Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

[Túrin Turambar]

Massive news, even if not unexpected:

Baroness Thatcher has died

This will probably bring out some extremely strong feelings, both in the U.K. and around the world. I expect that we will see some come out in the next few days. The extent of her influence can hardly be denied, even if people continue to fight bitterly over her legacy.

[Alatar]

There's some pretty major reaction here also. Many people hold her personally responsible for the death of the Hunger Strikers.

[Túrin Turambar]

I was aware of the depth of hatred held for Thatcher in some working-class areas, and I knew that some hardline left-wingers had been printing t-shirts and signs in preparation for her death once it was clear her health was in terminal decline. Still, I was unprepared for the wild street parties that broke out in places like Brixton and Glasgow (although I suspect that the numbers are lower than the media suggests). I don't recall anything like it for a democratically-elected leader. Also interesting that the normal rules among politicians of not speaking ill of the recently-dead have gone out the window. George Galloway's "may she burn in hell" was at the extreme end of the spectrum but Gerry Adams and Ken Livingstone didn't hold back either.

The discussion has taken off a little bit on TORC, and I offer my opinion there. It is mostly focused on her economic policies at the moment. To save time I'll quote myself:

The thing that I always wonder is, had Labour won in 1979 they would have done what, exactly? We can debate the merits or lack thereof of Thatcherism for the next week, but it isn't like the alternative was peace and prosperity. The decline of manufacturing jobs, rising unemployment and stagflation were problems all western governments faced, exacerbated, in Britain, by union militancy and falling productivity. Blue-collar workers in Britain were the victims of economic forces moving across the western world. [...] Likewise, the post-war welfare state depended on levels of economic growth, population growth and workforce participation that no longer existed in 1979. The model of the Attlee Government had a lot to recommend it at the time but it could not have continued into the 1980s, Thatcher or no Thatcher. Her confrontational and aggressive style naturally made her a lightning-rod for the frustrations of those at the receiving end of these changes, but it seems to me that they are pining for something which no longer existed before she even came to office.

[axordil]

One of the dangers of becoming an icon is that the next iconoclasm is always just around the corner.

[Lalaith]

I was surprised by the hatred for her. Most people I know here in the U.S. have a favorable opinion of her.

[JewelSong]

I was surprised by the hatred for her. Most people I know here in the U.S. have a favorable opinion of her.

We DO???

I always thought she was kind of a tyrant...even before I lived in the UK...

[Lalaith]

Well, most people I know are conservative politically. You all don't count, in this case.

But whatever.

[anthriel]

I was surprised at the outflow of hate for a woman who just died, too. Yikes.

[JewelSong]

I was surprised at the outflow of hate for a woman who just died, too. Yikes.

I think you would have to be British to fully understand what she did. She ruined thousands of lives, basically. And nobody is going to hold back their opinions of her simply because she "just died." She walked a long and bitter road....littered with the poor and working class.

Oh, and she privatized the railroads. Worst Decision Ever.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I have mixed feelings. I don't agree with virtually any of her politics or polities, and agree that many people's lives were hurt because of them. But I admire her strength and the example that she set as a woman who overcame tremendoes obstacles.

[Túrin Turambar]

I was surprised at the outflow of hate for a woman who just died, too. Yikes.

I think you would have to be British to fully understand what she did. She ruined thousands of lives, basically. And nobody is going to hold back their opinions of her simply because she "just died." She walked a long and bitter road....littered with the poor and working class.

As I said upthread, I don't see what the alternative outcome was. The working class in Britain would have copped it under a government of any political stripe just because of upheavals in the global economy. The East Asian Tigers had more competitive manufacturing industries than Europe and North America, oil prices were rising, demographics were changing, and global demand was changing. One can criticise Thatcher's rhetoric and methods, but Britain (and much of the rest of the western world) was already in deep trouble in 1979. It isn't like she came in and smashed a system that was humming along nicely.

[Alatar]

Well, from an Irish perspective, she allowed 10 men to die rather than reinstate their status as political prisoners, a status they had held until Thatcher's attempts to "criminalize" the republican movement. Lets remember that she categorised Nelson Mandela as a terrorist also.

The woman single handedly set the peace process back by at least 10 years by her actions during the Hunger Strikes. Apart from the 10 men who died striking, how many more thousands suffered over the next 10 years because of her intractability? I'm sorry, I don't believe in speaking ill of the dead in normal circumstances, but I for one will not mourn her passing.

[Lalaith]

I know nothing about the people who died on a hunger strike.

I'm sorry, I don't believe in speaking ill of the dead in normal circumstances, but I for one will not mourn her passing.

Actually, I don't see anything wrong with either of those things, Alatar. And, to me, there's a big difference between not mourning her passing and having street parties to celebrate her death.

[axordil]

Perhaps it's not so much a celebration of a death as a party by the powerless to welcome her back to their ranks. If so it's founded on a falsehood. The dead are more influential by far than the living.

[JewelSong]

The dead are more influential by far than the living.

Well, they CAN be, I suppose. It depends on how their "story" is spun and how their perceived legacy and personality enters the common consciousness.

Can you give an example, Ax?

[axordil]

The dead are more influential by far than the living.

Well, they CAN be, I suppose. It depends on how their "story" is spun and how their perceived legacy and personality enters the common consciousness.

Can you give an example, Ax?

