Thursday 11 April 2013

Thatcher`s Law & Order Legacy

This is a slightly different tack to what I usually put but in the last few days, certain details have come into the public domain.  I was listening to Jeremy Vine the other day, on Radio 2 and a caller told of his time as a distributor of donations of money and food for families of striking miners in the mid-80`s.  He told of how Thatcher ordered the Metropolitan Police, NOT the local Police, to stop people delivering food and money for strikers.  They could share amongst themselves the money they seized but it was most important that all food was destroyed!  She was determined to starve them into submission.  I find it beyond comprehension that a Prime Minister can subvert the Police and turn them, literally, into highway robbers.  Anybody but the Police stealing money from people and keeping it for themselves, would be arrested and charged.  This was using the Police as her own private army of bully-boys.

    If Thatcher could have done something for Law & Order, it should have been in regards to the drug problem.  She would not have shirked from putting through proposals that would have tackled the drug problem in the 80`s, the era in which it should have been, but all she was interested in was the confrontation with the unions, and backing big business in making mass profits with total disregard for the working man.  Remember it was the era of the "Yuppie" which was hammered home by Michael Douglas in the film "Wall Street."  His character, Gordon Gecko infamously said, "Greed is good!" 

    Another point about her reign for a Law & Order perspective was made by former top cop John Stalker.  He stated that the closest we have ever came to a Police State was under her reign.  Strong stuff from such a senior cop, but then Mr Stalker was never anybody`s man.  He spoke his views whether you agreed with him or not.  He never toed the line.  During her time, we had riots, her turning a blind eye to blatant Police corruption, and doing nothing when it was finally revealed that Sir Anthony Blunt had been a Soviet spy.  This had been suppressed from the public for twenty years, yet he was never charged with treason, which incidentally, still carried the Death Penalty.  This was finally dropped at the beginning of the nineties.  Yes, she did an awful lot for the working class!!!

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