Mrs Thatcher's speedy release from St Thomas' hospital on Saturday morning probably elicited a very, very small groan of disappointment among the nation’s journalists and bloggers. I'm not referring to the mean-spirited and tribal disappointment of political opponents that wish her ill - although I'm sure that was there too - but the sense of professional anticipation thwarted with the realisation that profiles, obituaries and tributes must remain on file for the time being. Indeed, the best indications of how voluminous that outpouring will be when the inevitable happens are the few bits that broke to the surface anyway - witness reaction in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail to a brief hospital visit.
I've always found the political hagiography that surrounds Mrs Thatcher just as troubling and misguided as the deep, deep hostility she undoubtedly attracts from the left – both camps seem to suffer from the same wilful ignorance of context. Such was the state of the country in the late 1970’s that few would deny the merit (and necessity) of her early economic reforms but the characterisation of Thatcher’s time in office as some sort of golden age is a nonsense few serious pundits would entertain. She was a politician, not a religious leader – why this implied sense that her press office never spun a story or that she never changed her mind on any political issue? Why are so few of her supporters willing even to acknowledge how divisive a figure she was and how painful (even if necessary) many of her reforms were? It’s laughable that a press that denounces Brown as a workaholic control freak who brooks no dissent should still revere someone with Mrs Thatcher’s character. A control freak you agree with is still a control freak.
I witnessed first hand the impact of those reforms as I watched my father, an intelligent and hard-working man struggle to find work in an economy that offered huge-start up grants and tax rebates to foreign firms who only hung around long enough to soak up those fiscal benefits and then made their employees redundant. Unemployment reached more than 3.5million, the vast majority of whom were decent hard-working people simply unable to find any viable employment – yet the standard Tory narrative on this issue is that these were all layabouts who simply didn’t want to work or that unemployment was somehow the fault of the unions.
This isn’t to deny any of Mrs Thatcher’s achievements and I do think we’re all the better for her early years in office. But there were mistakes so let’s not be too eager to airbrush them out and cast her as somehow beyond politics – let’s at the very least acknowledge the unfortunate consequences of the things that had to be done. And let’s stop treating her time in office with this ridiculous sense of reverence. I think the absence of a grown-up and balanced assessment of her legacy remains one of the things that harms the Conservatives to this day.
I've always found the political hagiography that surrounds Mrs Thatcher just as troubling and misguided as the deep, deep hostility she undoubtedly attracts from the left – both camps seem to suffer from the same wilful ignorance of context. Such was the state of the country in the late 1970’s that few would deny the merit (and necessity) of her early economic reforms but the characterisation of Thatcher’s time in office as some sort of golden age is a nonsense few serious pundits would entertain. She was a politician, not a religious leader – why this implied sense that her press office never spun a story or that she never changed her mind on any political issue? Why are so few of her supporters willing even to acknowledge how divisive a figure she was and how painful (even if necessary) many of her reforms were? It’s laughable that a press that denounces Brown as a workaholic control freak who brooks no dissent should still revere someone with Mrs Thatcher’s character. A control freak you agree with is still a control freak.
I witnessed first hand the impact of those reforms as I watched my father, an intelligent and hard-working man struggle to find work in an economy that offered huge-start up grants and tax rebates to foreign firms who only hung around long enough to soak up those fiscal benefits and then made their employees redundant. Unemployment reached more than 3.5million, the vast majority of whom were decent hard-working people simply unable to find any viable employment – yet the standard Tory narrative on this issue is that these were all layabouts who simply didn’t want to work or that unemployment was somehow the fault of the unions.
This isn’t to deny any of Mrs Thatcher’s achievements and I do think we’re all the better for her early years in office. But there were mistakes so let’s not be too eager to airbrush them out and cast her as somehow beyond politics – let’s at the very least acknowledge the unfortunate consequences of the things that had to be done. And let’s stop treating her time in office with this ridiculous sense of reverence. I think the absence of a grown-up and balanced assessment of her legacy remains one of the things that harms the Conservatives to this day.
4 Comments:
Her reputation was sytematically destroyed by the state funded media ie the BBC in the 90s and if there was hagiography it was damn hard to find. That is why thee has been a charged fight back.
True ,Spin , stealth taxes , and the European project all went forward in her time but this was part of the natural development of political life which , she might have corrected. Certainly Europe The Blair goverment took these bad trends , twisted and accelerated them.
Let us not forget Thatcher`s clean little secret as Nick Coen out it , she was not authoritarian socially and her law and order policies were far more Liberal than her rhetoric . She started on the left-ish of the Party.
Before you start accussing ber supporters of mindless hero worship you need to define which Thatcher you mean .The politician or the spitting image Puppet.
I would have her back tommorow
"Few would would deny the merit (and necessity) of her early economic reforms ..."
Well, I for one would, and so would much of the left come to that. The facts are the left was not opposed to her policies just because of the damage she caused: hers was a class project, about entrenching the power of capital over labour and affecting a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich that continues to this day.
This isn't to say the post-war economy of state intervention and limited planning was some kind of golden age. Neoliberalism was one response to the crisis that faced British capital at that time. Other alternatives were available, but none pandered as much to capital's interests as the programme that was emerging from the Thatcher-Joseph axis.
She was certainly one who polarized.
Thanks all.
As for the notion that 'much of the left' would repudiate her early reforms I can't agree - only the unreconstructed old left which you're clearly part of. In the main the sensible left recognised the need to accept the modern world and thankfully dropped silly notions about 'the power of capital' etc.
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