Thatcher is not for returning.

Last night my beloved Manchester United let Manchester City win just to liven up the run in to the end of the season. You might think that I would have been disillusion at the prospect of my team losing a game. But nothing could spoil my day, after all Thatcher was dead!

Thatcher

I remember Thatcher passing the comment "let us all rejoice" after the Falklands conflict. A conflict which had cost the lives of thousands. It cost the life of a school friend. Having never felt that war was a worthwhile method of resolving political and ideological difference. There was no way that I would have been  rejoicing. 

Today I am rejoicing at the passing into the pages of history, one of the worst periods in our recent times. I have seen and witnessed the outcome of a weak government that was bullied into a dictatorship. 

Coming from a mining family and being brought up in a mining community. I witnessed first hand the care and compassion that Thatcher and her sycophant arse licking cronies did to an industry that created the industrial revolution. An industry that built the great into this country.

Even Tory London mayor, Boris Johnson, said "Thatcher's name had become a 'boo-word', a shorthand for selfishness and me-firstism." Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted and for her political legacy of rampant inequality, personal greed, privatisation and social breakdown.

For me, it’s impossible to be balanced and impartial when considering the legacy and impact of Thatcherism. Apart from attacking the miners at home. her policy of opposing sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa was akin to upholding slavery of the black majority by a white minority. Thatcher was a prime minister who denounced Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and defended the Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. This is a politician, after all, who destroyed communities; created mass unemployment; de industrialised Britain; redistributed from poor to rich; and, by her deregulation of the City, laid the basis for the crisis that has engulfed us 25 years later. Michael Foot, said of Thatcher: ‘She has no imagination, and that means she also has no compassion.’ He was so right!

Prime minister, Winston Churchill, was given a ceremonial send-off. Churchill's role as war leader when Britain was threatened with Nazi invasion meant he was accepted as a national figure at his death. Thatcher,  has no such status, and is the most divisive British politician of our time.

We should celebrate her passing, there should be street parties organised. Critics have long demanded she be denied a full state funeral. Which she thankfully will not get. The former prime minister has however been granted a ceremonial funeral with military honours. Which as a war monger who can stand shoulder to shoulder with other war mongers, dictators and despots from around the world seems quite appropriate.

I think any kind of formal funeral state or military that is organised at the taxpayers expense will bring much in the way of protest. For those who opposed Thatcher in life will seek out the last opportunity to demonstrate that opposition in death.

As the saying goes - the lady is not for returning! 

Rejoice, Rejoice!

Later...