[aLICErOBERTSfANkLUB]

.

[Pitcairn]

Absolutely.  Time for a party...

[SA Chris]

Topics getting locked because one person takes offense. Has it come to this?

[fatboySlimfast]

oh dear.....

[crimp]

Shall we extend the same respect to saville?

Thatcher killed 2 communities here. We are still running at 25% unemployment. She used troops as strike breakers for god sake!

[iain]

Taking pleasure in someone eventually getting their due, as I did when she was pushed out of politics, is one thing. Celebrating a human being dying is pretty low imo. Did you cheer when tories were killed in the conference bombing too?

[crimp]

Good riddance

[Will Hunt]

I'm not sure if the "Good riddance" there is aimed at Thatcher or tories who died in the IRA bombing. I'd consider myself firmly on the left but, if its the latter, then that is ridiculously low and you ought to be ashamed!

[chillax]

I'm not sure if the "Good riddance" there is aimed at Thatcher or tories who died in the IRA bombing. I'd consider myself firmly on the left but, if its the latter, then that is ridiculously low and you ought to be ashamed!

Will, I don't know what age you are, but I suspect both you and I are too young to fully grasp how emotive and divisive these issues were at a certain time. I'm not saying its an admirable sentiment by any means. But imposing a judgment from the position of being someone who "wasn't there", is to my mind almost as bad as lionizing someone just because they happen to have died.

Some lives are more worthy of grief than others, and many people won't grieve Thatcher one bit. At the same time, she didn't become PM by accident.

[mrjonathanr]

She quoted St Francis of Assisi on the step as she first entered 10 Downing St, and then aggressively and viciously pursued the exact opposite objectives, without the slightest regard for those who were harmed in the process.
Malice burned within her.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

She pardoned no-one. This country's an uglier place now, and no-one should pardon her role in that.

[tregiffian]

I wonder where Arthur Scargill stands on this? He is probably legless.

[Dolly]

Will, I don't know what age you are, but I suspect both you and I are too young to fully grasp how emotive and divisive these issues were at a certain time. I'm not saying its an admirable sentiment by any means. But imposing a judgment from the position of being someone who "wasn't there", is to my mind almost as bad as lionizing someone just because they happen to have died.

Some lives are more worthy of grief than others, and many people won't grieve Thatcher one bit. At the same time, she didn't become PM by accident.

Completely agree.
If you were too young to know or didnt live somewhere where the disregard of social consequences of her policies were felt then you just dont know. If you think Im wrong then read widely and without blinkers. Dont let the rose tinted view of revisionist historians who werent there and didn t see the consequences of her actions give you a false perspective.

[Moo]

I feel pretty good about Margaret Thatcher being dead and I'm not the slightest bit ashamed about it.

[Will Hunt]

Let me reiterate. It was ambiguous to me whether Adge's comment "Good riddance" was aimed at Thatcher's death or at Tory party members who died in a terrorist bombing. I specifically said that if it referred to those killed by the IRA then it was a shameful thing to say. As I say, I'm liberal, but could we all agree that whilst we may dislike and hate politicians for the policies they enact, we should not wish death by violence upon them? To support the opposite would be flagrantly undemocratic.

As to the open celebration of Thatcher's death, I won't be doing so, but I certainly won't be grieving either. You're right that I wasn't directly affected by her policies, and yes, it dulls the knife greatly. That does not mean that I cannot at least empathise with those who suffered (as anybody who has read Andy Cave's book, heard the histories of the mining communities etc no doubt can). I would not say that celebration is shameful, but I'm afraid I would say it lacks propriety. Rather than rehash old text I will copy a Facebook post here instead.

John, Linda, you're absolutely right - it is undoubtedly easier to stand on a moral high ground when you weren't personally affected by past events, but not impossible. I have no problem with people harbouring hatred and ill-feeling toward her, she certainly earned it; but it's the act of celebration I find fault with.
Her death achieves nothing. Our manufacturing industries will not be rebuilt, the communities she flattened will not be restored, we are still in an economic recession brought about by the proliferation of the greed she encouraged. By raising a glass to her death you are merely saying "I outlived you", which isn't really a great feat when the opposition is a frail old woman who has been on death's door for a number of years.

Decorum?

