T4 International Flashcards
1
Q
The Falklands War (1982)
A
- The crisis over the Falklands Islands provided Margaret Thatcher with an opportunity.
- She had become an outstanding war leader. Her commanding conduct and demeanour during the Falklands conflict added to her reputation that she regained a popularity (sometimes referred to as ‘The Falklands Factor’) that enabled her to stay in office until 1990, wining the general elections of 1983 and 1987 along the way.
2
Q
The Anglo-Argentinian Dispute
A
- The legal ownership of the islands had long been disputed between Britain and Argentina.
- This historical arguments over who had sovereignty were complicated. Britain’s position was that the Falklands had legally been a British Dependency since 1833.
- What was not in dispute in 1982 was that 98% of the population of some 2000 islanders wished to remain under the British flag.
- This was a point constantly emphasised by Margaret Thatcher.
- It gave her justification for insisting that ‘sovereignty is not negotiable’.
- Interestingly, Thatcher’s government had at first been willing to discuss a compromise with Argentina.
- Nicholas Ridley, a minister at the Foreign Office, had proposed a ‘leaseback’, agreement by which Britain, while maintaining ultimate sovereignty over the Falklands, would allow Argentina to administer the region as its own.
- However, any chance of settlement on these terms was destroyed by the Argentina’s decision to take the island by force.
- In a precipitate move on 2nd April 1982, General Gualtieri, the Argentine dictator, eager to make his four-month-old regime acceptable to the nation, ordered the seizure of the Falklands.
- Some 4000 Argentine troops invaded the islands and quickly overcame the resistance of the garrison of 80 Royal Marines based there.
- The act of aggression was condemned by all parties in Britain, but whereas the Labour Party wanted the British response to be channeled through the United Nations (U.N.), which formally condemned the Argentine invasion.
- Thatcher was adamant that it was entirely a matter for Britain to resolve.
- Its sovereignty had been affronted and its people on the Falklands put under foreign military occupation. Britain was therefore entitled to take unilateral action by itself.
- She immediately ordered the retaking of the Falklands by the British Armed Forces
3
Q
The Falklands Conflict (April to June 1982)
A
- On 8th April 1982, a British task-force, having rapidly been assembled in four days, sailed from Portsmouth and Southampton.
- On 25th April 1982, South Georgia, which Argentina had also seized, was recaptured, Air strikes began on 1st May 1982 against the occupying Argentine forces on the island.
- Having placed a 200-mile exclusion zone around the islands, Britain began its naval campaign on 2nd May 1982.
- In an action that caused considerable controversy in Britain, the Argentine cruiser Belgrano was sunk by a British submarine.
- Opponents of the war asserted that Thatcher had personally ordered the Belgrano to be torpedoed even though it was sailing out of the exclusion zone at the time it was sunk.
- The accusation was that she had done this deliberately to wreck the efforts of the UN Secretary General to bring about a peaceful negotiated settlement to the conflict.
- Thatcher’s defence was that, in a war situation, the Belgrano regardless of its position and heading, remained a threat to British military forces.
- Ships, she pointed out, can always turn around.
- Two days after the Belgrano had been sunk, HMS Sheffield was destroyed by an Argentine Exocet missile fired from an aircraft.
- In subsequent engagements, two British frigates [warships] were destroyed and others damaged in Argentine air attacks.
- The Royal Navy, however, had prepared the way for British troop landings to begin on 21st May 1982.
- By the end of the month the two key areas of San Carlos and Goose Green had been recaptured.
- The climax of the conflict came with the liberation of the Falklands capital, Port Stanley, on 14thJune 1982. Argentina surrendered.
- The conflict had claimed the lives of 255 British and 665 Argentine servicemen.
- Although some found it tastelessly jingoistic [nationalistic] Thatcher’s cry of ‘rejoice, rejoice’ at the news of the taskforce’s victory found an echo with the wider British public who read the pro-war and pro-Tory tabloid press that likened her to Churchill in her ability to inspire the nation in wartime.
4
Q
Thatcher’s Political Benefits of the Falklands War
A
- The reward for her leadership during the Falklands Crisis came with the 1983 General Election.
