Thatcher balancing...

I had no idea what to write today, but I knew that I couldn’t let it pass without comment.

I was a teenager when Thatcher came to power and I bless her for stealing the school milk I was forced to drink saving countless numbers of children from lactaphobia. As a unit we had lived our lives in a variety of council houses (and I am the better for that) but all at once my ‘family’ were home owners. Of course nothing changed. The endless rows went on. The slaps and slights of a labour - conservative - independent councilor father, too full of himself to notice anyone else, still went on. His restlessness even came through in his politics, they changed with the climate although he drew the line at liberal (I think). Anyway, thanks to Thatcher his house was at last his own - and didn’t I know it.

I remember watching the miners and the police clash on the TV in the living room of that house. But a boy in rural Oxfordshire was just that and the mines were, for me, another country. They say ignorance is bliss and it might as well have been happening in Siberia for all the effect it had on me. I was more interested in watching ‘Call my Bluff’ than the news. Meanwhile Margaret called the unions bluff, and that was that. 

Good or bad? I don’t know. But I do know that the unions had become as corrupt as any government so if it wasn’t Thatcher it would have been somebody else.

In retrospect she was probably right in many ways about Europe, wrong about privatisation and she should have never pretended to be the Queen by using the royal ‘we’. The Queen she was not, despite her terribly affected accent, not a hint of Lincolnshire remaining.

The Falklands? Well, let’s just say that, although I was of the right age, I wasn’t called up, much to my relief, although for a while there was a question mark around it. I can’t help thinking even now that the Falklands was a war about very little but principle and penguins, But at least it was our war and not someone else’s.

As for the Poll Tax; well, for once the people of this country stood up and got something done and as a result today we live without unfair and unlimited taxation (insert sarcasm symbol here).

Margaret Thatcher you could love her, or hate her, or be indifferent – just another politician in a long line of politicians who believed or believe that they know what the country needs. She wasn’t Hitler, or Churchill (who in my mind is not much better than the former), she was herself in all her gaudy and sometimes tarnished glory.

So that is my Margaret Thatcher. Here’s another by Damian Thompson who is a journalist I much admire. I can’t completely disagree with a single word.

“Let it be said, immediately and unequivocally: Margaret Thatcher was the finest prime minister of the post-war era, the only British politician in modern times to change Britain – and so much for the better. As her aide Ferdinand Mount once said of her – and he was by no means blind to her faults – she made Britons believe that things were possible: that we could revive ourselves through a sheer act of will and by blocking our ears to the enemies of progress. The intensity of the hatred she inspired was, paradoxically, a tribute to her. No one who changes the way a country works, to put it bluntly, can do so without implementing policies that hurt people. She knew that, and regretted it, for she was a kind lady. But Britain is enormously in her debt. This is an immensely sad day.”

Well, I did say that I couldn't disagree completely.

One last thing. I found myself ranting at some bloke kicking off about Thatcher and the funeral cost this morning. Now I'm no Thatcherite but she did work hard for this country even if she got lots wrong. I think it was right to give her a decent send off and move on. I shan't watch it though, not even on the news.

Goodbye Margaret Thatcher – God grant that you lie still.