I grew up in the Thatcher years. She was, I think, part of the reason I developed my interest in politics. When she first became the British Prime Minister, I had just turned 14. I was in my mid-twenties, and working, when Maggie eventually stepped down, ousted by her own party after three General Election victories on the bounce.
Last Monday, I had just finished a set of news interviews at the River Lee Hotel, when I saw on Twitter that she had died. Sky News was on the TV in the hotel conference area, and the flood of reaction had begun. Social Media was hopping. For everyone who described her as a great Prime Minister, or even a great World Leader, and would mourn her passing, there was another for whom her death came as good news. I think I saw the first posting of "Ding Dong (the Witch is Dead" within half an hour of the official confirmation. The whole thing set me thinking. How, if I were asked, would I describe her?
So, I began to think, and I began to read back over the news and events of my teens.
I looked back at the H-Block and the Hunger Strikes. As a typical Irish teen of the time, I looked upon her as the woman who killed Bobby Sands. I admire any man with the courage to risk his health, or even his life for a belief, and convinced myself that he was right, and she was wrong. I considered that she had starved him and the others to death. Now, as I can feel my half century starting to bear down on me, I'm not so sure. Did she cause the hunger strikers to die, or did those men choose to end their own lives, by continuing with a lethally dangerous form of protest, when anyone could see Mrs. Thatcher was prepared to let it happen? Yes, she could have saved them from certain death, but by the same token, they could also have saved themselves.
I thought about the Miners Strike. I was in college at the time, and then, as I do now, I believed in, and supported the Trade Union movement. I had an opportunity at the time to hear Arthur Scargill speak at UCC. He was a powerful, articulate and convincing speaker, and if I'm to be truthful, convinced me that Margaret Thatcher was the embodiment of evil, who wanted to destroy entire swathes of her own country. Looking back on it now, with a few decades in the Real World under my belt, I know that I could not have been more wrong. The twenty mines, and remember it was only twenty out of a total of nearly 180 around Britain, were not paying their way. They had not paid their way for a long time, were costing a fortune to keep open, and were plainly unsustainable. The strike led by Scargill was also illegal. It did not have the support of the majority of his unions (NUM) members. This is because having lost three previous ballots for strike, he refused to ballot again, and just walked (some might argue dragged or even forced) the men out of the pits and onto picket lines. Many of them did not want to be there. They wanted to work - but he muscled them out. Mrs. Thatcher was not one for flinching, and she set her face against the actions of the NUM, determined to break Scargill, which of course, she did.
I fully understand how she is hated to this day for the closure of the mines, because of the havoc those closures wreaked on the local economies that surrounded them. However, looking back, I can see why she did it. She believed that it was not the role of the State to pour good money after bad into subsidy of a mining operation that without that support, would die on its feet. Thatcherism, as it came to be known, dictated that a business which cannot sustain itself, should either restructure and 'fix' itself, or be closed. Thatcherism and its supporters held that it's not the job of the State to sustain a business. She took over a Britain in which many industries were Nationalised, were sucking the exchequer dry in an effort to stay alive, and could never hope to compete in a Global marketplace. They were ruled over by unions that wielded an unhealthy level of power and control. Bear in mind that when she arrived in Downing Street, Britain had suffered its now infamous "Winter of Discontent", with strike, after strike after strike - under a Labour government! Mrs. Thatcher took it all by the scruff of the neck and sorted it out.
Another central plank of Thatcherism was that people should support themselves, make their own breaks and build their own success, with the resources at their disposal. She allowed and even encouraged people to buy their own Council Houses. She cut taxes, slashed regulation and kicked State control to touch, so that businesses could get off the ground and prosper. However, and before I'm accused of being a Thatcherite myself, she forgot something. Mrs. Thatcher forgot (or perhaps didn't care - I've yet to decide for sure to be honest) that there must also be a kind of "Social Safety Net", to catch, mind and protect those without the education or skillset to do their own thing. Mrs. Thatcher didn't believe that the State must be willing to protect certain people. In that, she got it badly wrong. Some people will never be able to go it alone. That's just the way it is, and it was a great failing of her economic model, that Mrs. Thatcher wouldn't accept that.
I think its fair to say that Margaret Thatcher is seen by Socialists as the Devil Incarnate. It's easy to see why. Thatcherism, in its purest form, saw dependency on the State or on Welfare, as undesirable. Hundreds of thousands of people agreed. They must have done - they voted for her in huge numbers. She won three General Elections in a row. That drove Socialists demented. Everyone who put dependency behind them, worked hard and enjoyed the fruits of that work in the form of money and having nice homes and 'things', was a person who would never again embrace Socialism. As her successor John Major put it, "Socialism depends on dependency. It feeds on poverty and thrives on the needy."
Margaret Thatcher was both loved and loathed. She was seen, depending on your point of view, as both an economic reformer and a ruthless dictator. She got a lot of things terribly, terribly wrong, especially in her Foreign policy - but any realistic analysis of her career must give her due credit for taking a Country that was falling to bits and being bailed out and financed by our "friends" the IMF (yes, it was!), and turning it around. Obviously in that, she got things wrong too - sometimes terribly wrong - but she got a lot of things right. Ask the hundreds and hundreds of people who still run small businesses that they set up while she was in office.
Love her, or hate her, you can't ignore her.
RIP, Mrs. T..