- Carried to victory by the surge of popularity that the war had brought her, she won an overwhelming electoral victory in the 1983 General Election.
- In contrast, the Labour opposition led by Michael Foot, who had opposed military action found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to attack the government while at the same time supporting the British servicemen and servicewomen who were actually fighting the war.
- It proved an impossible act to bring off and the Labour Leaders, Michael Foot and then Neil Kinnock, suffered a dip in their personal standing.
- Impressive electoral success though it was, Thatcher’s achievement has to be put into context.
- What she had done was to recover the support that the opinion polls suggested she had lost in the early 1980s, as a result of her unpopular monetarist economic policies, and to restore herself and the Conservative Party to the position they held in 1979.
- The real explanation for the Conservative landslide in 1983 was the remarkable poor performance of the Labour opposition, which saw its total vote drop by three million and its share of the vote fall by nearly 9%.
5
Q
Thatcher, the Special Relationship & the Cold War
A
- At the end of her premiership, Margaret Thatcher, was far more popular abroad than she was at home. This was because she was a staunch anti-Communist, had played a significant role in bringing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
- Her populist instincts served her well in this regard. She sensed that Communism no longer represented the will of the people in those countries where Communist regimes were still in power.
- Although she was prepared ‘to do business’ with the Soviet Union in commercial matters and got on personally well with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whom she met on a number of occasions, she never budged from her conviction that Communism as an ideology was the enemy of freedom.
6
Q
Reagan and Star Wars (The Strategic Defense Initiative)
A
- Reagan was accused of starting a Second Cold War by declaring the Soviet Union ‘An Evil Empire’.
- President Reagan knew that the Soviet economy was struggling.
- Therefore, increasing defence spending would put the USSR under pressure.
- He announced in 1983 that America had developed the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI).
- The SDI was a shock to Moscow; they had spent huge amounts developing missile technology to compete with the Americans.
- These would now be redundant.
- The ambitious initiative was widely criticized as being unrealistic, even unscientific, as well as for threatening to destabilize MAD and re-ignite “an offensive arms race”.
- However, Reagan had hoped the USSR would try and compete and so cripple the USSR.
- SDI was derided, largely in the mainstream media, as “Star Wars,” after the popular 1977 film by George Lucas.
7
Q
Reagan and the Falklands War
A
- It offered use of American Bases on the British Ascension Island.
- It provided diplomatic intervention prevented Argentina from obtaining new Exocet Missiles.
- The relationship between President Reagan and Thatcher was strengthened.
8
Q
‘The Iron Lady’
A
- As early as 1976 Thatcher’s attitude had earned her the nickname ‘the iron lady’ in the Soviet press.
- The title was intended as a disparaging allusion to her opposition to Communism, but she delighted in it, viewing it as a recognition of her firmness of purpose.
- As Prime Minister, she made a number of visits to the Eastern bloc, including Poland, Hungary and the USSR itself. For many people in those countries Thatcher became a symbol of freedom.
- In Poland, for example, chapels and shrines were dedicated to her.
- This was principally because of her open support throughout the 1980s for ‘Solidarity’, which was the anti-Communist trade union movement of Poland.
- Led by its chairman, Lech Walesa, Solidarity fought a running battle with Poland’s Communist government, demanding recognition as an independent trade union movement free from the control of the authorities.
- Its successful resistance to attempts to crush it was a major factor in encouraging anti-Communist, anti-Soviet movements throughout Eastern Europe that culminated in the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of the late 1980s.
- The Velvet Revolution is the name given in the face of popular nationalist opposition movements, to the USSR abandoning its authority over the countries of Eastern Europe, without a fight.
- There were some shaking heads in Britain. Critics asked how Thatcher could reconcile being pro-trade union abroad, while simultaneously so fiercely anti-trade union at home.
- Thatcher’s defenders suggested that it was all a matter of freedom; she was against trade unions when their actions threatened liberty, but supported them when they promoted it.
9
Q
The Special Relationship & President Ronald Reagan
A
- Margaret Thatcher’s powerfully expressed anti-Communism chimed well with the prevailing views of the United States.
