Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

[Droo]

This will probably come as little surprise, what with her health deteriorating as it was, but that doesn't make this story any less somber. Margaret Thatcher was both loved and hated by the people with a passion, depending on what side of the political fence you fell, generally speaking, and while there will always be arguments to made on both sides, there can be no disputing she was a towering iconic figure in the world of politics. It is a sad loss today.

I fall on the left side of the fence, and, while I wouldn't want to speak on behalf of the generation before me who endured the working class struggle of the Thatcher era, I have to concede that she was a strong leader, an inspiration to women, and stood fast when it came to issues such as the Falklands and the European Union. She was an excellent and commanding orator, and for that alone, she had my respect - it is a thrill to see her in full flow in the House of Commons. And, regardless of political alignment, I think history will put her in the grand pantheon of great British leaders.

Farewell, Iron Lady.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

I think that's probably the nicest thing I've seen written about her today by a good breadth, so that's pretty telling. Certainly a transformative figure, I'll give her that much.

[Dasquian Belargic]

She died an old woman after a life of privilege.

I can't imagine there will be any tears shed in Newcastle over this.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Well at least she's got a better approval rating than Oliver Cromwell so there is that.

[Darth Turbogeek]

Hss anyone staked her to make sure the evil bitch doesnt come back? Evil and vindictive she was, she deserves no credit for "other" qualities. She made millions of lives misreble with her regressive bullshit - Her and Regean have a lot to answer for.

Good riddance. The world is a better place today without her foul politics.

[Droo]

What a load of stereotypical lowest-common-denominator rubbish. And it comes as absolutely no surprise to me.

[Anna Fernandez]

I will freely admit to not being completely up to speed on her policies or politics, but she was PM while we lived in England, and so I will say rest in peace Mrs. Thatcher. And it isn't my job to pass Final Judgement on other human beings.

[Darth Turbogeek]

What a load of stereotypical lowest-common-denominator rubbish. And it comes as absolutely no surprise to me.

And it's all she deserves.



Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC) :

A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death.

[Captain Untouchable]

And yet despite all that, you're the one here spitting bile and taking pot shots at a dead person.

You're a wonderful human being, Mark. Kindly go fuck yourself.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

And yet, for apparently being evil, both she and Reagan picked their respective nations up, made people work, and set both countries back on the road to prosperity.

Sometimes the hard way is the only way out in the long run. Feel free to hate on that, if you must.

[Charley]

Not sure if hitching her legacy to Reagan is going to earn any sympathy whatsoever. They are inextricably bound together though, and there was plenty ill spoken of the dead when the Gipper passed.

I won't go as profane as Mark on it, but that quote he dropped is dead on correct. You don't get a free whitewash when you snuff it

[Droo]

That is not the point, though. There is a presumption that this post-mortem venomous free-for-all is warranted under the infantile belief that this woman was somehow inherently wicked - that is the picture being painted here, and in many other places, and it is exactly why I labelled it as stereotypical and lowest common denominator. And let's look at that quote: by the same token, are we entitled to entirely blacken someone's name by virtue of our suriving them? Of course not, which is why I wouldn't recommend leaning on the words of ancient scholars to prop up one's prejudices; it may be attractive in aesthetic, but not substance.

My objection is that these ugly heavy-handed and distasteful criticisms do not contribute anything towards a discussion, they are black-and-white character sketches, devoid of wit, and thanks to the predictable degree of saturation out there, entirely boring.

I said it earlier: she was a divisive character who, for her politics, was both loved and hated. But the story of someone is never black and white, so when people fall back on tired old tropes just for the sake of spewing bile, they need to be called out on it.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Are we discussing? We can. :) I'm genuinely curious to hear from folks who know more about it and have a more intimate view of her than I as to her positive legacy. The gist of what I've seen has been a litany of negative policies and actions both foreign and domestic, and the positives being her personality and character and other such intangibles (including some true over-reachers trying to frame her as a feminism icon). Found myself readily making the Reagan parallel even if it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

When folks die it's usually the fodder for leaving blurbs and epitaphs. Heap the bad with the good, I say.

I will admit I've been listening to a lot of old British music today that's said a lot worse about ol' Maggie than what Mark posted, which is definitely a thing I find novel in political discourse!

[Darth Turbogeek]

1) Propped up Pinochet and then worked to prevent his victims seeing justice for his crimes against humanity
2) Campaigned to keep Nelson Mandela in jail refering to him as a 'terrorist' for opposing apartheid.
3) Propped up Pol Pot, including sending in the SAS to train Pol Pots forces.
4) Supported Suharto
5) Wrecked the UKs industrial base.
6) Dealt with the falklands crisis by war when it could have easily been resolved by diplomacy. Many many deaths.
7) Provided material support to Sadam Husseins use of MWDs against Iran.
8) State sponsored terrorism against the Democratically elected government of Nicuragua.
9) Violent repression against unionists in Northern Ireland, including the deaths of Bobby sands and the hunger strikers.
10) And we can go on


And you wonder why I am profane about the dead?

Droo - Frankly I have avoided being a dick to posters here. I will continue to do so, for I'm very much in the camp this woman absolutly deserves to be a subject of bile and anger so I will not engage with you on the personal insults level. But I will absolutly continue to voice my disgust at not just what this woman believed in, but the manner of how she did it.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Anyone who, after this point, personally insults another poster in thread, will get a time out from the board. It's perfectly possible to discuss this topic without resorting to slinging muck at one another.


My personal opinion on Thatcher is pretty straight forward.


