivals.
2 June – In response to the Heysel tragedy four days ago, UEFA bans all English football clubs from European competitions for an indefinite period, recommending that Liverpool should serve an extra three years of exclusion once all other English clubs have been reinstated.
6 June – Birmingham unveils its bid to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, which includes plans for a new £66 million stadium.
13 June – The James Bond film A View To A Kill is released, marking the last appearance by Roger Moore as the spy after six films since 1973.
25 June – Police arrest 13 suspects in connection with the Brighton hotel bombing of 1984.
29 June – Patrick Magee is charged with the murder of the people who died in the Brighton bombing eight months ago.
4 July – 13-year-old Ruth Lawrence achieves a first in Mathematics at Oxford University, becoming the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.
Unemployment for June fell to 3,178,582 from May’s total of 3,240,947, the best fall in unemployment of the decade so far.
13 July – Live Aid pop concerts in London and Philadelphia raise over £50 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.
29 July – Despite unemployment having fallen since October last year, it has increased in 73 Conservative constituencies, according to government figures.
7 August – White House Farm murders at Tolleshunt Darcy, Essex; 28-year-old Sheila Caffell is reported to have shot dead her six-year-old twin sons, and also her adoptive parents Nevill and June Bamber, before turning the gun on herself. Her 24-year-old brother Jeremy, who was also adopted, alterted the police to the house after telling them that he had received a phonecall from Nevill Bamber to tell him that his sister had "gone berserk" with a rifle.
13 August – The first UK heart-lung transplant is carried out at the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex. The patient is three-year-old Jamie Gavin.
The Sinclair C5 ceases production after just seven months and less than 17,000 units.
22 August – 55 people are killed in the Manchester air disaster at Manchester International Airport when a British Airtours Boeing 737 burst into flames after the pilot aborts the takeoff.
24 August – Five-year-old John Shorthouse is shot dead by police at his family’s house in Birmingham, where they were arresting his father on suspicion of an armed robbery committed in South Wales.
September – SEAT, the Spanish carmaker originally a subsidy of Fiat but now under controlling interest from Volkswagen, began importing cars to the United Kingdom. Its range consisted of the Marbella (a rebadged version of the Fiat Panda), the Ibiza hatchback and Malaga saloon.
1 September – A joint Franco-American expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
4 September – The first photographs and films of the RMS Titanic’s wreckage are taken, 73 years after it sank.
6 September – The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre opens in Glasgow.
8 September – Jeremy Bamber is arrested on suspicion of murdering his adoptive parents, sister and two nephews at their Essex farmhouse last month, after police had originally believed that his sister had killed herself after shooting her parents and sons.
9 September – Rioting, mostly motivated by racial tension, breaks out in the Handsworth area of Birmingham.
10 September – The riots in Handsworth escalated, with mass arson and looting resulting in thousands of pounds worth of damage, leaving several people injured, and resulted in the deaths of two people who died when the local post office was petrol bombed. One of the fatalities was the owner of the post office.
Scotland national football team manager Jock Stein, 62, collapses and dies from a heart attack at the end of his team’s 1-1 draw with Wales at Ninian Park, Cardiff, which secured Scotland’s place in the World Cup qualification playoff.
11 September – The rioting in Handsworth ended, with the final casualty toll standing at 35 injuries and two deaths. A further two people are unaccounted for.
The England national football team secures qualification for next summer’s World Cup in Mexico with a 1-1 draw against Romania at Wembley. Tottenham midfielder Glenn Hoddle scored England’s only goal.
Enoch Powell, the controversial former Tory MP who was dismissed from the shadow cabinet 17 years ago for his Rivers of Blood speech on immigration, states that the riots in Handsworth were a vindication of the warnings he voiced in 1968.
17 September – Margaret Thatcher’s hopes of winning a third term in office at the next election are thrown into doubt by the results of an opinion poll, which shows the Conservatives in third place on 30%, Labour in second place on 33% and the SDP–Liberal Alliance in the lead on 35%.
