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Britain and the World, 1979-84: A post-imperial postscript. Leave a comment
Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher's main supporter in her election as Conservative leader and in her early governments, once said that, in the past, Britain's trouble had been that she had never had a proper capitalist ruling class. In 1979, the first Thatcher government sought consciously to put this right. The task it set itself was daunting – the liberation of British enterprise from a hundred years of reactionary accretions, in order to return the machine to the point along the path where it had stood when it was diverted away. It was helped by the fact that, with the empire gone, very little remained to sustain the older, obstructive, pre-capitalist values any longer, or to cushion Britain against the retribution her industrial shortcomings deserved. This movement promised to mark the real and final end of empire, the Thatcher government's determination to restore the status quo ante imperium, which meant, in effect, before the 1880s, when imperialism had started to take such a hold on Britain. Thatcher looked back to the Victorian values of Benjamin Disraeli's day, if not to those of William Gladstone. She itemized these values in January 1983 as honesty, thrift, reliability, hard work and a sense of responsibility. This list strikingly omitted most of the imperial values, like service, loyalty and fair play, though she did, later on, add 'patriotism' to them. Nevertheless, the new patriotism of the early 1980s was very different from that of the 1880s, even when it was expressed in a way which seemed to have a ring of Victorian imperialism about it.
Part of the backdrop to the Falklands War was the residual fear of global nuclear war. With hindsight, the Soviet Union of Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko may seem to be a rusted giant, clanking helplessly towards a collapse, but this is not how it seemed prior to 1984. The various phases of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) were underway, but to well-informed and intelligent analysts the Soviet empire still seemed mighty, belligerent and unpredictable. New SS20 missiles were being deployed by the Soviets, targeted at cities and military bases across western Europe. In response, NATO was planning a new generation of American Pershing and Cruise missiles to be sited in Europe, including in Britain. In the late winter of 1979 Soviet troops had begun arriving in Afghanistan, Mikhail Gorbachev was an obscure member of the Politburo working on agricultural planning, and glasnost was a word no one in the West had heard of. Poland's free trade union movement, Solidarity, was being crushed by a military dictator. Following the invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter had issued an ultimatum: the Soviets must withdraw or the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympic Games due to be held in the summer of 1980. Margaret Thatcher supported the call for a boycott, but the British Olympic Association showed its independence from government and defiantly sent a team, supported by voluntary contributions from students, among others. Two British middle-distance runners, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett each won gold medals.
Western politics echoed with arguments over weapons systems, disarmament strategies and the need to stand up to the Soviet threat. Moscow had early and rightly identified Margaret Thatcher as one of its most implacable enemies. She had already been British Prime Minister for eighteen months when Ronald Reagan's administration took over in Washington. He may have been many things Thatcher was not, but like her, he saw the world in black and white terms, especially in his first term to 1984. She was from a Methodist background, he was from a Presbyterian one, so they both shared a view of the world as a great stage on which good and evil, God and Satan, were pitched against each other in endless conflict. Reagan found a 'soul mate' in Thatcher. Already dubbed the 'Iron Lady' by the Russians, Thatcher was resolute in her determination to deregulate government and allow the benefits of capitalism to flourish at home and abroad. Although the UK was committed to Europe, Thatcher was also a strong believer in Britain's "enduring alliance" with the United States. Reagan and Thatcher saw eye-to-eye on many key issues. Their shared detestation of socialism in general and Soviet communism, in particular, underpinned their remarkably close personal relationship which was eventually to help steer the world away from Armageddon.
Of course, in a sense, the Falklands War of 1982 could be seen as an imperial war, fought as it was over a fag-end of Britain's old empire: but that was an accident. There was no imperial rationale for the war. Britain did not fight the Argentines for profit, for potential South Atlantic oil reserves (as some suggested), or for the security of her sea lanes, or indeed for the material or spiritual good of anyone. She fought them for a principle, to resist aggression and to restore her government's sovereignty over the islands in the interests of the islanders themselves. The war also served to restore to Britain some of the national pride which many commentators had long suggested was one of the other casualties of the empire's demise. That was what made an otherwise highly burdensome operation worthwhile if that sense of pride could be translated into what Sir Nicolas Henderson had described three years earlier as a sense of national will. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher believed that if British Leyland could be injected with some of the same 'Falklands spirit' then there was no reason why British industry could not reverse its decline. The popular jingoism the affair aroused and encouraged showed that a post-imperial Britain would not necessarily be a post-militaristic one. But it was not an imperial jingoism per se, more one which expressed a national pride and patriotism. It did not indicate in the least that 'imperialism' proper was about to be resurrected, even if that were practicable; or that anyone intended that it should be.
However proud Britons were to have defended the Falklands, no one was particularly proud any longer of having them to defend. Most of Britain's remaining colonial responsibilities were regarded now as burdens it would much rather be without and would have been if it could have got away with scuttling them without loss of honour or face. In her new straitened circumstances, they stretched its defence resources severely, and to the detriment of its main defence commitment, to NATO. They also no longer reflected Britain's position in the world. When Hong Kong and the Falklands had originally been acquired, they had been integral parts of a larger pattern of commercial penetration and naval ascendancy. They had been key pieces in a jigsaw, making sense in relation to the pieces around them. Now those pieces had gone and most of the surviving ones made little sense in isolation, or they made a different kind of sense from before. If the Falklands was an example of the former, Hong Kong was a good example of the latter, acting as it now did as a kind of 'cat-flap' into communist China. The Falklands was the best example of an overseas commitment which, partly because it never had very much value to Britain, now had none at all.
Diplomatically, the Falklands 'Crisis' as it was originally known, was an accident waiting to happen, no less embarrassing for that. At the time, the defence of western Europe and meeting any Soviet threat was the main concern, until that began to abate from 1984 onwards. The British Army was also increasingly involved in counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland. Small military detachments helped to guard remaining outposts of the empire such as Belize. But Argentine claims to the Falklands were not taken seriously, and naval vessels were withdrawn from the South Atlantic in 1981. In April 1982, though, Argentina launched a surprise attack on South Georgia and the Falklands and occupied the islands.
Even if oil had been found off its shores, or South Georgia could have been used as a base from which to exploit Antarctica, Britain was no longer the sort of power which could afford to sustain these kinds of operations at a distance of eight thousand miles. The almost ludicrous measures that had to be put into place in order to supply the Falklands after May 1982 illustrate this: with Ascension Island serving as a mid-way base, and Hercules transport aircraft having to be refuelled twice in the air between there and Port Stanley, in very difficult manoeuvres. All this cost millions, and because Britain could not depend on the South American mainland for more convenient facilities.
But it was not only a question of power. Britain's material interests had contracted too: especially her commercial ones. For four centuries, Britain's external trade had used to have a number of distinctive features, two of which were that it far exceeded any other country's foreign trade and that most of it was carried on outside Europe. However, between 1960 and 1980, Britain's pattern of trade had shifted enormously, towards Europe and away from the 'wider world'. In 1960, less than thirty-two per cent of Britain's exports went to western Europe and thirty-one per cent of imports came from there; by 1980, this figure had rocketed to fifty-seven per cent of exports and fifty-six per cent of imports. In other words, the proportion of Britain's trade with Europe grew by twenty-five per cent, compared to its trade with the rest of the world. Of course, this 'shift' was partly the result of a political 'shift' in Britain to follow a more Eurocentric commercial pattern, culminating in the 1975 Referendum on EEC membership.
By 1980 Britain was no longer a worldwide trading nation to anything like the extent it had been before. Moreover, in 1983, a symbolic turning-point was reached when, for the first time in more than two centuries, Britain began importing more manufactured goods than it exported. It followed that it was inappropriate for it still to have substantial political responsibilities outside its own particular corner of the globe. British imperialism, therefore, was totally and irrevocably finished, except as a myth on the right and the left. I remember Channel Four in the UK screening a programme called 'the Butcher's Apron' in 1983 which argued, from a left-wing perspective, that it was still very much alive, and that the Falklands War was clear evidence of this. Likewise, there were, and still are, many nationalists in Scotland and Wales who used the term as a metaphor for the 'domination' of England and 'the British state' over their countries. Of course, in historical terms, they could only do this because the British Empire was a thing of the past, and the sending of Welsh guardsmen to recover islands in the South Atlantic was an unintended and embarrassing postscript, never to be repeated.
The imperial spirit had dissipated too, despite Mrs Thatcher's brief attempt to revive it in Falklands jingoism and whatever might be said by supercilious foreign commentators who could not credit the British for having put their imperialist past behind them so soon after Suez and all that and certainly by 1970, when they had abandoned overseas defence commitments 'east of Suez'. But Britain had indeed left its past behind it, even to the extent of sometimes rather rudely 'putting its behind in its past' to emphasise the point. Scattered around the globe were a few little boulders, 'survivals' from the imperial past, which were no longer valued by Britain or valuable to her. There were also some unresolved problems, such as Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe, as an independent territory in 1980. Britain had clearly dissociated itself from its white racist leaders even at the cost of bringing an 'unreconstructed Marxist' to power. After that, smaller island colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific continued to be granted their independence, so that by 1983 the Empire had effectively ceased to exist.
