Unforgiven? The rehabilitation of Mrs T
This week’s dramatisation of the fall of Margaret Thatcher shows her as a more human figure than often supposed. As the Iron Lady is re-evaluated on TV, we asked some of those who were prominent in the 1980s how they regard her now
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Sir Max Hastings Editor of The Daily Telegraph in the late 1980s
She regenerated the capitalist system in Britain and was right to privatise large areas of state ownership, but failed to reform such vital sectors as education and health which could not be delegated to private management. After a decade in power she had exhausted her energy, ideas and credibility, and governed increasingly erratically. I was much relieved that, after I was obliged to sack her daughter during a round of bracing Thatcherite redundancies, she never spoke to me again.
Sir John Tusa Managing director of the BBC World Service, 1986-92
Her most significant acts were fighting for the recovery of the Falklands and recognising that she could “do business” with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. She was wrong to say and believe that “there is no such thing as society”, undermining the essential bond that connects a humane society – shared responsibility for one another. She began the coarsening and degrading of local and national community.
Tony Benn Labour MP in the 1980s and previously a Labour minister
She mounted a counter-revolution against the welfare state and the 1945 reforms, strangled local government and privatised public assets. Trade union legislation today is less progressive than in 1906. Her greatest achievement was New Labour, which is a Thatcherite party. When Eric Heffer [a Liverpool Labour MP] died, I spoke at his memorial. Someone was coughing behind me, and it was Thatcher. I thanked her for coming.
Jonathan Aitken Backbench Conservative MP during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and former suitor of her daughter, Carol
She was right about the Falklands War, the excess of the unions and general economic liberalisation. She could be unnecessarily combative, abrasive and harsh. But what you saw was what you got.
Hanif Kureishi Playwright, screenwriter and novelist
Her view of human nature and of people was that that they were aggressive and competitive and only interested in themselves. She took it for granted that people were not altruistic, which has brought us to where we are today – a consumer society obsessed with celebrity. We are only now reopening the way we think and talk about ourselves in light of the bankruptcy of consumer capitalism. Once in the National Theatre, I turned round to find that I was with the Queen, Michael Heseltine and Thatcher. Had I been in possession of a bomb, Britain would have been considerably changed.
Sir Bernard Ingham Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary
Her most significant act was to stand against the prevailing pale-pink consensus which had stood for 35 years. She didn’t do a lot wrong. She might have been less abrasive but then she would not have achieved as much.
Beryl Bainbridge Novelist
I never voted Conservative, but she was a strong and able woman, well educated and she wasn’t scared of men. I saw her a couple of years ago with Carol. I had had a drink and I just went up to Margaret and kissed her. I felt terribly ashamed afterwards. Carol asked me why I did it and I just said, “she’s nice”.
Germaine Greer Writer, academic and feminist
Her most significant act was introducing cervical cancer screening for women, although I didn’t think it was a good idea at the time. The Falklands War was wrong but from the perspective of her leadership it was right. It reversed her fortunes as a leader but it was very cynical.
Will Self Novelist and columnist who grew up in Margaret Thatcher’s constituency
She spoke to us in the sixth form. I was only 16, but I never understood the sexual allure she held with some people in the Cabinet. Maybe it was power.
Tariq Ali Novelist and left-wing political campaigner
The Falklands War and inciting consumerism and xenophobia as a result of that conflict was her biggest act. Both laid the basis for the new consensus. Did she do anything right? No.
Billy Bragg Singer and left-wing activist
Taking on the National Union of Miners was her biggest act because, by destroying them, she broke the back of the post-war consensus.
Anything she did right was obscured by the vindictive way she carried out her policies. We are still living with the legacy of what she did wrong.
Edwina Currie Health minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government
Her most significant act was to defeat [the miners’ leader] Arthur Scargill and to open up the economy. She failed to respond in 1989-90 when the downside of the economic revolution was making itself felt. But she called those of us who were worried about it “moaning minnies”. She was a fantastic leader to work with and very supportive. She made the men look like wimps.
Ann Widdecombe Backbench Conservative MP under Margaret Thatcher
Privatisation was her biggest act and doing away with the idea that the state has to own everything that was essential. But she failed, as all successive Prime Ministers have, to get to grips with the welfare-dependency culture.
Lord Coe Olympic 1500m winner in the 1980s and Tory MP in the 1990s
At a Downing Street reception ahead of the Seoul Olympics in 1988 she asked me when I was going out, and I said I would go early because I needed four weeks to acclimatise. She said: “You don’t need that amount of time.” I said: “I think I do.” “I think you’re wrong and I am a research chemist,” she said. “I think I’m right and I have won the title twice,” I replied. I don’t think she understood sport.
John Fortune Satirist and cast member of Yes, Minister
Encouraging people to buy council houses was her biggest act, and she was right in that. She was wrong to demonise Arthur Scargill and the rest of the miners and to create the idea that the working classes were the enemy within.
Robert Lawrence Falklands War veteran and subject of the film Tumbledown
I met her and Denis at a fundraiser. He was introduced to me and was told I was the subject of Tumbledown, but he misheard and said: “What a load of left-wing crap,” and walked away. I passed the word along that I was outraged. When it got back to him the garden party parted like the Red Sea as he strode towards me and grabbed my damaged hand saying: “Bless your golden heart, sonny.”
Alexei Sayle Comedian and cast member in The Young Ones
I remember them dropping litter in St James’s Park so she could go round and pick it up on camera as a Keep Britain Tidy message. That told me a lot about her and her mind. I always made sure I never met her or I would have had to punch her.
