Ding Dong …… and so forth are the words filtering across the web and into column inches but really should we be celebrating the death of someone, dancing round their grave like vultures, picking at the carcass and ripping it to pieces for sheer delusional enjoyment. Delusional enjoyment is what I call it as half the people squealing in excitement at the death of Margaret Thatcher are it seems people who were not around when she was ruling her Iron fist or even people who have picked up a history book.
Many people it seems love or hate Margaret Thatcher, there seems to be no middle ground that people fall in. Maggie’s like marmite on toast. Usually in life there’s a middle ground that people dance around not really ever setting route as ideas and ideals can be changed so quickly and mercilessly, but when it comes to The Iron Lady it seems people know exactly where they are. I was born in 1980’s, my first memory I have of politics is John Major losing the elections, I was gutted. We watched the elections every year in my house like some people would watch the world cup and in my house we were very much Conservative. Now you may sit there and say, ‘How could you be a Tory?’ You may say, ‘Maggie did nothing but destroy the country,’ but in our reality in my family Maggie helped us get us from where we were to where we are today.
My mum is a single parent, she got pregnant young and ended up in council housing, like many she struggled and claimed benefits to get by, but Maggie gave people like my mum the chance to take responsibility for themselves and move themselves from council housing, from leaching off the state to get by to owning something that was there’s, something that they would have to work to keep. Maggie Thatcher gave £26,000 to people to leave council housing and with that money to buy and invest in private property, obviously there was clauses and so forth attached to this, one won’t bore you with those details. My mum knowing that life doesn’t throw up many opportunities took it with both hands and went on and took the money Thatcher was offering to work towards a better life for her and her children, that’s me. My mum always says without Thatcher giving people the chance to get out and take responsiblity for themselves she would most likely still be stuck in council housing, claiming off the state. Thatcher not only gave my mum hope but a new moral attitude, in that she must work her hiny off to make the chance Thatcher had given her work and no one else is responsible for that but her. I believe that people are responsible for themselves just like Thatcher. I am not saying in life think of number one and don’t give two cents about the next person, what I am saying is though that in life don’t expect people to carry you, you must be independent.
My mum now is near paying off her mortgage, now tell me Maggie Thatcher was all bad and I will tell you to look at the bigger picture. Maggie was tough and she may at times of been too brutal in her actions, but in the end many of her decisions were the right ones people were calling out for. When Maggie was elected she was elected by the people to sort out the unions as the unions were holding the country to ransom, did she do what you asked? Yes she did. Maggie may of at times not done things with the compassion or the ease that it needed, here i am talking about the closing of mines, but it had to be done. Mining was losing money hand over mouth, our country was paying taxes to pay mines to stay open that weren’t even turning a profit. Unions were to big for their boots and taking liberty’s, Arthur Scargill has allot to answer for and in some ways why aren’t people looking at him and damning him as he has blame to claim. Maggie should have closed the mines slowly, worked out a better plan instead of leaving areas ruined for years to come, but I can say one thing, she did what she was elected to do, can many of her predecessors say the same? I will never vote labour, never trust a party that sell half the country’s gold reserve in haste, which cost us around a tidy £5 billion, not much to lose hey Gordon… clever much, I think not. I like Maggie Thatcher like it or lump it. Thatcher really knew what working class meant and we need more of that in the party, not people educated at Eton, fed with a silver spoon as they don’t know what us everyday people really face. I am pretty sure Cameron as nice as he is has ever had to walk 6 miles because he didn’t have the fare for the bus or the 21p to take a leak at Marylebone.
In the end, as many people yell with glee at the passing of The Iron Lady I will take a moment to remember a women who changed the course of my mums life for the better and say, thank you.