In 1984 Bernard Porter wrote, in the second edition of his book on British imperialism, that it was…
… unlikely that any subsequent edition of this book, if the call for it has not dried up completely, will need to go beyond 1980, because British imperialism itself is unlikely to have a life beyond then. That chapter of history is now at an end.
It was not a very long chapter, as these things go; but it is difficult to see how it could have been. The magnificent show that the British empire made at its apogee should not blind us to its considerable weaknesses all through. Those who believe that qualities like 'will' and 'leadership' can mould events might not accept this, of course; but there was nothing that anyone could have done in the twentieth century to stave off the empire's decline. It was just too riddled with contradictions.
The Imperialists themselves were the first to predict the decline; that Britain could not help but be overhauled and overshadowed by the growing Russian and American giants. Britain did not have the will to resist this development and the empire was not, in any case, a fit tool for resistance. While Britain had it, in fact, the Empire was rarely a source of strength to the 'mother country', despite the attempts of imperialists to make it so.
A part of the narrative of the Falklands Crisis not revealed at the time was the deep involvement, and embarrassment, of the United States. Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan had already begun to develop their personal special relationship. But the Argentine junta was important to the US for its anti-Communist stance and as a trading partner. Prior to 1982, the United States had supported the Argentine generals, despite their cruel record on human rights, partly because of the support they gave the 'Contras' in Nicaragua. Therefore, they began a desperate search for a compromise while Britain began an equally frantic search for allies at the United Nations. In the end, Britain depended on the Americans not just for the Sidewinder missiles underneath its Harrier jets, without which Thatcher herself said the Falklands could not have been retaken, but for intelligence help and – most of the time – diplomatic support too. These were the last years of the Cold War. Britain mattered more in Washington than any South American country. Still, many attempts were made the US intermediary, the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, to find a compromise. They would continue throughout the fighting. Far more of Thatcher's time was spent reading, analysing and batting off possible deals than contemplating the military plans. Among those advising a settlement was the new Foreign Secretary, Francis Pym, appointed after Lord Carrington's resignation. Pym and the Prime Minister were at loggerheads over this and she would punish him in due course. She had furious conversations with Reagan by phone as he tried to persuade her that some outcome short of British sovereignty, probably involving the US, was acceptable.
Thatcher broke down the diplomatic deal-making into undiplomatic irreducibles. Would the Falkland Islanders be allowed full self-determination? Would the Argentine aggression be rewarded? Under pulverizing pressure she refused to budge. She wrote to Ronald Reagan, who had described the Falklands as that little ice-cold bunch of land down there, that if Britain gave way to the various Argentine snares, the fundamental principles for which the free world stands would be shattered. Reagan kept trying, Pym pressed and the Russians harangued, all to no avail. Despite all the logistical problems, a naval task force set sail, and with US intelligence support, the islands were regained after some fierce fighting.
Back in London in the spring of 1984, Margaret Thatcher's advisers looked into the new, younger members of the Soviet Politburo who had emerged under Konstantin Chernenko, the last of the 'old guard'. He was old and frail, like his predecessor, Yuri Andropov. The advisors to the Prime Minister wondered with whom she, and they, would be dealing with next, and issued a number of invitations to visit Britain. By chance, the first to accept was Mikhail Gorbachev, who visited Thatcher in London. He arrived with his wife, Raisa, itself remarkable, as Soviet leaders rarely travelled with their wives. By comparison to the old men who had led the Soviet Union for twenty years, the Gorbachevs were young, lively and glamorous. The visit was a great success. After Thatcher and Gorbachev met, the Prime Minister was asked by reporters what she thought of her guest. She replied with a statement that, again with the benefit of hindsight, was to usher in the final stage of the Cold War:
David Killingray (2001), The Penguin Atlas of British & Irish History. London: Penguin Books.
Bernard Porter (1984), A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-1983. Harlow: Longman.
Andrew Marr (2008), A History of Modern Britain. Basingstoke: Macmillan Pan.
Posted September 28, 2018 by TeamBritanniaHu in Africa, American History & Politics, Ascension, Britain, British history, Britons, Caribbean, Christian Faith, Civil Rights, Cold War, Colonisation, Commonwealth, Communism, Conservative Party, decolonisation, Empire, Europe, European Economic Community, Falklands, Gorbachev, History, Imperialism, Ireland, Methodism, monetarism, Narrative, nationalism, Scotland, tyranny, Victorian, Wales
Tagged with 'glasnost', Afghanistan, Alexander Haig, Antartica, Argentina, Belize, British Leyland, Business, Caribbean, Channel Four, China, Christianity, Contras, Diplomacy, Disraeli & Gladstone, Faith, Francis Pym, Harrier jump jets, History, Hong Kong, Ireland, Iron Lady, jingoism, junta, Keith Joseph, Konstantin Chernenko, Lord Carrington, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow Olympic Games, NATO, Nicolas Henderson, Pershing & Cruise, politics, Port Stanley, Raisa Gorbachev, Rhodesia, Ronald Reagan, Sebastian Coe, society, South Georgia, SS20 missiles, Steve Ovett, Suez, UN, USA, Welsh Guards, Yuri Andropov, Zimbabwe
The Rise of Thatcherism in Britain, 1979-83: Part Two. Leave a comment
Above: Denis Healey in combatant mood
Labour's 'Civil War' and the Creation of the SDP:
As a general election loomed, with Labour in visible disarray, Margaret Thatcher moved within a couple of months from being one of the least popular prime ministers ever to being an unassailable national heroine. This was the result of two 'factors', the struggle for power within the Labour Party, which (as I wrote about in the first part of this article) began with Callaghan's decision to step down as its leader in the autumn of 1980, and the Falklands Crisis and War of 1982.
Labour's Civil War began with constitutional arguments about whether MPs should be able to be sacked by their local constituency parties. It became nasty, personal, occasionally physical, and so disgusted those outside its ranks that the party almost disappeared as an effective organisation. Undoubtedly, there was widespread bitterness on the left of the party about what were considered to be the right-wing policies of the defeated Wilson-Callaghan government, and about the small number of party conference decisions which found their way into Labour's manifesto at the May 1979 election. In this atmosphere, the left wanted to take power away from right-wing MPs and their leadership and carry out a revolution from below. They believed that if they could control the party manifesto, the leadership election and bring the MPs to heel, they could turn Labour into a radical socialist party which would then destroy Thatcher's economics at the next general election.
At Labour's October 1980 Blackpool Conference, the left succeeded in voting through resolutions calling for Britain to withdraw from the European Community, unilateral disarmament, the closing of US bases in Britain, no incomes policy and State control of the whole of British industry, plus the creation of a thousand peers to abolish the House of Lords. Britain would become a kind of North Sea Cuba. The Trotskyite Militant Tendency, which had infiltrated the Labour Party, believed in pushing socialist demands so far that the democratic system would collapse and a full-scale class war would follow. Tony Benn, who thought that their arguments are sensible and they make perfectly good rational points, saw Militant as no more than of a threat than the old Tribune group or the pre-war Independent Labour Party. He thought that the left would bring about a thoroughly decent socialist victory. In fact, thuggish intimidation in many local Labour parties by Militant supporters was driving moderate members away in droves. Many mainstream trade unionists went along with Militant, feeling let down by the Wilson and Callaghan governments. So too did those who were driven by single issues, such as nuclear disarmament.
Shrewd tactics and relentless campaigning enabled a small number of people to control enough local parties and union branches to have a disproportionate effect in Labour conference votes, where the huge, undemocratic block votes of the trades unions no longer backed the leadership. At the 1980 Conference, the left won almost every important vote, utterly undermining Callaghan, who quit as leader two weeks later. Since new leadership election rules would not be in place until a special conference the following January, Labour MPs had one final chance to elect their own leader. Michael Foot, the old radical and intellectual, was persuaded to stand. Benn would stand no chance against him, especially since he had now allied himself with the Trotskyists who were attacking the MPs. But Foot was a great parliamentarian and was considered to be the only candidate who could beat Denis Healey, by now the villain of the piece for the Labour left.
Healey had already highlighted the fatal flaw in their strategy which was that if they did take over the Labour Party, the country wouldn't vote for it. Activists, he told them, were different from the vast majority of the British people, for whom politics was something to think about once a year at most. His robust remarks about what would later be called 'the loony left' were hardly calculated to maximise his chances, despite his popularity in the country at the time. At any rate, he was eventually beaten by Foot by 139 votes to 129. Many believe that Foot was the man who saved the Labour Party since he was the only leader remotely acceptable to both the old guard and the Bennite insurgents. He took on the job out of a sense of duty, with his old-style platform oratory. He was always an unlikely figure to topple Margaret Thatcher, the 'Iron Lady'. It was the last blast of romantic intellectual socialism against the free market.
