Politicians don't have it easy. You're always struggling with problems. From the economic situation to scandals in your own party to resistance in the opposition or even the population. That can spoil your mood. But fortunately every politician knows an old trick. If things are not going well inside and the support of the people goes away, a little distraction can often work wonders. A war for example! Ah, nothing distracts the population like a small war.
If you then also manage to create a bit of cheering patriotism in the population and win the war, you can sit back and relax for a few years. That's how quickly you go from being an unpopular head of government to a national idol! Today we are dealing with a prime example of this tactic:Margaret Thatcher and her Falklands War. Welcome to the second part of my little hurray patriotism series! (By the way, here is part 1). A few basics of the modern idea of nationalism can be found here.
Stupid democracy with its stupid restrictions
The process is always the same with this tactic and takes place in three phases, as our dear Maggie Thatcher will impressively show. It all starts with the problems in your own country, which uncomfortably prevent you from governing. Margaret Thatcher has struggled with this since she was elected Prime Minister in 1979. For her, the dilemma was a simple one. Although she ran for election with a huge reform program, others would call it her neoliberal obsession. However, she was not necessarily elected because of this program but, as is so often the case, because the Labor government before her had driven the country so massively against the wall. Naturally, the implementation of the election program was not that easy.
Nonetheless, Thatcher immediately began to turn the country upside down. The capital markets were liberalized and London's rise to financial power began. Masses of state-owned companies were privatized. The tenants of state apartments should be able to buy them from the state. The economy and the state were liberalized in every respect. However, things did not go really well for the newly crowned Prime Minister Thatcher. Despite all the reforms, inflation continued to rise after her election and apart from her party friends, only a few benefited from it at first. This is the classic point at which politicians move on to part 2 of the plan. If things don't go well at home, you just start a war abroad! Nothing unites the stupid populace like a little war! Patriotic feelings, homeland pride. All of that is much more important than such trifles as appropriate social legislation or a job.
The Falklands War:For a pile of rocks and some sheep
Luckily for Thatcher, the chance for such a war arose relatively soon when Argentina attacked a puny remainder of the British Empire in the South Atlantic in 1982:the Falkland Islands. This is an archipelago off the coast of South America with an awe-inspiring population of just under three thousand and an economy based almost entirely on sheep farming. The Argentine military government of the time thought the British would not take it upon themselves to defend this useless piece of land against occupation. After all, the islands were just off the coast of Argentina, but almost 13,000 kilometers from the British Isles. It would have been quite an expensive undertaking to send the British Navy there. A full blown Falklands War. The British wouldn't do that!
But the Argentinians were very wrong about Mrs. Thatcher! Without hesitation, they sent their war fleet to the South Atlantic to show the Argentines in this little Falklands war that Great Britain was still a force to be reckoned with in the 1980s! And indeed:The British Navy was able to drive the Argentine troops completely off the islands within just a few months. About 250 British soldiers died in the Falklands War, and more than 600 on the Argentine side. Since then, the Falklands have certainly belonged to Great Britain, even if Argentina never gave up its claim to the archipelago. A few years ago there was even a referendum in which the few residents were asked whether they wanted to remain a British Overseas Territory. 99.8 percent of the people there were for it. That means three people voted against. I'm sure they're hugely popular in Port Stanley Village Pub.
At least Margaret Thatcher was after the war. The old trick still works, and it was the success of the war that earned her the approval in the country, with which she was able to push through her further reform plans. After winning the Falklands War in 1982, Thatcher was able to govern more or less. The cheering patriotism experienced by the English people (it was a different story in Scotland) when the British marines were bid farewell and received at Portsmouth was to continue for a while and keep Thatcher in power for a long time to come.' /P>
The Iron Lady shows her claws
The Falklands War is also one of the reasons why the 1980s were so all-changing in Britain as they were. Nothing stood in Maggie Thatcher's way after this war. The opposition was completely divided and the most important parts of the population (that is, the wealthy English in the south of the country) were almost united behind it. With this support, the new national heroine Thatcher was able to set about achieving her most important goal:the disempowerment of the country's trade unions. Because even if they and their mass strikes in the 1970s contributed to Thatcher's electoral success, they really didn't fit into her worldview at all. And so the Iron Lady violently overthrew the British unions! In fact, Thatcher sat out a full-blown miners' strike for a year before people ran out of energy. After that, the unions were never heard from again. Not every head of government could afford something like that, and Even Thatcher could hardly have done it without the Falklands War. The nickname Iron Lady is no coincidence for her. Though she wasn't particularly keen on the country's iron mines. Kind of ironic.
Her winning streak continued unabated into the 1980s. A few years later, Thatcher famously walked into the European Council brandishing her purse and yelling "I want my money back!" . It doesn't speak well for the European leaders of the time that they actually gave her the money she was asking for. Since then, Great Britain has enjoyed its infamous “British discount”. Great! So the problem is finally off the table and we'll never have to deal with British demands in the EU again! Thatcher's success has probably not done him any good either. At some point she became so arrogant that she only spoke of herself in the pluralis majestatis, i.e. in the royal we form. Then one day she proudly announced "We are grandmother" , that might have become too much for most people in the country. Falklands War or not!
And that left its mark on the country
On the other hand, those people who had not succumbed to their cheap patriotism had to wait even longer until Thatcher's departure. That didn't come until 1990, when the prime minister introduced a poll tax. This was really a very special kind of evil stroke of genius. Each household was therefore simply taxed according to the number of people living there. The fact that the value of the property and the income of the residents were ignored is certainly another bad coincidence from which Thatcher's rich party friends only benefited in passing. The fact that poor families also tend to live with more people in one house is certainly not intended in the law either. It is also certainly pure coincidence that the Thatcher government introduced the tax on April 1, 1990 of all times. At least people had something to laugh about. In Scotland, however, the tax was "tried out" beforehand. At least Thatcher couldn't lose voters there. She didn't have any.
The country then retained the poll tax for a number of years, although the prime minister resigned due to internal party pressure. However, Thatcher was extremely popular with the people far beyond her reign. Ask Scotland what they think of Thatcher. Or in Northern England. Or any family earning under £100,000 a year. Extremely popular, to this day. That's why when she died in 2013, no one was singing "Ding Dong the witch is dead" on the streets of Britain and there were certainly no spontaneous celebrations.
Can't get enough of wacky historical stories from and about Britain? Then you are lucky! Because I wrote a whole book about it! It's called Brexit terminus and I deal with 2000 years of English-European history with a good dose of tongue-in-cheek. Here you can find all the important information about Brexit at a glance. But in short, if you like this blog, you're going to love this book. And that's a promise.