Contributed by my truckbuddy Tim from England, now resident in Spain:
Last week Your Head Trucker and I were chatting about the death of Baroness Thatcher. Here’s some of what he said:
Well Tim, the Iron Lady has passed into history now, and I suppose as a Conservative you feel the loss keenly, and if so please accept my condolences.
However, I see from The Telegraph that reactions in Britain are all over the map, from sincere mourning to rampant glee. Can you sort this out for a distant, uninvolved foreigner? What is the real story here?
I’ll start with that initial response to Russ’s enquiry which I wrote at the beginning of a few days’ walking holiday with my Labrador, ‘Lulu’, in a country hotel near Cordoba:
Yes indeed, it was sad news for me; I heard it on a day in which I was already in a strange and somewhat melancholy mood.
On the drive up I had stopped for a coffee and bite to eat at a little one-horse pueblo called Benameji. It breaks the journey and I'd been there before. As I sat outside in the sunshine with Lulu, a scruffy 'campo' dog appeared, all skin and bone, checking out the trash cans for food, so I threw it some pieces of my sandwich.
First of all it ran away in fright, as if I had been throwing a stone, but in a while it returned and timidly snatched the morsels of food which it then took some distance away before eating them. Typical wild dog behaviour; it was frightened of Lulu and even more so of me. Poor thing, there are thousands of them here in Andalusia, and I felt a sense of guilt and shame that Lulu sat there fat and sleek, cared for and loved, and this little dog didn't have a friend in the world.
And what can you do unless you have land and funds? The dog-pounds and rescue shelters are already full to bursting with such poor creatures. Should I feel guilty and ashamed, or is that just the way the dice are thrown? So preoccupied with my thoughts was I that I almost totalled the car, with Lulu and me in it, when I left. I just pulled out in front of a car coming along the road without ever really seeing it. He stopped in a cloud of smoke and curses and I just numbly waved in shock then drove on, feeling very chastened!
And so later, when I saw the news about Maggie and read some of the polarised comments being made, and some were vile - she was after all, a woman, and now deceased - I thought about how black and white her world was, and how, if you were of her persuasion, you could be fat and sleek, safe and loved, but if you were on the other side of the fence, your life was hard and painful, you had an enemy. I hope you get my drift, and a sense of the strange mood I found myself in yesterday.
She was divisive, without a doubt, and that is what the reactions show. I won't talk about specific comments, but she has been demonised by the left in much the same way Richard III was demonised by the Tudors. I don't think she could have ever united the Britain of the 70's and 80's, the nation was beset with class divides, work divides, north-south divisions, etc, etc. It would have taken a huge external influence to bring about reconciliation, which, for a short while only, is what the Falklands war achieved.
Personally, I admired her and thought she did well for the country. I believe that one issue was decisive in marking Maggie’s term of office, and divisive in our subsequent national recollection; the conflict between militant trade unionism and elected government. The unions had garnered far too much political power under successive Labour and Conservative governments, and a painful showdown was inevitable. It is telling that subsequent Labour governments never revoked the legislation concerning trade unions, work and employment that her administration passed, for they too had been released from undue union influence.
For most of the two decades before she came to power, this conflict had influenced British politics enormously. It’s important to understand this historical context, so here’s a little more ‘background’ which may help explain why Maggie did what she did, why it was so popular with some and yet divisive for others. It’s impossible to discuss her role in UK politics without this scene-setting, so to lighten things up I’ve also thrown in some personal recollections for good measure!
Growing up in fifties Britain, even a child couldn’t fail to see that the nation was literally still crawling out of the bomb craters. Paying off the war-time debt was crippling the economy, and job security was a thing of the past. The sixties initially seemed to offer some relief, but increasing industrial unrest meant progress was uneven. By the late 60’s and early 70’s, people were increasingly fed up with seemingly never ending walk-outs, go-slows, and illegal strikes. There seemed to be an almost suicidal intent on the part of organised trade unions to hold the economy back at the expense of unrealistic wage claims and the resultant high inflation. Productivity had fallen against our major competitors, and the nation was becoming an international laughingstock.
The first major confrontation with a democratically elected government came in January 1974, when, in order to protect dwindling electricity supplies due to industrial action by the coal miners, the Conservative administration was forced to instigate a 3-day working week. This limited the commercial consumption of electricity to 3 consecutive days. TV stations closed down early, street lights were switched off, factories, shops and offices shut. Many everyday commodities quickly became scarce. Coupons were issued in preparation for petrol-rationing.
At the time I was on detachment with the RAF in Florida. Just before we were due to return home, I rang my parents to see if there was anything they needed, for the reporting in the US press had painted a worrying picture of daily life in Britain. Toilet paper, came the reply, we’re having to use old newspapers! And so 50 rolls of America’s finest, softest, pink three-ply were purchased at the Base Exchange and flown back to the UK! On arrival back at our base in Scotland, we were first subject to a Customs inspection. You can imagine the look on the officer’s face when he asked me if I had anything to declare!