28 September – A riot in Brixton erupts after an accidental shooting of a woman by police. One person dies in the riot, 50 are injured and more than 200 are arrested.
Manchester United’s excellent start to the Football League First Division season sees them win their 10th league game in succession, leaving them well placed to win their first league title since 1967.
29 September – Jeremy Bamber is re-arrested on his return to England after two weeks on holiday in France and charged on five counts of murder.
1 October – Neil Kinnock makes a speech at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth attacking the entryist Militant group in Liverpool.
Lord Scarman’s report on the riots in Toxteth and Peckham blames economic deprivation and racial discrimination.
Economists predict that unemployment will remain above the 3,000,000 mark for the rest of the decade.
5 October – Mrs Cythnia Jarrett, a 49-year-old black woman, dies after falling over during a police search of her council house on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, London.
6 October – PC Keith Blakelock is fatally stabbed during the Broadwater Farm Riot in Tottenham, London, which began after the death of Cynthia Jarrett yesterday. Two of his colleagues are treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, as are three journalists.
15 October – The SDP-Liberal Alliance’s brief lead in the opinion polls is over, with the Conservatives now back in the lead by a single point over Labour in the latest MORI poll.
17 October – The House of Lords decides the legal case of Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority[26] which sets the significant precedent of Gillick competence, i.e. that a child of 16 or under may be competent to consent to contraception or – by extension – other medical treatment without requiring parental permission or knowledge.
24 October – Members of Parliament react to the recent wave of rioting by saying that unemployment is an unacceptable excuse for the riots.
28 October – Production of the Peugeot 309 begins at the Ryton car factory near Coventry. The 309, a small family hatchback, is the first "foreign" car to be built in the UK. It was originally going to be badged as the Talbot Arizona, but Peugeot has decided that the Talbot badge will be discontinued on passenger cars after next year and that the Ryton plant will then be used for the production of its own products, including a larger four-door saloon (similar in size to the Ford Sierra) which is due in two years.
30 October – Unemployment is reported to have risen in nearly 70% of the Tory held seats since this time last year.
31 October – The two miners who killed taxi driver David Wilkie in South Wales eleven months ago have their life sentences for murder reduced to eight years for manslaughter on appeal.
1 November – The Queen Mother commissions aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.
Unemployment for September falls by nearly 70,000 to less than 3,300,000.
5 November – Mark Kaylor defeats Errol Christie to become the middleweight boxing champion, after the two brawl in front of the cameras at the weigh-in.
9 November – The Prince and Princess of Wales arrive in the United States of America for a visit to Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C.
15 November – Anglo-Irish Agreement signed at Hillsborough Castle. Treasury Minister Ian Gow resigns in protest at the deal.
17 November – The Confederation of British Industry calls for the government to invest £1 billion in unemployment relief – a move which would cut unemployment by 350,000 and potentially bring it below 3,000,000 for the first time since late 1981.
18 November – A coach crash on the M6 motorway near Birmingham kills two people and injures 51.
19 November – The latest MORI poll shows that Conservative and Labour support is almost equal at around 36%, with the SDP–Liberal Alliance’s hopes of electoral breakthrough left looking bleak as they have only 25% of the vote.
22 November – Margaret Thatcher is urged by her MPs to call a General Election for June 1987, despite the deadline not being until June 1988 and recent opinion polls frequently showing Labour and the Alliance at least level with the Conservatives, although the Conservative majority has remained well into triple figures.
25 November – Department store chains British Home Stores and Habitat announce a £1.5 billion merger.
27 November – Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock suspends the Liverpool District Labour Party amid allegations that the Trotskist Militant group was attempting to control it.
29 November – A gas explosion kills four people in Glasgow.
Gérard Hoarau, exiled political leader from the Seychelles, is assassinated in London.
