Remembering Maggie Thatcher.

 

Margaret Thatcher

Maggie Thatcher was a bloody awful woman.  Her colleagues got rid of her in a coup because they were sick to the back teeth of her. She hit one colleague with her handbag and constantly belittled others in public. 

Jim Prior thought she was 'potty' and Lord Carrington told the cabinet secretary to get this petit bourgeois bitch off my back. Her Conservative government pursued pro-rich policies - privatisations; deregulation of finance; breaking the power of the trade unions with anti-union laws. Bashing the unions paved the way for the gig economy and zero-hour contracts.

If there is a Dickens character that Thatcher reminds me of, it would have to be Mrs Sparsit in the novel Hard Times. Both Maggie and Mrs Sparsit thought trade unionists were wretched creatures and believed that the working-class must be conquered. Maggie detested organised labour. Her two favourite English trade unionists were two squalid scabs called Roy Link of the UDM and Frank Chapple of the EETPU.

When I think of Maggie's legacy, I think of deindustrialization, taking free milk off school children, the Falklands War, the Chilean military dictator General Pinochet who she befriended, the Poll Tax, the Miners' Strike, and Tony Blair and New Labour. Maggie said Blair and New Labour were her greatest legacy to the country.