To some she fought for Britain. Many others, including the Daily Mirror, felt she spent 11 years fighting against Britain
People's minds were made up long ago on Margaret Thatcher.
To some she fought for Britain. Many others, including the Daily Mirror, felt she spent 11 years fighting against Britain.
The controversial decision to grant her a ceremonial funeral, honoured with the full horse-drawn gun carriage and trappings bestowed on Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother, means she continues to split us in death as she did in life.
If widespread public consent is the qualification for a ceremonial send-off, with its £5million bill, then the immediate reaction tonight suggested that does not exist with Lady Thatcher.
She was the nation’s first woman Prime Minister and without doubt the Conservative leader left her imprint on the country she ruled inflexibly during a 1980s scarred by riots, strikes and strife.
The people who suffered under her have long memories.
They don’t forgive the agony inflicted on communities and industries systematically destroyed because they were deemed part of Britain’s past, not the future.
Selfish, reckless greed was unleashed in the City of London while much of the rest of the country endured mass unemployment.
Deepening poverty created two nations.
And on one side, dumped on the scrapheap, were the bruised and bloodied casualties of her economic and political drive.
Margaret Thatcher broke Britain and replaced what had come before with something crueller, nastier.
Many of the problems experienced today on bleak estates – joblessness, drugs, despair and hopelessness – can be traced back to her disastrous premiership.
The balance sheet weighs heavily against her. Even the sale of council homes at a discount – hailed as a great success and extending property ownership – came with a nasty sting in the tale.
Her government stopped councils using cash from the sale of those properties to build more new homes.
The legacy of that is today’s housing crisis.
We recognise she became a frail old lady and her two children have lost a mother.
But her passing away doesn’t rewrite political history.
Those who suffered will never love her, no matter how grand a funeral winds its way through central London.
Mirror
