Thatcher: 30 years on

Marking 30 years since Margaret Thatcher came to power
14 Bealtaine 2009


WITH the possible exception of the genocidal Oliver Cromwell – whose men butchered thousands of Catholics in Ireland in the mid-17th century – nobody provokes such vitriol and anger from Irish republicans as Margaret Thatcher. Just over 30 years ago, on 4 May 1979, Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister. She continued at the helm of British politics for over 11 years, leaving in her wake deep social unrest, mass unemployment, poverty and death. She had the audacity to paraphrase St Francis of Assisi as she first arrived at 10 Downing Street, stating: “Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

Thatcher became notorious for her obduracy and inhumanity with her refusal to negotiate with the 1981 Hunger Strikers, which culminated in the deaths of 10 republican prisoners. These men were fighting for their five demands. Thatcher was adamant that she would not negotiate with “the men of violence”, rather hypocritical in that she befriended and supported US war-monger Ronald Reagan and Chile’s murderous dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.

Even after Bobby Sands secured 30,493 votes and became MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, making a mockery of the British Government’s attempts to criminalise the republican struggle, and her insistence that the ‘terrorists have no mandate’, Thatcher remained intransigent, insisting:
“We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime. It is not political.”
It must be noted that Special Category Status (POW status) was removed in 1976 by a Labour Government but Thatcher was insistent on carrying on. When Bobby Sands MP died on 5 May 1981, after 66 days of a tortuous and selfless brave hunger strike, Thatcher remarked:
“Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life.”
Always first to claim that she was protecting democracy against evil, Thatcher’s government hurriedly ratified the Representation of the People Act, which prevented other IRA prisoners from contesting elections. The British criminalisation policy was shown up, with fellow Hunger Striker Kieran Doherty TD for Cavan/Monaghan, blind and on his deathbed, defiantly declaring:
“Thatcher can’t break us; I’m not a criminal.”

FERVENT UNIONIST
Thatcher was a fervent unionist, once proclaiming that “Ulster is as British as Finchley” (her north London constituency which first elected her MP in 1959). She revelled in her nickname ‘The Iron Lady’, given to her by the Soviets.

Her record in the North of Ireland became synonymous with controversial policies.
From 1982, the infamous shoot-to-kill policy was employed by British forces (the SAS being the main culprits) carrying out extra-judicial executions of IRA members and suspected republicans. In tandem with collusion, it was a method of eliminating political opponents without recourse to the law. All of this, obviously sanctioned in the British corridors of power, resulted in many unarmed republicans being executed by British forces. The British Army and RUC were also culpable of deliberately killing suspects without any attempts to arrest them and bring them to trial. This was Thatcherite democracy in action. The ‘supergrass’ (paid perjurer) system was also deployed from this time, rewarding informants with financial gain and immunity from prosecution. Nevertheless, many convictions based on the supergrass testimonies were later overturned.

In the early hours of Friday 12 October 1984, an IRA bomb ripped through Brighton’s Grand Hotel, location of the Tories’ annual conference. Thatcher was extremely fortunate to escape with her life as the explosion destroyed her bathroom. The subsequent IRA statement urged Thatcher to “Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.”

On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave a formal role in relation to the North to elected representatives of the 26 Counties, albeit restricted to matters of security and the treatment of Catholics. Gerry Adams dismissed this as “a powerless consultative role given to Dublin”.

RUTHLESS
Thatcher displayed equal ruthlessness in her own country. Her name is inextricably linked to neo-liberalism, privatisation and free-market capitalism. She became known as ‘Thatcher the Milk Snatcher’ when, as Education Secretary in the mid-1970s she presided over education cuts, including the abolition of free milk provision for schoolchildren. In 1975, she surprisingly became leader of the Tories. In power, she reduced public spending in education and housing. Unemployment rocketed to 3.6 million while manufacturing crumbled.

On 2 April 1982, Argentina attempted to reclaim the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and Thatcher ordered a military response. The war lasted over two months, claiming 258 British casualties. Thatcher’s domestic popularity rose on a wave of jingoistic nationalism and she cruised to a second electoral victory.

She continued selling most of the large national utilities to private companies. In 1984, she shifted her attention to trade unions, particularly the National Union of Miners. She was adamant and largely successful in neutering the power of British trade unions as she labelled the miners, with their just demands and courageous working-class defiance, as “the enemy within”. It was a calculated attack and an act of class warfare on behalf of the powerful and wealthy.

Thatcher’s rejection of imposing economic sanctions in 1986 on apartheid South Africa further exposed her immorality. Thatcher also caused outrage with her complete support for Pinochet in Chile, who violently ousted the democratically-elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende. She commended the bloodthirsty fascist on “bringing democracy to Chile”.

NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY
In 1987, Thatcher infamously stated that there is “no such thing as society... only individuals and families”. She signalled it was not the state’s role to provide housing for the homeless or financial assistance to the poor. It was essentially up to individuals to work hard and sort out their own problems. Her beliefs spurred on personal greed. Her introduction of the Poll Tax was instrumental in signalling the beginning of the end for the Iron Lady as thousands took to the streets to protest. According to this highly inequitable tax, she thought it positive that “the duke and the dustbin man” should pay the same amount of local tax despite the differences in their wealth and the value of their property. Protests culminated with 200,000 angry protestors engaging in pitched battles with police in London’s Trafalgar Square.
When she resigned in November 1990, she was driven away from Downing Street in tears. She left behind a quarter of British children in poverty and a country in the depths of recession.

