Clare Short

Clare Short (born 15 February 1946) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for International Development under Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2003. Short was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 to 2010; for most of this period she was a Labour Party MP, but she resigned the party whip in 2006 and served the remainder of her term as an Independent.

Clare Short

Quotes

• It is ridiculous that British troops are here in Crossmaglen. The claim is that they're in Ireland keeping the peace between the two communities. But there is only one community in South Armagh, so what the heck are they doing here?
  • 1983 comments quoted in Toby Harden Bandit Country The IRA and South Armagh (Hodder & Stoughton, 1999)

• I should make it clear [...] that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers.
  • "Why Mugabe is deaf to the West" BBC News (15 April 2008)
  • From a 1997 letter to Zimbabwe's Agriculture Minister, Kumbirai Kangai. Short was then Secretary of State for International Development. Short was writing in response to President Mugabe's request for Britain fulfill its Lancaster House agreement to pay for land redistribution from white farmers to poor black Zimbabweans.

• They say 10,000, double, treble and then think of another number. It will be golden elephants next. They have got to stop this game. It is bad governance. It's hysterica scaremongering, which is whipping people up.
  • From an interview quoted in "Clare Short Blows her to over Volcano Isle" The Observer (24 August 1997), p. 1
  • Accusing the government of Monserrat (a British Overseas Territory) of "talking mad money" over payments for residents to locate following ongoing eruptions from the Soufrière Hills volcano which had begun in 1995.

• I also believe that US backing for Israeli policies of expansion of the Israeli state and oppression of the Palestinian people is the major cause of bitter division and violence in the world.
  • Quoted in Weeping Skies and The Times (21 November 2006).

• Israel is much worse than the original apartheid state.
  • Wall Street Journal

• [Israel] undermines the international community's reaction to global warming.
  • ibid.

About Clare Short

• She sounds like a mouthpiece for an old nineteenth-century colonial and Conservative government.
  • Bernie Grant cited in "Clare Short Blows her to over Volcano Isle" The Observer (24 August 1997), p. 1
  • Responding to Short's comments about Monserrat.