From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Margaret Thatcher
and
President of the United States
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
HMS
Sheffield
was deliberately sacrificed to escalate the Falklands War.
When the recording first surfaced into the public domain in 1983, the
United States Department of State
considered it to be
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 traced the hoax back to them.
[4]
In January 2014, official government documents were released to the
National Archives
revealing the concerns of the UK's
Secret Intelligence Service
(MI6). A
Foreign Office
adviser's letter to Thatcher said: "This looks like a rather clumsy operation. We have no evidence so far about who is responsible. ...SIS doubt whether this is a Soviet operation. It is possible that one of the
Argentine
intelligence services might have been behind it; or alternatively it might be the work of left-wing groups in this country."
[5]
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). The full recording was later released on the expanded
Crassical Collection
edition of the group's best of album
Best Before 1984
.
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