Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007150111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Medium
Ridley described moves toward European monetary union as "a German racket" to dominate the continent, likened the European Community's executives to Adolf Hitler, derided the French as "poodles" of the Germans, and dismissed European parliamentarians as "reject politicians."
His remarks threw the government here into its worst political crisis in years, threatening a possible Cabinet split. The diatribe highlighted the division between ministers led by Thatcher who are less than enthusiastic about joining Britain's continental neighbors, and those led by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major who loudly support such cooperation.
The opposition charged that Ridley had undermined Britain's position in the European Community and forfeited his own ability to sit at the negotiating table opposite the Europeans he had insulted.
However intemperate Ridley's words were, however, they had overwhelming popular support here.
His departure deprives Thatcher of a man who boasted of being a Thatcherite even before the prime minister came to power in 1979. He was regarded as her most loyal follower.
Offering his resignation late Saturday, Ridley acknowledged that his failure to use "more measured language" had created the problem, but said he "deeply resented" the assertion by The Spectator magazine, which published the damaging interview, that he associated modern Germany with past aggression.
The magazine carried a cartoon on its front page of Ridley, paintbrush in hand, running away from a poster of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl disfigured to look like Adolf Hitler.
Thatcher said she would "greatly miss" Ridley's "loyal support" for the policies they both believed in. His departure would leave "a great gap," she said, adding that his resignation was "most honorable."
Ridley had been involved in the negotiations to create a single European market by 1992, prompting the conservative West German newspaper Die Welt to ask before he resigned: "With what face - he has already lost his own - will Mr. Ridley appear at the bargaining table with politicians in Bonn after remarks such as `German racket' and outrages about a German plot to take over all of Europe?"
Thatcher quickly distanced herself from Ridley's remarks, telling members of parliament last week that they were neither the government's views nor her own.
But when the British papers arrived Saturday morning at her country residence, Chequers, outside London, she learned that Ridley's remarks had overwhelming popular support here. A phone-in poll by the nation's largest-selling daily, the tabloid Sun, showed readers endorsing what the paper termed Ridley's "Kraut-bashing" by a 7-1 margin.
In the Daily Express, he had 97 percent support. The paper commented in an editorial: "While the majority of politicos and pundits have competed to see who could express the greatest shock and indignation at both the tone and sense of his remarks, the majority of voters have cheered him on for voicing their own unspoken thoughts."
by CNB