I left the UK in the dark days of Harold Wilson’s tenure as Prime Minister: the era when the country was run – more accurately ruined – by trade unions. During my early years in Canada, it was with considerable relish that I followed Thatcher’s battle with the thuggish UK unions.
As Mark Steyn notes:
That’s to say, she understood that the biggest threat to any viable future for Britain was a unionized public sector that had awarded itself a lifestyle it wasn’t willing to earn. So she picked a fight with it, and made sure she won. In the pre-Thatcher era, union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. Britain’s system of government was summed up in the unlovely phrase “beer and sandwiches at Number Ten” — which meant union grandees showing up at Downing Street to discuss what it would take to persuade them not to go on strike, and being plied with the aforementioned refreshments by a prime minister reduced to the proprietor of a seedy pub, with the Cabinet as his barmaids.
Living through the Harold Wilson years provided me more than sufficient empirical evidence that Socialism doesn’t work. It is a lazy form of Communism, lacking Communism’s demonic fervour but immersed in the same blinkered utopianism: Communism for dilettantes. Ironically, in Canada, socialism is now the official religion of the Anglican Church; it is enthusiastically embraced by witless Anglican clergy willing to try anything to avoid the embarrassment of reciting Creeds in which they no longer believe.
As expected, the left, ever caring, tolerant and inclusive, is indulging in an orgy of rejoicing:
MP George Galloway led the way with a crass tweet…. ‘Tramp the dirt down.’…… ‘May she burn in the hellfires.’….
Colchester Labour councillor Tina Bourne posted a photo of a bottle of Bollinger on Twitter with the accompanying message: ‘Chin chin everyone.’…..
A Facebook campaign has been launched to take Judy Garland song ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead’ to number one following Margaret Thatcher’s death.
R.I.P., Mrs. Thatcher.
I can recommend the column by Rex Murphy in this week’s National Post, on British incivility being unleashed by those celebrating Mrs. Thatcher’s death. Personally, I think that British incivility has been rampant for decades now, but the barbarian antics of this past week hit a new low.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/13/rex/
And while I am at it, wouldn’t one have expected the great sisterhood of feminists to have come out by the truckload right about now, applauding the accomplishments of Britian’s first female Prime Minister, born pre-WWII, even? Frankly, I have read or heard almost nothing from that group, though they are certainly nauseatingly mouthy at all other times. Feminists are not keen on truth, of course. They focus only on what suits them.
Margaret Thatcher was what Britain most needed, then — and now. She had the guts to face the truth, and work with it. The fact that so many of the citizenry chose to sulk and to hate her always reminded me of badly spoiled children reacting in animosity when they were informed of the hard facts of life. I lost a great deal of respect for Britons during the Thatcher years because of this behavioiur of theirs. Mrs. Thatcher herself just kept rising in my estimation.
She was amazing. I am not sure that Britain will ever have another like her, and that is their tremendous loss.
Notice how when lefty Jack Layton died, anyone speaking ill of the dead was shamed. The same finger-waggers are now gleefully insulting Mrs. Thatcher before she has lain dead for a day. It’s the old double standard, again and again and again.
Not so. A ten second google search produced this article shaming people who are speaking ill of Thatcher:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305760/Margaret-Thatcher-death-party-The-Lefts-chorus-hatred-Champagne-streets.html
I hardly think they are the same finger wagers anyway – different country and all that.
It has to be said that the Daily Mail has at times been accused of being slightly to the right of Attila the Hun…
I didn’t know that! But in retrospect it seems pretty obvious. My in laws used to buy the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Star, the Montreal Gazette and the Ottawa Journal, because they figured that if they read the same story in all four papers the truth would probably be somewhere in the middle.
The fact is that so many of these yobs acted shamefully to begin with, Kate. Even people here who thought Jack Layton’s politics were abysmal did not behave in that manner when he passed away. And Canadians have not heard of Margaret Thatcher? Come on….. The papers are full of coverage this morning. They know Desmond Tutu, but not Margaret Thatcher? They must have great educational gaps.
