The Deepest Lore #153: Enter Thatcher, Enter Reagan – Monetarism, Falklands,

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This storm has caused Confusion And Delay you have caused Confusion And Delay the p face pre Daisy is just the ultimate thought da Daisy is just the ultimate thought your impatience has caused Confusion And Delay this storm has caused Confusion And Delay you are caus in Confusion And

Delay you’re C Confusion And Delay 26 years old and you can’t even drive I can are you stupid eh are you a stupid fool why can’t you drive then you can’t even drive big gray today well hello everyone and welcome to another deepest law We are continuing

With the Adam Curtis series uh we’re going to be finishing off an ocean apart today but we’re actually going to set it up by dipping into a later series which is called Pandora’s Box so this is uh actually going to be the first time that we hear Adam Curtis’s

Voice so we’ll uh I’ll talk about that in a moment um let us uh first of all remind everybody do buy my courses at the academic agency that Nell car mechanic still hasn’t he still hasn’t fixed the car so uh if he hasn’t sorted that out

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Michael benbo Blake this is a great book to read so pick it up at your local library Now all right so um now these two uh documentaries going to look at today the um the final one uh the seventh episode of an ocean apart um finishes off the story of the UK US relationship with the Thatcher Reagan years and there’s a lot of stuff about Fork the Forkland and um

Things like that in there okay but there’s quite a lot of uh interesting stuff in the Pandora’s Box episode about Thatcher um which is all about the economic models that were used uh during it now it’s a bit more kind of domestic British Focus but uh I actually think it’s worth

Watching that one first uh because it kind of gives a lot of uh context I think to what was actually going on in the country just how bugged it was really um after the war and indeed right through the 60s 70s and arguably right into the 80s lots of interesting

Things in here so without further Ado I’m going to start now I may skip ahead at different bits as I have done before so I can get both of them in within the two hours um they’ll be talking from me as well of course but let’s make a start

On uh this is the league of gentlemen uh from Pandora’s Box and right out of the gate I’ll say that you’ll notice the uh you know David imbe who we’ve been uh who’s been our kind of steady firm host of Oceans Apart um it’s it’s Curtis himself and uh Curtis’s

Style is always narration over archival footage that’s his whole deal but the full what I would describe as Curtis formula is still not fully uh fleshed here by Pandora’s Box because there are still talking heads there are still interviewees uh there’s even some times where you Curtis an interviewer

Who I assume is Curtis asking the Talking Heads questions so that it’s still a little bit more uh I would say Pandora’s Box is a transitional series from the more conventional format of Oceans Apart to um the fully fleshed out Curtis style which I I would say comes

In uh 1995 with a with with a living dead all right let’s uh make a start Then for the last 30 years politicians in Britain have tried to build a new Prosperity they wanted to make make an Old Nation I should mention by the way this was made in 1992 so when he says 30 years he’s talking about roughly speaking 1962 to 1992 okay

That had fallen behind in the world recapture the glories of its [Applause] past they turned for help to what they believed was a science of money one after another labor and conservative governments became convinced that if they followed what they thought were a set of scientific laws the economy would grow faster the perceived tide of decline could Revers Classic 80s yappies Here but instead of restoring the country’s fortunes the economic experiments failed to Halt Britain’s relative decline this is the odd story of how politicians came to believe there was a technical way to make Britain Great again it it’s interesting by the way that he he uses the refrain throughout

This make Britain Great again given you know now you’d think make America great again as a as a trump slogan but yeah he is talking uh about making Britain Great again and um there’s some I mean there are some really enduring Curtis themes in this one he is obsessed I would say

Curtis with um kind of managerial attempts technocratic managerial attempts to uh try to find these scientific or rational solutions to human problems and um for this reason I think you know this is one of the reasons I wanted to do this because that Obsession of courtesies I think

Goes to the heart of a lot of our a lot of the ills that we’ve had uh really since uh well since the turn of the 20th century could argue or maybe even since the 19th century um you know see profits of Doom for more but uh yeah let’s let’s

Continue 10 years ago one car in every three bought in Sweden was British today we’ve less than 10% now that’s this is the voice of Alan wicker by the way for the younger viewers in the chat it’s Alan wicker he used to present a show called Wickers

World and he had this uh really unusual voice so there’s a there’s a terrific Wickers World by the way looking at uh San Francisco in the 1960s where he goes there and sees the hippies and so on uh well worth a watch um I I think I

Don’t think I did a stream on it but I may have shared it once or twice many years ago all right a sad story but let’s take a quick sample here on this bridge in central Stockholm and see just what the sweds are driving well there’s

A Swedish Volvo a Swedish Sab that is another Swedish Volvo over there a Swedish Volvo one after another other European countries who we were used to thinking of nice guys but poorer uh began to get within shouting distance of us and passing it’s like being in a sailing race and seeing

People you didn’t think were good enough or hadn’t scraped the bottoms of their boat well enough nevertheless overhauling you a German Ford truck an English zeer congratulations Ford a Mercedes Benz people began insistently to ask if they can once get on a growth path of that steepness won’t they soon

Overtake us properly and a and our leaders today by the way are still absolutely obsessed with the notion of growth um I think K’s slogan one of his slogans in the current um campaign for labor is growth growth growth um they’ve been obsessed with growth for many for decades now um and

Uh this is one of the things that I really think needs to change by the way I think this obsession with growth is one of the things this this killing us essentially well in that lot one British car one Ford what was holding Britain back it was decided was the

Old-fashioned idea that the civil servants job was simply to keep the economy stable in 1961 the conservative government set up nedy the National Economic Development Council in what had been a gentleman’s club in Westminster it was advised by Young economists convinced they could make the economy grow much faster oh yes this is

My old room suspended room isn’t it yes I’m I’m sorry it’s all boarded up the windows there because you know there’s a balcony out there as as you know the growth Target of n was 4% year and I had Visions to myself getting out onto that balcony and

At the end of 1966 proclaiming to the chering cloud below 4% we’ve done it many of this generation of economists had been taught with the aid of a large large machine worked by water now I shared this on Twitter earlier on and it’s gone kind of like I wouldn’t say

Like viral but I’ve seen I I passed it around the my friends and Mees and uh you know I’ve seen it passed around a lots of people are comment on it this blew my mind when I watched earlier on I cannot believe this machine existed and they used it

To do economic modeling and just just it’s just mental built by Bill Phillips an engineer turned Economist it has Lain disused for years that powers these two parts over here which is where money money can actually come into the economy the actual water flowing round is the money going through the economy that

Enabled you to illustrate for instance what would happen if you try to grow the who’s if you’re in the chat this guy is an Iranian so FYI economy pump more money into the economy for instance you could increase government expenditure and I mean I it’s

Just I I cannot get my head around this machine actually being built and used in the London School of Economics the fact that this exists is just it should show you how crazy these people are see what the effect of that is through the workings of the economy the interaction

Of all the variables on growth of course if the economy is very prone to Imports people might simply spend their money to import foreign Goods or if the economy is operating at a high level of activity then that would lead to inflation Ned’s economists did not

Have a new Theory but they believed they could use existing techniques in a new way they saw themselves as followers of The Economist mayard KES he had shown how to manage an economy by increasing or decreasing demand I mean it’s what a what a great single own from

You know if you’re an Austrian or Chicago guy or whatever and you want to dunk on canans just show that clip of the bloody water machine model I still can’t believe it the problem was that every time you increase demand too much Imports flooded in and wages Rose but Ned’s economists were convinced

They could control roller boom they would plan investment in industry and the government would hold inflation down the bad old days of stop go would be over We% Paradise is here extra effort and the country going our plans for the future of Britain in the coming year are clear and comprehensive we have accepted with enthusiasm the NY Target of a 4% growth rate and all our actions have been designed to achieve it I can see

Someone in the chat saying that Curtis sounds young here he was 37 years old when he made this um so he was younger than me I’m 40 41 so he must have had quite a high high voice when he was younger but uh if you go back and listen

To me when I was 37 I sound considerably younger than I am now as well so there we are this nation must not jog along along this nation must be inspired with a determination to achieve great things Factory owner called his men and said I’m confident you rally to the

Challenge and produced that 1% and up then spoke a worker do our wages rid or what and the bus said most amusing and sacked him on the spot by 1963 The Economist promises seemed to be coming true the conservatives had poured money into the economy and sure enough it had begun to

Grow they had placed their bets on growth they talked about it a lot there was announcement about it why now now this guy I would say has got a great uh you know really nice Library love that leather chair I love his kind of slightly debed uhor demeanor maybe this is something to

Aim aim towards in like 10 years time something papers speeches and all the rest in our system of politics when something important like that is put on the table by the government of the day the opposition has to respond to it my purpose tonight is to have a word with

You about the future of Brit the outstanding thing we ought to do obviously is to get up our economic strength operating a national plan a plan for steady continuous controlled production and expansion labor promised a national plan run by a separate Department of Economic Affairs and what could go wrong

What could go wrong e George Brown it would make Britain grow by a quarter in just six years it was a seductive dream for Socialist Party for if the economists could produce this growth then Labor’s leaders would avoid what they had always thought inevitable the battle to redistribute the country’s

Wealth instead there would be more for everyone but it all depended on the economists promises that they had the technical solution to the politicians problems look at the plans they all had where was that future then where was that this is what we were all promised what happened to it all

Where’s my monor rail where’s my flying cars instead what we’ve got is infinity Africans and everything going down the [ __ ] what what happened to all these promises that we were given anyway growth then Labor’s leaders would avoid what they had always thought in never evitable the battle to redistribute the country’s

Wealth instead there would be more for everyone but it all depended on the economists promises that they had the Technical Solutions to the politician problems we saw ourselves as providing the politicians with a potential menu of outcomes if the politicians would give us some indication then we could set the

Instruments in such a way as we could deliver reasonably enough give or take the various shocks that would occur in the economy the kind of outcomes that the politicians Wanted there’s one basic fact labor has a clear majority we have a labor government but labor had come to power just as the Boom the conservatives had begun was overheating Imports were now I I asked earlier on what an does overheating mean this is like Keynesian talk which I’ve

Never quite understood but uh as it happens I have an economist friend um uh uh whose work I actually really recommend he’s got a good uh he’s got a good podcast as well Steve Davis he said nice things about my book The Defenders of Liberty some years ago um I

Know him from the from the iea which is actually going to be talked about uh later on in this uh In This Very documentary and he says that overheating means the level of economic activity is greater than can be sustained by the available resources at a given level of

Technology the symptoms are rising prices and or shortages particularly in labor markets but also with the other factors of production so that is the precise definition of what they mean when they say overheating so thank you very much for that stepen flooding in and wages Rising this was the point when

In the past a halt would have been called but labor were determined to press on Mr Brown have you been discussing the economic situation this morning we’ve been discussing the Affairs labor had missed out a vital component from the plan the economists told them they should devalue the pound and so make

Britain’s exports cheaper we’ve been working very hard yes but in the politician’s eyes devaluation would undermine precisely what they were trying to achieve to make Britain Great again Wilson was a great one who believed in sterling sterling was the center of everything and he always said

That he would defend the pound and we’d have a place east of sewers and it was a sort of nationalism of a Kind after that all talk of devaluation by Economist and everyone else was forbidden I I mean this is really stupid by the way because

Um the strength of a currency is not necessarily a good thing sometimes it’s a good idea to let the value of the currency come down okay because it means more people will buy your stuff if if the currency is strong it means your goods are too expensive

But uh Harold Wilson I mean this is like Thomas Soul basic economic stuff here Harold Wilson you know through a kind of sense of Pride wanted the pound to be strong because it sounds good that’s basically what I’m getting from this um anyway let’s carry on personally used to do

Little sums on scraps of paper in my room in the DEA but anyone I open the door I would hastily put them into my drawer there are millions of workers in this country who will never get fair play until you’ve got a decent income’s policy can’t you get that into your

