As a society and culture we are big on anniversaries. In case you didn’t realise, next month is the 30th anniversary of the Falkland’s war. I was about to call it conflict but I think ‘war’ sums it better. After all, there was killing and dying. Sadly, some of it could have been avoided. Even during the war, more could have been done to reduce the numbers who died.
I was told over the weekend that after one particular battle the whole war could have been brought to an end. But apparently the Brits didn’t just want surrender but they wanted a big victory with all its glory- and, of course, more deaths.
At the time I was a full-time student doing my teacher training course at the Selly Oak colleges in Birmingham. I remember going to an anti-war meeting at the George Cadbury Hall. We had the great EP Thompson speaking. During the questions and answers I made a little speech. I tried to remind everyone present that, of course, life in far away islands was precious but it helped if you had a white skin. This meant that the Falklanders were seen as worth rescuing with the use of the full British might. However the residents of Diego Garcia were not. This was an island ruled by the same Brits which had been ‘depopulated’, a euphemism for colonising and clearing out a people so their land could be put to other use, deemed to be more beneficial to the national interest. Although the crime had been committed from as far back as 1968, I learnt about it in 1983 when a compensation claim had been made by a group of the islanders who obviously were still waiting 15 years on.
Anyway, my claim to fame is that when I made my little speech, with some anger, I recall, there was uproar as everyone clapped very loudly. I sat down feeling a little embarrassed.
Recently, someone said that we probably wouldn’t have gone to war if we had had a different prime minister instead of Mrs Thatcher. But I thought we were a democratic government with a cabinet and accountability to a parliament and nation. If this is what can happen here, it is not worth contemplating the damage that can be done by real dictators.
As Bruce Springsteen once said, “trusting your leaders will get you killed”.