Maggie Thatcher death discussion thread - Mod rules in first post

Hidalgo wrote: »

While goods were imported to both Irl and the UK form South Africa, she went a bit further than Irish Taoiseach's by labeling Mandela a terrorist.

She described the ANC as 'a typical terrorist organisation' up to the point it dropped it campaign of violence. From that point on she openly and on many occasions pressed for the release of Mandela from incarceration and used it as a condition in many of the dealings with the SA govt at the time.

On his release in 1990 Mandela himself said 'We regard the attitude of the British Government on the question of sanctions as of primary importance ... My release from prison was the direct result of the people inside and outside South Africa. It was also the result of the immense pressure exerted on the South African Government by the international community, in particular from the people of the UK.'

Taking events out of context and forgetting other events of the time dont make for a convincing history lesson.

wonderfullife wrote: »

But....Mandela was, for part of his life, a terrorist.

He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and masterminded the attacks on Dec 16th, 1961 where 57 bombings took place in one day.

When Margaret Thatcher referred to him as a 'terrorist', it would be no different from anyone in 1997 (or even today) referring to Martin McGuinness as a terrorist. You can renounce violence and become a politician, no problem, but the past doesn't always disappear in everyones mind. For some, McGuinness will always be a terrorist. That's just life.

After he had given up all hope that peaceful resistance would bring an end to the apartheid system of government in SA. His aim was sabotage not death (pretty naive when you deal in bombs, people will die).
Its understandable why he chose such a path.

Of course, the founding fathers of America would also be terrorists.

wonderfullife wrote: »

That's a positive thing. The fact some rich people got richer as a by-product of the scheme is nothing new. It happens everywhere, even this country. The rich, the developers, the builders, they will always seize opportunities to snaffle up lots of property.

It wasn't the case of one or two being snaffled up; up to a third of them are now in the hands of landlords with more to eventually follow. You have five million on the waiting list for houses while the government pays exorbitant rents to landlords in the form of housing subsidy for homes that used to be state owned. The fact that many of these are wealthy Tories themselves is the worst kind of opportunism. Much of the housing crisis today could have been alleviated if she hadn't sold off public assets which were later scavenged by the rich to the detriment of the ordinary worker today.

So, again, the act itself of reaching PM is a huge positive in a male dominated era. The Tory party had (i believe) 13 female MPs in 1979. By 2010 they had 50+. It was 13 out of 344 in 1979 and now it's something like 50 out of 270. It's progress.

This happened all over Europe. It happened in Britain itself largely because of Labour initiatives on women only shortlists. In short, it happened in spite of Thatcher, not because of her. If anything she set the role of women in general back due to the fact her polices made it extremely difficult to pursue a career outside the home.

Here's the reality: from 1971 the CIA was financing and supporting Pinochet, providing him with weapons, intelligence and material support. This was very much intergral to the overthrow of Allende. From 1973-1980 the CIA continued to support Pinochet, to the extent that many of the Generals were informants.

Maggies role in the Pinochet story really has no relevance. It's a distasteful support for the man based almost solely on the help Pinochet offered the UK in the Falklands War.

If anyone should be ashamed of their actions it's the USA and even they refused to apologise for it (President Obama was asked to apologise and he refused saying "we need to learn from the past").

Eh, you don't need to tell me about the malign role of the US either. I'm fully aware of that fact as well thanks. Thatcher was one of Pinochet's most prominent allies, fact. She also supported Reagan's global initiatives which included attempting to topple people's governments in Central America as well as funding death squads. I think her only problem with his invasion of Grenada was that he didn't ask her first.

wonderfullife wrote: »

By 1979 when she came to power, there was a consensus that the UK had become "ungovernable". You had epidemic striking, riots, even people working by candlelight because there was no power. Inflation running in the double digits, taxation incredible, basically no private sector to speak of. It's hard to underestimate what an absolute shambles the country was in.

If you look at the country today, not everything is peachy (it's never peachy in any time) but it's chalk and cheese from 1979.

It's easy to trot out the anti-liverpool, anti-working class rhetoric now but of the time the country was gone to the dogs. Almost literally. Rubbish bags piling up in the streets because bin-men were on strike. Dead bodies laying around mortuarys as they couldn't be buried. People not getting to work due to epidemic rail strikes.

People can easily disagree with many of her policies, or even the manner in which she implemented them, but without a politician like her the country would be in bits. It needed someone to do something drastic and she did it. Drastic change will never be popular.

