Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Ethiopia

Tony Hall, Ethiopia, Dinser 1973

  Tony Hall in Ethiopia in 1973 Dad heard reports of the famine and decided to go there to investigate as Oxfam's field officer for East Africa. He went and saw the evidence of it and then came back to Kenya. He found photographer Mohammed Amin and went in again. He sent articles and evidence to the British Press.  The empreror Haile Selassie was a close ally of the west and so, initially, the newspapers and the media were very reluctant to take up the story. However, Jonathan Dimbleby read Dad's article in the Sunday Times and Dad took him around Ethiopia. Jonathan decided to make a film. It was this film that alerted Britain to the so called 'forgotten famine.' The Ethiopian famine of 1973, in which several hundred thousand people died. Subsequently, the British children's programme, Blue Peter , wanted to organise a campaign to help famine victims and asked Dad, Tony Hall, to be their man on the spot. British children sent in 900 million stamps to be sold, a