Head by 1965 the Boom was clearly out of control faced with inflation the Government tried to hold down wages and prices but to no avail it also faced repeated runs on the pound as foreign investors lost confidence in Labor’s management of the now became a game between the politic

Well it were an absolute Disaster by the way um I mean Wilson I thought on the foreign policy front with the Americans a couple of episodes back will ask episode did you know he was not awful hit on the econ on the economic front absolute disaster this Wilson government you know labor have

Only really been in power three times Atley Wilson and Blair there were you know there was kalahan and there was a few other uh but really they’ve only been in power three times and this government here was a complete an utter disaster on on pretty much every single

Front um anyway let’s let’s carry ons whose fortunes depended on it and their economists who had begun to realize the economy was now far beyond their control they were being used I think the moment I really realized it was a gimmick was when after we’d finished work on it and

It was the summer I think it was the summer of 1965 I hadn’t very much to do and so I decided I’d look at the details of the plan and see all the different measures the things like the decision that you double expenditure on road building for

Instance and try and work out what effects these might have on the growth rate of the country and I laboriously worked through making my best guesses and calculations um not having me particularly told to do this by anybody and came up with the results and they were well well short of anything that

Might have produced uh the 25% growth and I wandered along to my seniors and said hey look I’ve done this useful little exercise they weren’t in the least interested nothing to do with it at all I mean typical typical like no buau actually wants to solve any real problem

So not surprised he got that Answer the fight for the pound is on after last week’s depressing trade figures the rise in the bank rate after a weekend of growing speculation and three days of shorting up the pound in the Foreign Exchange Market Mr har Wilson himself cried stop what went wrong was that foreigners who H the

Pound decided in unison that Britain was no longer to be trusted there was a wave there was a move what the government has done is to respond to the Mood by producing something which demonstrates a will to deflate this economy which is bound to crush it in my

View in other words we’re condemned to no growth the attempt to plan growth had failed Britain was left with little expansion and political disaster what I love about this particular documentary is that literally it doesn’t matter what the plan is it doesn’t matter how what theories they

Have you know what school they’re from everything is a [ __ ] disaster and I just love the way Curtis said yes and the plan fail it’s just this everything ends in Failure it’s uh quite incredible most economists blamed it on the government’s failure to devalue few asked whether the weakness

Of Britain’s currency was really a symptom of something much deeper far beyond the power of their techniques to deal with a year later the government bowed to the inevitable and devalued but it was far too late the economy had long ago come juddering to a stop as a result of that

Experience we had to abandon the notion tacitly and slowly but abandon it all the same that the planning apparatus itself was the unique and certain method of achieving the aim of fostter growth we still believed in FAS to growth and we still many of us thought that it was

Attainable but this particular path to its achievement was no longer key was no longer essential could no longer be relied upon in the early ’70s many economists began to find they no longer understood how money [Laughter] behaved oh it’s just so oh amazing just a great line it’s such a good line I might have to listen to it again oh I enjoy that it’s just it’s dead pan delivery was no longer Cal could no longer be relied upon in the early ‘ 70s many economists

Began to find they no longer understood how money behaved the new conservative government under Edward Heath had tried what was called a dash for growth they poured in money by liberalizing credit and increasing public spending for a moment the economy boomed what a surprise I mean oh I hate to go

Back to my LV Von Mees but come on a sudden credit expansion it’s going to create a quick boom and then it’s going to create I mean what could happen What could happen trade cycle People Credit expansion followed by doesn’t I I I don’t know I’m just going

To let him talk but then the strangest thing happened prices and unemployment began to rise together people called it stagflation all a girl needs 30p for a deck chair this week blimy it was only 15 P last week this inflation’s killing me now I happened to arrive in the

Treasury in 1970 when I got there people really felt that they didn’t quite yeah Credit Credit expansion led to inflation well no [ __ ] [ __ ] oh I I just don’t understand why these extremely obvious uh facts continue to elude all of these people um and it’s the same thing today you could

You could literally that little scene with the woman in the deck chair you could have played that last year where we got ridiculous inflation in the past couple of years understand how the economy worked anymore and one particular example of this was that we saw unemployment and

Inflation rising at the same time and that was something that should have been quite impossible while this was going on there sitting in Chicago in the states with the monists who said no we know perfectly well what’s going on we can explain it you’ve been LED astray by

Your keian beliefs and we can explain precisely what’s going on and it’s all to do with the growth of the money supply I and people who believe the way we did were saying that a continuation of the policies was going to lead to higher inflation and more unemployment

It represented a recognition that fine efforts to produce Paradise on Earth were producing something very different than what was intended fredman argued that any attempt to put money into the economy to make it grow was doomed to failure but he was not challenging the idea of the economy as a predictable

System only how it worked he considered his laws were as powerful and objective as those of the physical sciences it was scientific inflation is not a communist phenomenon it’s not a capitalist phenomenon it’s a printing press phenomenon that’s a scientific statement and you will only have inflation if the

Quantity of money increases more rapidly than output you can only stop inflation by slowing down the rate of monetary growth monitor now I have to admit that despite what is said later on in this uh despite what happens I don’t really understand the logic of people who say that that what

Freedman said isn’t true because to me it’s just a basic um exchange ratio proposition right you have a total amount of money in the economy if you keep on pouring more in the prices are going to go up because there’s the exchange ratio of money to all of the goods has changed

And it will adjust to reflect there so I mean I I don’t really understand the logic of people who deny what fredman said there but uh well we’ll see what happens an attractive technical explanation for the problem of inflation but from it would come in less than 10 years another scheme for Britain’s

Salvation a set of scientific rules which if the politicians followed them correctly would create the right conditions for economic Growth it began with a disillusioned group of economists they included two influential journalists Peter J of the times and Sam Britain of the financial times we were found to be stimulating and interesting which are the English words for damning people and we were always regarded as good for a puzzling interlude in a

Program such as this of a complete runaway inflation and an internal collapse of confidence in the currency I’m sorry I think Mr Britain that’s an exaggeration when you start talking about runaway inflation in Germany after the first World War I think quite frankly that that’s an exaggeration that

Can’t be sustained by anyone but I think can we stay on our home ground for the moment yes if there was one place where we tend to bump into each other it was The Institute of economic Affairs good God Almighty this is the right place The Cooperative whatnot thing yes do come in we were just about to begin without you oh I took the wrong turning and not for the first time found myself in a room full of trade unionists cooking up the next wage claim all Tories of course

Didn’t take to me at all Milton frean would would set up we’ set up a table here to maximize the array of people that we could fit in we could probably fit in 20 or 25 people in this small room and uh he would develop his argument briefly very emphatically in no

No I I think I’ve been there ladies and gentlemen if it’s the same office but uh I recognize these pictures on the wall but uh anyway form and he would say if you want details of this and particular episodes in American history I can go back to that and then the discussion

Would take place to start with I must admit I I didn’t believe the monetarist for a moment this seemed totally implausible this was the sort of Economics that i’ been told to discard all the time I’d been learning economics it was I mean how is it infl how is it

Implausible that increasing the money supply would lead to inflation I just don’t understand it you can see it with um histo like the historical situation I would look at is the Gold Rush of the 19th century they experienced inflation in the mid 19th century when they when they struck gold

In uh in the on the west coast uh California and all all of that and the gold flooded into the money supply and it created inflation in the mid 19th century how is that not just completely you know non-ref I don’t understand how this dude or current

Economist uh dispute the claim why is it implausible surely it is is it should be like the null hypothesis and then you have to prove why anyway let’s carry on a joke really it wasn’t to be taken seriously whatever else one used to explain inflation it wasn’t the money

Supply bit farfetched perhaps you couldn’t see it happening in real life oh I wouldn’t go as far as that life’s always surprising Me in in February of 1974 Edward Heath’s government fell amid power cuts a three-day week and never-ending inflation they were direct consequences of his crude dash for growth the time was ripe for the monists in particular Alan Walters a professor from the London School of Economics he began to attract both press

And politicians with apocalyptic warnings of what was to come a reduction in output an increase in unemployment and and at the same time rampant inflation inflation of the order of perhaps 30% perhaps even increasing as we go on there is a real danger of hyperinflation Alan Walters had snubbed

Me when I went back to meet old friends once I was once the government fell and I was back in I was back as as a member of parliament without a government post and Alan Walters refused used to shake my hand he said you’ve been deuling the currency why should I welcome you

Back and I started to rethink what we’d been up to and a fellow called Alfred Sherman was very influential in convincing me he used to say don’t you know KES is dead KES is dead I didn’t understand what he meant he turned to me for help and I managed to persuade him

To go further and look at the whole kesian Mambo Jambo the Panacea Keith Joseph toured the country translating monetarism into a political program the primary job of Economics was no longer to create employment he said it was to reduce inflation after having P failed to persuade the shadow cabinet to

Reconsider our economic policies I warned them that I’d help to make a speech well the speech was made I remember I I remember that I said to Sam Brittain who looked at one of the drafts this speech has been through nine drafts we’re trying to get it right and Alfred

Sherman from the background said yes and I wrote 13 of them well we slogged at that speech is threatening to destroy our society the distress and unemployment that will follow unless the trend is stopped will be catastrophic inflation is caused by spending more than we produce too much

Money chasing two few goods deficit financing printing money mild inflation seemed a painless way of maintaining full employment encouraging growth and expanding the social services we now see that inflation has turned out to be a mortal threat to all Three but labor was in power as before they had inherited the chaos of a conservative boom yet this time none of the traditional Keynesian methods offered them any help because inflation and unemployment were Rising together it was something the keynesians believed Impossible by the end of 1975 the economists advising the government were

Lost I mean when I was watching this earlier on I couldn’t help but think this country has been a total and utter [ __ ] show since 1945 like literally it has been a [ __ ] show how does anything work here it’s it’s it’s remarkable I just don’t know how anything works at all uh

Given given the total mess of the past 80 years but there we are my memory is I think it was a dinner party at liberally organized where the main economic modelers were there the treasury was represented the bank was represented the National Institute of economic and social research London business

School as a fly on the war and they were talking about the medium-term projections and their models and they were unanimous that they could not project what was going to happen to inflation or to unemployment or the balance of payments there’s almost total agreement around the room that the UK was in

Serious danger of going to Absolute decline that was negative growth not just growing at a slower rate than other industrialized countries that is is when the civil servants in the treasury in the Bank of England realized that the UK economy had arrived at the brink of the

Abyss they had sight of the awfulness of what that Abyss might look like and they were shell shocked as a result of it believe me Lord we’ve tried so hard we’ve tried everything everything then in March 1976 Britain fell into the abyss 203 change 202 foreign investors led by

American Bankers panicked the pound began to slide against the dollar and nothing would stop it sorry lost 2025 and 1025 stocky it dropped 100 points we don’t know why it just dropped 100 points when everything else was staying still Britain faced bankruptcy in desperation labor turned to the

International monetary fund for a loan oh [ __ ] it talk about from the fire from the Fran ban into the fire the IMF gets involved now oh brilliant an IMF team came to London they were determined that the only way to restore confidence was for the British government to adopt monetarist

Policies in a speech that could have been written by Keith Joseph prime minister James Callahan told the labor party why it had to do what the financial markets wanted we used to think that you could use spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes

And boosting government spending I tell you in all cander that that option no longer exists and that in so far as it ever did exist it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy on every occasion followed by a

Higher level of unemployment as the next step it was presented scientifically but then they always presented scientifically as being the only way of doing it there is no alternative and this gripped people but at the same time you must never forget that politics is in the pursuit of an interest and an

Ideology and if the scientist helps you with the ideology you use him if he doesn’t you disregard him so the look at that Tony Bell Tony Ben based and BBs therefore I rule anti ideology ped conflict between as it were Milton fredman and kanes was a political

