The right wing politicians and the right wing press are
making great capital out of the fact that a lot of people from the lower levels
of British society have been holding parties to celebrate the death of a
tyrant. I wouldn’t attend such a party for several reasons:
a) I would consider doing so to be indecorous.
b) I would consider their common banner – ‘The Witch is Dead’
– to be an insult to witches (even though I realise which film they got it from.)
I’ve known a few witches in my time, and they were all rather worthier people than
Mrs Thatcher.
c) Her death is of little consequence, since she hasn’t been
able to add to her devastating policies since she was ousted from power by her
own party in 1990. By then, even they
had realised what a liability she’d become. (Although it is an interesting fact
that present members of the same party are now lauding her as a ‘great leader,’
whilst turning the might of their firepower on the nasty little creatures at
the bottom of the social heap whom they address with the pejorative term ‘welfare
dependent.’ They conveniently forget, of course, that welfare dependency
was effectively non-existent before Thatcher’s policies created it.)
I could go on and on, but I don’t want to. I just want to get
through next week and finally see the back of her. And although I wouldn't have attended any celebratory party, it hardly surprises me that others did. There is, however, one thing
troubling me.
One of the right wing tabloids carried a typically crass
headline to the effect that the British people had voted Thatcher the title of ‘the
greatest Prime Minister ever.’ Well, I don’t know whether that poll was
conducted genuinely, or whether it was manipulated to produce the ‘right’
result as opinion polls often are. If it were true, however, that a
representative cross section of the British public had so voted, I would have
to state unequivocally that I’d suddenly become ashamed to be British.
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