People of the UK would do better to direct their anger at the current state of the economy – not at the grave of an old lady who is, and had for a long time been, powerless to do anything about it.
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Margaret Thatcher visiting Salford in 1982. Picture by: University of Salford Press Office
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From the frenzied celebrations that followed her death, anyone would think Margaret Thatcher was a military dictator ousted from power or assassinated by a resistance, not someone who was democratically elected – on no less than three occasions –and who relinquished power over 20 years ago..
In death, Margaret Thatcher has taken the global stage once again, clogging up news channels around the world, even though in Thailand news channels accidently showed footage of Her Majesty the Queen and another of Meryl Streep when announcing her death. I found it strangely appropriate that she was stripped of her identity seeing as how, on shedding her mortal form, she has become a generic hate figure to rival the Wicked Witch of the West – a bogeyman who’ll snatch children’s dairy products when they’re not looking.
I suppose a backlash against Britain’s fawning rightwing press was inevitable. Taxpayers, many of whom lost their jobs, had loved ones die on NHS waiting lists or were educated on a shoestring under her reign are understandably insulted at shouldering the cost of her GBP 10 million state funeral. An honour not bestowed on any democratically elected official since Winston Churchill, it seems an ill-fitting tribute to such a divisive figure who loathed spending money on anything.
Being the daughter of a card carrying left-wing feminist and a working class Glaswegian, I grew up with an inherited hatred of the so-called iron lady. She was in power at a time when I favoured the goings on of the Magic Roundabout to her shenanigans in parliament, but had I been of voting age her policies certainly wouldn’t have won my support. However, she left power when I was seven-years-old and the bulk of my frustration is directed at her successors. To me she was one prime minister in a long line who made a lot of bad decisions. What marks her out is she seems to be carrying the can for all the others who have done the same thing.
Strangely, those ex miners dancing on her grave seem to be outnumbered by people of an age with me, whose memories of the ‘80s probably consist more of shell suits and Roland Rat than footage of strikes and riots. Is this a socialist outburst at what she stood for – capitalism, greed and selfishness? Frustration at a failed services-led economy she laid the foundations for? Desperation at high youth unemployment? A loathing for the rich who condone tax avoidance while social welfare is slashed?
If any of the above, their anger would be better directed somewhere useful – not at the grave of an old lady who is, and had for a long time been, powerless to do anything about it.
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