Iron Lady

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