The more I learn about Margaret Thatcher, the more contemptible she becomes......

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:




Margaret Thatcher blocked Soviet aid for striking miners, files reveal
Margaret Thatcher exerted intense diplomatic pressure on Mikhail Gorbachev over funds for miners during strike


She was the prime minister at the height of her powers, using every arm of the state to crush the striking miners. He was the Soviet heir apparent who had authorised a large donation to help striking comrades in the UK.

Now newly released Downing Street documents have shed fresh light on the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, exposing how Thatcher exerted intense diplomatic pressure on the future leader to successfully block a Soviet donation of much-needed cash to the strikers.

The documents, released to the Guardian after a five-year freedom of information battle, show how the pair clashed during the titanic miners' strike that convulsed Britain in 1984-85.

In October 1984, six months into the dispute, the National Union of Mineworkers was desperate for cash to fund the strike, because a judge had ordered the confiscation of the union's entire assets. The NUM leader, Arthur Scargill, had stepped up efforts to raise cash from the USSR; Soviet miners had responded by donating more than $1m from their wages.

To avoid the cash being seized by the court-appointed official who had been put in charge of the NUM's finances, it had to be transferred clandestinely to the union. The Soviets attempted to transfer the cash to an NUM bank account in Zurich, but it, like other accounts, was frozen. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/29/margaret-thatcher-soviet-aid-miners

[hlthe2b]

1. yes... but like Ronnie... she is fading away to Alzheimers...

The Right Wing has tried hard to lionize her, just as they did with "St. Ronnie..." though, so it is good that some of this is finally coming out. Sad that the truth about Raygun will likely never be fully reported.

[wookie72]

7. Not quite

I believe it's some sort of vascular-related dementia (i.e. the result of a multiple mini-strokes).

[Bitwit1234]

2. She was a conservative what do you expect.

That she be a normal human being.

[quinnox]

3. Another right winger with no empathy

If you are not a rich guy then you don't exist to these people.

[JVS]

4. Any Western head of state of the last 80 years would have done the same.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Actually, she was a caricature of a demagogue, and the far right simply could not

believe their luck. She was really a puppet, and one of very mediocre capacities, but very soon she began to believe that she was really as great as our crypto-fascist press made her out to be - still do.

Imagine her utter, utter bewilderment, when her party gave her 'the bum's rush' from no 10, virtually overnight. "But I'm still the same fantastic leader I always was! How can I have changed overnight," one can imagine her thoughts. What she actually said was that it was a funny old world.

I think the handle they needed was given to them when she referred to herself as a grandmother, using the royal plural. But that flakiness was never far below the surface. Indeed, it was her special charisma, the very feature which made her such an invaluable prize for those to the right of GK. No male who wasn't patently certifiable, could have got away with the sort of nonsense she was able to, as a result of the press building up all sorts of irrelevant nonsense about her being the first woman premier and a strong leader - if you please - and so on!

For the record, while many other young women put their careers on hold to serve in WWII, she was one of the ones who preferred not to. She did for the UK what Reagan did for the US, deregulated the corporations with the catastrophic economic consequences that have now brought the entire planet to the brink of an economic depression on a scale never seen before. And what destruction of our welfare state, the country's whole infrastructure, has occurred in between, thanks to the blind sychophancy of NuLab(c)'s finest, Blair and Brown.

[Nye Bevan]

6. If she was a "puppet"

who was controlling the strings?

[Joe Chi Minh]

15. Well, as one of our right-wing Daily Mail journalists commented today,

"I have no difficulty in believing that America interferes in our domestic affairs. It has meddled for years in the governance of poor, obscure nations such as Haiti, let alone countries with which it shares economic and defence intelligence, like Britain.

"Indeed, I believe our leaders are vetted by Washington long before they acquire power and, if one emerged who was hostile to America's interests, they would act to prevent them acquiring the keys to No 10. No such British politician has succeeded in recent history."

I don't consider Peter McKay to be an oracle by any stretch of the imagination, but when a right-winger (in my view, always shameless about their politics) speak in that vein I am indeed inclined to set some store by his words.

He had earlier stated that it was reported that Bush told Blair that he didn't relish the prospect of Brown succeeding him as PM - which sounds as if it contradicts the last sentence of the item, quoted above. But presumably, Brown had not been 'black-balled'.

However, if I had read your question yesterday, I wouldn't have mentioned the role of the US in this matter. But having noted your perverse-seeming choice of username previously, I can't help pondering your good faith in asking such a question. Most right-wingers are nothing if not worldly and would be aware that the most powerful people reveal little or no public profile, at least in normal circumstances, and are the ones who ultimately pull the politicians' strings. The bizarre corollary of the dictum, 'knowledge is power', is 'secrecy is power'.

I believe one of your politicians, it might even have been a President, once commented that he and his fellow-politicians scarcely dared whisper among themselves, the names of the dark powers who pulled all the strings (although ultimately their strings are pulled by the Principalities and Powers referred to in the Epistles).

[Blue_Tires]

8. i know that movie biography is coming out soon...

it will be interesting to see what else is uncovered...

[wookie72]

9. this is the song I will always associate with her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6T9qp9XbRY

Yes, I know it's not the original. But Wyatt's version is fricking heartbreaking.

[Odin2005]

10. Her only redeeming quality is that she takes global warming very seriously.

Which makes sense, she is a scientist by training (Chemist).

[EFerrari]

14. Or maybe she thinks the fires of hell will be that much hotter. n/t

[GreenTea]

11. Margaret Thatcher's dumber fellow ideologue, union-busting Ronald Reagan found.....

Thatcher fascinating, loved her policies and emulated her cold-hearted agenda in favor of the rich and corporations over workers needs. The millions of narcissistic and the "I want mine, me, me, me, I want it all now" voters, were on both side of the Atlantic - and the even dumber democratic voters here who never even considered what republican party ideology means nor it's real objectives and what its all about, instead they voted for slimy republican Reagan's bullshit promises in droves, believing and eating up everything the media & Reagan fed them....or perhaps they were even dumber than I believe them to be and didn't even knows the definition of the word (ideology) even meant....Disgusting ignorance voluntarily blinded by their pure selfishness & greed!

[mr blur]

12. She was/is an evil hag,

and when she dies the streets of London will be full of people queueing up either to just make sure she's really dead or to piss on her grave.

[EFerrari]

13. She supported Pinochet. F#ck her. n/t