At the special party conference, Labour's rules were indeed changed to give the unions forty per cent of the votes for future Labour leaders, the activists in the constituencies thirty per cent, and the MPs only thirty per cent. Labour's struggle now moved to its next and most decisive stage, with the left in an exuberant mood. It was decided that Benn must challenge Healey for the deputy leadership the following year. This would signal an irreversible move. A Foot-Benn Labour Party would be a fundamentally different one from a party in which Healey continued to have a strong voice. Both sides saw it as the final battle and 'Benn for Deputy' badges began to appear everywhere. Benn went campaigning around the country with verve and relentless energy. I heard him speak impressively at the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, though his analysis of the problems in the British economy was far stronger than the solutions he proposed. At public meetings, Healey was booed and heckled and spat at. The intimidation of anyone who would not back Benn was getting worse, though Benn himself was apparently unaware of what was being said and done in his name. Neil Kinnock eventually decided that he would support neither Benn nor Healey, announcing his decision in Tribune. As education spokesman, he had been gradually moving away from the hard left, while continuing to support his neighbouring south Wales and fellow-Bevanite MP and now party leader, Michael Foot. Popular in the party, he was regarded with increasing suspicion by Tony Benn. But this open break with the left's 'champion' shocked many of his friends. At the Brighton conference, Benn was narrowly beaten by Healey, by less than one per cent of the votes. Neil Kinnock and Arthur Scargill clashed angrily on television, and a young Jeremy Corbyn openly called for the mandatory deselection of Tribune MPs who had refused to back Benn.
This next phase was too much for those who were already planning to break away and form a new party. Roy Jenkins had already mooted the idea before the Bennite revolt, as he contemplated the state of the British party system from his offices in Brussels, where he was President of the European Commission. He argued that the Victorian two-party system was out-dated and that coalition government was not such a bad thing. It was time, he said, to strengthen the 'radical centre' and find a way through the economic challenges which accepted the free market but also took unemployment seriously. Although he was in touch with David Steel, the Liberal leader, and was close to Liberal thinking, he judged that only a new party would give British politics the new dimension it needed. He began holding lunches for his old friends on the right of the Labour Party, including Bill Rodgers, still a shadow cabinet member, and Shirley Williams, who had lost her seat but who remained one of the best-liked politicians in the country. At this stage, the public reaction from Labour MPs was discouraging. Williams herself had said that a new centre party would have no roots, no principles, no philosophy and no values. David Owen, the young doctor and former Foreign Secretary, who was now fighting against unilateral nuclear disarmament, said Labour moderates must stay in the party and fight even if it took ten or twenty years.
The Bennite revolt changed many minds, however. After the Wembley conference, at which Owen was booed for his views on defence, he, Jenkins, Williams and Rodgers issued the 'Limehouse Declaration', describing Wembley as 'calamitous' and calling for a new start in British politics. Two months later, this was formalised as the 'Social Democratic Party' (SDP) two months later, in March 1981. In total thirteen Labour MPs defected to it and many more might have done so had not Roy Hattersley and others fought very hard to persuade them not to. Within two weeks, twenty-four thousand messages of support had flooded in and peers, journalists, students, academics and others were keen to join. Public meetings were packed from Scotland to the south coast of England, and media coverage was extensive and positive. In September an electoral pact was agreed with the Liberal Party, and 'the Alliance' was formed.
After running the Labour Party close in the Warrington by-election, the SDP won their first seat when Shirley Williams took Crosby from the Conservatives in November, with nearly half the votes cast, followed by Jenkins winning Glasgow Hillhead from the Tories the following year. His victory allowed Jenkins to become the leader of the party in the Commons, but David Owen had always believed that leadership was more rightly his and feared that Jenkins was leading the SDP towards a merger with the Liberals. Owen saw himself still as a socialist, although of a new kind. By the early eighties, the Liberal Party was led by Steel, 'the boy David' who was looking for a route back from the Thorpe scandal to the centre ground. The alliance with the SDP provided this, but Owen was not alone in despising the Liberals and the eventual merger between the two parties was bitter and difficult. Nevertheless, the initial upsurge in the SDP's support shook both the Labour Party and the Conservatives and by the early spring of 1982, the SDP and Liberals could look forward with some confidence to breaking the mould of British politics.
The Falklands 'Escapade':
One of the many ironies of the Thatcher story is that she was rescued from the political consequences of her monetarism by the blunders of her hated Foreign Policy. In the great economic storms of 1979-81, and on the European budget battle, she had simply charged ahead, ignoring all the flapping around her in pursuit of a single goal. In the South Atlantic, she would do exactly the same and with her good luck, she was vindicated. Militarily, it could so easily have all gone wrong, and the Falklands War could have been a terrible disaster, confirming the Argentinian dictatorship in power in the South Atlantic and ending Margaret Thatcher's career after just one term as Prime Minister. Of all the gambles in modern British politics, the sending of a task force of ships from the shrunken and underfunded Royal Navy eight thousand miles away to take a group of islands by force was one of the most extreme.
On both sides, the conflict derived from colonial quarrels, dating back to 1833, when the scattering of islands had been declared a British colony. In Buenos Aires, a newly installed 'junta' under General Leopoldo Galtieri was heavily dependent on the Argentine navy, itself passionately keen on taking over the islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas. The following year would see the 150th anniversary of 'British ownership' which the Argentines feared would be used to reassert the Falklands' British future. The junta misread Whitehall's lack of policy for lack of interest and concluded that an invasion would be easy, popular and impossible to reverse. In March an Argentine ship 'tested the waters' by landing on South Georgia, a small dependency south of the Falklands, disembarking scrap-metal dealers. Then on 1 April, the main invasion began, a landing by Argentine troops which had been carefully prepared for by local representatives of the national airline. In three hours it was all over, and the eighty British marines surrendered, having killed five Argentine troops and injured seventeen with no losses of their own. In London, there was mayhem. Thatcher had had a few hours' warning of what was happening from the Defence Secretary, John Nott. Calling a hurried meeting in her Commons office, Sir John Leach gave her clarity and hope, when her ministers were as confused as she was. He told her he could assemble a task-force of destroyers, frigates and landing craft, led by Britain's two remaining aircraft carriers. It could be ready to sail within forty-eight hours and the islands could be retaken by force. She told him to go ahead. Soon after, the Foreign Secretary, Peter Carrington, tended his resignation, accepting responsibility for the Foreign Office's failings.
But Margaret Thatcher was confronted by a moral question which she could not duck, which was that many healthy young men were likely to die or be horribly injured in order to defend the 'sovereignty' of the Falkland Islanders. In the end, almost a thousand did die, one for every two islanders and many others were maimed and psychologically wrecked. She argued that the whole structure of national identity and international law were at stake. Michael Foot, who had been bellicose in parliament at first, harking back to the appeasement of fascism in the thirties, urged her to find a diplomatic answer. Later she insisted that she was vividly aware of the blood-price that was waiting and not all consumed by lust for conflict. Thatcher had believed that from the start that to cave in would finish her. The press, like the Conservative Party itself, were seething about the original diplomatic blunders. As it happened, the Argentine junta, even more belligerent, ensured that a serious deal was never properly put. They simply insisted that the British task-force be withdrawn from the entire area and that Argentine representatives should take part in any interim administration and that if talks failed Britain would simply lose sovereignty. The reality, though, was that their political position was even weaker than hers. She established a small war cabinet and the task-force, now up to twenty vessels strong was steadily reinforced. Eventually, it comprised more than a hundred ships and 25,000 men. The world was both transfixed and bemused.
Above: Royal Marines march towards Port Stanley during the Falklands War.
The Empire struck back, and by the end of the month South Georgia was recaptured and a large number of Argentine prisoners taken: Thatcher urged questioning journalists outside Number Ten simply to 'rejoice, rejoice!' Then came one of the most controversial episodes in the short war. A British submarine, The Conqueror, was following the ageing but heavily armed cruiser, the Belgrano. The British task-force was exposed and feared a pincer movement, although the Belgrano was later found to have been outside an exclusion zone announced in London, and streaming away from the fleet. With her military commanders at Chequers, Thatcher authorised the submarine attack. The Belgrano was sunk, with the loss of 321 sailors. The Sun newspaper carried the headline 'Gotcha!' Soon afterwards, a British destroyer was hit by an Argentine Exocet missile and later sunk. Forty died.
On 18 May 1982, the war cabinet agreed that landings on the Falklands should go ahead, despite lack of full air cover and worsening weather. By landing at the unexpected bay of San Carlos in low cloud, British troops got ashore in large numbers. Heavy Argentine air attacks, however, took a serious toll. Two frigates were badly damaged, another was sunk, then another, then a destroyer, then a container ship with vital supplies. Nevertheless, three thousand British troops secured a beach-head and began to fight their way inland. Over the next few weeks, they captured the settlements of Goose Green and Darwin, killing 250 Argentine soldiers and capturing 1,400 for the loss of twenty British lives. Colonel 'H' Jones became the first celebrated hero of the conflict when he died leading '2 Para' against heavy Argentine fire. The battle then moved to the tiny capital, Port Stanley, or rather to the circle of hills around it where the Argentine army was dug in. Before the final assault on 8 June, two British landing ships, Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad were hit by missiles and the Welsh Guards suffered dreadful losses, many of the survivors being badly burned. Simon Weston was one of them. Out of his platoon of 30 men, 22 were killed. The Welsh Guards lost a total of 48 men killed and 97 wounded aboard the Sir Galahad. Weston survived with 46% burns, following which his face was barely recognisable. He later became a well-known spokesman and charity-worker for his fellow injured and disabled veterans. He recalled:
My first encounter with a really low point was when they wheeled me into the transit hospital at RAF Lyneham and I passed my mother in the corridor and she said to my gran, "Oh mam, look at that poor boy" and I cried out "Mam, it's me!" As she recognised my voice her face turned to stone.
