Truman, Thatcher and Right to Work - A Legacy of Political Resolve

So much has been written about the late, great Margaret Thatcher this week that if you found this blog post via a search engine, I applaud your diligence! (and good evening to my regular readers). It's hard to encapsulate Thatcher's legacy in a single blog post, but here's one ex-pat Brit's attempt to write something new:

Before we get to The Grocer's Daughter, let's look in on 1945. In April of that year, Harry Truman, who had Vice President for just 82 days, took FDR's place in the White House. When he asked a grieving Eleanor Roosevelt if he could help in any way, she told him “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now."

How right she was. Though Truman faced Communist expansionism abroad and made the tough decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, he had a host of problems at home. The doubts of the liberals who doubted his commitment to the progressive cause, threats of the Southern Democrats who despised his pro-civil rights stance and look-down-the-nose derision of the FDR loyalists who thought him an uneducated commoner were the least of them.

At the top of the list was labor unrest. Once the war was over, the AFL, CIO, UMW and other big unions wanted payback for their wartime efforts and for frozen wage increases. Their foils, the titans of industry, refused to meet these demands, and so the picketing began. Steel workers, miners, auto workers and more refused to man their posts, and all told 28.5 million work days were lost, the highest total in US history.

Truman called in A.F. Whitney, chief of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, and Alvanley Johnston, head of the largest railway engineers' union, insisted that they put a stop to the strikes. They refused. "All right," the President told them. "I'm going to give you the gun."

And he did. Though Truman's negotiators brokered a settlement while he was at the podium, Truman told a joint session that he wanted power to draft the striking trainmen into the US Army. They'd have to obey their Commander in Chief, he reasoned. Though Truman later healed his rift with most union leaders and secured crucial labor backing to fuel his unlikely 1948 election win, he would not be held hostage by union chiefs, even when his opposition risked their wrath.

Fast forward to the late 1970s. Now it was Britain that was at the mercy of the trade unions, which provided funds for the ruling Labour Party and so had carte blanche at 10 Downing Street during the shaky Labour tenure of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. Unlike Truman, these two men lacked the fortitude to say "no" to their backers, and so the Communist-influenced unions got exactly what they wanted.

Until Maggie. When she took over from Callaghan in May 1979, the union chiefs must have thought it'd be business as usual, even though she was a Conservative instead of a leftist puppet. When it became clear that the new Prime Minister wouldn't be intimidated by threats, the National Mine Workers strikes started, led by the fiery Marxist Arthur Scargill, who was determined to destroy Thatcher's government as his organization had Edward Heath's Tory administration in 1974.

But they underestimated the grit of the Iron Lady. She told the Conservative Party's 1922 Committee during the peak of 1984-1985 strikes: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."

Despite the difficulty and danger of the situation, during which strikers battled riot police and Scargill disgraced his movement by failing to bring the Government's settlement offer before his workers (see this brilliant book), Thatcher prevailed. The type of strike that saw unions punish industrial suppliers was banned and the striking workers failed to bring the nation to its knees. Which was Scargill's aim all along. In the ensuing years, the British economy awakened from its late-70's slumber and ceased to be "sick man of Europe" (or, indeed, woman!).

And who is carrying the leadership torch of Truman and Thatcher today? None other than the bold state governors of the United States. Recognizing that people like Scargill and current UAW president Bob King are not defenders of workers' rights but rather the living embodiment of the "some are more equal than others" mentality of the ruling elite in Orwell's Animal Farm, Rick Snyder, Mitch Daniels and the governors of 22 other states have passed "right to work" legislation. Combined with bold tax cuts, such as those recently passed by Kansas governor Sam Brownback, such moves are spurring economic growth that's impossible in union-dominated states. No wonder so many people are relocating to low-tax areas.

For the good of taxpayers and business alike, unions cannot be allowed to hold the whip hand. To prevent this, the US President, British Prime Minister and American governors should channel the resolve, determination and courage of the grocer's daughter and the farmer's son: a Conservative and a Democrat who strode boldly where others feared to tread.

Peace Through Strength and David Cameron: Not a Love Story

This week I had the pleasure of reading a well-craftedWall Street Journal blog post by Pete Du Pont, in which he argues that President Barack Obama would do well to put Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" mantra into practice.

But what of David Cameron and the British military? Surely a Conservative Prime Minister has preserved Britain as a global force to be reckoned with, even after the follies of his predecessor in Afghanistan and Iraq? Particularly a Conservative Prime Minister who just vocally advocated for the continuation of his nation's Trident nuclear deterrent?

Not so much. Despite the Trident statement and William Hague's belief that a strong, capable Army, Navy and Royal Air Force is necessary to protect us from traditional threats and combat the malevolence of terrorists, the Conservative Party seems to have either disregarded Reagan's theory or confused it for "strength through weakness." First there was the 8% cut in 2010, then the decommissioning of the HMS Ark Royal aircraft carrier, and the removal of the Desert Rats' tanks. By the time Cameron and co are up for reelection, they'll have pensioned off thousands of troops.

And the Prime Minister may not stop there if he returns to Number 10 Downing Street, recentlyrefusing to eliminate the possibility of further weakening British forces if he wins reelection in 2015.

Reagan's "peace through strength" stance (best expressed in this 1986 speech) is not some obscure American concept, but rather has its roots in Winston Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' address in 1946. In it, Churchill stated that Stalin and his cronies would only push Communism westward if they thought Britain and America were too weak to prevent it. "I am convinced," Churchill said, "that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness." 