Conflict it wasn’t really that it was people solemnly assessing the different values of two sets of ideas one benefited one group another benefited [Applause] Another [Applause] thank you thank you hon honestly I I feel like the details of this one are so important I’m just probably just going to watch the whole thing and I’ll I’ll skip through the final episode of uh Oceans Apart in part two in December 1976 the IMF granted a loan to

Britain that same month Milton Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in just 5 years his economic theory had moved from the margins to Center Stage it was seen by many politicians as the only solution to Britain’s disastrous economic position and waiting in the wings was fredman’s most devoted follower a

Politician who believed it was possible to useed monetarism as the basis of a plan to regenerate the Country Keith Joseph was now the closest adviser to the new leader of the Tory party Margaret Thatcher he and the economists around him had drawn up what was called the medium-term financial strategy the boss the and then they want us all out Angus hello in you go and in particular I’ll

Bring you all out in a moment the plan was to combine monism with another theory from economics called rational expectations it said that whenever a government changes policy it will only work if the politicians can persuade people they are going to stick with it whatever happens we believe that now now

I was interested by this because it strikes me that whatever our Elites do now it’s not on the on the rational expectations model because our leaders chop and change and chop and change and chop and change their plans so regularly and so frantically now that we have the opposite of the rational expectations

Model I would call what they do now something like um Perpetual bewilderment and if uh this series ever gets to hyper normalization Adam Curtis himself will talk about exactly that kind of Perpetual bewilderment that we’re all in all the time now um he does it looking at Putin’s Russia but really that’s what

They’re doing to us that in in announcing and Publishing a midterm Financial strategy of what we were going to do with the crucial element of the money supply we we would persuade the negotiators the managements and the trade unions and the opinion formers that there must be some limit to

Pay claims if jobs were not to be priced out of the market a rational expectation it was to get away from short termism and in that respect it had something in common with the national plan comparison of which I’m not ashamed and as with the national plan it was all very simple the

Supply of money was to be reduced by raising interest rates and cutting public spending inflation would fall and Enterprise flourish instead of putting money in as labor had done 15 years before this time the theory said it should be tightly controlled we are gathered here to

Discuss phase one of the operation now I don’t have to tell you that but as a general rule Banks take very good care of people’s money they’re not going to give it to us um so we shall have to take it monetarism worked throughout the 19th century when we were the Envy of

The world now now can I just say something a second that that statement by him just now was absolute bollocks by the way they did not exercise monetarism in the 19th century it’s just not true that they exercise that the policy of the British Empire was monetarism rubbish absolute

Rubbish they they didn’t have somebody um on the levers of the government trying to control the money supply in in the in the way that Milton Freeman and Friends wanted to do um in fact as I’ve shown on this channel many times they had uh they had uh deflationary

Economies for much of the uh much of the 19th century in England um so I I I reject the claim uh that they had uh that they use monetarism in the 19th century with our people growing in numbers and generally prospering generally despite all the horrors of the

Time generally prospering with the world looking to us for how to do it it could work again there arose a sci Messianic sense of mission haven’t you heard of the inflation tell you what I don’t want to see what’s that labor imp power again laor imp power was that the Mark’s

Brothers No another bunch of comedians coming shortly the conservatives I can’t bear Britain in Decline I just can’t we who either defeated or rescued half Europe who kept half Europe free when otherwise it would be in Chains look at this Boomer truth crap from thata here because of course

Of course Thatcher was a church chill Fang girl so that’s why she’s coming out with all of this and look at us now the Thatcher government is a kind of an experiment in whether it will be possible in a Democratic Society that has gone as far as Britain has gone to

Change course in an orderly effective way to set Britain on a new road if if the that your government succeeds it will be an example that will not be lost on the United States or the rest of the world an an experiment he Milton an experiment for who okay let’s let’s see what Happens the latest unemployed from the Royal Stafford helped form an unwelcoming committee for Mrs Thatcher as she arrived at the but the economy did not behave in the way the monetarists predicted that’s one of the things yeah all these plans fail to squeeze on money led to a wave of

Factory closures while inflation continued to rise wasn’t it which fact closed more one which has suffered lack of investment among other things I’ve been in insolvency for all my professional life and I think up until 1980 I used to going with a great deal of confidence that with new management

And and perhaps some sort of reorganization something could be done it was very sad to have to go onto the shop floor in the early 80s into a company knowing in fact that there wasn’t much chance of of selling that business and that in fact the the

Business would come to an end this is what would normally be a working days the middle of the week and we’re now down in this plant which produces well over half the cast iron baths of the United Kingdom onto uh one week on one week off and that’s an immediate and

Practical effect of the strict manism policy that the government is carrying up the managing director said uh I’m very sorry to tell you but as from this minute the F has gone into volunteer larization that was it somebody shouted well we get any wages and he said you’ll

Get nothing there now follows a government statement on the current employment [Laughter] figures uh oh dear oh dear oh de the government seems to have totally lost its way in terms of the interaction of four economic indicators on British industry oh God as every member of any

Firm knows once with high interest rates as a weapon for controlling money supply what is is the first thing that has to be cut investment because you still have to pay wages and you still have to pay your current costs one day we may be able to afford it I get the economic

Policies right the government would say just hang on and stop making such a fuss now yeah all I can say is that the government isn’t standing where I’m bloody well standing even more mystifying was the behavior of the money supply see the thing is is that when all

That industry went it didn’t come back again right it’s not like there was new investment or new new basically all those just went all of that industry gone all the infrastructure gone um so you know I don’t know what the answer I don’t know what the answer is because

Clearly what was happening before wasn’t working but this [ __ ] didn’t work either let’s carry on despite the squeeze it was still growing something the monists thought impossible well it was all a bit embarrassing people like me were at the bank of England because uh we’d been forced the government had signed up uh

For this path of gently declining monetary Aggregates and instead of the monetary Aggregates gently declining some five or six months after this new policy was put into operation they took an enormous jump and it was very difficult to know why or to know what ought to be done about it so the money

Supply was going up rather down and they didn’t know why by the end of 1980 unemployment had nearly doubled manufacturing output had fallen by a sixth Britain was declining faster than even in the darkest days of the 1930s brilliant absolutely brilliant despite this the politicians were convinced they were right the laws of

Their science told them so let me just have a word about monetarism and monetary control first I mean you all know full well that if you produce too much of something its value will fall that’s Elementary it isn’t a new fangle Theory it is as essential as the law of

Gravity and you can’t avoid it people used to say you’re destroying my job and I was absolutely secur in my conscience that their negotiators and their employers were destroying their jobs by not following rational expectations and see that if they didn’t accommodate unit labor costs by a combination of pay

Increases allowed and Rising productivity to what would keep their prices internationally competitive jobs would go so there was I absolutely clear in my conscience and there were they convinced in their what I would call Invincible ignorance that I was an enemy yes it was awkward time there’s no question question that what was

Happening did in my view a great deal of damage to the economy go Pol the politicians of the day will never admit to that they never admit to making mistakes at all but it’s quite clear that’s what was happening they were trying to do it right but they got it

Wrong in January 1981 Alan Walters became Mrs Thatcher’s economic adviser although a convinced monetarist he agreed with Sir John Hoskins that interest rates would have to come down this in turn would reduce the exchange rate and make exports more competitive but the problem was how to do it without

Admitting that all the destruction of the past 2 years had been for nothing the only solution they said was to cut even more from public spending that way the government would be seen to be keeping up its squeeze on the money supply what we said was we will take a

Deep breath and take an enormous amount of money out of the economy but at a at the at the nerdier of a major recession I mean it’s against every textbook that’s ever been written or all the Keynesian conventional wisdom which prevailed at the time uh and thus hopefully by that

Insurance uh make it very unlikely that we would have to put interest rates back up again just at the wrong moment at a meeting with Mrs SRA and Jeffrey har they were both absolutely taken aback I think they could hardly believe their ears I Mrs S saying very indignantly You

Know it’s all very well for you but you don’t have to stand up and defend it in the house what your told and no one will get hurt over there everyone in the budget of 1981 public borrowing was cut by a fifth 364 leading economists wrote to the

Times and the Prime Minister accusing her of virtually destroying the economy just to impress upon you the need of abortion that summer there were riots in English cities that even even some cabinet members blamed on the economic policy unemployment headed towards 2 and2 million inflation did begin to fall but

The money supply continued its mysterious rise still money supppr still going oh man it became clear that the fundamental law of monetarism the relationship between the money supply and inflation didn’t work ever so quietly this solution to Britain’s problems was discarded now this was one of the most interesting parts of this documentary

For me right because in short hand people say well thata comes in she’s all about Milton Freeman and hyek and all of that um these were her policies this little detail here which is that they basically dro monetarism right at this point I think is really interesting

Let’s have a little watch finally the man who had first brought the monetus message to Britain was publicly told it was over monetarist economists believe in something called the natural rate of unemployment which is supposed to be the rate at which unemploy inflation stops or ceases to accelerate now do you think

That we prime minister with alltime record unemployment figures this week have yet reached that natural rate even though inflation is still proceeding sufficiently to half the value of money every 15 years it’s not a Doctrine to which I’ve ever subscribed it’s one which I think actually came in with

Milton Friedman I used to read about it I used to look about it it’s not a Doctrine it’s a theory to which I’ve never [Laughter] subscribed oh you’ve got to love politicians eh she never subscribed to it never never bloody heard of [Laughter] him some of those who had lived through

The experiment now became deeply pessimistic one Economist saw it as proof that it was fundamentally impossible to change in a predictable way how an economy behaved as in other Sciences his observation had a formal name good heart’s law good heart’s lord said that if ever the government decides to rely on any

Particular statistical relationship as a basis for policy soon as it did that that relationship would fall apart and that’s just what happened now I I thought this was fascinating I spent a good deal of time earlier on reading about good heart’s law um basically as as I understand it

In in a kind of shorthand way what he’s saying is is that if you take a particular metric and you make that the focus of whatever your policy is the focus of your plans the incentives around whatever that thing is will change sufficiently that that will become an like the original thing you

Were trying to solve will fall apart that’s how I understand what he’s saying but uh correct me if I’m wrong I thought this was very very interesting this segment which is why I’ve basically watched the whole documentary because I think this is just as an economics fan I

Thought this was very very uh interesting bit of History to look over the implication is that what you should try and do is not to disturb things too much and let individual agents go on and try and make the best of the situation as each of them sees it individually I youron promise

You it was a conclusion that fitted well with conservative philosophy if there was nothing that governments could do then the economic agents in a newly liberated city of London should be left alone unlike the economists they seem to know how money worked the city’s growing confidence and drive owes a good deal to

Young people its vast new dealing rooms are run by the young people who made it not because of who they know or what school tie they were but on sheer Merit and that is Merit is kind of society I want to see Capital was available ideas were

Available and there was a um a keenness to do things and I think that uh probably the government felt that our Merchant bankers and the city of London which after all had put us on the map there they were again they were to go out and they were going to uh make us

Great again if you like money now became a commodity traded for itself it was managed by Young technicians in the dealing rooms economists who once thought they could control money became its servants they were now employed in their hundreds by the Banks to predict on television what might or might not

Happen as a result of the Colossal flows of capital what do you see it is of course extremely uncertain but my view is that I guess there’s still a lot more to come we’re currently saying people fear that there will be a rerun of what happened a fortnite ago I

Suspect it’ll certainly not stop there is however a risk that interest rates will have to go higher it may get worse when you get a loss of Faith say if Bishops cease to believe in God they’re going for Socialism or sodomy but in Economist who is agnostic about economics is unemployable therefore they

Said we know if you do this and if you do that and the economists will argue with each other but none of them will ever question whether economics is as scientific as it claims great Great Britain the finest country in the world right and let us not forget who made it Great

