{"id":12253,"date":"2013-12-06T11:20:45","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T11:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12253"},"modified":"2013-12-06T11:20:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T11:20:45","slug":"david-cameron-wont-be-hanging-mandela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12253","title":{"rendered":"David Cameron won’t be hanging Mandela"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Conservative-Future\"<\/a>British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday said “a great light had gone out” following Nelson Mandela’s death, revealing that flags would be flown at half-mast at his Downing Street Office.<\/p>\n

“A great light has gone out in the world,” said a statement released by Cameron.<\/p>\n

“Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death — a true global hero.<\/p>\n

“Across the country he loved they will be mourning a man who was the embodiment of grace,” he added.<\/p>\n

“Meeting him was one of the great honours of my life. My heart goes out to his family – and to all in South Africa and around the world whose lives were changed through his courage.<\/p>\n

“I’ve asked for the flag at No.10 to be flown at half mast.”<\/p>\n

In a newly updated edition of Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative, by James Hanning, the deputy editor of The Independent on Sunday, and Francis Elliott, the deputy political editor of The Times, it is revealed that\u00a0the 23-year-old future leader went on a “fact-finding mission” that took place 20 years ago while the Thatcher government was opposed to sanctions against South Africa at the time.<\/p>\n

The trip was organised and funded by Strategy Network International (SNI), created in 1985 specifically to lobby against the imposition of sanctions on South Africa.<\/p>\n

Cameron remembered the visit: “It was all terribly relaxed, just a little treat, a perk of the job. The Botha regime was attempting to make itself look less horrible, but I don’t regard it as having been of the faintest political consequence.”<\/p>\n

In 2006, shortly after becoming Tory leader, Mr Cameron tried to make amends for his party’s record on South Africa by visiting Nelson Mandela, by then President, at the same time as suggesting the party’s policy from the 1980s was from another era that he did not belong to. He said at the time: “The mistakes my party made in the past with respect to relations with the African National Congress and sanctions on South Africa make it all the more important to listen now.<\/p>\n

“The fact that there is so much to celebrate in the new South Africa is not in spite of Mandela and the ANC; it is because of them \u2013 and we Conservatives should say so clearly today.”<\/p>\n

But what was not known, and which sheds new light on the 2006 meeting, was that British civil servants and advisers were told not to go on such trips, the book reveals.<\/p>\n

Many in the Conservative Party used to wear ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ badges at university. Their leader at the time Margaret Thatcher described Mandela as a terrorist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday said “a great light had gone out” following Nelson Mandela’s death, revealing that flags would be flown at half-mast at his Downing Street Office. “A great light has gone out in the world,” said a statement released by Cameron. “Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; … Continue reading “David Cameron won’t be hanging Mandela”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3,4],"tags":[7763,1149,7764,7765],"class_list":["post-12253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-british-prime-minister","tag-david-cameron","tag-downing-street","tag-hang-nelson-mandela"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Conservative-Future.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12255,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253\/revisions\/12255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}