How Will you feel/What will you do when Margaret Thatcher Dies?

but he'll kinda have to do that, won't he? (or whomever it is that will be PM if Labour is in charge when maggie kicks it). i mean, clinton had to make nicey-nice when nixon dropped dead (and dubya would prob. be nicey-nice if carter or clinton died under his watch).

either way, seems kinda pointless to get too angry about it -- it's part of the job!

Thatcher in hospital
Those Brits sure love their Thatcher
Lets Celebrate The 25th Anniversary Of Margaret Thatcher Coming To Power. May 03 1979
How long has Margaret Thatcher got to live?

xpost

FWIW, I think there will be a lot of undeniably true platitudes that don't actually say anything "she had a massive influence on the country", "she was a trail-blazer" etc. And no state funeral.

Her grave will be well watered.

There will be no Princess Diana type mourning

You're wrong there. There are still huge numbers of people who consider her a hero. I'm fairly sure a venn diagram would show a large overlap between those and the Queen of Hearts mourners.

thatcher herself? i doubt i'll be much affected.

I don't think she'll get a state funeral, because I think her family will decline due to threats of people pissing on her coffin etc. And why teh fuck would she get minute's silences at sporting events?

Lex, misogyny, wtf?

PM's only get state funerals if they die when PM don't they? (I assume however Winston Churchill got a state funeral?)

Not true. Actually, I don't think any PM who died in office got one. Very few non-Royals get a state funeral. I think Thatcher will be offered one due to place in history/first woman PM etc, but it'll be declined.

and it's got absolutely nothing to do with her gender. fwiw i don't think of her as a woman - or even as particularly human. i remember an old comic adventure thing i had called "you are margaret thatcher" in which they opened her up and found she had "the old-style heart: reptillian, with cold blood". that's exactly how i think of her.

but also living where i did it was v difficult to observe badness happening that could be directly attributed to her actions

this is an interesting and admirably honest point; i mean, i grew up in the north of england, part of an extended scottish family, and my mum was a nurse ... it was difficult for me to feel anything other than spectacular and painful loathing.

(my parents, fwiw, voted for her the first time round, i think. i understand their reasons for doing so; i accepted their grovelling apologies on behalf of my generation; and i still wind them up about it at every opportunity.)

and yes, plenty of people still revere her. she has been the topic of ferocious arguments round certain in-laws' dinner table.

(hopefully it's not too busy or i'll get shy bladder or something)

They should state clearly that it's a shame when someone dies but she was a disaster for the country and her actions will never be forgiven.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ToaK00BUcJE

an earnest question.

I thought we did.

the middle classes might not be materially richer. but at least the country might just have a fucking soul left.

Considering that Clinton was getting foreign policy advice from Tricky Dick up until the moment the latter was too sick to give it, this was the least he could do.

also lex, was that politics degree in fucking martian politics or something?

I shall stop my jigging long enough to laugh at the press if I actually see a "stop the presses! People dying is not a good thing!" article in any paper.

FWIW, if she'd died in the 80s, someone else would have carried on her reign of evil. This way she gets to see the shite she's inflicted on the country and the way she's fucked everything up and she gets to read and hear people moaning about it (if she cares, which I strongly suspect she doesn't). Small comfort, I know.

The Lex has a politics degree? and thinks the Thatcher hatred would be misogynistic? oh crikey.

(yep, that's the one)

x-post

actually, fuck thatcher's death and two-minute silences. i might just do this at the weekend anyway.

"How will you feel, what will you do
when margaret thatcher dies?"

I too did not particularly feel the impact personally, being young and middle class at the time, but I felt it all around me, I still feel it now, and I cannot forgive. Grr.

-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...), November 2nd, 2006.

so THIS is what marcello means by 'thatcherkid'.

The triumph of identity politics over real politics.

Sometimes I think the Lex is really stupid.

so THIS is what marcello means by 'thatcherkid'.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

(I missed the '88 cup final Kerr - I was getting pished, in a pub, at 16 - you see what Thatcher did to society?! Kids with no future turning to alcohol!)

(roll on teh all new edit function plz)

Yes Henry, but nowhere near as much as this:

"Thatcher had no significant impact on my life other than being the leader of the country when i was just a child"

I use it jokingly a lot but when I say "I blame Thatcher", 99.9% of the time I do, and it's true she IS to blame

And neither did the leaders of Germany, France, Japan, the USA etc, and they still have coal miners, steel workers, shipbuilders, trade unions etc etc

USA is a basket case. they get like 10 days' holiday there a year.

dunno about japan.

No it doesn't, it means you're a product of Thatcher and are thus inclined to say things like "Well she had a point, the unions were destroying the country..." or, the clincher, USING THE PHRASE "THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT"

isn't this the same as supporting Thatcher?

it Is supporting thatcher.

xpost

stevem: "and are thus inclined to say things like "Well she had a point, the unions were destroying the country..."
isn't this the same as supporting Thatcher?'

markg: YES

We still have all of these. Not as many, granted. But then we don't have as many penny-farthings on the road as we used to.

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

god almighty: she makes it sound so easy, doesn't she? like people's "problems" could all be solved if, i dunno, they went and got a job in the city somewhere and bought themselves a big house. did she know the first fucking thing about how people become homeless; about social exclusion? (actually: she pretty much invented the latter, so i'm sure she did.)

It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour

never quite got to the second part of it, though, did you?

And bye bye Britain, be sure to turn the lights out on your way out

the point is many of us (who were kids growing up in the South-East of England, have mercy on our souls) are still largely ignorant of the negative effects of her rule, on our own lives. what WERE the effects for US? (srsly, do point it out for me).

this doesn't mean we don't understand the hate - it makes perfect political sense. but naturally we don't quite FEEL it ourselves because of personal experience.

Your life is not affected by anyone else's life? Thatcher would be so proud of you!

that's because it's very hard to see how 1979 couldn't have 'happened', given the state of the opposition at the time. blame the voters OR, maybe, partly blame the labour party a little bit. or maybe blame the bigger economic picture and labour's failure to safeguard the welfare state/full employment -- while acknowledging this would have been a toughy to pull off.

You see, here we have the genuine voice of the Thatcherkid, who is saying that Britain was a "great place" in the 70s and what exactly does that have to do with Thatcher destroying industries, communities, PEOPLE?

Winter of Discontent?

What about the fact that the New Labour you so despise would not have been considered necessary had it not been for Thatcherism and the attitudes it engendered?

She's did a lot of harm to this country, to working people, to social housing, to the health service and to transport and she set the ground work for Tony Blair and his continuation of the same.

xpost

xpost

and she set the ground work for Tony Blair and his continuation of the same.

are these two statements contradicTory of each other?

but it's her favourite song!

Incidentally I had no idea that Cameron had picked "Ernie" on DID!

even assuming that things were as, say, mrs fiendish's uncle would have it ("the unions were coming round your house, taking your dinner and then piling it up rotting outside for six weeks, and then you were being taxed on how many muddy footprints they left on the floor") there's still no excuse for thatcher's "solution" involving the total annhiliation of entire communities; of basically treating large parts of the country, and its inhabitants, as totally expendable in order to increase the wealth of small pockets of the south.

what, after all, is a country? a land mass populated by people? or a way of making money? this is what i find hard to understand about thatcher: she appears to have not one ounce of compassion, of human feeling. perhaps i should pity her for that. but then i look at the wastelands where there used to be mining communities - which, sure, needed to adapt to a changing world, but "adapting" isn't the same as "having your heart ripped out" - and think, no, hate beats pity hands-down.

a) Nothing much (not happy I hope)

but...

b) Will go out and get seriously bevvied

xpost

benrique have you adopted systems thinking?

But the reason this is an actual change is that the state isn't a business and doesn't/shouldn't think like one. CF previous discussion of whether state companies should be run on a profit/loss basis.

Because there's one thing I know,
I'd like to live long enough to savour
That's when they finally put you in the ground
I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

-- Andrew Farrell (afarrel...), November 3rd, 2006.

i think we were talking abt cost/benefit which a whole 'nother thing. with govt-as-business it's murky because industries subsidized by government were still nominally independent and making profits and had shareholders, etc: britain still had a capitalist economy and was dependent on exports.

if the government was not a business as such, it was so deeply implicated in business that the fate of business affected them more than it could ever have done before 1910-45 (or thereabouts).

if government is in business and the books don't balance -- and more to the point here, if the city refused to invest in uk industry -- the government is in a tight spot.

