Many of us saw Thatcher as the embodiment of evil. OK well that’s a little exaggeration, but the damage she did to the British culture and its people is irrevocable. In my view she released the demons of greed. She told us it was OK to embrace them; that there was no such thing as society, therefore nobody to be responsible for, except us.
Every person who believed the state should protect the weak and disadvantaged fought against her. But why did we? Did we really care about people? Did we fight because we only saw a war of ideologies, of our class against their class? Or did we fight because of the humanity we saw in others?
Often we become so concerned with political tactics, attempting to convert people to our own view point, looking for power, and defending our own perception of truth, that caring for people, the real reason behind it all, gets lost. We can see it happen not only with politics but with religion too.
Living in Ghana, I have come into contact with people that I would never have met in the UK but would have identified as ‘the enemy’. In my naiveté, I have found them to be really nice people, even if I disagree with their ideologies. I discovered that even they care about people but have an approach to society’s problems that is different from mine.
Someone on facebook said he would dance in the streets when Thatcher died. I won’t. In fact I will probably feel a little sad. He would probably say that Thatcher was a nasty, evil, bitch. Well, OK, but do we want to be the same? Do we want to deny the humanity of Thatcher and in doing so deny our own humanity? How human would we look dancing because of the death of another?
I want to search for those values of compassion, empathy and kindness which I feel got lost when I was political. And I won’t allow the death of Margaret Thatcher to obstruct me in my journey to become more fully human.
It is our humanity that makes us human.
Graham at his sentimental best. I have a friend like that although in a different way. She was raised as a woman to be independent so she saw her reliance (even if you were a friend) on a man as dependence; therefore, her weakness. I think in our attempt to cling to ideologies, we lose our humanity most of the time. I love this one
Graham, for all your militant atheism you’d make a great Church of England vicar in some little village in Sussex!! Thatcher did more than unleash the demons of greed. She declared war on the “enemy within”, by which she meant the organised working class and anyone that stood in her way. The human cost of this war can be measured in blighted communities, riots in the inner cities, smashed up unions, families broken apart, proud middle aged men and women who never worked again after they were thrown on the scrapheap, more than 100 miners jailed in the great strike of 84/5, and the poll tax. I knew some of these victims personally.
I nearly went to jail in 1986 after she sent the police to Wapping to beat the printers to a pulp and fit up innocent people. I spent 6 months on bail before I was acquitted, terrified I would lose my job, my home. I was 21 years old. And you want me to feel sorry for HER?
But rather than dance on Maggie’s grave, I would prefer it if people put their enegies into something constructive, like fighting the current Tory government which plans on destroying what’s left of public services and privatising by stealth the NHS.
Graham, your humanity is a very good thing. Just maybe you’d be better directing it at more worthwhile targets, like for example the Ghanian woman Ama Sumani. http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/who_will_have_killed_ama_sumani_01598.html
Hi Calv,
It is important to remember the realities of life under Thatcher and your personal experiences have brought this to life.
Thanks for reminding us about Ama Sumani who of course made the news here at the time but is now, characteristically, forgotten.
My writing was not suppose to provoke sympathy for Thatcher but was more about how we can lose our humanity whilst claiming to fight for those same values. Luckily we do not have to ration our humanitarian instincts to only those deemed worthy. Otherwise we are back at where we started.
I take it as a compliment that you think I would make a good vicar. It was a temporary childhood aspiration and it is not without its appeal. I am impressed by some of the Christians I am currently dialoguing with and I am attempting to model myself on them. Perhaps, that is what you see? It is unfortunate if you have formed the impression that I’m a militant atheist. That is almost certainly the result of me being amongst anti-rational fundamentalists. Perhaps reading some of my blog posts on religion might change your mind.
Maybe the call to love our enemies is more than us administering forgiveness. Perhaps it is a radical way of preventing the self-dehumanisation that we all too easily fall victim of.
Yes vicar, but you’re in danger of losing sight of the bigger picture as you wallow in introspection. The real challenge is to create the widest possible unity to challenge, reform and ultimately change the capitalist system, from which the social ills, selfishness and greed you described inexorably flow.
Because of my job I probably know more multi-millionaires and bankers than almost anyone on planet earth, and no, not all of them have red horns sprouting from their foreheads. It’s not about “good” or “bad” people, although they undoubtedly exist. Rather, it is the logic of the system and its structures that coerces people into ruthless competition not co-operation. Whilst the wealthy do not suffer economically, they do suffer from the corrosive effects of moral turpitude, hence the oft asked question: “How can I get out of the rat race?”
The late Jimmy Reid put it more eloquently than me:
“Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
“Profit is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a give-away. It’s more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. The power structures that have inevitably emerged from this approach threaten and undermine our hard-won democratic rights. The whole process is towards the centralisation and concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. The facts are there for all who want to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise a power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of democracy.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/still-irresistible-a-workingclass-heros-finest-speech-2051285.html
So whilst it may seem crass to figuratively (or even literally) dance on the grave of Maggie Thatcher, what people will really be doing I suspect is celebrating the death not of a human being, but of the symbol of an ideology that did so much to undermine decent human values of co-operation and social solidarity.
