I laughed out loud listening to the News Quiz on the radio this morning (17th October 1998) Presumably recorded a few days ago, Jeremy Hardy (a man wise in his choice of home town, if nothing else) said that General Pinochet (so modest never to promote himself to Field-Marshal) had complained that the British were no longer respectful enough. Hardy said something like "does no-one in the Foreign Office remember the correct form of address for a brutal mass-murderer?"
Then, on the real news immediately afterwards, as a one-liner, they said that Pinochet had been arrested in London pending extradition to Spain on charges of murder. Three thousand charges of murder.
If only it could have been done ten years ago. Or twenty. Or even better 25. But, assuming it is true, it is almost embarrassingly gratifying. Too little, too late, but better than nothing.
I don't know if the British Labour government was in on the decision to arrest him, but I hope they were. I felt genuinly good about them for the first time in months. I've been wandering around saying "at least they are better than the last lot" until it sounded hollow. This is the first thing they've done since the Scottish referendum that made me sit up and laugh.
I hope it is not sinful for me to have felt such a lifting of the heart at the thought of that little old man Pinochet confined to bed, surrounded by armed police. Someone has now done to him what his friends did to so many.
Michael Portillo and other Tory scum were on the TV bleating about Pinochet having been a "friend to Britain" during the Falklands War, and about the British people being friends of the Chilean people, and how Chile has transformed itself into a representative democracy (funny - I thought it was one before the coup? This sounds awfully like thanking a robber when he stops kicking you) and has become one of the most prosperous nations in South America. There was a lot of guff about "the Free World" and "our Allies".
But that is exactly the point! We are friends of the Chilean people - so we will help them out by delivering their oppressor to a justice they, for very good reasons, were not able to serve on him. (The same principle would apply to South Africa - it is obviously good and sensible for them to have their Truth Commission and maybe it makes sense not to pursue their enemies to the bitter end. But if, say, the murderers of Ruth First came to England and some of her English relatives wanted justice? That would be a different matter. In the same way, for the sake of peace in northern Ireland maybe we have to make deals with people we don't like and maybe some prisoners are freed that we'd rather stayed locked up. It makes sense here.)And we want to separate ourselves from what Pinochet did. We want to say that the death squads, the murder camps, the disappearances were wrong even if they helped us in the Falklands. We want to say that rape and torture and murder should be no part of political process even if they seem to lead to economic improvement. A man like Pinochet - a man who, when told of mass graves could chuckle that it seemed an "economical" solution - has no place in any kind of politics we want to be a part of. If he seems to be our friend that is our shame. We need to tell the world that he is not our friend, that the people of Chile are our friends, but not refuse like that.
Apparently Margaret Thatcher is a friend of Pinochet. It is said that she had him round to her flat for sherry and biscuits, more than once, when neither of them were any longer in power, when there was no official reason for them to meet. In office, politicians need to talk to some dodgy people. Tony Blair needs to talk to the IRA and Sinn Fein, who he supposes to be his enemies. Not even Unionists could blame him for that. In war you talk to your enemies, you need to to make peace. But if, in 5 or 10 or 15 years time, when neither of them hold office any more, we found Tony Blair going out of his way to have a few quite pints in a pub with Martin McGuinness? That would change our opinion about what had really happened to the British in Northern Ireland. Pinochet is a leader of a group that is far, far worse than the IRA. If Thatcher really is his friend then she should be ashamed of it. It just goes to show shows how close to the rocks we were steering in the 70s and 80s, what a dangerous person she was to have in power in the first place. That is the shame of the Tory party.
There is a thin line between the kind of jingoistic, authoritarian, blue-rinse Toryism that keeps people like Thatcher and Portillo influential in the Tory party and out-and-out fascism of the Franco sort. Pinochet crossed that line. Thatcher wasn't any kind of Fascist when in office (although it was fun to call her one) but she certainly supped with them. We don't want that kind of politics in this country.
And as for the business of "sovereign immunity"! What bullshit! At Nuremburg we threw out the "it wasn't me, I was only obeying orders" argument. Now Pinochet is trying to plead that "it wasn't me, I was only giving orders!"
That such crimes as he is accused of should go uninvestigated and unpunished just because he was once a head of state - that whole idea is morally bankrupt. And how did he win this "immunity"? How did he become that wonderfully innocent thing, a head of state? By the murder of the previous incumbent. Since when in any jurisdiction did theft and murder entitle you to inerit legal privileges from your victims?
It was right to arrest him and it will be right to question him, and to try him, Even if he is then let go (my guess is that the most likely thing is for there to some mildly humiliating questioning from the Spanish, in England, followed by someone on Spain putting pressure on their courts to withdraw the extradition request), or if he dies before the trial can be completed, the very arrest puts down a marker, one of those "lines in the sand" the Americans are so fond of. There are things that cannot be tolerated. And fascism is one of them. If he really is such a friend of Thatcher and Portillo and Redwood and Lilley then we sould rejoice that none of that crew are likely to get back into any position of power for a long time.