Baroness Thatcher is dead.

Thanks Harry. I was on the verge of composing something more substantive, but I rather this was here rather than something hectoring and pontificating by me. She was loathsome, and I’m rather glad she’s gone (and I’m sure half the country feels the same). The spirit of hatred against the unions, the public sector, academics, the unemployed, people who live in council houses, immigrants etc that she fostered lives on in the current Tory party. It has its origins in middle class resentment of the Labour movement in the 60s and 70s and so its current articulation, shorn of that context, has a zombie-like quality to it. I do so hope they fix the funeral for when I’m out of the country.

So why say ill of the living, meaning Neil Kinnock? I have no reason to believe Kinnock would not have helped Heffer in that situation. That was just gratuitously mean-spirited against Kinnock.

Nice of Thatcher, but really, as Chris Bertram is saying, Thatcher was a pretty mean spirited piece of work toward workers and their families. And she promoted the sort of hatred so commonplace in the UK and the US against workers, too.

And of course Thatcher puts to rest the belief that female leaders would somehow promote more humane and kind public policies.

I read somewhere that Hitler was a vegetarian and loved kids. Anyways

“And this, Prime Minister, is a former fellow, G.D.H. Dole.”

“La bouche de Marilyn, le regard de Caligula,” as Mitterand said.

GOTCHA

(sorry – seemed appropriate. Bit late to be able to muster any bile, really.)

But just on – I see no reason to doubt what he said though.

– no reason except that his ‘observation’ wasn’t one, and he was a bitter opponent of Kinnock.

Going to try again:

Why must her enemies be so incompetent, for God’s sake!?

http://www.blackbookmag.com/music/a-lot-of-people-think-that-cher-is-dead-1.60753?PQId=1.106

A Lot of People Think That Cher Is Dead

“One of my relatives in the UK claims that current US /British government social and economic policy are the “unholy love child of the union between Reagan and Thatcher….””

That’s the reason to hate her the most – her revolution was so successful that even the opposition had to accept much of it. We are too much fighting on turf designed by her and Reagan.

Briefly (I’m going to say something more substantial on my blog when I get round to it) – I think what angers me the most about Thatcher and her legacy is the way that she devalued work. It’s perhaps not its most obvious feature, but Thatcherism was always at odds with the idea that there was a certain basic dignity in simply having a job that needed doing and doing it to the best of one’s abilities. Once you’ve recognised a dignity in work, this has certain implications: it implies that workers should have a say in how they work (and how they’re paid), and that non-workers may simply not be able to find a job that’s worth doing. So if you want to turn workers into a cheap and interchangeable labour force, and unemployed people into an even cheaper reserve army of labour, ideas of dignity in work – ideas of craftsmanship, service, vocation, profession – have to be attacked. As they were attacked under Thatcher, and as they’ve been attacked ever since. This trend wasn’t unique to Britain and didn’t originate with Thatcher, but she did an awful lot to welcome, facilitate and entrench it, with a dreadful human cost which is still being paid.

If it hadn’t been for some Argentine generals, Thatcher would have been remembered as a disastrous right deviation who completely mishandled economic policy.

Also, her inflexibility (and use of the Northern Ireland Secretary position as a punishment for the Tory Wets) resulted in setting back peace in Northern Ireland by fifteen years. She hated the IRA because they killed her friend Airey Neave, but her handling of the Hunger Strikes rejuvenated the IRA, led to the creation of (Provisional) Sinn Fein, and meant the political wing of the IRA became the dominant nationalist political force.

I assume that part of Harry’s point is that one of her political opponents was touched by her concern for his health. The making him tea as they wait is the sweet part. It is not that she was nice but that she was so toward someone whom I assume vehemently opposed her politically.

Oh dear. Speaking ill of the dead doesn’t come into it. Pointing out that, as a full-godwin analogy, hitler and other senior nazis ordered ther murder of millions of people should not be verboten as speaking ill of the dead. To not speak clearly of thatcher’s attrocities would be akin to holocaust denial.

I am reminded of Frankie Boyle:

“Her state funeral is going to cost nine million pounds. For that much money, you could buy a shovel and give it to every single Scottish person and we’d dig a hole deep enough that you could deliver her to Satan personally.”

I am reminded of Frankie Boyle:

Here.

“To not speak clearly of thatcher’s attrocities would be akin to holocaust denial.”

Ho boy!

So why say ill of the living, meaning Neil Kinnock? I have no reason to believe Kinnock would not have helped Heffer in that situation. That was just gratuitously mean-spirited against Kinnock.

Kinnock and Heffer hated each other. I don’t know whether he would or wouldn’t but there was soo much bad blood there (oddly enough, they were both Blues). Other Merseyside Labour trivia – Heffer was, in the considered opinion of my dad, the most foul-mouthed man he had ever met.

…conservative policies cause suffering in the short run, but history is on our side, can’t make an omelet, etc. Was Thatcherism the mirror-image of the ideology it opposed?

Yes. One X is a tragedy, many X’s a statistic, for all sorts of values of X.

I would think that gave her legacy a cautionary note for the Tories.

You don’t know many Tories. For most of them, the relationship is more like Jimmy Savile’s with his mother.