I was thinking more in Col Parker terms.

The main reason Thatcher got out of the deficit was 1) the discovery of North Sea Oil meant that the country was able to afford the huge unemployment her policies caused 1979-81. without it, they would have had to slash it massively, and there would have been riots in more than Brixton and Toxteh and they would have been more than riots. She also did a sale-and-leaseback on the country's asset base which is not exactly a sensible long-term strategic policy. And that was discovered by accident.

boris, go for the one with the tits.

ok or dom passantino

Female Thatcherbabies are why there is a vogue for £900 handbags.

Maybe the Queen will have a conga in Buckingham Palace as she hated Thatcher supposedly.

Saddam Hussein's death will be greeted with more sadness than Thatcher's

OTM. I was 12 when Thatcher came to power, 23 when she resigned. In that time I saw the community I lived in turned from thriving to destroyed. Last time I went back there it had barely recovered at all. Multiply that population x1000 and you have the number of people queueing up to piss on her grave. Just get on with it you contrary cow.

Haha just you guys wait til Thatcher is on death's door. That's going to blow away all previous RIP threads.

-- Matt DC, Monday, 18 February 2008 15:46

I for one look forward to Shakey Mo posting

We can have a poll. So list all the ways you might react then I'll do a poll!

1 Grimly Fiendish's suggestion of A MASS CONGA

2 Join The Mass Migration of The Whole Scotland To Piss On Her Grave.

3 Get Angry At The Media Coverage Of "our great leader"

4 Spontaneously Combust After Reading BBC Have Your Say

It's amazing how someone so hated was able to win three (or was it four) election victories.

maracas.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w234/cherrycodes/msbg/rickroll5.gif

We can have a poll. So list all the ways you might react then I'll do a poll!

1 Grimly Fiendish's suggestion of A MASS CONGA

-- Herman G. Neuname

You know I thought for a minute someone was parodying you, then it turned out to actually be you.

ok astley gif is kinda hypnotic and rong

I hope this thread revival didn't get you too excited, Onimo

Serious question for Brits, because I am not there: does "Thatcherism" still have the same awful under-the-skin way of framing all your political debates as "Reaganomics" (or similar) does ours? Because we're still haunted by that motherfucker.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8499/scousersdanceonthatchertd6.jpg

does "Thatcherism" still have the same awful under-the-skin way of framing all your political debates as "Reaganomics" (or similar) does ours?

Possibly more so.

still not giving a fuck about this

Possibly more so.

ha ha. LET US COUNT THE WAYS.

I don't think it's even awful, because it's impossible to talk about late 00s politics without mentioning Thatcherism because Thatcherism is still the default state, New Labour have just tinkered round the edges really.

Blairology
Brownomony

mandelsonics

major...

nope.

majoritis

i think there's something quite wrong about celebrating a person's death, even margaret thatcher.

shh, it's cool. it's like a badge or something.

YOu know what will happen?

There will be some sort of "state occasion/procession", where the streets will be thronged with people having a massive punch-up.

it's impossible to talk about late 00s politics without mentioning Thatcherism because Thatcherism is still the default state, New Labour have just tinkered round the edges really.

In my darker moods I believe the same is true of Reagan. He seems to have done a fine and solid job as a politician -- he took the fear and perceived chaos (I'M AS MAD AS HELL!) and economic uncertainty of the 70's and turned it into certainty, order, security -- not through his policies, which were fucked inside and out, but through nothing more than seeming pretty likable. This is how we choose presidents now. People don't really want change, because change is a bitch. They just want someone to tell them everything will be ok. Maybe that's not such news, maybe it was always like this. Maybe the only question in choosing a president is, Who would you rather listen to a fireside chat from, while you try to tell yourself that you're not in a handbasket and you don't know exactly where you're going.

Dark moods, like I said.

Haemajorrhoids

(er, I'll get me coat)

Did something happen to her?

Only on another thread. Otherwise, not that we know of.

Poll Tax Riot anniversary coming up.

I wonder who will go first, Maggie or the Queen?

omg same day please

They're the same age, I think.

or at least same week. like Diana+Mother Theresa in reverse.

Poll Tax Riot anniversary coming up.

-- roxymuzak, Monday, February 18, 2008 6:03 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

eh?

You know, when you were conceived in a frenzy of protesting.

ah, that all-important 18th anniversary.

just after the gulf war's big one-seven.

Yeah, it's actually still an anniversary, even though it's not a square number!

happy 20th, aswad at #1

Your comment aside, Steve, how does anger towards the Queen compare to that shown Thatcher?

it's a drop in loch lomond

I find it difficult to really hate on the Queen, but I'm not a Britisher, so what do I know.

still six weeks till the big one-eight, but i'm getting in party food already.

Shit, I didn't realize that Elizabeth was creeping up on Victoria's record. She needs to rest.

I find it difficult to really hate on the Queen, but I'm not a Britisher, so what do I know.

in my experience (fwiw) hatred of both do frequently go hand in hand (anyone hate the Royal Family more than they hate Thatcher? not quite seeing it), certainly in more deprived areas (natch), but with hatred towards the monarchy concept rather than Lizzie herself who obviously continues to enjoy more support from the usual suspects than Thatcher ever did.

I was listening to WNYC and apparently Liz used to swap recipes with Presidents.

I wonder who will go first, Maggie or the Queen?

-- roxymuzak, Monday, 18 February 2008 18:05 (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

omg same day please

-- blueski, Monday, 18 February 2008 18:10 (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

YES.

Hold no hate for QE2 (don't care abt royals really), but thatch obit getting pwned by THE QUEEN would be too awesome.

Time was I'd have rejoiced when thatcher died, horrible mad nazi cow, but it's sll so long ago now that I probably wouldn't care much one way or the other. It'd've been better if she'd died in '79, the damage is done now.

I should record the bottom-of-page run of drawings in an old Spitting Image book i have which if you flick thru fast shows the Queen in stamp-esque profile being shoved forward, her crown flying in the air to come to rest on Thatcher's head. most amusing.

country doesn't seem to have improved particularly since 1990 -- some things are better, but we seem to be going into another 1990-style repossession frenzy so ech -- so it's hard to get too worked up about it tbh. i would have felt different in the golden dawn of new labour, cough, but they've honoured her legacy almost extravagantly.

but thatch obit getting pwned by THE QUEEN would be too awesome.

Oh, I didn't even get this aspect of what Steve said! I just thought he was being all "I'd love to see them both dead."

yeah no it was really just for the media meltdown

Haw. I wonder what name they would come up with for the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWOy23MLY1I

She is so cold in this video. "You accept this, yes?"

still lols: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RRgvrGEwgh0

All this "thatcherkid" stuff is nonsense.

The moneyed middle-aged with their private health care and half a mil houses are the ones who've benefited from her policies, not us poor young sods who can't find affordable housing, decent public services, a state pension or secure jobs that aren't going to be outsourced next year.

"OMG THEY HAVE IPODS AND THE BLING BLING HIPPETY HOP"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWOy23MLY1I

She is so cold in this video. "You accept this, yes?"

ugh she makes my fucking SKIN CRAWL, to this day. i see/hear her so rarely i forget how visceral the hatred is. vile. just vile.

Oh, I remember this when it happened! THatch retreated behind a protective wall and NEVER EVER appeared in public again.

OK, 'appeared in public anywhere people could actually approach her' I mean.

I always thought it quite funny when you'd get a protesting pensioner hassling Tony Blair (or whoever), and the press would be all 'hray, people power' and I'd be all 'hah! not even slightly as good as the Thatch/Belgrano TV show'

Not dead yet? Oh well...

As per Emsk, that clip of her getting sonned by the housewife, I couldn't watch it, I get this visceral reaction of loathing at the sound of her voice. Horrible.

Yeah, at the time was used to it, but now? Why go back into that cold water?

Still alive, and showing off her bust!

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02_03/thatcherES_468x314.jpg

STRANGLER'S HANDS!!!

Fat handed twat

I just realised Maggie's starting to look a bit like my granny did before she died, at 82! Maggie won't see her next birthday.

Indifferent. Indifference is all she deserves and all she will get.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7284697.stm

I wonder if grimly is working tonight

i think she will die happy knowing that the changes she initiated are being driven home by her acolytes in the labour party.

On these Thatcher threads, there is a lot of talk about the glee that will be felt when she dies, and naturally accompanying this, a lot of talk about the hatred that people feel for her.

