We Counted a Few Out

The fortieth anniversary of the sainted Thatcher's most successful party election broadcast has been celebrated with an installation made up of life-size silhouette figures at Fort Nelson in Portsmouth, alongside a display of guns and other means of patriotic noise. The public entertainments manager called it "a striking reminder of how many lives were lost in the Falklands conflict;" by which of course she meant the lives of two hundred and fifty-eight real people, as opposed to the six hundred and forty-nine who had the misfortune to expire as lesser breeds. In similarly sober and reflective spirit, the perpetrator of the installation proclaimed it a monument to "why we have our freedom" and a tribute to "those who have fallen so we can live the lives we have today." An accompanying exhibition features contemporary news images and footage from the BBC, just in case the connection between our present sunlit uplands and Britain's war with its former friends and trading partners in a fascist military dictatorship might not be entirely clear.