- It so happened that her leadership of Britain in the 1980s coincided with the Republican Presidency of Ronald Reagan. The two leaders were soul mates.
- Regan was a supporter of New Right with Reaganomics an American mirror image of Thatcherism.
- Reagan had been greatly impressed, as indeed had most Americans, by Thatcher’s resolute handling of the Falklands War in 1982.
- Their liking for each other and their shared attitudes personalised the special relationship between Britain and the USA.
10
Q
The Cold War Arms Race
A
- Both Thatcher and Reagan agreed, as mutual Cold War warriors, that the West was fighting against the forces of evil and had to remain fully armed with nuclear weapons.
- One result of this was Britain’s buying of American Trident nuclear missiles to replace its obsolete Polaris nuclear missiles at an initial cost of £10 billion.
- In addition, Britain agreed in 1981 to allow the USA to install its nuclear cruise missiles at the US air force base, within the UK, at Greenham Common near Newbury.
- This was a decision that led to a resurgence of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) movement.
- Greenham Common became the site of a women’s peace camp which picketed the US base from 1981 to 2000, a graphic example of the extra-parliamentary protests against government policy that were a feature of late twentieth century politics.
- Thatcher played a crucial part in winning the Cold War for the West.
- While the left in both countries accused Thatcher and Reagan of crudely over-simplifying the issues, the effects of the Anglo-American unyielding front towards international Communism in the 1980s was to put great pressure on the Soviet Union.
- Its attempts to keep up in the vastly expensive arms race with the West exhausted it militarily and financially. This proved a major factor in the USSR’s eventual disintegration in 1991.
- The special relationship that Thatcher had helped to renew was to prove a significant factor in the subsequent premierships of John Major and Tony Blair when the USA and Britain acted together in several major international issues.
11
Q
Thatcher & the 1984 Hong Kong Agreement
A
- In 1839 China rejected British proposals to legalise and tax the drug opium and instead due to the harmful effects of the drug on its people attempted to eradicate this drug trade.
- The Opium Wars were a series of wars in the middle of the nineteenth century, where Britain had forced China to buy large quantities of British harvested opium [heroin].
- This was a historic humiliation which remained a basic historic reference point for many Chinese in explaining their suspicions towards Britain and the West generally.
12
Q
The Hong Kong Colony
A
- In 1842 China had granted Britain the island of Hong Kong on a permanent basis because of its defeat during the first Opium War.
- In 1860 Britain formally added Kowloon, the harbour directly facing Hong Kong Island, to its permanent possessions.
- The third piece of territory, Kowloon peninsula, on which the harbour stood, was gained by Britain in 1898. This last piece known as the New Territories, was not granted to Britain in perpetuity [forever], but only on a 99-year lease.
13
Q
Hong Kong’s Prosperity (An Asian Tiger Economy)
A
- The British colony of Hong Kong as formed in 1898 was to develop during the following century into one of the most prosperous cities in the commercial world.
- After, 1949 when the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, had taken over mainland China, Hong Kong became a heaven for those fleeing from Communist rule.
- Thousands of businessmen and bankers, who brought their wealth and expertise with them, settled in Hong Kong and quickly turned it into a world centre of manufacturing, commerce and finance.
- Hong Kong’s economy quickly became identified as one of the four Asian Tiger Economies, which included the rapidly growing and prosperous economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.
14
Q
The 99-Year Lease
A
- Yet, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) could take deep satisfaction from the thought that under the terms of the 1898 Agreement, Hong Kong would, legally under international law, must return to China in 1997.
- The then Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, whose famous policies prepared the way for China to become one of the world’s major economic powers, anticipated that the return of Hong Kong would add a huge asset in his modernisation plans for China.
15
Q
Hong Kong Public Opinion
A
- The Chinese people of Hong Kong experienced democracy and human rights under British rule.- This was not the case for Chinese people living in mainland China under the Communist dictatorship where human rights violations were frequent.
- The people of Hong Kong feared having to live under Communist rule and public opinion polls showed that 95% of the Hong Kong people wanted to stay under British rule.