Simon Weston in 2008
The Falklands Factor and the 1983 Election:
The trauma of the Falklands War broke across Britain, nowhere more strongly than in Wales. The impact on Wales was direct, in the disaster to the Welsh Guards at Bluff Cove and in anxieties over the Welsh communities in Patagonia in Argentina. Plaid Cymru was the only mainstream party to totally oppose the war from the beginning, and it evoked a strong response among artists in Wales. Students from the Welsh College and Drama in Cardiff staged a satirical drama on the war which won many plaudits. They portrayed the war as a mere butchery for a meaningless prize. Veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell hounded the Prime Minister with parliamentary questions as he sought to prove that the sailors on the Belgrano had been killed to keep the war going, not for reasons of military necessity. One of the few memorable moments of the 1983 election campaign came when Mrs Thatcher was challenged on television about the incident by a woman who seemed a match for her. Among the Labour leadership, Denis Healey accused her of glorifying in slaughter and Neil Kinnock got into trouble when, responding to a heckler who said that at least Margaret Thatcher had guts, he replied that it was a pity that other people had had to leave theirs on Goose Green to prove it. But there had also been those on the left who supported the war, together with Michael Foot, because of their opposition to the Argentine dictatorship, and there is little doubt that it gave a similar impetus to British patriotism across the political spectrum. It also bolstered a more narrow nationalism, jingoism and chauvinism both in the Conservative party and in the media.
For millions, the Falklands War seemed a complete anachronism, a Victorian gunboat war in a nuclear age, but for millions more still it served as a wholly unexpected and almost mythic symbol of rebirth. Margaret Thatcher herself lost no time in telling the whole country what she thought the war meant. It was more than simply a triumph of 'freedom and democracy' over Argentinian dictatorship. Speaking at Cheltenham racecourse in early July, she said:
We have ceased to be a nation in retreat. We have instead a newfound confidence, born in the economic battles at home and found true eight thousand miles away … Printing money is no more. Rightly this government has abjured it. Increasingly the nation won't have it … That too is part of the Falklands factor. … Britain found herself again in the South Atlantic and will not look back from the victory she has won.
Of course, the Falklands War fitted into Margaret Thatcher's personal narrative and merged into a wider sense that confrontation was required in public life country's politics. The Provisional IRA had assassinated Lord Mountbatten on his boat off the coast of Donegal in 1979 and the mainland bombing campaign went on with attacks on the Chelsea barracks, then Hyde Park bombings, when eight people were killed and fifty-three injured. In Northern Ireland itself, from the spring of 1981, a hideous IRA hunger-strike had been going on, leading to the death of Bobby Sands and nine others. Thatcher called Sands a convicted criminal who chose to take his own life. It was a choice, she added, that the PIRA did not allow to any of its victims. She was utterly determined not to flinch and was as rock-hard as the ruthless Irish republican enemies.
Thatcher was now becoming a vividly divisive figure. On one side were those who felt they, at last, had their Boudicca, a warrior queen for hard times. On the other were those who saw her as a dangerous and bloodthirsty figure, driven by an inhumane worldview. To the cartoonists of the right-wing press, she was the embodiment of Britannia, surrounded by cringing 'wets'. To others, she was simply mad, with a sharply curved vulture's beak nose, staring eyes and rivets in her hair. Gender-confusion was rife. France's President Mitterrand, who in fact had quite a good relationship with her, summed up the paradox better than any British observer when, after meeting her soon after his own election, he told one of his ministers, She has the eyes of Caligula but she has the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.
The Falklands War confirmed and underlined these opposing and paradoxical views of Thatcher. She encouraged the government's think tank, the Central Policy Review Staff, to come up with a paper about the future of public spending. They came up with a manifesto which could be characterised as 'Margaret Thatcher unconstrained'. They suggested ending state funding of higher education, extending student loans to replace grants, breaking the link between benefits and the cost of living, and replacing the National Health Service with a system of private health insurance, including charges for doctor's visits and prescriptions. In effect, this represented the end of Attlee's Welfare State. Although some of these ideas would become widely discussed much later, at the time the prospectus was regarded as 'bonkers' by most of those around her. The PM supported it but ministers who regarded it as, potentially, her worst mistake since coming to power, leaked the CPRS report to the press in order to kill it off. In this they were successful, but the whole episode was an early indication of how Thatcher's charge-ahead politics could produce disasters as well as triumphs.
The electoral consequences of the Falklands War have been argued about ever since. The government had got inflation down and the economy was at last improving but the overall Conservative record in 1983 was not impressive. The most dramatic de-industrialisation of modern times, with hundreds of recently profitable businesses disappearing forever, had been caused in part by a very high pound boosted by Britain's new status as an oil producer. Up to this point, unemployment had been seen as a price worth paying in order to control inflation, but the extent of de-manning required by 1983 had been underestimated. Howe's economic squeeze, involving heavy tax increases and a reduction in public borrowing deflated the economy, reducing demand and employment. In the 1980s, two million manufacturing jobs disappeared, most of them by 1982. Given the shrinking of the country's industrial base and unemployment at three million, a total tax burden of forty per cent of GDP and public spending at forty-four per cent, there were plenty of targets for competent Opposition politicians to take aim at. In an ordinary election, the state of the economy would have had the governing party in serious trouble, but this was no ordinary election.
After the war, the Conservatives shot into a sudden and dramatic lead in the polls over the two Opposition groupings now ranged against them. In the 1983 general election, the SDP and the Liberals took nearly a quarter of the popular vote, but the electoral system gave them just twenty-three MPs, only six of them from the SDP, a bitter harvest after the advances made in the by-elections of 1981-2. Labour was beaten into third place in the number of votes cast. This meant that the Conservatives won by a landslide, giving Mrs Thatcher a majority of 144 seats, a Tory buffer which kept them in power until 1997. It would be perverse to deny that the Falklands conflict was crucial, giving Thatcher a story to tell about herself and the country which was simple and vivid and made sense to millions. But there were other factors in play, ones which were present in the political undercurrents of 1981-2 and the divisions within the Labour Party in particular. For one thing, the Labour Party's Manifesto at the 1983 Election, based on the left-wing Conference decisions of 1980-82, was later considered to be the longest suicide note in history.
The Political and Cultural Landscape of Wales:
In Wales, we had expected that the calamitous effect of the monetarist policies would produce a surge in support for Labour and that the effect of the Falklands factor would not weigh so heavily in the Tories' favour as elsewhere in Britain. We were wrong. Moreover, we believed that the efforts we had made on the left-wing of the national movement in association with Welsh language activists, libertarian socialist groups, ecological, peace and women's groups would bring dividends in electoral terms. But, in the Wales of 1983, these remained marginal movements as the country remained, for the most part, locked into the British two-party system. The General Election of 1983 exposed the myth that South Wales, in particular, was still some kind of 'heartland of Labour' and continued the trend of 1979 in relocating it within the South of the British political landscape. In Wales as a whole, the Labour vote fell by nearly ten per cent, exceeded only in East Anglia and the South-East of England, and level with London again. The Labour vote in Wales fell by over 178,000, the Tories by 24,000 (1.7 per cent), the great 'victors' being the Alliance, whose votes rocketed by over two hundred thousand. This surge did not, however, benefit the third parties in terms of seats, which simply transferred directly from Labour to Conservative.
The Conservatives, with a candidate of Ukranian descent and strong right-wing views, took the Cardiff West seat of George Thomas, the former Speaker, and swept most of Cardiff. They also took the marginal seat of Bridgend and pressed hard throughout the rural west, almost taking Carmarthen. Michael Foot visited the constituency and held a major rally, during which he spoke powerfully but almost fell of the stage. We canvassed hard on the council estates for the Labour MP, Dr Roger Thomas, managing to hold off both the Tories and Plaid Cymru, in what turned out to be Gwynfor Evans' last election. Nevertheless, the Tories ended up with thirteen seats out of thirty-eight in Wales. Plaid Cymru, disappointed in the valleys, still managed to hold its green line across the north-west, holding Caernarfon and Merioneth and moving into second place, ahead of Labour, on Anglesey. The Alliance more than doubled the former Liberal poll, reaching twenty-three per cent in the popular vote, and coming second in nineteen out of the thirty-eight seats. But it won only two seats. Labour's defeat seemed to be slithering into rout even though it retained more than half the seats, twenty in all. It held on by the skin of its teeth not only to Carmarthen but also to Wrexham, its former stronghold in the north-east. In the fourteen seats which covered its traditional base in the south, one fell to the Conservatives and six became three-way marginals. The SDP-Liberal Alliance came second in ten and, in the Rhondda won eight thousand votes without even campaigning. The remaining seven constituencies gave Labour over half of their votes. Of the old twenty thousand majority seats, only three remained: Rhondda, Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent (Ebbw Vale). As Gwyn Williams commented:
They stand like Aneurin Bevan's memorial stones on the Pound above Tredegar and they are beginning to look like the Stonehenge of Welsh politics.