And yes, they are the same finger-waggers, indeed. I think you’re simply keen on refuting anything and everything I say, Kate, because you had to eat humble pie once or twice before. I can count on remarks from you which attempt to show me in a bad light. I thought you would have considered that un-Christian behaviour. This reply of yours is undoubtedly about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
In your Dailymail link, are these the same lefties who have always shouted about “tolerance” and who make it a part of their secular virtues? Doesn’t look too tolerant to me. In fact, I find left-wingers the nastiest bunch you might find, outside of the Taliban. They scream, “Tolerance!!” out of one side of their mouths, while they attempt to beat, insult, sue or humiliate anyone who does not agree with them, on every tiny aspect of their ideology. Folks like this used to be called Fascists. I warn my children to stay clear of the left-wingers; they’re dangerous. Mrs. Thatcher knew as much.
I agree, Anonymous. And I’m sure they do know who Margaret Thatcher was. On the other hand, Daniel Greenfield’s essay this morning sees the vitriol as a kind of unintended tribute.
“Today even Thatcher’s ideological foes were forced to pay tribute to her. Will anyone pay tribute to David Cameron on his passing? Doubtful. He will be far less hated, but also far less loved because he will have done nothing to earn any extreme o[f] feeling. Had Mitt Romney won and served for two terms, is there any conceivable possibility that he would have been remembered in the same breath as Ronald Reagan?”
Her quote below was given by her upon her election to Prime Minister and I thought it was her best.
“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.
Where there is error, may we bring truth.
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.
Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”
Sounds like a wonderful prayer to me.
I thought that was her best quote until I dug up the one below spoken in an exchange with Pierre Trudeau at the G7 Summit in 1983, when he was calling for conciliation with the Soviet Union Trudeau said:
“…we should be busting our asses for peace!”
To which Margaret Thatcher replied;
“Pierre, you are such a comfort to the Kremlin.”
She put Trudeau in his place, she put the Great back in Great Britain for a time, the “Wall” came down, and I believe we will not see a leader of her wisdom and fortitude again.
Well said, Terry. She was a gift to the nation.
And to Pinochet, bless his heart.
Until you’ve recovered your lessons on the bloody history of the 20th c, let me at least help you with your Engels.
“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon – authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”
Thatcherism certainly had its ugly side (greed is good springs to mind and Pinochet was certainly a military dictator rather than an angel), but Chile gave invaluable support to Britain during the Falklands War, including full access to Chilean military radar stations.
The only day during the campaign that the radar was not available, due to essential maintenance, HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet missile, against which the Royal Navy had no defence, since it was only used by traditional allies.
Whatever Thatcher’s faults may have been, she was always loyal to her supporters. It concerns me that everything is being seen in such black and white terms. Like most other people, Thatcher existed in various shades of grey.
Profit motive is good and capitalism is an enormous benefit to humanity. Pinochet was an anti-Communist in a region with some of the worst Marxist dictators. I doubt anyone thinks he was an angel, rather it’s those thinking Allende was who need disabusing.
Yes, indeed, Lisa. The problem with so many of the folks that Mrs. Thatcher oppopsed was they wanted the benefits of capitalism, without paying for it.
So we’re saying that torture is not a problem if the torturer has a radar we need to use?
That simplifies my universe considerably, thanks.
No I’m not saying that. I’m saying that Thatcher was always loyal to her supporters.
Bruce Thornton wrote an excellent essay this week on why Margaret Thatcher, who was, after all, “the most consequential British Prime Minister in the post-war period, eclipsed only by Winston Churchill as the greatest British leader of the 20th century,” should be held up as an example of women’s achievement, but won’t be because of Feminism.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/margaret-thatcher-and-the-death-of-feminism/
I looked again, but I didn’t see where anyone said “torture is not a problem if the torturer has a radar we want to use.” Whether ‘ideology’ may be substituted for ‘radar,’ you may wish to refer here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism