Some mixed reactions on Thatcher's death

So, not everyone was thrilled with Margaret Thatcher. 

Reaction to her death was mixed and, perhaps rather surprisingly, the media has actually allowed these stories to air.

In South Africa, reaction was mixed. After all, Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan (as well as more recent former Vice-President Dick Cheney) were opposed to sanctions that many others wanted to force the regime's hand and pressure it into ending apartheid. Instead, they were in favor of what was called "constructive engagement" with the white minority apartheid regime in South Africa. 

So much did Thatcher side with the white minority government, that she accepted their interpretation of things without question, calling the African National Congress (ANC) "a typical terrorist organization".

In his recent article, "South Africans give mixed response to Margaret Thatcher death" by David Smith of The Guardian, Pallo Jordan, the chief propagandist for the ANC had this to say:

"I've just sent a letter of congratulations," the former cabinet minister said. "I say good riddance. She was a staunch supporter of the apartheid regime. She was part of the rightwing alliance with Ronald Reagan that led to a lot of avoidable deaths.  

"In the end I sat with her in her office with Nelson Mandela in 1991. She knew she had no choice. Although she called us a terrorist organisation, she had to shake hands with a terrorist and sit down with a terrorist. So who won?"

Dali Tamob, the son of Oliver Tambo, the former leader of the ANC and a close ally of Nelson Mandela, had this to say:

"My gut reaction now is what it was at the time when she said my father was the leader of a terrorist organisation," Tambo said. "I don't think she ever got it that every day she opposed sanctions, more people were dying, and that the best thing for the assets she wanted to protect was democracy.

Some are a bit more skeptical than this, believing that she (and Reagan) were against sanctions precisely so that their nations could cash in on the big business of apartheid South Africa while the unfair policies lasted, and that "constructive engagement" was just a euphemism for lending support to an indefensible regime, at a time when it was in trouble. The white minority government used many of the goods coming in from the United States and Britain as instruments to help extend their rule, and continue the policies of apartheid for as long as they could.

But not everyone in South Africa was so angered by Thatcher. The last white minority government President from the apartheid regime, FW DeKlerk, has this to say, according to the same Guardian article:

"Although she was always a steadfast critic of apartheid, she had a much better grasp of the complexities and geostrategic realities of South Africa than many of her contemporaries," he said. "She consistently, and correctly, believed that much more could be achieved through constructive engagement with the South African government than through draconian sanctions and isolation. She also understood the need to consider the concerns and aspirations of all South Africans in their search for constitutional consensus."  

He added: "For this reason she was able to play a positive role in supporting our own process of non-racial constitutional transformation in South Africa. From my first meeting with her in London after my election as leader of the National party in 1989 and throughout the rest of her tenure as prime minister, she gave strong and valued to support to me and to all other leaders who were working for a peaceful, prosperous, and constitutional future for South Africa."

Here is the link to that article, "South Africans give mixed response to Margaret Thatcher death" by David Smith of The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/south-africa-margaret-thatcher-death

Her position, shared with US President Ronald Reagan (who again, living up to the moniker of "Teflon President", managed to largely avoid such criticisms since his departure from the White House), on the crucial matter of South Africa certainly proved divisive, to say the least.

In yet another article, "For Margaret Thatcher, few tears shed in South Africa" by Erin Conway-Smith, reaction was similarly muted, at best:

“Long after her passing on, her impact will still be felt and her views a subject of discussion,” ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said.

Her stated position was opposition to apartheid, but many blasted her approach as tantamount to supporting the apartheid regime, at a time when it seemed to many that they were just desperately trying to cling to power. The support received by the United States and the United Kingdom proved very valuable indeed. The strategy, however, was to try and bring people together and not push anybody away, at least officially. According to that same article, the logic behind this policy is summed up by Robin Renwick, who wrote a book about Thatcher:

“It seemed to her that the worst approach was to further isolate South Africa with sanctions, as isolation contributed to a siege mentality on the part of Afrikaners. She reacted with genuine indignation to any suggestion of racism,” Robin Renwick writes in “A Journey with Margaret Thatcher,” to be published this month in the UK.  

“She regarded any racially based legislation as incompatible with her meritocratic vision of society. She saw the apartheid laws as inhuman and absurd, understanding that the people they alienated most were the black elite on which the future of the country would depend.  

“She did, however, feel a good deal of sympathy for the white population of South Africa, whom she credited for the country's economic development,” says an excerpt of the book.

Yet, again, accepting the apartheid regime's version of things without question was simply too much for many to accept, and her words would come back to haunt her and, now, her legacy. Here is an exact quote from her own mouth concerning her rationale for opposing sanctions on South Africa:

Not exactly going to win over tons of friends these days, right?

