FINAL THOUGHTS


I saw that Thatcher was dead on a newspaper hoarding from the top deck of a London bus, not far from the Ritz in fact where she died. I felt nothing much, curiosity at how the media would handle her death and a sense that I should have been expecting it and surprise that I was surprised. I felt neither the jubilation that some felt, nor anger at the memories that her death provoked. My first response to the jubilation that her death provoked was that it was in poor taste.

In the week that passed after her death this changed. As the scale of the Thatcherfest has grown, as the stream of eulogising claptrap as vomited out, as the conscious and unconscious re-writing of history has flowered and as the cost of the whole affair, both culturally and financially, have grown, I grew angrier. The results can be seen in some of the preceding posts.

I understand that all the vitriol towards Thatcher seems to have surprised, and possibly even shocked people in the US. This sort of incomprehension is not new, nor restricted to Anglo American affairs, Gorbachev was heralded as a hero in the west, whilst he is still loathed in Russia; the French constantly look across the channel aghast at our insularity, and the popularity of the semi senile Reagan made no sense to British voters. Such phenomena as Thatcherism must be experienced from the inside. 

In all the eulogies of Thatcher not one mention, not even nuanced, that she was a bully, that she could be callous to the point of outright cruelty, that she held a grudge and took real pleasure in the humiliation of others, including members of her own cabinet.[1] Instead we had erected before our eyes a wholly new Thatcher, wise and compassionate, regal yet possessed of the common touch; Churchill in drag.

Had Thatcher had a private funeral I might just have been able to put up with all this guff, but the cost of her funeral and the propaganda exercise for the right that this became was too much. Like so many others I found within me years of suppressed anger at the Thatcher experiment suddenly, like some long dormant volcano, pour forth.

Now that she is buried physically it is time to take on and ultimately bury her malign political legacy. One good thing to come out of this whole affair has been a re-invigoration of the left, not only a clearer sense of the evils were and still are up  against but a re-examination of the terrain, of who we are and how best to carry on this fight. For that I suppose I can thank her.

[1] One thing not that has not been said too much but that I think ought to be emphasised more is that fact that, for all her supposed patriotism, she never really liked us, the flesh and blood citizens of this country, her patriotism was for a white cliffs of Dover world, that never really was. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/14/thatcher-never-liked-her-country
 







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