By her own admission her greatest achievement was the creation of ‘New Labour’, a party addicted to privatisation, profit and capitalism. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who adopted Thatcherite policies, have brought Britain to the brink of economic collapse and social implosion. New Labour’s affair with Thatcher continues with current attempts to privatise the Royal Mail postal service.

At 84, now Baroness Thatcher’s time on earth is coming to a close. A state burial has been mooted but this has been met with murmurs of opposition. The Iron Lady’s reign was too corrosive and divisive for so many people who suffered from it.

Sri Lanka

Brutal Slaughter of Tamil Civilians


A largely defenceless people struggling to survive and hemmed in on a narrow strip of land while facing ruthless indiscriminate airstrikes, assault from gun boats and subjected to cluster bombs by a well equipped government army, conjures up the image of the recent Israeli invasion of Palestine’s Gaza Strip. However, in Sri Lanka, where since the start of this year government forces have stepped up their campaign of wiping out the separatist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) militant group, which has fought a 25-year war for Tamil independence, the situation has culminated with the brutal slaughter of thousands of Tamil civilians who have literally become trapped in a war zone. The silence in the media in comparison to the daily headlines of Israel’s recent wanton destruction of Gaza has been deafening.

UN figures stated that 2,000 people have died in the fighting in the last month, not including last week; the most brutal. The civilian death toll has eclipsed 6,500 since the end of January and some 200,000 Tamil civilians find themselves trapped amongst the LTTE rebels on a tiny sliver of northern coastline measuring 10 sq km; surrounded by the Sri Lankan army who continue to pound the area with air strikes and heavy artillery fire, intent on exterminating the rebels and apparently unconcerned about the growing civilian death toll.

Sri Lanka is facing a growing humanitarian crisis. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already accused the Sri Lankan government of “causing untold suffering”. The vast majority of aid workers have been refused access to the euphemistically labelled “no-fire zones”, and journalists have been completely denied entry. Make-shift hospitals are crumbling under the demand, and people are reportedly dying of malnutrition. The Tamil civilians who are “rescued” by Government forces are being rounded into internment camps.

BLOODBATH
The international community has been pathetic in its response. Although on Sunday the LTTE announced a unilateral ceasefire, the government have not reciprocated insisting that they will push on to secure complete rebel surrender, at whatever expense. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described the war zone as a “catastrophic bloodbath”.

Sri Lanka, an idyllic island off the southern tip of India and home to 20 million people, is a tropical paradise boasting golden beaches straddled by palm trees. It is a land of unquestionable beauty, abundant in resources from tea and rubber, to coconuts and diamonds. However the ordinary people of Sri Lanka live in dire poverty and the country has been torn apart by civil war. Those civilians currently trapped inside the “no-fire zone” are being forced to endure hell on earth.

Sri Lanka’s current problems can be traced back to the legacy of British colonialism. It achieved independence in 1948 as Ceylon, changing its name to Sri Lanka in 1972. The ethnic make-up of the country includes 80 per cent Sinhalese, and 10 per cent Tamil (both Indian and Sri Lankan). The Tamils, Sri Lanka’s largest ethnic minority, are mainly concentrated in the north and east of the island. After independence, the Sinhalese government introduced controversial discriminatory policies including: stripping the Tamil plantation workers of their citizenship, unfair education laws; anti-Tamil employment rules and through the ‘Sinhala Only Act’ made Sinhala the only official language of the island. Initial Tamil resistance to these policies were peaceful, but were met with repression. Civil war erupted in 1983. After the LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an ambush, 3,000 Tamils were slaughtered in government-instigated Sinhalese programs in ‘Black July’. Since then the violence has spiralled out of control, claiming over 70,000 lives.

The LTTE were formed in 1976 by current leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. They seek a separate nation for Tamils, to be called Tamil Eelam, in the north and east of the country. With the failure of politics to achieve any equality for the Tamil population, the LTTE became stronger, more numerous and eventually crushed or consumed other Tamil militant groups. It soon became one of the world’s most feared and best equipped rebel groups. It has a sea and air force, and previously launched attacks on government military airports. It killed former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. However, it has also attracted negative attention for deploying suicide bombers and has been lambasted for allegedly recruiting children as young as twelve to engage in armed combat against government troops.

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaska has been widely accused of presiding over a racist regime, intent on crushing any dissent. The Asian Development Bank named Sri Lanka as one of the “world’s most politically unstable countries”. Human Rights Watch labelled the Sri Lankan government as one of the “world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances”. It is the fourth most dangerous place on earth for journalists to venture.

The international community must act to force the Sri Lankan Government to halt its bloody offensive and Tamil civilians must be granted freedom of movement and provided with sufficient humanitarian aid. The government-run internment camps, housing fleeing civilians, are horribly overcrowded, surrounded by barbed wire and controlled by government troops, and should be shut down. Those civilians escaping the violence deserve access to adequate food, shelter and health care.
All Sri Lankans need an all-inclusive political process, based on equality, inclusion and mutual respect. There can never be peace without social justice, and Tamils should no longer be treated as the inferior race. The International Community, through the UN, should facilitate this process. The root cause of the conflict needs to be addressed, that is the grievances of the Tamil population, those very civilians that have been risking their lives to flee to India in ramshackle boats. Civilians must stop being used as disposable pawns in this bloody political power struggle. The time has come for not only peace, but also prosperity and social justice for this majestic island and all who inhabit it.