Thatcher: The Dark Side (2)

By I. K. Gyasi
'Mrs. Thatcher's abuses of state power have intensified an awareness of how undemocratic, because it is unwritten, the British Constitution is.' - NEW STATEMAN & SOCIETY. June 10, 1988.

Indeed, between 1979 and 1990 when she was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher ruthlessly used state power in a way that an absolute monarch, or the most blood-thirsty dictator, would have envied. See what she did to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

The BBC is known as a Quango, an acronym for Quasi, Non-Governmental Organisation.

As a Quango, it is controlled by a Board of Governors appointed by the Queen on the advice of the government. The Board has a Chairman, while the day-to-day running of the BCC is in the hands of a Director-General. For all practical purposes, the BBC is meant to be independent of government control.

As an anti-democrate, one of the first dictatorial moves of Mrs. Thatcher was to put static into the microphone of the BBC. The very year she became Prime Minister, in 1979, she ominously stated, 'The Home Secretary and I think that it is about time the BBC puts its house in order.'

True to her words, she terrorised the BBC with sacking, redeployment, gagging, and witch-hunt investigations into the background of prospective employees of the BBC, etc. A few examples should suffice.

In 1987, the Thatcher government dismissed the BBC's Director-General, Mr. Alasdair Milne, over a programme called the 'Real Lives'. The government censored programmes before they were aired.

Wrote Mr. Duncan Campbell, then the Associate Editor of the NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY:  'There is a new determination by the Thatcher government to mould the BBC into the voice of government alone.

'After the sacking of the BBC's Director-General, Aladair Milne, in 1987, all the top appointees on BBC radio and TV were moved out. A special 'Political Unit' was established to pre-check any programme items that might irritate the government.'

Special Branch officers raided the offices of the NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY, the homes of three of its journalists, and the offices of BBC Scotland. This was followed by a year-long hunt by the government of what it considered as 'moles' or spies.

The British intelligence agency, M15, was used secretly by the government to vet journalists who applied for jobs at the BBC, and some people were refused jobs on the basis of wrong information supplied about them.

In an article entitled, 'So where do we go for Freedom?' and published in the August 1988 issue of the magazine, INDEX ON CENSORSHIP, Mr. John Mortimer wrote of the 'alarm, distress and harassment' at the BBC.

Mr. Mortimer noted that the government had attacked and undermined the BBC, had placed its supporters on the Board of Governors, and was threatening to abolish the BBC's licence fees and sell off the BBC's Commercial TV to the highest bidder.

Mrs. Thatcher was not above pettiness. In 1987, just before the general elections, the police arrested four people under the Public Order Act (1986), and charged them with 'displaying a visual representation likely to be abusive or insulting.'

The visual representations were posters showing the Prime Minister wearing suspenders and carrying a whip with the inscription, 'On Your Knees to Madam M.'

The charges were eventually dropped, but the fact that they were brought in the first place showed how petty, intolerant and humourless she was.

There is no doubt that, as far as human rights are concerned, Britain, under Mrs. Thatcher, lived in the Dark Ages. Mrs. Thatcher was determined to increase the powers of the police.

In 1985, while raiding a house, the police accidentally shot dead a five-year old boy, John Shorthouse, in the head. Thatcher's government refused to order a full inquiry to examine all aspects of the uses of firearms by the police.

In 1987, the police arrested a thirteen year-old boy, held him at the police station for three days, and interrogated him in connection with a riot at a place called Broadwater Farm.

Wearing only his pants and a blanket in cold Britain and under intense interrogation, the boy finally confessed to murder just to free himself from the continuous police torture.

Fortunately, the presiding judge threw out the case, describing the alleged confession of the boy as 'high fantasy and incredible.'

The Public Order Act, 1986, gave the police greater powers to restrict demonstrations and pickets. Seven days' notice was to be given to the police, who had vast powers to impose conditions, including stopping the demonstration altogether.

The Financial Service Act of 1987 gave Government Inspectors the right to enter premises and seize any documentation they might consider relevant without a search warrant, and also compel people to give evidence, even if the evidence was self-incriminating.

Under the Security Services Act of 1988, the intelligence agency M15 could bug and burgle peoples' homes, provided the Home Secretary had secretly authorised it.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act had been previously passed by the Labour Party. Under the Act, suspects could be detained without trial for up to seven days, access to lawyers could be denied, and the movements of people could be prevented.

It was a law very much suited to the anti-democratic spirit of Mrs. Thatcher. Consequently, when the European Commission on Human Rights ruled that the law contravened human rights, Mrs. Thatcher refused to comply with the ruling.

In her proposed reforms to the Official Secrets Act, Mrs. Thatcher made it clear that newspapers would not be able to rely on the defence of 'public interest'.

In 1984, the government banned trade unions at Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ). The courts ruled that the ban was against natural justice, but strangely enough, the courts also refused to overturn the ban, because the government claimed that the ban was necessary for reasons of national security.

Mrs. Thatcher also introduced lie detectors tests at GCHQ because of pressure from the Americans to improve security. Interestingly enough, the former head of another intelligence agency, M16, Sir Maurice Oldfield, passed the test, falsely denying the fact that he was a homosexual.

Mrs. Thatcher bestrode the narrow world of Great Britain like a colossus, and strong men had to run to find themselves dishonourable graves.

Indeed, she once boasted of leading her party to victory into the 21 st Century. However, her own Minster, Mr. Michael Hasseltine, was literally and figuratively man enough to bring her down, by challenging her for the leadership of the Conservative Party. May she rest in peace!