Who knows what Kinnock would have done? Improper to judge a man on the basis of a hypothetical situation. According to the wikipedia page you linked to, he said on his deathbed to Kinnock: “You should be dying, not me”. Right.

Bournemouth 1985: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLN7rIby9s
There’s Eric Heffer walking off the platform.
(And Derek Hatton. Arthur Scargill in a cutaway shot thrown in as a bonus. Each doing their bit to give Kinnock the highlight of his political career.)
The “Labour council” was Liverpool’s.

Phil 04.08.13 at 3:03 pm

” Briefly (I’m going to say something more substantial on my blog when I get round to it) – I think what angers me the most about Thatcher and her legacy is the way that she devalued work.”

This is a good point. The goal of neoliberalism is to reduce the working class/(most of the) middle class to peonage. Their basic principle is that a dollar in the pockets of the working class is a dollar not in their own pockets.

Josh at 42:

If you want to know their true hearts, you have to look at how they treat those below them on the social scale: employees, waiters, clerks, and so on.

Funnily enough this reminds me of an anecdote told by Sir Cliff Richard (yes, I know) about some function at Number 10 when a waitress inadvertently dropped a tray of food. The waitress was visibly distressed and the next thing anyone knew The Scourge of the Miners and Smiter of Galtieri was busy picking up canapes and reassuring the woman in question that these things happen and she wasn’t to take it personally.

AFAICS, she was basically decent to those she came into contact with (unless they had the misfortune to be in the Cabinet, in which case they could expect Sir Bernard Ingham to brief against them at some point) and less so to those she did not know but weren’t “our people”. Which is touching when it comes to one’s goodhearted Tory friends in private life but a bit unfortunate in the Prime Minister.

Anderson: “We were pondering that on another blog, re: the difference in the reputation of Reagan & Thatcher. Thanks to the parliamentary system, Thatcher was booted out by her own party when she overreached on the poll tax. I would think that gave her legacy a cautionary note for the Tories. Whereas despite Iran-Contra, Reagan served out his term and went out with high favorability. So the GOP didn’t take away any warnings from Reagan – quite the opposite.”

IIRC (too lazy to Google) Reagan didn’t go out all that popular. At least compared to Clinton, and We All Know that he left office in disgrace, etc. :)

There wasn’t really a point to the post. I just wanted to mark her passing, and had a story to tell. And couldn’t muster any hatred or vilification. The time for that seems past, and anyway I knew there’d be plenty around.

Though… as millicent friendly says, I do feel some nostalgia. I just wish she had been defeated, as well as a worthy, enemy.

Tom Hurka @57: Writing hagiographies of James Callaghan is hardly a necessary prerequisite to condemn Thatcher’s choices: she stands out as a uniquely bloodthirsty maniac amidst a crowd of incompetent nobodies post-Attlee.

She was democratically elected, right? Like, two or three times? How is it that all these people who I’m pretty willing to bet do not adhere to the Great Man Theory of History can still talk about Margaret Thatcher like she did all these things on her own, without the support of the electorate or other members of her party?

I think a reassessment of the 70s is pretty vital. I mean, it’s central to the entire neoliberal project that inflation was the WORST THING THAT HAPPENED EVER and legitimises pretty much any action however extreme.

I do remember the winter-of-discontent TV clips being played back in the early 90s recession and wondering in what way that had been worse.

Face it, Harry. You’ve taken a bath on this one. Glenn Greenwald has addressed the utterly contentless meme of speak no ill of the dead.

Agree about the Falklands, though. It was for the penguins.

‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ closer to number one spot as it reaches top five following Margaret Thatcher’s death

Margaret Thatcher protests this weekend to be attended by miners

[David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association] said there was a still a great deal of anger over the impact of Thatcher’s policies in former coal mining communities: “She destroyed our communities, she destroyed our villages, she has destroyed our pits and she tried to destroy our dignity … Her reign was a disaster for the mining communities.”

Tony Smith, who woked as a miner in a Nottinghamshire pit before it was closed in 1989, said he understood the argument that it was inappropriate to celebrate an elderly person’s death. “But the strength of ill-feeling is so deep it overrides any reservations,” he said. “We’ve lived under Thatcher’s shadow for many years. It split families right down the middle and that resentment is still going on.”

Thatcher funeral protesters get police go-ahead to turn backs on coffin

Organisers say Scotland Yard has approved protest after warning that anyone causing ‘harassment’ could be arrested

Protesters planning to demonstrate along the route of Lady Thatcher’s funeral procession have been given the go-ahead by police to turn their backs on the former prime minister’s coffin as it makes its way through central London to St Paul’s.

Scotland Yard has repeatedly asked people planning demonstrations to let them know in advance, warning that anyone causing “harassment, alarm or distress” could be arrested under section 5 of the Public Order Act. […]

… Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative chairman, described the protesters as “mindless bigots” but said that, provided they were obeying the law, the police had no option.

“I think they ought to be grateful for the fact that the people who hold our views, and who are not mindless bigots, won’t allow their behaviour to provoke us into words or behaviour which would could be seen as a breach of the peace.” […]

The Met say final judgments about exactly which protests will be allowed will be made on the day, although they have said they do not see their role as enforcing respect for Thatcher’s legacy.