Gary K
2013-04-10 15:34:00 UTC
Hours after the death of former British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher, the history books are being re-written and the beatification
of the Iron Lady is well underway.
Current British premier David Cameron praised Lady Thatcher for having
“saved Britain” and for making the has-been colonial power “great again”.
Tributes poured forth from French and German leaders, Francoise Hollande
and Angela Merkel, while US President Barack Obama said America had lost
a “special friend”.
Former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former Russian
leader Mikhail Gorbachev also lamented the loss of “an historic world
figure”. Polish ex-president Lech Walesa hailed Margaret Thatcher for
having brought down the Soviet Union and Communism.
Such fulsome praise may be expected coming from so many war criminals.
But it is instructive of how history is written by the victors and
criminals in high office. Obama, Cameron, Hollande and Merkel should all
be arraigned and prosecuted for war crimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia and Mali, among other places. Kissinger
has long evaded justice for over four decades for his role in the US
genocide in Southeast Asia during the so-called Vietnam War in which
over three million people were obliterated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The British state is to give Thatcher, who died this week aged 87, a
full military-honours funeral. The praise, eulogies, wreaths and
ceremonies are all self-indictments of association with one of the most
ruthless and criminal political figures in modern times.
So, here is a people’s history of Thatcher’s legacy.
She will be remembered for colluding with the most reactionary elements
of Rupert Murdoch’s squalid media empire to launch a war over the
Malvinas Islands in 1982, a war that caused hundreds of lives and
involved the gratuitous sinking of an Argentine warship, the Belgrano,
by a British submarine.
By declaring war, rather than conducting political negotiations with
Argentina over Britain’s ongoing colonial possession of the Malvinas,
Thatcher salvaged her waning public support in Britain, and the
bloodletting helped catapult her into a second term of office in Downing
Street. Her political “greatness” that so many Western leaders now
eulogize was therefore paid in part by the lives of Argentine and
British soldiers, and by bequeathing an ongoing source of conflict in
the South Atlantic.
It wasn’t just foreigners that Thatcher declared war on. Armed with her
snake-oil economic policies of privatisation, deregulation, unleashing
finance capitalism, pump-priming the rich with tax awards subsidised by
the ordinary working population, Thatcher declared war on the British
people themselves. She famously proclaimed that “there was no such thing
as society” and went on to oversee an explosion in the gap between rich
and poor and the demolition of social conditions in Britain. That legacy
has been amplified by both successive Conservative and Labour
governments and is central to today’s social meltdown in Britain - more
than two decades after Thatcher resigned. Laughably, David Cameron, a
protégé of Thatcher, claims that she “saved” Britain. The truth is
Thatcher accelerated the sinking of British capitalism and society at
large. What she ordered for the Belgrano has in a very real way come to
be realised for British society at large.
During her second term of office in the mid-1980s, the Iron Lady
declared war on the “enemy within”. She was referring to Britain’s
strongly unionised coal-mining industry. Imagine declaring war on your
own population. That is a measure of her pathological intolerance
towards others who did not happen to share her obnoxious ideological
views - ideological views that have since become exposed as
intellectually and morally bankrupt.
For over a year around 1984, her Orwellian mindset and policies starved
mining communities in the North of England into submission. Her use of
paramilitary police violence also broke the resolve and legitimate
rights of these communities. Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill would later
be vindicated in the eyes of ordinary people, if not in the eyes of the
mainstream media. Britain’s coalmines were systematically shut down,
thousands of workers would be made unemployed, and entire communities
were thrown on the social scrap heap. All this violence and misery was
the price for Thatcher’s ideological war against working people and
their political rights.
The class war that Thatcher unleashed in Britain is still raging. The
rich have become richer, the poor decidedly more numerous and poorer.
The decimation of workers’ rights and the unfettered power given to
finance capital were hallmarks of Thatcher’s legacy and are to this day
hallmarks of Britain’s current social decay. But that destructive legacy
goes well beyond Britain. The rightwing nihilistic capitalism that
Thatcher gave vent to was and became a zeitgeist for North America,
Europe and globally. The economic malaise that is currently plaguing the
world can be traced directly to such ideologues as Margaret Thatcher and
former US President Ronald Reagan.
