Margaret Thatcher dies

[Beef Oven]

In the "class" thread you went from dismissing everyone to engaging in the conversation with some really interesting insights, and now it's back to patronising talk of "Marxism for beginners" and "armchair sociologists." I wonder why you post here at all given that you clearly regard yourself as being surrounded by intellectual dwarves.

Not at all. Actually, judging by the posts on that thread, I think that intellectually you guys are ahead of me. But, the debate was a very basic kick-around of simple Marxist/second generation Marxist ideas, that's all I'm saying.

Yes, armchair sociologists. What you do with your intellect is your choice.

[MrGongGong]

... composer of one of the late twentieth century's great works of religious music, the track "Oh Lord Give Us More Money" from the Movies album. I though you might have meant the other genius Holger Hiller, whose oben im eck I was listening to the other day. If you don't know it I'm sure you'd like it.

Oben im eck...... great stuff

[Beef Oven]

I think he finally went to the loft and brought down his meldewed degree notes....

No need for notes, sadly it's all still in my head.

[Beef Oven]

"Our Creator"....????

Yes, he created both of us.

[Beef Oven]

It was not intended primarily to be offensive - it was a tribal call to all those who like me have had to deal with the fall-out, both personal and societal, of Thatcher's politics.

Last week, in the 'Marxism for beginners' debates, I was told off for using personal experience by the armchair sociologists

[Serial_Apologist]

Had our competitiveness outbid our co-operative side in the survival game, we'd never have got as far as we have in improving the human lot, is my take on this.

[ahinton]

Surely there's "no such thing as sociologists" ?

Nice one!

But, ultimately, what's to be said?

MT was Britain's first and still only female Prime Minister; she was also the longest serving British Prime Minister not only in the past century (as has been repeated endlessly) but since Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who clocked up almost 15 years compared to MT's 11½ or so until 1827, though Henry Pelham's term in office was marginally longer than hers and Walpole's not far short of twice the length of hers.

These, however, are mere statistics and convey nothing of her legacy.

It may be argued - as indeed Tony Benn has done - that MT's integrity, sincerity, honesty and clarity of expression and vision did her credit ("you always knew were you were with MT, even if you'd rather have been anywhere else", as in), but that, too, tells only of her and nothing of what she actually did or what she's left in her wake.

That Britain was in a pretty parlous state when she came to office is surely as undeniable as her determination to make her mark as a new broom (I make no mention of witches, ff!) was understandable, but it seems to me that the worst aspects of her legacy stem largely from her insensitivities, unwillingness to listen to almost anyone else and a burgeoning arrogance that made it abundantly clear to most of us that she was always right and everyone who disagreed with her must therefore be wrong.

Outmoded, unprofitable and badly managed industries in UK did indeed need to be reformed or, in some cases, wound down at the time that she assumed office but, instead of planning out serious and sensible courses of action, what did she do? Wilfully make sworn enemies of the trade union movement rather than "do business with" them (as she later claimed that she could do with Gorbachev) and decimate certain industries with little thought about either what to replace them with or the fate or future of the many tens of thousands of people thereby being put out of work.

The business of allowing people to purchase their social housing might have seemed like a good idea to some at the time, but not only was no thought given to allocating money to build more such housing for those who knew that they could not afford to make such purchases, she also clamped down on almost any local authority wanting to build more such housing while giving no thought to whether those who thought that they might be able to afford to buy their council homes at the time of purchase would be able to sustain the mortgage repayments for the term. The outcome of all that today is not hard to see.

The "share-owning democracy" thing was something of a misnomer; there was no law against individuals purchasing shares before she came along - all that she did was publicly to encourage this.

Privatisation on a large scale was another of her hallmarks but, again, this was prioritised over the possibility of reforming state organisations; for MT, if the government ran it, it was almost certainly useless, so don't fix it - privatise it. Where's the inherent logic in that? Civil servants and private sector workers are all people; on what conceivable grounds would each group be programmed so very differently as to define one as doomed to failure and the other as primed for success, with no room for exceptions? All of this activity proved to be one of the more glaring illustrations of her more widespread agenda of social and commercial divisiveness, setting public against private organisations rather than accepting the need for both with each run as efficiently and beneficially as possible for society's - yes, society's - benefit.

The fact that, for 13 years from 1997, "New Labour" chose to do almost nothing to turn back MT's "reforms" certainly speaks for the strength of her legacy, but one has only to consider the state of society and the economy today to realise that this is no compliment to anyone; whilst MT cannot reasonably be held solely and directly responsible for the financial crisis that began in 2008 and remains far from resolved today, a number of observers have already noted that her actions certainly helped to pave the way for it and make it possible.