Britain this last eight [Applause] years when I go to the Western Summit in Venice on Monday I will go with my head held high as leader of a strong country there were people earning a lot of money without doing anything at all in this world of money then it suddenly came to

A dramatic halt in the 80s uh the reasons I can’t give you you’ll need to talk to a qualified Economist and no doubt they’ll have differ views on why it happened but the system overnight became much more Cutthroat we had examples of firms right out of the blue calling fire drills locking their

Employees out and throwing their belongings from the window to them and saying sorry chaps you’re fired that’s how bad things became the bubble burst again but that’s what happens in history you’ll have these uh these slumps and these booms and you won’t change it because that’s what capitalism is really

Isn’t it I don’t think we can change the world it’s not something we can do certainly we insolvency Specialists can’t our job is sweeping up or trying to prevent now as far as I can see the best way is to try and see whether we can do something about stopping people

Being greedy and stopping people being over ambitious and I don’t think you ever will do that I mean the economists seem to think that just give up just give up Let the merchants just slowly take over all aspects of society just give up basically what’s happened really

Is it so the whole of the problems can be solved by by money uh by the use of money rather than the creation of wealth but they’ve never really got anywhere near it uh so I would ask the question who money what money where is he coming

From 10 years ago Britain was a loser today Britain is a Winner is the party over yes bunny the part’s over the drink and the luck ran Out economics has really obscured uh the fundamental problems of the British economy by seeming to be able to give a particular Solution by pulling a particular lever or pulling a set of levers it’s obscured the longer term decline our Industries the longer term decline in the quality of our labor

Force which politicians should really have been addressing 30 or 40 years ago and which some of our European competitors who’ve turned that far Fury eon economists in Britain by the way have succeeded in doing uh much better than we have in the UK for some economists who were involved in the Germans for

Example whatever they did they did pretty well after the war I would say I mean some would say before the war do but uh you know the Germans in general have done better at managing their economy than Britain has certainly managing their manufacturing Industries um I mean mean

Now they’re being absolutely uh screwed uh right now like in the past few years uh the Germans are currently getting there you know the whirlwinds coming to reap for them now but you know they did well for a while story there is a further question were their theories used to disguise

Political policies that would otherwise have been very difficult to implement in Britain the nightmare I sometimes have about this whole experience runs as follows uh I was involved in making a number of proposals which were partly at least adopted by the government and put in play by the government Now My worry

Is as follows that there may have been people making the actual policy decisions or people behind them or people behind them who never believed for a moment that this was the correct way to bring down inflation they did however see that it would be a very very

Good way to raise un employment and raising unemployment was an extremely desirable way of of reducing the strength of the working classes if you like that what was engineered there this is an interesting bit of left-wing conspiracy here uh here that this was basically a form of class Warfare to

Crush the working class to crush the power that had been vested in the working class um now I have a book by little pamphlet by fa hyek here talking about unemployment in the 1980s in Britain um it cost me a pretty penny back in the day I can tell you kind kind

Of rare it’s called um let me just pull it out here it’s called 1980s unemployment and the unions the Distortion of relative prices by Monopoly in the labor markets um it was published in 1984 by The Institute of economic Affairs and um uh if you read that book carefully there may well

Be something to what uh this chap is saying uh although hyek would not have explained it in those terms um he does basically say that [ __ ] load of people are going to have to lose their jobs though in this book uh he says no salvation for Britain until Union privileges are

Revoked um and if you remember when I did the stream on John Gray a few weeks back um it was a special one-off stream about how the Thatcher government destroyed what he called intermediary institutions centralized power in the government took them away from the intermediary institutions stood

Between um uh capital and labor if you want to put it that way not just unions but other institutions too um basically you could say in Shand that is what they did they did break the working class in Marxist terms was a crisis of capitalism which recreated Reserve Army

Of Labor and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever ever since now again I don’t say I believe that story but when I really worry about all this I worry whether indeed that was really what was going on what we now doubt which we used to

Think was that our models will enable us to look into the future and indeed to change the future uh to the benefit of mankind um we the experience of recent years has been such that as soon as we develop a model that seems to be reasonably good at explaining the

Present and there are few enough of those God knows now um the future changes we live in an imperfect world and if that’s true how are you ever going to make it a better world we can perhaps hope that we can prevent it becoming a worse world I

Don’t think that we can easily make it a better world now now this good heart chap I don’t know much about him but he’s a of interest me because he’s starting to sound quite a lot like an Austrian Economist in some of these uh you know uh the uncertainty of the

Future the impossibility of models working um the futility of trying to model these things I mean he’s he’s coming to a lot of uh Austrian positions here kind of around the back door kind of interesting Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve seen no Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve seen Glory

Hallelu sometimes I’m up sometimes I’m down oh yeah yeah I mean I I thought that was fantastic really interesting um and as ever with Curtis he you know it’s the little bits that are forgotten you know the fact that thatch had dropped monetarism mid you know after the yearly cup disastrous

First couple of years she actually dropped the policy very interesting indeed to me um so anyway uh let us um now get on to the rean and Forkland War um and uh I’ll just say I mean we’re going to be finishing off with Oceans Apart and I just say going into this uh

Final part of Oceans Apart that as a whole I loved ions apart I thought it was a really I thought it was a lot better than I was expecting it to be and um I’m going to miss David dimbleby going forward in this Adam Curtis I mean

As much I do love Adam Curtis as a as a narrator and uh but I I think dimble Bee’s been a you know a welcome presence in oceans ofarts I’m going to be sad when he when when he’s gone after this week so uh let’s uh start this one

An ocean apart is made possible in park by British Airways serving North well people want a break why are people okay what I’ll do is I’ll read super chats so that you n do well and have a break well you know um speaking of Breaks by the

Way I hope you’ve all subscribed to AA mellow 9:00 a.m. every morning every single day a a mellow and I’m going to keep try to keep on that going get a cup of mellow Birds now unfortunately I’ve discovered that mellow Birds has calories in it and may be breaking my

Fast now I can’t get stable numbers on the calories but essentially if it’s not a zero calorie drink it has been unwittingly breaking my 16 hour fasts which is not good that means that my uh rate of weight loss over the past couple of weeks since I’ve been drinking mellow

Birds ironically given how much I’ve loved it um is going to be so that means that I can only drink mellow birds in my eight hour window of eating now and I’m going to have to stick with uh zero calorie drinks coffee is meant to be zero zero calorie but apparently there

Are hidden calories in mellow Birds which has made me very sad um um so I mean I would love to if somebody knows about mellow Birds um look into yeah somebody saying it’s 200 plus calories a cup I mean that’s no good for me um I I mean I have

Not been drinking that I had a lot of it yesterday because I recorded that show but um I’ve definitely had one or two cups outside of my8 hour window so that’s that’s no good at all um uh I’ll just read a couple of super chats that have come in while people are having

Their break because you know it’s 2024 and everybody’s a spiritual woman can’t last um Mighty Sebastian says hello AA I made the mistake of saying something to you on your timeline Twitter and we’ll refrain from it in the future oh well well thank thanks for that Mighty

Sebastian you have to understand that I don’t understand any jokes I mean I understand jokes when I’m on a stream with somebody um but not in written form uh adamy says is this period where the growth failed the time uh is this period where growth failed the time when Soros made his

Billion shorting the pound that sounds right that sounds right and um we’re going to be looking at corporate Raiders when we get onto the Mayfair set um I mean Adam Curtis really had documents this period of History which is an intense interest to me um and looks at Britain and looks at

America in in real detail in these was one of the reasons why I thought this would be something worth doing right um and I have confirmed a guest for the May first set very knowledgeable guest Horus he’s a kind of uh you know he does history shows and he’s kind of a

Dissident historian Horus is and um so I’m looking forward to getting to the F set I don’t know if he talks about George Soros in particular but there’s a lot of dodgy activity that goes on during during this time um okay so uh I think that’s enough

Of a break is it not that’s enough of a break let us now get onto the final part of an ocean part and um I kind of grown really fond of this series Oceans Apart I thought it was uh you know going to be sad that this is the last part so enjoy

David dimbleby while he’s still with us America to London and Beyond Hansen a company which has provided basic goods and services since 1964 and attained increased profits dividends and earnings per share every year Hansen here today here tomorrow and by this and other public television stations We may not have our own kings and queens but today New Yorkers got their own Taste of a royal wedding the brides from Chicago Heath’s from New York but they look like they come from a fairy tale palace in England it’s America’s way of saluting the mayor of Charles and Diana

The real thing happens tomorrow in London St Paul’s Cathedral by the late 1970s and early ‘ 80s there wasn’t much left of a special relationship between Britain and America there was of course America’s love of British traditions and in particular of the British Monarchy but otherwise for America Britain was just another friendly Ally a country whose people happen to watch Dallas on television and eat hamburgers brilliant um and uh I did a bit of research and I found uh let’s see if I’ve still got it on my computer here

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play this but um I found uh a thing from 1981 of a guy and welcome to that this and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play this but it’s um basically the introduction of fast food uh in

1981 um you can find this on YouTube yourself or I put it on Twitter a couple of days back where they uh they basically go to McDonald’s in 1981 and they talk about how the government basically was encouraging people to go and eat fast food for the good of the economy really quite

Fascinating watch so uh I won’t play it because I’m not it’s BBC and BBC are funny about copyright but um yeah definitely worth a watch that um I put it on Twitter just type in 1981 BBC fast food and it’ll come up um on the BBC archives there anyway let’s

Continue within months of the royal wedding here in St Paul’s Cathedral the old relationship was to be revived it happened because Britain found herself in a military crisis and as on other occasions turned to the United States for help hoping that the old time would still hold Good now now I have to say going into this that America has not come off particularly well uh I mean Britain hasn’t either especially not Churchill um in this documentary so far but in this final episode I have to say that I thought the Americans during the thater

Years came off better than the British and Thatcher um I honestly thought that uh the Americans actually were pretty honorable during for Forkland and as we’ll see and um I think they were pretty like honestly I feel like the thata government was pretty scummy uh as we’ll See no noer saying yank fence sitters you’re not going to be saying that in 20 minutes I’m telling You British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power after several days of RIS by the way if you’re wondering how Margaret Thatcher won that election after all that economic damage she won it on this she didn’t win it because of because of the economic

Policies uh in 83 she won it because of this uh anyway let’s carry oning tension in our relations with Argentina that country’s Armed Forces attacked the Forkland Islands yesterday and established military control of of the islands the government has now decided that a large task force will sail as soon as all deorations

Are if the Argentinian Invasion came as a shock to Britain Britain’s dispatch of a task force to the South Atlantic came as an equal shock to America Washington was not consulted President Reagan faced a dilemma the prospect of war between Britain America’s closest partner in NATO and Argentina whose support he

Planned to use in the battle against communism in Central America it’s a very difficult situation for the United States because we’re friends with both of the countries engaged in this dispute and we stand ready to do anything we can to help them and what we

Hope for and would like to help in doing is have a peaceful resolution of this uh with no forceful action or no Bloodshed the president publicly stated that America was neutral and instructed his secretary of state Alexander hag to seek a peaceful settlement hag’s team came first to London they were told

Firmly by Mrs Thatcher that no diplomatic compromise was possible unless Argentina complied with the United Nations resolution and withdrew all its forces from the folkland her mood was I would say uh combative I believe she just removed two paintings in one room and replaced them with uh as I remember at Wellington and

N other people had been on that particular wall before they had been replaced by Wellington and Nelson and she said uh something like and I’m not sure she said in this room is where Neville Chamberlain said why should we go to war for a far distant Nation about which we

Know so little and with which we have so little in common I do not intend to repeat that mistake and since I remembered hearing Neville chamberlains being quoted as is saying that a slight shiver ran down my spine thank you very much you having a nice day The Churchill worship of uh thater

Is just unreal by the way unreal um although I do think putting the Wellington and the Nelson paintings up was uh Loki Base by thater but still what chances her peace in spite of the prime minister’s air of calm determination the British government was one by America’s neutrality memories