December – Builders Alfred McAlpine complete construction of Nissan’s new car factory at Sunderland. Nissan can now install machinery and factory components and car production is expected to begin by the summer of next year.
4 December – Scotland’s World Cup qualification is secured by a goalless draw with Australia in the playoff second leg in Sydney.
5 December – It is announced that unemployment fell in November, for the third month running. It now stands at 3,165,000.
25 December – Charitable organisation Comic Relief is launched.
26 December – Rock star Phil Lynott, formerly of Thin Lizzy, is rushed to hospital after collapsing from a suspected heroin overdose at his home in Berkshire.
The Waterside Inn at Bray, Berkshire, founded by the brothers Michel and Albert Roux, becomes the first establishment in the UK to be awarded three Michelin Guide stars, a distinction which it retains for at least twenty-five years.
Inflation stands at 6.1% – the highest since 1982 but still low compared to the highs reached in the 1970s.
Peak year for British oil production: 127 million tonnes.
The Dire Straits album, Brothers In Arms, becomes the first million selling compact disc.
The first retailers move into the Merry Hill Shopping Centre near Dudley, West Midlands. A new shopping mall is scheduled to open alongside the developing retail park in April 1986 and it is anticipated to grow into Europe’s largest indoor shopping centre with further developments set to be completed by 1990, as well as including a host of leisure facilities.
Television
1 January – Brookside is moved from Wednesdays to Mondays which means the soap can now be seen on Mondays and Tuesdays.
3 January – The UK’s last VHF television transmitters close down.
4 January – Channel 4 achieves its highest ever audience as 13.8 million viewers tune in for the final part of the mini-series A Woman of Substance.
6 January – The last 405-line transmitters are switched off in the UK.
18 January – Debut of The Practice, a twice-weekly medical drama intended to become Granada’s second soap produced for the ITV network. But viewing figures are not as healthy as had been hoped, and the series first run ends in May. It returns for a second series in 1986 before being axed.
20–21 January – Channel 4 airs Super Bowl XIX, the first time the Super Bowl is aired on British television.
20 January – American television sitcom The Cosby Show is broadcast in the United Kingdom for the first time.
23 January – A debate in the House of Lords is televised for the first time.
18 February – BBC1 undergoes a major relaunch. At 5.35 p.m., the legendary mechanical "mirror globe" ident, in use in varying forms since 1969, is seen for the last time in regular rotation on national BBC1. Its replacement, the COW (Computer Originated World, a computer generated globe) debuts at 7pm. On the same day, computer-generated graphics replace magnetic weather maps on all BBC forecasts, and Terry Wogan’s eponymous talk show is relaunched as a thrice-weekly live primetime programme. EastEnders launches the following day.
19 February – EastEnders, the BBC1 soap opera, goes on air.
28 April – The World Snooker Championship Final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis draws BBC2’s highest ever rating of 18.5 million viewers.
11 May – A fire breaks out at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford during a football match between Bradford City and Lincoln City. The match is being recorded by Yorkshire Television for transmission on their Sunday afternoon regional football show The Big Match the following day. Coverage of the fire is transmitted minutes after the event on the live ITV Saturday afternoon sports programme World of Sport. BBC’s Grandstand also transmits live coverage of the fire.
29 May – Heysel Stadium Disaster televised live by BBC1; at the European Cup final in Brussels, Belgium, between Liverpool and Juventus, 39 Juventus fans are killed when a wall collapses during a riot at the Heysel Stadium.
5 June – The first episode of Bulman airs.
13 July – Live Aid pop concerts are held in Philadelphia and London and televised around the world. Over £50 million is raised for famine relief in Ethiopia.
31 July – The BBC announces it has pulled At the Edge of the Troubles, a documentary in the Real Lives strand in which filmmaker Vincent Hanna secured an interview with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and his wife. The announcement leads to a one-day strike by members of the National Union of Journalists, and the eventual overturning of the ban. A slightly edited version of the programme is shown in October. The controversy damages the Director-Generalship of Alasdair Milne, who eventually resigns from the post in 1987.
The War Game, made for the BBC’s The Wednesday Play strand in 1965 but banned from broadcast at the time, is finally shown on television as part of BBC2’s After the Bomb season.
August – After a series of high-profile football hooliganism and a dispute between the Football League and the broadcasters over revenue, televised league football is missing from British screens until the second half of the season. The Charity Shield and international games are the only matches screened.
1 August – The nuclear war docudrama Threads is repeated on BBC2 as part of the After the Bomb series.
13 August – ITV airs the US intergalactic whodunit Murder in Space. The film is shown without the ending, and a competition held for viewers to identify the murderer(s). The film’s concluding 30 minutes are shown a few weeks later, with a studio of contestants eliminated one by one until the winner correctly solves the mystery. There is a prize of £10,000.
30 August – Debut of Granada’s ill-fated "continuing drama series", Albion Market. The series – set in a market in Salford and intended as a companion for Coronation Street – is panned by critics and suffers from poor ratings. It is axed a year later.
3 September – BBC1’s EastEnders moves from 7.00pm to 7.30pm to avoid clashing with ITV’s Emmerdale Farm, which airs in the 7.00pm timeslot on Tuesdays and Thursdays in many ITV regions.
10 September – ITV airs the Wales vs Scotland World Cup qualifier from Cardiff’s Ninian Park. The match – played against the backdrop of escalating football hooliganism – is notable for the death of Scotland manager Jock Stein, who collapsed shortly before Scotland secured their place in the 1986 FIFA World Cup.
15 September – ITV airs Murder in Space: The Solution, in which the puzzle of the sci-fi murder mystery is finally solved.
28 September – After 20 years ITV’s Saturday afternoon sports programme World of Sport is aired for the last time.
3 October – Roland Rat, the puppet rodent who saved an ailing TV-am in 1983 transfers to the BBC. Commenting on the move, he says, "I saved TV-am and now I’m here to save the BBC."
28 October – A documentary in ITV’s World in Action series casts doubt on evidence used to convict the Birmingham Six of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings.
November – The 1,000th episode of Emmerdale Farm is celebrated with a special lunch attended by Princess Michael of Kent. Not recognising any of the cast members she later admits that she never watches the show.
9 December – 25th anniversary of the first episode of Coronation Street.
25 December – Minder on the Orient Express, a feature-length episode of the television series Minder, receives its UK television debut as the highlight of ITV’s Christmas Day schedule.
BBC1
19 February – EastEnders (1985–present)
March – Comic Relief (1985–present)
1 April – Bertha the Machine (1985–1986)
15 April – Three Up, Two Down (1985–1989)
September – CBBC on BBC One (1985–2012)
1 September – Howards’ Way (1985–1990)
3 September – Telly Addicts (1985–1998)
BBC2
11 January – Victoria Wood As Seen On TV (1985–1987)
September – CBBC on BBC Two (1985–2013)
No Limits (1985–1987)
ITV
11 January – Dempsey and Makepeace (1985–1986)
18 January – The Practice (1985–1986)
20 January – Supergran (1985–1987)
26 February – Busman’s Holiday (1985–1993)
12 April – C.A.T.S. Eyes (1985–1987)
16 April – The Wall Game (1985)
19 April – Home to Roost (1985–1990)
27 April – Crosswits (1985–1998)
13 May – Connections (1985–1990)
5 June – Bulman (1985–1987)
30 August – Albion Market (1985–1986)
23 October – Girls on Top (1985–1986)
30 August – Drummonds (1985–1987)
1 November – Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It (1985–1988)
13 November – Alias the Jester (1985–1986)
30 November – Blind Date (1985–2003)
30 December – All in Good Faith (1985–1988)
Channel 4
2 January – A Woman of Substance (1985)
6 October – Pob’s Programme (1985–1988)
Music
The biggest British musical event of 1985 was the Live Aid concert in London’s Wembley Stadium on 13 July. Held to follow-up the previous year’s charity record "Do They Know It’s Christmas?", the biggest selling single ever at the time, popular acts such as The Who, U2 and Queen performed in front of an estimated audience of 1.5 billion viewers. It raised £150 million to help famine in Ethiopia, and a similar event would happen 20 years later in 2005, with Live 8.