For all its existing failings, the UK of today is in a pretty decent place. In 1979 it was literally on its knees.

very true on the problems in 1979, however economies are cyclical and I doubt that the UK would have remained in the state it was in 1979 today whoever got in. The world had economic problems not just Britian. The world had an economic boom in the 80's which would have happened was she there or not. Keynesism was falling out of favour because of high inflation all over the world.
The unions did hold too much power at the time, however I think some of her economic policies were ideologically based rather then economics. Otherwise why was military spending so high when she agreed with cutting public spending. I don't agree with her methods, they were too quick and there was too much de regulation, the recent problems with the banks illustrate this.
I would not be of the subsidise every industry to keep it alive or keep all welfare high but I think she went too far too quickly with little regard for human cost.

the fawning Anglophile lackeys are very busy on this thread. I'm with Galloway on this one.

http://redmolucca.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/tramp-the-dirt-down/

She created atmosphere of hatred

Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Comment by Danny Morrison

WHEN Mark Thatcher went missing in the Sahara while taking part in an international motor race in Jan 1982, his ashen-faced mother, upset and distressed, appeared on television close to breaking down.
She prayed to God that Mark wouldn’t die, that he would be rescued.

Six months earlier Rosaleen Sands appeared on television, interviewed in the car park of Long Kesh, and prayed for her son Bobby, and asked Margaret Thatcher to compromise and resolve the hunger strike. We all know how Thatcher answered, and the mountain of suffering that nationalists in the North experienced under her premiership.

Ironically, this is the day, 32 years ago, that Bobby Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Thatcher’s mantra to republicans before that was, “‘how can I talk to you, you don’t have a mandate”. But when Bobby got elected (with almost 10,000 more votes than Thatcher got in her constituency), the British prime minister rushed through an amendment to the Representation of the People Act to prevent any other prisoner being elected in his place.

When Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and I were elected to the assembly in 1982, Thatcher issued exclusion orders against us, banning us from entering Britain on pain of a five-year prison sentence. My ban lasted 13 years. In 1988 she introduced the Broadcasting Act banning Sinn Féin elected representatives from being interviewed on radio and television. Yes, she was the Queen of Democracy for sure.

I remember the 10 men who died on hunger strike but also women and children her forces killed with impunity and immunity; people like 14-year-old Julie Livingstone, shot dead by the British army the day Francis Hughes died in jail; 11-year-old Carol Ann Kelly, shot dead a week later while getting milk for a neighbour; and on the morning of Joe McDonnell’s death in jail, my childhood friend Nora McCabe, a mother of three, shot dead seconds after going to buy a packet of cigarettes to calm her nerves.

These are just some of the names. The list runs to hundreds when we add to it those killed by loyalist groups that were rearmed and reorganised by British military intelligence, which reported to Thatcher until her resignation.

Thatcher sanctioned the use of supergrass trials which completely undermined the justice system. She authorised the shoot-to-kill policy and her colleagues subsequently undermined the attempt by Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker to get to the truth. She authorised the attacks on republican funerals and created an atmosphere of hatred and bitterness which ultimately led to the attempt on her life by the IRA in the Brighton bombing in 1984.

Of course, she also destroyed proud working-class communities in Britain with her social and economic policies. And over lunch one Sunday she ordered the sinking of the Argentinian Belgrano during the Falklands War even though it was outside the 200-mile exclusion zone and was sailing away from the area of conflict. More than 323 sailors died, many of them teenage cadets.

When Carol Thatcher, Margaret’s journalist daughter, travelled to the Falklands and Argentina to make a documentary on the 25th anniversary, one woman whose son died on the Belgrano said to her: “I never saw him again because your mother killed him.”

IN 1986 she and US president Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya, which took the lives of over 130 civilians.

Some have argued that Thatcher stood up to the unionists when she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Nov 1985 and should be given credit. But her motives were two-fold: She expected extradition to be made easier and increased security collaboration in the fight against republicanism. She was, indeed, also responding to the warnings from then taoiseach Garret FitzGerald that something needed to be done to halt the electoral rise of Sinn Féin.

In reality, it was the suffering and determination of the Northern nationalist community which forced change.

When Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 we know that on her desk was a secret assessment of the IRA by Brigadier James Glover, commander of land forces in the North. He said the IRA would continue with its war until there was an acceptable political settlement.

He rejected the official propaganda line which was the basis for the treatment of the men in the H-Blocks and the women in Armagh jail. He said that IRA volunteers were not criminals but were talented and dedicated.

Thatcher put my community through hell and her policies unnecessarily protracted the conflict. When it came to a political agreement on Good Friday 1998, the prisoners in the H-Blocks were given early release (an “amnesty”) which was recognition that the British knew they were political prisoners all along.

I was in jail (again as a result of her dirty war and use of agents provocateurs) when she resigned in 1990. One newspaper told this story: “‘The bad news,’ said a voice over the public-address system in a north London railway station, ‘is that a signal failure means another delay. The good news is that Thatcher’s resigned! Hip, Hip, Hooray!’ Most of the commuters cheered.”

I once might have cheered her passing. But now I am indifferent — though I will never forget what she did, and all those who died on her watch.

freddiek wrote: »

the fawning Anglophile lackeys are very busy on this thread. I'm with Galloway on this one.

http://redmolucca.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/tramp-the-dirt-down/

So George Galloway and Gerry Adams have spoken out against Thatcher?
Two individuals I would not piss on if they were on fire