Having spent most of my adult life waiting for this moment - Maggie Maggie Maggie Out Out Out has been ringing in my ears since I was 16 - now that it's actually come I feel a bit of an anticlimax.
As a historian I am certainly not inhibited in talking ill of the dead. I enjoy the childishness of all that stuff on Facebook as much as the next man. Although I do think that Tony Benn hits the nail on the head with his characteristically sober and dignified epitaph:
"Mrs Thatcher was a politician that believed what she thought, did what
she said she was going to do and that gave her a certain integrity.
However, she used that trust to make war on the working class. She
taught us the meaning of class war through campaigns against the miners
and the introduction of the Poll Tax. We are still dealing with the
effects of that 'Neo-Con' economic experiment".
'Integrity' I would add only in the perverse sense of an enemy that looks you in the eye before stabbing you in the guts. As opposed to the turncoat Blairs, Browns and Millibands who stab you in the back.
And that's my sense of anti-climax. Thatcher may be dead but Thatcherism is all too much alive and well. Still for tonight at least - let's permit ourselves a bit of time to rejoice.
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