"Margaret Thatcher and Hitler are in a lift. You get in. You’ve got a gun but only one bullet. Who do you shoot? Margaret Thatcher."
- Primary school playground joke, Ipswich, circa 1989.
I was about 8 years old when a boy came up to me in my primary school playground and told me this joke. I didn’t get it. How could the leader of our country be hated more than the worst person in history? That question is what got me interested in politics.
The boy who told me the joke had no doubt heard it from his parents but it sums up how passionate people were about politics in the 1980s that such a joke was told by children under the age of ten.
The 80s was about extremes: the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the decade when capitalism undoubtedly defeated socialism for good in the western world. The person most responsible for that in Britain was Margaret Thatcher – this is why she is loved and hated in equal measure and with so much passion.
Divisive is the word that best describes Thatcher. In the last decade those extremes of feeling
were buried deep in society, long forgotten until she died on Monday and they
bubbled back up to the surface again. The range of emotions from the British
public is as extreme now as it was when she was in power 30 years ago – it’s either
‘a great lady has died, very sad’ or ‘ding, dong, the witch is dead!’
The response in the British television and print media has largely
been favourable – you only remember the good bits when someone dies of course. It
is good timing for the Conservative-led government as it has distracted public attention
and media coverage from their recent welfare cuts to the poorest people in
society. Cameron is only likely to benefit in the short term from association
to this mainly favourable media coverage around Thatcher.
Social media is this decade’s fundamental form of communication and it’s funny that there is a third kind of response to Thatcher’s death: who’s Thatcher? I was one of ‘Thatcher’s children’ – children born into a Britain who have only ever known Thatcher as their leader. Now of course, there are millions of Twitter and Facebook users who were born after she was kicked out of Number 10 by her fellow Conservative party members. The best tweet I’ve seen about this was “Why is everyone saying that Cher’s dead? #thatchersdead”.
A genius response to the Twitter generation’s lack of
knowledge about the Iron Lady was by @beardedgenius who has produced Thatcher
for One Direction fans:
There are of course many jokes doing the rounds, my
favourite being the coal related ones:
‘Margaret Thatcher’s final wish was to be cremated. Unfortunately, we’ve no coal left.’
‘Mrs Thatcher arrives at Hell and is greeted by Jimmy Savile who says to her “Now then, you’re here for screwing minors too?”’
Thatcher pretty much destroyed British industry, privatised
everything and taught us that the most important thing to be in life is to be greedy.
The quote that sums her up the best is by her in 1983:
"There is no such thing as society".
In other words, look out for yourself, don’t care about anyone
else, do whatever it takes to get to the top.
Many people admire what they see as the beneficial parts of this philosophy: the single-minded, determined, go-getter mentality that will get you far without any interference from the State. An equal number of people hate the negative parts of this philosophy: if you’re not able then you don’t matter, you’ll be left to yourself and if you can’t make it on your own then the State isn’t going to be there to help you.
Thatcher is a woman who created a country of extremes and of
divisions. Britain in 2013 is as extreme and divided as it has been since the
1980s. That is why Thatcher’s recent death has provoked such a diverse reaction
from society (if of course, it exists).