I do indeed have the luxury and privilege of introspection but it is the bigger picture that I’m worried about. My point is that a bunch of dehumanised thugs (to put it in an extreme way) are not going to be able to forge a better world. I’m also concerned that the expression of these concerns is not seen as “big boy politics”.
You are absolutely right that some will symbolically dance on the grave of Thatcher, celebrating the end of an ideology. Except, looking at Britain from afar, it seems that it has not died. And you remember how we used to complain about the personalisation of that ideology by Martin Jacques?
I’m not advocating a return to “the personal is political” which elevated feelings and self-help groups to the position of political action but I do believe we have to look carefully at how our politics affects our inner lives which then feeds back into our politics. It is not an either / or situation.
I also remember the inhumanities we remained silent about so as not to “give ammunition to the enemy”. How we excused bad behaviour because the person was “a good comrade”. The songs we used to sing privately, in jest, that now seem so dehumanising. Many of my friends from that time have moved beyond this but I still see comments coming from others that suggest many have not.
We thought that the end did justify the means and, however brutal we became, somehow we would become transformed into angels once the revolution was completed.
I thought you might enjoy the lyrics of Elvis Costello’s ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’
I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child’s
face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
coming down on that child’s lips
Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the Lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
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
When England was the whore of the world
Margaret was her madam
And the future looked as bright and as clear as
the black tarmacadam
Well I hope that she sleeps well at night, isn’t
haunted by every tiny detail
‘Cos when she held that lovely face in her hands
all she thought of was betrayal
And now the cynical ones say that it all ends the same in the long run
Try telling that to the desperate father who just squeezed the life from his
only son
And how it’s only voices in your head and dreams you never dreamt
Try telling him the subtle difference between justice and contempt
Try telling me she isn’t angry with this pitiful discontent
When they flaunt it in your face as you line up for punishment
And then expect you to say “Thank you” straighten up, look proud and pleased
Because you’ve only got the symptoms, you haven’t got the whole disease
Just like a schoolboy, whose head’s like a tin-can
filled up with dreams then poured down the drain
Try telling that to the boys on both sides, being blown to bits or beaten and
maimed
Who takes all the glory and none of the shame
Well I hope you live long now, I pray the Lord your soul to keep
I think I’ll be going before we fold our arms and start to weep
I never thought for a moment that human life could be so cheap
‘Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down
Let me add another song that has been ringing in my head this whole time:
Encouragement by Wolf Biermann
You, don’t let yourself harden
In these hard times
Those who are all too hard, break
Those who are all too sharp, stab
And break off immediately
You, don’t let yourself get bitter
In these bitter times
The ruling ones are trembling
- You’ll be first behind bars –
But definitely not at your sorrow
You, don’t let yourself get scared
In these fearful times
That’s just what they want to happen
That we lay down arms
Before the great battle’s even begun
You, don’t let yourself be consumed
Use your time
You can’t disappear
You need us, and we need
Just your cheerfulness
We don’t want to silence it
In these times of silence
The greenery bursts from the branches
We want to show that to everybody
Then they’ll know the score
I don’t feel this lady brought out anything in the people of Britain that wasn’t already there. Its amazing how people need a scapegoat for their own failings.
I agree with you. I think we all have hidden demons. Most of us keep them under control. She told us it was OK to release them.
Hi…
I feel you are being hard on the great woman. Her era was Britain’s most prosperous post war period. She with Reagan did so much to put an end to the greater evil of communism, perhaps if she did not have the cold war to contend with her policies may have been more populist but all in all Britan prospered under her. She led Britain to victory at the Falklands…You are almost equating her with dictators like Abacha, Gadaffi, Assad,Mubaraq,Charles Taylor etc…The name of Magareth Thatcher belongs with the Greats.
In 2011, Labour leader Ed Miliband praised some of Thatcher’s key policies, stating: “Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80 per cent. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time.”
And some people would consider dancing on her grave?
You Poms are sick people. You are a worn wot people from a worn out Country who express your hate and inadequacy by demeaning a very great Leader. You, with the rest of Europe are broke and without hope for the future and deserve to sink into the mire of third world status, something that Margaret Thatcher avoided during her Prime Minister-ship. To talk of dancing on the grave of the dead is sickening and shows mental imbalance.
Sometimes it’s advisable to read more than the title of a blog post or you can end up looking a bit silly!
The title of this post, the contents and your responses to many of the comments
are not so different even the unflattering picture of the noble iron lady you posted says it all.
The photo is not here to be unflattering but to show her as a fragile human being with emotions. I’m also not here to argue her policies with this post. Yes, I clearly distance myself from her policies, but I’m arguing that whatever differences we have with others we need to still recognise our common humanity. That’s why I will not be dancing on her gave or anyone else’s.