After the huge success of Band Aid’s "Do They Know It’s Christmas?", several more charity songs reached number 1 this year. USA for Africa, inspired by Band Aid, released "We Are the World", a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, while David Bowie and Mick Jagger released a cover of "Dancing In The Street", the music video being premiered at Live Aid and all proceeds going to the charity. In May, a fire at a football stadium in Bradford killed 56 people, and supergroup The Crowd released a charity cover of popular football anthem "You’ll Never Walk Alone" in tribute.
British rock band Dire Straits released their album Brothers in Arms in May, one of the first ever albums to be released on Compact Disc. It went on to become a huge seller, the biggest selling album of the entire decade and as of 2008 in the top 5 biggest selling albums of all time. Four singles were released from the album, including the number 4 hit "Money for Nothing", which referenced American music channel MTV and had a groundbreaking video featuring early computer-generated imagery. When a European version of MTV launched in 1987, it was the first video ever played on the channel.
Jennifer Rush entered the top 75 in June with the power ballad "The Power of Love", which remained in the chart for months without entering the top 40. When it finally did in September, it quickly hit number 1, where it remained for five weeks and was the biggest selling single of the year. It sold over a million copies, however it would be the last single of the decade to do so, and there would not be another million-seller until 1991.
Many songs this year competed for the Christmas number one single, and the entire top 3 from 1984 re-entered the chart this year; Paul McCartney’s "We All Stand Together" at number 32, Wham!’s "Last Christmas" at number 6, and Band Aid’s "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" at number 3. There were also attempts from Bruce Springsteen with a cover of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", and ventriloquist Keith Harris released a cover of "White Christmas" with his green puppet Orville the Duck.
However, the Christmas number one went to Shakin’ Stevens with the song "Merry Christmas Everyone". It had been intended to be released in 1984, but was kept back a year due to the Band Aid charity single. Still a widely known Christmas song in the 21st century, it re-entered the chart in Christmas 2007 on downloads alone, at number 22.
John Rutter, hitherto best known for his popular modern carols, acknowledged his classical roots with his Requiem, which was premièred in October in Sacramento, California. Less than eight months earlier, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem had its première in New York. Paul Miles-Kingston, the boy soprano who won a silver disc for his recording of the "Pie Jesu" from that work, became Head Chorister of Winchester Cathedral in the same year. The prolific Peter Maxwell Davies (who had moved to Orkney in 1971) produced one of his most popular works, Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise, notable for featuring the bagpipes as a lead instrument. Veteran Welsh composer Daniel Jones, produced his 12th symphony, at the age of 73, whilst 80-year-old Michael Tippett began work on his last opera, New Year.
Charts Number one singles
"Do They Know It’s Christmas?" – Band Aid
"I Want to Know What Love Is" – Foreigner
"I Know Him So Well" – Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson
"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" – Dead or Alive
"Easy Lover" – Philip Bailey and Phil Collins
"We Are the World" – USA for Africa
"Move Closer" – Phyllis Nelson
"19" – Paul Hardcastle
"You’ll Never Walk Alone" – The Crowd
"Frankie" – Sister Sledge
"There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" – Eurythmics
"Into the Groove" – Madonna
"I Got You Babe" – UB40 and Chrissie Hynde
"Dancing in the Street" – David Bowie and Mick Jagger
"If I Was" – Midge Ure
"The Power of Love" – Jennifer Rush
"A Good Heart" – Feargal Sharkey
"I’m Your Man" – Wham!