16
Q
UK-China Negotiations
A
- In strictly legal terms, Britain could have argued that according to earlier treaties, Kowloon and the island of Hong Kong were permanent British possessions.
- It was only the New Territories that were leased for 99 years.
- China expected to meet difficulties and prepared for a long diplomatic battle.
- Talks between China and the UK began in 1979.
- Margaret Thatcher was personally involved in the negotiations from 1982 onwards.
- Deng Xiaoping took a hard line.
- He told her: ‘I would rather see Hong Kong torched than leave Britain to rule it after 1997.’
- Britain was not in a strong bargaining position.
- The idea of giving up the New Territories, but keeping Hong Kong and Kowloon was not really an option. It was the New Territories that supplied Hong Kong with its water and power supplies.
- The logistical problems of supplying the island by any other means were insurmountable.
- Deng Xiaoping was not exaggerating when, in one sharp exchange, he threatened that the Chinese armed forces ‘could walk in and take Hong Kong later today if they wanted to.’
- Deng Xiaoping knew that he also held the moral high ground.
- The British had originally only acquired the colony of Hong Kong through superior military strength, forcing China to sign away Hong Kong against its will.
- It was, said Deng Xiaoping, an example of colonialism at its most exploitative.
- Mainland China’s official Communist government newspaper, the People’s Daily, commentated bitterly: ‘150 years ago, to maintain its drug trafficking in China, Britain launched the aggressive Opium War against China, during which it carried out burnings, killing, rape and plunder on Chinese soil’.
17
Q
‘One Country, Two Systems’
A
- Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping proposed the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ during negotiation with Thatcher over the expiration of the United Kingdom’s lease on the New Territories of Hong Kong in 1997.
- The principle was that, upon reunification, despite the Communist system in China, Hong Kong could retain it British established system of government under a high degree of autonomy for up to 50 years after reunification.
18
Q
The 1984 Joint Declaration
A
- Britain agreed that upon the expiry of the lease on the New Territories in 1997 all the areas that made up Hong Kong would return to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).
- In return the Chinese Communists declared that Hong Kong after 1997 would be treated as a ‘Special Administrative Association’ (SAR) until 2047. This would leave its capitalist economic and democratic structure unaltered. The Chinese referred to this policy famously as ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy.
19
Q
Hong Kong Democrats
A
- Difficulties arose leading up to he 1997 handover.
- An especially demanding problem was the opposition to Hong Kong’s democrats, who felt that The 1984 Joint Declaration would not give them sufficient democratic and human rights protections post-1997.
- Britain, however, seemed intent on causing as little fuss as possible by not pressuring Beijing on the democracy question.
- Since the Hong Kong handover was now inevitable, there were more important things Britain should be looking forward towards.
- Among these were the maintenance of good relations with China, whose billion-plus population offered huge commercial prospects for Britain.
20
Q
Margaret Thatcher & Europe
A
- When Margaret Thatcher came into office in 1979 she had been confronted by the record of Britain’s poor economic performance in the 1970s.
- She later claimed that she had not been initially anti-Europe, but when she realised how much waste and inefficiency there was in the Brussels bureaucracy and how much Britain was disadvantaged, she felt compelled to speak out.
- The centralising, bureaucratic character of Europe ran counter to the Thatcherite Revolution she was trying to bring about in Britain.
21
Q
Thatcher’s main concerns about Europe
A
- Protectionism: Europe was based on the principle of protectionism [tariffs], which was outdated in an age of global free trade.
- Centralisation: Europe was obsessed with centralised control from Brussels [the EU’s headquarters] rather than respecting country’s sovereign independence.
- Budget Payments: The disparity between the budget payments made by separate members states that rewarded economically inefficient and poor member-countries like Greece at the expense of economically efficient and rich member-countries like Britain.
22
Q
European Federalism
A
- Thatcher was disturbed by the threat that deeper European Federalism and the move towards a ‘United States of Europe’ held for Britain.
- Thatcher stressed how young European institutions were; none of them pre-dated 1945 whereas the British governmental system had evolved over centuries.
- Furthermore, she feared that Europe could easily become the prey of creeping socialism and bureaucracy, which was a powerful political force within other European countries.
