Imperfect Memory

It's funny the way we remember some things.  Last night I found myself watching a documentary about the 1986 Commonwealth Games, which were held in Edinburgh, (yes, its exciting times here).  All I vaguely remembered about it was the opening ceremony, the fact that the weather wasn't great and the names of some of the athletes who competed for England, including Steve Cram and Daley Thompson.  However, according to this programme it was the centre of a huge political storm and was boycotted by a large number of African nations.  I really don't remember that.  Mind you, unlike the recent Glasgow Commonwealth games, it wasn't on TV twenty four hours a day.  Or maybe it was and I just don't remember it.  It was all about the Apartheid regime in South Africa (as most things seemed to be back then).  Mrs Thatcher, unsurprisingly, was refusing to join the Commonwealth's economic sanctions against the regime, (she was also refusing to finance the games, resulting in mega-fraudster Robert Maxwell stepping in as their 'saviour').  Incredibly, having done her best to wreck the fames, Thatcher then had the audacity to turn up at them, only to be roundly booed. 

Interestingly, economic sanctions are back on the agenda today, with regard to Russia, which has just announced its own 'counter-embargo' of those countries currently imposing sanctions against Russia.  In the midst of all this, we have the usual chorus of wealthy businessmen telling us how sanctions are counter-productive, hurting the countries imposing them - or, rather, cutting in to the profits of companies who find their  unethical trading with dodgy regimes curtailed.  This argument comes up every time an economic embargo is proposed against a rogue regime, as if profits should outweigh morality in foreign policy.  The other argument trotted out, (particularly by Thatcher with regard to South Africa), is that the sanctions will hurt poor people in the target country.  In the case of South Africa, this was pretty ludicrous - those black people Mrs Thatcher was supposedly so concerned about were already being deprived of what most of us consider basic liberties and were already living in shanty towns.  The sanctions would mainly hurt wealthy white South Africans.  Who were, of course, friends of  Thatcher.  The variation on this argument heard with regard to Iraq before the Gulf War was that ordinary Iraqis were suffering because of the lack of essential medical supplies.  Which was nonsense as such supplies are always exempt from embargoes. But hey, they needed to 'prove' that sanctions wouldn't work so as to justify a war.  Or am I misremembering that, as well?