By chance I knew Margaret Thatcher rather better than a junior civil servant might have been expected to, not least from giving her some maritime briefings during the First Gulf War. On another occasion Denis and I once got absolutely blind drunk in Lagos – I had been given him to look after for the day, and the itinerary started with the Guinness brewery and went on to the United Distillers bottling plant, before lunch at the golf club. I had to reunite him with his spouse for the State Banquet and quite literally fell out of the car. Happy days.
I can say I was on first name terms with her – she always called me by my first name. Except unfortunately she thought that was Peter. I recall she came out to Poland when I was in the Embassy there and I was embarrassed because she knew me, and thus greeted me more warmly than my Embassy superiors. The problem was lessened by her continuing to call me Peter very loudly, even after I corrected her twice.
In person she was frightfully sharp, she really was. If you gave her a briefing, she had an uncanny ability to seize on the one point where you did not have sufficient information. She also had that indescribable charisma – you really could feel when she entered a room in a way I have never experienced with anybody else, not Mandela or Walesa, for example. You may be surprised to hear that in person I found her quite likeable.
Yet she was a terrible, terrible disaster to this country. The utter devastation of heavy industry, the writing off of countless billions worth of tooling and equipment, the near total loss of the world’s greatest concentrated manufacturing skills base, the horrible political division of society and tearing of the bonds within our community. She was a complete, utter disaster.
Let me give one anecdote to which I can personally attest. In leaving office she became a “consultant” to US tobacco giant Phillip Morris. She immediately used her influence on behalf of Phillip Morris to persuade the FCO to lobby the Polish government to reduce the size of health warnings on Polish cigarette packets. Poland was applying to join the EU, and the Polish health warnings were larger than the EU stipulated size.
I was the official on whose desk the instruction landed to lobby for lower health warnings. I refused to do it. My then Ambassador, Michael Llewellyn Smith (for whom I had and have great respect) came up with the brilliant diplomatic solution of throwing the instruction in the bin, but telling London we had done it.
So as you drown in a sea of praise for Thatcher, remember this. She was prepared to promote lung cancer, for cash.
After the recent flurry of political discourse; can someone please tell of any government policies that are significant, positively?
Left or right. Just one.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1211077/h7n9-bird-flu-may-mutate-8-times-faster-regular-flu-study-finds
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/apr0913cdc.html
‘A former senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, Clive Ponting leaked information about the sinking of an Argentinian warship, the General Belgrano, in 1984. The classified documents revealed that, contrary to official accounts of the incident, the ship was outside an exclusion zone and was moving away from a Royal Navy taskforce when it was sunk by the submarine HMS Conqueror, resulting in the loss of 323 lives. Ponting was charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act 1911 after the leak, but was later acquitted by a jury which decided, against the direction of the presiding judge, that it was in the “public interest” for the documents to be released. In the years following Ponting’s acquittal, the Thatcher government introduced the Official Secrets Act 1989, which in effect removed the public-interest defence.’ New Statesman. Hiding state corruption
Giles: You’ve fascinated onto one comment, and ignored the rest of my post. Don’t worry, you didn’t disappoint. You chose to attack a weak misinterpretation of a single aspect of my reply to you. The rest of your supposed rebuttal consists of retorts against positions I have never held or expressed.
That is not the act of an intellectually honest person. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I invite you to give it another shot.
For instance, I did not compare Thatcher with Hitler/Stalin – but rather illustrated the weakness of your own “won the day” argument, as if it proved Might is Right.
“Winning at the ballot box” might sound very laudable, if the entire gutter-press/ establishment media and Murdoch with his running-dogs were not entirely behind the winner. Tell me the winner in any election for the last 30 years where the press wasn’t behind them.
*
I have to end this discussion here.
The Official Secrets Act in action hiding state corruption
‘Former foreign secretary Jack Straw and Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 officer, have said they cannot respond to allegations of conspiracy in the torture of a prominent Libyan dissident, pleading the need to protect official secrets.