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Comments
Me, I'll die happy if given an opportunity to p.ss on her grave.
The facts are she stood up to left wing unions that had caused the absolutely miserable winter of discontent that resulted in Labour's 'Lucky Jim' Callaghan PM being removed from office. The left winger unions pressed the self-destruct button when they continued striking and demonstrating when they tried to remove her from office. Their bloody minded revolution failed to remove her and her democratically elected Tory Government.
Many blame her, but it was the Scargill types of the union leadership world that caused all the trouble and so much hardship. They are the ones that misled strikers and lost millions of jobs.
Many union leaders and Labour politicians today still refuse to accept the truth.
Thatcher's biggest failure was taking away industry and leaving the industrial classes with no alternatives. Tebbit's insultingly dismissive command to "get on your bike" was naive to the extreme. Most people in those places had already had to sell their bikes to keep their families together and a roof over their head.
All those feral children we're constantly told about; most of their grandparents were hard-working industrial workers whose children were abandoned in favour of Thatcher's shiny new service economy, and their children, ignored again by New Labour, are now growing up into a country that has no place for them. Over the course of two generations, industry has been replaced with strong cider, heroin and a lifetime in and out of prison. They are Thatcher's children, and Blair was their nanny.
Thatcher's evil will live on long after her. I live in Australia, but still have ancestral ties to the UK. I will despise and detest her and her cronies for what they did until the day I die!
As for the opening comments by "bgarvie", surely bankers have run out of our money and now want other people's money. That is not parasitical socialism, but it is bloodsucking capitalsim.
- the "we have become a Grandmother" those five words at once sealed her fate electorally and showed the bankruptcy of "Thatcherism"
- her standing up and speaking on Climate Change and the danger posed by CO2 and global warming. Incredibly with a chemistry degree she alone amongst all of the lawyer / politco world leaders had the training to understand the science and know what CO2 actually is.
Did any sane citizen believe that the essential task of defeating the power of the Unions was best served by destroying the industry in which they worked? Or are we suppposed to forget that Thatcher's energy policy was based on using cheap coal dug up by child slave labour?
Should I forget that her policy of turning the UK into a 'homeowning democracy' was only based on her gerrymandering approach to elections (see a woman called Porter for evidence), led directly to our present financial conditions, made houses so expensive that the average newly wed could not possibly afford a proper home, put large numbers of young men who wanted nothing better than to make a home and family with their girl out on the streets?
Shoud I forget her greed and corruption, or is 'Mark' a word we don't use in polite society?
Why did I vote for her? Because she knocked the over-powerful trades unions into shape, which certainly did need to be done as a matter of urgency. Other than that, she was a waste of space.
Remember: these people backed Scargill's unsuccessful attempt to bring down an elected government (as he considered he had done with Mr Heath) at the expense of the members of his union and the country as a whole. This class war was started by the Left after the defeat of Callaghan, and was defended by the Thatcher government only when it became apparent that the alternative was a reversion to a pre-World War 1, us and them economy.
And it is astonishing that some of those commenting should claim that Scargill and his trades union cronies represented consensus politics, and make such despicable comments about the greatest British peacetime Prime Minister, rather than apologise to her and the British people for the misery they wreaked in ordinary people's lives for their own short-term political gain.
Ah well, that's me stuffed then ...
Industry disappeared because we were uncompetitive. Consumers will not buy junk and sadly, British industry produced expensive rubbish as opposed to the products of Germany, France, Japan and other nations. What caused the decline? Not Thatcher but Scargill and others who thought they deserved subsidy from the public.
No such thing as society? Entirely right! Who is this "society" that gets blamed for crime and all that is bad? It does not exist. Individuals do and have a personal responsibility to stop that which is bad from happening.
Wake up and get a grip people!
"She was wrong to say and believe that 'there is no such thing as society' "
Truth *will* out in the end
I pity her, and forgive her her weakness, but cannot forgive what she and her allies did.
Just change the pronoun "her" for "him" and you have Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown summed up perfectly. Well done!
Her greatest achievement, surely, was to end, and then reverse, the quarter-century of decline that began with the debacle of Suez. Her decision to recover the Falklands Islands made the British people realise their country wasn't a spent force, but could still achieve the apparently unachievable, as it had in the past. As for Unions, particularly the Miners, the truth is they were the architects of their own downfall. After decades of being pandered to by successive governments of both stripes, their leaders believed they were invincible and decided to set themselves up as a shadow government, a process that culminated in the Labour government's decision to allow the TUC to set the rates of tax towards the end of its. Arthur Scargill's attempt to bring down the Thatcher government by provoking a strike over a non-issue - pit closures that would have cost not one miner his job - was not only suicidal, but cynical, and it is a tragedy that it took the miners so long to realise they were on a hiding to nothing. The truth, whether we like it or not, is that Margaret Thatcher injected a huge and long-overdue dose of realism into a nation that for too long had been living in a fantasy world, and was rapidly declining to the status of a "banan republic". Instead of looking back and highlighting her mistakes, we should instead ask where this country would be, and what would it be like, had she not been Prime Minister during that turbulent decade. She must surely rank as the most important and influential Prime Minister after Winston Chuchill; indeed, I would go as far as to say that when the history of Britain in the 20th Century is eventually written, its pages will be filled and dominated by Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, whilst Tony Blair and the others will merit little more than footnotes.
Like Ayatollah Khomenei's.
At this point my faith in god has left me,now the bitch has Alzheimers she wont remember how bad she was.