THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603220010
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, which owns Monticello, has announced that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will be given the first Thomas Jefferson Medal in Statesmanship on April 13 in a ceremony marking Jefferson's 253rd birthday.
Daniel P. Jordan, president of TJMF, said Thatcher was the obvious choice to be the first recipient. ``Lady Thatcher seemed to meet all the criteria. That is, she has excelled as an international statesman and she exemplifies Jeffersonian ideas, such as democratic values, individual liberty and individual freedom.''
Is this the same women who can be criticized for her authoritarianism and intransigence; her awful toadying to Presidents Reagan and Bush; her police-mentality response when faced with dissent; the indulgence shown to apartheid; and the destruction of democratic and autonomous popular institutions? I am afraid so.
Several things make this award particularly offensive just now. This choice is being made during a year which is seeing many events commemorating the 150th anniversary of ``The Great Hunger,'' the Irish-potato famine which resulted in the deaths and emigration of millions of Irish. This monumental tragedy was brought about by the cruel mercantile policies of British governments whose economic theories were the antecedent of Mrs. Thatcher's own reactionary political philosophy.
The award is being presented near the anniversaries of the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act (EPA) and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The PTA became permanent law in 1989, the last year Mrs. Thatcher was in power. These acts, in the name of national security, anti-terrorism and administrative convenience, are major attacks on democratic values, individual liberty and individual freedoms. They repeal the right of criminal suspects in Northern Ireland to remain silent without prejudicing their trials; enable authorities to do wholesale searches of property and to seize private property; enter and search homes without warrant, and with force, at any hour of the day or night; dictate how British broadcasters may cover the news; and suppress politically embarrassing radio and television programs.
Thatcher's agenda was a catalog of prior restraints and civil-liberties abuses worthy of King George III. No similar program could have been carried out in the United States without provoking a major constitutional crisis.
Mr. Jordan says, ``(T)here is a touch of irony in giving a medal bearing the name of the author of the Declaration of Independence to a former British leader.'' A mere touch? I don't think so. It is more like a major incongruity between Jeffersonian ideals and Thatcherite practices.
I urge the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation to cancel this unfortunate invitation. In any case, it would be enlightening to know the procedures followed by TJMF in selecting Mrs. Thatcher and whether her selection was promoted by particular individuals in or outside the foundation's board and staff.
STEPHEN D. CAMPBELL
Charlottesville, March 19, 1996 by CNB