Monday, April 22, 2013

The Funeral Rites For Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism

Clement Attlee, British Prime Minister 1945-51
Clement Attlee, British Prime Minister 1945-51 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Margaret Thatcher
Cover of Margaret Thatcher




It's been an eventful couple of weeks in the USA with the death of the "greatest prime minister since Winston Churchill" Margaret Thatcher. It's amazing that even with the Boston Bombings her recent passing was still a leading news item. What amazed me that even left wing commentators were lauded her as the best since Churchill! I thought that the late Clement Attlee had done quite a lot great things, the Welfare State, the NHS, rebuilding the economy after a rather expensive war, staring down Joe Stalin in Berlin and the Communists in Korea. I am sure that Lady Thatcher was a great Prime minister and did great things. I guess recovering the Falklands and  helping in ending the Cold War would be considered great! However what divided the country were things that she did that were not so great, like letting our manufacturing go down the drain, and as the late Harold Macmillan put it "selling off the family silver"., and to leave the last say to the late Ian Gilmore (one of Lady Ts cabinet ministers) "The ship is off course and heading for the rocks". Looks like history is repeating itself, its a shame there are no real "one nation Tories" around, they are more effective than the whole of the Labour party.

Should Lady Thatcher have been given a state funeral considering the division of feeling about her? I would say yes as if to bring closure to her and her era. Also for there to be a spirit of forgiveness for those who we feel that she destroyed their lives. There was a comment in the Spectator that said that "it was not her who saved Britain, but Britain itself" That would say to me that she really did nothing during the great recession of the early 1980s, just let nature take its course.



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