"Saving All My Love for You" – Whitney Houston
"Merry Christmas Everyone" – Shakin’ Stevens
For Some, Housing Crisis Stress Is Unbearable
Image by Renegade98
by Karen Grigsby Bates
NPR
It’s only natural to worry as the value of homes and investments falls. But the financial crisis is hitting some people harder than others. In California, the housing meltdown started early. Over the past three months, a record number of Californians lost their homes to foreclosure.
And some of those financial losses are turning into human tragedies, as reports of suicide and other desperate behavior emerge.
Scott Harder lives on a quiet street in North Pasadena, in a neighborhood that is aptly named Bungalow Heaven. Small wood frame houses nestle under spreading shade trees. Residents visit on each others’ porches and gossip in rockers. They check up on each other to make sure everything’s all right.
But before dawn one recent morning, Harder woke up and smelled smoke coming from the home of his 53-year-old neighbor, Wanda Dunn. He quickly threw on some clothes and went next door to check on her. Their street was still quiet and dark.
"I went out front and looked at the front of her house," Harder said, "and could see plumes of smoke wafting across the street light."
Harder called 911. When emergency personnel arrived, they found Dunn’s body in her rear bedroom. She’d apparently set her house afire and shot herself in the head. Dunn had been facing eviction from the only home she’d ever known.
Harder says he understood Dunn’s anguish.
"She’d grown up in the house, from what I understand, and lived there her whole life, so it was all she had," Harder said. "I talked with another of the neighbors down the street, and through the grapevine he’d heard that she really didn’t know what to do if she’d lost her house."
Dunn had inherited her bungalow from her family and lost it after she stopped working because of a disability; she had also made some bad financial decisions. The new owner let Dunn rent the yellow stucco bungalow, but he lost the house when the subprime meltdown sent all of California’s real estate into a tailspin.
Homeowners Feeling Trapped
Beverly Hills psychologist Kenneth Siegel says Californians are especially attached to their residential real estate.
"California represented for many of us the pinnacle of the effects of hard work," Siegel said, "of the ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps."
Owning a home, Siegel said, "represented the physical manifestation of all we have done and how hard we have worked."
But Californians’ dream of a modest detached home, Siegel says, often morphed into something far grander when the economic boom of the 1990s made home loans — many of them subprime — easier to come by.
"So here, as much as anyplace else, people did overbuy, their houses were bigger than their egos," Siegel said, "and they in fact invested more of themselves and more of their savings in them."
Dunn’s suicide is the latest in a series of events that seem to be linked to financial problems. Shortly before Dunn’s death, money manager Karthik Rajaram killed his wife, mother-in-law, three sons and himself inside the home they rented in an upscale Los Angeles suburb.
At a press conference, LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Moore explained the presumed motive.
"We believe that he has become despondent recently because of financial dealings and the financial situation in his household, and we think this is a direct result of that," Moore said.
Psychological Strains Of A Slump
"Loss is often a trigger — and there is more loss now that could trigger suicide among those that are already vulnerable," said Dr. Kita Curry.
Curry, a licensed clinical psychologist who heads the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center in Los Angeles, says she has a gauge of how tough things are getting.
"Our 24-hour suicide prevention crisis line has seen an increase in calls, and it does seem to be partially fueled by anxiety and a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness," Curry said.
And middle-class status that once seemed a given isn’t anymore. Scott Harder says there are more and more signs reading "BANK OWNED" popping up on his town’s lawns — something he never thought he’d see.
"As this is happening in Pasadena — I think it’s sort of shaking people to their core," Harder said.
Waiting Anxiously For A Recovery
Anxiety can be contagious, but Siegel says that taking the long view is a good antidote.
"The people who tend to believe that this is going to be for a long time, they’re the ones that are feeding off the misery of the current situation," Siegel said. "So keep this in the perspective of, ‘we’re at a point in time, but only a point in time, and it’s not likely to continue forever.’ "
The people who feel that the slump could continue indefinitely, then, are those who are struggling to stay afloat until the economy recovers.