Went back 30 years to seiz on that occasion the United States had undermined Britain’s attempt to recapture the canal because it conflicted with her own interests in the Middle East Britain was determined that this time things would be different and set about winning American public opinion to her side you were very

Concerned when you had 52 hostages we have 2,000 hostages down there large principles are at stake of whether on the American continent you Willow aggression to pay and the principle of self-determination which you the Americans established to be overthrown were you fearful that sez might be repeated over the Forkland very very

Frightened because it had the colonial overturns that you might say had promoted American suspicion over SE I suppose instinctively I made a lot of what I thought were aspects of Britain British life that um had a strong appeal in America particularly the Navy the Chiefs of Staff had told the government

That it was one thing to send the task force a threat to make the argentinians negotiate quite another to have to use it in an assault on the fauland British troops would be fighting 8,000 mi from home with no radar protection against enemy aircraft no guaranteed fuel supplies and no information about the

Enemy’s movements but it seemed impossible to turn to America for support the administration had proclaimed its neutrality and was itself divided on what to do I argue that we should maintain neutrality in that conflict and uh I what uh the reason I argue that we should maintain neutrality was first of

All that the United States had uh a very significant stake in good relations with Latin America generally all of Latin America I had also learned by then in the United Nations that Britain frequently maintains a position of neutrality with regard to American conflicts with other nations that um so it wouldn’t have been

Introducing any new factor into our relationship for us as in as in Vietnam as we saw last last week to maintain neutrality in case of a British conflict with another Nation where we had a state Britain knew she needed America’s help but she also knew the difficulty

That the Americans were in if they were seen to side with Britain they risk losing the new friends that they’ been cting so carefully in South America if they didn’t they risked seeing an important NATO Ally go down to defeat as long as America was officially neutral and seeking a diplomatic

Settlement there was no possibility of asking her openly for support and so the British government decided to act in extreme secrecy they turned to the people at the top of the American Department of Defense who they thought they could rely on not to let an old friend down what did you decide America

Should do well I think it was very clear that we we had our Ally in the in England and uh that we should help in every way that we could that wasn’t a unanimous opinion I suppose in the United States government but it was the reaction I had and um the reaction the

President had how soon did help start very soon it with the first requests Casper Weinberger decided that Britain should be provided with everything she wanted and as fast as possible without seeking the support of the American cabinet he instructed his deputies to make use of the private channels which

Had been maintained between the two countries navies ever since World War II I mean this is a fascinating little uh little bit of History here the underhand and clandestine close level of cooperation between Washington and uh London here despite the official stance of neut tranity very interesting most of the

American Administration was kept in the dark the the president himself knew what was being done well it really began when the force uh was ordered to start down well before it ever arrived while uh there was certainly no attempt to try to hide anything from anyone else in the

Administration neither did we we just didn’t tell them we we didn’t hide it exactly we just didn’t tell them what we were doing go out of our way because we were busy to try to educate people people on what was really going on and it really wasn’t

An attempt to uh hide things but most people in the American government simply don’t know how close the relationship is between the two navies and they didn’t know then how much was passing through the channels with direct support to the Faulkland there was no need to establish a new relationship

Because forget about the actual government we’ll just um we’ll just do it anyway we’ll just well tell them later ACT first tellal them later bl’s mot it it flows all the time and it was really just turning up the volume I think almost on day one I telephoned or

Signaled uh my opposite number and asked for an assessment of the Argentinian forces operational effectiveness knowing now all of this by the way is really quite surprising to me because it’s the only time in this entire seven part documentary where it just seems like Thatcher

Said [ __ ] it I’m gonna I’m gonna do the for forlands are you with me and they were like yeah okay yeah we’ll just do it I I don’t I don’t really understand like this is the only time really where the Americans have almost kind of tripped over themselves to help Britain not vice

Versa and as far as I can tell there wasn’t really that much kind of [ __ ] involved with this particular bit so I don’t really like there’s something odd about this because this is like when I was watching it earlier and when I’m watching it back now I’m thinking like the Americans just

Did a solid no strings like they just did a solid for once in their lives kind of amazing that to they exercise with them regularly the United States Navy does a a cruise run South America every year exercising with the Navies in turn and they would have more recent knowledge of the operational

Effectiveness and tactics um and he sent me almost a book uh which was extremely useful particularly about the submarine uh tactics did did you hear that then the Americans were doing joint military exercises well or joint Naval exercises with the argentinians and then so they had basically you know intimate knowledge of

The capacities of the Argentinian Navy and they just gave that dude a book basically detailing all of their strategies all of their capacities I I mean it’s just kind of incredible the greatest part of the assistance was logistic uh particularly the use of the Airfield at Ascension which was vital

Absolutely vital Ascension Island was the key to the secret help given to Britain the US Airbase there was sealed off to the outside world transport planes flew in around the clock carrying supplies from American stocks to be fed out to the ships of the task force as

They paused on their way South those in the Pentagon organizing this operation knew that if the full scale of it was revealed it would seriously damage America we were not naive we were not children we knew what the effects of what we were giving to the Royal Navy

Would be and so did the Latin Americans although I still don’t think they quite understand the extent to which it it did have an effect but we certainly did and we knew the price we would be paying in uh what actually happened the argentines and all of the other Latin Americans abruptly stopped

Supporting uh the efforts of the salvadorians and the uh Contra forces against the Communists in Central America and that led to contate while Layman’s staff was helping Britain secretary ha and his team were maintaining the official American posture of neutrality traveling back and forth between London and

Buis were you aware as you were shuttling backwards and forwards trying to get a diplomatic solution that equipment and provision was already being provided by the United States to Britain yes didn’t that conflict with the aim of achieving a diplomatic settlement well you know uh not necessarily uh we thought it might make

The British more willing to be more flexible did the Argentine realize that oh well they were excusing us of doing far more than we were actually doing but it’s a curious kind of even-handedness when you’re arming one side even while saying you’re even handed well I mean we were neutral when

We gave Britain 100 destroyers in World War II that’s not a very neutral act we were also neutral when we were firing unsighted German submarines in the North Atlantic that’s not a very neutral act it goes back to this rather atavistic business of blood and language I thought I mean just

Extraordinary what an extraordinary statement from that guy the activistic business of blood and language I mean correct me if I’m wrong but this is the only time this entire documentary that the Americans have truly behaved like going of you know they’re actually doing the special friend thing weird really

Weird in a city where Winston Churchill is regarded almost as a national hero and presides over Massachusetts Avenue the ties with Britain are still by far the closer of the two this has led to a great deal of unhappiness among ordinary Americans about their country’s diplomatic even-handedness letters have

Been pouring into the British Embassy here offering advice support and even money well one urged us to reduce the Argentinian Navy to an artificial Reef uh another urged us to sink the sink the bismar which I passed to the naval atache here’s a remarkable one from an ex-marine in Texas amphibious assault of

Any Island happens to be my bread and butter but in this particular case I’m offering my services free to the UK and in his PS to the Ambassador he says uh I doubt you’ll need my help but if it turns out you do don’t fail to let me

Know I haven’t been in a good battle since inchan and the chosen Reservoir I me isn’t this just amazing just amazing stuff and I’m speechless listening to this by the end of April the task force was nearing the folkland it had become clear now to the American negotiators

That there was no possibility of a diplomatic solution in what was presented as a dramatic change in policy hay now announced that America would respond to British requests for for material support he and the president neatly ignored the fact the British ships were already full of weapons provided by the United States this

Moment we’ve had no request for anything such help uh from the United Kingdom the capacity of politicians to just baref facedly lie is incredible isn’t it isn’t it incredible but I think what he was what the secretary was saying is we must remember that the aggression was was in the part of

Argentina in this dispute over the sovereignty of that little ice cooled bunch of land down there on the morning of the 21st of May 1982 British troops attacked the fand islands at San Carlos Bay the Argentinian forces were taken by surprise but with can I just say by the

Way that we’ve seen two absolute bareface lies today Thatcher when she denied ever following monetarism and uh and the giper just there in hours their Jets were attacking the landing Fleet from their bases in Argentina every gun and missile system aboard the British ships was brought into action against the Argentinian

Planes as they screamed in across the bay without warning it was one of the biggest Naval actions since World War II and American weapons played a crucial role no weapon was more important than the American Sidewinder missiles which the Harrier Jets had been adapted to carry okay well they weren’t just

Sidewinders they were the latest version of the sidewinders that give gave a wholly new capability to that heat seeking missile there were only the small harriers that had no real area defense capability and so the shots they could get at the attacking argentines were within visual range and often

Oncoming shots well the old Sidewinders you have to get behind an aircraft uh to shoot a Sidewinder and by that time he’s dropped his bombs on the ship the new Sidewinders you can shoot head on and that’s what uh the harriers did so brilliantly and so effectively and as a

Result they forced all of the argentines after that to fly down on the deck which forced them to drop the bombs from very low altitudes and and most of them didn’t fuse so there were about 10 ships that actually had bombs in them they didn’t go off because of the

Effectiveness of forcing them down but the decision to give that new Sidewinder that’s not just normal relationships that’s a deliberate decision isn’t it a deliberate decision to save Britain’s bacon yes de facto definitely it wasn’t just Sidewinders but all sorts of American Weaponry that was made available to Britain during

This war other missiles mortar shells high explosive ammunition even night vision goggles and matting for the harriers to land on as the battle for the Faulkland intensified Britain’s constant requests to the Pentagon continued to meet with a swift response we received one particular request which I cannot discuss in terms

Of what the equipment was but it was uh a certain type of equipment which only made sense if they were going to land we were asked that we deliver that particular equipment within six hours uh we managed to do it from our stocks to the South Atlantic I mean they

Just did everything just just said yes to everything gave them all the help they wanted because basically they wanted Britain to win the forlands it’s kind of what’s going on here what’s the angle the British for use six hours later we did It so it was your war was it America’s war no it wasn’t our war we weren’t dying out there it’s only your War if you’re dying out there so what was it to you we were helping we were doing what we could we were being loyal friends but it wasn’t

Our war I mean what why why when has when has America ever like throughout this entire documentary when has America ever actually been like actually a friend like this as far as I can see they did actually behave in that way during this I can’t see any angle really didn’t lose

People I think America would have been in a very difficult position if Britain had looked like losing they would have had a NATO Ally and a close old friend being defeated by a dictatorship in the South Atlantic and I think they would have inevitably in some ways have got

Drawn in which they didn’t want to do could we have done it without them we certainly couldn’t have done it in the time in which we did it or with the relatively reasonable casualties it would have been much more costly and much more lengthly without American Support I attach enormous importance to

The support we got from America in Communications and in materials not of course in men what would have happened if the American administration had said we’re going to be strictly neutral no more help to Britain while this thing goes on well I think I think that Britain would

Have had to have withdrawn from the Faulkland would have been defeated in other words yes that’s my they’ve been extraord considering this was 1988 right so some of these guys were either still around or they were current right this only happened like this this is 1988 documentary and this happened like five

Years earlier I don’t know if Reagan was still in Bush senior was in by this point but thatcher was still the prime minister at this point when this documentary was made it is remarkable how candid they’re all being they’re just like yeah yeah that’s what happened my personal opinion anyone can speculate

But uh from everything I know that that is certainly my uh my firm conclusion why do you conclude that because Britain had let so much of her modernization and infrastructure declin during the 60s and 70s that she did not have what it took to defend herself in a uh a prolonged engagement

Even against a rather primitive though highly trained and highly motivated Force like the argentines they were not up against uh the Russians but uh the a succession of governments had refused to put the money into the modern Communications gear the missile defenses the side winders well when we we

