Thatchergate

Thatchergate was the colloquial title of a hoax perpetrated by members of the anarcho-punk band Crass during the aftermath of the 1982 Falklands War. Using excerpts from speeches by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, a recording was spliced together which purported to be a telephone conversation between the two leaders. During the course of the tape Reagan seems to state his intention to use Europe as a battle front to show the Soviet leaders the US's resolve in a nuclear conflict, whilst Thatcher appears to imply that the HMS Sheffield was deliberately sacrificed in order to escalate the Falklands war. When the recording first surfaced into the public domain in 1983, it was initially considered by the US State Department to have been propaganda produced by the Soviet KGB, a story reported by both the San Francisco Chronicle ^[1] and The Sunday Times ^[2]. However, coverage of the tape by the UK broadsheet The Observer in January 1984 identified the true source as Crass ^[3]. Crass have stated that great care was taken to ensure their anonymity, and that to this day it is a mystery as to how Observer journalists were able to trace the hoax back to them ^[4] Excerpts of the recording can be heard in the Crass track "Powerless With A guitar" on the compilation LP Devastate To Liberate (Yangki - 1985 - Yangki 1).

Quotes

• Gee Vaucher on Thatchergate; "What course that took was beyond our control, really. Not always, we controlled it. Especially the "Thatchergate tapes," that took a long time to surface. They were sent out, what, a year before that. That was good fun. That was Pete's main instigation, to do that. Feedback from that was more than we thought it would be. We just really didn't think people would be taken in by it (laughs). It just goes to show what you can do. Anything goes, really. And if it didn't, we'd have to be very meticulous about the way we did something, to make it guide up a certain route. But we were never that conniving, really. We had dreams, and we'd joke and say, bring the government down here... we were very close to getting compromising photos of Dennis Thatcher, extremely close. The person who had them backed out at the last minute. That would have been such a wonderful thing as far as I'm concerned. Had we computers then, we could have knitted two photos together. I mean, you could have great fun now, couldn't you, my God! But during those days, there wasn't that technology, so we were relying on the real thing. But I would have been extremely pleased with that. But the person got very frightened, sort of backed off."^[5]

References

1. ^ San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 1983. Page 10 http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/1238.html
2. ^ The Sunday Times, 8 January 1984, page 3 http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/1238.html
3. ^ The Observer, Sunday, January 22, 1984 http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/1238.html
4. ^ "We were overcome with a mixture of fear and elation, should we or should we not expose the hoax? Our indecision was resolved when a journalist from The Observer contacted us in relation to 'a certain tape'. At first we denied knowledge, but eventually decided to admit responsibility. We had been meticulously careful in the production and distribution of the tape to ensure that no one knew about our involvement. How The Observer got hold of information that led to us is a complete mystery. It acted as a substantial warning, if walls did indeed have ears, how much more was known of our activities?" - From 'In Which Crass Voluntarily Blow Their Own', sleeve notes to Best Before 1984 http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/
5. ^ 'G Sus interviewed by Richie Unterberger' http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/gsus.html

External links

• Thatchergate transcript and press coverage
• Details of LP containing Crass - "Powerless With A Guitar"

In a recent Dutch TV documentary (There Is No Authority But Yourself), Penny Rimbaud reveals he did a deal with a broadsheet (The Observer)that Crass would admit to making the tapes as long as the paper printed the whole transcript of the tapes. He also revealed the source of the "classified information" as a Skinhead who was in the Navy at the time. The source said the crew on the Sheffield knew exactly what was going on and there was a near mutiny.