Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

[Stavros]

Jenny I don't know what the purpose of your chronology is, other than to talk up Thatcher's role in the end of the Cold War. That you have relied on the arguments of double agent Oleg Gordievsky is a pity as he was at times unable to make sensible political judgements while at other times he was a liar.

I cannot verify if Gordievsky alerted Mrs Thatcher to Gorbachev, we employed people in Moscow (when Gordievsky was in London) to follow the musical chairs in the Kremlin and they would have known about Gorbachev once he became Agriculture Secretary but as you suggest Mrs T was suspicious of the Foreign Office. But certainly Pierre Trudeau did so my choice of influential figure goes to the Charismatic Canadian -Gorbachev met him in 1983 when he was still Agriculture secretary but their talks lasted longer than planned and ranged far and wide on politics -by this time Gorbachev had seen enough foreign countries to understand how utterly inefficient the Russian economy was.

Incidentally it was on that Canadian trip that Gorbachev met up with Alexander Yakovlev who had been in effect sent into exile as Canadian Ambassador during the Brezhnev era because of his position on reform -at a time when hard-liners managed to edge aside reformers -two others being Anatoly Chernyaev and Georgy Shakhnazarov -these reformers can be seen as the precursors of Gorbachev, they supported him when rehabilitated after Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, and are also part of the alternative dialogue on the future of the USSR from within that doesn't appear in the triumphalist histories, which suggest a reforming Gorbachev came out of nowhere whereas he had been part of the anti-Stalinist reforming bloc since the 1960s; this also included Andrei Sakharov, whom Gorbachev released from exile on his elevation to the party leadership. Gorbachev also had the advantage in the mid-1980s of being young when the leadership of the USSR was old, he had built up a reputation for precisely the kind of organisation efficiency the party wanted; he had the backing of Gromyko -who became Head of State in 1985- and in 1950 was one of a very few students from peasant backgrounds admitted to Moscow State University, which suggests anything other than a 'mediocre cv'.

The history of the Cold War is becoming a difficult one because 'the victors' have been emphasising the role of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and now Mrs Thatcher; and often it has more to to do with politics today than yesterday, Charles Moore in particular. In her early days as PM a priority was to defeat the arguments of the CND and commit Britain to this thing called an 'Independent Nuclear Deterrent'; if anything she had a greater preference for Nuclear Weapons than Reagan who didn't like them and saw SDI as an alternative to them -the Russians were more concerned at the military spin off's than the fantasy of the defensive shield.

We can argue about some of the finer details, for example the CIA has produced an account of the 1983 scare which doesn't offer a broader context for the impact of the KAL 700 disaster and whether or not it became a precedent for the successive passenger airlines shot down or blown up in the 1980s.

The USSR was dysfunctional, and had been for decades. Brezhnev had seen off the rebels in Prague in 1968, had begun the military build-up that concerned Washington in the 1970s and was believed to made some Americans feel they were falling behind (certainly a conservative critique of President Carter). The USSR had benefited from the staggering rise in the price of oil in the 1970s -but by the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982, the oil price was falling, Poland had become the latest challenger to Party dominance and had briefly succeeded in establishing an independent trade union, and the sense of decay was palpable, until Gorbachev came along. Neither Reagan nor Gorbachev wanted to see the break-up of the USSR; Gorbachev wanted to reform it, and failed. Reagan saw the end of the cold war, but not of communism, and the USSR did break up, with mixed results.

Thatcher recommended Gordievsky for an honour, which he duly received from the Queen. He wrote a book which cost Rupert Murdoch £100,000 in libel fees when serialised in the papers before its publication when Gordievsky claimed Michael Foot had been a 'KGB Agent of Influence' (called "Boot") and had regularly received payments from Moscow Centre when editor of Tribune magazine in the 1950s' -all rubbish. It was established that KGB officers who couldn't think of anything to say and justify their positions made up the phrase 'Agent of Influence' to make it sound good to their bosses. To compound this drivel Charles Moore, the latest biographer of Margaret Thatcher wrote a shitty little piece after Michael Foot's death knowing he wouldn't be sued in which he repeats the rubbish about "Agent Boot", and adds this bizarre comment: There was no protest by Foot to the KGB over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 -Michael Foot is on record as condemning the Russian invasion in 1956 and yet for Mr Moore, he was supposed to 'protest to the KGB' to prove his credentials? Weird. Gordievsky subsequently had the cheek to complain that the £20,000 a year he lived on, courtesy of the tax payer, was not enough, even though shop assistants were earning barely £10,000 at the time.

In sum -Thatcher was in the loop, but the key figure in the end of the Cold War was Gorbachev, and it was Trudeau who probably swung it for Maggie.

On Trudeau etc:
Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (Allen Lane, The Bodley Head, 2009, esp p470 for the Trudeau meeting).

On Michael Foot and Gordiesvsky:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...t-1574439.html
(but does not credit Trudeau)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...ful-idiot.html
(Charles Moore re-writing history)

CIA article on 1983
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...rum/source.htm

[Ben]

Thatcher’s Coup

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/25/thatchers-coup/

[Prospero]

Beat me to it Ben

[martin48]

Well, at least she hasn't been picked to be on the new £5 banknote - that's to be Churchill

[Jericho]

Well, at least she hasn't been picked to be on the new £5 banknote - that's to be Churchill

Thank Christ for that...Bogroll's expensive enough!

[Ben]

Thatcher's full speech on global warming:

[Ben]

[DirtyDon]

This thread was a most engaging read. Thatcher will always be mummy to me.

[Prospero]

Thankfully she is a Mummy to everyone now. Why did you need to dig up this old thread!

[martin48]

She will return