Thatcher was a strident, rebarbative character, and in many ways - as a reading of John Campbell's tremendous biography of her years in power shows - an odd person, rather ill at ease with what many consider normal social interaction; something of an obsessive and little blessed with what Denis Healey called a hinterland. It's not difficult to see why anyone would find her a distasteful, dislikeable personality. I found her that myself, throughout her time in power, and until she faded from the scene.

But the talk about hatred of Thatcher and happiness at her demise surely involves more than this - it involves, as is often said, 'what she did'. That is, presumably, government policy 1979-1990 (and since, given the power of her legacy). But few people here have spelled out exactly, and specifically, what it was that she did that she shouldn't have done, or should have done differently, or what they would have done in her position. I would be interested to see someone here do that.

I guess I don't feel totally convinced, now, that Thatcher herself was the key to what has happened to this country. As long ago as 1989, for instance, Stuart Hall et al were arguing that post-Fordist 'New Times' were bigger than just Thatcherism, which was only a limited adaptation to them. But it's of course true that she was a remarkably strong and powerful character, and if anyone could alter the course of contemporary history perhaps she could; and maybe she was the key after all - I'm not sure how best one should nuance this.

I also think that attacks on Thatcherism are often rather vague - 'she told us that greed was good and that only money mattered', that kind of thing - when I would like to see a more concrete account of what was wrong with specific policies, and what alternative policies could have been pursued.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44477000/jpg/_44477824_thatcherbody_getty.jpg

Thatcher going for maximum Emperor Palpatine effect in this shot.

For my friends brought up in ex-mining towns (I moved to the area at 14), the hatred doesn't always have its basis in your knowledge about specific policies. It's based on feelings aroused by seeing your community in tatters/queueing with your mum for food/seeing your dad dejected and unemployed and linking that with Thatcher because that's the only person in the whole world your parents and your aunts and your friends' parents attribute the hardship to. For them, it's cultural, not cerebral.

I mean, the hatred started brewing in childhood...and what motivation would they have for now undoing all that hatred?

well, one motivation for undoing hatred, arguably, is that hatred is itself a bad thing, which takes its toll on those who hate. Brecht wrote about 'anger, even against injustice, can make the voice hoarse' - the radical or the oppressed can be emotionally contorted or twisted by their suffering and struggle. It might be good to let go of some of that hatred.

I'm not particularly advising that any specific individual should do that, though, if that's how they feel about MT. They could be right to hate, and their hatred might be a kind of reminder of political principle. I'm just answering your question.

I agree in general that those who were part of the communities around the coal industry probably have the most right (if that's a sensible or comprehensible way of putting it) to hate MT. And if I heard that someone who had been laid off from a Yorkshire pit in 1984 and been brutalized by the police at Orgreave that June was the one who had gone and vandalized a putative MT monument or grave then I would respect, even salute, his action. That doesn't really answer the question, though, of what should have been done differently, re. the coal industry or anything else.

I thought this was quite an interesting assessment:

http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/journal/thatcher.htm

I would be interested to see someone here do that.

The trouble is when you've been doing this for about 25 years, as I have, you just get so tired of doing it. I really can't be bothered any more.

I won't rejoice at her death, I don't wish death on anyone, and her policies will live on. Which is more depressing than the fact that she does as well.

Just in case anyone else is interested in answering, I asked here the other day (see above): what exactly did MT do, in policy terms, that makes you hate her so much?

PF - that Brecht quote is good. Anger is a fascinating emotion, as it is injurious both to its subject and object.

I'm finding the Thatch hate at the moment a bit pathetic, in that it is like people think they can undo Thatcher's victory by drinking beers when she dies.

pinefox question u&k. not one i can answer tho.

what oh what will the thread be called? no-one will want to use "RIP"

It's a good question, because so few of the things she introduced have been rolled back, and when radical, and yes, hurtful, changes bed into the status quo, it's hard to carry on complaining about them without looking like an ostrich. Might becomes right, so to speak.

But: the programme of dismantling traditional industries, war on unionised labour, benefits cuts, the poll tax, the Falklands War, backing US foreign policy, council house sell-off.

x-post: Thanks, Vicar. Here is the whole poem - it's longer than I remembered, but tremendous, I think, in its characteristic cunning and wisdom:

--

TO THOSE BORN LATER

I

Truly, I live in dark times
Naive words are dangerous. A forehead without wrinkles
indicates lack of sensitivity. One who laughs
just hasn't received
the dreadful news.

What are these time when
a chat about trees is almost a crime
because it incorporates silence about so many evil deeds!
Is the one who walks calmly along the road
out of reach now for his friends
who are in trouble?

It is true: I am just earning my living
But believe me: that's just accidental. Nothing
of what I do entitles me to eat my fill.
I was saved by accident. (Once my luck runs out, I am lost.)

They tell me: you just eat and drink! Be glad of what you have!
But how can I eat and drink if
what I eat I take away from the those who hunger, and
My glass of water is what's lacking for the one who is dying of thirst?
And still I eat and drink.

I would like to be wise, too.
The old books say what's wise:
To keep away from the struggles of the world and to spend the short time
without fear
Also, to live without violence
repay evil with good
not to fulfill your longings, but to forget
is what is said to be wise.
All that I cannot do.
Truly, I live in dark times!

II

To the cities I came at the time of chaos
when there was hunger.
Among the people I came at the time of rebellion
and I rebelled with them.
Thus passed the time
that was given to me on earth.

I ate my food between battles
I slept among murderers
I loved heedlessly
And I watched nature without patience
Thus passed my time
that was given to me on earth.

The roads lead to the morass of my times
Language betrayed me to the butcher.
I was able to do so little. But the rulers
would sit more safely without me, that I hoped.
Thus passed my time
that was given to me on earth.

Strength was limited. The goal
was far away
It was clearly visible, even though for me
virtually unreachable.
Thus passed my time
that was given to me on earth.

III

You who will emerge on the surface of the floodwater
in which we drowned
remember also
when you speak of our weaknesses
the dark times
whom you escaped.

Walking as we were, changing countries more often than our shoes,
through the wars of classes, desparate
where there was only injustice and no rebellion.

Yet we know:
Hatred of baseness too
contorts our features.
Anger about injustice too
makes the voice hoarse. O we
who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness
were ourselves unable to be friendly.

But you, when the time comes
when a human being is a helper to human beings
commemorate us leniently.

Though I'm perhaps not the best person to answer - I don't really HATE her in the way that other people who want to dance on her grave do, because I don't subscribe to the view that it was a one-woman crusade, but more a wave of heartlessness in British culture.

btw, Vicar, you won't be surprised to hear that there is an inflection of this argument in Irish literature. A good book on Ulysses from 2002 argues that the novel, while anti-colonial in spirit and detail, also attempts to overcome anti-colonial 'ressentiment' and bitterness through laughter (that sounds formulaic, but it really is a good book).

And there is also Yeats's tremendous formulation from 'Easter 1916':

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

*Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.* [this is the strongest echo of BB]
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?

like i said before i don't know any southerners with anywhere near the same sense of anger towards her, even if they're well aware of her flaws, errors and the damage her ideas caused. xp

I'm finding the Thatch hate at the moment a bit pathetic, in that it is like people think they can undo Thatcher's victory by drinking beers when she dies.

I don't think anyone's actually thinking that, are they? She and her party ripped the fucking soul out of this country, several contributors to this thread have already explained how, and being glad to see the back of her as a symbol of Things That Are Bad isn't that bad a way of thinking when all's said and done.

xposts, Alba, she kind of symbolised the wave heartlessness and turned it into an art form. She possibly even drove it from on high, she certainly had a hand in creating it by spouting shit about no such thing as society etc.

(this is terribly glib and not very insightful and missing out a lot of historical context, I know, but I'll maybe come back to it later)

If you were, like me, a middle-class child during her time in office, then I think it's true to say that disdain was more likely to spring, on a personal level, from a deep lack of connection with the Thatcherite crowd's personality, philosophy, outlook on the world, rather than from feeling the brunt of specific policies.

xpost, reply to Alba earlier:

Alba: you are right, and that was very much part of what I meant - MT created the UK we live in now, to some extent, and to undo everything she did would actually be to cause a kind of quake beneath our own feet in many ways.

as for this list: let me be sceptical for a moment:
- the programme of dismantling traditional industries: well, isn't that a much broader process - a bit like blaming a politician for the Industrial Revolution? or do you think the UK needed to retain the same primary and manufacturing base it had in the 1970s?

- war on unionised labour: I agree about this criticism, really

- benefits cuts: OK, but I would like to see some figures to prove this; I have seen figures showing that public spending actually grew in the 1980s, partly because more people were unemployed

- the poll tax: didn't last

- the Falklands War: it is actually quite difficult to argue against the Falklands War, once you accept the donnee that Argentina had invaded. (One frequent criticism is that the wrong signals were sent out *before* that happened, by drawing down naval forces in the South Atlantic.) A lot of people who are not on the radical Right think it couldn't really have been handled differently, from that point; cf Bernard Porter's LRB review of the official history, for instance (2006 or so). One could look into details here, though, to be sure.

- backing US foreign policy: I think in some cases this is a well-founded argument, though in the case of the USSR the ending of the Cold War looks benign with hindsight. Did you know that MT is supposed to have been much more ravenously keen on nuclear weapons than Reagan? His SDI was conceived as the way to a post-nuclear world, and she didn't like that idea.

- council house sell-off: but by the end of the 1980s no party opposed this. I don't know, it's true that the second Thatcher rececession hurt a lot of people who had bought and were then reposssessed. And it's true, I think, that social housing is a good, and that the cutback / deliberate decline of this resource is maybe a very bad thing. But arguing against an expansion of property ownership in general is a pretty ambitious thing to do, esp. when you look around and most of our own generation want to own their own homes, etc.

Ailsa: "She and her party ripped the fucking soul out of this country, several contributors to this thread have already explained how"

I don't think they have explained how, at least not on this thread; that was the point of my question.

"ripped the fucking soul out of this country" is powerful talk, perhaps, but doesn't tell us much about what they actually did, or what that soul looked like beforehand. Do you think 'this country' (you mean the UK as a whole, rather than Scotland?) doesn't have a 'soul' now? I think we are still pretty lucky people here, by global standards.

Re: Falklands. I nearly didn't put that in, on the grounds that, no, I don't mean Argentina should have just been allowed to take it by force on the grounds that it was an ugly rock half a world away not worth defending. I was more referring to the handling of it, the Belgrano, the diplomacy, etc. But I am quite ignorant of the subject and perhaps am swayed by my dislike of all the jingoism it engendered, which got the government out of an unpopularity hole.

Lets Celebrate The 25th Anniversary Of Margaret Thatcher Coming To Power. May 03 1979

^^ This thread's quite useful, pinefox, for explaining what Thatcher did. I am referring to the UK as a whole, yes. I think the loss of heavy industry etc has made a change to the country in a not-good way (see Pashmina's post on that other thread about the unemployment situation in the North East, for example).

Just in case anyone else is interested in answering, I asked here the other day (see above): what exactly did MT do, in policy terms, that makes you hate her so much?

-- the pinefox, Monday, 10 March 2008 12:13 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Generally, I feel the same way as Ned T R does. One thing that still rankles somewhat is this, though: she was given advance information of a coming military attack on our territory. She chose not to act on this information, and the resulting invasion and war cost many people their lives, as well as millions of pounds, and a bunch of expensive military hardware, including a cruiser and a capital ship, all unneccesarily. Rather than resign over this pathetic failure, she had one of her ministers resign instead. Then she milked the publicity over our successful military campaign, presenting herself as a sub-churchillian war leader. She won an election over this, that she very possibly would have lost otherwise. She presented herself as some kind of a great patriot for the remainder of her time in office. To me a "great patriot", if the term hasn't been completely devalued by now, is one who cares enough about their country to try and make it a better place in some material way, not someone who allows part of their country's territory to be invaded by fascists, then acts like they were the only ones who got it right afterwards.

On top of that, wasting a shitload of money on Trident still rankles.

That Brecht poem reminds me of Mandelstam's one about Stalin.

Income inequality:

ihttp://www.poverty.org.uk/01/a.gif

http://www.poverty.org.uk/01/a.gif

Alba: does that chart suggest that inequality, or poverty, has declined under New Labour?

Marginally, yes, but it's only one measure. The super rich have got richer since 1997, I believe.

In addition to Alba's list:

Selling the British public that which it already owned. If she had really been on the true path of radical Neo-Liberalism a lot of her defenders claim her to have been on then she could have, should have, privatised the nationalised industries by handing over equal shares to every british citizen. Instead she sold off the nationalised industries to the Sids and funded election winning tax cuts.

Education and health were consistently underfunded during her term.

Whats so shocking about that graph is the relentless rise from '82 to '92, which Thatcher and her government seemed to not care one jot about. One small example, after the 1987 election Thatcher's first words on victory night were something along the lines of "We've got to do something about those inner cities". There was never any inkling that her policies might have something to do with the great swathes of poverty that were in those inner cities just that, now everything was so great, it would just require a bit of tinkering with to sort out.

I think that's true. She could come across as quite vague and impetuous - suddenly latching onto a cause or idea like this (her anti-litter campaign with Branson is perhaps a milder example) in quite a dotty way. (The moment you talk about is, I suppose, an early part of the so-called 'Social Thatcherism' period of 1987-, in which she decided to try to influence social conduct, values, etc - the 'no such thing as society' statement is from about 4 months after this, though she had said similar things previously.)

She also (as you imply) had that oft-noted knack of distancing herself from her own government - 'something must be done', as though she had not been at the heart of what had already been done.

"poll tax: didn't last"

!

xp
In fact you can see her say it here...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/11/newsid_2511000/2511095.stm
The way she says 'inner cities' and grimaces/tries to smile (at 2:04) is just amazingly cringeworthy. Shudder.

to get more choice she says...grrr...oh, it's bringing it all back...

As the child of working class (some might say underclass) immigrant parents who grew up during her reign, I can say that my disdain for her arises directly from the policies her government pursued towards me and the people like me. And the seeming indifference to the idea that this might piss people off. As if these people somehow didn't count.

The fact that her government's policies seemed almost designed to victimise those sections of the electorate that historically didn't vote Conservative also rankled. It seemed so vindictive and personal - like these people deserved to be punished for disagreeing with her.

Arguably Thatcher was, at best a figurehead, for this - although the propaganda of the time put her as prime mover - but she was so smug, arrogant and unapolagetic about what her government were doing that hatred seems to be the only response I can muster. She's the symbol for a set of attitudes that I loathe.

My utter disdain for the new, caring Conservative Party is mainly caused by their continued willingness to hold up people like her (and the truly abominable Norman Tebbit) as great and influential figures worthy of respect.

is there a good biography one of you can recommend?

She's the symbol for a set of attitudes that I loathe.

Because her so called "liberties" were reserved for the likes of "us".

Whereas we were "you" or "them" or "non-U"

it is actually quite difficult to argue against the Falklands War, once you accept the donnee that Argentina had invaded.

Ridiculous. pinefox more and more OFFtm in this thread, as rebutted in detail by Pash above.

to me, as an American, she came across like Reagan's evil twin sister. same policies of economic class warfare layered under a veneer of upper crust contempt. same long shadow cast across the country.

I for one would be happy to dance on her grave.

I shall raise a glass and congratulate Hell on its new tenant.

Those burning furnaces of eternal damnation will be shut down within a couple of years.

(c) Steve Bell circa 1985

Remember when laydee politicians cried and we didn't feel sorry for them?

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_02/maggieES_468x294.jpg

to me, as an American, she came across like Reagan's evil twin sister. same policies of economic class warfare layered under a veneer of upper crust contempt. same long shadow cast across the country.

Yes and no, ostensibly one of the aims of Thatcherism was to improve the lot of yer aspirational working class in this country. It's a no because a lot of them did very well out of it. It's a yes because the Thatcherite view has always been that there are two working classes. A 'redeemable' working class, that is interested in social mobility and aspiration, who should be encouraged to pursue this, and the rest of them who aren't interested/can't be arsed and who policy-makers essentially shouldn't bother with.

is there a good biography one of you can recommend?

One of Us by Hugo Young.

Exactly.

What if God was "One of us"?

My utter disdain for the new, caring Conservative Party is mainly caused by their continued willingness to hold up people like her (and the truly abominable Norman Tebbit) as great and influential figures worthy of respect.

To be fair, Blair and Brown do this too.

Norman Tebbit? Really?

OK, Tebbit doesn't get a mention, though I'm sure they'll issue some respectful statement when he dies.

John Campbell wrote a two-volume biography of Thatcher. The second volume, The Iron Lady, was published in 2003, and is superbly informed and informative. A striking thing about it, for me, was that (unlike most people I've read on Thatcherism, and indeed most people I know) it wasn't anti-Thatcher in intent - yet it somehow became incredulous and dismissive of aspects of her, as it went on. So the author's disdain and disapproval were all the more powerful, in a sense.