Two other 'events' of cultural significance took place in Wales in 1983. The first demonstrates how the question of culture in Wales had become caught up with the arguments over language. The language became a badge, the possession of which by learners is a sign of good faith: I was one of them, though I never learnt how to write in Welsh. In 1979, however, I had managed, with the help of friends, to write a speech in 'Cymraeg Byw' (Colloquial Welsh) as 'Cadeirydd' ('Chair') of UCMC (NUS Wales), which I delivered at the National Eisteddfod in Caernarfon. I argued for English- speaking and Welsh-speaking students to come back together throughout Wales in order to defend the country, the University and their colleges, paid for by the 'pennies' of miners and quarrymen, from the cut-backs in education which the Tories were bringing in. I was not successful in persuading the Welsh-speaking students from Bangor, who had formed their own separate union in 1977, to form a federal union, like the one which existed in Aberystwyth. But what chance did we have when, four years later, the renowned poet R S Thomas, himself a learner of the language, fulminated at the Eisteddfod that the Welshman/ woman who did not try to speak Welsh was, in terms of Wales, an 'un-person'. His fundamentalism as Dai Smith called it, demanded that reality, the chaos of uncertainty, be fenced in. R S Thomas, for all the brilliant wonder of his own poetry in English, had:
… turned Wales into 'an analogy for most people's experience of living in the twentieth century … a special, spare grammar and vocabulary in which certain statements can be made in no other language'.
Thomas' conversion to Welsh language fundamentalism had come rather late in life. In the sixties and seventies, he had remarked that he was rather tired of the themes about nationalism and the decay of the rural structure of Wales and that whereas he used to propagandise on behalf of Welsh Country Life and … the Welsh identity, he felt that he'd wrung that dishcloth dry. In May 1983, the Western Mail had welcomed the poet to Cardiff on the occasion of his seventieth birthday to Cardiff, describing him as a man whose genius found expression in the search for the ancient simplicities of rural Wales. R Gerallt Jones, introducing an evening of celebration at the Sherman Theatre in the capital some days later, acclaimed Thomas as the poet who has expressed the national identity of the Welshman. As Tony Bianchi showed in 1986, Thomas' work has been used – within the context of a wide range of prescriptive notions concerning the "Welsh heritage" – to condemn most of the Welsh to a marginal existence in which they are permitted only a vicarious identity. That's what makes R S Thomas' statement at the 1983 National Eisteddfod so surprising and intriguing.
The second cultural 'event' was the publication of an impressionistic but learned survey of Welsh history by the distinguished Welsh novelist Emyr Humphrys. The Taliesin Tradition took as its theme the survival of a continuous Welsh tradition in the face of all contrary odds. He ascribed this to a 'poetic tradition' which had invested the native language with the power and authority to sustain 'national being'. In order to explain the unfolding of Welsh history, however, he welcomes the blurring of history and myth:
The manufacture and proliferation of myth must always be a major creative activity among a people with unnaturally high expectations reduced by historic necessity … In Wales history and myth have always mingled and both have been of equal importance in the struggle for survival.
For 'organic nationalists', like R S Thomas and Emyr Humphrys, history must not only mingle with myth but also have its disciplines submitted to the needs of the nation. Dai Smith pointed out that while this provided for acceptable politics for some, it is not good history. The verbal dexterity which it requires, Dai Smith claimed, obscures the reality of Welsh life, by emphasising the myths of 'the murder of the Welsh language', and the 'kowtowing to 'Britishness' at the expense of 'Welshness'. On this theme, Gwyn Williams (below) wrote:
Ahead, a country which largely lives by the British state, whose input into it is ten per cent of its gross product, faces a major reconstruction of its public sector … a country whose young people are being dumped like in town and country faces the prospect of a large and growing population which will be considered redundant in a state which is already considering a major reduction in the financial burden of welfare.
Small wonder that some, looking ahead, see nothing but a nightmare vision of a depersonalised Wales which has shrivelled up to a Costa Bureaucratica in the south and a Costa Geriatrica in the north; in between, sheep, holiday homes burning merrily away and fifty folk museums where there used to be communities.
… What seems to be clear is that a majority of the inhabitants of Wales are choosing a British identity which seems to require the elimination of a Welsh one.
As it happened, Dai Smith was right. The idea that 'Britishness' and 'Welshness' were mutually exclusive was indeed a myth, and both were able to survive as dual identities into the later eighties and beyond.
Ghost Town – The Case of Coventry, 1979-83:
By the late 1970s, the British motor industry had reached an historic crossroads. Entry into the EEC had coincided with an unusually weak range of British products. Models were either outdated or bedevilled by quality and reliability problems. European manufacturers soon captured nearly forty per cent of the home market. The choice facing British manufacturers was varied. Those companies owned by American parents integrated their UK operations with their European counterparts. Ford and General Motors are two successful examples of this strategy. Unfortunately for Coventry, the Chrysler Corporation was experiencing problems in many parts of their 'empire' and did not possess the resources necessary for the establishment of a high-volume European operation. British-owned Leyland faced a more complex situation. The company produced both high-volume and specialist products. The Cowley and Longbridge plants which produced high-volume products badly needed investment to keep up with the European companies and the American subsidiaries. The specialist producers, Jaguar, Rover and Triumph, also required a large injection of capital in order to meet the growing competition from such companies as Audi, BMW, Alfa Romeo and the Scandinavian manufacturers. The various schemes devised by Ryder and the National Enterprise Board underlined Leyland's commitment to the large and medium volume plants. The announcement of the collaborative agreement with Honda in 1979 to produce a new Japanese designed quality saloon at Canley was seen by many as an end to uncertainty over Leyland's long-term commitment to Coventry.
The change of government in 1979 soon quashed the cautious optimism that had been present in the local car industry. The Conservative economic strategy of high-interest rates overvalued the pound, particularly in the USA, the major market for Coventry's specialist cars. Demand for Coventry models declined rapidly and Leyland management embarked upon a new rationalisation plan. The company's production was to be concentrated into two plants, at Cowley and Longbridge. Triumph production was transferred to Cowley along with the Rover models produced at Solihull. The Courthouse Green engine plant in Coventry was closed and three of the city's other car-manufacturing concerns – Alvis, Climax and Jaguar – were sold off to private buyers. Only Jaguar survived the recession. In the first three years of the Thatcher government, the number of Leyland employees in Coventry fell from twenty-seven thousand to just eight thousand. One writer described the effects of Conservative policy on manufacturing industry in these years as turning a process of gentle decline into quickening collapse. The city's top fifteen manufacturing companies shed thirty-one thousand workers between 1979 and 1982. Well-known names at the base of the pyramid of Coventry's economic life – Herbert's, Triumph Motors and Renold's – simply disappeared.
Even in 1979, before the change in government, unemployment in Coventry stood at just five per cent, exactly the same level as in the early seventies. There was a noticeable rise in youth unemployment towards the end of the decade, but this, as we have seen, was part of a national problem caused mainly by demographic factors. Neither was the election of the Tory government seen as a harbinger of hard times to come. Coventry had prospered reasonably well during previous Tory administrations and even enjoyed boom conditions as a result of the policies of Anthony Barber, Heath's Chancellor of the Exchequer. Heath had ridden to the rescue of Rolls-Royce when it needed government assistance. Unfortunately, the economic brakes were applied too rapidly for the car industry and monetarist policy quickly cut into it. Redundancy lists and closure notices in the local press became as depressingly regular as the obituary column. The biggest surprise, however, was the lack of protest from the local Labour movement. It was as if all the ominous prophecies of the anti-union editorials which had regularly appeared in the Coventry Evening Telegraph during the industrial unrest of the previous decades were finally being fulfilled.
In any case, it was difficult to devise defensive industrial strategies. Michael Edwardes' new tough industrial relations programme at British Leyland had seen the removal of Derek Robinson, 'Red Robbo', the strongest motor factory union leader from Longbridge. He also demonstrated, at Speke in Liverpool, that he could and would close factories in the face of trade union opposition. Factory occupations, used to such effect by continental trades unionists had, thanks to the Meriden Triumph Motorcycle fiasco, no chance of local success. The opposition to closures was also undoubtedly diminished by redundancy payments which in many cases cushioned families from the still unrealised effects of the recession. Young people, especially school- leavers, were the real victims. Coventry's much-prized craft apprenticeships all but vanished, with only ninety-five apprentices commencing training in 1981. In 1982, only sixteen per cent of sixteen-year-old school leavers found employment. The early 1980s were barren years for Coventry's youth. Even the success of the local pop group, The Specials', brought little relief, though for a brief moment the band's song Ghost Town was a national success, giving vent to the plight of young people throughout the manufacturing towns of the Midlands and the North of England, not to mention Wales. The sombre comparison in the lyrics of boom time and recession express an experience that was felt more sharply in Coventry than elsewhere.
For the first time in over a century, Coventry became a net exporter of labour, but unemployment levels still remained stubbornly high. The main loss was mainly among the young skilled and technical management sectors, people who the city could ill afford to lose. Little research and development work was taking place in local industry. Talbot's research department at Whitley including much key personnel, for example, was removed to Paris in 1983. The Conservatives promised in 1979 that a restructuring of the economy would be followed by increased investment and employment opportunities, but by 1983 there were very few signs of that promise being fulfilled. Coventry's peculiar dependence on manufacturing and its historically weak tertiary sector has meant that the city was, at that time, a poor location for the so-called 'high tech' industries. As a local historian concluded at that time:
Coventry in the mid 1980s displays none of the confidence in the future that was so apparent in the immediate post-war years. . The city, which for decades was the natural habitat of the affluent industrial worker is finding it difficult to adjust to a situation where the local authority and university rank among the largest employers. Coventry's self-image of progressiveness and modernity has all but vanished. The citizens now largely identify themselves and their environment as part of a depressed Britain.
