Baroness Thatcher deserves respect, not sick death parties

The grocer’s daughter, once the most powerful woman in the world, will be honored by the state tomorrow with a lavish ceremonial funeral in the British capital. Her flag-draped coffin will be taken on a horse-drawn gun carriage down the Strand to Saint Paul’s Cathedral where hundreds of British dignitaries and foreign heads of state will pay their last respects.
Thatcher planned her funeral with the same meticulous detail with which she performed her prime ministerial duties, eschewing a state funeral involving her body lying in state because she, more than anyone, knew that her policies had been divisive. But even she couldn’t have been aware that her death would trigger a mass spewing of hatred and vulgarity of the kind more befitting a genocidal tin-pot dictator than a woman who battled against all odds to save her nation from becoming a bankrupt and inconsequential island.
The “Iron Lady” may not have been a lovable mother figure. She was tougher than all of her male Cabinet colleagues put together and far more determined to achieve her goals. Her high-pitched voice was described by TV critic Clive James as sounding like a cat sliding down a blackboard before she received elocution coaching. She had little time for shirkers and would rarely offer apologies, primarily because most of the time she was right. The responsibilities of her job weighed heavily and there were many occasions when she made do with little more than three hours sleep. She cared not whether or not she was liked; she was no people pleaser and rarely picked up a newspaper to see what was being written about her.
In short, this housewife, mother of two and barrister was a rare woman, nay rare person, of dedication and conviction and for those qualities alone she was exceptional. Let’s not forget, too, that she was Britain’s longest-serving resident of Number Ten Downing Street, voted into office three times, which signifies that the majority of Britons believed in her. The country didn’t force her exit; she was ultimately betrayed by members of her own Cabinet she once considered friends. By all accounts, she never fully recovered from their treachery and spent her twilight years ill and embittered.
Sure, she made some mistakes — her downfall was the implementation of a grossly unfair poll tax causing civil unrest. As a self-ascribed “Lady not for turning” she was unable to back down. But her successes, many resonating far from British shores, even today, far outweighed her failures. Most of those plotting protests to coincide with tomorrow’s funeral procession or planning to turn their backs as her coffin passes are simply too young to know what a terrible state the UK was in before she first took office in May, 1979.
The socialist-based economy was in terminal decay. Taxation was sky-high, the top rate was 83 percent on earned income which she substantially lowered. Union bosses were holding the country to ransom calling “everybody out” at whim leaving unburied bodies piling up in morgues, mountains of garbage accumulating in the streets and idle trains leaving commuters adrift. She believed in the market economy and free enterprise, entrepreneurship and small government, concepts that were foreign to post-World War II Britain. Her sell-off of state industries boosted the fiscal purse along with productivity, a policy that has since been mirrored elsewhere in the world. Yes, she hurt Welsh and northern communities by shutting down coalmines but that had to be done in an era when British coal exports were no longer competitive and consumers were turning to cleaner fuels.
Her loutish, booze-swilling, tattooed detractors forget that because of her ordinary folk were facilitated to become owners of their own homes and council house occupants were given the opportunity to buy theirs at rock bottom prices. Abroad she is remembered for being instrumental along with her political soul mate President Reagan in bringing down the Soviet Union; their close relationship was the budding of the special relationship now existing between Washington and London that not only secures the UK’s defenses but also permits Britain to punch above its weight internationally. Not everyone will approve of her controversial decision to go to war with Argentina over its occupation of the Falkland Islands, understandably so. Nevertheless, it was a brave one that paid off with a victory that injected the British people with a renewed sense of national pride. I was busy globetrotting during that conflict and noted that everyone from street sweepers to waiters to stay at home housewives knew Maggie Thatcher’s name. I wonder how many would recognize David Cameron’s!
OK, so I’m a fan of Thatcher and most of her clean-sweep policies and I’m in awe of a woman who was written off by Conservative Party head honchos early in her career as a prim and proper, nicely coiffed housewife, the perfect token female politician in a male stronghold. She showed them otherwise and they took their revenge; indeed a number of her former parliamentary colleagues are bent on taking revenge on the dead, including the disrespectful Respect MP George Galloway who is attempting to block a parliamentary motion canceling Prime Minister’s Question Time tomorrow so that MPs would miss the funeral. I never realized Galloway, one of my heroes for his championship of the Palestinian cause, could be so vindictive and petty.
Thatcher died alone in a London hotel suite except for her employed caregivers. Her mind had let her down, her short-term memory failed her. The death of her beloved husband Dennis who stood by her through thick and thin was an almost fatal blow to her personal happiness. She cut a sad and lonely figure in recent years so why this urge by sections of the community to scar her image after she’s gone? She had more dignity in her little finger than those hoodlums trying to turn a solemn occasion into a circus. She made me proud to be British; they certainly don’t. “Death, the sable smoke where vanishes the flame” wrote Lord Byron. But Maggie’s flame will live on, long after the twisted morons gleefully reviling her remarkable life and staining their country’s image return home.

Sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk