If there is one thing, and perhaps one thing alone, that the Left should draw from Thatcher’s hegemony, it is the need for a leader with the same uncompromising conviction and steely determination as she repeatedly demonstrated. She interpreted her mission in 1979 as confronting trade union power, rolling back the State, instilling unabashed individualism, […]
Posts Tagged ‘Margaret Thatcher’
How desperate are the Tories to mythologise their “glorious past”
Apr 10th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Just as Thatcher outranks Churchill in the estimation of Sun readers, so she does in the eulogising of Tory MPs. When Churchill died in 1965, the four speeches in his memory in the House of Commons lasted 25 minutes. He had been an MP until the previous year and Prime Minister only ten years earlier so a […]
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Mrs T – a depreciation
Apr 9th, 2013 by Ian Williams.The New York Times epithet machine used to describe Margaret Thatcher for American readers as “the prime minister who privatized the loss-making state industries.” Of course she did no such thing. The enterprises she sold off made huge profits for the Treasury. BP was, after all, the state-owned creation of Winston Churchill and kept a […]
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Death of a class war enthusiast
Apr 9th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Thatcher was a deeply divisive figure, which is why she will be lionised in much of the South of the country and reviled in most of the North. In hard and difficult times the British people will rally to a unifier, whether Churchill in wartime or Attlee in constructing a peace that would not return […]
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Condolences where they’re due but let’s celebrate the death of Thatcherism when it comes
Apr 8th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.We’ll celebrate no-one’s death. Margaret Thatcher was a mother and grand-mother and we offer condolences to her family. But we’ll not suffer the hagiographies in silence, and the final end of Thatcherism, when it eventually comes, will indeed be a cause for celebration. For now, however, Thatcherism lives on still, under various names – the […]
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The complex legacy of Tony Blair
Jun 2nd, 2012 by Andy Newman.The rise of Owen Jones as a persuasive and articulate exponent of socialist politics is certainly a very welcome development, and the reach of his articles in the Independent gives him a useful vehicle for propagating left-wing ideals, which he does very well. However, I want to take issue with Owen’s recent article about Tony Blair. One of biggest intellectual challenges for […]
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The Iron Lady
Jan 12th, 2012 by Andy Newman.Last Friday night, I was down in Torquay drinking with trade union colleagues going to the next day’s Regional Council of the TUC, and I was surprised that many people were opposed to seeing the Iron Lady on principle. I had already agreed to see it to take part in a chat about the film […]
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Thatcher’s funeral: you mourn if you want to
Dec 23rd, 2011 by David Osler.Perhaps the most inane remark ever uttered by any leading New Labour figure – invidious though it is to select just one, of course – is Peter Mandelson’s vapid contention that ‘we are all Thatcherites now’. Some of us never were, and never will be.
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The age of consensus is over. And I fear things are about to turn ugly
Dec 19th, 2011 by Owen Jones.Watching the trailer for The Iron Lady, the forthcoming biopic of Margaret Thatcher, I shuddered. All the indications are that her adoring fans will have much to be pleased about: the film apparently champions their image of a determined leader battling against the odds, vindicated by events and toppled by the treachery of lesser beings. […]
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Ronald Reagan: what 1980s Britain really thought
Jul 4th, 2011 by David Osler.Spitting Image – a widely-watched satirical television show of the 1980s – famously suggested that Ronald Reagan fancied Margaret Thatcher something rotten. ‘What a fine lookin’ woman,’ the punch line to one particularly celebrated latex puppet sketch ran. ‘Pity I’m only screwing her country.’ Juvenile sexist witticisms of that kind are usually beneath the dignity of the […]
