Animal QC

A good passage

By now into my A levels, I was elected President of the Students’ Union and represented the college at the NUS conference in Blackpool. Many important issues were debated and settled, among them a vote to tell the Polish government that we students did not approve of them silencing Solidarity, and another to ban the playing of Kenny Rogers’ Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town from college juke-boxes, on the grounds that it was offensive to disabled people.

Then, in April 1982, came the Falklands War. I still cannot understand the objections to that conflict. Islands belonging to Britain, populated by people who were to all intents and purposes British citizens, had been invaded by Argentina – a country ruled by a fascist dictator. There were no Argentineans living on the islands, there never had been any Argentineans living on the islands, and our claiming of the islands predated the very existence of modern-day Argentina. That country’s sole and very flimsy claim to ownership rested on the fact that, at six hundred miles away, it was the closest mainland nation. People talked in dark tones about British ‘colonialism’, without apparently acknowledging that Argentina was itself founded on conquest. Perhaps they thought that the indigenous inhabitants had welcomed the Spanish conquistadors with open arms?

Mrs Thatcher immediately sent a task force to liberate the Falklands, while the Labour Party, the student left, and just about every idiot I knew came down firmly against it. Call me a cynic, but it seemed to me that some of them were so keen to attack the Tories that they were prepared, in effect, to support Galtier’s junta. They were not so much anti-war, as anti-Thatcher.