The Heath government lost a ‘snap’ election called in February and Labour returned to power. The new government restored normal working conditions shortly afterwards, and things slowly improved. However, four years later, they too faced industrial unrest when the unions reneged on a government-backed pay deal designed to cap wages and so slow down inflation. This led to the so-called ‘Winter of Discontent’, with widespread public-sector industrial action, and another round of hardship for the general population ensuing. People were sick and tired of the strikes, a change was due, the government’s lead in the polls vanished.
Subsequently, with the loss of support from the Scottish National Party over the unrelated issue of devolution, the Callaghan Government lost a motion of no-confidence in March 1979, and a General Election was called. For the second time in a decade, industrial unrest had either directly or indirectly lead to the defeat of the elected government of the day.
Maggie had been somewhat unsure about her position during 1978. Although Conservative party leader, she was still not popular with many in the party, and did not have a good public persona. Besides being a woman, in the view of the Tory hierarchy she was not really ‘top-drawer’ either! However, the Winter of Discontent had damaged the Labour party’s ratings, and her slogan ‘Labour isn't working’ caught the public mood.
It was during the run-up to the 1979 election that my partner and I got to meet her in Newquay, North Cornwall. A favourite holiday destination for her and husband Dennis, by the way, and a good choice, I loved my time there in the RAF. I was then a member of the Constitutional Club in Newquay, the social arm of the Conservative Party (I was not allowed to join a political organisation of course, being a serviceman), and she visited in March whilst on the campaign trail. Very petite, smaller than we had imagined (5’ 5”), lovely clear complexion, bright blonde hair, wearing a small-checked two-piece suit. Confident, smiling. Partner got to shake her hand (damn him), which was firm and dry. All I got was this photo of her head, but that hairstyle is unmistakeable!
The back of Partner’s head is in the right foreground. That’s when he had hair, ha! She gave a short rallying speech, buoyed us all up, and then was gone in the official Rover car.
If you consider her background, first as a chemist, then as a barrister, I believe she saw things very much in black and white. Small talk was a waste of time, you were either with her or against her. But she had an inner strength and undoubted determination, and she knew the cards would always be stacked against her, but she overcame that, and how. In May 1979, Maggie Thatcher swept into office with a sizeable majority. The public, if not the unions, had got what they wanted.
A couple of ‘gay’ angles here; although the overall national swing to the Conservatives was around 6%, the swing in North Cornwall was well over 9%. This was against a strong ethic which had seen the constituency held by the Liberal Party for decades. Much of this was swing was thought to be due to the homosexual scandal that befallen the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe and his implication in a conspiracy to murder his alleged homosexual lover, Norman Scott.
And, despite what some people may being saying today about Maggie’s views on homosexuality, it is interesting to note that she was one of only a handful of Conservative MPs who supported the bill to decriminalise male homosexuality in 1966.
But her tenure was too long. Increasingly autocratic and distant from the public, blunders over taxation and the economy, plus a seeming inability to seek or even desire consensus, led to her being isolated within her own Cabinet, and distrusted and disliked by large sections of the population. The daggers were drawn. Not without reason did Roman Emperors have someone whispering in their ear during their triumphal processions the repeated phrase: ‘You are mortal, you are mortal’. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So was she a great leader? Well, it depends on your definition of ‘Great’ of course. For me, a great leader would be someone who unites a nation’s people, like Churchill during WWII or from an earlier time, William Pitt the Younger. So in that sense no, she was not a great leader: but she had a job to do, break the power of the trade unions over democratically elected governments. And if that meant being divisive, so be it, but she desired greatness for the nation, and had the courage of her convictions, which is probably as much as you can ask for in this day and age, so I would say she was a good leader, but not a great one.
She did have a vision, allied to a strong sense of patriotism, but you had to agree with it, there was little room for disagreement, which, of course was her ultimate undoing. She should have left office after 8 years, quit whilst she was ahead. Her supply-side economics were not sufficiently flexible for the situation Britain was in, I think, but I'm no better an economist than a philosopher! And of course, she helped make it accepted for women to be national leaders, that was a big deal at the time, as much for the Conservative party as the nation, as we have previously discussed.
However, unlike many fellow voters, who seem to have very short memories, I still remember those early ‘golden years’. So you can imagine my dismay when I am told, by the BBC no less, that some of the vile and cruel abuse currently being displayed by my fellow countrymen, and countrywomen, against Maggie shows that the nation has a ‘strong and healthy democracy’! And there was I, still thinking that respect for women and the recently departed was a good thing. Oh dear, how very undemocratic of me!
To conclude, I got over my earlier melancholy and relaxed for the rest of my short holiday with Lulu. We both enjoyed the beautiful countryside: it was awash with wildflowers, swathes of buttercups and ox-eye daisies, hawthorn, and almond blossom in abundance, all swaying to their own flamenco in the balmy Spanish breeze, but I saw only one solitary poppy, still, but opened fully to the sun. Now in the UK, poppies are traditionally associated with remembrance and the armed forces. Baroness Thatcher asked that her funeral have a strong military theme, so from a former serviceman, this is my tribute to a leader whose legacy, whilst remaining controversial, will not soon be forgotten.
The ceremonial funeral for Baroness Thatcher, attended by the Queen and other world leaders, will be held tomorrow in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, beginning at 11 a.m., local time (6 a.m. EST in the United States). Watch it live on the BBC here.
