CRASS
“This year, 1983, Thatcher has given the go-ahead for the installation of American cruise missiles on several sites in the UK. These weapons, designed to fly beneath ‘enemy’ radar to give ‘maximum surprise attack potential’, will greatly increase the risk of the nuclear nightmare becoming a reality. Further to this, it was recently disclosed that America intends to set up a ‘War Centre’ in the UK as a fallback should ‘the enemy’ necessitate a retreat from the present centre in West Germany. It would appear that the US Government regards Britain as a convenient military building site and that Thatcher, in her adopted role as imperial warlord, is happy to welcome them on our behalf with open arms.The British people, however, have not been asked what they think about either the cruise missiles or the centre and in Thatcher’s ‘democracy’ there’s little chance they will be. A further even more frightening erosion of British ‘democracy’ is that Britain will have no say in the use of the missiles – in plainer language it means Britain has become nothing more than a convenient stagingpost for the militaristic ideology of another nation. Given the volatile and pugnacious reputation as ‘The Iron Lady’, it is perhaps a good thing that Thatcher will not have her finger on the button, but the absorbing reality is that Reagan will. Do we really want to be the Fifty Third State with no rights of citizenship? Thatcher made a great issue of the ‘right of the Falklanders to self-determination’, rights that she increasingly denies the people of her own homeland. “The Falklands debacle demonstrates how easy a slide into total war could be. If Thatcher had had her way and ordered the bombing of the Argentinian mainland, it is quite possible the ensuing escalation would have led to the holocaust. Britain and other countries in Europe are being set up by the American government as prime targets in a future war that could quite possibly have nothing to do with us. We have lost our international reputation through Thatcher’s lunatic war and we are losing our national right to self-determination through her equally lunatic agreements with America. The contradictions are obvious and absurd. Are we prepared in these hideously dangerous times to sit by and let this happen? “From its roots in the blues to Elvis’ waggling hips, rock ‘n’ roll has sent a thousand cinema seats through the screen of middle-class complacency. It has been about rebellion, rejection and revolution, a big sod off to the grey people who make our world into a battlefield and who see us as toy soldiers with which to enact their terrifying war plans.
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