I don't see how the admirable Pashmina has 'rebutted in detail' my general position, if I have one (I'm not sure I do). He made some interesting points about the Falklands - fine. As I said myself, above, a major, widely-made criticism of MT's government on this issue is not that they went to war, but that they allowed the conditions to develop in which invasion and war happened. But nb that this partly involves drawing-down of naval deployments, cuts in that sector of the armed forces - which doesn't sound like a 'Thatcherite' / right-wing / militaristic thing to do.

Pashmina is right, of course, that MT shamelessly milked that conflict, and everybody knows that it had a major role in altering her electoral fortunes. But he didn't say (and nobody has yet said) that the UK should have left the Falklands to the Argentinian regime. I don't know what I think about this, myself. I know that lots of people think that the islands, having been invaded, had to be retaken as a kind of vindication of international law, etc. I'm not sure I want to believe that.

Some of the sad 'ambiguity' of the Falklands War can be gauged, I suppose, by comparing it with the 2003 Iraq War. Both were waged against the (perhaps limited / inferior) armed forces of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes; one could probably have made some of the 'human rights' case for war in 1982 that some made after 2003. (Indeed it has been said that MT's war helped, albeit somewhat indirectly, to topple a dictatorship, etc.) But the Falklands involved a clear issue of 'national sovereignty', UK territory, etc - even if we actually consider that the UK really shouldn't have territory on that part of the world, and that some kind of more enlightened arrangement would be appropriate. Imagine an Iraq invasion of Gibraltar, and the Iraq War as response to that -- that would be relatively sane compared to the actual Iraq War, which was nothing really to do with national interest, international law & order, etc, but just a mad fetish for which endless different justifications and cover-ups were sought.

There is a temptation to say (as doubtless many have done): 'MT, with UK interests in mind, wouldn't have done such a crazy and bad thing as Blair' (who was arguably much more in thrall to his US president than she was), which is perhaps like saying 'canny / pragmatic Kissinger wouldn't have backed the messianic neo-cons' (but apparently he has done, according to a recent LRB article? - so I'm not sure that line would stick at all anyway).

but I was 'against' the Falklands War in 1982; I remember 'arguing' with people in the primary school dinner-hall about it, if you want a vintage and absurd anti-Thatcher image.

"poll tax: didn't last"

!

-- roxymuzak, Monday, March 10, 2008 2:20 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^this.

What is that supposed to mean about the moral value of the poll tax, pinefox?

well, it doesn't appear to count as a 'legacy'. it would be hard to say that through the poll tax she ruined Britain or tore this country's soul apart, considering that it was quite swiftly repealed. as far as I can see, the main political legacy of the poll tax was her own political demise.

What difference does it make if she dies now anyway?

Maybe in '78 or '82 or whenever. Not like she hasn't lived a long and very successful life now anyway.

I'm tired.

well, it doesn't appear to count as a 'legacy'. it would be hard to say that through the poll tax she ruined Britain or tore this country's soul apart, considering that it was quite swiftly repealed. as far as I can see, the main political legacy of the poll tax was her own political demise.

Ah, I see what you mean. But the reason it's not part of her legacy was because of mass civil disobedience by us Scots. And even then, it was the introduction in England that resulted in the repeal of the law.

As for the other points - you acknowledge that she fought a war against the unions: surely that alone would be enough to understand why the left hates her? And I don't agree that the destruction of British industry can be compared to the industrial revolution. It was a decision to punish the unionized working class for the fall of Heath, rather than adapt to changing global conditions. And even if it was necessary, her failure to cushion the blow for those whose communities were destroyed had long lasting effects. The Falklands were a fairly ridiculous gambit that could have been solved without bloodshed - and i think that defending it might mean a more general support for violence to defend imperialist conquests. Either way, the sinking of the Belgrano was an unconscionable act.

But these are just the bullet points of the 80s. There is also the bloody attitude towards Northern Ireland, the mishandled economic policies that resulted in millions of unemployed workers, and the destruction of the social fabric of this country.

I don't really see how any person committed to social justice and equality can defend her time in office.

Anyway, might be a better discussion once she's shuffled off. Later.

The "creative destruction" of British industry, more like. (x-post)

As a long-standing leftie myself, I can't understand the emphasis people place on traditional industry as having some talismanic-like magical qualities in the economy. There is nothing special or outstandingly virtuous about manufacturing, or mining, per se.

The 'destruction' of British Industry is indeed linked to the Industrial Revoloution; having been at the forefront of that, we are now one of the leading post-industrial service-led economies - and good thing too.

It is not special or virtuous but it provided employment to a great deal of people and taking it away from them took the heart out of a great deal of communities, leaving a lot of people jobless, dispirited, and skint.

Countries like Germany and Sweden have hi-tech post-industrial industries and a strong manufacturing base. Claiming that her monetarist policies were only way to solve the UK's economic problems is myopic and conformist.

dowd, I find some of what you say persuasive. I agree that the attack on trades unions was deliberate and strategic (and devastating to the labour movement), rather than merely an adaptation to an altering global economy. Though this raises the question, which I have often tried to ponder (and which Bodrick here, rightly, also implies): *how could it all have been done differently*? That is partly what Hall et al were getting at in trying to distinguish what they called New Times from Thatcherism, c.1989.

But what do you mean by "the destruction of the social fabric of this country"? That seems to suggest that this country post-MT is like Iraq or the Lebanon or the like - a kind of war zone or disaster area which barely hangs together. That is clearly not the case. The UK remains one of the most prosperous and influential nations in the world, with a welfare system more extensive than many and an incredibly complex and rich culture, or myriad cultures. This country has a very substantial, very densely knitted social fabric.

I think part of my attitude to all this might be shaped by having read so much detail re. MT's years in power, which tends to give you, in a curious sense, a depoliticized (or if you prefer, a de-ideologized) view: basically government is government or, as the anarchist cliche says, the government always gets in. Any number of decisions are taken on local / temporary / pragmatic grounds; any number of conventions and traditions simply persist; many things are rather consensual within 'the political class', and would have been similar if a different party had been in power. In that sense it can feel misleading to single out a given PM or government that much, when in a sense they all buy in to the same system and run the same ongoing show.

... and yet this perhaps blandly sceptical view must itself be suspected, esp. as MT was such a mould-breaker - it's not true, for instance, that she simply left the civil service as she found it, or that her aspirations were defeated by the intransigence of the Whitehall machine or the solidity of the status quo; it's doubtless not true that a 1980s Labour government would have been the same as hers in policy and effects. Just what it would have been like - if it is a plausible proposition at all - remains, to me, a peculiarly interesting counter-factual.

Here, in case anyone is interested, is Bernard Porter's LRB article on the Falklands War (19.10.2005).

--
Palmerstonian
--

In 1982 Britain’s continued possession of the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands was ridiculous. Even at the British Empire’s height they had been one of its least important and favoured colonies. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 they were represented by a showcase containing some tufts of wool and dried grasses. Dr Johnson’s famous description of them in 1771, which Lawrence Freedman uses to open this history, has scarcely been challenged:

a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island which not even southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional; and which, if fortune smiles upon our labours, may become a nest of smugglers in peace, and in war the refuge of future buccaneers.

That last bit, about ‘expense’ and ‘use’, remained the gist of the objection to them by British policy-makers (the people at the Foreign Office, for example); together with the fact that, as they knew full well, but didn’t always let on, Britain’s legal title to the islands was highly dubious. It was anomalous that they remained colonies (or ‘overseas dependencies’) long after most of the rest of the empire had gone. It wasn’t because Britain valued them, even for their potential. (Offshore oil was a rather desperate and unconvincing rationale for them at the time of the 1982 war; it has never been found. Were it to be, Argentine co-operation would be needed to exploit it.) No particular pride was attached to having the Falklands. They were ‘a nuisance’; the situation was a nonsense.

In 1982, when Argentinian troops landed on the Falklands, it looked more nonsensical than ever. There were only two thousand people living there. They wanted to be British, but could remain so only at huge cost to the Treasury (which was already subsidising them heavily), or by reaching some accommodation with their Argentinian neighbour. Alternatively, they could be shipped off somewhere else, which would be very much to Britain’s advantage. It would be cheaper than securing them in the Falklands, which nearly all military experts believed would be impossible to defend were they to be invaded. Britain was 7000 miles away: taking the islands back seemed ‘barely militarily viable’, or at least prohibitively expensive. It would also dangerously divert Britain’s forces from their more urgent Cold War role in Europe. That was why the main goal of FCO policy in the twenty or thirty years before the war had been, reasonably enough, to negotiate some form of transfer.