They do not deny being involved in rendering Abdel Hakim Belhaj into the hands of Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police in 2004 but say they did nothing unlawful.’ The Guardian
Friends – this is a fascinating and involved discussion such as my Dad would have loved. But he’s just passed away. I’ll be back in due course.
Glenn; I am very sorry. Lost my Dad in ’90 after a bittersweet 72 hour final watch. Can I suggest a book?
“Who Dies?” by Steven Levine of the Hanuman Foundation.
My sympathy Glenn_uk -solace in those we love are never truly gone.
” The pain of death for survivors many times is the feeling of separation, but that feeling of separation, is an illusion”
S. Levine.
Pinochet, Allende and the Vatican.
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pagina12.com.ar%2Fdiario%2Felmundo%2F4-217571-2013-04-09.html
Who needs Wikileaks anymore? (We all do)
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/04/09/believe-it-or-not-wikileaks-can-be-an-organization-that-accepts-leaks-archives-information/
I submit this for your Dad and for you Glenn…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA2IYnGRYac
Glenn_uk
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioun/ Indeed we belong to God and indeed we will return to him. Dads are best, sorry to hear you’ve lost yours today.
Thank you, friends. But I think this is more fitting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCE_aYJNfQo
I was never a fan of Thatcher. I thought she was a nasty piece of work and I voted against her. But can you really blame just her for the destruction of British industry?
You have to ask what the alternatives were at that time. Where were the policies and people that could have been put in place that would have put British industry on perhaps the same path as Germany? They just weren’t there, is the answer. The alternative to Thatcher, at that time, was more union power, more protectionism and more state spending. Kinder in the short term, perhaps, but nothing that would change the facts that British industry was inefficiently making crap products that nobody in the world wanted to buy. So much for the “world’s greatest concentrated manufacturing skills base”. Britain didn’t have the visionary industrialists, the product-centered management or the diligent (obedient?) workforce and there wasn’t much that Thatcher or anybody else was suggesting that was going to change that and suddenly morph BL into BMW or Amstrad into Siemens. A massive failure, for sure, but not a failure that was Thatcher’s alone.
It might be easy to vilify Thatcher, and there’s some feel-good benefit to dancing on her grave, but actually the problems are deeper and the solutions a little more difficult.
A Bayesian Question
What is the probability of a country that elects bad leaders resulting in people dancing on the graves of those leaders, compared to the probability of a country that produces people who dance on the graves of bad leaders electing those kinds of leaders?
Every country where the deaths of hated leaders are widely celebrated, are shit countries. I would hope that the British people remain stoic and dignified when burying one of their mistakes.
Debate about the relationship between Thatcher’s personality and her legacy seems belated. The time to deal with the problem of politicians with personality disorders is before they get elected to higher office. Take a close look at your next crop of leaders and weed out the bad ones before you make another mistake.
Democracy = you get what you vote for.
Who’s to blame for bad leaders?
After the 2nd world war: The de-Nazification of Europe came a massive rise of the left wind cultural Marxist Ideology and unionist power which re-forced the massive divide of workers, middle management and Elites.
Add to this a new emphasison materialistic principles and focus on “self satisfaction” came the weak divided society we have.
The profiteers run Britain, they send us to war and they put our women and children in the factories.
Our unemployed sit at home on the couch and our work is not done.
There is reason out there you are all too stupid to see it!
Sorry.
It is too easy to personify the errors and crimes of the 1979- ???? tory governments in one objectionable person. But it is not so simple.
They LOVED her while she was an asset and despised and deposed her when she was a liability.
Her attitudes, character and intellectual flaws, mental illnesses etc were in part to blame for the disaters that befell Britain during her time and after – but she cannot realistically be scapegoated.
We NEED a new way of selecting, monitoring and controlling those we put in power over us. What we have is clearly not working.
Glenn,
I especially appreciate your notes and i am struck the news of your loss.
My best wishes *
How appalling that the taxpayers are forking out for yet more expense on this propaganda exercise to enable the spivs and troughers led by Agent Cameron to expound from 2.30pm until 10pm on the death of the late unlamented Thatcher. What will the slimeball Miliband E have to say?
