30th anniversary of the sinking of the Belgrano

30 years ago today the Royal Navy sank the Argentinian ship, the General Belgrano.

It was all part of the Falklands conflict that had begun a month earlier when the Argentinians had invaded and taken over both the Falklands Islands, which they call the Malvinas islands, and South Georgia.

As part of their campaign to recapture the islands, the British government had announced a 200-mile exclusion zone, but, when HMS Conqueror, a nuclear powered submarine, launched 3 torpedoes at the Belgrano it was outside of that exclusion zone, in international waters, and sailing away from the islands and the British Task Force that had been amassed in the South Atlantic over the previous weeks.

The General Belgrano posed absolutely no threat to Royal Navy ships and had every right to be where it was, and yet, on the orders of Margaret Thatcher, the UK Prime Minister, it was sunk, killing 368 men.



Today, in a tasteless events and a reunion, British veterans of the conflict celebrated this massacre and justified this dreadful attack.

Why, instead, were they not arrested for war crimes? And why has Margaret Thatcher never had her day in court at the Hague to account for the cold-blooded murder of so many men?

Thatcher did many things during her premiership that people find distasteful, for the sinking of the Belgrano she should have spent her later years in prison.

COMMENT: Ken's bigotry will end Miliband's leadership

It seems that Ken Livingstone has commuted electoral suicide today and, as a result, handed the role of London mayor to Boris Johnson for four more years.

His gaffe, the latest in a long list of gaffes that have seen him offend many minority groups in the capital and beyond, was to refer to the Conservatives as being riddled with gays.

No, this isn't "PC gone mad" - that popular phrase of the Daily Mail and Daily Express - it is a truly distasteful comment that could have wider repercussions than the position of London mayor for the Labour Party.

Surely Ed Miliband, the ineffective and increasingly disastrous leader of the Labour Party, will be further wounded by the guaranteed loss of London. It was likely that his leadership was going to be challenged after the expected fails in the local elections in May and, quite probably, the only reason a challenge didn't materialise before Christmas was because it would have damaged Ken's mayoral campaign. Without Ken, as is surely the case now, Ed Miliband is cut adrift from any possible success, and the attention his brother, David, has been gaining for recent speeches can't help Ed's situation

Ken probably shouldn't have been given the nod to run as Labour's candidate again after losing the election last time round and various earlier gaffes. This year he'll turn 67 and, without wanting to be ageist, he has lost the plot. I can only assume he was given the chance to recapture the mayorship through a misguided sentimentality - or because nobody else wanted to have the embarrassment of losing to Boris.

Who could Labour parachute in to stand in May? There aren't many options, but, surely, they wouldn't leave it uncontested?

Ken Livingstone was a political hero to many when he was the leader of the GLC, and when he stood up to Margaret Thatcher. It was, somehow, destiny (if you believe in such things) that he became the first Mayor of London when the role was created by Blair's government, but, in recent times, he has increasingly shown himself to be unpredictable, unpleasant and, quite frankly, bigoted human being.

Labour are due some major reorganisation and desperately need to decide where in the political spectrum they sit. This needs to happen without Ken Livingstone or Ed Miliband.

It's time for change. It's time for the Labour Party to remember its socialist roots.

OPINION: Just get rid of the Falklands

30 years on from the Falklands Conflict, the UK and Argentina are getting hot under the collar again about the desolate rocks in the South Atlantic.

When Margaret Thatcher sent a large task force to the Falkland Islands back in 1982, following Argentina's invasion of the islands and South Georgia, it had more to do with pulling the heart strings of Little Englanders, playing the patriotism card, in order to help her chances of reelection following a bad couple of years in the opinion polls and an economy that was struggling and the deaths of several hundred Argentine sailors, and some (*cue fake tears) British heroes achieved its goal - she was re-elected by a landslide a year later.

Today things are different. I'm sure that Cameron quite fancies the poll boost that a war PM tends to get (Tony Blair can only puzzle as to why his cynical wars backfired) and it would serve as a wonderful distraction from his flatlining economy and other political woes, but now there is a far bigger issue.

Oil and gas fields have been discovered beneath the waters around the islands. It's been long suspected that there was a large amount of oil and gas there, someone just had to find it. So now the battle for the Falklands has another purpose - the pursuit of climate destroying oil.

Because of the Falkland Islands legal status, however, the UK won't benefit from the oil and gas found there. The UK spends millions of pounds each year protecting the islands, including having two warships permanently there, for which the islanders pay nothing, but the monies generated from discovery of oil and gas are the islanders. Every single one of them, men, women and children, could, it seems, become multi-millionaires but the UK won't receive a penny, or peso, of it. We, the UK taxpayers, pay to protect the islands, build them infrastructure, etc. but won't benefit from any oil windfall. How can that be right?

It, of course, makes no sense but raises the question, why do we continue paying out huge amounts of money to protect a set of bleak, inhospitable islands with a tiny population?

In the late 1970s the UK was trying to get rid of the Falklands and, had the Argentine junta not tried to gain popularity by invading the islands, there is every chance the islands would have been given away by the mid-1980s.