A condominium was mooted; or a ‘lease-back’ scheme; or an arrangement rather like the one the Åland islands had with Finland. (The Swedish-speaking islanders had been ceded against their will, but with special privileges internationally guaranteed, which seemed to work satisfactorily.) Any of these solutions would have been better than Britain simply hanging on, in deference to a few settlers whose right to have the last say just because they lived there was at least questionable. One British ambassador in South America thought it was

ludicrous that the interests of less than two thousand persons . . . should be allowed to be a thorn in the flesh of Anglo/Latin American relations, damaging the interests of the more than 50 million population of the United Kingdom. This seems to me to be a case where our principle of self-determination ought to take second place behind the principle that in a democratic society the minority have to bow to the majority.

But the islanders weren’t having any of this; and so successive British governments, clearly frightened of the public (or press) outcry were they to hand patriotic Britons over to foreigners against their wishes, chickened out. Perhaps – some of them reasoned – it might be easier to settle later. The British population of the islands was in decline. The young people were leaving. (One visitor – a Fabian, and clearly jaundiced – pictured them bored out of their minds by ‘an unending diet of mutton, beer and rum, with entertainment largely restricted to drunkenness and adultery, spiced with occasional incest’.) If current trends continued, their ‘fragile economic and social structure’ would collapse. That would force them to come to terms with the logic of their situation: either a compromise, or what one governor called ‘euthanasia by generous compensation’ – i.e. paying them to leave. That’s probably the best one can say for Britain’s foot-dragging. It was the way to get shot of what James Callaghan called this ‘poisoned chalice’ with least fuss.

It depended, however, on Argentina’s patience. In 1982 that finally snapped. Confused, perhaps, by the FCO’s subtle diplomacy; sharing the British military’s assessment of the difficulty of defending the islands; taking the wrong signals from the Thatcher government’s defence cuts, and from decolonisation elsewhere (Zimbabwe); convinced of their own case for sovereignty (although, in truth, it was not much better than Britain’s); and fired by local nationalism – or maybe exploiting it to divert attention from Argentina’s domestic problems – Galtieri’s junta decided to force the issue. The invasion started on 2 April. We know what the British government’s response to that was: the Task Force; ‘Rejoice!’ (Thatcher’s order to the nation when South Georgia was recaptured); Goose Green; and the eventual Argentinian surrender on 14 June. All this took Galtieri by surprise. That was the short-term sequel. Medium-term, the result was actually to strengthen Britain’s hold over the islands (‘Fortress Falklands’), increase the determination to hold them, and also, as it happens, to produce an economic plan (based not on oil but on fishing licences) that made them more self-sufficient than they had ever been before. It also helped to topple Galtieri and restore democracy to Argentina. That must make the invasion one of the most counter-productive actions in a long time.

Some critics saw the clock as having been put back to the days of the empire, which is partly what Galtieri had been banking on, in order to gain (anti-colonial) support. He had sent a ‘liberation’ force to the Falklands: by despatching the Task Force, Britain had reverted to imperial type. There may be something in this. Obviously the root of the Falklands problem was imperial. The islands were still colonies of Britain – though no longer in name and without the degree of direct rule over their inhabitants that ‘imperialism’ generally implies. The Task Force inevitably brought Palmerstonian gunboats to mind and the tabloid ‘jingoism’ that accompanied the whole event was redolent of ‘Mafeking night’ in the (very imperialist) Boer War. Some imperial nerves were certainly touched – among old Tory pro-Rhodesians smarting from Britain’s having just caved in to Mugabe, for example, and now from this humiliating tweak that Galtieri was giving to the mangy lion’s tail. Much of Thatcher’s later rhetoric – the ‘putting the Great back into Britain’ stuff – may have reflected this. Later, in her memoirs, she professed to admire the empire, though there’s little evidence that she knew much about it. For foreigners, whose main historical perception of Britain was as an empire (it was how it had mainly related to them, after all), it was natural to see the old monster looming out of the historical mists again.

Strictly speaking, however, the imperialist charge can’t easily be made to stick. Imperialists seek to expand, grab, exploit, rule; Britain wasn’t motivated by these things. There was, to repeat, nothing for it in the Falklands. For the broad mass of the people this wasn’t an imperialist war. Freedman quotes Anthony Barnett on some of the ‘symbols’ that surrounded it: ‘an island people, the cruel seas, an Anglo-Saxon democracy challenged by a dictator, and finally the quintessentially Churchillian posture – we were down but we were not out.’ These essentially defensive tropes go back further, and have always been far more powerful in the British popular historical consciousness than ‘imperial’ ones. This was why government propaganda favoured them, whatever their own motives may have been; and why Labour came on board too: remarkably, in view of their detestation of Thatcher. It helped that Galtieri’s government was a murderous right-wing one, which also explains why so many ex-colonies – and not only the ‘old Commonwealth’ – lined up behind Britain at the UN and elsewhere. That was another surprise to the Argentinians, who had expected the ‘anti-colonial’ card to trump all.

The reason for this degree of support is clear. Whatever the original merits of the dispute, Argentina was trying to solve it by force, and Thatcher responded as she did because of the affront it represented to British dignity (itself perhaps an imperial hangover); and because of the principle that international disputes should not be settled in this way. Freedman is aware that this might seem naive. ‘Scholars of international relations are often sceptical when it is suggested that countries can go to war for the sake of principle – but democracies find it difficult to go to war for anything else, especially when national survival is not directly threatened.’ Of course, ‘principle’ is often used as a cloak for more disreputable motives (Suez? Iraq?); but that doesn’t seem to have been the case here. There were disreputable reasons on the British side for the dispute culminating in an invasion – all that diplomatic prevarication, for example – which Argentina’s invasion conveniently blotted out. Thatcher also milked the whole thing shamelessly for domestic political advantage. But that wasn’t a motive at the beginning. It was just too risky: no one could be at all confident that Britain would win the war. Thatcher, Freedman says, was ‘taking an enormous gamble’. The reasons she gave were, first, the ‘principle’ of self-determination, which neutralised the ‘anti-colonial’ argument, though it had its flaws; and second, anti-appeasement – ‘aggression should not pay.’ It was this latter argument that marshalled most of the international community on Britain’s side; even the large majority who thought that on the issue itself – sovereignty – Argentina was probably right.

Much of that support was predicated on the assumption that a resolute response by Britain would persuade the Argentinians to think again. Apparently most of those on the ships that sailed south in April 1982 expected to be ordered to turn back long before they reached the Falklands. During this whole period (six weeks from embarkation to arrival) negotiations continued to try to get the two sides together, brokered by the UN, the US (Alexander Haig) and latterly Peru. They foundered on intransigence from both sides, though part of the game was for each to try to make the other seem more intransigent. ‘It is rapidly becoming a question of who wrong-foots whom when the negotiations break down,’ as Anthony Parsons, the UK ambassador to the UN put it. Parsons, one FCO man Thatcher had time for, was consummately skilful here. One of the negotiations is particularly controversial: it was claimed at the time that the British had deliberately sunk the Belgrano, with huge loss of life, in order to scupper the talks brokered by the Peruvians. Freedman is certain that this can’t have been the case, and argues that the sinking was strictly justifiable under the current rules of engagement, though he also confirms that the MoD lied about it, so had only itself to blame for the conspiracy theories.

In the end, Thatcher was undoubtedly relieved that she didn’t have to compromise. Both pride and principle came into this. Whatever the situation before the invasion, Britain could not give in to force; and when British soldiers started getting killed, they could not be seen to have died in vain. ‘We were prepared to negotiate before but not now,’ Thatcher told her ambassador to Washington at the end of May, in irritated response to an appeal from Reagan to bend a bit. ‘We have lost a lot of blood and it’s the best blood. Do they’ – the Americans – ‘not realise that it is an issue of principle? We cannot surrender principles for expediency.’ To be fair, however, Freedman believes the Argentinians were even stiffer. ‘We would rather die on our feet than live on our knees,’ said Galtieri (possibly drunk) to the Peruvians on 3 May. Machismo was a factor on both sides.