Saw based on the documentary we’ve just watched and the economic Dia Straits Britain was in why they didn’t do any of that stiff stuff because they were [ __ ] broke the uh the the three-dimensional air defense Radars and most stupidly they all scrapped the big aircraft carries indeed they had sold

They had the Invincible class carriers on the Block to Australia at the very time it took place so you you just can’t have it both ways you can’t want to play a role as a serious power and do it on the cheap and so we made up for it we

Knew what we had to do Britain’s victory was a Triumph for Mrs Thatcher for the time being the role of the United States remained secret a private debt to be repaid later one of two things there listen to everyone I must go down did she show signs of gratitude to the

Americans for what they had done uh not effusively no we paid for everything we got but I think we felt that um we we got what we expected to get because nothing was said public I mean what she wasn’t she wasn’t even that grateful she didn’t really care and

This this is the bit of this documentary that I don’t really see because as we’ll see when we get to the Granada bit now thata continues just to be like yeah [ __ ] you basically I I don’t really understand the Dynamics here because I don’t understand like what thatchers

Bring to the table whether she was just such a force personality that the I mean like the Americans don’t roll over for anyone but something weird happens around this point in the relationship which I don’t understand so it’s like the Reagan and Administration got sentimental or something anyway let’s

Carry on publicly at the time about the scale of American support for Britain during the forland war there was no sudden upsurge of pro-american feeling in Britain if anything the opposite anti-americanism which had been dormant since the Vietnam War was stirring again and the reason was a proposal to base a

New American medium-range nuclear missile the cruise missile here in Britain at greenham common okay so this is the big chip really they want the nuclear missile in Britain maybe that’s why maybe that was the deal that Thatcher did maybe originally these weapons have been requested from the American government

By the European governments but as the time of their arrival approached there was mounting public opposition there were fears that it would make Britain a more likely Target for Soviet attack and also fears based on statements from President Reagan and others that the United States might now think it

Possible with these medium- range missiles to fight a nuclear war that would be confined to Europe and wouldn’t damage America and so here at greenham common began the longest demonstration of anti-nuclear and anti-American feeling that Britain had ever seen when we actually got to greenham Common and we

Had decided to follow the suffragettes example and chain to the fence and make a SL I mean it seems like since 1890 Britain has had an unlimited an unlimited supply of women that look like this ready to ready to protest can anybody explain to me why there’s always

Such an unlimited supply of middle class white women just ready to go to pick up a placard and go to any protest because they’re still they’re still there basically the women like this more dramatic protests than we had originally anticipated the American base commander came out took a look at the women

Sitting there and said as far as he was concerned we could stay there as long as we liked and it was at that moment that we decided that’s exactly what we would do the women protesters at greenham common saw the US bases as a dangerous alien presence in Britain completely outside British control

I was amongst the women when for the very first time we took the fence down we took down all miles and miles of it you you felt at that very time as we stepped over the fence inside you were really going onto American territory it literally was you know

Little why why is there this I mean why is it a lesbian female protest I just don’t understand and why like it’s so so weird America there and I found that out because on one occasion when we were arrested um they kept us there for many

Many hours and we asked if we could have a cup of tea and the police said oh sorry we’ve got no American money with us so we can’t go in and get you any tea the greenham protesters became the focus for large-scale demonstrations in Britain and in Europe although they were

Ridiculed by many of their opponents they were taken very seriously by those in the Pentagon responsible for the deployment of Crews we had daily reports coming in demonstrations here demonstration can I get a check on Pearl please I’m sure I’ve seen in before actually this this character their

Demonstrations being planned and then of course they were widely shown on television programs in the United States it seemed as though everybody in Europe was was demonstrating there was the spectacle of the encampment at grenham common and from time to time encamp counts between the police and Demonstrators elections in some cases turned on on that issue or or the opposition at least tried to make make them turn on that issue it was touch and go and it was far from clear that deployment was going to be possible most worrying for the Americans was the British election due in June

1983 a new Minister of Defense campaigned vigorously against neighbor’s promise to remove all US nuclear weapons and bases from Britain we work on the basis of trust the Americans trust us and we trust the Americans and if you really start thinking about what the problem is problem is very clear we’re

Dealing with a monolithic Soviet power that’s where the Real Enemy that’s where the real threat is and we have a total unanimity of interest and purpose with the Americans and the the rest of the Western Alliance in deterring a threat from that direction if we start distrusting each other then I must say

It looks very bad for the Peace of the Western World see see the thing is is that I understand the position right with the you’ve got to understand with the USSR there they were a genuine threat they were nucle threat but they were also just a like the threat of

Communism was a genuine thing like they could have they want you know they wanted to expand their power they wanted to take over and some of these protesters some of these lesbians that you saw and whatnot that they weren’t necessarily I mean some of them would be thinking about like British sovereignity

Or whatever but some of them would have been commies some of them would have been sympathetic to the Soviet cause and you know or they could have been just straight up back by the Russians so I I mean I can kind of understand like you’ve got to like deal with the

Situation as it is right we’ve seen over the past six episodes the decline of British power at this point in the 80s it’s kind of like well okay you know yeah the Americans are foreign power but if they’ve got these cruise missiles we probably want them to

Hit the Russians before they can hit us um so I I mean I kind of I’m kind of with the government I’m kind of with hle and and the government on this to be honest what effect would it have had if labor had won the American bases had been

Ejected uh the United States would have withdrawn its forces completely from Western Europe uh it would have unraveled the alliance even though that first step with the United States would have been counter to the US interest still they would have done it because if the labor party came in and and pursued

The platform that was running on you could expect other nations in Western Europe to to shift in that direction and the United States I thought would walk out with its troops uh it would unravel the alliance and I thought it would move as a consequence

Of those two I thought it would move the Soviets more quickly towards the achievement of their objective in Western Europe which is the coercion and in intimidation without uh having a fire shot does this mean that the British government doesn’t really in your view have that much freedom to act

Independently to pursue its own policies it has to go along with American policy no in Europe it has to go along with NATO policy Margaret yeah yeah um the thing is is that at that time you’ve got to you’ve got to think about the mindset of the

Time during the Cold War the reality was that if you weren’t part of NATO you were liable to be taken over by the commies so in the Cold War calculus kind of made sense to be honest pilder thater Conservative Party candidate 19,6 2016 Mrs fer was returned to office with

A landslide majority attributed by many to her success in the Fons the relationship between the two leaders was now at its closest each had stood by the other in the face of position in their own country a bond strengthened by Mutual admiration their relationship was being compared to that between McMillan and Kennedy even Churchill and Roosevelt think they ever

Got it on by the way I know that was like a long running joke on spitting image do you think do you think they ever got it on these two and had already acquired the status of Legend among the president’s staff well we were at Williamsburg when the United States uh

Hosted the economic Summit and um the president was there in uh what was really the um the place where our uh Revolution began against uh the mother country back 200 years before so the president had a very carefully honed opening statement for dinner on the first evening of the summit at

Williamsburg and uh he began by saying um had things turned out a bit differently 200 years ago virtually on this very day and before he could utter his punchline Mrs Thatcher took the words right out of his mouth by saying and I would be presiding at this dinner

Rather than you and uh it was a a really a feat in being able to read the mind of Ronald Reagan because she knew exactly what he was going to say and she snitched those words right out of his mouth the high point of the visit was a

Dinner given by Mrs Thatcher at the British Embassy in Her speech she talked of Britain and America’s need to depend on each other as together they faced a new Cold War she consciously adapted a phrase of her hero Churchill to make still even now the looming figure

Of this fat prick anyway let’s carry on a point Soviet ideology teaches that we in the west are like ripe apples ready to fall into their laughs that all they have to do is to shake the tree as someone else might have said some apple some Tree Mrs Thatcher flew home with the praise of the American Press ringing in her ears but any glow of pleasure she may have felt at being ACC claimed America’s closest Ally was soon to be dispelled and the limitations of the alliance made all too clear just 2 weeks later on the 19th of

October the government of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada fell in a Marxist coup I have to say this entire episode is extremely strange and I still I when I watched it earlier on I didn’t understand it and I still I’m going to see if it makes any more sense to me now

I’m going to really concentrate but I just don’t understand the actions of Maggie in the next five minutes or so the state department fearing another Cuba argued for an invasion and said that because American students on the island could be taken hos it must be done immediately when the

Final decision was made by the president it was made in The Situation Room on rainy Monday afternoon at about 6:00 in the White House and everybody had their say around the table Secretary of Defense the director of Central Intelligence the Secretary of State others than those the room got very

Quiet as they all look at him and I’m sure it was no longer than 30 seconds but it seemed to me to be about 5 minutes of silence because that’s where the buck stops as they say and the Pres president finally says okay let’s go but Grenada was a member of the Commonwealth

And the queen was its head of state A worried British foreign office hearing rumors had asked the Americans whether it was true they were planning to invade just hours before the first troops went in the foreign secretary gave the House of Commons the reply he’ received from Washington can your foreign secretary

Assure us that there’s no question of American Military intervention on the island in this situation it could only make situation worse uh there is no question of that of which I know sir on the night of October 24th 1983 we were given a lovely going away party by Princess Alexandra at the

Thatch house Lodge in Richmond Park and one of the guests was Mrs Thatcher and after dinner she got an urgent telephone call from number 10 and had to leave rather swiftly but before she went out the door she motioned for me to come over in the corner of the room and said to

Me we believe that your chaps are going in to Grenada tonight or tomorrow morning uh she was Furious uh I was not called on the carpet someone named Ronald Reagan was on the telephone because Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan are Ron and Margaret to each other and I was privy

To some of their personal correspondents and uh their very close and that must that personal sex talk oh Ron I love it when you speak that way to me can you do that accent again frankly Maggie I don’t give a that you imagine the been a sort of a hot telephone

Call get back honey get [Applause] down he’s crashed into it oh my God he crashed right there what are they going to do now they got a rocket launcher on that Hill Mr satcher argued uh against it uh to the president I think she put her case very

Forcefully and she put it and her um comments I’m sure made an impact on the president but she would understand as an elected head of government better than anybody that the final responsibility for the protection of that country citizens rests with v person and in that

Case was Ronald Reagan not Mr statue and this conversation was it a debate or discuss or was it Mrs that telling the president what as I said I didn’t participate in the conversation but I’m told that the majority of the talking was done by Mr St Grenada America invades against

Britain’s advice Thatcher warned Reagan in Midnight call they’ve humiliated us Healey tells how in Commons uproar the foreign secretary told us yesterday there was no reason to think that American Military intervention was likely and that he knew of no American int you see I just don’t I don’t

Understand the Dynamics here after all the help that the Americans gave thater for Forkland why didn’t she just like give them this I just don’t understand why she’s being so I mean okay maybe the uh the involvement of the queen or or whatever but like you know if if it’s you know

She’s against communism let the Americans have this I just don’t understand why uh why she didn’t support this the least I mean she could have just said yeah cool you know do what you got to do I don’t I don’t understand the uh point of taking the

Stance she did over this it seems like particularly ungrateful given what they just done for her um maybe somebody can explain this to me because I still don’t get it to invade now that is an extraordinary statement to come from a representative of government which Prides itself on being America’s most loyal

Ally I felt very strongly that Jeffrey how had been very badly let down people felt he’d misled the house he hadn’t what he had done has given the best information available to him wasn’t good enough but that wasn’t his fault are you saying the Americans told you they

Weren’t going to go in and then did I think the words that I would use as there was a lapse in the good relations between the Allies sounds pretty much the same thing to me but you’re cynic Gren we were told was a friendly Island Paradise for tourism well it wasn’t it

Was a Soviet Cuban Colony being readied as a major military Bastion to export Terror and undermine democracy we got there just in time there was a bitter reaction in America to Mrs Thatcher’s failure to support the president the Wall Street Journal wrote that Grenada under a Marxist government

