Speaking at the 39th annual dinner of Third World Solidarity, an organisation committed to promoting justice, peace, democracy, and international cooperation, Institute Patron Keith Bennett stated that the organization “definitely has resilience and staying power”, and surveyed its history and current significance.

In his address to the event, Keith Bennett stated:

“On April 15, 1986, 40 years ago this month, US warplanes took off from bases in Britain to bomb Libya. Their intention was to murder the country’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. They succeeded – if that’s the appropriate word for such a heinous crime – in killing his adopted baby daughter.

“I hardly need to point out the contemporary resonance of this. When we have a Prime Minister – a man who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it stood up and slapped him in the face – falsely claiming to have kept us out of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran whilst simultaneously boasting that RAF planes are in the skies and in action, and, just as 40 years ago, US planes take off from bases here to inflict murder and mayhem far away.”

The full text of Keith Bennett’s speech is available here.