There were other things, of course, that made people skeptical towards her, such as her accepting a position endorsing a tobacco company, in a deal for $1 million, back in 1992, not long after the end of her reign as Prime Minister. 

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-19/news/mn-4763_1_margaret-thatcher

In "Thatcher critics recall labor battles, Irish strife" by Janet Stobart of the Los Angeles Times, some reactions were posted that were very critical of Thatcher's political stance:

Or, for that matter, those who supported union strikes following her closure of mines in the early eighties, which Thatcher clamped down on. 

David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners' Assn., told reporters that Thatcher’s death came on his 70th birthday and “it looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had.”  

“There's no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people.  For the union this could not come soon enough and I'm pleased that I have outlived her.”

London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, was also a harsh critic of her policies, and said that they were still being felt. According to this same article:

“She created today's housing crisis, she produced the banking crisis, she created the benefits crisis,” he said in remarks to Sky News. “It was her government that started putting people on incapacity benefits rather than register them as unemployed because the Britain she inherited was broadly at full employment.”  

“She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with 2 or 3 million unemployed and the legacy of that, the benefits bill that we are still struggling with today,” he continued. “In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact she was fundamentally wrong.”

And taken from the same article, the reaction from some Irish: 

Other critical voices came, not surprisingly, from Northern Ireland, where Gerry Adams, leader of the Sinn Fein movement of Irish Republicans, said Thatcher had brought “great hurt to people in Britain ... but also to people here in Ireland.” He recalled what he termed a “draconian policy of militarism” during the 1980s, when British troops fought against militant anti-British Republicans to control the streets of Belfast.  

“Margaret Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and '81,” said Adams, recalling the death in prison of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands.

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-thatcher-critics-20130408,0,6313433.story

Read this piece from Gerry Adams, of the Guardian, in his piece "Margaret Thatcher made the north of Ireland a more bitterly divided place":

Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights.  

Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. And when I and several other Sinn Féin leaders were elected to the Assembly in 1982 we were barred from entry to Britain.

Margaret Thatcher's government defended structured political and religious discrimination and political vetting in the north, legislated for political censorship and institutionalised, to a greater extent than ever before, collusion between British state forces and unionist death squads.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/09/thatcher-legacy-bitterness-north-ireland

He concludes his piece with these final words of condemnation:

For Thatcher it all ended months later in November 1990 when she was forced to resign. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. Her Irish policy failed miserably.

Now, I personally remember the news stories coming out of Northern Ireland in early September 2001 that were making all sorts of headlines that would very quickly be overshadowed, for obvious reasons. When attempts at integration of Catholics and protestants was attempted at schools, there was vehement, and even violent opposition, reminiscent of the days of Jim Crow segregation in the United States, when there were attempts to integrate schools in the early sixties. After two decades of what many viewed as increased segregation and militancy under conservative governments, the response towards dismantling this met with what could obviously be labeled as nothing but hatred and extreme paranoia. Thatcher might not have been responsible for the divisions going back centuries there, but many felt that her policies not only were not helpful, but were downright harmful, and contributed to the outbreaks of violence that were seen in September of 2001. Here are some articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/08/world/a-cycle-of-hatred-is-visited-on-a-new-generation-in-northern-ireland.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/1522368.stm

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/09/ire-s05.html

Yet, she certainly has her supporters, as well. In the Falklands, she was seen as the liberator, not surprisingly. Many felt that she was nothing short of the liberator of the Falklands, the tiny islands that Britain and Argentina fought a war over in the early eighties. 

One thing that I thought was a bit strange, and likely telling on the frame of mind not only in two different countries, but two different continents, was just how divisive the reaction of the death of Thatcher was, while the death of a very similar figure, Ronald Reagan, was seen as the tragic death of a national superhero here in the United States. Hardly anyone challenged this assertion, and just might tell you all that you need to know about just how far gone the political thinking in the United States has become.

Perhaps, also, it may be telling for attitudes about sex, where a reactionary conservative figure packaged in a handsome and charming male persona is, while a similarly minded reactionary conservative figure packaged into a witty, rather stiff female persona is more easily condemned? Who knows? 

One thing for sure: Thatcher was one of the central figures in the world during her tenure, which coincided with a wave of conservatism that not only left it's mark at the time, but which largely continues to be influential right up to the present day. 

Now, I would not exactly condone celebrating someone's death. I just think that is the wrong approach to take, and cheapens life. We can be saddened by what we perceive as a failure of someone to find any greater degree of humanity, empathy, or understanding, but it just seems that there is nothing to celebrate. Yet, we human beings tend to do just that. 

