Having seen more misery in the last year than I’d ever expect to see in a lifetime, a little part of me died when I read that the prime minister David Cameron was giving his backing to a new £15 million museum and library dedicated to Margaret Thatcher. Fans of THAT woman should look away now.
The Margaret Thatcher Library will be situated in or around Westminster and Cameron just can’t wait.
“I am delighted that young people will be able to come to the Thatcher Centre and learn about her achievements, and ensure her legacy lives on,” said the PM, with no hint of irony. Well, if it’s an honest museum, then I agree with Cameron because her legacy truly does live on. Here are some examples:
– The deregulation of the banking industry which led to the financial crash in 2008.
– The destruction of our manufacturing base.
– The near destruction of the NHS and state schools.
– The ‘me first’ society.
– The dramatic increase in poverty.
– Selling off publicly owned utilities to her friends in the private sector.
– The poll tax.
– Cutting taxes for the rich and raising them for the poor.
– Banned trade unions at GCHQ.
There were so many things she did, almost all of them bad and her sick legacy lives on today. The ‘I must have this now and I don’t care if I have to trample all over you to get it’ mentality spread like wildfire. Labour, despite huge majorities from 1997 onwards, was unable, or perhaps chose not, to reverse all of her pernicious policies and attitudes. (Let me make it clear, I was a huge fan of the early Blair years but the one major failing was to not use these majorities to make these changes permanent.)
A whole bunch of right wing politicians from around the world are lining up to support this project, including George W Bush’s chief of staff Karl Rove who said this: “Baroness Thatcher championed freedom around the world and was a strong friend of America in the dangerous days of the Cold War. The Margaret Thatcher Centre will be a timeless tribute to her fighting spirit, unwavering courage, and principled conservative leadership.” The Thatcher I remember championed freedom when it suited her. I don’t recall her friend Augusto Pinochet championing freedom in Chile, as thousands ‘disappeared’ and many more were tortured. Or how about King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, South Africa’s PW Botha, Pakistan’s Zia-ul-Haq and the Eygptian dictator Hosni Mubarak? She supported free trade unions in Poland, but shackled them at home. And what about her “fighting spirit, unwavering courage and principled conservative leadership?” (Note the small ‘c’.)
Her fighting spirit was, I suppose, during the Falklands War of 1982, but let’s not get some hero worship get in the way of the facts. It was Thatcher’s government that was secretly negotiating to hand the Falklands to Argentina in 1980 and it was Thatcher’s government that was asleep at the wheel when the islands were invaded. Let us not diss the incredible achievements of our military in (rightly) retaking the islands, but let’s remember whose fault it was they were taken in the first place.
Thatcher was the most divisive politician of my lifetime and I dislike her more than any other politician during my lifetime. Dislike in the present sense, not the past for her death cannot undo the things she did when alive. I only wish there was a hell for her to go to. I would imagine there might be heavy security at the entrance for this new building, although I won’t be going. In fact, I wouldn’t piss on it if it was on fire.
