Oh dear sweet baby Jebus, Thatcher's insanity just has no end:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/30/thatcher-snub-vietnamese-boat-people
QuoteMargaret Thatcher initially refused to give 10,000 Vietnamese boat people refuge in Britain, privately warning her ministers that there would be riots on the streets if they were given council housing, Downing Street papers reveal.
The papers also show how Thatcher told her foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, and her home secretary, Willie Whitelaw, that it was "quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not".
The Downing Street files provide shocking evidence that a personal element of racism, not evident in her public statements as prime minister, lay behind her reluctance to agree to a private and informal request from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees for Britain to take in 10,000 refugees who had fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. The papers, released at the National Archives today, show that her reluctance to take in any of the Vietnamese boat people led to her making a proposal to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, that they jointly buy an Indonesian or Philippine island "not only as a staging post but as a place of settlement" for them all. This proposal was blocked by Lee Kuan Yu of Singapore, who feared it might become a "rival entrepreneurial city".
This is just going to get more fun, as more Thatcher-era papers become disclassified.
QuoteThe papers, released at the National Archives today, show that her reluctance to take in any of the Vietnamese boat people led to her making a proposal to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, that they jointly buy an Indonesian or Philippine island "not only as a staging post but as a place of settlement" for them all. This proposal was blocked by Lee Kuan Yu of Singapore, who feared it might become a "rival entrepreneurial city".
this part is just too much :lulz: to take.
Yeah, that was where I lost it, too. The racism thing was pretty expected, though it was hard to prove before now. But even the concept of the creation of a Crown colony under Thatcher makes me laugh inappropriately.
If she had used the words "British citizens" instead of "whites", I'm sure the whole thing would be less objectionable.
I am always interested in cases like this, where protecting national interests blurs with racism. For instance, it it acceptable (mandatory, actually; thanks, US government!) for American indians to accept into their tribes only those who can prove by blood quantum descent from those tribes. The BQ laws are supremely racist to a degree that is nearly unbelievable, and are also designed as a deliberate form of genocide (most forms of racism are fairly self-destructive, as a static society is a dead society) yet go unchallenged by the general population. The same population who is outraged that Thatcher made a statement about not wanting to expend resources on an alien population when whites (natives) were going without those same resources.
aaaaah, it is all becoming clear now - the reason she wanted to sell off all the council houses was to keep the damned Vietnamese out . . .