A good few generations away, I think. As you may know, they tried a referendum on switching to Alternative Vote (which is not proportional, but the best compromise that the Lib Dems could get). The referendum died on its arse, big time. Whether that put back PR, or is merely a fair reflection of how much work PR has to do to persuade the British public, is open to question. I think PR campaigners are very much in the “regrouping” phase at the moment.
The difference is that Thatcher called the imprisoned Mandela a “terrorist” just at the time when saying that would shore up the comparative credibility of South Africa’s Apartheid government, Mandela’s ANC being the only plausible alternative. One is uncharitably tempted to suspect her of not wanting Apartheid to go.
Like a lot of Prime Ministers in a Westminster system, she was the right person at the right time when she started, but she wasn’t towards the end.
As to Nelson Mandela, Thatcher did not call Mandela a terrorist. She was the ANC was a terrorist organization, and that’s absolutely true. It was, at the time. Nelson Mandela was a greater man than that; he transcended the ANC, party lines, maybe even his own country. But it is the simple truth than the ANC engaged in dreadful murders and violence, mostly against black South Africans.
No, you’ve got it just backwards. The ANC had a terrorist (or, guerrilla-warfare freedom-fighter, if you prefer) arm,Umkhonto we Sizwe, and Mandela might fairly be branded a “terrorist” for founding it (which he did), regardless of whether he actually personally participated in any violent activities; but the ANC as such never was a terrorist organization.
Is Mr. Dibble still around? He could tell us what (the majority of) South Africans thought of Thatcher.
Er… at the time that Thatcher referred to the ANC as a “terrorist organization” they were necklacing teenage girls for sleeping with police officers and teenage boys for selling dagga, on the grounds that they were “collaborators”.
They were also “encouraging” children not to go to school through verbal persuasion and other methods.
Is your position that those weren’t “terrorist activities”?
Incidentally, for those who don’t know what “necklacing” refers to, it was putting a tire soaked in gasoline on somebody and lighting it ablaze.
Beyond that, I’m confused because I thought you had once referred to the IRA as a terrorist group.
Oh, what a crock. “Hey, it’s not us that’s doing the terrorism. It’s the subcontractors.” During the 1980s the ANC was in a campaign of open terror against rival groups. Look up “necklacing.” Spare me the saint stories, please.
That doesn’t necessarily make Nelson Mandela a terrorist, which may be why Thatcher did not call him a terrorist.
I don’t think people have a full grasp of just how badly off the UK was when Thatcher become Prime Minister, and how badly it needed her at the time. It was where Greece is today, effectively a dying economy. Did it need her in 1989? Maybe not. It sure as shit did in 1979.
That does not mean Greece needs somebody like her. It doesn’t, and if it tries probing that way it’s more likely to get the Golden Dawn than a Greek analogue of the Tories, assuming there’s a difference.
Suggesting that their is no difference between the Conservative Party and the Golden Dawn is at least as stupid if not stupider than comparing Barack Obama to Joseph Stalin.
Oh, of course, of course; but in a politically unstable environment like Greece, the comparison is real. To Godwinize, remember the German industrialists who thought Hitler was their best chance of putting down the Communists and Social Democrats; he was, but it was a cure worse than the disease.
As was Thatcher, judging by the posts of most BritDopers in this thread so far.
The situation is different to-day-the Communists in Greece are a fairly middle-sized party rather than a threat while the rich in Greece almost certainly want to stay in the Eurozone which the Golden Dawn clearly opposes.
The Eurozone, of course, was not a factor in Hitler’s day. One wonders – I mean, one really wonders – what he would have thought of it; the answer, surprisingly, does not suggest itself. From John J. Reilly’s review of Fascism: A History, by Roger Eatwell. (I can’t link to the whole review – Reilly’s webpage is gone since he died. :()
Just because British Dopers didn’t like her is no reason to assume that most people in Britain felt that way.
I wouldn’t assume they’re any more representative of the UK than Americans on the board are of the US.
People on a message board are hardly a scientific sample.
She was a polarizing figure like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama and as with those three you can find many who had an almost irrational hatred of her and others who went just the opposite route.
By contrast, John Major and George H. W. Bush who she had more politically in common will almost certainly not stir up such a furor when they die.
For myself, I never had a huge love for her, but I do love the fact that she once made Christopher Hitchens bend over so she could spank him on the ass while calling him a “naughty boy”.
She was definitely a polarising figure. There are a lot of people who talk about here like she was the messiah, but (I would say) a larger number of people who think she was the devil incarnate. Given that us British are usually fairly reserved (or in some cases apathetic), it speaks volumes that people actually went out to celebrate her death last night…