It was Thatcher’s machismo that eventually triumphed, though these volumes confirm that the actual fighting was fairly close-run. Generally, Freedman is impressed with the professionalism and bravery of the officers and men involved, though he is not convinced that the most celebrated example of heroism – Colonel ‘H’ Jones’s gung-ho charge at an Argentinian trench at Goose Green on 28 May – did ‘completely undermine the will to resist’ of the enemy, as his posthumous VC citation claimed. It probably did more for his own side’s morale. Overall, Freedman concludes, superior firepower made the difference between victory and defeat. That was despite frequent failures of tactics, matériel and (especially) communications, which could have been more serious if the Argentinians had not suffered similarly. (Several more British ships might have been sunk if the bombs that fell on them had been properly fused.) One gets the impression that the Argentinians could and possibly ought to have won.

Freedman’s account corroborates the popular picture of Thatcher: hard, determined, workaholic, fast-learning, in control, impatient of doubt or compromise, supportive of her admirals and generals, dismissive of the clever and reasonable FCO (its memos peppered with her angry ‘No!’). Only once does he show the mask slipping, and this may have been a mis-observation by the UN secretary-general:

The prime minister appealed to me to keep ‘her boys’ from being killed. I sensed that this was the woman and the mother who was speaking to me – a very different person from the firm, seemingly belligerent leader of the British government. From this call I was certain that Margaret Thatcher was not, as so much of the press was reporting, hell-bent on war.

Well, maybe. But she soon got over it.

This is an ‘official’ history, so one would not expect it to be too critical. It is also by Sir Lawrence Freedman: why did he or his publisher feel the need to emblazon his knighthood on the jacket? Other knighted historians don’t. For some readers it is likely to add to their mistrust. In fact, modern ‘official’ histories are not usually the apologias they used to be, and Freedman insists that he was not constrained in what he was allowed to see. I’m inclined to trust him on this, but more because of his reputation as a historian than because of the ‘sir’. He is pretty kind to nearly everyone on the British side (not so much to the Americans). Even ‘poor old Notters’ (Alan Clark on the defence secretary John Nott) comes out of it quite well. This is a highly empathetic account of the British campaign, but Freedman doesn’t pretend otherwise. ‘It has expressly not been my task,’ he writes at the start of the second volume, ‘to highlight the failures of individuals, sensationalise events, or take the opportunity to get as many secrets as possible into the public domain.’ If readers want that, they can go elsewhere. On the other hand, here they will get a full account of the tactics and the fighting (Freedman fears that this may be found ‘tedious’, but it is no more so than it needs to be), plus much more on the diplomatic and presentational aspects than one finds in the usual official war histories, which is right and proper, because these were just as important to the ‘campaign’. (It is interesting, incidentally, to see how continually sensitive the military were to this wider context.) There is some criticism: Colonel ‘H’ Jones’s VC citation is a minor instance, the Franks Report on prewar intelligence, which gave the government a soft ride, a much bigger one; and even some amusing passages – the picture of the dean of St Paul’s suggesting Thatcher read out Micah 4.1-4 at the postwar ‘thanksgiving’ service is priceless (look it up).

The history is more sketchy on the after-effects. Thatcher was of course a major beneficiary – after the islanders. Her margin of victory at the next election was surely boosted. (Freedman discusses this.) Beyond that, what else did it do? A total of 253 British and 655 Argentinian lives were lost, and many others blighted by injury, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Half of the British combatants reported experiencing some form of this; between 250 and 300 (Freedman can’t find the exact figure) later committed suicide. Was it worth this suffering? The basic problem of the islands – their post-imperial incongruity – remains. A ‘rational’ solution is as far away as ever; further, probably, than if the Falklanders had been left to wither away. So it remains ‘a time bomb for future crises’. Thatcher claimed that standing up to Galtieri would make other dictators pause before attacking their weaker neighbours, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to Saddam Hussein.

On the other hand, as Freedman points out, the conflict did not do the lasting harm to Anglo-American relations with South America that the ‘Latinos’ in the US administration had feared. Nor were the Soviets able to make much hay. One thing it did do was heighten the reputation of the military in Britain, which was something comparatively new. It also put a premium on a new kind of ‘leadership’, which again had been rather alien to the main British tradition: one that emphasised strength and single-minded determination over, for example, consensus and compromise – or, by another way of looking at it, over democracy. (‘If you are guided by opinion polls,’ Thatcher famously said, ‘you are not practising leadership – you are practising followship.’) That has remained. Thatcher also believed that her Falklands victory had breathed a new confidence into the British people, after all those years of demoralisation and decline under ‘socialism’; and had engendered a new respect for Britain abroad. Both these effects are difficult to measure. Many Americans were impressed, and took on the ‘leadership’ thing too. In the case of other countries, the effect was spoiled by the apparently ludicrous nature of the conflict: a struggle, as Borges famously put it, between two bald men fighting over a comb; and by its seemingly anachronistic aspect. It harked back to the days when Britain had hair. It was of no relevance to Cold War times.

Connected with the Cold War was the row over ‘colonialism’, which both sides in the Cold War were keen to exploit. It was these two great conflicts that confused and bedevilled the diplomacy of the Falklands campaign, especially in the case of the US, most of whose vacillation over what Thatcher regarded as the ‘principle’ of the conflict derived from its obsession with Communism, and its anxiety not to put itself on the wrong side of the ‘imperial/anti-imperial’ divide. With the end of the Cold War, however, this situation obviously changed. Freedman’s last word (in a short Envoi) is intriguing. He points out that as early as 1982 he suggested that the war in the Falklands ‘might turn out to be a precursor of things to come’, by virtue of its independence from the old East-West and North-South dualities, and also in ‘the role allotted to the United Nations’. He was mocked then, he says, but no longer. Further, he claims, the ‘traditional military virtues’ which he believes were displayed in the war seem to have more relevance now than in the old days of nuclear stalemate.

What he seems to be suggesting is that the Falklands conflict, marginal and old-fashioned as it undoubtedly was, can also be regarded as the first postmodern war. Whatever the truth of this, it’s a shame – for Thatcher’s poor ‘boys’, and for the ultimate peace of Dr Johnson’s ‘bleak and gloomy solitude’ – that reason did not prevail.

--

*20*.10.2005, in fact.

It is not special or virtuous but it provided employment to a great deal of people and taking it away from them took the heart out of a great deal of communities, leaving a lot of people jobless, dispirited, and skint.

Yes, that's very true.

And the Conservatives had a massive failing in understanding that transitions in the economy need to be managed well to help those made vulnerable by them, e.g through helping those who lost their jobs with upskilling, targetted help at the community/regional level for areas of industrial decline.

Not just Thatcher's blind-spot: many of them seemed to be a bunch of brash incompetent idiots in this regard, from Tebbit's 'My father got on his bike and looked for work' to Michael Heseltine's 'I'm just off to close down the mining industry'. (Though Hesletine redeemed himself to some extent with his interest in inner-city regeneration)

the pinefox has been very good value on this thread.

I thought about this last night, a bit. Was she the first leader who, on understanding the relationship between inflation and unemployment, sacrificed jobs for the 'good of the economy? That might be a good point against her, if only that her naivety thought the people doing well through reduced inflation would behave like the philanthropists of the past she admired, rather than squirrelling it all off into offshore banks or spending it on holidays in Zermatt.

The Falklands is a complex subject (in fact, isn't the over-riding purpose of possession something to do with Antarctica?). Thatcher undoubtedly inherited a poisoned chalice of sorts (given the mixed messages sent out by her predecessor/s), but perhaps the important thing to take from it - and certainly the root cause of almost all the British deaths - was the willingness of the French to directly sell weaponry to the opponents of GB. It's interesting also that there's this romantic notion Thatcher went to war purely in order to garner votes - instead, that criticism is better reflected on Galtieri, who did exactly that.

As I get older, I begin to think Blair's grave is more worthy of pissing on than hers.

Let's not get carried away.

I wish I was. For all the things we think of as Thatcherite (Single Vision leadership, cronyism, hiring of idiots in cabinet, sale of public assets, alignment with Big Business, strengthening UK/US relationships, War As Popularity, underfunding of the NHS and education, lying to the House, populist tax cuts, stealth taxes, pandering to Middle England at the expense of the rest of the UK) Blair has been at least as bad.

Yeah, but how many times were the UK population offered an 'old fashioned' socialist principle to vote for, only to get it turned down? Wanted nice people in suits. Which is what they got.

Absolutely, can't disagree. The point I'm making is maybe that maybe the bile that we (all?) felt for Thatcher in the 80s has been entirely diluted by every Government since doing EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS.

