British war crimes British war crimes are crimes committed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom from its formation in 1707 to the present day . Actions labeled " war crimes " range from independent actions of individual soldiers , such as the abuse of prisoners in the Iraq War , to officially sanctioned actions such as the bombing of Dresden in 1945 . India . While most of the war crimes committed by the British during their wars of conquest in India were not recorded , those committed during the brutal British suppression of the 1857 war of independence were recorded in passing . These included widespread summary executions across the countryside , particularly by forces under the command of Neill and Renaud ; indiscriminate murder of civilians during the capture of Delhi ; and teh summary execution of the princes of Delhi and other Indian leaders . Boer War . During the later stages of the Second Boer War , the British Empire ordered the civilian internment of the Afrikaner population into concentration camp s , one of the earliest uses of this method by modern powers . Though intended as a humanitarian gesture to protect the civilian population from the British Army ' s scorched earth policy , the women and children were rounded up and driven to , or transported to the camps under the most brutal , inhuman and appalling conditions , e . g . being transported in open cattle trucks in freezing rain during winter , without being given adequate food and water . A significant portion of adults died . Some Afrikaners consider this to be a war crime , which ended with the death of at least 34 , 000 people . A later Prime minister , Henry Campbell - Bannerman , declared in the British Parliament on 14 June 1901 : " When is a war not a war ? When it is waged in South Africa by methods of barbarism . " World War I . Two German submarines , U - 27 and U - 41 were sunk by the British Q - ship HMS " Baralong " between August and September 1915 . In the first case , a number of survivors were summarily executed by " Baralong " ´s crewmembers under orders of Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert on 19 August 1915 . The massacre was reported to a newspaper by American citizens on board " Nicosia " , a British freighter loaded with war supplies which was stopped by U - 27 just minutes before the incident . On 24 September , " Baralong " destroyed U - 41 , which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship " Urbino " . According to Karl Goetz , the U - 41 ' s commander , the British vessel continued flying the U . S . flag after opening fire on the submarine , and the lifeboat carrying the German survivors was rammed and sunk by the British Q - ship . Chemical weapons in warfare . Poison gas was introduced by Imperial Germany , and was subsequently used by all major belligerents ( including Britain ) in the war against enemy soldiers , in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare , which prohibited the use of " poison or poisoned weapons " in warfare . Irish War of Independence . Prime Minister David Lloyd George declared a state of emergency during the Anglo - Irish War . To break the Irish Republican Army , Winston Churchill , then UK Secretary of State for War , suggested recruiting World War I veterans into paramilitary units . Lloyd George agreed and advertisements were filed in British newspapers . Former enlisted men were formed into the Black and Tans , so called because of their mixture of British Army and police uniforms . Veterans who had held officers rank were formed into the Auxiliary Division , who were better paid and received better supplies . Kevin Barry , an 18 - year - old medical student and Irish Republican Army volunteer , was captured following a gun battle between IRA volunteers and British soldiers , which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers , Privates Humphries , Washington and Whitehead , at least two of whom were around the same age as Barry . Following his capture , Barry was interrogated and allegedly subjected to violence and threats of murder by British soldiers . As the British Government denied POW status to IRA members , Barry was interrogated under torture by British servicemen without access to a solicitor or civilian constable . He refused to name the others present at the ambush and was subsequently charged and convicted of first degree murder by a military tribunal on 28 October 1919 and executed by hanging on 1 November 1919 . John Ainsworth , author of " Kevin Barry , the Incident at Monk ' s bakery and the Making of an Irish Republican Legend " , has pointed out that Barry had been captured by the British not as a uniformed soldier but disguised as a civilian and in possession of flat - nosed " Dum - dum " bullets , in contravention of the Hague Convention . Dum - dum bullets were invented by the British Indian Army in the 1890s at Dum - Dum Arsenal , near Calcutta . The inventor ( Capt . Bertie Clay of the Royal Artillery ) realized that by drilling a hole in the bullet , it would expand on impact , maximising the damage to the " unfortunate individual " who was targeted . A recent adaptation is the hollow - point bullet , which has a pit in the nose of the bullet maximising damage on impact . Under international law , dum - dum bullets are banned from military use but are used by police forces around the world , because they suggest , they decrease the chances of causing collateral damage to innocent passers - by . Bloody Sunday was a day of violence in Dublin on 21 November 1920 . The day began when Michael Collins ' assassin squad , known as " The Twelve Apostles " assassinated 13 British intelligence agents , including most of the " Cairo Gang " . That same afternoon , a combined force of British soldiers , policemen , and paramilitaries opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park , killing 14 civilians and wounding 68 . Iraqi revolt ( 1920 ) . During the first years of British rule in Iraq , numerous attacks on civilians were carried out , including village burning and indiscriminate bombing . World War II . Crimes against prisoners , civilians , and civilian property . In violation of the Hague Conventions , British line of communication troops conducted small scale looting in Bayeux and Caen in France , following their liberation , during Operation Overlord . At Seedorf , in Germany , British armoured forces randomly selected and burned two cottages on 21 April 1945 , as a reprisal against local civilians who had hidden German soldiers in their cellars . On 23 May 1945 , British troops in Schleswig - Holstein plundered Glücksburg castle , stealing jewelry , and desecrating 38 coffins from the castle ' s mausoleum . The British Government closed public access to the official report about the incident for 75 years . The " London Cage " , a MI19 prisoner of war facility in the United Kingdom during and immediately after the war , was subject to allegations of torture . The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre in occupied Germany , managed by the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre , was the subject of an official inquiry in 1947 , which found that there was " mental and physical torture during the interrogations " and that " personal property of the prisoners were stolen " . Unrestricted submarine warfare . In response to Germany ' s intensive unrestricted submarine warfare during the Battle of the Atlantic and its invasion of Denmark and Norway , the British Navy carried on its own unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the 1936 Second London Naval Treaty after the British Admiralty announced on 4 May 1940 that all vessels in the Skagerrak were to be sunk on sight without warning . War Rape . Although far from the scale of those committed by the Red Army , rapes of local women were allegedly a common feature among British and Canadian troops in Germany . Even elderly women were allegedly targeted . The Royal Military Police tended to turn a blind eye towards abuse of German prisoners and civilians but rape was a major issue for them . Some officers reportedly treated this behaviour with leniency . Many rapes were committed under the effects of alcohol or post - traumatic stress , but there were cases of premeditated attacks , such as the assault on three German women in the town of Neustadt am Rübemberge and the attempted gang - rape of two local girls at gunpoint in the village of Oyle , near Nienburg , which ended in the death of one of the women when one of the soldiers , it is not clear if unintentionally or otherwise , discharged his gun , hitting her in the neck . Bombing of Dresden . The British , with other allied nations ( mainly the U . S . ) carried out air raids against enemy cities during World War II , including the bombing of Dresden , which killed over 25 , 000 people . While " no agreement , treaty , convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property " from aerial attack was adopted before the war , the Hague Convention s did prohibit the bombardment of undefended towns . Allied forces inquiry concluded that an air attack on the German city of Dresden was militarily justified on the grounds the city was defended . This city was filled with refugees fleeing the oncoming Red Army . It has been widely believed that the bombing was to showcase to the Red Army the " bombing capability " of the British and of the Americans . When asked whether the bombing of Dresden was a war crime , British historian Frederick Taylor replied that " I really don ' t know . From a practical point of view , rules of war are something of a grey area . It was pretty borderline stuff in terms of the extent of the raid and the amount of force used . " Historian Donald Bloxham claims that " the bombing of Dresden on 13 – 14 February 1945 was a war crime " . He further argues that there was a strong " prima facie " for trying Winston Churchill among others and that there is theoretical case that he could have been found guilty . " This should be a sobering thought . If , however it is also a startling one , this is probably less the result of widespread understanding of the nuance of international law and more because in the popular mind ' war criminal ' , like ' paedophile ' or ' terrorist ' , has developed into a moral rather than a legal categorisation . " Iraq War . Corporal Donald Payne ( born 9 September 1970 ) is a former soldier of the Queen ' s Lancashire Regiment of the British Army who became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime under the provisions of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 when he pleaded guilty on 19 September 2006 to a charge of inhumane treatment . He was jailed for one year and dismissed from the army as a result of his actions .