The Daily Mirror implies there were no divisions before Thatcher
I heard Radio 4 broadcasting the news of Margaret Thatcher's death on Monday this week without any particular emotion. That evening I was in Brighton. As I made my way to the Stanza meeting in the Caxton Arms a man slightly the worse for wear walked by on the other side of the street, singing "Hoo-ray, the bitch is dead!"
I was fairly shocked by the reaction, but it was an appropriate precursor of what has followed in the media (which for this purpose includes Facebook and Twitter). The BBC has gone overboard in its coverage. Indeed, I have felt almost slighted by their omission to telephone me and ask for my own views and memory of her. But at least they have shown a degree of impartiality - unlike the right-wing press on the one hand, or left-wingers - often of the armchair variety - on the other.
I have two particular memories of Margaret Thatcher's era. The first was when I learnt, fairly early on in her time as Prime Minister, that she had abolished exchange control. I was working in the City, and an inordinate amount of my time seemed to involve applications to the Bank of England for clients wishing to invest money in businesses overseas. The abolition of exchange control was a simple but radical move that freed British business to operate internationally and contributed in no small measure to its subsequent success.
The second - more general - is of the end of her time as Prime Minister, when she seemed intransigent and doctrinaire; incapable of admitting the validity of any opinion other than her own. Her downfall was by this time inevitable.
Those who dance on her grave commit a number of mistakes: they fail to acknowledge her triumphs as well as her failures; they fail to acknowledge that she was re-elected twice and thus had a mandate confirmed by the democratic process; last but not least, they fail to perceive that their own attitudes and behaviour may derive from her championing of the individual over the State.
Don't get me wrong: I have no wish to beatify her. But I see no point in airbrushing the picture either to show the saint pictured below, or to give her a pair of horns.
Antony Mair
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