Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
Rt Hon. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, LG, OM,
PC, FRS
Baroness
Thatcher of Kesteven
Her
ceremonial funeral on 17 April 2013 is a notch below state funeral, a grandiose
public occasion with military honours, attended by the Queen, and estimated to
cost ₤10 million at a time of national austerity and intensive cost-cutting.
Praise
from admirers has been effusive while, on the opposite, pop charts in the UK
have seen the resurgence of a ditty from the 1939 musical, The Wizard of Oz: "Ding Dong! The witch is dead".
Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom 1979-1992, she was the first woman in that post.
Relentlessly conservative, she was an admirer of economist Friedrich von Hayek,
the opposite in values to John Maynard Keynes. She moved to privatize state
enterprises and to remove controls in the financial sector. An enemy of unions,
she left the mining industry in shambles. She did what she could to dismantle
the welfare state. Famously she withdrew public funding of milk for children in
the schools.
When
in 1982 Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, the UK sent a
naval task force that in 74 days restored British sovereignty. Argentina lost
649 military personnel in that expedition, Britain 255, along with 3 islanders.
The patriotic British public was happy. It remains to be seen what Argentine
representative, if any, will attend the funeral this week.*
Since
her time the important financial sector of the City has been in serious
speculative trouble. High unemployment in the country has become endemic. British
industry remains in deep decline. National ties of the United Kingdom have
weakened with periodic unrest in Northern Ireland, and with evident separatism and local
nationalism in Scotland and Wales. Class divisions in Britain are sharper than
ever.
It
was Russians who gave Lady Thatcher her most apt soubriquet, long surviving the
cold war — iron lady.
* none did
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