The passage of 20 years has enabled us to assess the long-term impact of Margaret Thatcher's politics. 1) By destroying her party's standing in Scotland she did more to promote the eventual break-up of the UK than any other individual. 2) Two economic depressions caused by her ideology created the unbalanced economy and unstable society from which we suffer today. The demise of British manufacturing destroyed the skilled jobs that once gave working-class families a high standard of living, leaving Britain divided between the extremes of affluent professional-business employment and low-paid service work. 3) By promoting the sale of council homes and preventing the building of new ones, she created the current housing crisis in which many pay high rents (she abolished rent controls ) and immigrants get blamed for a shortage they did not cause. 4. Privatisation of sectors such as energy, water and railways exposed Britons to private companies that exploit their captive customers by raising prices endlessly to enrich their shareholders.

[Droo]

I will continue to do so, for I'm very much in the camp this woman absolutly deserves to be a subject of bile and anger so I will not engage with you on the personal insults level.

Good, because I wasn't trading personal insults with you. My objection was not with you, but the manner in which you expressed your views, for all the reasons I stated.

This (http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/02/thatcher-social-moral-society) old article reflects upon the social and economic mood of the time, and how Thatcher's politics have translated into our modern economics and society. It's more subtle and eloquent than most hindsight arguments I've read.

A bullet points list of any major political leader can look heavily damning, particularly with the advantage of twenty years of hindsight, but many of these issues were coloured by their time. The ANC was identified at the time as a terrorist organisation, and we'd be fooling ourselves to think that they weren't responsible for bombings that killed innocent civillians, and consequently politicians were very wary of having any kind of traffic with them whatsoever. This is not a trait exclusive to Margaret Thatcher - although, after researching this yesterday, I believe it was the ANC that she referred to as "terrorist," not Nelson Mandela himself. There may be a quote elsewhere that states otherwise, but I haven't found it. Edit: That is not to say this excuses her stance on Mandela, or the ANC, or Apartheid, of course, but rather to point out that a similar argument could be made against most politicians of that time - between 1962 and 1983, Mandela's name wasn't so much as uttered within the House of Commons by any member of parliament.

As for the Bobby Sands thing, the hunger strike was based on the stance that they believed themselves, and wanted to be recognised, as political prisoners, or even prisoners of war, and not criminals. But this simply wasn't the case. If Thatcher and the government had conceded to these demands, I wonder what kind of horrifying precedent would've have been created by that, and how many more hunger strikes would we have then had in our prisons?

Also, with the Falklands War, I think diplomacy was absolutely out of the question. When sovereign territory is invaded and occupied by a hostile force, you don't just whimper, and open up negotiations for... well, what, exactly? Leaseback? Shared rule? A UN protectorate? The Argentine junta didn't diplomacy their way onto the Falkland Islands, it was an invasion, and even amongst the left and working class haters of Thatcherism over here, I find that that is something on which most people agree.

[CMJ]

My general rule in judging US Presidents is that you need 50 years after their time in office ends to be able to fairly look at them. Any time before that politics still enters into the conversation. Basically, I think you need a large (majority) segment of the population to be born with no pre-existing biases.

So, if you translate that logic to British PM's - she still has another quarter century till she can be judged fairly.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Yeah historians usually debate that later, (of course it won't stop some from doing it now). It is hard to say right now where she stands in history. At the moment without considering her, I would say top U.K. prime ministers are (no order) Churchill, David Lloyd George, Liverpool, Gladstone, Atllee, both Pitts, and probably Warpole. Thatcher was very controversial, especially when it came to the poor, but I won't judge her.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

I'm not sure I buy into that. We're asked to evaluate these people in the present every time we go to a voting booth. I think that's enough to qualify an opinion on a politician.

The thing with Reagan and (from what I've read on her at least) Thatcher, is that regardless of what you think of their policies, the weight of their policies with the force of their personalities make them into transformative political figures. Reagan is dead in the ground and we are still dealing with the ongoing ripples of the changes he set in motion. Being in the moment you get to see how those ripples break up the pond's surface.

I will begrudge Droo an agreement on the Falklands thing, as I don't know how you can honestly sanitize an encroachment on sovereignty, even if it's a small and trivial one.

[CMJ]

Sure, we're asked to evaluate politicians when we vote for them...but I don't think we can fairly judge all the good/bad they've done till long after they're in office because a lot of the time it boils down into reliving the campaigns. People that live in the moment either romanticize or vilify these people in a way that people generations from now won't.

Like do I think I can look at read about say....Ike and be able to more fairly look at what he did than my grandfather? Absolutely. The same way 50 years from now I think folks will be able to more fairly look at someone like Obama without all the good/bad baggage that exists now. Things will look much different 40-50 years from now. This kind of reminds me of the story the historian David McCullough told about his father and Harry Truman. When Truman was elected in 1948 his dad, a Republican, was very depressed. A couple of decades later he was remarking about the lack of good candidates - "Gosh I wish Harry was there to give'em hell."

[Dasquian Belargic]

A speech on Thatcher / Thatcherism by Glenda Jackson MP at a House of Commons tribute debate:

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[Droo]

I'm sorry I missed that. Easily the best speech of the day from what I've seen. This is what the bulk of the Labour mouthpieces are lacking: backbone, conviction, and the capacity to make words breath-taking. It's a thematic speech, of course, and full of broad strokes, but wholly apt for the occassion.

[Dasquian Belargic]

One of the more interesting pieces that I've read on Thatcher: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/14/thatcher-economy-talk-based-fraud