In the seventies, when Thatcher was in full flow, I was just trying to make my way in the world, having just left University. I got married in 1980, so the first ten years of that, including my first three children, came during Thatcher's reign. I remember it vividly as a very difficult time, of divisive political decisions, union confrontation, the decline of British industry and the Falklands War.
I thought Thatcher was pretty bad. I accept it was a time when some difficult decisions had to be made, but I think the style of government, the means of implementation were all wrong. Personally, I think she was dominating and patronising in the way she ran things, and the way she treated people. Consensus was a dirty word to her, and she simply did not try hard enough to take people with her.
I'm sorry that she contracted dementia. It meant that she was able (unwillingly I'm sure) to forget a lot of what had made her so divisive in this country, and to be largely unaware of what her legacy would mean to politics & to the social fabric of Britain. To many people it seems "cruel" when a loved one contracts dementia, because they lose themselves & their identity, and they forget the people & things they knew. To me it seems equally cruel that Thatcher has managed to largely escape the consequences of her own actions, and to end her years in a lavish retirement, with her acolytes gathered around her.
It's hard to forgive and to forget what she did, and difficult to stomach who her friends were (both nationally & internationally).
Therefore I do not mourn her passing, but I'm not going to celebrate her death either. I won't watch her funeral on TV, and I strongly resent the fact that this has turned into a state occasion, involving an A-list guest list, the armed forces, and a tax-payer-funded £10m cost. She's an old lady who's died, and she deserves a quiet funeral with family and friends, but no more than that.
Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2013
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