This was a sad contrast to the vibrant city of full employment in which my mother had grown up in the thirties and forties and where she had met and married my father in the early fifties. By the time I returned there as a teacher, from a former mill town in Lancashire in 1986 which had recovered from its own decline in the sixties and seventies, Coventry was also beginning to recover, but the shiny new comprehensive schools built thirty years before were already beginning to merge and close due to these years of recession, unemployment and outward migration.
Revolution or retro-capitalism?
Thatcher's government of 1979-83 was not the return of 'Victorian Val', a revival of Gladstonian liberalism, nor even of the Palmerstonian gunboat imperialism which it sometimes resembled in its rhetoric. It was more of a reversion to the hard-faced empire of the 1920s when war socialism was energetically dismantled, leaving industries that could survive and profit to do so and those which couldn't to go to the wall. As in the twenties, resistance to brutal rationalisation through closure or sell-off of uneconomic enterprises, or by wage or job reductions, was eventually to be met by determined opposition in the confrontation of 1984-5 between Thatcher and the NUM, led by Arthur Scargill, a battle comprehensively won by the PM.
The trouble with this 'retro-capitalism' masquerading as innovation was that sixty years after the policy had first been implemented, the regions that were the weaker species in this Darwinian competition were not just suffering from influenza, but prostrate with pneumonia. They were now being told to drop dead. These included South Wales, Lancashire, the West Riding, Tyneside and Clydeside. Those regions which had risen to extraordinary prosperity as part of the British imperial enterprise were now, finally, being written off as disposable assets in a sale. What interest would the Welsh and Scots, in particular, have in remaining part of Great Britain plc? They were also now being joined by those same manufacturing areas which had provided respite for millions of migrants from the older industrial areas in the thirties, centres such as Coventry. The euphoria felt by the Conservatives following their unexpected second victory in 1983 disguised the fact that their majority was built at the price of perpetuating a deep rift in Britain's social geography. Not since Edward I in the thirteenth century had a triumphant England imposed its rule on the other nations of Britain.
Thatcher's constituency was not, however, to be found among the engineers of 'Middle England' or even the Lincolnshire grocers from whom she hailed, who might have voted for Ted Heath's 'Third Way' Tories. It was overwhelmingly to be found among the well-off middle and professional classes in the south of England, in the Home Counties, or the 'golden circle' commuter areas. The distressed northern zones of derelict factories, pits, ports and decrepit terraced houses were left to rot and rust. The solution of her governments, in so far as they had one, was to let the employment market and good old Gladstonian principles of 'bootstrap' self-help take care of the problem. People living in areas of massive redundancy amidst collapsing industries ought simply to 'retrain' for work in the up-and-coming industries of the future or, in Norman Tebbitt's famous phrase, "get on their bikes" like their grandfathers had done and move to places such as Milton Keynes, Basingstoke or Cambridge where those opportunities were now clustered. But this vision of ex-welders, or even assembly workers, lining up to use computers was not helped by the absence of such publicly funded retraining. And even if it was available, there was no guarantee of a job at the end of it, no apprenticeship system. The whole point of the computer revolution in industry was to save, not to expand labour. The new jobs it created could, and would be taken by the sons and daughters of the industrial workers of the early eighties, but not by those workers themselves.
Finally, the kick-up-the-rear-end effect of the eighties' Thatcher counter-revolution ran into something that she could do little about; the Coronation Street syndrome. Like the residents of the mythical TV soap opera, millions in the old British industrial economy had a deeply ingrained loyalty to the place where they had grown up, gone to school, got married and had their kids; to their extended family with older generations, to their pub, their parks and hills, to their football or rugby club. In that sense, at least, the post-war social revolution and welfare state had helped to maintain and even develop towns and cities that, for all their ups and downs, their poverty and pain, were real communities. Fewer people were willing to give up on these places than had been the case fifty years earlier, and certainly not on cities like Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Coventry. But not everything the Thatcher government did was out of tune with social 'harmony'. The sale of council-houses created an owner-occupier class which corresponded to the long passion of the British to be kings and queens of their own little castles. Nationalised industries were failing to take advantage of enterprise and innovation. But many of these more popular reforms were to come after her confrontation with the miners and especially in her third term.
Gwyn A Williams (1985), When Was Wales? A History of the Welsh. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Dai Smith (1984), Wales! Wales? Hemel Hempstead: George Allen & Unwin.
Bill Lancaster & Tony Mason (1984), Life & Labour in a Twentieth Century City: The Experience of Coventry. Coventry: University of Warwick Cryfield Press.
Simon Schama (2002), A History of Britain III, 1776-2000: The Fate of Empire. London: BBC Worldwide.
Posted September 26, 2018 by TeamBritanniaHu in Affluence, Britain, British history, Cartoons, Castles, Coalfields, Colonisation, Conquest, Conservative Party, Coventry, decolonisation, democracy, Demography, devolution, Empire, Europe, European Economic Community, Factories, Falklands, History, Immigration, Imperialism, Labour Party, manufacturing, Marxism, Methodism, Midlands, Migration, Militancy, monetarism, Monuments, Mythology, Narrative, National Health Service (NHS), nationalisation, nationalism, Nationality, Nonconformist Chapels, Population, Revolution, south Wales, terrorism, Thatcherism, Trade Unionism, Unemployment, Victorian, Wales, Welfare State, Welsh language, West Midlands, World War Two
Tagged with 'Coronation Street', 'Malvinas', 'retro-capitalism', 'The Sun', Aberystwyth, Alliance, Alvis, Aneurin Bevan, Anthony Barber, Argentina, Arthur Scargill, Basingstoke, Belgran, Bevanite, Bill Rodgers, Blackpool, Blaenau Gwent (Ebbw Vale), Bluff Cove, Bobby Sands, Boudicca, Bridgend, Britannia, British Leyland, Business, Caernarfon, Cambridge, Cardiff, Carmarthen Anglesey, Chelsea barracks, Chequers, Chrysler, Climax, Colonel 'H' Jones, coventry evening telegraph, Cowley, CPRS, Crosby, Cymraeg Byw, Dai Smith, Darwin, David Owen, David Steel, Denis Healey, Derek Robinson, Donegal, Eisteddfod, Emyr Humphrys, Exocet missiles, Falklands War, Galtieri, GDP, General Motors, George Thomas, Ghost Town, Gladstone, Glasgow Hillhead, Goose Green, Gwyn A Williams, Gwynfor Evans, health, History, housing, Hyde Park, ILP, Ireland, Iron Lady, Jaguar, James Callaghan, Jeremy Corbyn, John Nott, Lancashire, Liberal Party, Limehouse Declaration, Longbridge, Lord Mountbatten, Margaret Thatcher, Meriden, Merthyr Tydfil, Michael Edwardes, Michael Foot, Militant Tendency, Milton Keynes, Mitterand, Neil Kinnock, NHS, Norman Tebbitt, NUM, Patagonia, PIRA, Plaid Cymru, Poetry, politics, Port Stanley, R Gerallt Jones, R S Thomas, RAF Lyneham, Rhondda, Roger Thomas, Rover, Roy Hattersley, Roy Jenkins, Royal Navy, San Carlos, Scots, Shirley Williams, Simon Weston, Sir Galahad, Sir John Leach, Sir Tristram, Social Democratic Party, society, South Atlantic, South Georgia, Tam Dalyell MP, The Specials, Tony Benn, Tony Bianchi, Tribune, Triumph, UCMC, Unemployment, USA, Warrington, Welfare State, Welsh College of Music and Drama, Welsh Guards, Wembley, Western Mail, Wrexham


text:
Quod Erat Demonstrandum (2013)
Quod Erat Demonstrandum (original title)
Andrei Gruzsniczki
Velvet Moraru
Vivi Dragan Vasile
Dana Bunescu
Pedro Negrescu
Cristian Niculescu
Andreea Popa
Sorin Leoveanu
Sorin Parvu
Ofelia Popii
Elena Buciuman
Florin Piersic Jr
Alexandru Voican
Tora Vasilescu
Eleonora Parvu
Alina Berzunteanu
Valeria Amohnoaiei
George Alexandru
Colonelul Deleanu
Icon Production: Production
Quod Erat Demonstrandum (title with latin characters)
Fiction, 108 min
Production country Romania
Language Romanian
Director Andrei Gruzsniczki
Scriptwriter Andrei Gruzsniczki
Producer Velvet Moraru
Romania, 1984. A mathematician's decision to publish a paper in a magazine edited by an American university without asking for permission from the authorities triggers a chain of events that will change the lives of his friends. After all, there is no such thing as decisions without consequences. Director's statements At first it was a story about a man who swam against the current. In the end, we had a film about love, betrayal, personal choices. The kind of story that passes smoothly from one character to another, through the lives of three people that are at a crossroads. In any type of society there's a constraint. Constraint generates compromise that we either accept or not. Betrayal, as a particular form of compromise, is not tolerated by a certain society. Anytime, anywhere, a person wants a better life for himself and his family. But at what cost? Careers, feelings, freedom, everything is at stake... The setting of the story during the Communist era is not a critical element, but it does provide a particularly sensitive context for revealing universal truths.