A final word on Thatcher’s real legacy, as opposed to the fakery from
fellow war criminals, is her role in Ireland’s conflict. Her epitaph of
“Iron Lady” is often said with admiration or even sneaking regard for
her supposed virtues of determination and strength. In truth, her “iron”
character was simply malevolent, as can be seen from her policies
towards the Irish struggle for independence from Britain. In 1981, 10
Irish republican prisoners, led by a young Belfast man by the name of
Bobby Sands, died from hunger strikes. The men died after more than 50
days of refusing prison food because they were demanding to be treated
as political prisoners, not as criminals. Thatcher refused to yield to
their demands, denouncing them as criminals and callously claiming that
they “took their own lives”. No matter that Bobby Sands had been elected
by tens of thousands of Irish voters to the British House of Parliament
during his hunger strike. He was merely a criminal who deserved to die,
according to the cold, unfeeling Thatcher.
As a result of Thatcher’s intransigence to negotiate Irish rights, the
violence in the North of Ireland would escalate over the next decade,
claiming thousands of lives. As with Las Malvinas dispute with
Argentina, Thatcher deliberately took the military option and, with
that, countless lives, rather than engage in reasoned, mutual dialogue.
Her arrogance and obduracy blinded her to any other possibility.
As the violence gyrated in Ireland, Thatcher would also embrace the
criminal policy of colluding with pro-British death squads. Armed,funded
and directed by British intelligence, these death squads would in
subsequent years kill hundreds of innocent people - with the knowledge
and tacit approval of Lady Thatcher. It was a policy of British state
terrorism in action, sanctioned by Thatcher. One of those victims was
Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane, who was murdered in February 1989. He was
shot 12 times in the head in front of his wife and children by a British
death squad, after the killers smashed their way into the Finucane home
on a Sunday afternoon.
Thus whether in her dealings with Las Malvinas row with Argentina, the
British working people or Irish republicans, Margaret Thatcher was an
intolerant militarist who always resorted to demagoguery, violence and
starvation to get her political way. She was a criminal fascist who is
now proclaimed to be a national hero.
Reports this week say that Thatcher died with Alzheimer’s, the
brain-degenerating disease in which the patient loses their faculty for
memory. Western leaders, it seems, would also like to erase public
memory of Thatcher’s criminal legacy.
FC/JR
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297353/margaret-thatchers-criminal-legacy/
Thatcher, the history books are being re-written and the beatification
of the Iron Lady is well underway.
Current British premier David Cameron praised Lady Thatcher for having
“saved Britain” and for making the has-been colonial power “great again”.
Tributes poured forth from French and German leaders, Francoise Hollande
and Angela Merkel, while US President Barack Obama said America had lost
a “special friend”.
Former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former Russian
leader Mikhail Gorbachev also lamented the loss of “an historic world
figure”. Polish ex-president Lech Walesa hailed Margaret Thatcher for
having brought down the Soviet Union and Communism.
Such fulsome praise may be expected coming from so many war criminals.
But it is instructive of how history is written by the victors and
criminals in high office. Obama, Cameron, Hollande and Merkel should all
be arraigned and prosecuted for war crimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia and Mali, among other places. Kissinger
has long evaded justice for over four decades for his role in the US
genocide in Southeast Asia during the so-called Vietnam War in which
over three million people were obliterated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The British state is to give Thatcher, who died this week aged 87, a
full military-honours funeral. The praise, eulogies, wreaths and
ceremonies are all self-indictments of association with one of the most
ruthless and criminal political figures in modern times.
So, here is a people’s history of Thatcher’s legacy.
She will be remembered for colluding with the most reactionary elements
of Rupert Murdoch’s squalid media empire to launch a war over the
Malvinas Islands in 1982, a war that caused hundreds of lives and
involved the gratuitous sinking of an Argentine warship, the Belgrano,
by a British submarine.
By declaring war, rather than conducting political negotiations with
Argentina over Britain’s ongoing colonial possession of the Malvinas,
Thatcher salvaged her waning public support in Britain, and the
bloodletting helped catapult her into a second term of office in Downing
Street. Her political “greatness” that so many Western leaders now
eulogize was therefore paid in part by the lives of Argentine and
British soldiers, and by bequeathing an ongoing source of conflict in
the South Atlantic.
