Margaret Thatcher....

[Shamrock Shore]

What home for the aged did they find 'Gerard' Collins in?

Albert - you'll burst the party 

[blanketattack]

What I found odd was that there was little celebration when Maggie Thatcher was ousted as PM when she was a huge threat and influence, but there was big celebrations when she died even though at 87 years old, suffering from dementia and numerous strokes she had very little influence and was no threat to anyone. Surely being ousted from the role of PM or even when she bowed out of politics were more a cause for celebration than her death?

The other thing I found odd is how young John Major looks, he looks more like 50 than 70.

[deiseach]

What I found odd was that there was little celebration when Maggie Thatcher was ousted as PM when she was a huge threat and influence, but there was big celebrations when she died even though at 87 years old, suffering from dementia and numerous strokes she had very little influence and was no threat to anyone. Surely being ousted from the role of PM or even when she bowed out of politics were more a cause for celebration than her death?

What's different is the internet. There was much rejoicing when she left Number 10 with her (pointy) tail between her legs, but how would you have organised an impromptu party? Placed an ad in the Daily Mail? Called the BBC?

[Orior]

What I found odd was that there was little celebration when Maggie Thatcher was ousted as PM when she was a huge threat and influence, but there was big celebrations when she died even though at 87 years old, suffering from dementia and numerous strokes she had very little influence and was no threat to anyone. Surely being ousted from the role of PM or even when she bowed out of politics were more a cause for celebration than her death?

The other thing I found odd is how young John Major looks, he looks more like 50 than 70.

I remember it being a huge relief.

[Jell 0 Biafra]

What I found odd was that there was little celebration when Maggie Thatcher was ousted as PM when she was a huge threat and influence, but there was big celebrations when she died even though at 87 years old, suffering from dementia and numerous strokes she had very little influence and was no threat to anyone. Surely being ousted from the role of PM or even when she bowed out of politics were more a cause for celebration than her death?

The other thing I found odd is how young John Major looks, he looks more like 50 than 70.

I remember it being a huge relief.

Me too.  Went to see Billy Bragg in the Olympia shortly afterwards, and the biggest cheer of the night was for his "ding dong the witch is dead" dance of joy.

[Milltown Row2]

Bump!!!!   

[Armaghgeddon]

Think everything has been said.

[Onion Bag]

Think everything has been said.

I agree, im sick of listening about the aul bastard

[stew]

I  Waited a long time before posting on here before commenting because my emotions were very strange to me, rather than hate on her I simply want to take time to think of her and her hateful legacy, after that I simply want to forget she existed because she does not merit any of our time. Shane said a while back that she was on old woman and he wasn't going to celebrate her death, I am amazed to find I could not find it in my heart to do so either.

[Dougal Maguire]

Interesting that she spent her last few months in The Ritz and now some shithole privatised nursing home

[Maguire01]

Having a party for someone dying strikes me as being like having a party for beating the Kilkenny footballers.

The difference of course being that that Kilkenny footballers weren't/aren't inhumane war criminals.

Of course if you consider the conflict here to have been a war, republicans are guilty of numerous inhumane war crimes.

[LCohen]

No fan of thatcher or her works but some of the nonsense on here is dispicable and grossly ill-informed particularly on the Falklands. By all means hall her name and reputation over he coals for the Belgrano but anybody who thinks she had a choice not to go to war or that the argentinian conduct was anything less than illegal and disgusting suffers from some form of idiocy

The Falklands War was certainly avoidable, and if you believe in the conspiracies surrounding it then the Conservative government of the time was engineering the Argentines to take the bait by withdrawing most of the UK armed forces from the islands in the early 80's. Thatcher's government at the time was unpopular as her monetarist economic strategy (initially started under the previous Callaghan Labour government - Thatcher just ramped it up a bit more) was not showing signs of improving the British economy and the SDP/Liberal alliance was surging ahead in opinion polls - the war ended up giving Thatcher a major rub and ensured her victory in the general election the following year. But as mentioned earlier, it was avoidable - one in that had the military presence not been scaled down it could have provided an effective deterrent to the Junta in the first place

