Jonathan Walker: Don't expect a ‘Maggie’s gone’ party

Jul 25 2008 By Jonathan Walker

Maggie is to get a state funeral when she heads for that great debating chamber in the sky – and the news has aroused strong emotions.

Ted Heath didn’t get one. Neither did Harold Wilson or Sunny Jim Callaghan, whom she replaced.

But, like Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher will be accorded the nation’s highest honour.

This is partly in recognition of her achievement in becoming Britain’s first female Prime Minister.

But it also seems to be based on the belief she did something remarkable in office, namely transforming Britain from an object of pity into something resembling a major power with a strong economy.

The response, and the thinking behind it, has revealed that Lady Thatcher is still a divisive figure.

Some people are angry. The letters pages of one well-known left-wing newspaper (alright then, The Guardian) have been awash with expressions of disgust, or “jokes” about how best to celebrate her death.

I remember when Maggie was forced out of Downing Street. I was at university at the time, and the student union held an impromptu party.

I suspect one reason why some people are so angry at the idea of giving her a heroine’s send-off is that they were planning to do something similar on the day she died.

Forgive me if it sounds crass, but even Lady Thatcher’s greatest admirers must surely know one or two people who hold this type of opinion. Back in the 1980s, hating Thatcher was mandatory in many social circles, particularly among younger people, and some have held on to that hate all these years.

What must get their goat is that Maggie held on for too long. She’s lived long enough to have been rehabilitated. We are all Thatcherites now.

The BBC, that stronghold of the liberal conspiracy, recently ran a drama about Lady Thatcher’s early political career, portraying her as a pioneering woman who battled against sexism and other outdated attitudes.

Gordon Brown invited her to tea in Downing Street. Even the Grauniad reported with no apparent irony that the funeral “would acknowledge the exceptional impact of her 11-year premiership in reversing the decline in Britain’s postwar fortunes”.

It also reported on the controversy, of course, but the idea that she did reverse Britain’s decline seems to have become an accepted fact among journalists of all persuasions.

Haters beware – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. When she goes, the newspapers, airwaves and websites will be full of debate about whether she was good for Britain, or whether her achievements were worth the price that parts of our society undoubtedly paid.

But however sincere that debate may be, I think we can already predict what type of conclusion most commentators will reach. She was a great woman, they’ll say. Despite her faults, and despite the mistakes she undoubtedly made, she was responsible for the transformation of Britain from ... etc. You get the gist.

The one ray of hope for the die-hard haters may be the blogs – websites, as us old people in our late 30s know them – where alternative views are said to take root.

But the truth is that the bloggers aren’t quite as unconventional as they are sometimes portrayed. The prevailing mood in the mainstream media is that Thatcher, now that we’ve had 16 years to think about it, was a good thing for this country, on balance, and this consensus may extend even into cyberspace.

So if you’re a die-hard Thatcher hater, the political equivalent of those Japanese soldiers who refused to believe the war was over, be prepared to close the curtains and lock yourself away when the day comes. Better yet, pack your bags and head off to some remote Scottish island, leaving your mobile phone at home – because the celebrations you’ve been looking forward to are not going to happen.