Thatcher the pro-apartheid warmonger
The controversial former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was influential in a set of major political upheavals at the time of her premiership in the 1980’s, which openly contradict the image of a reformist neoliberal political leader the current British government is trumpeting.
Thatcher was one of the main supporters of toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam during the Iraqi-imposed war on Iran in the 1980’s. Despite her government being officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, and having voted for a UN Security Council resolution calling on all countries not to further escalate the conflict, she was hungry for selling arms to Saddam’s government. Secret files made public in December 2011 unveiled an exhaustive list of equipment from Hawk fighter jets to military air and naval bases that London was attempting to sell the Iraqi regime as early as 1981 under the pretext that they were “non-lethal”.
Thomas Jones: Blair’s Thatcher, Thatcher’s Blair
Chris Floyd: A Chronicle of Thatcherism's Horrors Foretold
Owen Jones: Thatcherism was a national catastrophe that still poisons us
Julie Hyland & Chris Marsden: Thatcher’s legacy - Margaret Thatcher, the friend of Chile’s fascist dictator General Augusto Pinochet and supporter of the apartheid system of racial discrimination in South Africa, has died of a stroke at the age of 87. Neither the media’s eulogies to Thatcher as a great stateswoman, nor the staging of a day of national mourning complete with military honours, can conceal the fact that she died arguably the most hated figure in British politics. [Ordinary people] will have greeted the announcement of her demise with cold indifference, contempt, and, in some cases, celebration. Impromptu street parties were underway in several cities within hours of her death. [...] Margaret Hilda Roberts embodied everything that is narrow-minded and philistine in the English middle class. She was preoccupied solely with self-advancement and enrichment, owing much of her success to having secured a rich husband. Her political talents, such as they were, consisted of the nasty cunning and ruthlessness of the social climber.