I wish I was. For all the things we think of as Thatcherite (Single Vision leadership, cronyism, hiring of idiots in cabinet, sale of public assets, alignment with Big Business, strengthening UK/US relationships, War As Popularity, underfunding of the NHS and education, lying to the House, populist tax cuts, stealth taxes, pandering to Middle England at the expense of the rest of the UK) Blair has been at least as bad.

I don't think that's a list of things that we would think of as Thatcherite and I don't think Blair was necessarily more extreme than Thatcher on most of those things either.

underfunding of the NHS and education

This is demonstrably incorrect ain't it? My mum who knows these things has always said that his one saving grace is the money put into education, and the question with the NHS is not how much money was put in but where it went and what good it did.

(xpost) I mean, I don't disagree with all of it, but:
'sale of public assets' - surely the Tories sold off far more in the 80s?
'War As Popularity' - surely the war in Iraq had completely the opposite effect on Blair as the Falklands did on Thatcher?
'underfunding of the NHS and education' - surely Labour have pumped billions of extra money into these?
And when I think of 'Thatcherite' qualities I think of self-centred, callous, narrow-minded bastards who look after their own and don't give a fuck about the suffering of anyone else.

And Railtrack was renationalized (not to mention Northern Rock, fiasco though that was).

War as Popularity Bloodthirsty warmongering

The issue with underfunding is how the money is spent - although superficially it could be argued that 'more' has been spent, a greater proportion than ever is diverted to middle management, 'Trusts' and contractors/consultants in an advisory capacity. A friend of mine works in debt recovery and about two years ago took an 'NHS' job - he chases the debts different trusts owe each other and does notional work against 'repayment' and trades values. Each regional trust has about 200 people doing just this, chasing money WHICH DOESN'T EXIST and debts WHICH DON'T EXIST. Is this really good use of taxpayer's money? Also, although it's 'more' there has been a conspicuous ducking of the issue of replacing things which have reached the end of their useful life because they cost too much, spunking money away on a unified computer system because it is THE FUTURE, foundation hospitals...

The point I would make over sale of public assets is that although the Tories sold off large chunks in the 80s, they sold all the obvious targets. Scraping the barrel to find things to sell like The Tote smacks more desperately of adhering to the principle because of the principle, rather than generating any value for the country.

I take the point on Iraq, but my idea behind the suggestion was that he believed it would make him more popular, and that's why he did it.

As far as I know Blair never purposely decimated regions/towns/villages, destroying jobs/lives/self-respect/self-belief for decades thereafter. Admittedly there was nothing much left to destroy after Thatcher had finished.

I suppose, by dint of his intervention in Afghanistan, Blair has helped re-invigorate the heroin trade that Thatcher pioneered in so many of our towns and cities

As far as I know Blair never purposely decimated regions/towns/villages

what about the closure of rural post offices?

I hope that was a joke?

There is that, although the burden of proof of intent or purpose is on m'colleague. xpost to Tom D

Also, in another xpost, the official Labour position is that Network Rail is a private company, not a public one.

New Labour has not renationalized the railways. It is surely giving them far too much credit to imply that they have. As far as I know, that idea is quite popular (though I could be mistaken and anyway its popularity != its soundness).

haven't Brown's 'stealth taxes' been his route to non-Thatcherite 'redistribution'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail#Private_sector_status.2C_governance_structure_and_accountability

I'm inclined to agree with the "nationalised in all but name" but they fact that they don't want to claim it as nationalisation indicates that it was hardly done out of socialist principles so... ok.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7289113.stm

What made people like that decide to join the Labour party in the first place?

I suppose the idea is that it doesn't matter if someone's making silly money long as they're paying that 40% income tax and it's going back into the country. Course, they hardly ever do...

oh oh

Dear Britishes, your country is about to be completely fucked.

Reviving this was a tease

She's probably gonna outlive both Major and Blair

Blair will have keeled over of a heart attack within four or five years.

Is there a "get on with it!" message in that article?

no comments allowed, shame

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7579352.stm

she caught it from reagan

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hFzNhLRAgEU

At around 0:59 I atually stood up and applauded the telly. For people who can't be arsed listening to some comedians talking, they are discussing the potential state funeral. It is mentioned it will cost £3 million.

Frankie Boyle: "£3 million? For £3 million they could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel and we could dig a hole so deep that we could hand her over to Satan personally"

lol

"I almost fell off my chair. Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn't believe it," she says.
"She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100% cast-iron damage-proof."
The contrast was all the more striking because she had always had a memory "like a website", she writes.

Frankie Boyle: "£3 million? For £3 million they could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel and we could dig a hole so deep that we could hand her over to Satan personally"

They need to pay that much cause they'll need to pay for all those "grieving" people.

The contrast was all the more striking because she had always had a memory "like a website", she writes.

Too bad the source code was flawed.

I really dread the media coverage and eulogies when she does go.

there will probably be a new thread. so there is no need to be alarmed or news-hungry when these ones get bumped.

What will I think? Something along the lines of: too late; the damage has already been done.

Oh I think when it does happen it will be this one that's posted on.
x-post

Assuming she doesn't outlive ILX

why are people bumping every single thatcher thread there is all of a sudden?

I assume her death is imminent.

Has to be something to cheer the masses in these times of recession, unemployment etc.

She's in good health as far as I know.

Why does she have to leave us Dead Poolers in torment by waiting right until the end of the year. Just why.

Secret papers released after 30 years show how Labour tried to sideline opposition leader Margaret Thatcher on the anniversary of universal suffrage.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7796261.stm

I don't want her to die.

Some of us dealt with this concept a long time ago.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/87/261295913_e0ffe73062.jpg?v=0

tbh, blair will be a bigger celebration.

But Blair will probably be cryogenically frozen and saved for the nation with the help of millions of pounds worth of Lottery money.

I don't want him to die either.

tony blair is nowhere near as hated as thatcher. No one is.

hmmm

Such a small world you inhabit. Thatcher is hated by a small fraction of the population of a small country in the huge world where people are being blown the fuck up all the time. I'm part of that band of haters but I try to keep some perspective.

well, i meant personally re: the blair thing.

Via Twitter just now: "Just saw footage on TV of miners and Scousers celebrating. Is Thatcher dead?"

Last night I found myself wondering where you could rent tap shoes from.

have you seen the youtube of that weirdo dancing on haughey's grave? strange/creepy/hilarious. might be useful as a template

I saw the thread but didn't watch the vid. Was thinking of a more dignified soft shoe shuffle I suppose, but you'll probably be limited to a 60 second slot what with the queues and all.

"charlie, you old FUCKER"

Is it a coincidence that this was revived on her birthday?

i was thinking that, but i'd imagine it was just confluence of events re scousers and miners tbh

anyway hb iron lady

^ that should rack up the sb's

Chumbawamba split up.

Still, they have an e.p. pressed and ready to ship only to advance orders: http://www.chumba.com/thatchep.php

also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcXi-VYy_Yw Pete Wylie's got a track ready too.

So, will the chart be full of 'ironic' tributes, or will they all be BANNED!!! ?

Oh balls! I was starting to think about seeing them again.

You may be OK, they are doing the 'wind-down' to the end of the year.

Hmm, looks like it's time for my first folk festival then....

Well?

we're partying hard

http://www.youngs-hire.co.uk/dresswear/white_tie_and_tails

I texted grimly fiendish "time to conga" and he hadnt heard the news but knew exactly what i meant.

Co-ordinated congas abound

How do I feel? Terrified. This lot are worse, and this is likely to galvanise them. Imagine that shit that will leap from their mouths in praise, and stick to this country's legislature for however long it takes us to not elect cunts anymore.

http://medleymag.com/upload/2013/01/Justin-Timberlake-Suit-Tie-Lyric.jpg

I feel sort of jittery and excited

How do I feel? Terrified. This lot are worse, and this is likely to galvanise them. Imagine that shit that will leap from their mouths in praise, and stick to this country's legislature for however long it takes us to not elect cunts anymore.

― they all are afflicted with a sickness of existence (Scik Mouthy), Monday, April 8, 2013 12:10 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah

There's two years to the election, the old bag will ancient history by then

will be

https://www.facebook.com/events/650707421611923/?notif_t=plan_user_invited

Surprisingly few wrong-uns on my Facebook timeline tonight.

Fuck her and fuck her legacy and fuck the Tories and fuck New Labour.

Nick S otm - this will galvanise them, though I'm struggling to think what they'll come up with next.