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.’