I find some of those comments and the article itself shameful and disturbing. Margaret Thatcher no matter what your person views may be was and always will be one of our best Prime Ministers. Her determination, forward approach and risks made England a better place. Yes there was struggles there is in every Government in the world, yes some didn’t like her but when she came to office our Government was crumbling and the country was falling. The sick man of Europe we was called. Yet once she left in the 1990′s we was the best, we was great, we was England. This woman made many people feel proud to be British and I am only sorry you dont feel the same way.
Jack
Aged 14
Well Jack, understand that people had very different views on this woman. The economy did boom when she took over, for some sections of society (a word I know she didn’t like), whilst others were left to sink. But then things started to go terribly wrong. Even the benefactors started to loose as well and houses were repossessed. As things got worse and worse she followed the advise of her economic advisers which was to stick to the policies no matter what. The idea was that things were going to get really bad before they got better. But things got so bad that she had to make a U-turn which she did secretly.
Some people became very ashamed of England particularly after various incident in the Falklands war. So you have every right to feel the way you want to but understand that others will not feel the same and it is these differences of opinion that are the mark of a diverse, democratic society.
I recently watched the film “Iron Lady’ and then i came upon your blog. I think that after reading your article and all the comments that the film showed her in a rather positive light.
But after reading all these comments, i’m confused, what exactly did she do to create such a mixture of opinions of herself and her policies (which i don’t understand much either)?
Previously after viewing the film she became a female hero of some sort whom i aspired to become, but now….is she not admirable?
All this talk about her hating the word ‘society’ and stuff, exactly what is that about? Did she ignore the existence of the community and simply focus on the individuals profit? Was that really bad, did it have tragic effects on others?
Last question, would you say that because Maragret was a women, she and her policies were recieved less enthusiastically than if it had been a man? If it were not a man who shaped England into the nation it became by the 1990′s would he not become a national hero, who’s stubborn determination allowed Britian to take the risks it did and come out victorious?
Right now, i think i lack the knowledge to form my own opinion upon Thatcher, however i’d like to hope that she wasn’t truley loathed enough to have people dance on her grave, or anyone elses.
-Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Firstly, I don’t think being a woman worked against her. I think a lot of people voted for her for expecting a different type of politics because she was a woman, only to find that identity issues (such as gender and race) do not particularly affect policies!
She waged class war so it really depends which side of that war you identified with as to how you viewed her. She had a plan to crush the most powerful union – the miners – and she did. In order to do this she used the police and the courts politically.
She shut down local services which benefited working class communities. Her infamous move was to stop the small bottles of milk that were given to school children everyday to help with their nutrition. She was labelled “milk snatcher”!
Her monetarist policies appeared to work for a while until the economy collapsed and people lost their homes. Unemployment soared.
She destroyed the manufacturing base of the country which had devastating effects on local communities and made Britain reliant on the financial sector. She deregulated the financial institutions creating a free-for-all resulting in the recent collapse of that sector.
The right wing press – her supporters – painted Britain as the “sick man of Europe” in order to present her as the saviour. Arguably, the economy was already improving when she took power and the gap between rich and poor was not as extreme as she made it.
Her mission was to make people less reliant on the state and to take responsibility for their own lives. This is an admirable aim but whether the best way to do this is to remove safety nets and support to the most vulnerable sections of a society is what needs to be examined.
In a nutshell, her policies benefited the bankers and wealthy at the expense of the rest of the population.
I am really looking forward to seeing the film because her life is certainly inspirational and she did make a mark in a very male dominated area.
I have one question about being more fully “human”. What does it mean to be “human”?
I suspect your question is loaded but to others it is probably obvious. It means understanding our mortality, our humanity and ability for compassion, it means striving for more, for self-improvement, about realising others are a reflection of ourselves so deserve the same dignity as we do, about realising our fundamental connections to all life at a genetic level and our connection to the universe at a molecular level.
Anyone, anyone, who thinks of Margaret Thatcher as someone who did anything but rescue us from the abyss was not alive, or not conscious, in the 70′s and ’79 in particular. This country was ruined, bankrupt, dead. The union practices had finished any meaningful production of engineering products, weak management had allowed ridiculous pay increases to outstrip any increase in business effectiveness and we were bailed out by the rest of the World as we slid into a financial ruin.
You may not like what she did or how she did it, but the simple fact is that it had to be done, by someone, and pretending that everything that followed, including Blair and Brown spending every single penny we made in the ensuing 20 years, would not have happened without her is a fool.
Dislike her all you like but be realistic, Labour, Unions and pathetic manager gave us 10 years of black outs and strikes, dead bodies in butchers freezers and rats running in Trafalgar Square, have we truly forgotten that?
Oh, and on the subject of the Miners Union, they had brought down one Government and were set on bringing down another, as anti-democratic as possible I would suggest, the subsequent scandals over Scargill’s mortgages, the realities of non working union members paid a salary and the clearly political motivation of their actions showed they cared nought for their workers and all for their power.