Sheesh, what can I say? Â How do you sum up a person whose every thought, action and word you utterly loathed? Â By saying I’m glad she’s dead? Â Actually I’m not particularly, since she had been irrelevant to my life for the last few years and would probably have continued to be irrelevant had she lived. Â The legacy was already in place; her survival as a person was contingent. Â I guess I could say, harsh though it is, that I’m sorry she lived: I’m certainly sorry she won a second and third term in office and I’m more than sorry that it was the Falklands War wot won it for her. Â There’s no point in being nice, even if I could bring myself to do it: I loathed everything she stood for: she dismantled everything I cared about and espoused everything I despise. Â Normally I don’t speak ill of the dead, but I think politicians are in some sense an exception to this, since their actions affect all of us. Â Their deeds stay with us long after they are gone – and of no-one is this more true than of Thatcher. Â That woman destroyed everything I care about and espoused everything I despise, and that is all I have to say about her.
In that light, I actually honour Neil Kinnock for speaking the truth when asked for a statement yesterday – I think what he had to say was coherent and fair-minded: (second paragraph)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-verdict-legacy-1819346
Tony Benn was also cogent and fair: I can’t find the quote but here’s a left-wing analysis of her legacy:
The death of this spectre of the right (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) is a good moment to start the recovery of the left. Â To look forward, not back, and find responses to what is happening now. Â We need to find a way of gathering together and using the strength of the disunited, the scattered, the fragmented, the poor and the exploited. Â And women need to be central this time – it is to the eternal shame of the Labour party that Britain’s first – and only – female PM was on the right of politics.
I may find words to assess the legacy of Thatcher but there’s a lot to think about, so I shall leave it at that for now.
Comments please – particularly if you disagree!
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
Firstly, if you’ve not seen it, do have a look at the cartoon on page 29 of the Guardian today!
Yes, I loathed her too, but agreed with her foreign policy, although sinking the Belgrano may have been a bit iffy.
As a woman, did she pave the way for other women to be successful? Hardly. If you judge a mother by her children what’s her score? Probably not high. I am in her debt, to some extent, because her government abolished the organisation I was working for, but we had a strong union and good redundancy arrangements.
I have a feeling that there will be lots of people lining the streets for her funeral cortege, eager to show their feelings for her.
Will you be one?
Spock out
:
No, I will not be trailing behind her cortege but honing my planned series of blog posts about her legacy. Which organisation did she abolish that you worked for?
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I worked for the Engineering Industry Training Board, our job being to set training standards and monitor them in all engineering companies (above 60 employees) and for all categories of workforce (except labourers), from managers to operators. It was for me a marvellous job, which I had for 21 years.
I’m taken aback by the Queen going to the funeral of such a divisive and hated figure, seeing that the only other PM’s funeral she attended was Churchill’s. I think the republicans among us will have a field day.