- These fears were not new and were held by both Conservative and Labour governments as early as the 1950s when proposals were first made for Britain to enter the EEC. What made Margaret Thatcher appear particularly hostile to Europe was her fierce manner.
- She carried over into her discussions with her European counterparts, the same adversarial style of debate which she used, back at home, within a British political context.
- But this adversarial style of debate was out of place within a European political context.
- Direct confrontation was rare between European ministers and their officials. They tended to get things done by calm negotiation, compromise, concessions and private agreements.
23
Q
Britain’s European Rebate (1984)
A
- The ground on which Thatcher chose to defend the British position in Europe most strongly was that of Britain’s disproportionately high payments to the EEC budget.
- Thatcher’s battling had some success and the EEC reluctantly agreed.
- In June 1984, at Fontainebleau outside Paris, Thatcher successfully negotiated what is now known as the UK rebate with other EU members.
- The aim was to correct for the apparent imbalance in the UK contribution at the time.
- The UK rebate was ratified and then implemented in May 1985.
24
Q
The Euro Tunnel (1986)
A
- Thatcher established a good working relationship with the French president, Francoise Mitterrand (president from 1981 to 1995).
- They operated closely over the Channel Tunnel project, which was agreed in 1986 (opening in 1994).
- Sharing in the creation of such a symbolic link between Britain and France was hardly proof of any anti-Europeanism on Thatcher’s part.
25
Q
The Single European Act (1986)
A
- Despite Thatcher’s fighting words, in her later famous 1988 Bruges speech, the great paradox was that she oversaw the process by which Britain was drawn ever closer into Europe.
- It was Thatcher who in 1986 accepted the Single European Act, which marked the first step towards a centralised Europe.
26
Q
The Single European Act terms
A
- The signatory members committed themselves to closer European monetary and political union.
- The principle of supra-nationality (the subordination of individual member states to the EU) was established.
- The right of individual member states to veto majority decisions was abolished.
27
Q
Consequences of the Single European Act (1986)
A
- Thatcher was enthusiastic about the Single European Act because for Thatcher and her supporters it would make a single European common market a reality.
- But at the same time, with hindsight, it is obvious that it surrendered some elements of British sovereignty.
- At the time Thatcher did not seem to realise this, or she ignored the implications. She recommended support for the Single European Act and it passed parliament with little controversy.
- In 1987 it was clear that the Conservative Party still appeared a broadly pro-European party and Britain’s future was clearly within the EEC.
28
Q
Thatcher’s Bruges Speech (1988)
A
- In a landmark speech in the city of Bruges (Belgium) in 1988 Thatcher condemned ‘the erosion of democracy by centralisation and bureaucracy’ as Europe moved towards an ever-closer federal European ‘super-state’:
- ‘It is ironic that just when those countries, such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, some in the community seem to want to move in the opposite direction. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a Brussels super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’
29
Q
The Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM)
A
- Margaret Thatcher was also in office when Britain agreed to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in October 1990.
- She had been told by her financial advisors that it would provide Britain with a means of fighting inflation. In the event it did the opposite and in 1992 a monetary crisis forced John Major’s government to withdraw from the ERM on ‘Black Wednesday’.
- Thatcher claimed that she had been misled into entering the ERM in 1990 by her former Chancellor of Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, and her Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe.
- Both ministers were to play an important role in weakening Margaret Thatcher’s position as Prime Minister.
- In 1989 Nigel Lawson had resigned when he found that the Prime Minister was taking the advice of Alan Walters, whom she had appointed as her special economic advisor, than she was from Lawson who was the Chancellor. Geoffrey Howe, a pro-European, made a similar charge, claiming
that the Prime Minister’s aggressive anti-European stance was distorting his attempts as Foreign Secretary to smooth Britain’s entry into the ERM. - On 31st October 1990, on Thatcher’s return from a top-level European meeting in Rome where she had openly declared that Britain would never join a European single-currency, she stated in the House of Commons:
- ‘The President of the Commission, M. Delores, said at this conference that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the community, he wanted the Commission to be the executive [government], and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No, No, No!’
