I know a great many of my friends will be celebrating the death of a tyrant tonight, and frankly – I don’t blame them. I don’t need to go into detail the damage and despair Margaret Thatcher caused in people’s lives in this country. There are few examples in history of a leader so committed to the ruin of that nation’s own citizens.
However, I don’t share their relief and I can’t participate in their joy. Not just because I wasn’t living here at the time of her reign or because I didn’t really experience the effects. Trust me when I say that the architects of financial policy in New Zealand were in thrall to Thatcherism, and it took its toll there too.
But that’s the problem: Thatcher may be dead, but Thatcherism does not require Thatcher.
Today, a frail, old human being died. But honestly, I don’t give a shit about not speaking ill of the dead – and certainly not in this particular instance. This Comment Is Free article by Glenn Greenwald sums up my perspective on that way more eloquently than I ever could. Britain suffers from a surplus of politeness and a deficit of kindness and care, and no more than right now.
Thatcher can go to hell. She personally and wilfully caused massive social harm and divided a nation through greed and soulless enslavement to an ideology of selfishness. She enabled and supported despotic regimes. She started and campaigned for unjust wars. She directly caused poverty, violence, death, hatred, suicide and despair. She was not simply a tyrannical leader, but she was the architect, the vessel and enactor of that particular flavour of evil.
But that evil is alive and well and living in Westminster.
I understand the closure and sense of justice that will be felt by those who welcome Margaret Thatcher’s disappearance from our world – though many of the people I know have simply waited too long. They’re tired and they’ve been ground down by the relentless persistence in our culture of everything she stood for.
This is not about being heartless that an elderly woman has passed away. Thatcher was and is rightly despised. This is about the fact that nothing concrete is changed by her death. It’s purely symbolic at this point. And while symbolism is important in people’s lives – it’s not real and lasting change.
If anything needs to die, it’s the Thatcher project. The idea that people are less important than highly localised prosperity. That public services and social support for those who need it are a drain on society, and corporate tax evasion and high-risk speculative banking practices, fiddled expense accounts and multi-million dollar bonuses are the merely the cost of doing business.
We waited for Thatcher to die. We need to actively kill Thatcherism. We need to punch it in its stupid, selfish, spoiled and smug face, then hit it with hammers and stab it with screwdrivers until it’s truly, properly dead with no chance of returning.
THEN let’s party.
In the meantime, I can think of no better collection of words to mark this occasion, than these spoken by Pete Postlethwaite in the film Brassed Off.
I wish it had been this kind of unnecessary and tragic despair that had died today. But her cruelty endures in the corridors of power and Britain is sick with her legacy. Whether the woman is breathing or not is, I think, almost entirely immaterial at this point.
Brilliant.
This is a really fantastic piece of writing (and thinking) – it’s exactly the reason I keep reading what you write!!
Best thing you have written in quite a while Mr. Dubber.
This is a little strong. Only the most rabid supporter of Thatcher would deny that she was merciless, that she instigated, or was willingly involved in, events that ruined and cost lives. The speeches and decisions she made, and the policies she rolled out, are on her shoulders, and they, and their legacy, should be given all the attention they deserve, pulled apart and examined – no doubt about it.
But she wasn’t “committed to the ruin” of England’s citizens. (and seriously, you think Thatcher is amongst – or just is – the very worst leader in all history in this sense? Dude.) She was committed to turning England into a business; people were just ruined in the crossfire. I found, and still find, her actions repellent, and I personally witnessed and felt the tendrils of her aggression during my childhood. But she didn’t walk (or, to be more accurate, claw her way) into the leadership of a naive and innocent country. The unions were poisoned and bloated with corruption (my old man still bares the scars), people didn’t want some socialist utopia, they wanted better carpets and holidays abroad. Like it or loathe it, since Thatcher the country has had vast swathes of society driving better cars, traveling further and more often, houses filled with gadgets and plenty of food. Yeah, it’s an empty dream, with rot underneath it, but people look after their own, and they always have. When ‘working class’ meant, among other things, being stuck in one town your whole life with barely two pennies to scrape together, there was bound to be a stronger illusion of society – what else was there? If those people could have had a well-paid job that wouldn’t smash their health to pieces, how long would they have stuck around with their lifelong neighbours? I’ve read enough socialist and communist literature to imagine my own personal utopia, but to do so I have to ignore all the history I’ve read and almost all of the personal experience I’ve had in this and every other country I’ve visited.
“She personally and wilfully caused massive social harm.” This is accurate, there’s no denying it. “[She] divided a nation through greed and soulless enslavement to an ideology of selfishness.” This imbues her with superhuman powers, and seems like an extremely reductive vision of an entire nation (minus one woman), to the point that it’s patronizing. She identified already existing traits within the populace and used/abused them, but people had been tempted with the baubles of capitalism long before she took power. She went too far with her war on the unions, but they needed pulling back; she was brutal with the miners, but the industry’s days were already numbered. It could all have been done infinitely better – it should have – but do you really think without Thatcher we’d be a more cohesive society, free of capitalism’s particular strains of ugliness? And honestly, would we be anywhere near as close to gender equality as we are now? I’m not saying she brought enlightenment, but the country and political scene were essentially old boy’s clubs. Getting to the top when she did wasn’t nothing.
Finally, I just don’t understand the positive vision, or even the celebration of death. People hate her, fair enough. I hate the things she did, the things she stood for – I’d go as far to say that I considered her an enemy. But justice, if there is such a thing, would have been her seeing the errors of her ways, or at least something resembling redemption. Responding to her lack of compassion, with one’s own lack of the same, isn’t justice, it’s a tragedy. Even on the day she dies, you can pounce on her every fault and still maintain that sense of compassion – “don’t speak ill of the dead” is indeed nonsense. But pouncing on the death itself isn’t problematic because it’s impolite, it’s problematic because it wanders into eye-for-an-eye territory, and it harms the already-weakening political left. No matter how brutal an enemy she might have been, she wasn’t a monster, and even if she had been it does people credit to keep a sense of composure. Letting rage or bitterness cloud the language thrown at her demise will only cement the image of her as a martyr. It doesn’t matter that she breathes no more, because there is no hell to go to. What does matter is how we behave.
Apologies for the ridiculously long comment.
Following you since 2009, unsubscribing after reading this. Very disappointed you stooped so low :-(
I would just like to say thank you John for bringing some common sense to this topic.
Totally agree with what you say ,and the clip at the end,genius.