[lagerstarfish]

She used troops as strike breakers

I don't like what she did for a lot of us

However, this use of the army thing is interesting - I always believed it - my granddad was an active and well respected union representative and was involved with moderating his people's behaviour during the Thatcher oppression. His father had been stopped from working by the police/government for being a communist organiser in the 1926 strike - police guard on the house to stop him from going out to work - the family survived on food packages from Russia and what they could grow - despite his experience, my granddad took a more practical approach. Anyway, my granddad said he was pretty sure that no troops were involved in the Thatcher oppression of the miners - he talked to both sides to do his best to prevent violence - I saw him on  TV and everything. He was an egocentric old git, but plenty of folk said good things about his efforts

I know someone who was in the army who said that the army was used - but he wasn't involved and couldn't name anyone who was

also, I have a step-brother-in-law who is a reporter who looked into this thing and he didn't find a single person who said they were a soldier involved in the action. what he did find was that the police squads who were brought up for the pit strikes were accommodated in army barracks - which meant that coaches full of them were seen leaving army barracks on the days of oppression

I'm not sure either way

having said all this, someone's probably going to tell me about some Panorama program that interviewed either a load of troops who did it or the person who started the rumour in the first place

just saying like

[Jaspersharpe]

Remember talking about this and I think that's probably the explanation for the rumors. Irrelevant though really as she certainly authorised police to act as troops. Or perhaps even worse than troops, to act with complete disregard for the law or any form of decency.

[lagerstarfish]

she certainly authorised police to act as troops. Or perhaps even worse than troops, to act with complete disregard for the law or any form of decency.

you mean like when troops are instructed to carry out a "police action" as per numerous foreign interventions?

you're right, of course,  there is no difference

[mrjonathanr]

The police were immediately brought onside in '79 witha hefty pay rise, you might conjecture why.
Years ago as a youth around '90 I had an interesting hitch across the Snake with a former police officer who had joined in that wave of recruitment. He left the force about 5 years later, disgusted at what he was asked to do and the behaviour of other officers eg taping £50 notes to the windows of the coaches which delivered them to the pickets, earned through overtime.
He also said that the character of the recruits around the time of the strike did not fit with his vision of what police officers should be ie there to serve the community, not vested interests.

No mention of the army fwiw.

[El Mocho]

https://www.facebook.com/paul.pritchard.378

Don't know how to add facebook posts. As Pritch says she wasn't all bad - look what she did for the slate quaries 

[Krank]

i was to young to know what was going on with all this stuff, has anyone got any independant info so i can have a read to see what went on.

The impression i always get is always very one sided either she was the devil or she was a cracking politician.

cheers

[mrjonathanr]

She was both, that's the sad part. The most talented and strongest-willed politcian of peacetime 20th century, but I would argue the most damaging.

She changed the politcial landscape forever, an astonishing feat for any man, let alone a woman in  a more sexist era. In 79 communism vs capitalism was an unconcluded contest, but her vision of capitalism is the greed-driven free-market, Cameron is just progressing along the pathway she established, similarly motivated by a hatred for collectivism.

She was famously misquoted as saying 'There is no thing as Society' - but it's a fiction which embodied her view.

She hated the 'enemy within' as she called them, and strived to crush the unions, either forgetting or not considering that unions are made up of men, women and the children they support. In hating the unions she pushed the pendulum in favour of the employer, and employees' rights are weak now.

If you adopt a Darwinian market ideology where do you end up? With the rich in gated communities like South Africa? Taking money off the weakest financially but giving more to the most privileged? That is the logic of her reforms.

Her foundation will give an enthusiastic overview:http://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential/biography.asp

and the Guardian articles will give a more left-leaning and diverse perspective: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/margaretthatcher

ps Hugo Young was an intelligent journalist. I haven't had the time to read this, but it might be worth a look.

[Krank]

cheers mate, i will give them a read.

[Bonjoy]

I come from a mining background which was hit hard by pit closures. My father was a labour councillor. She stole my milk as a school kid. I was not brought up to love this woman! Really I could do with reading round a bit in order to get something approaching an objective view of her.
What I would say is that it seems to me her supposed salvation of the British economy was largely a product of selling off the family silver and at rock bottom prices at that. By which I mean the extraction and sale of our offshore fossil fuels, at a time of record low wholesale prices and the sale of utilities created by tax payers to private interest. The rest was by financialisation of the economy (at the expense of manufacturing), reckless deregulation and a housing bubble. All of which sowed the seeds of our current woes.

[duncan]

I don't think this is logpile material.  Thatcher is the person who had the single biggest influence on UK climbing in the last 50 years in my view.

Here is UK unemployment data:



Note the near tripling of unemployment from when she came into power in 1979 to 1984. It still had not returned to 1970s levels when she left office in 1990.

This mass unemployment was directly responsible for the flowering of Brit. climbing talent in the early 1980s. When there is 30% youth unemployment (and far higher in the North of England) throwing your energies into climbing seems a lot more productive than looking for work. Read Andy Cave’s book 'Learning to Breath' for some insight into this.

I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar is happening in Spain right now (current epicentre of world rock-climbing, youth unemployment now around 50%).

[mrjonathanr]

I agree Bonjoy.

Current social housing crisis...sold off affordable council houses for a song. Was that a vote buyer winner?

Think you're paying too much for your utilities? Tell Sid