Remember that the actual title of this talk was not the 'Iron Curtain' speech, but actually "The Sinews of Peace." Contrary to the claims of revisionist detractors, it was peace, not war, that Churchill wanted. And he knew that to withstand Communism, Britain must stand strong and stand with its "special relationship" partners - the United States, Canada, Australia et al - in good times and in ill.

Of course, the world of combat is not the same as it was under Churchill, Thatcher or even Blair. Military forces must be increasingly fast and mobile, drones are fast replacing manned fighter planes and the need for a large-scale ground invasion as in the Gulf War is, thankfully, receding.

Yet saber-rattling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, strongman Russian President Vladimir Putin and even posturing North Korean President Kim Jong-Un will be merely encouraged to test our resolve by the sight of Britain's military spending and personnel cuts.

Click here to finish reading this article at Huffington Post UK. 

To read my other Huffington Post entries, click here

The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher as Heir to Churchill

The new Margaret Thatcher biopic, The Iron Lady, is arguably the most divisive Best Picture and Best Actress Oscar favorite for next year’s awards. Meryl Streep is predictably excellent in the title role, the dialog is crisp, and nowhere is the film better than delineating a complex and powerful woman from one succumbing to the ravages of age. And therein is what some have taken issue with: the stark portrayal of a diminished Thatcher suffering from advanced dementia.

Though The Iron Lady is presented through the lens of Thatcher’s failing health and there are certainly moments when the script needles her for supposed vanity and her ruthless ambition, it also gives an even-handed portrayal of some of her finest political moments. 

One of these is her strong and decisive response to Argentina’s seizure of the British-held Falkland Islands in April 1982. After an America-brokered negotiation fell apart, Thatcher ordered British forces to the remote area, 400 miles from the southeastern tip of South America. A swift and incisive joint operation by the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and British Army (most notably the Parachute Regiment) followed, and the Argentine general Mario Menéndez surrendered on June 14.

Some have dismissed the Falklands conflict as an unnecessary war and, given the strategic unimportance of the islands and the limited ambitions of Argentina’s military, they may have something of a point. However, the rapid British response was extremely significant as a symbol that Britain would be neither rolled over nor intimidated – a message that needed to be communicated above all to Moscow (and, in the case of David Cameron's assertion today that Britain will never abandon the Falklands in the face of renewed Argentinian saber rattling, needed reiterating to the many non-traditional enemies of liberty these 30 years later).

Thatcher’s words and actions followed the blueprint laid out by Winston Churchill in his “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946, when he stated, “From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.” The ‘Iron Lady’ realized, with the iron curtain now embodied by the Berlin Wall, the same principles held true 36 years later, and acted accordingly.

Echoing resoundingly in the policies of the Thatcher government is another phrase Churchill coined in his speech at Fulton: the “special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.” Though the first two words of this phrase are among the most overused in our geopolitical lexicon, they remain, nevertheless, rich in meaning.  Thatcher, like Churchill, understood that the only way to successfully resolve the Cold War without direct conflict with the Soviet Union was to strengthen ties between London and Washington. She believed, too, in the inherent freedoms that Churchill and his American counterparts risked everything to protect.

For Churchill, mounting a strong stance in defense of such values involved courting the support of first Roosevelt during World War II, and afterward, Truman and Eisenhower. Certainly, he overestimated his ability to facilitate what he later called a “parley at the summit” between Britain, the U.S. and Soviet Russia. Still, Churchill was farsighted in predicting that the Cold War would be ended by top-level, personal diplomacy, albeit with Britain being the junior partner in the Anglo-American alliance. In Thatcher’s case, as director Phyllidia Lloyd shows, the nexus of this was the Prime Minister’s relationship with Ronald Reagan, which writer Nicholas Wapshott correctly termed “a political marriage” between two principled and determined conservatives. Economic hardship, the inability to keep up in the arms race with the U.S. and the Polish uprising led by Lech Wałęsa all contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union, but the unified stance of Thatcher and Reagan cannot be underestimated.

Even in her downfall, Thatcher was acting as the natural heir to Churchill’s mantle. While Euro-integrationists often misrepresent Churchill’s position on the Continent due to speeches such as “The United States of Europe” (delivered at the University of Zurich on September 9, 1946), they conveniently gloss over his true sentiments on the subject, which he revealed during two telling exchanges. In a Saturday Evening Post article published on February 15, 1930, Churchill argued that whatever steps Europe may take toward greater integration, Britain must remain on the periphery: “We are with Europe, not of it. We are linked but not compromised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed.” In 1941, he shared similar sentiments with his parliamentary assistant, Jock Colville, telling him that “while Britain might be the builder and Britain might live in the house, she would always preserve her liberty of choice and would be the natural, undisputed link with the Americas and the Commonwealth.”

As (all too) briefly conveyed in The Iron Lady, it was the continuation of such beliefs (once she realized the full extent of European technocrats’ ambitions and hardened her position) that led to Thatcher’s downfall, as she ousted by a political coup hatched by Europhiles within her Cabinet. For whatever flaws there were in her character and policies – all of which would seem to me exaggerated in this film –Thatcher followed her (and Churchill’s) convictions on Britain’s limited role in the European community until her bitter political end. With the EU house of cards now ablaze, there is little doubt that history, if not cinema, will judge her kindly for this.