It wasn’t just foreigners that Thatcher declared war on. Armed with her
snake-oil economic policies of privatisation, deregulation, unleashing
finance capitalism, pump-priming the rich with tax awards subsidised by
the ordinary working population, Thatcher declared war on the British
people themselves. She famously proclaimed that “there was no such thing
as society” and went on to oversee an explosion in the gap between rich
and poor and the demolition of social conditions in Britain. That legacy
has been amplified by both successive Conservative and Labour
governments and is central to today’s social meltdown in Britain - more
than two decades after Thatcher resigned. Laughably, David Cameron, a
protégé of Thatcher, claims that she “saved” Britain. The truth is
Thatcher accelerated the sinking of British capitalism and society at
large. What she ordered for the Belgrano has in a very real way come to
be realised for British society at large.
During her second term of office in the mid-1980s, the Iron Lady
declared war on the “enemy within”. She was referring to Britain’s
strongly unionised coal-mining industry. Imagine declaring war on your
own population. That is a measure of her pathological intolerance
towards others who did not happen to share her obnoxious ideological
views - ideological views that have since become exposed as
intellectually and morally bankrupt.
For over a year around 1984, her Orwellian mindset and policies starved
mining communities in the North of England into submission. Her use of
paramilitary police violence also broke the resolve and legitimate
rights of these communities. Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill would later
be vindicated in the eyes of ordinary people, if not in the eyes of the
mainstream media. Britain’s coalmines were systematically shut down,
thousands of workers would be made unemployed, and entire communities
were thrown on the social scrap heap. All this violence and misery was
the price for Thatcher’s ideological war against working people and
their political rights.
The class war that Thatcher unleashed in Britain is still raging. The
rich have become richer, the poor decidedly more numerous and poorer.
The decimation of workers’ rights and the unfettered power given to
finance capital were hallmarks of Thatcher’s legacy and are to this day
hallmarks of Britain’s current social decay. But that destructive legacy
goes well beyond Britain. The rightwing nihilistic capitalism that
Thatcher gave vent to was and became a zeitgeist for North America,
Europe and globally. The economic malaise that is currently plaguing the
world can be traced directly to such ideologues as Margaret Thatcher and
former US President Ronald Reagan.
A final word on Thatcher’s real legacy, as opposed to the fakery from
fellow war criminals, is her role in Ireland’s conflict. Her epitaph of
“Iron Lady” is often said with admiration or even sneaking regard for
her supposed virtues of determination and strength. In truth, her “iron”
character was simply malevolent, as can be seen from her policies
towards the Irish struggle for independence from Britain. In 1981, 10
Irish republican prisoners, led by a young Belfast man by the name of
Bobby Sands, died from hunger strikes. The men died after more than 50
days of refusing prison food because they were demanding to be treated
as political prisoners, not as criminals. Thatcher refused to yield to
their demands, denouncing them as criminals and callously claiming that
they “took their own lives”. No matter that Bobby Sands had been elected
by tens of thousands of Irish voters to the British House of Parliament
during his hunger strike. He was merely a criminal who deserved to die,
according to the cold, unfeeling Thatcher.
As a result of Thatcher’s intransigence to negotiate Irish rights, the
violence in the North of Ireland would escalate over the next decade,
claiming thousands of lives. As with Las Malvinas dispute with
Argentina, Thatcher deliberately took the military option and, with
that, countless lives, rather than engage in reasoned, mutual dialogue.
Her arrogance and obduracy blinded her to any other possibility.
As the violence gyrated in Ireland, Thatcher would also embrace the
criminal policy of colluding with pro-British death squads. Armed,funded
and directed by British intelligence, these death squads would in
subsequent years kill hundreds of innocent people - with the knowledge
and tacit approval of Lady Thatcher. It was a policy of British state
terrorism in action, sanctioned by Thatcher. One of those victims was
Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane, who was murdered in February 1989. He was
shot 12 times in the head in front of his wife and children by a British
death squad, after the killers smashed their way into the Finucane home
on a Sunday afternoon.
Thus whether in her dealings with Las Malvinas row with Argentina, the
British working people or Irish republicans, Margaret Thatcher was an
intolerant militarist who always resorted to demagoguery, violence and
starvation to get her political way. She was a criminal fascist who is
now proclaimed to be a national hero.
Reports this week say that Thatcher died with Alzheimer’s, the
brain-degenerating disease in which the patient loses their faculty for
memory. Western leaders, it seems, would also like to erase public
memory of Thatcher’s criminal legacy.
FC/JR
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297353/margaret-thatchers-criminal-legacy/