Presumably if you don't believe the conspiracy theories (that the junta were entrapped into the war) then the war was not unavoidable. I'm not sure anbody credible believes that the british demilitarised the Falklands in order to entice an ontherwise peaceable right wing brutal junta with severe domestic issues to invade and the troops to turn right around and travel back across the world and win a war in time for an election. I think the idea that the election was called early to capitalise on her new found popularity (ultimately disasterous for the british people) is a lot more plausable.

also much of Argentina's debt was to the governments of the USA and UK. When you think about the relationship she had with Ronald Regan, if both countries had decided to tell the Argentines that they were calling their debt in then the Junta wouldn't have had any money to finance an invasion outside of the gimmick of landing on South Georgia.

What was the Thatcher/Reagan relationship like at that time? We know what it was like later but back then was it strong enough?
A significant body of credible comemtators would point to the Argies true motives - a distracting attack against a foreign enemy. Debt foreclosue by that same enemy as a means of preventing an attack on that enemy is interesting. Have a strange feeling the argies would have launched their attack with greater ugency in that scenario.

She pretty much smashed the Munroe Doctrine dead by the finish.

It doubtful whether the original british occupation of the Falklands was a breach of the convention. The decision to re-militarise it in 1982 certainly was not a breach. How could it have been?

In the end many British lives (leaving aside any Argentine ones - they should be left in the hands of their Junta really) were lost either though a naive overseas territory policy or a deliberate bit of international grandstanding. And for many British soldiers who fought to expel the Argentine forces, they later ended up being regarded as "the enemy within".

Naive? Explain how Britain could have ignored the islander' pleas?

Without the Falklands war happening Thatcher would very likely have been either a one-term PM with a historical profile of ineptitude, or leading a minority government after the next election depending on support & concessions with the SDP & Liberals.

Agree. And lets be clear I would rather she and the argentinian junta had never came to power

[Eamonnca1]

On balance:

1 - Falklands - She went against the advice of the weaker members of her cabinet and military advisers and insisted on a forceful response. In hindsight I think that turned out to be the correct response from a British point of view.  If the Brits are going to hold on to these random bits of rock all over the place, they have to be prepared to defend them, and in fairness you can't really let people take territory by force in this day and age.  Galtieri was actually a friend of the Reagan administration too, so the dynamics there are quite interesting. 

Their fleet was old and decrepit though, a result of her own spending cuts.

The sinking of the Belgrano was uncalled for. That was more about making a political statement than dealing with an actual threat. 

D+.

2 - Labour relations - A lot of people forget how strong the unions had gotten by the 70s.  Trade union leaders were the most powerful men in the country and they could hold the place to ransom.  Down tools at the drop of a hat.  She pushed back against this culture of "how dare you make us be more productive" which was necessary up to a point, but then she went too far and swung the pendulum too far to the point where unions became too weak IMHO.  There was no need for that.  The Germans were able to make their economy more competitive without taking a shit on the working man.

C-

3 - Economy - Fighting inflation was necessary, I'll give her that.  But she stubbornly stuck to monetary policy and refused to take other stimulatory measures for ideological reasons. 

De-industrialisation was very badly handled, no measures were taken to move the economy in a new direction.  Could have invested in R&D and new technologies, but instead left it up to market forces.  Market fundamentalism is not a good basis for policy.

C-

4 - Ireland - Maggie's record in Ireland is a perfect illustration of why Britain should not be governing any part of the country.  They've never governed it properly because they don't understand the place, and they don't understand the place because it's not their country. 

She found herself on a learning curve.  Thought she could throw her weight around and be as stubborn as she liked with the Irish, but didn't realise who she was dealing with or the history of the situation.  Stubbornness and incompetence are a deadly combination.  The hunger strikes were an almighty blunder on her part, it was completely unnecessary to let that situation escalate the way it did, the Brighton bomb* woke her up to the importance of what she was dealing with, and the Anglo Irish Agreement was a sign that she eventually realised that you can't exclude the free state from the process.

*Proceeding with the Tory Party conference as scheduled was interesting.  Didn't let it stop her.  You have to tip your hat to her determination there on a personal level, I couldn't see any American politician acting like that.  They'd be crying in front of the TV cameras before hiding in a concrete bunker.

F-

5 Taxation - Poll tax: the less that's said the better.

F--

6 - Europe - Looks like a lot of what she said about Europe has turned out to be more insightful than we thought.  Her fear was a "federal Europe through the back door."  Now if you're in favour of a federal Europe, by all means go out and campaign for it, convince people, and let them vote on it, but be open about it.  But to gently ease the people into it without them realising through a succession of complex treaties? That's just sneaky.  "Sign here mate" at the bottom of a very long contract should be the start of a long reading process, and if it's too long to read then send it back and tell them to simplify it so you can see exactly what you're signing up to.  You don't want people waking up one morning needing to adjust their interest rates and suddenly realising that at last night's party they gave that power away to the European Central Bank.

She was also opposed to Britain joining the single currency, and given Ireland's woes as a result of Eurozone membership, that would seem to have been the right choice for Britain.

B

7 - Foreign policy - This is where her right wing market fundamentalism clouded her judgment, big time.  Support for Augusto Pinochet's murderous regime in Chile was inexcusable. Her dismissal of Nelson Mandela and the ANC as "terrorists" and refusal to apply sanctions on apartheid South Africa was a disgrace.  Helping the US to drop bombs on Libya only strengthened Gadaffi's hand, probably added another ten years to his grip on the Libyan people. 

F--

8 - Overall - Yeah, definitely a transformative figure, made a lot of necessary reforms, but had no compassion for the working man and did nothing to soften the blow.  It's alright saying what industry can no longer produce economically, but you have to replace it with something and you can't just leave it up to the "magic of the market" when people need to put food on the table for their families.  Government can play a role there, and has a duty to step in when the market doesn't.  It's all right making industry more competitive by not letting the unions hold the country to ransom, but workers still need some sort of reasonable protection from exploitation. 

Policy in Ireland has to be more imaginative than repeating the mantra "we will defeat terrorism," and she seemed to get it in the end, but a Prime Minister should understand these things straight away, Number 10 is no place for on-the-job training.  You have responsibilities, you have to live up to them.

It's all right being decisive and showing leadership, but that sort of thing can go to your head after a while to the point where you stop listening to good advice.  One good thing about the parliamentary system is that while a PM has a lot of power, he/she still can't govern without the support of their own party and if she's been in power for so long that she starts getting cocky enough to rob from the poor to give to the rich with a poll tax, she can be ousted.

She did a lot of things that were necessary for the time, but went to far with a lot of it. Decisiveness and determination can be admirable traits when applied correctly in certain situations, but when it stops you from listening then it becomes a problem.

So I don't know if I'll go as far as joining in with the street parties, but I won't be putting her on a pedestal either.   And I certainly don't agree with the gushing and fawning eulogies that the US media are cranking out at the minute.

D-

[muppet]

Decent post Eamon.

Although linking Ireland's economic woes to the Euro, and giving her credit for not joining, when Britain is in as bad a position financially, all on its own, doesn't add up for me. She put all her eggs into the City and it hasn't worked, Europe or no Europe.

[seafoid]

Decent post Eamon.

Although linking Ireland's economic woes to the Euro, and giving her credit for not joining, when Britain is in as bad a position financially, all on its own, doesn't add up for me. She put all her eggs into the City and it hasn't worked, Europe or no Europe.

She was very divisive. The Tories still can't deal with Europe. It will tear them apart again in a few years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHYOXyy1ToI
And the UK economy is a total mess. They can't blame the ECB either.
Triple dip. Austerity just made everything worse.