So much of what she did and omitted to do seems tarred with the brush of utter inflexibility and an inability / unwillingness to think things through, consider the possible consequences of her actions and depart from her own very specific vision; the latter of these might at least have been regarded as something of a saving grace of sorts had that vision not been so appallingly myopic as it was - single-mindedness is a virtue only when it is one.

Some of her affiliations with leaders of other nations were, to say the very least, suspect.

The fact that her influence has been as long-lasting as it has in the world of British politics can in no wise excuse the fact that her legacy dismally fails to add up to the kind of thing for which Britain can stand so proud today as to warrant treating here in death as though she merits the highest of honours that contemporary British society can provide.

Neither a gloater nor a hagiographer be, methinks.

[ahinton]

Yes, he created both of us.

Who? You and Mr Pee?

[Richard Barrett]

Had our competitiveness outbid our co-operative side in the survival game, we'd never have got as far as we have in improving the human lot, is my take on this.

Exactly.

An "armchair sociologist" writes: actually I don't even own an armchair, apart from which the only substance in your jibe, Beef Oven, seems to be that some prefer to find some objective evidence to support their arguments while others depend on personal anecdotes, which in your case seem to be coloured by a certain bitterness. Like Serial_Apologist I think the cooperative qualities of humankind are more significant than the competitive ones, and I try to live my life according to that principle. However, if I were to cast around for an example of a person whose "cooperative qualities" were stunted to a pathological degree, the name Thatcher would come to mind fairly quickly.

[MrGongGong]

Who? You and Mr Pee?

I thought it was a "holy trinity" ?

[ahinton]

Exactly.

An "armchair sociologist" writes: actually I don't even own an armchair, apart from which the only substance in your jibe, Beef Oven, seems to be that some prefer to find some objective evidence to support their arguments while others depend on personal anecdotes, which in your case seem to be coloured by a certain bitterness. Like Serial_Apologist I think the cooperative qualities of humankind are more significant than the competitive ones, and I try to live my life according to that principle. However, if I were to cast around for an example of a person whose "cooperative qualities" were stunted to a pathological degree, the name Thatcher would come to mind fairly quickly.

Indeed so. Had MT prioritised those co-operative qualities (assuming her to be capable of developing them in the first place) over competitive ones, her legacy would have been utterly different and, with the benefit of her leadership qualities reined in by such prioritisation, she really could have made a lasting positive mark on British society; instead, the very business of "competitiveness" has increasingly become endemic in many walks of life where it has little or no business to be, as superficially illustrated by the still burgeoning craze for competition-oriented television programmes from The Apprentice at one end through Masterchef to what I believe is the latest and perhaps absurdest one of all that is about competitive sewing.

[ahinton]

I thought it was a "holy trinity" ?

OK but, as only two appeared to be implied by the expression "both of us", I merely accepted it and responded accordingly.

[Flosshilde]

Hang on, Flossie, you and your leftie clique are the first to get your knickers in a twist over the whole principal of a hereditary monarchy; yet you think it is acceptable for a state funeral to be granted to somebody who was simply born into/married into the Royal Family, but you then don't think it is right for the country's first female Prime Minister, who rose from being a shop-keeper's daughter in Grantham to the highest office in the land? And what do her children have to do with it?

[Pabmusic]

I agree. The world would be a better place if we approached life as a series of challenges that need to be solved by collaborations.

But I don't get the sense that it's how our creator made us. A fundamental flaw in the domain assumption.

Don't worry. There is plenty (plenty) of evidence that we have evolved as a co-operative species. The same is true of many creatures, but it is especially true of humans. Of course, this is behaviour that developed mainly when we lived in small groups, each member of whom was probably closely related to the rest. Hence our empathy and willingness to collaborate, even though we now live in large groups. We have lived in fixed communities for only a few thousand years or so (as compared to at least 2-3 million years as hunter-gatherers) so we haven't lost our inborn gregariousness. Particular individuals may have lost it, of course, but not most of society as a whole. Oh!...there's no such thing as society? Must be, else what I've said can't be true. And it is.

As for a creator, I've no idea what one of those is, but it probably had no part in the natural process I've described above, since we understand that very well and a creator doesn't get a look-in.

[eighthobstruction]

Thank goodness she died now and not near to May 2015 elections....(thinking pragmatically as was her wont)....