Was a far worse place than the fauland islands under Argentina Britain was a fair weather Ally that was one that was a bit puzzling for for us uh in the United States you see I I I completely understand the American perspective on this because they did Maggie a massive

Solid over Forkland as we’ve just seen so what the [ __ ] is this belligerence about and why you know I just don’t understand why you know it’s so like piffling and um inconsequential as well you know Granada just let them have it [ __ ] it I mean they’re America they’re

Going to do what they want to do anyway so might as well just go along with it for the good of the so-called special relationship I don’t understand why what’s the point of having a tiff over this is women basically she’s a woman uh it was obvious that we moved uh

Very quickly on Grenada that uh we did not consult with uh the British government as thoroughly as we should have but time didn’t permit and also the secrecy of the mission didn’t permit but we were a bit puzzled that Mrs Thatcher did not back the United States uh uh

Invasion a little more strongly we are of course always uh impressed with the views of the British government and Mrs Thatcher but that doesn’t mean that we always have to agree with him we quickly wrote it off to her necessity to deal with her own internal politics and we

Respected that because after all uh she wouldn’t be our friend very long if she wasn’t reelected do you mean she didn’t really mine she just had to appear to mine for domestic reasons well uh that’s what we presumed a week later the British prime minister took the opportunity of a BBC World Service

Phonin program to dispel any doubts that she hadn’t meant what she said I think as a general rule we in the Western countries the Western democracies use our Force to defend our way of life we do not use it to walk into other people’s countries independent Sovereign

Territories we try to extend our beliefs not by force but by persuasion you mentioned oppression communism yes I hate it there are many many peoples in countries in the world who would love to be free of it that doesn’t mean to say that we can just walk into them and say now you’re

Free what what the [ __ ] okay all right fair enough whatever Grenada was a reminder that where America’s interests and Britains were in Conflict Britain couldn’t expect any special treatment and it was a lesson that wasn’t lost on the growing number who were worried about America I I still

Don’t understand the point of that she could have just been like yeah you know I mean okay okay the the help they gave over the Forkland was secret or whatever but she she knew how much help they’ given them so just return the favor I don’t get I really don’t get it

America having sole control of the crew missiles that were due to arrive any day at greenham common a public opinion poll taken just a week after Grenada showed that three4 of the British people believed that if America wanted to fire those missiles and Britain objected America would fire them anyway well yeah

Of course they would of course they would so you might as well just go along with it I just don’t get it it was just before 9:00 as the plane bringing the first cruise missiles to Britain came into land at the end of its overnight flight across the Atlantic Cru

Arrived on the 14th of November 1983 it was one of those wonderful occurrences in our life where something was ahead of schedule so much in advance of their date that Michael heseltine was taken completely by Sur surprise he was reviewing the troops in order shot or could have been anywhere I mean they

Nobody bothered to tell him and he arrived in a flustered State and said of course he knew all about it all along of course as he was minister of defense I mean I’m not being like Blair I just get on board with the America I’m just

Saying of all the all the issues we’ve seen of all the things that is not what like it’s just such a nothing such a nothing episode after they’ve just you know my like from my point of view the help they gave over the Forkland was probably the nicest thing America has done

In 80 years as far as I can see since since we started watching this documentary and her immediate repayment is to just be is to just uh publicly criticize them when they need need the return of the favor I just don’t get it just seems like needless but it it could

Be it could be that she had such a good relationship with Reagan or whatever that she could get away with being a bit more critical I don’t know like you know now like you can say things to you can be critical of a friend and not fall out

With them maybe maybe it was something like that but it just seems odd to me of course he knew what was happening it’s just the Americans had forgotten to tell it the first sign that an announcement was imminent came when Mr hesseltine cut short a visit to Aldershot this morning

He planned to spend three hours with the fifth Airborne Brigade but after half an hour he returned to London as he held a news conference he denied that the arrival of the missiles had caught him by surprise the initiative for the decision for deployment uh today came from

Me despite growing public pressure for some form of British control of the missiles the government insisted that the agreed procedure for consultation with America was adequate in practice though they knew that if it were to break down Britain’s opposition would in any case prove irrelevant they’ve got other nuclear weapons and they have

Other cruised missiles in it just seems bizarre to me that those like you know Teena like 20 something uh lesbian women were were crying over this like why do they care since since when do young women care about like the placement of nuclear cruise missiles why do they care so much

About that issue that there there must have been some there must be a story behind that it must be a kind of a an elite Network or something behind those because that’s just not the sort of issue that women care about typically seems very uncharacteristic I’d love to know more

About about those women in particular were they working for the Russians or what seem seems like something unnatural about women caring as much about um you know oh should the British have control of these nuclear missiles does doesn’t pass the sniff test to me in other parts of Europe so if we

Didn’t use them or didn’t agree to let them use the ones here they could have got agreement from someone else and uh I always took The View that in terms of the consequences the Russians wouldn’t discriminate between those countries that had used them and not used them

They would immediately say well the risk is that the British will be next it’s just dawned on me America as one day it may Dawn on you that you are just another country just another nation in the history of the world just another collection of fallible human beings

History has not provided you America with a monopoly of moral good Bas Young Trap or a special Divine role in The Working of History by 1984 distrust of Britain’s dependence on America was spreading The American Secretary of Defense was worried enough to fly to Britain to argue America’s

Case this is mental right can you imagine right this is the equivalent of Anthony blinkin or something going to the Oxford Union to try to try to persuade the students that America is good what what the [ __ ] is he doing this is mental I I just anyway let’s carry on

At the Oxford University Union president president ladies and gentlemen Great Britain could walk out of NATO tomorrow sorry yes Lloyd Austin okay yeah Lloyd Austin couldn’t you know know he he doesn’t have the uh mental faculties to have a debate like this uh but but still I just find it remarkable that he

Thought this was important enough to take time out to have a debate with with with with that young twerp that we just saw it’s just like haven’t you got more important things to be doing if you told us to take our soldiers out of Great Britain they would

Be gone within a day or two American tanks would certainly not roll in the streets as the Soviet tanks have rolled in Budapest and cabul and Prague the point is that whether you think it is moral or not or whether anyone else thinks it is moral or not it is capable

Of being stopped and changed by the will of the people and that I I I went to Oxford uh Union debat a number of times by the way number of times myself um you know not not my scene really cannot be done in the Soviet Union so I

Urge your concern about the consequences of Britain’s military involvement with America was soon to spread to The Wider issue of American Investment and cause a dramatic political crisis in the British [Applause] government it began when the giant American Helicopter Company Sosi offered to come to the rescue of the ailing

British helicopter manufacturer Westland what Sosi hoped for was a friendly takeover with the agreement of a British government known to admire America’s business skills and Enterprise and before we we made this transaction we did go to the mod and we did did go to the uh the trade industry

And we asked them would you have any uh objections to our taking minority interest and the answer was no that’s the support we were looking for the thater government saying let it be a commercial deal was a signal to you that you had a good chance of winning AB

Absolutely without that we had no chance of winning but not all the government was happy with the plan leading the opposition was Michael heseltine the very man who campaigned so hard for the cruise missiles he proposed instead that Europe’s helicopter companies should combine to create a rival to SOS and

Keep now this is very interesting because I increasingly find myself sympathetic to the views of tazan um now this will not come as that much of a talk to longtime members of this channel who know that I voted remain and was never really big on brexit I was never a

Brexiteer right um and I I have come in the fullness of time to truly appreciate what hessle time was trying to do here and um I think we should listen closely to what he says the Americans out of Westland behind his argument was the idea that Britain’s proper role was not

As a junior partner of listen in the context of what we’ve been talking about and in the context of the kind of uh horrible situation that we’re in now listen to what hassel’s saying here just listen carefully and really try to process what you’re saying instead that Europe’s helicopter companies should

Combine to create a rival to Sosi and keep the Americans out of Westland behind his argument was the idea that Britain’s proper role was not as a junior partner of America assembling their helicopters for them but as America’s equal and that meant joining Europe there is no way in which a

Relatively small nation state of our size can ever expect to be a partner of a superpow we can be part of a superpow a European one but we could never be a partner of the United States of America have we been deluding ourselves that we can

Be well we’re torn aren’t we between the need to persuade the Americans to stay here and to show solidar ity with them in that endeavor which I strongly support and difficulty of finding a way of securing a more cohesive European pillar within the alliance which could give some Americans but not all the

Impression that we’re trying to separate ourselves from America I take very much the view that the stronger the European pillar the more likely the Americans are to remain wedded to a proper partnership across the Atlantic but the European scheme was anathema to the Prime Minister helzel nevertheless pursued it

The mood in the British cabinet became increasingly acrimonious with every Twist of the argument being leaked to the Press finally at a meeting of the cabinet early in January 1986 an exasperated heseltine decided that he could take no more I I don’t have really anything to

Add to what I said at the time I’ve the whole thing was thoroughly ventilated and explored yes but this is a history program we’re not doing a but looking back it’s nothing is history in that sense it’s all very current my life I have resigned from the cabinet and I

Will make a so I mean if we had fully pursued the policy that hessle time was talking about here and if Europe had been able to um kind of fulfill some of its Ambitions right in a more gungho manner uh than it than than it

Did I think that we wouldn’t be in the mess that we’re in right now because I think if the Ukraine war has shown anything to Europe it is that America is not not its friend the bombing of nordstream should have been a wakeup call to every single

Person who has an iota of national pride in Europe and as an oor of pride in the idea of being European in any single way um if we’d followed the course that Hessel time was talking about and actually gone for it properly rather than in a kind of halfast manner which

Is what has actually happened um we wouldn’t now we’re in a situation where America can just like literally bomb uh multi-billion dollar pipe and nobody even says a word about it across Europe now in a situation where we’re so enthralled to the Americans that uh we

Have to just sit back and watch Israel you know bomb the [ __ ] out of the Gaz and population and not a single SLE European leader will say one word about it right so we’re basically in a situation now where we are just 100% vessel to America in all single ways and

I I just don’t see that as a good as a good place to be um whereas the course he was suggesting in time could have turned into something that’s been [ __ ] now it’s been completely [ __ ] um so that that’s my thing about this at the moment be later

Today the resignation of a senior cabinet minister over the issue of us investment in Britain encouraged more anti-americanism a week later the Westland shareholders meeting at the Albert Hall became a Battleground for and against America to the dismay of the Americans involved I was pulling up in my car and

I just couldn’t believe it it looked like every entrance to the Royal Albert Hall had at least 15 cameramen by it when my car pulled up in the street they ran out to surround the car I couldn’t even get out and when I did of course

All kinds of microphones were in my face then as I walked through I noticed the girls were dressed in in these banners that said vote Europe vote against American I think US versus Europe is an important point that had to be debated but not to the extent that it did and as

A result of that it got out of control Sosi acquired Westland but the prime minister paid a high price When government plans were announced to sell the motor manufacturer of British Leland to Ford and General Motors the outcry forced her to back down there was a wave of very strong

Anti-American sentiment or certainly uh a very strong wave of pro British sentiment uh that the British Motor industry should not pass into foreign hands and particularly into American hands I seriously pursuing the policy not not pursuing has ‘s policy and the policy pursued since this moment that we

That we’re looking at right now every last scrap of assets of this country has been porned off and sold off every last scrap every bit of Industry every business every corporation every everything is the country has been strip mined since this moment since this exact

Moment and in the in the last 10 15 minutes of this doc documentary you’ll see there there’s a particular hinge Point here where things could have gone a different way and it was the policy not pursued and the way we’ve gone we are now I mean not only is the country

Completely sold out but like I said 100% American vessel and the direction that America has gone in has been a disaster as well as any American will tell you but now we all everybody everybody in Europe has to you know when their ship goes down our ship’s going to go down as

Well and all the all of the I mean I don’t need to tell anybody watching this every single shitty policy they’ve done has happened here as well down to mass immigration demographic change you know this war that war Israel this Israel that um you know so now now all of our Fates are

