Word: thatcherism
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Public opinion in Europe, while predominantly against the raid, was hardly monolithic. Polls showed an odd pattern. In Britain, Market & Opinion Research International surveyed 1,051 people for the London Times. Two-thirds were against the air strike, and 71% disapproved of Thatcher's permission for British bases to be used. But in France, which refused to participate, a survey taken within 48 hours of the raid turned up only 49% against vs. 39% who were in favor of it. In France also, one notable political figure, former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, stated flatly, "I approve of the American...
...lioness in a den of Daniels," the London Times characterized her. When British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stood before the House of Commons last week, opposition members and even backbenchers from her own Conservative Party hooted and jeered her for allowing U.S. planes to take off from English air bases for their bomb runs to Libya. The Prime Minister held her ground. "It is inconceivable," she stated, "that (the U.S.) should be refused the right to use American aircraft and American pilots . . . to defend their own people." The opposition was in full cry against her. Labor Foreign Policy Spokesman Denis...
...Many in Thatcher's own Tory Party were equally unsympathetic, particularly former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, who pointed out that he had refused President Richard Nixon's request to use British bases for U.S. aircraft resupplying Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Even some members of Thatcher's Cabinet privately opposed her decision, though all supported it publicly...
...January, Thatcher had told U.S. correspondents she could not support a retaliatory strike against terrorists that violated international law. But she seemed to have come to believe with Reagan that alternatives to force in dealing with Libya had simply failed. Last week she reminded her critics of Libya's continuing support of the terrorist gangs in the Provisional Irish Republican Army and of other Libyan incidents much closer to home. Two years ago, London broke diplomatic relations with Tripoli after Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire from the Libyan "people's bureau...
...Thatcher been entirely complaisant in responding to the U.S. requests. Before permitting the use of the air bases, she insisted that the raid be justifiable as self-defense. She was shown what one aide said were "compelling" reports from U.S. and British intelligence that Gaddafi had ordered the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque and planned a wide range of other terrorist activities. She also demanded promises from Reagan that the U.S. warplanes would confine their attack to "clearly defined targets related to terrorism" and avoid widespread civilian casualties...