R.I.P a political heavyweight

🙁

I remember doing a general knowledge quiz when I was in the first year of secondary school and was asked “What’s the name of Mrs Thatcher’s husband?”

You can guess the rest.

😥

Heard him on the radio only a few weeks ago, talking about the 1945 landslide. He said that a large part of the reason was that the electorate thought the tories were a load of traitors for trying to appease before the war so (Churchill aside) they weren’t to be trusted. Seeing what Osborne’s up to in China at the moment, things haven’t changed much.

Quite a polymath by the look of it.

Respect for his intelligence and integrity.

RIP – not a bad innings at 98.

He said that a large part of the reason was that the electorate thought the tories were a load of traitors for trying to appease before the war so (Churchill aside) they weren’t to be trusted. Seeing what Osborne’s up to in China at the moment, things haven’t changed much.

I cannot say that Ive heard that before so would be very interested how that links in with osborne squirming in front of the Chinese.

He wrote this whilst serving in Italy during the war.

I think he lived his life according to his beliefs and fair play to him for trying to help other people have better lives.

Silly billy…

RIP.

cheekyboy, it was on world service a few weeks back. Interestingly, Lord Carrington agreed. I don’t always agree with Fraser Nelson but I think he’s on the money about Osborne.

“…until the pips squeak”

😀

RIP indeed.

Denis Healey was an old school Labour right-winger. As someone very much on the left of UK politics his views were quite a bit bit at odds with mine, but our goals were very similar – peace and social justice for ordinary working people, even though how to achieve them might have differed considerably.

This is in stark contrast with today’s blairite self-serving right-wing careerists with whom I share no goals.

I had some respect for Denis Healey, and other similar Old Labour right-wingers, I felt we were generally on the same side.

I was never very comfortable about him being a founder member of Bilderberg Group though.

I’ve just read his Wikipedia entry and I’m surprised if not shocked to learn that in much more recent years he became opposed to Britain’s “independent nuclear deterrent” and also EU membership, I didn’t know that. It seems that in his later years he might have rediscovered some of his earlier youthful left-wing credentials. It certainly helps to justify my belief that “we were generally on the same side”.

It seems there were some pretty terrible decisions to hold against him – genocide of the Chagossians as a people, backing Blair, taking the UK to the IMF, founding the Bilderberg Group o_O – but nice to be reminded of a time when politicians could string a complex sentence together and had actually been up close and engaged with the destruction caused by great power politics.

“we were generally on the same side”.

Looking back now, did he sense the scale of the cultural and political change that Margaret Thatcher’s victory heralded in 1979? “I expected her to move in that direction. I never expected her to do so much.” He was advised early on to watch out for the up-and-coming Thatcher by an MP friend who knew her well. “He said, ‘She’s good-looking but she’s also politically brilliant.’ He was right.”

He said, ‘She’s good-looking but she’s also politically brilliant.’ He was right.

Half right.

genocide of the Chagossians as a people, backing Blair, taking the UK to the IMF

I have never heard the expulsion of the Chagossians being described as “genocide”. While it was without doubt a monstrous injustice, especially when seen in the light of UK hypocrisy over the Falklands, it was an injustice which has never been corrected by successive UK governments. All successive Defence Secretaries have backed and justified Healey’s decision as far as I am aware.

Singling out Healey for backing Blair sounds a little harsh too. While at no time have I ever backed Blair many others have, and I thought you too at one time KB. And didn’t Healey, like you, later regret backing Blair?

On the question of going to the IMF, again, that’s hardly a decision which only Healey could have made. He actually delayed going to the IMF by 2 years more than the Tories would have done had they won the 1974 general election :

How former Prime Minister Ted Heath nearly went to the International Monetary Fund for a loan in 1974

Ted Heath considered going to the International Monetary Fund for a loan in 1974 – two years before Labour was forced to do so – it emerged on Friday.

The Tory prime minister was preparing to go ‘cap in hand’ to the IMF and to take ‘unpleasant measures’, archives reveal.

It is an embarrassing revelation for the Tories, who still make political capital out of the 1976 crisis when Labour chancellor Denis Healey had to submit to IMF supervision to get a loan.

The newly released documents are minutes from failed talks on March 2, 1974, between Mr Heath and Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe about forming a coalition three days after an election led to a hung parliament.

The minutes read: ‘On a Privy Councillor basis the prime minister told Mr Thorpe that preparations had been made for a drawing [a loan] on the IMF.’

Yesterday Lord Healey, 92, said: ‘This really is the time when they should shut up about what happened with the IMF.

‘This document, showing their government would have had to do much the same, really should silence them for ever.’

I have no idea what you think the significance of putting those two quotes together is big_n_daft. But don’t bother trying to explain, I suspect you’re not too sure yourself.

RIP DH, one of the good guys, served his country in so many different ways.

His Desert Islands Discs programme is worth a listen too.

Shame he’s gone. He used to subscribe to an antequarian book mag I worked on. Like everyone there I have one of his cheques I never cashed just to have a signed cheque from the Chancellor.

In a similar vein I have a cheque from Ken Livingstone. (I’m not suggesting KL is in the same league.)

I thought he was a piss poor chancellor and a bit of a buffoon as well. I remember when Tony Benn and he were running for deputy leadership of the Labour party and he got severely heckled while making a speech and said he knew the heckler and he was a personal friend of Benn only to then be told that the person was actually in another country at the time of the incident . It always seemed strange to me that his latter day comments on the country’s economic performance were given any credence given what a spin he was in when he was chancellor .

I thought he was a piss poor chancellor

I have no wish to defend Denis Healey or the government of Callaghan whose right-wing policies precipitated the Winter of Discontent but that’s in your opinion, other opinions are available :

He inherited the world-wide inflation and economic disruption precipitated by Opec’s oil price increases, but left office with inflation and unemployment falling. Perhaps a few more months and a less rigid wages ceiling, combined with a better rapport with union leaders, might have averted disaster. – The Daily Telegraph

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When Labour returned to power in 1974, he became chancellor and inherited an exceptionally poisoned chalice from the outgoing Heath government.

Given the severity of the economic situation, and that Labour had no majority in the Commons, it was almost a miracle that the government managed to endure for more than four years. Healey deserves a lot of the credit for its survival. By the end of his tenure, inflation had been curbed, if not fully controlled. The economy was growing. Unemployment was falling. – The Guardian