Why is an inch or a centimeter the length it is? Why do men button shirts on one side and women the other? Why are roads, or city limits, or time zones where they are?

I won't go into the overtly political or religious, because I don't want to start any arguments there, and I think we can all come up with examples. But even in practical, everyday matters, the most basic facets of our life are shaped by the decisions of people who have been dust for years. We live from moment to moment within bounds largely circumscribed by the dead, and we move those bounds with only the greatest of difficulty.

[JewelSong]

Why is an inch or a centimeter the length it is? Why do men button shirts on one side and women the other? Why are roads, or city limits, or time zones where they are?

Maybe I am being totally thick, but I honestly don't see what you are getting at here. Men button shirts on the side they do because they had valets (I think) who buttoned them up. What this has to do with a dead person having more influence than a living one doesn't compute with me, especially when discussing Maggie Thatcher.

I won't go into the overtly political or religious, because I don't want to start any arguments there

Oh, please do. It would be nice to have a discussion/dialogue with some grit in it for once.

[Pearly Di]

Believe me when I say that people from Liverpool, Scotland and Wales (and elsewhere) have very good reason to be bitter about Thatcher's legacy.

Yeah, Labour stuffed it up in the 1970s, big time. Somebody had to do something. There is a reason why my father, a life-long Labour supporter, voted for her in 1979 (the first and only time he ever voted Tory!) But she was a very, very divisive figure.

I do admire Thatcher in some ways - she was an extraordinary woman who battled sexism and patriarchy in her own party to rise to the top, and she had nerves of steel.

I also hated most of her policies, and her friendship with Pinochet - PINOCHET! - was just beyond the pale.

I don't like all the dancing on her grave stuff. At all. You can dislike the woman and her legacy without stooping to that. She deserves to be buried with dignity, like any other human being. But I also do not think that British taxpayers should be footing the bill for her funeral (not quite a state funeral, a 'ceremonial' funeral ... on the same level as Princess Diana's!) To quote a good friend of mine from Facebook:

“Politicians are, by their very nature, divisive figures, not the unanimous choice of the entire nation. For this reason, I do not think it is right that ANY politician should be given a public send-off which wrongly implies that the whole nation was behind him/her.”

Winston Churchill was the last Prime Minister to be given a state funeral and I can understand why this was so, even though Churchill, great man as he was, had feet of clay and had plenty of controversies of his own. But he did unify my country in her darkest hour. It was understandable that he got that kind of a send-off.

You cannot possibly say the same of Baroness Thatcher! Again, to quote my friend: “If her supporters want to organise and fund a high-profile public funeral/memorial service, that's a different matter all together.”

This strikes me as searingly insensitive at a time when our government is carrying out policies worse than Thatcher's - the poor and disabled are being very, very hard hit by the cuts that have just come into effect.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

The Thatcher era made us a worse people than we were. That's what can't be forgiven. It was a war against our spirit and we lost it. One has to live in the UK to understand the level and breadth of bitterness even now.
The economic arguments are a different matter and can be argued on utilitarian grounds but this isn't what the UK reaction is about; it is something much deeper.

[axordil]

JS--

And I heard that was the reason WOMEN had them the way they do. Which points at the underlying issue: someone, long ago, made a decision. Whether that decision was insightful or arbitrary matters little. That decision became a standard, which is now taken for granted. Far from even being debatable, it doesn't even rise to the level of noticeable on a lot of matters...until it does, because the dead person lived then and we live now and what worked then doesn't any more, or perhaps what mattered then doesn't.

This doesn't apply just to buttons and the side of the road you drive on and where the salad fork goes. It applies to the societal basis for laws, for belief systems, for the entire infrastructure of civilization. Someone who is now dead made a decision, alone or in a group, and it stuck. Thus woman can or can't own property, or BE property. Thus it's all right or not to marry a cousin, or someone from another tribe, or someone of the same sex, and then it's all right or not to divorce them. Thus one big chunk of the population of the planet ends up monotheistic and another doesn't.

The farther back you go, the more far-reaching decisions can be, even if they disappear in the mists of antiquity--because some decisions define the terms of debate for anyone following.

Witness the U.S. Constitution. It's an overt attempt by the Founding Fathers not only to define the powers (and with the Bill of Rights, limits) of government, but to define and limit the conversations one can have in that area. It sets down the rules by which the rules will be made, and it cannot itself be changed easily (compare the twenty-something amendments in the two hundred twenty plus years to the thousands upon thousands of laws passed in that time).

That may or may not be the best way to do it. Jefferson, for example, wanted to *require* a new Constitutional Convention every generation, because he believed it was *impossible* to get it right not only the first time, but for all time. The fact that the Third Amendment still exists in its original form supports this notion, and pretty much tells me at least that strict constructionists have selective reading abilities. Or has someone had National Guard troops demanding to use their house recently?

But more often the dead affect us in ways we don't notice. Decisions which lie at the foundations of paradigms are like old subway stations. People forget they were ever made, and then someone digs around to build a new foundation for something and stumbles upon one, and they have to figure out what to do about it. Fill it in? Cover it up again? Try to preserve it for posterity? But everything above it took it into account.

Thatcher made a lot of decisions that shaped how things are, and how things *could and could not be*. She was a great gaping wound of a person, and even with the wound gone, the scar tissue remains, and likely will for generations. But even she worked within a pre-existing framework.