Color / Black & White Black & White
» Closer to the Moon is named Best Feature Film at the 9th Gopo Awards
» Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) - Till November 30
» Balkan Presence at Thessaloniki International FF 2014
» The 49th edition of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
» TIFF 2014 - Festival Report: The best of the 2013 and 2014 festival circuit
» Transilvania IFF 2014 begins!
» The 40th Seattle International Film Festival
» Transilvania IFF 2014, Romanian Days
» goEast Film Festival, 2014 Awards
» Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz 2014
» The 14th goEast Film Festival is On
» 8th Rome International Film Festival Awards!
» 8th Rome Film Festival - The Balkan Entries
Films of Andrei Gruzsniczki
The Other Irina
Quod Erat Demonstrandum

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
P3: Student Design Competition
Research Fellowships
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
Grantee Research Project Results Search
Name: The State University of New York at Albany
Dept:
EPA Region: 2
Street Address: 1400 Washington Ave
Associated Project Details for: The State University of New York at Albany
8 Projects listed for this institution:
R824787 In Situ Assessment of the Transport and Microbial Consumption of Oxygen in Groundwater Grant October 1, 1995 through October 1, 1998
R825449 Microbial Community Dynamics of PCB Dechlorination in Sediments Grant January 1, 1997 through December 31, 1999
R825812 Developmental Effects of Fish-Borne Toxicants in the Rat Grant December 15, 1997 through December 15, 2000
R827180 PAH Metal Mixtures-Human in Vitro Mutagenicity Studies Grant November 1, 1998 through October 31, 2001
R827446 Improving Human Health Risk Assessment for Tetrachloroethene by Using Biomarkers and Neurobehavioral Testing in Diverse Residential Populations Grant October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2002
R833778 The Role of Avian Host Dynamics and Anthropogenic Stressors on the Transmission of West Nile Virus and the Implications for Human Health and Biodiversity Grant November 1, 2007 through October 31, 2010
R834787 Assess the Linkage Between School-Related Environment, Children's School Performance/Health, and Environmental Policies Through Environmental Public Health Tracking Grant February 1, 2011 through January 31, 2014
R835636 Assess school environmental effects on children's health and performance and strengthen state/community capacity to create a healthy and safe learning environment Grant December 18, 2014 through December 17, 2018
19 Additional Projects listed as performed at this location:2112
FP917307 Risk Assessment and Life Cycle Analysis of Nanoscale Metal Oxides Used in Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication Fellowship August 1, 2011 through July 31, 2014
FP917375 Components of Riverbed Filtration Enhancement in Urban Stream Restoration Sites Fellowship September 1, 2011 through August 31, 2013
FP917434 Assessing Exposure to Propylene Glycol and Glycol Ethers in Relation to Asthma and Allergic Disease: Independent Risk Factor or Correlate of Known Triggers? Fellowship August 1, 2012 through July 31, 2014
U914929 Collaborative Environmental Problem Solving at the Local Level: Process and Impacts Fellowship January 1, 1996 through November 1, 1999
U915373 Analysis and Fate of Sewage-Derived Polar Contaminants in the Marine Environment Fellowship August 1, 1998 through August 1, 2001
R823422 Tracer Studies of Sulfur Dioxide Oxidation in Clouds Grant September 1, 1995 through August 31, 1998
R825258 The Chemical Kinetics and Mechanisms of Hydrocarbons Contributing to Ozone Production in the Atmosphere Grant November 25, 1996 through November 24, 1999
R825260 Integrating Observations and Modeling in Ozone Management Efforts Grant November 15, 1996 through November 14, 1999
R826373 Investigations of Factors Determining the Occurrence of Ozone and Fine Particles in Northeastern USA Grant April 15, 1998 through April 14, 2003
R827929 Improved Simulation of Advection and Dispersion of Urban Air Toxics Grant December 1, 1999 through December 1, 2002
R827958 Development of an Environment for Assembling Spatial Ecological Models Using Reusable Components Grant January 1, 1997 through December 31, 1999
R828578 Patroon Creek Watershed Monitoring, Management and Restoration Program Grant November 30, 2001 through December 1, 2003
R828733 Modeling Heat and Air Quality Impacts of Changing Urban Land Uses and Climate Grant September 1, 2000 through August 31, 2003
R831043 Environmental Contaminants in Foodstuffs of Siberian Yu'piks from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska Grant December 1, 2003 through November 30, 2006
R832161 Highly Time-Resolved Source Apportionment Techniques for Organic Aerosols Using the Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer Grant December 1, 2004 through November 30, 2007
R835215 Creating Building Blocks for a More Dynamic Air Quality Management Framework Grant June 1, 2012 through May 31, 2015
SU835937 Developing a Vacuum Distillation - Acid Absorption System for Recovery of Ammonia from Dairy Manure Grant October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2017
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Last updated on Thursday, July 18, 2019


6.125 x 9.25. 288 pp. 33 color, 18 b&w photos. 2 maps. Index.
As they tee up, make their approach shots, or line up their putts, few Texan golfers likely realize that the familiar landscapes of tee boxes, fairways, and greens can obscure stories from the past that played out on those same grounds. Such little-known links to the past include prehistoric campsites, a Spanish presidio, and a prairie where the Rough Riders trained, as well as courses constructed by New Deal agencies in the Great Depression or military personnel in times of war.
Links to the Past: The Hidden History on Texas Golf Courses takes readers on a tour of eighteen Texas golf courses with surprising connections to history. On the "front nine," points of interest include encounters with dinosaur fossils near Austin, a Comanche raid on a Spanish frontier presidio near Menard, and a battle between Anglo buffalo hunters and Native Americans near Lubbock. The "back nine" explores reminders of the East Texas lumber industry near Diboll, a training ground for the Rough Riders outside downtown San Antonio, and a race riot near Houston in 1917, to name a few. In addition, Dan K. Utley with Stanley O' Graves provide full histories of the courses themselves, detailing their design and evolution and explaining how they came to be constructed at these historically significant sites.
Fun, compelling, and enlightening, this book is a reminder that history has occurred all around us, not just in historic districts, state parks, or even where official state markers might be found. Featuring "scorecards" for each course that include location, historical facts, and a "signature hole of history," as well as historical and contemporary photographs and informative sidebars, Links to the Past is sure to entertain. Golfers, history buffs, and heritage tourists will want to toss this handy and engaging book in the front seat of the car—or zip it into the side pocket of their golf bags.
DAN K. UTLEY, coauthor of History Ahead: Stories beyond the Texas Roadside Markers, Echoes of Glory: Historic Military Sites across Texas, and other books, formerly served as chief historian of the Texas Historical Commission. He is now chief historian for the Center for Texas Public History at Texas State University in San Marcos. STANLEY O. GRAVES, FAIA, is a preservation architect and senior principal with the Architexas firm in Austin. He previously served as director of the architecture division and deputy state historic preservation officer for the Texas Historical Commission.


I can now see how each piece of the puzzle brought me one step closer to a greater understanding of myself. As I graduated through the moments in my life, I learned how to make the decisions to honor my wellbeing. I can now use those skills to address challenges today as they arise. I hone those skills from my past and use them as magic wands to create rainbows of adventure and intrigue.
My life seemed to be made up of 10 year increments of what I call life stages, composed of a multitude of very crucial moments for me. All of those phases were each significant in their own way. But that which I feel was the greatest phase, wherein I became a student of "Me-how University" was from 2005 to 2016. Then 2017 was the most tumultuous because it provided the most information I would need to sum up and connect the dots, and I entered into a new life of self-awareness, understanding and awakening.
Those last 13 years helped me make the shift from a life borrowed from others to a life styled for me by me. As opposed to my years as a child, I'd say those latter years were actually my "growing up" ones. In retrospect I think that all of these life stages of development were important because I learned many things about myself in increments. In fact, that is what has built and shaped me today. Every little conversation, every little perception, every little thought or feeling created my network of beliefs and values. My evolving mindset continually shaped how I moved through my experiences and affected the way I perceived each and every one of them. And it took quite a bit of confronting, examining, releasing and embracing of that whole journey, to eventually lead me to an apex of self discovery. I finally could feel and know that I had graduated through a multitude of incremental defining moments of growth. Until I got to that point, I became determined to finally live life my way. I was able to cast away the Quasimodo burden I carried on my back once and for all. With self-acceptance, self-confidence, self-assurance, self-efficacy, self love, and a expanding self esteem, I finally have a foundation to stand upon and just go and pursue what makes my heart sing. I went from surviving to thriving and of course the journey never ends as potential never does. Just like that empty canvas or plain piece of paper, I have taken my lessons through experiences, learned and grew, and used it to shape, mold, fold and bend my life to my will, whims, and wishes. And that's what I refer to as Life Origami. Today I'm living my life the way I wish I could have way back in the day.