I have just read back Glenn. I am very sorry to hear that your father has died and send my condolences. You have been a good son to him.
Her nasty racist side displayed to Bob Carr on Australian migration. I heard on Radio 4 that she said this when his Malaysian born wife was standing at his side and could hear what was said.
‘I couldn’t believe it’: Bob Carr recalls Margaret Thatcher’s ‘unabashedly racist’ comment about Australia
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/i-couldnt-believe-it-bob-carr-recalls-margaret-thatchers-unabashedly-racist-comment-about-australia-20130410-2hksz.html
….the facts that British industry was inefficiently making crap products that nobody in the world wanted to buy.
I remember it well, DavidH. Another country that was making crap…etc, at that time was China. Do check the country of origin of your next washing machine/television/security camera/microscope/(the list goes on), the next time you buy one. Though, as we sensibly concentrated on blowing up a credit bubble and speculating in future derivatives of hedges on swaps of sweet-fuck-all, we are in a less comfortable position when it comes to paying for our voluminous Chinese consumer imports, aren’t we?
THAT’s the point. Thatcher hoped to drop wage levels to the point where the then-dominant Japs would build factories here. Not to reform the sclerotic management and antiquated production methods which were an appropriate counterpart to the troublesome unions she delighted in demonising. Her famed patriotism did not extend to providing a working British industrial base for the future.
@DavidH
Although i see you go further than this, i read it as proposing that only Thatchers direction was possible, because it was achieved. But I don’t see it substantiated, that unions, protectionism, UK industrial potential and state spending are all defunct concepts.
It is a legacy of Thatcher more-over of the movement she championed and their combined PR and advertising efforts, that those things are assumed to be dysfunctional now.
But as it played out in reality, we are seeing it substantiated now to a crushing degree, that capitalist control of productive spending is so dysfunctional, that States are required to bail out hyper-rich profiteering schemes on demand -actually by amounts which dwarf the supposed impossibilities of more sociable ideas.
And still, after an un-repeatably large (hopefuly) financial crisis, Our State still continues to give free loans to purely self interested speculators for them to lend to others and us (after expensive convolutions not to mention corruptions). There has been no improvement of financial vision or contract with society. The state and the country is owned by financial system which is much bigger and more powerful than societies it sits atop of. Thatcher and co and then newLab and all parties following surrendered and consigned us to it.
True States should spend a lot, probably most of all money! They should spend it by review and by design – and not from extortion by world marketeers, and also for unrevealed influences, discrete lobbying etc.
States are intended to belong to all of us together. If without protection, we have no industry to trade with, and we cant equip or feed ourselves without trading fragile “financial affairs” — then we need to arrange some form of protection.
It seems only an international social revolution could move against the international finance now, which is plain ruthless and destructive and a waste of human resourcefulness. But fans of Thatcher cant even abide the language of hope.
Glenn,
I’m sorry to hear about your loss. My condolences to you and yours.
Mary @ 8.49 am. Bob Carr’s reproach of Thatcher for racism just shows how complex human beings, particularly politicians, are. On the one hand he criticises Thatcher’s racist chat but on the other is quite happy to have a fellow Australian, Julian Assange, extradited to the torturing regime he loves and worships – the US.
Yes John and he is part of the pro-Zionist Gillard administration. She takes the Chinese yen in billions for the coal and minerals extracted to the detriment of Gaia yet colludes with Obomber in putting up a shield against China.
I don’t suppose he challenged La Thatcher either on her use of the word ‘natives’, meaning the settlers. The aboriginal people whose land has been stolen from them by the Occupiers just like the Palestinians, are Australia’s the true native people.
Jemand –
“The time to deal with the problem of politicians with personality disorders is before they get elected to higher office.”
Happy to agree with that. But am inclined to believe that any politician stabbing and cringing its way to higher office necessarily possesses a personality disorder. Several, even.
Further to my comment on the recall of ‘parliament’, ie the Lords and the Commons, there is a banner running on Sky News saying that the ‘Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will allow travel claims from MPs who are overseas to a maximum of £3,750’.
Laughing in Our Faces cont’d.