22 May 1997 Edition
Back issue: Word war ends with war
The scene now appears set (and last Wednesday's attacks would seem to bear this out) that over the next few days British pig-headedness and imperialist fever will set off a conflagration in the South Atlantic over the Argentinian capture six weeks ago of the Falklands/Malvinas islands and their assertion of sovereignty.
Since that invasion on 2 April the attitudes of the British government, the British media and the British people (trade unionists in a Scottish port are working round the clock to equip a warship, and English people interviewed for television last Monday night were rabid in their jingoistic militarism) have been most revealing for their infallible conceitedness. To the struggling Irish it was a face we are well used to, but the depth and breadth of chauvinism was still surprising, and the `orgy of social patriotism', as one British left-wing newspaper put it, shows what exactly any anti-war movement in Britain had to contend with.
Since that invasion on 2 April the attitudes of the British government, the British media and the British people (trade unionists in a Scottish port are working round the clock to equip a warship, and English people interviewed for television last Monday night were rabid in their jingoistic militarism) have been most revealing for their infallible conceitedness. To the struggling Irish it was a face we are well used to, but the depth and breadth of chauvinism was still surprising, and the `orgy of social patriotism', as one British left-wing newspaper put it, shows what exactly any anti-war movement in Britain had to contend with.