I wish I had discovered the thumb drive to My Life's Fantastic Adventure during those times of wandering aimlessly when I was younger, immature, and inexperienced. However that would have been impossible. I would have needed all the lessons I have accumulated up until now from my lifetime of experiences, in order for it to have been of any use or value to me back then. True I received opinions and wisdom from some key people in my life but that was based on their mindsets. I needed to learn about ME. They couldn't be as helpful as that which I could teach myself about me. Ultimately I needed to create my own concept and reality of what I consider to be a satisfying and fulfilling life for me. I needed to discover my own talents and gifts. I would then find a way to take that artistic creativity and write the script of a compelling life. This life would be a passionate expression of my innermost being, and would flow naturally with a rhythm of contentment.
I started living the way I wanted, enjoying a life of passion and integrity.
Today I experience what matters to me and disregard that which hinders me. I follow what is to my higher good rather than what doesn't serve my happiness factor.
There is no more spinning in circles because I know my direction and goals and I can make better use of my time. There is no more wasteful lingering in the tyranny of the incringements that were holding me back. Those roadblocks of self doubt and non-acceptance consumed my energy and kept me back from giving myself permission to not only dream, but go out and develop it. So indulging in wasted space in my head is not for me. Shrinking does not become me.
With a whole new perspective and purpose, living in the present influences my day-to-day beliefs, values, morals, principles, ethics, attitude, decisions and behaviours in a positive way.
I give myself permission to leave dysfunctional relationships that hurt me and hold me back from trying to be happy, based on what I feel that means for me.
I can be more engaged in the present and engage less time in damaging self dialogue pertaining to past hurts, feelings and memories. Even my physical health is better because of a healthier mindset.
My life feels more purposeful with more meaning, rather than boomeranging here and there in confusion and unable to make choices.
The Skills and Tools I extracted from those hard lessons of the past, and the good ones too, only evolved as I moved through the learning curve as a student of my life. I learned that I could not go around, under, or above this learning curve. I couldn't spend my way through it either. I had to go through it. But with the skills and tools I created, I can now use them to accelerate through any learning moments as they come up.
I can now live my life as if I matter. And I am freed knowing that I am "Enough and More"!
I believe that the things I went through before do not define me today. And they are not relevant and do not necessitate a label of any sort because I am and never was "Broken" or "Wrecked". I do not blame, shame, guilt-beat myself into co-dependent relationships and attempt to control that which is not my business or baggage to take on. I am continuously learning to respond rather than react to situations, which gives me greater self-empowerment and control of my emotions.
I know my weaknesses and work with them rather than against, and I also know my strengths so I can tap into them when desired.
Being able to live in the now, in the present, enables me to show up in the world today and allows me to build the legacy that I desire.
Taking my tools and skills from all those experiences that I learned to use, I can now offer other people, who are experiencing similar conditions, to tap into their inner harmony and help them become students in the University of "You How", not "Others How". I wish I had these tools way back in the day and I feel like some of the roadblocks wouldn't have been so monumental or devastating. And I wish I could have embraced all the good times and not spent so much time smearing them with so much investment into other peoples judgments and projections on me. I would have enjoyed life more fully and been more engaged with the things I wanted more of rather than I wanted less of. Being present in the now would have been a valuable tool in mindfulness. This is a skill I was developing even back then but didn't lasso and harness until this phase of my life.
And now with my own thumb drive of skills and tools that I have used to navigate through the learning curve, I am able to contribute to the practice of Life Origami for others. I am dancing in my dreams awake. And the truth is, if I could figure it all out and can do it, then pretty much anybody else can too because it all took small steps to get here, nothing monumental. We all have this ability, just a bit of support sure goes a long way.
I can think of many people who have contributed to each of my moments of truth, giving me valuable insights and wisdom. We all need support and I really want to be there for others and help them deal with the same emotions we all feel in the clubhouse of humanity. Our experiences and situations may be different, but one thing we all have in common is feelings. And I just want you all to know that you "Are Enough" and more. And your past doesn't define you. "You are not broken". You just need to tap into your inner gifts and strengths and learn who you are and how you want to express that in the life of your choosing. You only need to claim your birthright to love, joy, peace, tranquility, safety and healthy wellbeing. And that is what I want to help you discover for yourself. I want to help you tap into your own inner resources, becoming unshakeable and unbound. Your life is your teacher. You are your own Guru. You are Magnificent.
Previous post A Life BEYOND Now What?


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Category: Joint Force Quarterly
In many parts of joint warfighting, getting the right situational awareness (SA) is essential to success, especially to those of us in a position of military or civilian leadership. I must admit to a lack of SA in recent years as I, like many, have been drawn into an information cycle centered around less-traditional media sources. Because I live and work in the Nation's capital area, I fully accept that I live in a "bubble," where I may not have an accurate picture of events. But in recent years, with the rise of social media platforms—including active disinformation campaigns, both foreign and domestic—getting and keeping good SA is increasingly difficult. Where does one scan to find an objective view? As always, we look forward to hearing from you about what you think we need to do in the years ahead.
Joint Force Quarterly 102 (3rd Quarter, July 2021)
Joint Force Quarterly 101 (2nd Quarter, April 2021)
In 1993, General Powell encouraged members of the joint force to "Read JFQ. Study it. Mark it up—underline and write in the margins. Get mad. Then contribute your own views." What do you think? How do you read JFQ? How can we make it better suited to the world you find yourself in? We are soon posting up a way for you to provide us more feedback. Watch this space. In the meantime, read on!
Joint Force Quarterly 100 (1st Quarter, January 2021)
Whether you are on the ground halfway around the world or standing point here at home in Washington, DC, whether you are in uniform or civil service, in defending our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic you are defending both a way of life and a precious set of values all freedom-loving people around the world believe in. Your team here at NDU Press supports your efforts and wants to hear from you as you work the difficult issues and tasks in the days and months ahead. Stay safe.
From the Chiefs of the Joint Staff
The American people have trusted the Armed Forces of the United States to protect them and our Constitution for almost 250 years. As we have done throughout our history, the U.S. military will obey lawful orders from civilian leadership, support civil authorities to protect lives and property, ensure public safety in accordance with the law, and remain fully committed to protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Joint Force Quarterly 99 (4th Quarter, October 2020)
Robert Kennedy's speech that day in 1966—on a then unprecedented trip and exactly 2 years before his assassination—included some words that may help all of us see our road ahead a bit more clearly. He stated, "It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." To me that is what Americans, especially those in uniform, aspire to do. Let us know what you think. Be safe.
In an address in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 6, 1966, Senator Robert F. Kennedy stated, "There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind." As it turns out, we ourselves are living in interesting times: from the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic to racial strife, wildfires to record numbers of hurricanes, contested politics to economic crises, and more.
Joint Force Quarterly 98 (3rd Quarter, July 2020)
As I write this column from my table far away from my NDU Press office during the pandemic, I am wondering about the scope of it all, as I am sure many of you are. Was COVID-19 unexpected? Unprecedented? Did we all think it would not happen? One thing I am certain about—such times bring out the need for capability and teamwork in the harshest of conditions. While not a typical environment for the military, often when we see the need to team up in ways that might not be traditional to work out a "wicked problem" like this one, I wonder if this situation is exactly what jointness is for.
Joint Force Quarterly 97 (2nd Quarter, April 2020)
This issue of JFQ shows the way ahead for the Joint Force. In our Forum and JPME Today sections, we discuss emerging battlespace technologies. In Commentary, authors propose the development of a new global engagement cycle. In our Features section are articles about the need to adapt the Joint Force command and control structure, about dealing with Iran as a rival nation-state, and addressing A2/AD threats in the Indo-Pacific region. In Recall, we see how General Ulysses Grant learned the art of joint operations in the Civil War. Finally, we review Andrew Marble's biography of former CJCS General John Shalikashvilli.


Funky Ball hack tool can be used instantly to get unlimited packages inside the game.
Bounce your ball as high as possible, but watch out for hazards! Collect gems to buy power ups that are valuable! Race to the peak of the leader board, or simply play for fun. How high can you get? FREE to perform with! Straightforward swipe-based gameplay. Collect gems and also receive rewards. Endless gameplay. Play All Night! Customize your chunks and platforms! Double your gems with the stone multiplier! Raise your stone count with all the gem magnet! Funky soundtrack! Disco resides!


Cunningham Clan Scottish Blue White Cotton Printed Tea Towel?
Each Clan Tea Towel carries the Clan Name, above a carefully researched Clan Crest with a description of the heraldic devices which make it up and a translation of the Clan Motto. The clan's genealogical, historical and geographical origins are explained. Other associated clans or family names are also listed.
Tea Towels can always make perfect useful gifts to give to friends, family or even simply for yourself.
Tea Towel made from 100% Cotton, printed using bright vibrant colours with clear, sharp print.
The tea towel size is approximately 31.10 inches (79.00cm) by 20.27 inches (51.50cm) and is a high grade professionally made tea towel.
Buy for you're family and friends as a gift or momento. The ideal gift for any lover of all things Scotland.
Combined postage is available for larger quantities - Please Ask ! It will be sent to you folded and sealed to protect it.
This item is made in Scotland. After placing your order, please allow sufficient time for your order to arrive.
Not all surnames are a Clan or Sept in their own right - many are part of a larger more prominent family. Not all Clans are available for these products.
There are also other styles and colours of Clan Tea Towels available in my stores, please see my other listings.