13 Apr 2013 20:01
I despised everything she stood for - she may have been a woman, but in her policies she showed no compassion to the sick, needy and the desperate
When Margaret Thatcher’s death was announced I was bombarded with media requests to pay tribute to her. I refused. Honour Thatcher? No, no, no.
“Tribute” would be the last word that could be used to describe what I wanted to say. So I decided to wait six days to share my thoughts with you.
I despised everything she stood for. She may have been a woman, but in her policies she showed no compassion to the sick, needy and the desperate.
She won the election off the back of her famous Saatchi and Saatchi adverts... “Labour isn’t working.” She was the biggest spin-merchant going.
Remember when she stood on the doorstep of No 10 in 1979 and quoted St Francis of Assisi? This was meant to be her personal manifesto.
So let’s judge her record in a cold and dispassionate way. It’s what she would have wanted.
“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.”
Thanks to her failed economic policies, Britain went through two recessions and unemployment was deliberately allowed to skyrocket above three million. Under her, crime went up 79 per cent. Her reign started with riots in Brixton and Toxteth and ended with civil disobedience and more riots against the Poll Tax, a regressive taxation that hit the poor the hardest.
“Where there is error, may we bring truth.”
Tell that to the families of the 96 football fans who died at Hillsborough. Her Government and South Yorkshire Police conspired with Murdoch’s Sun to smear the victims as drunks and louts, then covered up the truth for years.
“Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.”
Thatcher never had faith in society. She claimed it didn’t exist. Her belief in the individual led to selling off council homes and refusing to build new ones, leading to record waiting lists for social housing and homelessness.
She also showed no faith to Nelson Mandela, whom she branded a terrorist, but called Chilean fascist dictator General Pinochet a “staunch true friend”.
“Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”
She destroyed mining communities, setting family against family and short-sightedly closed pits that were still economically viable. As many as 200,000 miners lost their jobs just to show she could prove who was boss. Since then, the price of coal rose from $30 a ton in 1987 to $130 in 2008. Forty per cent of our electricity is powered by coal, and we import the vast majority!
It made no economic sense. It was a cold-hearted political decision.
Election win: Thatcher on the step on No.10 after her victory
Getty
Under Thatcher, inequality increased and the number of people in poverty rose by nearly five million to 12.2million... nearly a quarter of the UK population.
When she was elected, one in seven children lived in poverty. By the time she was sacked, by her own Cabinet, it was one in three.
Manufacturing collapsed under her strategy of deindustrialisation and we became beholden to the bankers, the very people who caused the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s depression.
Remember “Tell Sid”? Well Sid might have bought shares in British Gas but today he has to make the choice between heating or eating now that the average dual-fuel bill is more than £1,400.
Thatcher’s “shareholder democracy” vision didn’t stop the privatised British Gas in 2012 making £606million profits and its five bosses sharing £16.4million in pay and bonuses. She left this country in a terrible state... bitter, selfish and divided. Her legacy is the out-of-touch Tory ministers hell-bent on replicating her nasty and twisted politics today.
The antithesis of Thatcher was a prime minister who helped lead this country, with Churchill, against the scourge of fascism and then rebuilt this country.
Clement Attlee, who served as Churchill’s deputy prime minister in the wartime cabinet, led Labour to victory in 1945, with policies to defeat the five evils of the pre-war Tory government: “Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.”
He introduced a national system of benefits to protect people “from the cradle to the grave”.
He brought in free secondary education, employed 25,000 extra teachers and achieved near full employment with only 500,000 people out of work. He built more than one million new homes fit for heroes.
And his crowning achievement, a National Health Service with free medical treatment for all, based on need, not your ability to pay.
In 1997 Labour didn’t look back to Margaret Thatcher’s divisive government. We used Attlee’s administration as our template to deliver what I called “traditional values in a modern setting”.
We rebuilt crumbling schools, recruited 42,000 teachers and 123,000 teaching assistants which saw the number of pupils getting five good GCSEs rise from 54 per cent in 1997 to 69 per cent when we left office in 2010.
We breathed life into a neglected NHS by employing over 44,000 more doctors and 89,000 more nurses, and building over 100 new hospitals, cutting waiting times for treatment from 18 months to 18 weeks.
We introduced the minimum wage, the New Deal, tax credits to lift over a million children out of poverty and created two million new jobs, reducing unemployment to 1.5million. It led to the longest period of continuing growth.
We invested £20billion to bring two million social housing homes up to a decent standard: warm, weatherproof and with modern facilities.
We put 32,000 more bobbies and PCSOs on the beat, introduced community policing and ASBOs which helped to slash crime by more than 40 per cent. And we pumped £400million into the former coalfield communities to help regenerate the areas. So do I believe Thatcher’s claim that New Labour was her “greatest achievement”?
Absolutely not.
Even in death, she is spinning from her grave.
She claimed she never wanted a state funeral, but she planned to give herself the same ceremonial one as the Queen Mother.
And her “children”, the out-of-touch Tory Boys Cameron and Osborne, are getting YOU to foot the £10million bill for the biggest political propaganda exercise this country has ever seen.
This is what “Operation True Blue” is about. It’s not a remembrance. It’s a rebrand.
Firstly, they brought back Lords and MPs for a combined total of 12 hours of fawning and mourning from Tories, using it as a platform to kick the Labour governments of the 1970s.
When Attlee died in 1967, just 40 minutes was given for parliamentary tributes. For Churchill, the tributes in the House of Commons lasted little more than half an hour.
At Churchill’s funeral, Attlee was a pall bearer along with Tory Premiers Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan. That showed how united Labour and Conservative had been during the war.
But Thatcher split this country, North and South, the haves and have nots, “one of us” or “the enemy within”.
This country paid enough thanks to that woman. So why the hell should we continue to pay now she’s dead?
So I’ve an idea. Get the 13,000 millionaires who’ve just received £100,000 each from this Government to each stump up £770. Privatise her funeral. It would be a fitting tribute.
On Wednesday I’ll remember the wasted lives, the blighted childhoods and the lost industries that were the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies.
And I’ll pay tribute to a former PM who made Britain stronger, healthier and happier, not weaker, sicker and despondent.
Clement Attlee, Prime Minister 1945-1951.
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