Simply Smith

There was an ordinary looking photograph in the newspapers last week: an elderly gentleman inviting his female companion to take tea.

Two old age pensioners pleased to see each other and looking forward to a good old gossip. But looks can be deceiving, as any politician will tell you.

These were not ordinary pensioners, these were the former leaders of two member states of the United Nations. Even so, the sight of two ex-Heads of State greeting each other should, in the normal course of events, be no more than a picture of touching gentility.

Old soldiers who have served their fellow countrymen (and women) and now deserve to take it easy: war horses now put out to stud.

But take a closer look and you will realise that the old woman is Lady Thatcher and the old man is General Pinochet: war horses indeed. Each in their own way served their countries to the best of their abilities.

Unfortunately, for Great Britain and Chile their best was deemed to be not good enough.

Each left a lasting mark on the populations of their countries.

Ask many in those countries and their memories of these two will not be happy ones. Although they are no longer in office both Lady Thatcher and General Pinochet continue to believe that theirs is a legacy that has made their countries strong and confident.

It seems to me that only a few British fat cats and a small minority of Chile's wealthy would welcome their return to power.

There are those who think that simply because a person is old that is justification enough to treat him or her with honour and respect.

I have to say that I am not one of those people. I believe that respect has to be earned and any honour should reflect, not on leaders, but on the countries they once led.

Both Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in their own ways used democracy. In this country a whole generation came to believe that no-one was more important than Number One. In Chile thousands disappeared or were driven into exile.

Even now Lady Thatcher is patting the head of the Conservative Party with a clammy hand: William Hague had better watch out. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean Senator Pinochet's influence even now could topple Chile's fragile democracy.

This scene is endowing each of these personages with a quality of statesmanship that, I believe, neither deserves.

The picture is one for the family photograph album: not, though, of those thousands of families in this country who lost their jobs and their homes in the eighties, and certainly not of those families who lost loved ones in Chile between 1973 and 1990.

In the 1980s these two people listened to no-one and nothing except their cronies and their own destructive dogma.

I hope that, as we enter the next millennium their like will never again grace the corridors of power either in this country or anywhere else in the world.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.