Thatcher: Divisive icon?

I have a discussion session with some of the youngsters in my local church every Sunday. I was asking them this last Sunday what they thought of Margaret Thatcher and the overwhelming response I got was silence and the ‘who’s-that’ look on their faces. Now, while the current generation don’t exactly give two hoots who she is or what she stands for, older ones had little choice but to give more than a thousand hoots.

Mainstream media outlets have done the best they can to tell us she was a modern day lady of sacred hearts. CNN, BBC et al have tried to tell us all she was one of the best things to happen to mankind as far as political leaders are concerned in the 20^th century. I know enough however to know these corporations are being controlled behind the scene very likely by those who profited from the views and causes she championed. The rich!

Now, I was not around when she was the prime minister to be able to give an accurate opinion this way or that but I like to explore things from different perspectives.

We must resist the attempt by politicians like her and the commonplace media to give her credits she does not merit. If she was such a great leader, why would Britons rejoice and party over her death? Many celebrated that the leader they loved to hate had died. A Trade Union leader did not spare words in condemning the role she played in the politics of England. Chris Kitchen said: “We've been waiting for a long time to hear the news of Baroness Thatcher's demise and I can't say I'm sorry. I've got no sympathy for Margaret Thatcher and I will not be shedding a tear for her. She's done untold damage to the mining community. I don't think Margaret Thatcher had any sympathy for the mining communities she decimated, the people she threw on the dole and the state she left the country in. I honestly can't think of anything good I can say about Margaret Thatcher.”

Thatcher was until death the most divisive and controversial Prime Minister in British history. The ordinary British people, whose lives she shattered while at 10 Downing Street, hated her even in death. Nevertheless, those who benefited from her free market policies that enriched the rich and impoverished the poor and those who shared in her racist and oppressive ideology loved her until death.

Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher’s policies towards Africa, especially South Africa was imperialistic. I guess if she had her way she would not have minded recolonizing Africa. She was a staunch supporter of Apartheid that ravaged that country. At one point she had the audacity to call Nelson Mandela and all those fighting against white brutality, terrorists.

Notwithstanding the emotions surrounding her death, no one can take away from Thatcher the fact that she was one of iconic personalities of the 20th century and still remains the first and the only female British Prime Minister. Her death however reminds us of the mortality of man, no matter how powerful such a person is or was. People who find themselves in the corridors of power should use their position to engineer enduring social change and not to perpetrate special interests. The evil that men and women do lives with them and after them as we have seen with Thatcher’s death.