Tied to the American fate and the American fate is a [ __ ] disaster so I I really do think that Hassel was farsighted um at this point I really do I think that that was a very powerful emotion I cannot explain why it should have risen with such Force I think it was substantially

Irrational uh but uh it was undeniable in its strength and coming as it did short after the Westland Affair it meant that the British government uh took actions which frustrated what would have been I think an understandable American Commercial development but the anti-americanism Unleashed in Britain by the Westland

Affair was puny compared to what followed at the beginning of April 1986 us tanker planes used for midair refueling was seen arriving at bases in Britain in unusual numbers there was speculation that America was preparing to attack Libya which the Reagan Administration blamed for terrorism against Americans any such intention was

Officially denied but a US Air Force spokesman said the extra planes are in Europe for the start of the exercise season I was sent on the eve of the bombing of Libya or very shortly before to go and see the Prime Minister of Great Britain whom we H would allow us

To use uh basically British bases but American aircraft and American lives but she understood that for the past 40 years we’ve kept 350,000 men in Europe at a cost to ourselves of a hundred billion dollar a year and I think she feels that in the alliance everybody must make some contribution

And that this was one of the forms of Britain’s contribution the end of it I said uh just to make conversation I said you know prime minister my normal job is United States Representative to the United Nations and when I go back there I’m going into the eye of the

Storm and she said General when I go back to the British electorate I’m going into the is this morning the United States launched an attack on Military Targets in Libya some of the f-111s involved in the mission left from bases in Britain with the full permission of the Prime

Minister Mr ster had obviously many questions uh and concerns uh and they were expressed and they resp response was made to them and permission was given to do what was done uh we will have very full reports of the attack as the f-111s return to their bases uh in

The early morning and uh we will have uh more precise bomb damage um uh assessments at that time the American intended target was possibly the Central Security headquarters they missed instead a medical clinic and ordinary fla and houses took the hit the number of casualties is not at all

Clear on the Streets of London protests erupted on a scale not seen since Vietnam the Prime Minister was accused of involving Britain in a dangerous and possibly illegal act of War a raid that Britain’s European allies had refused to participate in and the protests now began to include people who’ never

Questioned Britain’s involvement with the United States the staunchly conservative Villages around the US base at upper haford had accepted the American presence here for 40 years but it was from upper haford that many of the f-111s left for Libya the villagers organized a petition and marched to

Present it to the base commander they found that as in Britain as a whole 2third of local residents oppose this use of the base I would like to stress that it is not an anti-American petition it is dealing solely with the issue of the American bombing of Libya on I was

Absolutely Furious that the Americans done what I thought then and still do think was a totally illegal act and I was Furious that Mrs saer is probably the poshest name ever Karen Fairfax chomley [Laughter] hello Karen Fairfax jley allowed them to use the launch the planes from

England wherever I had lived I would have been against the action but it was the hearing the airplanes go over and then hearing that those planes had been making the raid that made me get out of my usual posture of the armchair obor I felt then and I still feel to some

Extent that the Americans are cocooned from the Arenas of War if you like because they have great oceans around them and that perhaps therefore the way in which they look at turmoil in other parts of the world is different from the way that we in Western Europe look at it

Later downtown a Texas group honored the people who helped the United States confront Libya last week the Texas Great Britain commission for the cesa Centennial said thanks to prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the people of Great Britain for standing with the United States we wanted a peopl to people

Exchange I mean the people of the United Kingdom did not did not stand with with uh Maggie on this one I don’t think to let the people know in Britain how the people of Texas felt I think that what Margaret thater did in joining with us deserves Our Praise I think that what

I’ll just mention that something I mentioned on Twitter have you noticed the very nasal quality of Ed Cox’s voice here and Milton fredman has the exact same very nasal quality to the voice can’t help but notice uh that they have that in common I don’t know if F like a

Kind of New York Jewish thing or what but uh something about that nasal accent isn’t it the French did in opposing us and exposing our Flyers to additional hazards deserves contempt it didn’t look quite so simple from Downing Street only 3 months before the Prime Minister herself had stated publicly that she

Believed it would be wrong to attack Libya her ministers wondered now whether in supporting America they’ stretched The public’s loyalty too far I think there was a general feeling not merely among ministers I would have thought among conservative members of parliament as well that the Americans had um really

Pushed us to the edge in uh using the basis for the bombing raid upon Libya you had set off anti-americanism on a scale quite quite different from what was represented by the existence of Cru missiles the United States is our greatest Ally it is the found foundation

Of the alliance which has preserved our security and peace for more than a generation she gave us unstinting help when we needed it in the South Atlantic four years ago there’s a widespread attitude in Europe that the Americans are somewhat naive and ingenuous and tend to shoot from the

Hip and that really they’re not a people with historical perspective absolutely 100% true and therefore they can’t see the ultimate consequences of some of their actions absolutely 100% true now my reaction to that is when we with our naive and ingenuous ways had nothing to do with running the world you the wiser

And the older people the British the French and the others arranged for a 21-year peace period between World War I and World War II since we naive ingenuous and without historical perspective have had some part in world affairs we’ve had 40 four years of Peace

So well I mean it’s been 79 years of peace now and look at the [ __ ] state of Europe so thanks a lot for that I mean may may maybe peace is not as old as cracked up to be I would I would argue but anyway let’s carry on I’m not

As utterly convinced of our naive in these matters to some of our European friends on the fourth of July 1986 America once again celebrated her independence from Britain a reminder to her friends and her enemies that she was the most powerful Nation on earth a title Britain had claimed only 70 years

Before but changes were already happening which would alter the way America looked at the world back in 1916 Britain had been forced to borrow from the United States to pay for her armaments in World War I it had made America rich but was a symptom of Britain’s decline

Now on the eve of these celebrations it was revealed that America had in turn taken the same step borrowing on a huge scale from abroad to maintain her role as a superpower it made Americans ask whether they were now taking on too much there’s a whole current of people

Here who say why do the 290 million Europeans need us to defend them against 264 million Soviets now that’s something this is very pivotal now what’s coming up because of course we couldn’t have they couldn’t have known and nobody in Europe could have known back then that the USSR was

About to fall okay USSR is they didn’t know that back then so the calculus is different but if only they had so many things could have turned out differently let let’s just consider what he’s about to say here they’re among the most Europe is today the largest industrial

Infrastructure in the world it is the largest pool of skilled labor in the world why should we spend this kind of money to defend them we’re not true are you going to meet are you going to meet again sir yes this afternoon in November of that same year there was another

Shock at his meeting with the new Soviet leader mik gorbachov in ruic President Reagan revealed that he’d very nearly reached agreement on eliminating all nuclear weapons from the world world the British prime minister who had not been consulted hurried to Washington to express her hostility to any such

Proposal she feared that it would put Europe’s security at risk and undermine Britain’s own nuclear defense Mr Stater was clearly shaken by what appeared to be the prospect of an agreement that would eliminate nuclear weapons or even significantly eliminate categories of nuclear weapons she was alarmed because

You had a combination of things that seemed mutually reinforcing the zero option for intermediate weapons in Europe the president statements about a world without nuclear weapons the reports out of reic that we had come very close to an agreement eliminating nuclear weapons and when you put that all together it is

Not surprising that she was alarmed I’d have been alarmed in her position Mrs sata’s reaction to President Reagan’s desire for a nuclear-free world was to remind him of the dangers she believed Europe and America still faced on a visit to the Berlin wall she emphasized

That in her view the real threat had not changed the frontier of Freedom here is our Frontier it’s America’s Frontier as well as German’s Frontier and we’re never going to be picked off one by one and we’re going to have a sure enough defense to deter anyone who wanted to cross that wall

Every November in towns Across America the veterans of America’s Foreign Wars gather to honor their dead [Applause] ready who that they remember the thousands of Americans buried far from home many of them killed fighting for the freedom of Britain but two weeks weeks after these ceremonies in November 1987 a treaty was

Signed which it was hoped would make it less likely that American blood would ever again be shed for Europe America and Russia agreed on the withdrawal of all intermediate nuclear missiles from Europe and both sides said this was only a beginning ever since the end of the second World War Britain and America

Have been bound together by the fear of Russia Britain has relied very heavily on America for her defense the United States has looked to Britain to be a trusty Ally and a safe base but if America starts to think that the threat from Russia is receding then her need

For Britain will diminish and if that happens Britain will have to reconsider her future I mean this could explain by the way what he just said that could explain why the British government even to this day is still so insane in its anti-russian raar rism because maybe there’s a calculus

Where well this is if Britain can keep Russia there as a big threat it maintains its own relevance in the quote unquote special relationship I mean it’s you know completely homosexual way of thinking in my view but uh you know maybe that’s the calculus there maybe that’s why one of

The reasons why the British government is such a so yappy um when it comes to that conflict with ruic Mrs Thatcher leared a lesson that Winston Churchill had learned 40 years before towards the end of the war that however close a president and a prime minister may be

The moment comes when the United States in its own interests talks directly to Russia about the future of Europe superpower to superpower see what’s interesting now though if we fast forward to today is that Washington no longer speaks to Moscow they don’t even speak to Putin anymore so Russia and America don’t meet

About the future of Europe anymore because they they don’t even talk anymore which is an interesting development and at that point the political reality is clear however close their two peoples may be Britain and America discover that the Atlantic is once again an ocean that keeps them apart so I mean what particularly

Interests me is that there’s a moment there um especially when the dry the dry guy was talking when he said you know well if you don’t want us there we’ll just go home then just take the troops out it seems like there was there was a moment where that was being thought

About in in in the in the in in the late 80s there and given that the Cold War was about to end gorbachov was there and the end of the Soviet Union was on the horizon there was a moment where America could have left Europe and there was a moment where

Things could have gone in a different way to how they’ve gone since uh 1990 basically because because let’s face it I mean if things just stayed as they were let’s say at that point things wouldn’t be so bad but that’s not what’s happened that is not what’s happened in the 30

Years since this documentary was made and things have deteriorated significantly all across Europe in this country and in America itself because they have they have opted for you know this basically suicidal path that they’re on at the moment um so I do wonder about that road not taken at that point anyway

Okay um one more Super Chat from Matt Bell here he says Dr Matthew Rafael Johnson did a show on Forkland on radio albian search for Britain’s misrepresentation of the Falcons War ton 0908 21 so that sounds uh that sounds good um well I’m not saying imagine if

World will one never happened what I’m saying is at at this point in history in in uh 1988 1990 you know this kind of period there was a prospect of America and they were seriously thinking about and talking about on both sides of the of the pond they were talking about

American withdrawal from from Europe and you know the Cold War was over it’s it’s something that Thomas 77 ask all the time what is NATO for after the Cold War Soviet Union’s gone communist threat has gone all of the things that kept that infrastructure and the whole Alliance together was

Gone so America could have I mean 350,000 troops America had in in Europe and if you check they still have a massive military presence here and what I’m saying is is that from this moment onwards is only like 30 years ago could have could have had a very

Different uh could have gone a very different way uh you know unfortunately what we’ve got is now what we call the gay which has become a horrible monster I would say you know the the nature of the American as we’ve seen in this documentary I mean yeah they were unhanded and you know

They perceive their own interest and so on and so forth but it wasn’t like un un um untolerable as it is now now this what has grown from this has become irredeemably toxic in in my view so all right I will uh I will uh if I

Get time I try to check out the um uh the Matthew or Matthew Rafael Johnson show on the Forkland hope you enjoyed this um do uh check out AA melow 9 a.m. tomorrow morning and um I will uh see you next week uh I mean

AA mow is on every single morning but on this Channel I will be back on Monday next week for cigar stream do buy my courses join the channel but most importantly of all ladies and gentlemen get out what goes on in this town is none of your business as long as

I’m living here it is then maybe you shouldn’t be living here well that’s easily fixed