The horror of political assassinations
I find it difficult to think of blogging about anything today other than the death of Benazir Bhutto. Yesterday we were driving up to Leicester to spend the day with a gathering of all the immediate members of my family. On the car radio, we were told that a bomb had gone off at a political rally in Pakistan but that Bhutto had already left the scene. When we reached our gathering, relatives told us of her death.
All violent deaths are horrible, but there is something especially revolting about the murder of people simply for their political views. Sadly the Indian sub-continent has a bloody history of such assassinations including Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Nehru.
In the United States, we saw the assassination of John F Kennedy followed by his younger brother Robert F Kennedy. Even peaceful Sweden has seen the killing of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh.
Fortunately political assassinations are almost unheard of in British public life. However, there was one British prime Minister Spencer Perceval who was assassinated. On 11 May 1812, he was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons on his way to attend an inquiry into the recent Luddite riots. The assassin was John Bellingham, a merchant who had incurred business debts in Russia.