We approach war with bravado, and then celebrate war (whether we admit it or not), when we should approach approach it with extreme trepidation and truly as a last result, and when it is over, we should be thankful to bring the troops back home, and hope that we never have to engage in armed conflict again. All of those who supported the recent wars, and felt patriotic because they slapped a magnetic yellow ribbon that they got at their local Walmart for a few bucks of pocket change need to see the images of not only the tally of those killed in action, but also the images of the flag-draped coffins coming home. They should be forced to see the struggles of wounded soldiers trying to regain a sense of normality in their lives. They should care enough about the news of the day to understand when benefits to veterans are cut by the very administration that sent those veterans to war. Most importantly, they should be forced to see (preferably, to visit) the country that was essentially destroyed by the war, to see the tallies of those who perished at the hands of the "victors". They should be forced to actually see civilians, including children, wounded and killed, their homes destroyed. 

In my opinion (and I know that it is exactly that, just my opinion), there is nothing to celebrate in all of this, other than a war finally being over. I question the validity of the armed conflicts that the United States and Britain have been involved with since World War II, and agree with Kurt Vonnegut, that the last necessary war that we were involved with was that war. I did not celebrate when Reagan died in 2005, although I vehemently disagreed with his policies, and with America's mythology about him as some kind of a hero who saved the nation. I did not celebrate the capture or hanging of Saddam Hussein, although I understand how much of a criminal and brutal dictator he was. I did not celebrate the death of Osama Bin laden, although I was in the tiny minority there. His actions were horrific, and he was, indeed, monstrous. But he celebrated those lives that he destroyed. When we celebrate his demise, is that supposed to make everything right again, or are we doing something that he himself did? Did we "win", because we put a bullet to his head (almost a decade after 9/11)? 

Apparently, people are celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher. I do not find this cause for celebration. In fact, there is nothing about her that is cause for celebration, as far as I'm concerned. Her policies did a lot of damage, and we should learn from them. Those ideas live in, even though she is now dead. Some may celebrate her death, but it seems to me that this is edging closer to that very hate that we all know is so dangerous in the first place. So, no, I will not celebrate. Nor will I be taken away by eloquent and stately words of praise from dignitaries who will sing her praise. In a very real sense, she did more damage than almost anyone else in the latter half of the twentieth century, and her way of thinking (as well as Reagan's), far from being discredited, continues to live on. In some circles, these policies are still viewed as a tremendous success. We need to educate ourselves, to understand these things, and why they happened. Dumbing it down to that ridiculous tug of war has always seemed counterproductive to me, and perhaps the basest form of this is to celebrate someone's death.  

Here is what Morrissey had to say about Thatcher's death (Morrissey provides further comment on Thatcher, CMU.com, April 10, 2013), and I think he shows himself to be very thought-provoking, and with insightful perspectives and arguments.

So, I will conclude this blog entry by giving Morrissey the final word, which seems fitting, seeing as though it is a British subject speaking about a British Prime Minister: 

“The difficulty with giving a comment on Margaret Thatcher’s death to the British tabloids is that, no matter how calmly and measuredly you speak, the comment must be reported as an ‘outburst’ or an ‘explosive attack’ if your view is not pro-establishment. If you reference ‘the Malvinas’, it will be switched to ‘the Falklands”, and your ‘Thatcher’ will be softened to a ‘Maggie’. This is generally how things are structured in a non-democratic society. Thatcher’s name must be protected not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it, and therefore any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics”.  

He continued: “Thatcher was not a strong or formidable leader. She simply did not give a shit about people, and this coarseness has been neatly transformed into bravery by the British press who are attempting to re-write history in order to protect patriotism. As a result, any opposing view is stifled or ridiculed, whereas we must all endure the obligatory praise for Thatcher from David Cameron without any suggestion from the BBC that his praise just might be an outburst of pro-Thatcher extremism from someone whose praise might possibly protect his own current interests”.  

Finally, he wrote: “The fact that Thatcher ignited the British public into street-riots, violent demonstrations and a social disorder previously unseen in British history is completely ignored by David Cameron in 2013. In truth, of course, no British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s funeral on Wednesday will be heavily policed for fear that the British tax-payer will want to finally express their view of Thatcher. They are certain to be tear-gassed out of sight by the police”.  

PS: If you are paying attention to these things, ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ is currently at number two in the iTunes chart, and number one in the current UK Amazon MP3 sales list. The flurry to buy the track post-Thatcher’s death has been led by a Facebook campaign set up a while back, but which kicked into action after the former PM’s passing was confirmed on Monday. The original campaign suggested buying Ella Fitzgerald’s version of the ‘Wizard Of Oz’ song, fearing that the Judy Garland version from the film’s soundtrack was too short to be chart eligible, but chart bosses have said the 56 second track will count in this week’s official singles chart.

http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/morrissey-provides-further-comment-on-thatcher/