I'm all for self-determination but, surely, that is to decide between independence and being ruled over. If the Falkland Islanders can choose who they want to pick up their security bill and not their independence it's like Southampton declaring that they are now a French port.

And it's not as if the Falkland Islands have always been under some sort of British flag. It was only in the 1820s that the UK stole them from Argentina! Hardly a long history.

So what will happen?

The Argentine government have accused the UK of upping the stakes and "militarising" the South Atlantic. The UK say they are simply changing ships (to a much bigger and more armed one) and that William Windsor, second in line to the British throne is there as a routine duty. They'll be lots of huffing and puffing (including, announced this week, the renaming of the Argentine football league as the "Cruiser General Belgrano Premier League") and eventually someone will do something stupid, quite probably for personal electoral gain.

I fear another conflict and the inevitable loss of life. I fear this will increase narrow-minded Little Englanders patriotism and that, if he times it right, an overall election win for David Cameron at the next general election. I fear the British taxpayer will be asked to pay more and more money for islands we don't really want and which it would make more sense to get rid of. And I fear that, with huge amounts of oil and gas being discovered, it will delay the inevitable development of alternative technologies and we'll have more decades of polluting carbon-based fuels.

My solution? Give the Falkland Islands to Argentina - it makes much more sense for them to look after the Malvinas, as they call them, and allow any Falkland Islanders who want to be "British" to settle on UK soil (though I guess they won't do that if there's a chance their snouts can be buried in the oil trough).

MILITARISATION OF THE DALKLANDS? (HUMOUR)

REVIEW: The Iron Lady (12A)

Everyone over the age of about 30 has an opinion about Margaret Thatcher. One of the most influential, and one of the most controversial, politicians ever to rise through the party ranks to become Prime Minister.



I was never a supporter of hers (the first General Election I could vote in was 1983 when she got re-elected, wiping away the more intelligent, but scruffier, Michael Foot). That was the only election I ever voted Labour, back when that party had principles but wasn't good at presentation. She became PM when I was 14 and stopped when I was 25. She was also the Education Secretary while I was in primary school - "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher!" - so I guess I can be described as a "Child of Thatcher"!

"The Iron Lady" is an odd biopic as it takes one of the world's most powerful women and portrays her as old and frail and suffering from dementia. Her career is shown via flashbacks but, perhaps because of the constraints of being a commercially viable movie, the story of her political career is highly selective and omits many major and significant moments.

Meryl Streep is phenomenal as Margaret Thatcher as firmer grocer's daughter who wants to lead the Tories, as the strident leader who orders the sinking of the Belgrano, as the out of control, maniacal demon she became, and as the old and frail woman who imagines conversation with Dennis, who has been dead for 8 years. Streep has perfected every intonation and every mannerism. Finally, there is a better Thatcher impersonator than Steve Nallon!

Phyllida Lloyd, who directed Streep in "Mama Mia!" seems to want to skim over most of Thatcher's most divisive decisions. Sure, there's scenes if riots and strikes, and police armed with batons, but so much is left out it feels incomplete. For instance, Richard E. Grant looks good as Michael Heseltine, Thatcher's arch nemesis within the Tory party, but in this movie he's hardly seen - in one scene he's there being supportive, and then he's suddenly announcing he'll stand against her in the 1990 coup that saw Thatcher's fall from powe, and John Major becoming Prime Minister.

Maybe the selectiveness of the episodes from her life are meant to be symbolic of the Alzheimer's that she is suffering... Or maybe it's just a script that's not quite got the balance right.

The young Margaret Roberts is played, rather well, by Alexandra Roach. She gets in to Oxford, gets involved in politics, loses her first by-election, gets married and gets into parliament but, as a rather staid, middle-class woman who wears hats and pearls and, "does screech too much" - there are few hints of what is to come but, at the point Streep takes over, she suddenly becomes more focused and develops the beliefs that will dominate a nation for over a decade and still have an effect today. However, there is no signs of where these beliefs came from, beyond inspiration from her father.

It's also a shame that the soundtrack limits itself to Thatcher's personal likes (Rodgers & Hammerstein and Bellini operas apparently) and rather insipid original music and doesn't make use of, or explore, the music of the various eras through which the movie travels.

The movie has massively divided opinion. Some, including current Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, believe the movie has been made too soon and should have waited until Thatcher had passed to the great Grocer's shop in the sky. Others, from the other end of the political spectrum, find it objectionable that it shows Thatcher in a sympathetic light. I also know some staunch left wingers who have been impressed by Thatcher's drive and vision, even if they disagree with her politics, and some, who supported her at the time, who now have a different view with hindsight. What is great is that the movie has got people talking about movies and about politics.

It's fair to say that I did enjoy watching "The Iron Lady", as, it seemed, did the rest of the audience when I it. It is cinematically structured and presented, with some pleasing moments, and, well, Streep is fantastic and VERY likely to win the Best Actress OSCAR on February 26th.