| March 21 |  |
Editor says, what if anti-war Labour Member of Parliament Tam Dalyell had brought down British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the September 2011 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
| Share this Article on: |  Facebook |  Twitter |
In 1984, on this day agents of the British Intelligence Service tortured, abducted and then murdered seventy-eight year old Hilda Murrell who had disturbed their search of her Shrewsbury home.
Gotcha Our lads sink Mrs Thatcher and her cabinetThe objective of their desperate search was a missing log book from the Falklands Conflict which contained a minute-by-minute record of the crucial hours before the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano in which 321 Argentinian sailors died.
Because the explosive truth was that Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet had ordered the HMS Conqueror to fire on the Argentine Cruiser - even though they were fully aware of a change of course which was taking the vessel OUT of the Royal Navy's Exclusion Zone. The orders for that headline grabbing but cowardly "shot in the back" had been wrongly passed on by Murrell's nephew, Royal Navy Commander Robert Green whose aunt was a campaigner against nuclear energy and weapons and thus suspected of holding on to the log book on her nephew's behalf.
Two days later the discovery of her abducted body triggered a sequence of events that would eventually lead to Margaret Thatcher's resignation and perhaps more significantly an end to the belligerent mindset of the secret state. Because not only had Murrell been sickeningly beaten, but the true rottenness of the act was the discovery of seminal fluid on her body indicating that the torture had been conducted by Intelligence Agents in a heightened state of sexual arousal. The theory has been explored in Graham Smith's book "Death of a Rose Grower: Who Killed Hilda Murrell?"
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Hilda Murrell, Robert Green, General Belgrano, Argentina, Great Britain. Editor says, in reality the sixteen year old local labourer Andrew George was convicted of the crime.
~ Would this have brought Thatcher down? The Brits I knew weren't at all displeased that the _Belgrano_ had been sunk..."hey, it's an enemy vessel, our lads were in submarines, sinking enemy vessels is what submarines DO! What's all the fuss about?" But then, they'd have preferred for the war to end with Buenos Aires under a British military governor and the Argentine junta being paraded through the streets of London behind Her Maj's chariot.
~ Belgrano had been specifically sent towards the Falklands; whether or not her and her two escorts were in the Exclusion Zone made little difference. The Zone was something declared by the British, not some sort of international law both nations were required to honor.
~ Even if Thatcher took the blame and her secret state ended, there'd be another posthaste.
~ Ironic since it was the Brits who cried the loudest during WWI about German Subs.
~ Rubbish! Argie-lover! Enemy ships in wartine are fair game.
~ As usual, the defenders of right-wing excess are focusing on the debatable issue of whether or not taking down an Argentine warship was kosher, rather than the indisputable issue that the murder of a British citizen is definitely illegal, and VERY capable of bringing down a government
~ I think this is a very odd one tbh!
Realistically the only people who were/are worried about the Belgrano are Guardian reading leftie types (oversimplification but the general point is the same!).
To the vast bulk of the British populace (and most people worldwide I would think) the sinking of Belgrano was perfectly reasonable. It manouevered into a shallow zone south-west of the Falklands as part of a two-pronged move on the British fleet, with the carrier going in the northern pincer. In many ways this was the nightmare scenario for the British as the loss of or damage to either of the carriers in the fleet (HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes) would have been fatal to the Falklands effort. A coordinated attack by the two wings of the Argentine fleet together with their land-based air force would have been a massive threat and some of their ships had exocet.
Whether or not it was inside or outside the exclusion zone the Belgrano was clearly a direct and major threat and I for one don't blame Thatcher for one second for ordering it sunk. It utilised Britain's main asset, nuclear submarines, and chased the Argentine fleet into port for the remainder of the war. The whole exclusion zone thing was really not 100 percent serious it was just a sop to international opinion.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
